Auschwitz: A Three-Quarter Century of Propaganda

Abstract

During the war, wild rumors were circulating about the infamous Auschwitz Camp: that the Germans were testing new war gases there; that inmates were murdered in batches of thousands in electrocution chambers, with gas showers, or by pneumatic hammer systems; that living people were sent on conveyor belts directly into cremation furnaces; that oils, grease and soap were made of the mass-murder victims. Nothing of it was true.

When the Soviets captured Auschwitz in early 1945, they reported that inmates were killed on electrocution conveyor belts that discharged their victims directly into huge furnaces; that at least 4 million people were murdered there. That wasn’t true either.

During the immediate postwar years, “witnesses” and “experts” repeated these things and added more fantasies: that inmates were murdered with gas bombs, in gas chambers made of canvas; that the gas chambers’ floors opened downward to discharge the bodies; that carts drove both corpses and living people into the furnaces; that the crematoria of Auschwitz could have cremated 400 million victims… Again, none of it was true.

This book gives an overview of the many rumors, myths and lies about Auschwitz which mainstream historians today reject as untrue. It then explains by which ridiculous methods some claims about Auschwitz were accepted as true and turned into “history,” although they are just as untrue.

1. Forgotten Propaganda Lies

On 27 January 1945, the vanguard of the Soviet 100th Infantry Division forming part of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front reached the Auschwitz- Birkenau complex, now abandoned by the Germans.

The Soviet propaganda machinery went to work immediately, echoing the most hare-brained stories circulating among the inmates – perhaps through excess of zeal.

On 2 February, Pravda published an article by its correspondent Boris Polevoi titled “The Death Complex at Auschwitz,” in which, among other things, we read the following:[1]

“They [the Germans] leveled the mounds of so-called ‘old’ mass graves in the eastern area,[2] blew up and destroyed the traces of their electrical conveyor belt [elektrokonvejera] where hundreds of inmates had been murdered simultaneously by electrical current [elyektriceskim tokom]; the bodies were placed on a slowly moving conveyor belt which brought them to a pit furnace [shiachtnuju pječ [3]], where the bodies were burnt completely.”

Until this time, Soviet propaganda had never paid much attention to Auschwitz. Pravda, in the preceding months, had only dedicated a few lines to it, reporting, moreover, information received from London, according to which the Auschwitz “death factory” had three crematoria, “equipped with gas chambers,” with a capacity of 10,000 bodies per day![4]

The above propaganda story recounted by Boris Polevoi was picked up by a former Auschwitz inmate, a certain Lieberman, who stated as follows on 27 September 1945:[5]

“As already mentioned, I was one of a working party whose duty it was to unload potatoes at the station. We had at this time no contact with the prisoners of the big camp. We were separated in quarantine but housed together with another working party, which was serving the crematorium and the gas chambers. It is due to this fact that I know how things occurred [there].

The men and women entered the so-called bathroom and undressed separately to avoid panic. Once they were undressed they entered by separate doors in the central gas chamber. This chamber could take 3,000 people. The gas was released through sprays of the showers and from bombs which were thrown through apertures designed to allow for that procedure. Death occurred within five minutes. On certain days, when enormous transports arrived at the station of Birkenau, 42,000 people were gassed.

Once the gassing process had been completed, the floor of the chamber opened automatically and the corpses fell into the subterranean chamber, where prisoners in charge of extracting the teeth or cutting hair of a certain length, took over. […]

Once the gold teeth had been recovered, the corpses were loaded onto a moving belt and transported to cremation ovens, through subterranean gangways. There were four ovens, a big one and three small ones, which were capable of burning 400 corpses in five minutes.[6] Later on, when the number of corpses exceeded the capacity of the ovens, trenches were dug and the corpses thrown in saturated with petrol.

I have personally seen these trenches and smelled the stench of the combustion. I have equally been able to visit the gas chambers and the crematorium, when I was detailed to clean up on a day when they were not in use.

I have never seen the trolleys for the transport of corpses personally, not have I seen the ovens operating; but as I have already mentioned, several of the working party, which was serving the gas chambers and ovens, lived with us and have given me all the details. This special working party was called Sonderkommando [special commando]. A certain Jacob Weinschein[7] of Paris, who is a survivor of this commando, is personally known to me.”

In 1946, a French governmental publication, referring to a “Report from the Russian services,” reported another version of the story:[8]

“800-900 meters from the location of the furnaces, the inmates get into carts travelling on rails. At Auschwitz, these are of varying dimensions, containing from 10 to 15 persons. Once loaded, the cart is put into motion along an inclined plane, where it then enters a gallery at high speed. At the end of the gallery is a wall; behind it is the access into the furnace.

When the cart knocks into the wall, it opens automatically, the cart tips, dumping its cargo of living humans into the furnace. Once this is done, another cart follows, loaded with another group of inmates, and so on.”

According to another, hybrid variant of the story, recounted by the former inmate Leo Laptos, the “gas chambers” were rigged out like shower baths, with shower heads squirting “gas instead of water,” after which “the floors were tipped, causing the bodies to fall onto a conveyor belt which carried them into the crematorium.”[9]

Even during the war, the propaganda branch of the resistance movement at Auschwitz was busy inventing other, no-less-fantastic methods of extermination, such as the story of the “pneumatic hammer,”[10] the “electrical chambers” and the “electrical bath.” On 23 October 1942, the underground newspaper Informacja bieca (Current Information), no. 39 (64), published the following news item:[11]

“According to the report of an SS employee at the electrical chambers [przy komorach elektr.], the number of victims killed daily officially amounted to 2,500 per night. They were killed in the electrical bath [w łaźni elektrycznej] and in gas chambers.”

And a report dated 18 April 1943 attributed these methods of extermination to Auschwitz:[12]

“b. Electric Chambers, these chambers had metal walls, the victims were brought in and then high tension electric current was introduced.

c. The so-called Hammerluft system. This is a hammer of air. Those were special chambers where the hammer fell from the ceiling and by means of a special installation victims found death under air pressure.”

Still in May 1945, Mordechai Lichtenstein declared:[13]

“On little carts the corpses were taken to the crematoria, where they were burned by an electrical current of 6,000 volts.”

In June 1944, at Stockholm, an official of the Polish government in exile, a certain Waskiewicz, interrogated a Pole who had fled Poland after spending seven weeks in Auschwitz. On 18 June, Waskiewicz wrote a report in French on the interrogation of the witness,[14] whom he identified by initials only: K.J. The latter was a conscript worker who had been arrested by the Gestapo upon his unauthorized-late return from a few days’ furlough, and sentenced to ten weeks in a concentration camp. He was then interned in Rattwitz camp, in Silesia, for three weeks, after which he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he spent the remaining seven weeks.

In his report on this camp, the witness repeated the fable of the conveyor belt, but in a different context:[15]

“At every roll call, a special service carried away all those who had fallen and no longer responded to blows, sending them, without making sure whether they still lived, on a mechanical transporter directly to the cremation furnace, whose capacity, in 1943, was designed for 1,000 persons [at a time].”

But the most fantastic part of the testimony is this:[16]

“Section XVIII (Jewish) was equipped with a gas chamber and a factory manufacturing grease for machinery. K.J. declares that it was there that the Germans transformed the bodies of the gassed Jews into grease, then shipped it off in packages labelled ‘Schmierstoff-Fabrik Auschwitz’ [Auschwitz Lubricant Factory].

Being charged with carrying away the bodies of gassed persons, he had been able to observe the process on a group of 1,500 Polish Jews, ‘shipped’ in May 1943. Upon their arrival, these Jews were not mistreated. Nor did they appear to be particularly ill-nourished. As soon as they arrived, they were made to take a real bath, and were even given soap. Then, afterwards, their clothing was taken away, they were selected, grouped separately into fat ones and thin ones, women and men. Every group was then sent to the gas chambers separately, a vast concrete room which was accessed via a triple door. The victims generally died a few minutes after the doors were closed. The room was then rapidly ventilated, and the inmates in charge of carrying away the bodies had to place them as quickly as possible, before they would become stiff, on special carts which went to the grease factory by means of a special mechanical transporter.

There, by means of chemical processes the nature of which were unknown to K.J., the transformation into a slurry and the extraction of the fat took place. The remains, in the form of a few bones and a shapeless slurry, was carefully burned in the crematorium.”

In view of the above, Waskiewicz’s introductory description of the witness, K.J. – a genuine forerunner of the present-day historians, who are always prepared to regurgitate the most hare-brained “eyewitness testimonies” without batting an eye – sounds almost comical:[17]

“Of peasant origins, simple and sometimes primitive, [he was] without imagination, but a good and conscientious observer. His truthfulness appears indisputable.”

The fable of the shower heads squirting poison gas instead of water was invented fairly early on. It appears in a “Letter Written in Auschwitz Camp,” dated as early as 29 August 1942, in which we read:[18]

“The most terrifying thing is the mass executions in gas chambers constructed especially for the purpose. There are two of these, and they can contain 1,200 people. They are equipped with shower baths, unfortunately delivering poison gas instead of water. [Urząd­zone są łaźnie z prysznicami, z których niestety zamiast wody wy­dobywa się gaz].”

In an underground report on living conditions in the camp dating back to December 1942 or January 1943, the gassing procedure is described as follows:[19]

“On the inside, the chambers are equipped so as to resemble a shower bath, which only differ from real shower baths in the fact that the showers distribute poison gas instead of water [miast wody, z pryszniców wydobywa się trujący gaz]. […]

Inside the barracks, they must undress immediately, because they have to take a bath. They are even given towels and soap. After their shower, they are supposed to receive underwear and clothing. When the chamber is full, the doors are closed and the gas is emitted through openings designed to look like shower heads [i przez otwory w formie pryszniców wydobywa się gaz]”

The imaginary story of the “poison-gas shower baths” immediately received widespread publicity, to such an extent that Dr. G. M. Gilbert, the psychologist at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, even inserted it into the mouth of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz:[20]

“The killing [procedure] was easy; you didn’t even need guards to drive them into the chambers; they just went in expecting to take showers, and, instead of water, we turned on poison gas.”

The French underground newspaper Fraternité, in its issue for May 1944, published the following “eyewitness testimony” on Auschwitz:[21]

“Upon arrival, all the men who were still able to work were sent to the work sites immediately. The others, women, children, old people, were sent to the showers. They were taken into a splendid, modern building […]

But, instead of showers of warm water, which would have refreshed their tired limbs, they received a spray of toxic gas: and in a few instants, there was nothing left but bodies, piled up against the doors through which they had attempted to flee – the bodies of mothers with their children in their arms, or old people clutching their spouses in a supreme gesture of protection.”

Naturally, the story of the shower baths was spread far and wide by former camp inmates. Here is an example of Sofia Schafranov’s version:[22]

“They faked a shower bath for the victims, although they knew by now just what kind of shower bath it was; they were even given towels and a piece of soap; after which, they were made to undress and chased into low, hermetically sealed concrete chambers. The ceiling was decked out with shower heads, which emitted poison gas instead of water.”

The most fantastic version of the “shower bath” fable was invented by Ada Bimko, a Polish Jew deported to Auschwitz on 4 August 1943, and who testified as follows, under oath(!) at the Belsen Trial. In August 1944, she had been compelled to enter a “gas chamber” at Birkenau to remove blankets [sic] which had allegedly been left there by the gassing victims. She had hardly entered when she had the immense good luck to meet an inmate member of the so-called Sonderkommando from the same city, after which a very agreeable SS non-commissioned officer hurriedly showed her the top-secret extermination gassing installations. This is her description:[23]

“In the first room I met a man who came from the same town as I do. There was also an S.S. man with a rank of Unterscharfuhrer, and he belonged to the Red Cross. I was told that in the first big room the people left their clothes, and from this room were led into a second, and I gained the impression that hundreds and hundreds might go into this room, it was so large. It resembled the shower-baths or ablution rooms we had in the camp. There were many sprays all over the ceiling in rows which were parallel. All these people who went into this room were issued with a towel and a cake of soap, so that they should have the impression that they were going to have a bath, but for anybody who looked at the floor it was quite clear that it was not so, because there were no drains. In this room there was a small door which opened to a room which was pitch dark and looked like a corridor. I saw a few lines of rails with a small wagon which they called a lorry, and I was told that prisoners who were already gassed were put on these wagons and sent directly to the crematorium. I believe the crematorium was in the same building, but I myself did not see the stove [sic!]. There was yet another room a few steps higher than the previous one with a very low ceiling, and I noticed two pipes which I was told contained the gas. There were also two huge metal containers containing gas.”

In a deposition annexed to the trial records, Ada Bimko stated:[24]

“The S.S. man told me that the cylinders contained the gas which passed through the pipes into the gas chamber.”

therefore, the gas travelled from the containers into the pipes and through the shower heads into the “gas chamber”!

But even this story had its variants. One particularly extravagant variant was recounted by Bruno Piazza, who had been sentenced to death in the “gas chamber,” from which he miraculously managed to save himself:[25]

“I heard one of them say, ‘Crematorium’. We continued marching through the camp, between two rows of barracks of a type quite similar to those of the last camp. When we got to the end, they made us turn left and then made us enter a barracks in semi-darkness, all eight hundred of us. Night had already fallen. In the middle there was a stove that had gone out and three zinc buckets. Suddenly, they turned on the lights and we saw that we were in a sort of shower room. Twenty shower heads hung from the ceiling. […] This room was the antechamber of the crematorium, was the gas chamber […]. No doubt of it now. I had heard of the system: they put a white layer of potassium cyanide powder underneath the shower and then suddenly turned on the water. This caused the release of deadly poisonous cyanide gas from the powder. Then the clerk [sic] entered with a mask on his face, sprinkled the powder, turned on the shower, left, closed the door, and after ten minutes we were all dead, asphyxiated. At the other end of the room was a high door which was said to lead to the crematorium by means of an inclined plane. […]

In the past, asphyxiation had been achieved using a different method from the current one, with the showers. A hole was pierced in the ceiling. The hole was opened by an automatic valve, ejecting three or four pre-prepared cyanide gas cylinders into the interior of the chamber. But the system was not very safe, because sometimes the cover of the cylinder didn’t break during the fall, and it was then necessary to repeat the procedure four or five times, to be sure that the gas had actually been emitted.”

At the Degesch trial in 1949, a witness mentioned the rumor that “at Birkenau, the gas was introduced into the chamber through fake shower heads,” but both Dr. Heerdt, the inventor of Zyklon B, and Dr. Ra., physicist, declared that this gassing technique was impossible, so that the High Court of Frankfurt am Main, in its judgement of 28 March 1949, acknowledged that it was incorrect:[26]

“The Tribunal does not doubt the fact that the hypothesis that the gas was taken from the Zyklon can with a cannula B and introduced into the gas chamber, is erroneous, so that it is no longer necessary to perform the experiment requested by one of the defendants.”

The story of the “cylinders of hydrogen cyanide” was an adaptation of the more-commonly heard version of the “bombs” containing hydrogen cyanide, which was invented towards the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944 by Jerzy Tabeau, who was interned at Auschwitz under the name of Jerzy Wesolowski on 23 March 1942 and escaped on the night of 19-20 November 1943. In his report, which began circulating in the summer of 1944, he wrote:[27]

“After reaching the area with the chamber, which was surrounded by barbed wire, the condemned men had to undress completely, men, women and children together; each person then received a towel and soap. They were then all driven into the chamber, with plenty of blows and mistreatment. They drove as many into the chamber as it could hold, then the door was closed tight, and SS men especially assigned for this [threw] bombs filled with Prussic acid through valves located in the walls. After ten minutes, the doors were opened, and a special commando (always made up of Jews) carried away the bodies and made room for the next convoy.”

A report dated 23 August 1944, by contrast, mentioned “vials”:[28]

“Under the guise of visiting a bath, the arrived people are being undressed, given soap and are directed to the “bath sections”, where the doors are hermetically closed, after which ampoules with unknown liquid are being thrown in from above, which break and emit gas, as a result of which after five-ten minutes happens [unclear word] suffocation.”

This fantastic story was also echoed by Kurt Gerstein, who wrote that the Degesch director had told him “that for the killing of men, he had supplied hydrogen cyanide in vials (in Ampullen).”[29]

However, according to him, at Auschwitz, these “vials” were used in a different manner:[29]

“Only at Auschwitz were millions of children killed by holding a wad [soaked with] hydrogen cyanide underneath their noses.”

In addition to “bombs” or “cylinders” or “vials” of hydrogen cyanide, other substances were indicated as methods of extermination: “sternutatory gases” (gaz sternutatoires)[30] and “certain substances that put the people to sleep [einschläfern] in one minute.”[31]

Ex-inmate Otto Wolken, by contrast, spoke of gassing ditches:[32]

“Ditches were dug and covered with canvas, serving as provisional gas chambers.”

At the Nuremberg Trial, on 21 June 1946, the American prosecutor, Jackson, mentioned another method of alleged extermination “in the vicinity of Auschwitz”: a high-tempe­rature weapon of mass destruction, similar to the effects of an atom bomb:[33]

“A village, a small village was provisionally erected, with temporary structures, and in it approximately 20,000 Jews were put. By means of this newly invented weapon of destruction, these 20,000 people were eradicated almost instantaneously, and in such a way that there was no trace left of them; that it developed, the explosive developed, temperatures from 400° to 500° centigrade and destroyed them without leaving any trace at all.”

These fables quickly fell into oblivion, being replaced by other, better organized ones, which shall be examined in Chapter 3, that nonetheless caused a certain disconcertment among orthodox Holocaust historians. The latter, after all, were then compelled to proclaim that it was not the case that these same propaganda fables later developed, through a variety of literary elaborations, into the Holocaust “revealed truth” which reigns supreme for now. On the contrary, they claimed that such fables were a mere “reflection” of a “truth” whose precise details were only discovered later, but which was not yet known when these “reflections” were published. The value of such conjectures will be examined in Chapter 7.

2. The Lie of the Industrial Exploitation of Human Corpses

In the paragraph above, I reported the manner in which the “eyewitness” K.J. described the “Auschwitz Lubricant Factory.”

The fable had already been put into circulation by the Polish underground publication Informacja zachodnia (Western Information) in its No. 16 of 10 February 1944, which reported the following “information”:[34]

“Auschwitz. Recently, a modern electric oven [nowoczesny piec elektryczny] was supplied by Siemens. It is used for the special processing of corpses. By means of a progressively increasing temperature, the fats are removed from the human corpses, which are then processed. There is also a large bone-glue factory in the camp.”

The Auschwitz resistance movement was perhaps inspired by British black propaganda. Since 1940, the British Political Warfare Executive organized a vast “Rumors and Whispers Campaign” based on the creation of false news called “sibs,” from the Latin word “sibilare” to whisper.

Someone put the following macabre themes in circulation:

“About 200,000 amputations have been made in Vienna hospitals. The meat is very sensibly being rendered for its fat for soap.”[35]

“The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute has worked out a method of extracting calcium from the bones of air raid victims. It will be used in special diets for children.”[36]

Studying the origins of this lie is important because it shows clearly the manner in which the Auschwitz propagandists elaborated upon their own fables, starting with a sliver of truth, but distorting it so as to invest it with a terrible criminal significance. This was the procedure utilized in creating the fable of the gas chambers.

The lie of the manufacture of human soap was too juicy to avoid propagandistic exploitation, but since the propagandists lacked any sense of proportion, successive developments of the tale degenerated into the grotesque and ridiculous.

For example, the following tale was told by ex-Auschwitz inmate Olga Lengyel:[37]

“The Nordic Supermen knew how to profit from everything. Immense casks were used to gather the human grease which had melted down at high temperatures. It was not surprising that the camp soap had such a peculiar odor. Nor was it astonishing that the internees became suspicious at the sight of certain pieces of fat sausage!”

This tale, too, has now fallen into oblivion, although attempts are made to resurrect it from time to time.

In 1994, a researcher from the Auschwitz Museum, Andrzej Strzelecki, declared:[38]

“There is no evidence that human fat was used to manufacture soap, or that human skin was treated to make lampshades, bookbindings, purses, or similar objects in Auschwitz.”

But another fable, no less grim, is, incredibly, still around: that of the exploitation of human bones. This accusation had already been made at the First Nuremberg Trial by the Soviet prosecutor, Smirnov:[39]

“From 1943 the Germans, in order to utilize the bones which were not burned, started to grind them and sell them to the firm Strem for the manufacture of superphosphates. In the camp there were found bills of lading, addressed to the firm Strem, of 112 tons and 600 kilograms of bone meal from human corpses. The Germans also used for industrial purposes hair shorn from women who were doomed for extermination.”

And in the Auschwitz Museum’s most important work, published at the end of the 1900s, Andrzej Strzelecki himself adds:[40]

“The Soviet commission that investigated war crimes at Auschwitz determined that bones from corpses in the crematoria were sold, after being crushed, to the ‘Strem’ firm in Strzemieszyce (near Dąbrowa Górnica), for use in the manufacture of fertilizer. At least 100 tons of crushed human bones were shipped from Auschwitz to the ‘Strem’ firm in 1943 and 1944.”

The fable was based on a list drawn up by a Polish inmate, dated 27 February 1945, and delivered by him to the Soviet Commission. This bears the heading “Wykaz nadanych wie ych ko ci i odpadków ko cianych do stacyj Strzemieszyce dla firmy Strem,” that is: “List of fresh bones and osseous waste shipped to the Strem Company from Strzemieszyce Station.”

The list inventories the materials shipped to this company with an indication of the date, carriage number, content and weight. The “contents” column specifies, in German, the type of bone shipped:[41] “frische Knochen” – fresh bones, “tierische Abfälle” – animal waste,[42] “Rinderknochen” – bovine bones, “Leimleder” – skins for making glue”

Therefore, the bones sent to the Strem Company were not human bone, but animal bone.

Incredibly, the appeal “An die internationale Öffentlichkeit” (“To the International Public”), signed on 4 March 1945 in Auschwitz by four distinguished university professors (Geza Manfeld, Budapest; Berthold Epstein, Prague; Henri Limousin, Clairmond Ferrand; and Bruno Fischer, Prague) repeated this fable in even more imaginative way:[43]

“The oils and fats necessary for the combustion in order to save petroleum were obtained partly from the corpses of those gassed. Also obtained from the parts body were technical oils and greases for machines, even washing soap.”

Pursuing the investigation in greater depth, we can see the origins of the lie of the use of human fat for industrial purposes.

The slaughterhouse at the Auschwitz Camp, as shown on an installation inventory dated 27 September 1944,[44] contained a device for the extraction of grease from animal bones (Knochenentfettungs[anlage]), which was installed as early as September 1942.[45] The related device (Knochenentfettungsapparat) had been supplied by the M. Trüsted company of Berlin-Hannover, as shown in a letter from the company management to the management of Auschwitz concentration camp dated 25 June 1942.[46] The installation was used to extract grease from animal bones to enrich the diet of the inmates, but, for camp propaganda, it was transformed into an installation for the industrial exploitation of human fat!

It is worth noting that the British propaganda story of the “corpse factory” during the First World War, correctly termed by Arthur Ponsonby “one of the most revolting lies invented during the war”[47] had a similar origin.

The Times, for example, on 16 April 1917, wrote that the German army had a “Corpse Exploitation Establishment (Kadaververwertungsanstalt)” in which the fat obtained from the bodies of fallen soldiers was transformed into lubricant oils, while the other remains were ground up into osseous flour, which was then mixed with food for swine.[48]

As Walter Laqueur wrote:[49]

“there were indeed such installations in Germany (Kadaververwertungsanstalten)[50] but they were processing animals’ cadavers [Kadaver in German] not human corpses [Leichen in German].”

He adds (ibid..):[51]

“In the mid-twenties, Austen Chamberlain, the [British] Foreign Secretary, admitted in Parliament that the story of corpses factory had been without foundation.”

But this sort of propaganda blooms afresh even today. One news item of the year 2005 described the discovery in Israel of a box of soap supposed produced out of Jewish fat, arousing the annoyance of the Yad Vashem Institute. One of their spokespersons has in fact declared that “there is no proof the Nazis made soap from human bodies during the Holocaust.”[52]

Other, no less revolting lies also circulated during the Great War. Laqueur notes (ibid.):

“The Daily Telegraph reported in March 1916 that the Austrians and Bulgarians had killed 700,000 Serbs [in gas chambers], using asphyxiating gas. Some readers probably remembered these stories when in June 1942, the Daily Telegraph was the first to report that 700,000 Jews had been gassed.”

But a few resistance members at Auschwitz “probably” remembered this “report” even earlier than the Daily Telegraph, towards the end of 1941.

3. Birth of the Propaganda Lie of the Gas Chambers

The story of the gas chambers was born rather early on, but with a highly specific connotation: experimentation with toxic gases for military purposes, with precise reference to the use of asphyxiating gases during the First World War, and the alleged gassing of 700,000 Serbs. This version of the story appeared in a report from the underground resistance movement at Auschwitz Camp on 24 October 1941:[53]

“At Oscwiecim [Auschwitz], at the beginning of October, 850 Russian officers and non-commissioned officers Russians (POWs) who had been transported to Auschwitz, were subjected to death by gassing for the purpose of experimentation with a new type of war gas, which was to have been used on the Eastern front [jako próbę nowego typu gazu bojowego, który ma być użyty na froncie wschod­nim].”

In subsequent versions of the story, the reason for experimenting on inmates, using war gases, remained the primary motive.[54] The propaganda requirements of the resistance then invented a new theme, that of the extermination of Jews in gas chambers, which were initially called “Degasungs­kammer.” This term was a misspelling of the German term Begasungskammer, fumigation chamber, referring to a disinfestation chamber using hydrogen-cyanide gas using a Degesch circulation system. The combination of gas chambers and shower baths which we have already seen in the letter of 29 August 1942, and which became a recurrent motif of subsequent propaganda, was inspired by two hygienic installations, one still in the design stage, the other in the course of implementation: the first was the Aufnahmegebäude (reception building), which included, under the same roof, 19 Begasungs­kammern (fumigation chambers) and a shower installation for the inmates, which gave its name to the alleged homicidal gas chambers; the second consisted of two mirror-symmetrical disinfestation installations referred to as Bauwerke (building sites) 5a and 5b, which likewise consisted of a hydrogen-cyanide gas chamber and a washing and shower area, referred to in the related blueprints as Gaskammer and Wasch- und Brauseraum, respectively.

This gave rise to a literary theme which developed into an efflorescence of unfounded and contradictory versions finally purged and amended in the final version of the provisional gassing installations, referred to (after the end of the war) as the Bunkers or “little white house” and “little red house.”

The invention of the yarn of the “homicidal gassings” in the crematoria at Birkenau was more laborious.

A first draft of the story appeared rather tardily in the paragraph “Death Factory” of the “Periodic Report” (Sprawozdanie okresowe) of 5-25 May 1944:[55]

“Starting in May 1943, ‘comfort.’ The transports are taken to the ‘ramp of death’ at Rajsko,[56] and from there, after the selection, men, women and children are taken to the gas chambers in the recently-built crematoria (we possess blueprints of the chambers). After the gassing, the naked bodies are transported on a freight elevator in this ‘death factory’ to the [ground] floor, where they are subjected to careful inspection for the enrichment of the Third Reich. The commando of dentists pulls out all gold or platinum teeth – to save time – together with the jaws. In the dissection room, suspicious bodies are dissected in search of swallowed precious objects. There are 4 active crematoria, which process up to 5,000 [bodies] a day. The furnaces at Auschwitz have already ‘processed’ 1,500,000 Jews and another 100,000 Poles, Russians and others.”

Rather a tardy and insignificant description of colossal gassings of at least one and a half million people! Auschwitz resistance members realized this right away, and decided to invent a much more detailed version of the fable of the alleged mass extermination. The propaganda machine was thus set in motion and invented a story which, notwithstanding its obvious falsity, became the embryo which later developed into the current “historical truth”: the so-called “Auschwitz Protocols,” a series of reports from inmates who had escaped from Auschwitz between 1943 and 1944.

The most important report was that of Rudolf Vrba (interned under the name of Walter Rosenberg on 30 June 1942, Registration Number 44070) and Alfred Wetzler (interned on 13 April 1942, Registration Number 29162), two Slovakian Jews who escaped from Birkenau on 7 April 1944. After reaching Slovakia, they compiled their report at the end of April, which began to circulate as early as the following month. One of the first versions, in German, was titled “Tatsachenbericht über Auschwitz und Birkenau” (Factual Report on Auschwitz-Birkenau) and dated Geneva, 17 May 1944.[57]

The purpose of Vrba and Wetzler’s escape, as the first later explained, was that of “telling the world about what was happening at Auschwitz,” to prevent the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to that camp.[58] Vrba also declared that he had been in contact with the inmate from the so-called Son­derkommando, Filip Müller, “who became one of [our] most precious sources of information,” and that they had also received “additional information” from him when they discussed the situation in the camp with him in very early 1944.[59]

At the Zündel Trial in 1985, in which he participated as a witness for the prosecution, Vrba confirmed that he had frequent contacts with members of the Sonderkommando, declaring that he had drawn the sketch of Crematoria II and III of Birkenau contained in the Vrba-Wetzler Report based precisely on this information.[60] Filip Müller, the ex-inmate mentioned by Rudolf Vrba, confirmed that he had provided Alfred Wetzler, in 1944, with “a sketch of the crematoria with the gas chambers” (einen Plan der Krematorien mit den Gaskammern),[61] among other documents.

But in a book written by him under the pseudonym “Jozef Lánik,” Wetzler once again dished up the story of the “shower gas chambers”:[62]

“The men, who were still busy with their luggage, and who were also stupefied by the kindness of the SS men, looked at the ceiling suddenly, and saw that the shower heads were emitting minute crystals instead of water. The crystals immediately generated poison gas, which they were now compelled to breathe: it was the powerful, poisonous Zyklon.”

The victims “moved forwards in a line, in groups of five, and entered the shower baths with their children, where the shower heads emitted poison gas instead of water.”[63]

The Vrba-Wetzler Report contains a detailed yet false description of Crematoria II and III:

“At present there are four crematoria in operation at BIRKENAU, two large ones, I and II, and two smaller ones, III and IV. Those of type I and II consist of 3 parts, i.e.: (A) the furnace room; (B) the large hall; and (C) the gas chamber. A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings.

Each opening can take three normal corpses at once and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies. Next to this is a large ‘reception hall’ which is arranged so as to give the impression of the antechamber of a bathing establishment. It holds 2,000 people and apparently there is a similar waiting room of the floor below. From there a door and a few steps lead down into the very long and narrow gas chamber. The walls of this chamber are also camouflaged with simulated entries to shower rooms in order to mislead the victims.

This roof is fitted with three traps which can be hermitically closed from the outside. A track leads from the gas chamber to the furnace room.”

This is followed by an explanation of the alleged gassing technique, which is said to have occurred by pouring a “a preparation in powder form,” contained in “tin cans labeled ‘CYKLON’,” through the “three traps.” The label on the cans says “For use against vermin”; the poison “is manufactured by a Hamburg concern.”[64]

It is now known that both the description of Crematoria II and III supplied by Vrba and Wetzler, and their sketch intended to illustrate the same, are completely invented, as shown by a simple comparison with the original diagrams. In short:

1. there were five cremation furnaces in the furnace room, not nine;
2. each furnace had three muffles (combustion chambers) not four,
3. the furnaces were arranged in a straight line along the longitudinal axis of the furnace room, not grouped in a semi-circle around the chimney;
4. the area referred to as an undressing room for the victims (Morgue #2) was located in the basement, not on the ground floor;
5. the area referred to as the gas chamber (Morgue #1) was not located on the ground floor, a little bit lower than the undressing room, but also in the basement, on the same level as the undressing room;
6. the area referred to as the gas chamber was connected to the furnace room by a small freight elevator, not by rails or a “track.”

Since both the sketch and the description of Crematoria II/III contained in the Vrba-Wetzler Report are pure inventions, it follows that the story of the extermination of the Jews in homicidal gas chambers referred to by the authors did not originate from inmates forming part of the so-called Sonder­kommando, but was concocted without their knowledge. This proves that the story was created by the camp resistance movement as crude propaganda and without any thought of consulting the inmates who worked in the crematoria!

But this was obviously quite irrelevant for the intended purposes of the propagandists. Throughout 1944, and even afterwards, the Vrba-Wetzler Report became the “proof” of the alleged extermination of the Jews in gas chambers, heavily setting the terms of all subsequent propaganda. As Walter Laqueur writes:[65]

“Thus it was only in 1944, when Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler arrived with most detailed news about the greatest of all death camps, that the ‘rumours’ became a certainty.”

It was precisely for this reason, i.e., to confer credibility upon propaganda “rumors,” which had, until that time, remained utterly risible,[66] that the Vrba and Wetzler “report” was concocted.

The Vrba-Wetzler Report also influenced subsequent Ausch­witz testimonies, right down to the point of shameless plagiarism. The “Yellow Paper,” published in 1945, containing “Data on the martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry during the 1941-1945 war,” presents the testimony of a certain Henrik Farkas, deported to Auschwitz on 15 June 1944. In the paragraph entitled “The Gas Chambers,” he repeats the information invented by Vrba and Wetzler, claiming, however, to have supplied “a technical description of the gas chambers based on the annotations of a Jewish engineer (zsidó mérnök) employed in a technical task.”[67]

Szaja Gertner, a self-proclaimed member of the Sonderkom­mando, reformulated all prior propaganda themes in more fantastic form:[68]

“After the gassing, they opened the door from the other side – the side where nobody could enter – and the windows, and they ventilated [the area] for five minutes. Then the Kapos penetrated to the center [of the room] and pulled the bodies away from the doors and windows, to be able to work more rapidly. We had thick rubber gloves on our hands, and wads of cotton over our mouths. The bodies emitted gas as soon as they were moved, so that we couldn’t breathe. The tracks led from the doors of the gassing area [gazowni] to the furnace. We loaded 40 bodies onto the trolley at a time, and the trolley set off immediately towards the grill [na ruszt]. These trolleys tipped into a ditch, where there was a grill, [and] the bodies immediately started to turn red due to the current [od prądu], and after ten minutes they were transformed into ashes.

If the current was too low, it left large bones, but normally only small residues remained. In the center there was a device, which they called ‘Exhauster,’ which blew away the ashes into an adjacent ditch after every cremation. There, a workman filled a barrel with the ashes, and it was hauled up by means of a winch. The ashes were carried away and thrown into the water.”

Ada Bimko’s deposition was also freely inspired by the Vrba-Wetzler Report.

A recently discovered report drawn up in Kiev on 31 August 1944 by two Soviet POW escapees from Auschwitz (Ananij Silovich Pet’ko and Vladimir Jakovlevich Pegov), shows the subsequent literary developments of the gas-chamber stories.[69]

Now, the propagandists were at least informed as to the architectonic structure of Crematoria II and III, but, lacking, as they did, any sense of proportion, they attributed a cremation capacity to the furnaces which was even more absurd than ever:

“In [the] underground part of the crematorium there are two sections: undressing room and gassing room. In the above-ground part the crematorium itself resides, i.e. the ovens, which are fired with coke. Each crematorium has 5 ovens, 3 muffles in each oven. Into each muffle 3-4 corpses are introduced simultaneously. After kindling, duration of the cremation of a batch of corpses is 5 to 10 minutes, later the burning time is shortened. Crematoria work at full capacity twenty-four hours and anyway [still] fail to burn all corpses.”

Therefore, on average, Crematoria II and III were capable, in total, of cremating a minimum of 20,160 bodies per day, or approximately 30,900 bodies, if we include Crematoria IV and V (more than thirty times the theoretical maximum capacity), but, notwithstanding this assertion, were unable to cremate all the bodies.

Another report, dated 6 September 1944, by the Soviet army captain Grigorij Jakovlev and other inmate escapees from the camp, informs as follows in relation to the question of just how many bodies would have to have been cremated if the furnaces had been able to handle them “all”:[70]

“From 16 May to 20 July of 1944 1,200,000 Hungarian and Rumanian Jews were exterminated in the camp.

From the end of July of this year whole transports with Jews from France, Jugoslavia and Greece, occupied by the Germans, began to arrive in the camp.

Adults are being poisoned in special gas chambers, and old people and children are being thrown into fire alive.”

Apart from the fact that the figure mentioned is almost three times the total number of Jews deported from Hungary between mid-May and the beginning of July (437,402), according to the authors of the report, the number of persons murdered in 65 days (1,200,000÷ 65 =) an average of approximately 18,400 persons per day, but the crematoria of Birkenau, which were described as possessing a fictitious cremation capacity of approximately 30,900 bodies were day, were still incapable of cremating all these equally fictitious bodies! Propaganda obviously requires neither consistency nor intelligence on the part of its audience.

The report dated 31 August 1944 also introduced another major variant: the “three traps” of the Vrba-Wetzler Report became the canonical four, while the alleged introduction columns emitting poison gas generated from a “sort of powder-like substance” – a description reminiscent of the granular diatomite forming the solid basis of Zyklon B, which the report never mentions – appear here for the very first time:

“In this room there are 4 /four/ lattice-work columns, going through the roof of the building. After the ‘bath’ is full of people /standing next to each other/, the doors are hermetically closed. Into the openings, which are on the top of the columns, some sort of powder-like substance is poured, which emits poisonous gas, and people begin to suffocate. Process of suffocation lasts for 10-15 minutes.”

Although constituting another step towards the final version of the story, the report still contained certain features requiring further work: it claimed that the gold teeth were extracted from living inmates (and not their bodies) and there is still no mention of the freight elevator:

“Then corpses are brought on special trolleys to the upper room and incinerated.”

The grossly propagandistic nature of the report is confirmed by another hare-brained claim:

“During the crematoria’s work, the flames appeared out of chimneys, up to 15 m high.”

4. The Propaganda Lie Consolidated:
Soviet and British Contributions

The Soviets had already experienced the immense propagandistic power of their images of the liberation of Lublin-Majdanek. When the Red Army reached Lublin-Majdanek on 23 July 1944, they found, among other things, the gigantic Kori five-muffle cremation furnace, intact, along with warehouses containing approximately 800,000 pairs of shoes. Based on a technically nonsensical “expert report” on the cremation capacity of this furnace, and presupposing that the shoes were necessarily proof of murder, the Soviet transformed Lublin-Majdanek into an “extermination camp” with one and half million victims.

The Majdanek Museum later revealed that the camp had a warehouse to which old shoes were sent from many other camps for recycling purposes. The number of victims of the camp was revised downwards thrice by the Majdanek Museum, which first lowered it to 360,000, then to 235,000, and finally (for now) to 78,000. The number of real deaths is about 42,000. As for the “expert report,” suffice it to say that it exaggerated the actual cremation capacity of this single furnace by 1000%.[71]

The world’s daily newspapers were soon filled with images of the furnace and the mountains of shoes in the camp, considered visible and irrefutable “proof” of the mass extermination allegedly perpetrated there.[72]

The Germans thus, at their expense, experienced the suggestive power of images. For this reason, before abandoning the Auschwitz Camp, they blew up the crematoria at Birkenau and burned all except for six of the warehouse barracks in the Effek­tenlager, containing inmate personal effects.

By contrast, the Germans left practically intact and in Soviet hands the entire archive of the Central Construction Office, with all the alleged “criminal traces” of the alleged homicidal gas chambers,” not to mention approximately 8,000 inmates,[73] all of them ready to serve as alleged “eyewitnesses” to the alleged homicidal “gassings” (all of whom could easily have been gassed and cremated by the SS, according to the Holocaust orthodoxy, in the first week of January 1945 in Crematorium V, the only one left standing).

Having already deluded their captive audiences with propaganda images of the cremation furnaces and alleged gas chambers in the same building, the Soviets presented the disinfestation chamber of so-called Kanada I (Bauwerk 28), which they presented as a homicidal “gas chamber” with gas-tight door and peephole “to watch the progress of the extermination,” as stated in a Polish photo caption in 1980,[74] in addition to the cans of Zyklon B and the gas masks stored in the warehouse in that building.

In their new propaganda museum of horrors, the Soviets exhibited the more than seven tons of human hair found at Auschwitz, corresponding, according to them, assuming 50 gr of hair per person, to approximately 140,000 women, which had been “cut off the bodies, that is, probably in the crematoria and, in particular, after the killing with gas, but prior to cremation,” as claimed by the witnesses Tauber, Mandelbaum and Dragon.[75]

This allegation was echoed by the Auschwitz Museum, which claimed that the hair originated from 140,000 persons murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp.[76]

But more than 400,000 inmates were registered at Auschwitz, including more than 131,000 women.[77] It is furthermore well known that the collection of hair for purposes of industrial recycling was practiced in all concentration camps, including male hair,[78] and all inmate hair was cut at regular intervals, as soon as it reached a certain standard length.

A letter from the Sachsenhausen camp administration to the administration of the local infirmary (which had always proven itself resistant to the procedure) dated 11 October 1944 warned that “it is not a question of the inmates’ appearance, but inmate hair has important uses in the war economy.” The last delivery of hair, stated the letter, weighed 275 kg.[79]

As for Auschwitz, we do not even know how long it took to collect that much hair, so that it could also have originated, for example, from the 135,000 inmates still in the camp in August 1944.[80]

Therefore, the allegation that the 7,000 kg of hair originated from 140,000 gassed persons, and that the hair constitutes “proof” of the mass gassings, is absolutely groundless.

Anxious, on the one hand, to divert the eyes of the world from the authors of the real “crimes against peace” (for example, the division of Poland and the aggressive war against Finland), and “crimes against humanity” (for example, the massacres at Katyn and Winniza, upon which the Germans had published two voluminously documented White Papers) committed by themselves, the Soviets were now driven to the expedient of having to stupefy and terrify the world by attributing to the Germans an even more horrendous massacre than the one dreamed up by the Soviets at Lublin-Majdanek: an immense massacre of four million people.

They therefore created a State Commission for the Investigation of German War Crimes, which then charged numerous sub-committees of “experts” and “expert witnesses” with the task of concocting an “historical” cloak for Soviet state propaganda.

The Soviet Commission’s essential contribution to the success of the propaganda lie of the “gassing technique” described by Vrba and Wetzler and subsequent reports lay in integrating them into the real architectural context of the crematoria. The archives of the Central Construction Office contained in fact dozens of blueprints of the crematoria, which were shown during the interrogations of witnesses remaining at Auschwitz, such as Henryk Tauber. In this way, the witnesses were able to orient themselves in retelling the story already told by Vrba and Wetzler without their gross architectural blunders.

Witnesses who had already been transferred away from Auschwitz, by contrast, were unable to benefit from the information offered by these blueprints, and continued to commit the same or similar gross architectural blunders.

Thus, Miklos Nyiszli, in relation to Crematorium II/III, spoke of 15 individual furnaces arranged in a hall 150 meters long, while the actual furnace room measured 30 meters long and contained 5 furnaces with 3 muffles each; the alleged gas chamber, also 30 meters long, was, for him, 200 meters long, and the small freight elevator was quadrupled into four powerful freight elevators, to say nothing of all his other fantasies.[81]

Sigismund Bendel, by contrast, claimed that the alleged gas chamber measured 10 x 4 meters, while in reality it measured 30 x 7, while he reduced the height of the ceiling from 2.41 meters to 1.60 meters.[82] And yet both men were self-pro­claimed “eyewitness” members of the so-called Sonderkom­mando, who pretended to have spent several months in the Birkenau crematoria!

According to Eugen Kogon, “the hydrogen-cyanide gas flowed out from the shower heads and from the ventilation pillars [Ventilatorenpfeilern].”[83] He based his testimony on a certain Janda Weiss, who claimed:[84]

“There were three columns for the Ventilators, through which the gas poured in.”

As late as 1961, during the 68th hearing of the Eichmann Trial (7 June), the witness Yehuda Bakon still clung to this same mendacious version of the tale. With reference to the pillars of the alleged gas chambers in Crematoria II and III, he declared that “below were the ventilators and also holes for cleaning with water. Afterwards, when they [the Germans] dismantled the crematoria, we saw the ventilators separately.”[85]

But the air-intake and exhaust blowers were not located in the alleged “gas chamber,” but rather in the attic of the crematorium.[86]

According to the testimony of Isaak Egon Ochshorn, by contrast, the crematorium (singular) “had hundreds of ovens.”[87]

Having invented the extermination procedure, it was now necessary to invent the number of victims.

One of the many Soviet sub-committees of “experts” went to work and prepared the “scientific” underpinning for the fateful total of four million victims between 14 February and 8 March 1945, based on absurd and fanciful assumptions. The concoction of this fable involved an inextricable connivance between “witnesses” and “experts,” the latter of which enabled the former to attribute a technically nonsensical capacity to the cremation furnaces at Birkenau, based on ridiculous calculations.

The Soviets elaborated their Auschwitz propaganda in a “Communication of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation and Research into the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices,” which was published by Pravda on 7 May 1945 and immediately translated into various languages. The English translation appeared as early as 29 May 1945;[88] a French translation also appeared in 1945.[89] The Soviet report was later introduced into evidence by the Nuremberg Tribunal under Document No. 008-USSR.

Between 17 September and 17 November 1945, the British staged the trial of Josef Kramer and 44 other SS men. Kramer, a former SS Hauptsturmführer, had been commandant of the Auschwitz II/Birkenau Camp and then the Bergen-Belsen Camp. For this reason, Auschwitz was also under discussion at the Belsen Trial. The investigatory phase of the proceedings, as regards the alleged “gas chambers” at Auschwitz, were based on a curious syncretism between the Vrba-Wetzler Report and the story of the gas chamber shower baths. This is how they were described by Colonel Backhouse, who represented the prosecution:[90]

“Then naked, they [the victims] were taken to the next room where there were five rows of, apparently, 20 sprays. The door was then locked. It would hold about 1000 people at a time. The place was gas proof, and gas was turned on and these persons were gassed deliberately and killed. There was a door at the other end, a trolley and rails, and the bodies were loaded on the trolley and taken straight to the crematorium.”

Although the British investigators were well aware of the “historical” framework established by Soviet propaganda,[91] many Jewish witnesses invented stories so improbable as to induce the defense attorneys – British officers! – to accuse them openly of perjury.[92] For example, Major Cranfield declared:

“The Nazis have aroused racial passion all over the earth, and I do not think it is unnatural or surprising that those young Jewesses [the witnesses] should be vindictive towards their former warders, or to seek to avenge themselves upon them.”

He considered their testimony “wholly unreliable.”[93] The blind fury of the witnesses was such that a few inmates were falsely accused of being criminal SS men by other inmates.[94]

As for Auschwitz, the most important witnesses were Sigismund Bendel and Ada Bimko, who, as we have seen, made statements which are totally incredible. Other witnesses gave proof of a no less vivid imagination. Particular mention is due Regina Bialek and Sophia Litwinska. The first stated that there were seven gas chambers at Auschwitz, one of which was underground. The trucks were able to enter this gas chamber – an area of “12 yards square meters” (ca. 10 m²) – directly, by means of a sort of ramp. The witness was unloaded with a group of inmates destined to be gassed, but just as she was about to die, her number was called out by Dr. Mengele and she was taken out of the gas chamber![95]

Sophia Litwinska experienced a similar miracle. She, too, was taken out of the gas chamber, which resembled a shower bath, with shower heads, towels and even mirrors. Suddenly, she saw “fumes” enter through a high window, and was just about to die when she heard someone calling her name. It was none other than SS Obersturmführer Hössler (head of the protective-custody camp at Auschwitz I), who took her out and took her away on a motorcycle![96]

This is to say nothing of the testimony of Jolan Holdost, who saw 300-400 persons who were unable to enter the gas chamber at Auschwitz I, because there was no more room, so they were soaked with oil and burned alive![97]

The idea of burning people alive as a propaganda motif appeared towards the end of April 1943, concocted to render the whole set design even more horrifying than ever, soon transformed into the immolation of conscious adults and finally children.[98] A few months later, the process of literary evolution had been completed. The following notice appears in the “Review of Major Events in the Nation. Weekly Report of August 27, 1943” (“Przegląd najważniejszych wydarzeń w kraju. Meldunek tygodniowy z dn. 27. VIII 43 r.”):[99]

“In the crematorium, 5000 corpses are burned every day, but as there are more, the remaining [Jews] are burned alive in the ‘Eternal Fire’ in the open air at Birkenau – the children are thrown into the fire alive.”

The Belsen Trial added little to the propagandistic framework already sketched out by the Soviets, but confirmed its essential principles. As Robert Jan van Pelt remarks, “With the Belsen Trial, the gas chambers at Auschwitz formally entered the historical record […].”[100]

Thus, even the “Free” West had its Auschwitz Trial and its “convergent proof” of the reality of the “gas chambers” and the figure of the four million victims, statistically “confirmed” by Ada Bimko:[101]

“I have examined the records of the numbers cremated and I say that the records show that about 4,000,000 persons were cremated at the camp.”

The scientific exploitation of the fable of the “gas chambers” by the British and the Americans intensified over the course of subsequent trials, all of which were intended to make people forget other crimes, no less horrendous, perpetrated by the Soviets. It began with the Belsen Trial, as clearly shown by Maurice Bardèche:[102]

“To excuse the crimes committed in [their] conduct of the war, it was absolutely necessary to discover other, even more serious crimes, of the other side. It was absolutely necessary that British and American bombers appear as the Terrible Swift Sword of the Almighty. The Allies had no other choice. If they had not solemnly affirmed this claim, if they had failed to prove, no matter how, to have been the saviors of humanity, they would have been nothing but murderers. If one day the people stopped believing in the German monstrosity, wouldn’t they ask about the destroyed cities? There is therefore an obvious interest in all British and American propaganda, and, to a lesser extent, in Soviet propaganda as well, in upholding the theory of German crimes.”

All that is needed is to substitute “German crimes” and “German monstrosity” with “gas chambers,” in the reality of which Bardèche actually believed,[103] and we can understand the roots of the propaganda industry which has raged for over seventy years now, in comparison to which the “Holocaust Industry” appears downright amateurish.

5. Propaganda Lies Become “History”

In May 1945, the Soviet War Crimes Commission was replaced by a Polish Investigatory Commission, responsible for conducting the preliminary investigations with a view to future trials of SS members. This task was entrusted to Investigating Judge Jan Sehn, who carried it out assiduously. He was the author of the first “history” of Auschwitz,[104] based on the Höss Trial (11-29 March 1947) and a trial of the camp garrison (25 November-16 December 1947).

As regards the alleged extermination facilities, Jan Sehn based his findings upon the “technical” expert report authored by Roman Dawidowski, a certified engineer, which was officially approved on 26 September 1946.[105] The expert enthusiastically approved the Soviet propaganda findings: not content with merely repeating the story of the four million deaths,[106] he added another, personal absurdity, supported, as always, by “scientific calculations”:[107]

“In the light of the concordant testimonies of the witnesses, the [undersigned] expert is of the opinion that the productivity of the gas chambers in the four cremation complexes at Auschwitz Camp amounted to approximately 60,000 persons in 24 hours. This figure is based on the following calculation: according to the statements of the witnesses, 3,000 persons at a time were crammed into the gas chambers in each [of the four] crematoria. The undressing procedure, in a climate of violent threats, lasted 30 minutes, while the actual gassing time lasted an average of 25-30 minutes, while the process of clearing out the chambers took 4 hours for each gassing. In total, therefore, to carry out the gassing of a chamber-load of people took 5 hours, that is, the productivity of the gas chambers located in each crematorium complex amounted to approximately 15,000 people. For the 4 cremation complexes put together, therefore, this means a capacity of 60,000 people in 24 hours.”

The expert added that, in 1944, Birkenau’s cremation capacity was 18,000 bodies per day – 8,000 in the crematoria and 10,000 in the “cremation ditches” – but was capable of reaching 24,000 “in the event of maximum utilization of all the installations.”[107]

One wonders why the SS spent 1,400,000 Reichsmark for the Birkenau crematoria[108] if they could have obtained a higher cremation capacity by just digging a few holes in the ground!

The absurd story invented by Dawidowski was repeated in the verdict of the Höss Trial as well as in the charges of the trial of the camp garrison: both trials reaffirmed that the exterminatory capacity of the alleged gas chambers was 60,000 people a day,[109] while the fable of the 10,000 bodies per day cremated in the “cremation ditches” still passes for official Holocaust “proven fact” today.[110]

Dawidowski also undertook to claim that the capacity of the Auschwitz cremation facilities was 400,000,000 (400 million) corpses (without specifying a period of time), and the Polish prosecutor Tadeusz Cyprian claimed that the Germans intended to turn Auschwitz into a “Himmlerstadt” with a crematorium “for the cremation of 200,000 corpses per day.”[111]

Jan Sehn never even got close to such numbers, but was more Soviet than the Soviets in his own way. In fact, he even wrote that the (fantastic) cremation capacity of all four Birkenau crematoria was 4,380,000 “bodies” (zwłok). One witness, a certain Stanek, moreover stated that 3,850,000 inmates reached Auschwitz by train between 1942 and 1944. The following is Jan Sehn’s conclusion:[112]

“If we consider the camp’s remaining year of its existence as well as the great number of transports by truck, it appears perhaps very probable that the number of victims of Auschwitz camp amounted in reality to approximately five million [koło pięciu milionów].”

Sehn’s writings remained the sole “history” of Auschwitz for over forty years, while the nascent science of serious Holocaust historiography remained (literally) fugitive. Sehn’s writings were promptly translated into English[113] and later into French,[114] becoming the historical paradigm par excellence, reaffirmed by him in 1956 with the republication of his writings in book form,[115] followed by translations into French[116] and English.[117]

Historians behind the Iron Curtain distinguished themselves by their fawning acquiescence faced with Soviet and Polish propaganda, which they attempted to equip with a “scholarly” veneer.

One of the first books in this genre, published by Filip Friedman in 1945, limited itself to acting as a megaphone for Soviet propaganda.[118] Most typical is the case of Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, authors of a book on The Death Factory of Auschwitz, published in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1946[119] and revised in 1956, followed by another edition the next year.[120] In this book, the authors attempt to provide historical justification, based on fictitious transports, for the Soviet propaganda lie of the four million deaths (founded on a theoretical basis, i.e., the presumed capacity of the crematoria and so-called Bunkers of Birkenau): they simply invented transports of unregistered Jews allegedly gassed upon arrival, reaching a total of 3,500,000 persons, adding the alleged 320,000 dead registered inmates and the presumed 15,000 deaths during the evacuation of the camp, finally concluding that the figure adopted by themselves was not far off the Soviet figure of four million![121]

Particularly juicy was their description of the furnaces of Crematoria II/III:[122]

“The cremation installations are located on the ground floor of the crematorium building, They had 15 furnaces on three levels.[123] On the lower level, the air was blown by electrical ventilators, the central level was the proper combustion chamber for the fuel, and the upper level contained sturdy refractory grids upon which two or three bodies were placed, transported thither with a trolley.”

This is how the two “historians” interpreted and explained the German expression Dreimuffelofen, three-muffle furnace, as an “furnace on three levels,” although – even more incredibly – they had just published a photograph of the three-muffle furnaces of Crematorium II on the preceding page!

This work, via the Communist East-German translation and subsequent translation into English,[124] became a keystone of Holocaust biblio­graphy on Auschwitz. Sehn’s chief claim to fame is a volume entitled German Crimes in Poland. Dino A. Brugioni and Robert G. Poirier were merely following in his footsteps with their imaginative interpretation of the air photographs of Birkenau.[125]

The transformation of Soviet and Polish propaganda into “history” was obviously the principal task of the Auschwitz Museum, which really got to work in the 1950s. Its first and most important contribution was the authorship of the “Calendar of Events in Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp,” which was published in Polish between 1958 and 1963 and in German between 1959 and 1964,[126] a hastily prepared “classic” replete with indignation over the fate of unregistered inmates without the slightest proof.

In one of the first official histories of the camp, published by the Auschwitz Museum in 1977, Franciszek Piper, echoing in toto the official Soviet propaganda line, wrote:[127]

“Through the almost five years of the camp’s existence about 4,000,000 people lost their lives as a result of disease, execution and mass gassing, including 340,000 of the over 400,000 men, women and children registered in the camp.”

Not even the Medieval Frankfurt Trial of former Auschwitz personnel, held between 20 December 1963 and 20 August 1965, succeeded in laying the foundations for authentic historiography, since it was based almost exclusively on “eyewitness testimony.” The grounds for the judgement acknow­ledged that the trial was conducted without regard to the normal procedures followed in any ordinary murder trial, in which[128]

“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 murderers, murder weapons, etc. An examination of the eyewitness testimony was only possible in rare cases.”

Thus, a court lacking the basic technical and legal instruments required to judge a single murder was empowered to sit in judgement of accusations of mass extermination, which were in essence nothing but a series of individual murders!

The eyewitnesses, in turn, under the irresistible influence of 18 years of Soviet and pseudo-legal propaganda, were in no position to question that same propaganda tradition. Even the judges realized this. The documentary evidence was scanty in the extreme, and even the most credible eyewitness statements – those which appeared most firmly grounded in fact – were, in reality, “not very plausible in many ways and should not always be considered to correspond to objective reality,”[129] an elegant way of saying that it was untrue.

Holocaust historiography only began to concern itself seriously with Auschwitz in 1989, thanks to Jean-Claude Pressac, who published the book cited above, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. Pressac rejected the old Holocaust imposture, employing a new method demonstrating the “complete bankruptcy” of all past Holocaust history, “based for the most part on testimonies, assembled 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.”[130]

This retrospective judgement fully mirrored the reality of the facts, as demonstrated by works such as that by Georges Wellers[131] or the more pretentious one by Hermann Langbein.[132]

With Pressac, orthodox Holocaust historiography reached its peak – a peak simultaneously foreshadowing the commence­ment of its inexorable decline. Having established, at least by intention, the primacy of documents over eyewitness testimony, and having grasped (although in a completely inadequate manner) the technical problems involved in the alleged mass extermination, Pressac dealt the first hard blow to the official propaganda story, stripping away the basis for what had, until that time, been an indisputable assumption, not subject to question: the fiction that the Birkenau Camp was built as an extermination camp, and that its two larger crematoria were designed with homicidal gas chambers from the very start. Pressac provided revisionist researchers with such a huge mass of arguments that Pressac came under suspicion of being a crypto-revisionist himself, subjected, in the end, to solemn ex-communication as a heretic by the Holocaust Orthodoxy – an ex-communication so totally ferocious that it lasted until his death, which occurred on 23 July 2003 amid total media silence.[133]

The argumentative structure of Pressac’s work was patterned on Dawidowski’s expert report, which had already listed the majority of Pressac’s “criminal traces,” in addition to blueprints and photographs later rediscovered and published by French historians, but critically reformulated in a way that would have been impossible a short time before.

Pressac’s work indicated both the peak and ensuing decline of Auschwitz Holocaust historiography in another sense as well, after which it regressed into a rudimentary historical-propagandistic fog characterized by the exploitation of testimony, accepted without criticism; formalistic assessments of the documents, torn from their historical, administrative and technical contexts; and the repudiation of science as the criterion of evaluation in judging the reliability of both the testimony and the documents; all the while spiced up with an impossible “convergence of evidence” according to which, if three “independent” and “convergent” proofs of a lie are presented together, the lie then becomes the truth!

Putting it in a nutshell, Holocaust historiography fell off a cliff, from Pressac to van Pelt.

The inconsistency of Holocaust documentation with regard to the gas chambers was openly acknowledged in late 1996 by the French novelist and historian Jacques Baynac. After noting that “no acceptable testimony exists as indisputable proof” and that in response to the revisionist request for documents proving the reality of the gas chambers “we must remain silent due to the absence of documents,” he stated:[134]

“We must either abandon the primacy of the archives in favor of the primacy of testimonies, and, in this case, we must disqualify history as a science and immediately requalify it as an art. Or we must maintain the primacy of the archives and, in this case, we must acknowledge that the absence of traces implies the inability directly to establish the reality of the existence of the homicidal gas chambers.”

This is a perfect explanation of the real nature of contemporary Auschwitz Holocaust historiography: a simple extension of Soviet propaganda equipped with “scholarly” pretensions.

6. Collapse of the Four-Million-Victims Propaganda Lie and the Consequences

With the collapse of the Soviet system, the Soviet lackeys at the Auschwitz Museum, who had always prostrated themselves in obsequious veneration before the iconic figure of the four million right up to the very day before – since the said figure was always considered ridiculous among serious historians in the non-Communist West[135] – decided that the time had come to perform a noisy revision downwards of their version of the total death toll, which was therefore first reduced to 1,500,000 (now inscribed on the famous stone slabs at Birkenau), and then to 1,100,000. Subsequent revisions by mainstream scholars, right down to a provisional total of 510,000 victims (Fritjof Meyer[136]), are only the inevitable consequence of fleeting glimpses – obviously heterodoxic – of the scientific imposture pervading all official Holocaust history.

This collapse had a disastrous effect on orthodox Holocaust historiography. As noted elsewhere, the testimonies and the propaganda figure of the four million deaths were closely interlinked from the very outset, so that invalidation of the testimonies implied an invalidation of the total figure of deaths, while invalidation of the total figure of deaths would have implied the invalidation of the testimonies, and, consequently, the invalidation of the theory of mass extermination!

In other words, if the testimonies were true, then the four-million death figure should be true, too. If this is false, then the testimonies must be false, too. And if the testimonies are false regarding the elimination of the corpus delicti [i.e., missing corpses, or evidence] why should they be true as to the essential aspect of the alleged extermination itself?[137]

With renunciation of the propaganda figure of the four million deaths, the official historiography itself has in fact triggered this irreversible process of historiographical invalidation.

A few “survivors,” by contrast, are contributing to this invalidation on their own account. In an interview published in a French newspaper on 20 January 2005, an Italian witness from the so-called Sonderkommando, Shlomo Venezia, declared:[138]

“There are five furnaces with three apertures in each furnace. They threw the bodies in, two at a time. The furnaces worked without ever stopping. There were two squads working in twelve-hour shifts. It took three days to burn 1,500 bodies.”

This means that Crematoria II and III, each equipped with five three-muffle furnaces, had each a cremation capacity of 500 cremations per day, respectively. But in his interrogatory rendered before the Soviets on 27–28 February 1945, the “eyewitness” par excellence, Henryk Tauber, stated that the average cremation capacity of each of the above installations was 4,320 bodies per day.[139] Venezia thus unexpectedly reveals himself to be a “negationist”![140]

7. Historians Rush to Provide Support for the Official Propaganda

The propaganda fantasies described in the previous chapters have vexed not a few Holocaust historians: how does one explain the fact that the underground resistance movement, which had trusted members in every sector and every agency of the camp, failed to draw up a precise, detailed report on the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz? Why did they wait more than two years to draw up a reasonably decent record of the alleged mass gassings? Why was this record itself merely a product of fantasy? And why did the most fantastic fantasies continue to circulate for two whole years before the (current) final story took shape (as well as long afterwards)?

In response, Pierre Vidal-Naquet invented the theory that these fantasies were “like a shadow projected by reality, like an extension of reality.”[141] Others picked up the gauntlet of demonstrating this theory, even to the point of researching the most improbable explanations. Let us examine the most significant examples, beginning with the Vrba-Wetzler Report.

Current Holocaust historiography is well aware of the falsity of the report, but attempts painfully to justify it.

Jean-Claude Pressac hypothesized that the crematoria’s description was the result of direct observations of the crematoria by Vrba and Wetzler from the outside, up until March 1943, plus indirect information originating from inmates working in the mysterious Bunkers of Birkenau.[142] But that information had to have been passed on by 17 December 1942 at the latest, because on that date, these inmates, the so-called Sonderkommando members, are said to have been gassed themselves.[143]

Robert Jan van Pelt, by contrast, wrote that “given the conditions under which information was obtained, the lack of architecture training of Vrba and Wetzlar,[144] and the situation in which the report was compiled, one would become suspicious if it did not contain errors.”[145]

In reality, the essential part of the report, that relating to extermination in gas chambers, does not merely contain “errors,” it is all wrong. The conjectures of Pressac and Van Pelt are, as we have already seen, contradicted by both Vrba and Müller, the self-proclaimed source of their information as to the sketch contained in the report.

In the logic of the “projected shadow of reality,” Robert Jan van Pelt even attempted to justify Polevoi’s lie, while acknowledging they belong to the “category of myth”:[146]

“One can only speculate about the source of Polevoi’s claim that the extermination installation contained an electrical conveyor belt between the gas chamber and the so-called blast furnace. In Crematoria 2 and 3, an electric elevator connected the underground gas chamber and the incineration room. In the confusion of tongues that existed in Auschwitz at liberation, Polevoi could have misunderstood references to the electrical elevator.”

But there were also excellent interpreters in that “confusion of tongues.” The alleged misunderstanding (between “electric elevator” and “conveyor belt”) is, quite to the contrary, simply an insult to the intelligence of the Soviet journalist.

Van Pelt continues his justification as follows:[147]

“As to the blast furnace, the most likely source is patent application T 58240, which was submitted by incinerator manufacturer J. A. Topf & Söhne in Erfurt for a ‘Continuous Operation Corpse Incineration Furnace for Intensive Use,’ filed by Topf on November 5, 1942. In its design it reflects in general terms Polevoi’s description. The Auschwitz Central Construction Office possessed a copy of the patent application, and it was found by the Russians when they liberated the camp. It may be possible that Polevoi was shown this document and drew his own conclusions.”

In reality, no patent application (Patentanmeldung) for a “Continuous Operation Corpse Incineration Furnace for Intensive Use” (“kontinuierlich arbeitender Leichen-Verbrennungsofen für Massenbetrieb”) was ever found in the archives of the Central Construction Office, therefore it could not have been shown to Polevoi at all; the copy of the document in the possession of the Auschwitz Museum originates from the Deutsches Patentamt (German Patent Office) at Berlin and reached the Museum very late. As noted in a “Service Note” (Notatka służbowa) dated 17 January 1985, the document, archived on that same date by Franciszek Piper had been transmitted “to the Director [of the Auschwitz Museum] K. Smolen by Harold Kirschner, Ministerial Director at the Ministry of Justice of Bonn on 9 July 1984.”[148]

Still more incredible is van Pelt’s attempt to justify Ada Bimko’s lies. Van Pelt claims, in fact, that the witness had seen “the ductwork of the ventilation system installed above the gas chamber.”[149] However, no alleged gas chamber in the Birkenau crematoria possessed a disaeration (Entlüftung) or aeration (Belüftung) system consisting of visible metallic piping. He adds that Ada Bimko’s SS guide “wrongly identified the cylindrical drums that contained the ventilators as gas cylinders,”[149] but the “cylindrical drums [that is, the metallic housings] that contained the ventilators,” as van Pelt well knows, were located in the attics of Crematoria II and III, not in the alleged gas chambers; therefore, the SS guide and false witness could never have seen them.[150]

Thus, van Pelt covers up Ada Bimko’s lies with more lies!

But the worst thing is that the method of these historians is intended solely to invert the terms of the problem, to transform lies into truth: instead of reality projecting a “propagandistic shadow,” rather, it was propaganda projecting a “shadow” of imaginary reality. There were never any “reflections of the truth” to start with, just propaganda, literally worked up into the current “historical” version of events with the passing of the years.

The only “reflections” of the truth” were the real elements of life in the camp, from which, with insolent propagandistic impostures, resistance members interned in Auschwitz fabricated the fable of the mass exterminations in gas chambers.

8. The Decline of the Propaganda Lie: Revisionist Criticism

The caricaturistic portrait of Auschwitz created by Soviet propaganda has now been irreversibly obscured by historical revisionism.

My own contribution to all this has covered all the fundamental aspects of Holocaust historiography on Auschwitz.

As is well known, according to the current official historical “truth,” the alleged mass extermination at Auschwitz was carried out by means of a successive and consistent development of events starting with the first gassing in the basement of Block 11 of Auschwitz in September 1941, which permitted the murderers to experiment, and then adopt, the murder weapon: Zyklon B. The homicidal gassings were then committed in the crematorium of the Stammlager, i.e., Auschwitz Main Camp, and later transferred to the so-called Bunkers at Birkenau. Finally, the crematoria at Birkenau entered into operation as extermination installations starting in March 1943.

I wrote a specific study of each of these alleged phases, briefly summarizing my conclusions at each stage.

8.1. The First Gassing

The account of the first homicidal gassing at Auschwitz, according to Danuta Czech’s official reconstruction, is based exclusively on the contradictory declarations of self-proclaimed eyewitnesses, and is refuted by documents; it is therefore entirely without historical foundation.[151]

This fictitious event was conjured up in October 1941 by one of the black-propaganda centers of the Auschwitz underground resistance movement, based on the initial idea of experimentation on human beings using an unnamed war gas in an unidentified Bunker or “concrete shelter” at Auschwitz. Only later, inspired by the disinfestations with Zyklon B which intensified with the expansion of the camp, did the propagandists introduce Zyklon B into their stories, locating the first homicidal gassing in the basement of the Main Camp’s Block 11. The normal trans­port of the bodies of registered inmates within the camp, from the mortuary room of Block 28 to the crematorium, offered new material, further enriching the narrative.

In 1946, Judge Jan Sehn, in view of the need to provide a pseudo-historical underpinning based on the tales of eyewitnesses for the purpose of creating fictitious but legally actionable “facts,” invented the initial nucleus of the tale, which included the canonical literary elements of the number of victims and the various phases of the gassing, but without the dates.

In 1959, Danuta Czech, by means of manipulating the more impudent and outrageous sources, summarized and expanded Jan Sehn’s account, deriving a purely fictitious “convergence of evidence” from a congeries of contradictory testimonies, and correlating it with equally fictitious dates; thus did the first gassing become “history.”

8.2. Crematorium I

The alleged gassings in Crematorium I of Auschwitz are without foundation in historical reality. This historiographical fairy story was based exclusively upon eyewitness testimonies, which were both sparse and mutually contradictory. The more detailed accounts, which are therefore easier to check, are obviously and demonstrably false. The “reconstructions” of historians are purely conjectural and fictitious, without any documentary basis. An examination of the archives of the Auschwitz New Construction Office (later renamed to Construction Office and finally to Central Construction Office) outlines the development of the crematorium’s ventilation system as designed by the Topf Company. It establishes with sufficient clarity the manner in which the provisional installations which were finally installed were actually realized and how they really worked. Drawings and prototypes were executed in the context of the need to equip an ordinary mortuary chamber with a functioning ventilation system. The hypothesis that this room was converted into a homicidal gas chamber, however, is not supported by the slightest documentary evidence.[152]

Finally, my study of the alleged Zyklon-B-introduction holes pierced through the roof of the mortuary by the Poles in 1947, hence after the war, shows that they necessarily presuppose the architectural structure of the time, rather than the original structure of the crematorium in 1942, and could not, therefore, bear any relationship to the presumed original openings, of which no material or documentary trace remains.

The alleged use of the mortuary of Crematorium I at Auschwitz as a gas chamber is therefore without historical basis. It is not history, but historical propaganda, tirelessly rehashed over the course of decades.

8.3. The Bunkers at Birkenau

The story of the gassings in the so-called Bunkers at Birkenau is entirely without the slightest documentary foundation. These alleged installations do not appear in the documentation of the Central Construction Office. In particular, the documents which should be there – if these structures really existed – do not exist, namely, the blueprints and cost estimates of Auschwitz Camp and the construction reports of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Camps, which are almost complete for 1942.

Several maps of Birkenau show, by contrast, that the two houses rebaptized as “gassing Bunkers” by Soviet and Polish propaganda were never taken over by the Central Construction Office – they had no identification numbers, no Bauwerk numbers, or designation. They were therefore not transformed into anything at all, and no homicidal gassings were committed there.[153]

Black propaganda on the Bunkers was disseminated by Auschwitz resistance groups from 1942 onwards, based on the designations (Degasungskammer) (degassing chamber) and Begasungskammer (fumigation chamber) in relation with the Aufnahmegebäude (reception building”) in the descriptions of the BW 5a and 5b disinfestation installations, as explained earlier. The mere existence of these installations, however, represents a necessary but not sufficient condition for the birth of the propaganda legend. The triggering incident catalyzing the imagination of the propagandists was still missing: the mass graves and the burning of bodies in the open.

The burning of the bodies exhumed from the mass graves containing the victims of a typhus epidemic,[154] which occurred daily for months in late 1942, struck the imaginations of Auschwitz inmates. This was this “eternal fire”[155] which inspired the propagandists: if thousands of bodies were being burned outside the camp, this proves there was a mass extermination. And if there was a mass extermination, then there were “gas chambers,” naturally with “showers” and installations similar to those of the gas chambers of BW 5a and 5b.

This was the origin of the propaganda story of the Bunkers at Birkenau.

A more in-depth – or less-superficial – study of these three aspects of the presumed extermination policy of Jews at Auschwitz consisted of 27 pages written on the subject by Franciszek Piper;[156] the four cited studies of mine on these issues cover more than 800 pages. This simple comparison shows the inconsistency and ineptitude of orthodox historians.

8.4. The Crematoria of Birkenau

The documents of the Central Construction Office not only do not corroborate the propaganda theme of the homicidal gassings in the crematoria, but actually disprove it, directly and indirectly.

Above all, the documentation on the use of the morgues inside the Birkenau crematoria shows that, since March 1943, they were never used, nor could they have been used, as “undressing rooms” and “gas chambers” in the context of a claimed mass extermination by gassing, because the extant documents show that these rooms were indeed uninterruptedly used to store foremost the victims of epidemics raging inside the camp.[157] There was simply no room for “gassings.” The whole theory that these rooms were used for “gassing” people is therefore historically unfounded.

In the second place, a blueprint of the camp hospital in Bauabschnitt III (construction sector III) of Birkenau Camp, with its 114 barracks for sick inmates (Krankenbaracken) and 12 barracks for the seriously ill (Baracken für Schwer­kranke), as correctly noted by Pressac, is incompatible with the theory of mass extermination. The blueprint was drawn up at the beginning of June 1943, in the context of “special measures for the improvement of hygienic installations” (Sondermassnahmen für die Verbesserung der hygienischen Einrichtungen) in Birkenau Camp, ordered by SS Brigadeführer Kamm­ler at the beginning of May 1943.

The camp hospital, however, did not remain in the conceptual design stage, as believed by Pressac. The SS began work at the end of the month of July and continued until 23 September 1944. Only the change in the military situation impeded full realization.[158]

The alleged “criminal traces” listed by Pressac, beginning with the “undressing room” (Auskleideraum) and the “fumigation basement” (Vergasungskeller) – all have entirely innocuous explanations; other, such as the fake shower heads, fell in the category of the “special measures” mentioned above, aiming at the installation of a real shower bath (Brauseanlage) for camp inmates in Crematoria II and III.[159] As for the presumed “definitive proof” of the Gasprüfer (gas testers), the alleged “cyanide-gas testing paper,” this proves nothing, as it has no relation to the “gas chambers.”[160]

Finally, the indispensable Zyklon-B-introduction openings in the reinforced-concrete roof of Morgue #1 (the alleged homicidal gas chamber) of Crematorium II at Birkenau, never existed. Orthodox historiography can only claim to have identified them through the use of evidently fraudulent methods. Even the alleged Zyklon-B wire-mesh introduction columns are simply a figment of the imagination, since there is not the slightest trace of these devices in the register of the WL-Schlosserei (metal-working shop), which lists all orders related to the crematoria from 28 October 1942 onwards.[161]

8.5. The Cremation Furnaces

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the official historiography is still fumbling in the dark as to the cremation furnaces at Auschwitz-Birkenau – structure, functioning, coke consumption, duration of the cremation process. Suffice it to say that the world-class “specialist” on Auschwitz for the moment, Robert Jan van Pelt, has imperturbably accepted Henryk Tauber’s thermo-technical absurdity as to the cremation capacity of the crematoria, adding, in turn, his own claim – which is no less absurd – that the cremation of a human body required only 3.5 kg of coke![162]

In my study on the cremation furnaces of Auschwitz, all the problems related to cremation are dealt with and resolved scientifically. The work consists of three volumes. The first volume, containing of text, deals in its first part with modern cremations in general from a historical and technical point of view – with particular focus on coke-fired furnaces – while the second part focuses on the furnaces installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the company J.A. Topf & Söhne. The second volume contains the reproduction of 300 documents, many of them previously unpublished, while the third volume contains more than 370 photographs of the cremation furnaces at Auschwitz (as rebuilt by the Poles), Gusen, Dachau, Maut­hau­sen, Buchenwald, Stutt­hof, Majdanek, Gross-Rosen, and Terezín.[163]

This scientific study, the findings of which I briefly summarized earlier,[164] radically refutes all the thermo-technical fantasies of eyewitnesses and historians on the cremation furnaces at Auschwitz, scientifically showing that only one body could be cremated in one muffle at a time in an economically advantageous manner, in approximately one hour, with a coke consumption (in the event of continual cremations) ranging – based on the type of furnace and the type of body – from a minimum of approximately 12 kg to a maximum of approximately 32 kg. The average coke consumption for a moderately emaciated body, for the crematoria at Birkenau, was approximately 17 kg of coke, almost five times the quantity supposed by van Pelt!

I also demonstrated that the testimonies of the “flaming chimneys” of Auschwitz-Birkenau are without foundation;[165] that the alleged “final proof” of the cremation capacity of the furnaces at Birkenau (the letter from the Central Construction Office dated 28 June 1943) is without technical value and derives from a bureaucratic error;[166] that the presumed “final proof”[167] (K. Prüfer’s memorandum dated 8 September 1942), discovered by Pressac in 1995 but published in December 2004, is nonsensical (the document attributes the same cremation capacity to the 8-muffle furnace as it does to the five three-muffle furnaces!) and contradicts the declarations of both witnesses and historians.[168]

Finally, the alleged cremation ditches at Birkenau, due to the high groundwater table, could not have been more than a meter deep (which contradicts all the testimonies),[169] while the alleged recovery of human fat, under the conditions described by the witnesses, is a risible fantasy.[170]

8.6. Various Problems with the Camp History

Official historiography on the subject was fumbling in the dark until 1998, even with regard to the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, an extremely important office, both because it was responsible for the construction and expansion of the camp, and because, as already stated, its archives survive practically intact. The first book on the subject was written by myself.[171]

The theory of “code language” (Sonderbehandlung, Sonderaktion, etc.) in the documents, as regards Auschwitz, has no basis in fact and is disproven by the documents themselves, as I demonstrated in two separate studies,[172] to which orthodox historiography can only offer Robert Jan van Pelt’s feeble attempt at refutation: half a line, in which, after mentioning the Spezialeinrichtungen (special installations) and Sonderbehandlung (special treatment), our world-class “expert” pontificates: “The latter term referred to killing”![173]

The real number of victims at Auschwitz is about 135,000; the total number of inmates admitted to the camp is at least 500,100. Approximately 401,500 were registered and approximately 98,600 were not registered.[174] Inmates not registered in the camp were transferred East. Thus, to be precise, inmates who were able to work were allowed to break their journey at Auschwitz on their way East, and were assigned to work there during their stay, as explicitly confirmed by the Pohl report to Himmler dated 16 September 1942.

Danuta Czech, in the republication of her Kalendarium of Auschwitz,[175] mischaracterized at least 97,000 inmates who were transferred to other camps in 1944, thus creating fake “gassing victims.”[176]

The most terrible alleged gassings – those of the Hungarian Jews,[177] the Jews in the gypsy camp of Birkenau,[178] the Jews from the ghetto at Lodz,[179] and the Jews from the family camp of the ghetto at Theresienstadt,[180] are without basis in historical fact.

Finally, the crimes attributed to Dr. Mengele have no historical-documentary foundation and are easily refuted by the hundreds of twins who survived Auschwitz.[181]

In a book on the claimed large-scale open-air incineration at Birkenau in 1944,[182] I presented an accurate analysis of the air and ground photographs (including the recently discovered photograph dated 23 August 1944), refuting all the fables, one by one, of the gigantic gassings and cremations of Hungarian Jews at Birkenau in 1944. In this study, in fact, I demonstrated that:

• orthodox historiography knows absolutely nothing about the cremation pits and is neither able to indicate how many of them there were, nor their locations, nor their dimensions, nor their capacities;
• the testimonies of the former inmates are radically contradictory as to their number, locations, dimensions and the capacities of the cremation ditches;
• the testimonies of former inmates are conclusively refuted by the air photographs of Birkenau;
• the documents do show open-air cremation activity during the summer of 1944, but of an extremely limited order of magnitude, absolutely incompatible with the immense scales claimed by official historiography;
• the ground photographs show open-air cremation activity in the northern courtyard of Crematorium V, but once again of an extremely limited order of magnitude which is absolutely incompatible with the immense scales peddled by official historiography;
• if the stories of mass exterminations at Birkenau were true, the air photographs would show, among other things, cremation ditches with a total surface area of at least some 6,000 square meters, both in the area of Bunker 2 (from one to four ditches, depending on the testimony), and in the area of Crematorium V (from two to five ditches). But in reality, the air photographs show one single smoking surface area of approximately 50 square meters in the area of Crematorium V (for a daily cremation capacity of about fifty bodies) and no trace of ditches and smoke in the area of Bunker 2.

So much for the 10,000 bodies per day cremated in the “cremation ditches” according to Roman Dawidowski’s “expert report” and Holocaust historiography.

* * *

The law outlawing “negationism” in Italy – or, more exactly, against myself personally – introduced by Ministry of Justice Clemente Mastella, is, in my view, simply an honor paid to me personally, since it constitutes an explicit and irrefutable admission of the total capitulation of orthodox Holocaust historiography. Finally, it is an admission that my writings are historically irrefutable, and must, therefore, be prohibited, for this very reason.

If “historians” are content simply to “prove they’re right” by having themselves declared correct in politically dominated courts of law, in the finest traditions of their Soviet propaganda masters, their “victory,” in historical terms, will be both shameful and quite short-lived.

9. The Making of the Auschwitz Myth

The Spanish scholar Enrique Aynat was the first to systematically investigate what the Polish underground operating in German-occupied Poland during World War II knew or rather must have known about Auschwitz, and what they reported back to their government in exile in London.[183] The fact that the Polish underground’s messages to London are full of internal contradiction and are in blatant contrast to today’s orthodox narrative led Aynat, among other things, to conclude that these propaganda messages have to be rejected as historical sources.

Another interesting source for the study of Auschwitz consists of radio messages sent by the SS to and from Auschwitz, which were intercepted and decrypted by the British between January 1942 and January 1943, right at a time when the mass murder of the Jews is supposed to have been implemented at Auschwitz. We did receive a foretaste of what these radio messages contain in 1981, when the British government published a brief summary of them in a book on the British Secret Services during World War II. It says there succinctly:[184]

“The messages from Auschwitz, the largest camp, with 20,000 inmates, mention disease as the chief cause of death, but also include references to executions by hanging and shooting. The decoded messages contain no references to gassings.”

Only in 2014 did a book appear, written by British science historian Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom, which quoted all the intercepted radio messages that he felt were relevant to our topic. These documents reveal neither a mass-murder program nor a racist genocide. Quite to the contrary, they show that the German authorities were determined, even desperate, to reduce the death rates in their labor camps caused by catastrophic typhus epidemics.[185]

Together with so-called “eyewitness” statements deposed during the war and mostly in the immediate postwar period, these documents allow a fairly good assessment of what the Allies heard about what was going on at the Auschwitz Camp, and what propaganda made of that information.

In a new comprehensive study, Carlo Mattogno has brought all these sources together and subjected them to his legendary scrutiny. He ferrets out the truth from underneath the propaganda piled up over the decades. He shows how exactly the myth of gas-chamber mass murder was created at war’s end and in the immediate postwar period, and how it has been turned subsequently into “history” by intellectually corrupt scholars – we would not call them historians, though many hold the requisite credentials – who cherry-picked claims that fit into their political agenda and ignored or actively covered up literally thousands of lies of “witnesses” to make their narrative look credible.

Among the testimonies scrutinized by the author in this new study are those by:

You get the picture: Carlo Mattogno has created yet another masterpiece of historical analysis of all the relevant source material upon which the orthodox Auschwitz narrative is based. And its effect is devastating for the orthodoxy:

Carlo Mattogno, The Making of the Auschwitz Myth: Auschwitz in British Intercepts, Polish Underground Reports and Postwar Testimonies (1941-1947). On the Genesis and Development of the Gas-Chamber Lore (working title), Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield.

This new book is slated to appear in summer 2018.[186] So stay tuned!

The Editor

Update 2024:

As of writing this, this book is available in its second edition of 2020.

Never content with the devastatingly thorough analysis he has already produced, Mattogno added three more studies that scrutinize in detail the accounts of former Auschwitz inmates who claimed to have worked in the alleged homicidal gas chambers, at the cremation furnaces or near the cremation ditches as part of the so-called Sonderkommando:

Sonderkommando Auschwitz I: Nine Eyewitness Testimonies Analyzed scrutinizes in detail the testimony of self-proclaimed Sonderkommando member Filip Müller – whose book Auschwitz Inferno is one of the most influential texts on Auschwitz – and the statements made by self-proclaimed Sonderkommando members Dov Paisikovic, Stanisław Jankowski, Henryk Mandelbaum, Ludwik Nagraba, Joshuah Rosenblum, Aaron Pilo, David Fliamenbaum and Samij Karolinskij

Sonderkommando Auschwitz II: The False Testimonies by Henryk Tauber and Szlama Dragon scrutinizes in detail the various testimonies of these two self-proclaimed Sonderkommando members, whose claims are the bedrock of the current mainstream narrative about mass exterminations at Auschwitz.

Sonderkommando Auschwitz III: They Wept Crocodile Tears. A Critical Analysis of Late Witness Testimonies analyzes the testimonies of self-proclaimed Sonderkommando members Josef Sackar, Abraham and Szlama Dragon, Jaakov Gabai, Eliezer Eisenschmidt, Shaul Chasan and Leon Cohen, as recorded and published by Israeli Historian Gideon Greif in 1995,[i] as well as statements made independently by the self-proclaimed Sonderkom­man­do members Daniel Bennahmias, Shlomo Venezia, David Lea, Franz Süss, Maurice Schellekes, David Karvat and Moritz Rosenblum.

The deeper we dig, the more self-proclaimed Sonderkommando member we find making outrageous statements about their alleged experiences at Auschwitz. For every witness who testified after the war, it may be assumed that ten more survived who did not go on record with their story. Multiplying the known number of surviving so-called Sonderkommando members with ten yields a number clearly showing that these Auschwitz survivors were never threatened to be killed by their German captors, simply because the Germans did not consider them carriers of any kind of “terrible secret.”

We’ll see whether this series will have to be followed up with more volumes in later years…

The Editor

[i]    Gideon Greif, 1995, Wir weinten tränenlos… Augenzeugenberichte der jüdischen “Son­der­kom­man­dos” in Auschwitz. Böhlau, KölnCologne, 1995; idem, We Wept without Tears: Interviews with Jewish Survivors of the Auschwitz Son­der­kom­man­do. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005.

Abbreviations

Bibliography

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• Lánik, Jozef, Was Dante nicht sah, Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1967
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• Lengyel, Olga, Five Chimneys, Academy Chicago Publishers, Chicago, 1995
• Ludwig, Carl, Eduard von Steiger, et al., La politique pratiquée par la Suisse à l’égard des réfugiés au cours des années 1933 à nos jours. Report intended for the Conseil fédéral à l’intention des conseils législatifs, Chancellerie Fédérale, Basel/Berne
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Auschwitz – 60 Jahre Propaganda. Die Gaskammern: Ursprung, Entwicklung und Verfall einer Propagandalüge,” Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 9, No. 2 (November 2005), pp. 167-187 (an earlier version of the present book); rough English translation: “Auschwitz – 27 January 1945 – 27 January 2005: Sixty Years of Propaganda. Origins, development and decline of the ‘gas chamber’ propaganda lie”; https://jan27.org/sixty-years-by-carlo-mattogno/
• Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassing, 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2016
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Auschwitz: Fritjof Meyer’s New Revisions,” The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2003), pp. 30-37
• Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: Open-Air Incinerations, 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2016
• Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: The First Gassing. Rumor and Reality, 3rd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2016
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Combustion Experiments with Flesh and Animal Fat. On Cremations in Pits in the Alleged Extermination Camps of the Third Reich,” The Revisionist, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004), pp. 64-72
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Contribution to the History of the Family Camp at Birkenau,” The Revisionist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2005), pp. 146-163
• Mattogno, Carlo, “‘Cremation Pits’ and Ground Water Levels at Birkenau,”  The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2003), pp. 13-16
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Das Ghetto von Lodz in der Holocaust-Propaganda: Die Evakuierung des Lodzer Ghettos und die Deportationen nach Auschwitz (August 1944),” in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 7, No. 1 (April 2003), pp. 30-36
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Die Deportation der ungarischer Juden von Mai bis Juli 1944. Eine provisorische Bilanz,” in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 5, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 381-395
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Dr. Mengele’s ‘Medical Experiments’ on Twins in the Birkenau Gypsy Camp,” in: Inconvenient History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2013); https://codoh.com/library/document/dr-mengeles-medical-experiments-on-twins-in-the/
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Flames and Smoke from the Chimneys of Crematoria,” The Revisionist, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004), pp. 73-78
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Franciszek Piper and The Number of Victims of Auschwitz,” The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2003), pp. 393-399
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Gypsy Holocaust? The Gypsies under the National Socialist Regime,” in: Inconvenient History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2014); https://codoh.com/library/document/gypsy-holocaust/
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Häftlingsüberstellungen aus Auschwitz-Birkenau 1944–1945,” in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 9, No. 3, April 2006, pp. 293-300
• Mattogno, Carlo, Healthcare in Auschwitz: Medical Care and Special Treatment of Registered Inmates, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2016
• Mattogno, Carlo, Il dottor Mengele e i gemelli di Auschwitz, Effepi, Genoa, 2008
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Jean-Claude Pressac and the War Refugee Board Report,” in: The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (winter 1990/91), pp. 461-485
• Mattogno, Carlo, “Kurt Prüfers Notiz vom 8.9.1942 und die Fantasien des ‘Holocaust History Project,’” in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 9, No. 4, August 2006, pp. 447-457
• Mattogno, Carlo, La deportazione degli Ebrei ungheresi del maggio-luglio 1944, Un bilancio provvisorio, Effepi, Genoa, 2007
• Mattogno, Carlo, “La verità sulle camere a gas?” Anatomia della “testimonianza unica” di Shlomo Venezia, Effepi, Genoa, 2017
• Mattogno, Carlo, “My Memories of Jean-Claude Pressac,” in The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 4, November 2003, pp. 432-435
• Mattogno, Carlo, Olo-Dilettanti in Web, Effepi Edizioni, Genoa, 2005
• Mattogno, Carlo, “On the Piper-Meyer-Controversy: Soviet Propaganda vs. Pseudo-Revisionism,”  The Revisionist, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004), pp. 131-139
• Mattogno, Carlo, “‘Schlüsseldokument’ – eine alternative Interpretation. Zum Fälschungsverdacht des Briefes der Zentralbauleitung Auschwitz vom 28.6.1943 betreffs der Kapazität der Krematorien,“ in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2000, pp. 50-56
• Mattogno, Carlo, Special Treatment in Auschwitz: Origin and Meaning of a Term, 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2016
• Mattogno, Carlo, The Bunkers of Auschwitz: Black Propaganda versus History. Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, 2005
• Mattogno, Carlo, The Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police Auschwitz: Organization, Responsibilities, Activities, 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2015
• Mattogno, Carlo, “The Deportation of Hungarian Jews from May to July 1944: A Preliminary Account,” https://codoh.com/library/document/the-deportation-of-hungarian-jews-from-may-to-july-1944/
• Mattogno, Carlo, “The Four Million Figure of Auschwitz: Origin, Revisions and Consequences,” The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2003), pp. 387-392
• Mattogno, Carlo, “The ‘Gas Testers’ of Auschwitz,” The Revisionist, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004), pp. 140-154
• Mattogno, Carlo, “The Morgues of the Crematoria at Birkenau in the Light of Documents,” in: The Revisionist, Vol. 2, No. 3, August 2004, pp. 271-294
• Mattogno, Carlo, The Real Case for Auschwitz: Robert van Pelt’s Evidence from the Irving Trial Critically Reviewed, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2015
• Mattogno, Carlo, “The Recovery of Human Fat in the Cremation Pits,” Inconvenient History, 6(3) 2014; https://codoh.com/library/document/the-recovery-of-human-fat-in-the-cremation-pits/.
• Mattogno, Carlo, Franco Deana, The Cremation Furnaces of Auschwitz: A Technical and Historical Study, 3 vols., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2015
• Mattogno, Carlo, Miklós Nyiszli, An Auschwitz Doctor’s Eyewitness Account: The Bestselling Tall Tales of Dr. Mengele’s Assistant Analyzed, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2018
• Mattogno, Carlo, Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss, His Torture and His Forced Confessions, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2017
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Index of Names

Names mentioned in footnotes are rendered in italics. Page numbers refer to printed edition.

Notes