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Friedrich Paul Berg, R.I.P.

PROFILE IN HISTORY

By Germar Rudolf ∙ January 3, 2020

In the first half of 1991, after I had realized that the Holocaust topic is too large for one single person to cope, I started getting in touch with scholars around the globe who, as I was told or had otherwise learned, would be willing and able to contribute to a major effort of compiling an anthology that would address all major issues within this umbrella topic, and report the most recent state of research in that area. After three years of international collaboration, the result saw the light of day in the shape of the original German edition of what is today titled Dissecting the Holocaust, which is number one of the prestigious series Holocaust Handbooks.

In the context of preparing this anthology, I also contacted the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), asking them whether they could send me a complete set of all issues of their periodical The Journal of Historical Review (JHR), so that I could get up to speed about the revisionist take on the issues at hand. Just a few weeks later, I received, free of charge, from the IHR an entire mailbag full of JHR paperback issues. I was surprised and very grateful for this spontaneous and swift magnanimity.

During the next weeks and months, I scoured the JHR for papers that addressed topics related to the Holocaust. One of the most impressive papers I ran into was an article written by U.S. engineer Friedrich Paul Berg on whether or not it is possible to kill people with Diesel exhaust gas. When he wrote this paper in 1983/84, he could look back on experiences gathered as an engineer working at an airport where he was responsible for environmental safety. This included making sure that exhaust-gas concentrations in parking garages and tunnels would not exceed certain levels. Berg had a degree in mining engineering from Columbia University, which equipped him with the knowledge that operating diesel-motor-driven machinery below ground was quite safe. Hence, his college education and professional duties equipped him well to address the question at hand: was it possible to mass-murder people using Diesel exhaust gas, as orthodox historiography claims (or used to claim) happened in the alleged Nazi extermination camps at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibór?

Friedrich Paul Berg, * November 11, 1943, † October 6, 2019, aged 75.
Friedrich Paul Berg, * November 11, 1943, † October 6, 2019, aged 75.

It was clear to me that the planned anthology had to include a contribution on this topic. Fritz Berg was the natural candidate to approach. He gladly accepted my offer to translate his 1984 article into German, and even embraced my suggestion to update and correct it. Whereas Fritz did not have any educational background in toxicology, I had taken a semester in this field as an add-on to my German university degree in chemistry. I was apprehensive to make the corrections needed, because some authors can get quite hostile when others tell them that they got things wrong in their most prestigious scholarly publications. However, Fritz was grateful for the improvements I made to his paper, and went along with all suggestions I made, seeing well that I was making it “bullet proof,” so to speak. While the changes made required a little tweaking of his general conclusions, they were still clear enough to satisfy Fritz. In fact, Fritz was so pleased with my polishing up his original paper that he offered me to appear as the co-author for this contribution. I had to turn down this generous offer back then, because living in Germany at that time, I wanted to reduce my public profile as much as possible, so as to limit the wrath of Germany’s authorities, once the book gets published.

I met Fritz several times when he traveled to Germany to join the authors’ meetings I had organized in preparation of our anthology. We became friends.

During those authors’ meetings, I learned a personality trait that could get quite problematic: he had little tolerance for people claiming technical nonsense, and tended to lose his temper when persistently confronted with such individuals. Since he perceived Robert Faurisson, a professor of literature but not a technician, to be among those he perceived as technical ignoramuses, he picked increasingly cantankerous fights with Robert. For years, both tried to get me to join their side in this puerile infighting, which eventually led me to record a documentary on one of the issues they were sparring over, which was posted on CODOH in early 2016.[1] I tried to be diplomatic with both of them, and remain a neutral arbiter as much as I could.

While Fritz’s at times belligerent attitude against perceived opponents may sound like a drawback, it was actually absolutely pivotal to put him on his revisionist journey. Had he not had his low tolerance for technical nonsense contained in the orthodox Holocaust narrative, and his uncompromising will to confront and fight it tooth and nail, he never would have joined the fight. In fact, I learned only much later that Fritz had been in this struggle much earlier: In April of 1978, Fritz took his first public stand against the orthodox Holocaust narrative when he led a demonstration against the National Broadcasting Company for its showing of the TV miniseries Holocaust, which contains several scenes that are “technical nonsense.”

Over the years following the first publication of the improved German version of his paper on Diesel exhaust executions, Fritz collected more material on this issue and posted it on his website www.NaziGassings.com (now defunct). Some of these newly discovered publications were eventually cited and discussed in papers he published or in new editions of Dissecting. However, the poorly organized nature of his website made it difficult for visitors to get an understanding of what exactly Fritz’s overall argument is. Hence, sometime in 2014, I suggested to him to write a monograph putting all his ideas, arguments and conclusion into one tome, laying it all out for everyone to read and understand. Fritz promptly asked me to do it, but I rejected the idea of ghostwriting such a book for him. In the end, he copied and pasted what he had on his website. Thusly patched together, he had a book issued that put in print the poorly organized nature of his website, rather than cleaning it up and organizing it properly. My review of his book was thus quite unfavorable.[2] That chilled down our relationship a bit.

In September of 2019, a new and completely revamped edition of Dissecting was getting wrapped up. I planned on including all the nuggets Fritz and other scholars had found on the Diesel issue since the book’s last update (in 2003). I approached him to get his permission for all the changes, updates and additions I had prepared, plus my intention to have me now listed as the co-author, since my share in this paper had again increased.

It was not meant to be. I found out that Fritz was in the hospital at that time. I called his bedside phone numerous times, but never managed to get hold of him. So I went ahead to include my suggested changes without his consent. It was only after the book had been submitted to the printers that I learned that Fritz had passed away during this hospital stay.

I would have very much liked to patch up our strained relationship with this last consensual act. It was not meant to be.

Fritz’s book was later reissued by Veronika Clark in an improved edition in her small outlet Wilk Mocy Publishers.[3] While cooperating with Fritz on this project, she experienced Fritz’s golden side of gifting her his entire book collection, helping her out financially, and taking all the time in the world to explain issues to her.

After Robert Countess, Ernst Zündel, Bradley Smith and Robert Faurisson have moved on to the eternal hunting grounds, I now miss yet another good revisionist friend.

Chronological Bibliography

Fritz Berg furthermore appeared on several podcasts, some of which are posted or linked to on CODOH (with at times dysfunctional links) at https://codoh.com/library/document/author/berg-friedrich-paul/

Endnotes

[1] “Is Zyklon B Explosive?,” 35 minutes; a friend helped enriching it with some illustrations, which is the version currently available online: https://codoh.com/library/document/is-zyklon-b-explosive/ (posted on June 7, 2016).
[2] G. Rudolf, “Angry Sledge-Hammer Revisionism,” Inconvenient History, 2015, vol. 7, no. 3; https://codoh.com/library/document/angry-sledge-hammer-revisionism/.
[3] To dodge the censor’s wrath, she retitled it as NGNH: A Novel On Life & Death, where NGNH stands for “Nazi Gassings Never Happened” – but don’t tell anyone; https://wilkmocypublishers.com/catalog-page-7/. [Editor’s remark: On May 28, 2024, WordPress decided to ban Veronika Clark’s WordPress-powered blog]

Author

  • Germar Rudolf

    Germar Rudolf was born on October 29, 1964, in Limburg, Germany. He studied chemistry at Bonn University, where he graduated in 1989 as a Diplom-Chemist, which is comparable to a U.S. PhD degree. From 1990-1993 he prepared a German PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in conjunction with the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Parallel to this and in his spare time, Rudolf prepared an expert report on chemical and technical questions of the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz, The Rudolf Report (now titled The Chemistry of Auschwitz). He conclude in it that "the alleged facilities for mass extermination at Auschwitz and Birkenau were not suited for the purpose as claimed." As a result he had to endure severe measures of persecution in subsequent years. Hence he went into British exile, where he started the small revisionist outlet Castle Hill Publishers. When Germany asked Britain to extradite Rudolf in 1999, he fled to the U.S. There he applied for political asylum, expanded his publishing activities, and in 2004 married a U.S. citizen. In 2005, the U.S. recognized Rudolf's marriage as valid and seconds later arrested and subsequently deported him back to Germany, where he was put in prison for 44 months for his scholarly writings. Some of the writings he got punished for had been published while Rudolf resided in the U.S., where his activities were and are perfectly legal. Since not a criminal under U.S. law, he managed to immigrate permanently to the U.S. in 2011, where he rejoined his U.S. citizen wife and daughter. He currently resides in Upstate New York.

    Read more about him here.

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Bibliographic information about this document: Inconvenient History, 2020, Vol. 12, No. 1
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