Auschwitz

Some 20% of post-war Polish territory is made up of former German lands; hence, some 20% of today’s Polish towns and cities once bore German names. All place names have long since been Polonized – all, except for one town, which displays bilingual entry signs: Auschwitz. Ethnically speaking, Oswiecim was never German. So why would the fiercely nationalistic Poles retain the Germanized name? Because it is big business. For the world at large, Auschwitz is synonymous with the Holocaust, and it represents the pinnacle of Nazi evil. Yet here we do not focus on the symbol which Auschwitz has become, but on the Auschwitz camp and its numerous satellite camps, such as Birkenau, Monowitz, Harmense, Raisko, etc.

The Unreliability of Documents in Jean-Claude Pressac’s Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Ga

There are documents, and then there are documents. Some documents are better than others. Original documents, for example, are more valuable than documents that are not original, particularly when you want to prove murder. Original documents are even more important when you want to prove mass murder. This is pretty complicated stuff, our holocaust historians…

The Case of Walter Lüftl or

1. Introduction In Germany, in the early spring of February 1992, many Austrian and German newspaper dailies[1] reported the resignation of the President of the Federal Austrian Chamber of Engineers, Walter Lüftl, who stepped down from his prestigious position after voicing doubts about the Holocaust. Things calmed down fairly quickly in Germany, while in Austria…

Auschwitz: myths and facts

Summary The Auschwitz extermination story originated as wartime propaganda. Now, more than 40 years after the end of the Second World War, it is time to take another, more objective look at this highly polemicized chapter of history. The Auschwitz legend is the core of the Holocaust story. If hundreds of thousands of Jews were…

Some Technical and Chemical Considerations about the “Gas Chambers” of Auschwitz and Birkenau

1. Introduction Prior to the Leuchter Report[1] no scientific studies of any significance had ever been conducted about the homicidal 'gas chambers'[2] of Auschwitz and Majdanek, which is astonishing in view of the importance of the topic. Even in the great Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt in the mid-1960s, the expert reports that were commissioned had…

The Nazi Doctors

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Robert Jay Lifton, New York: Basic Books Inc., 1986. xiii+561 pages. $19.95 The Nazi Doctors is divided into three main parts entitled “Life Unworthy of Life” (pp. 22-144; Chapters 1-6), “Auschwitz: The Racial Cure” (pp. 148-414; Chapter 7-18) and “The Psychology of Genocide” (pp. 417-500;…

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