From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 5

A Potpourri of Lies

Filip Müller is probably one of the best known witnesses who reported intensively about mass exterminations in the Birkenau camp.[1] Together with two other witnesses, Müller was tracked down by Hermann Langbein from the communist International Auschwitz Committee, and their statements were sent to the Stuttgart public prosecution on February 19, 1959. In Müller's testimony, one reads, i.a.:

Müller's testimony is not only surprisingly short, but also limited to what he claimed to know about Boger. Thus, he must have been instructed by Hermann Langbein what he was supposed to testify about – at that time the investigation was only about Wilhelm Boger -, because when comparing Müller's testimony of 1959 – focusing exclusively on Boger – with what he stated during the trial – where Auschwitz as such was the topic – and with what he wrote down in his 1979 book, it becomes apparent that Boger is almost of no importance in the two latter accounts, whereas general Auschwitz cruelties he describes in the latter accounts are not included in his first testimony. Even Müller's choice of words in this first account is remarkable, because apart from the alleged 'gas chambers' – which were always referred to as such – there was no other “execution room” in the crematoria, in particular no rooms regularly used for shootings.[3]

In this regard, the statement of a certain Jozef Piwko, which was mailed in by Langbein at the same time, is much better synchronized with the later atrocity stories, in which Piwko claims to have seen Boger as a center-piece: First during the forceful clearing of the gypsy camp – with the help of several SS men, Boger is said to have driven the gypsies himself into the gas chambers – and then a little while later during the clearing of the camp section housing Czech prisoners, in which Piwo was incarcerated:

Since Piwko himself was in that camp, the question arises of course, how he escaped his own extermination. But the witness has an easy solution for this:

They forgot him? But to which roll call did he go, if everybody in that camp section had been exterminated? And how can he tell us about an event, during which he slept? And why is it that especially sick people and those unfit for labor were spared from execution?

Karl Seefeld is another witness, whose very own statement proves him to be a liar. The last sentence of the penultimate paragraph of his statement made on Feb. 17, 1959, reads as follows:

Bad luck for this witness that according to generally held views Zyklon B was used – hydrogen cyanide absorbed on starch granules. The gas evaporating from these granules could neither be adjusted nor be let to flow anywhere. These granules were allegedly simply thrown into the chambers through openings.

Next we find a handwritten letter by Richard Böck, about whom I reported already elsewhere.[4] Böck's remarks impress primarily by the names he chose for the actors of his atrocity stories: Rosa from Rosenheim, who had been impregnated by an SS man, is shot by her lover while greeting him enthusiastically one morning (501aR), and the inmates Rudi and Ludi, who had planned to flee, are hanged precisely for this (501b). Rosa from Rosenheim and Rudi and Ludi – Böck's fantasy for assigning names was not the best.

Polite Mr. Boger

In 1942, Maryla Rosenthal from Krakow was arrested and incarcerated at the Birkenau camp.[5] Because of her being bilingual German-Polish, she volunteered as an interpreter and subsequently served at the Political Section as a secretary and interpreter, initially for the SS man Kamphues, “who was good to us,” and then, starting in early 1943 until the camp was evacuated in January 1945, for Boger directly. She translated the statements of Polish witnesses, who had been brought to Boger for an interrogation, as well as doing all sorts of secretarial work.

After the evacuation of Birkenau, she was transferred to western camps. About the catastrophic conditions reigning in those camps, she reports accurately that they were a result of overcrowding combined with and lack of supplies due to the war. Later, Mrs. Rosenthal emigrated to Israel, but returned back to Germany with her husband in 1957 and resided in Berlin ever since.

In Mrs. Rosenthal we probably have the best possible witness regarding the activities of Wilhelm Boger. Frau Rosenthal stated:

But in order to avoid the impression that this was normal behavior, she immediately interjects:

The only question is, who might have punished him – perhaps the frightening Gestapo man Boger? Frau Rosenthal continues:

Regarding events, which did not occur in her immediate environment, she ought to have at least some knowledge, because, after all, she was Boger's secretary and thus familiar with most of Boger's correspondence. In this regard she states:

After it was pointed out to her that she can hardly contribute anything “relevant” to the case – as if an exonerating testimony is irrelevant -, she suddenly remembers some clichés, which she, however, juxtaposes to her own experiences:

She also reports how other women in the Political Section exchanged gossip and the lastest rumors in the restrooms, but that she kept away from such Kaffeeklatsch. She can remember the content of such gossip, however:

About the infamous Boger Swing, on which Boger is said to have brought inmates to talk, Frau Rosenthal does not know very much either. She confirms that the term “Swing” was used at that time, but not “Boger Swing.” Boger himself allegedly called it the “talking machine.” She claims to never having seen this machine, as it was not located in Boger's office, but probably in a hut outside of the office building. Frau Rosenthal reports that she remembers only three cases, where inmates were brought to her for the typing of further interrogations after they had been tortured. In one case she remembers that she started screaming when she saw the badly disfigured inmate, but Boger admonished her

In contrast to this, she claims to have heard screams of tortured inmates more often. Since Frau Rosenthal – as Boger's secretary – is the one who is best suited to know the extent of such mistreatments, it seems that the “Boger Swing” wasn't used quite as often as other witnesses claim.

Frau Rosenthal's testimony regarding the authorization for the execution of inmates is clear and in accord with what we know from documentary evidence:

Frau Rosenthal makes only at this point a short reference about the otherwise very common atrocity stories: at the beginning of her activities in 1942, she was in charge of, so her statement, “registering the death cases in the camp, which occurred due to natural death and, much more often, due to gassings.” But this cannot be true, since the deaths resulting from mass gassing were – according to official historiography – never registered anywhere. Thus the only aspect of Frau Rosenthal's testimony collapses, which seems to support the claims of mass murder in Auschwitz.

One can imagine that such a massively exonerating testimony did not meet the public prosecutor's enthusiasm. Even less enthusiastic, however, would have been the reaction of influential inmate groups and Jewish lobby groups, if they had heard Frau Rosenthal's testimony publicly. And indeed: In a letter to the Public Prosecution Stuttgart, Siegfried Rosenthal, Maryla's husband, asked not to use his wife's testimony in the ongoing case, first because she would not be in perfect health, and secondly because the interrogating officer had already stated that his “wife, as matters are, could not be seen as an important incriminating witness.” This again indicates that the public prosecution was looking only for incriminating evidence – contrary to the wording of German penal law, which makes it obligatory for the prosecution in criminal cases to look equally for incriminating and for exonerating evidence.

Herr Rosenthal also insisted that his wife's name would not be made public. As a reason for this he stated that he fears “defamations by still existing SS organizations” as well as disadvantages for his company in case his wife becomes a target of the tabloid press (pp. 516f.). The fact is that not a single “SS organization” existed anymore at that time. The only organization, which concerned itself with the fate of former members of the SS, could act only very cautiously in the background and on a case-by-case basis by giving very limited legal and financial assistance. This organization never had any public influence. Apart from that, why should such an organization attack a witness, who is making a massively exonerating statement?

This is, or course, in massive contrast to the then publicly very active associations of former inmates (e.g., Association of Persecutees of the Nazi-Regime (VVN), Auschwitz Committee) and Jewish groups, which were a very real and likely source of defamations and other detrimental attacks on a witness whose statement exonerates their target of hatred. But these associations did not cross Herr Rosenthal's mind – or perhaps he did not dare to write this down on paper, not knowing who would read it.

However, despite of Herr Rosenthal's wish, Frau Rosenthal was interrogated a second time, and she even testified during the trial itself. During her second interrogation on Dec. 10, 1959, by the Public Prosecution Frankfurt, Frau Rosenthal was confronted with the glaring contradiction between her exonerating statement and those of other witnesses. She tried to explain this by claiming that her memory simply was not good enough and that the events she had to experience at that time in Auschwitz[6]

Over and over again pressed to explain, why she – in contrast to others – could not remember details of atrocities and the identity of perpetrators, she finally dished out the story that, considering the terror of these times, she must have lived like in trance, refusing to take notice of anything around her.[7]

The abnormality of Frau Rosenthal's testimony – the only massively exonerating statement under all statements of the former secretaries employed at the Political Section – is generally recognized by the mainstream literature on this topic. It was and is explained away by established Holocaust historians as well as by the Frankfurt Jury Court by claiming that Frau Rosenthal must have suppressed any conscious memory of those terrible experiences, as she herself indicated during her second interrogation.[8]

Let us take a closer look at the theory. Frau Rosenthal was the first of those secretaries, the first woman in general to testify in this matter. During her first interrogation, she could remember many details of how she was favorably treated by Herr Boger. The interrogating officers confront her for the first time (consciously) in her life about the atrocities, at which she is supposed to have been present. The officers are “discreet” and competent and make a convincing impression on the witness. Yet still, they accuse her indirectly of having memory holes about certain atrocities as described by the interrogator. She accept that these are memory holes and excuses them with a bad memory as well as with the fact that at those times she refused to partake in the usual inmate gossip!

Before being interrogated a second time, she meets former “colleagues.” This term in and of itself is very indicative, as it shows that she associates a normal employee's working activity with her time in Auschwitz rather than slave labor in an extermination camp. These colleagues (and possibly other 'survivors') tell her certain atrocity stories, which surprises her, because she cannot remember any of it. But since these stories conform with what the interrogating officer had told her before and wanted to see confirmed by her, and because she seems to be the only one having a different memory, she concludes sharply that her memory must be false. Looking for an explanation, the one she puts forward sounds convincing indeed, that is, that she must have suppressed the terror of her past into subconscious layers of her memory. But she remains steadfast with her statement that she cannot remember.

Beside that, the question arises, how Frau Rosenthal managed to get together with several of her former colleagues prior to her second interrogation in order to exchange their stories. Who organized these meetings? The literature contains information that associations of former inmates organized these meetings with the oft-criticized effect of manipulating testimonies.[9]

The established thesis about what happened to Frau Rosenthal's memory – and probably to that of many more witnesses – has been criticized massively as the “myth of suppressed memory” over the past 20 years. Although the context has been different – the claimed suppression of traumatic childhood memories of sexual abuse – the structure is nevertheless the same.

I myself used to know a person who had become a victim of memory manipulations. It is very revealing to study the dynamics of such a process:

Since her early youth, the affected person suffered from anorexia. Therefore, her parents sent her to psychiatric treatment. Unfortunately, she ended up in the hands of a psychiatrist who adhered to certain Freudian theses, according to which most psychological problems are caused by sexual problems. By sophisticated techniques of interrogation, said “expert” talked his patient into believing that colleagues of her father – and with his assistance – had sexually abused her. The result of this psychiatric treatment was that the patient was subsequently not only anorexic, but distrusting toward her parents, and she even started self-mutilations; she ended up spending several years in a closed institution; she temporarily lost custody over her children; some other patients of this psychiatric “expert” were treated so badly that one of them even committed suicide.

When I first learned about these alleged cruel childhood experiences of that lady, I initially was undecided if I should believe her or if her parent's claims were true that this was all an evil manipulation by this psychiatrist. Said lady, however, had a twin sister, who, according to my lady friend, had gone through the very same experiences as she had, although she neither turned anorexic nor was she ever in need for any psychiatric treatment. This twin sister, as a neutral person, could solve the riddle: This was a classic case of “False Memory Syndrome” as it has been repeatedly described by Elisabeth Loftus and other experts.[10] Nothing of that, which my lady friend had been persuaded to believe by this incompetent psychiatrist, was true, but despite of six years of trying, nobody within the immediate family circle managed to make her believe this.

Due to my knowledge about false, implanted memory – and because of my, an family outsider's close relationship to her – I managed to convince her within only a few days that her memory had been manipulated. Within a few weeks, said lady was mentally restored, and after more than a decade of permanent drama, the family was finally reunited in peace and love.

Maryla Rosenthal's claims of being unable to remember the purported atrocities and her attempt to rationalize this lack of memory by claiming that she must have lived in a trance-like state during those years, in connection with, and in contrast to, the fact that she has indeed many detailed memories about this past, whose positive nature does, however, not fit to what she claims (or is told to believe) to have suppressed from her conscience, is exactly the same type of explanation used by the lady in the case described above: It is a desperate attempt to help herself over the paradox that her conscious memories are in contradiction to what she is being told to believe by experts. As a matter of fact, my lady friend had a very warm and close relationship to her father all of her life, her childhood stories were always positive, and she also displayed a perfectly normal sexual behavior. All this clearly indicated that she had never been sexually traumatized during her childhood (with or without her father's assistance).

The behavioral patterns of Frau Rosenthal as well – her positive description of Boger, her return to Germany, her usage of the term “colleagues” – indicate that she has not been traumatized by her experiences in Auschwitz.

It can therefore be concluded that Frau Rosenthal was not traumatized by her experiences in Auschwitz, but that the memory-manipulating influences of the associations of former inmates, former inmates as such, media reports as well as the statements of interrogating officers, prosecutors, and later on also of the judges intimidated her. This is also confirmed by the fact that Frau Rosenthal's strategy of excusing her bad memory by claiming a trance-like life in Auschwitz became increasingly predominant the more often she was interrogated, that is: manipulated and intimidated.

Hysterical Anti-Fascist History

Between 1946 and early 1947, Fritz Hirsch was fulltime secretary of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (Verein der Verfolgten des Nazi-Regimes), an organization which was considered communist by the German (and allied) authorities for many decades. Hirsch was interrogated on Feb, 13, 1959, in Stuttgart. His interrogation protocol includes 49 pages (pp. 520-568). His statements are a collection of his own experiences, intertwined with things he read, rumors he heard, and his own perverted fantasies.

He starts his testimony by mentioning that three million people were gassed in Auschwitz according to camp commander Rudolf Höß (p. 523), which indicates that he does not report this from his own experience. Whereas he claims initially to never have seen with his own eyes how Boger shot inmates (p. 526), a few pages later he reports in detail about such executions (p. 531).

On the positive side, he reports that he was allowed to successfully pass an underground construction degree, that criminal investigation were started each time an inmate was killed (p. 529) and that a friend of his was allowed to marry in Auschwitz (p. 551).

Without going into detail, I may point out that Hirsch mentions repeatedly that he is reporting only “what is partly known sufficiently” (p. 540), what has been “general camp talk” (p. 546) or “daily talk” (p. 553), what he knows “from hearsay” (p. 543), and what other inmates have told him (p. 560). As deeply involved in the propaganda activities of the communist VVN as Hirsch was, it cannot come as a surprise that for most parts his testimony has nothing to do with what he experienced himself or what he remembers himself.

When considering the content, Hirsch destroys his credibility at several points irrevocably, so for instance when he claims to have Boger say:

This may still be considered funny, but later Hirsch becomes theatrical when claiming that he saw how Boger and Broad frequently went to executions, which he claims to have recognized by the fact that blood was dripping out of the closed boxes, in which always two corpses were transported (p. 536). The question is, of course, how he could possibly know, what exactly was in those closed boxes? On p. 536f., Hirsch tells the gripping tale of how the inhabitants of the town Lidice – men, women, and children – were deported to Auschwitz after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He claims that those inhabitants were all shot there, mainly by Boger and Broad, so that the blood of the corpses “literally soaked the camp road.” The problem with this account is that not a single inhabitant of the town of Lidice was deported to Auschwitz. The men were shot in Lidice, the women were deported to the Ravensbrück camp, and the children were offered for adoption by other families.[11] But Hirsch even claims to have seen physical evidence:

Thus, Fritz Hirsch is nothing but a vulgar liar. It is of no use either that he thinks he has to affirm expressively that all this “really happened, as all other events, which I mentioned, are facts as well […].” I spare the reader with a thorough analysis of his never-ending stories about wild shootings by SS men (pp. 534, 538, 548, 560 – how was that about criminal investigations initiated for every inmate killed, Herr Hirsch?); about crushing bones, shearing hair, pulling gold teeth, corpses ashes as fertilizers (p. 539); about hacking apart of corpses frozen together after the first gassing in Nov./Dec. 1942, as allegedly performed by Boger (p. 549, hearsay); about shaving the pubic hair of naked women (p. 563); about a Jew who was supposed to serve as an impartial writer during experiments with women and who was therefore castrated, after which he developed broad hips and breasts; as well as about experiments with inmates who were forced to have sex with each other (p. 562). Sex sells.

Interestingly so, Hirsch knows nothing to report about the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, of whom he knows only the name and that he was a camp physician (p. 554). He also claims that the number of gassed victims was reported to the RSHA (p. 556), which is in contrast to the thesis of unregistered and uncounted extermination.

Jakob Gorzelezyk, in earlier years personal sparring partner of famous German boxing star Max Schmeling, was also incarcerated in Auschwitz and was generally known in the camp. He has repeatedly been brought into the context of inmate executions, at which he is claimed to have assisted. In a sworn affidavit of Jan. 15, 1946, Gorzelezyk confirmed that Fritz Hirsch behaved decently towards his co-inmates in Auschwitz (p. 569). Apparently Hirsch had been accused by other inmates to have misbehaved in some way, as this was the case with many so-called Kapos (inmate supervisors). Although Gorzelezyk did not know Hirsch personally – how then can he make such a statement? – he defended Hirsch against such accusation, which during those immediate postwar times could, according to Gorzelezyk, not only lead to legal trouble caused by inmate organizations, but also to the refusal of food rations in starving Germany. Hirsch was well aware who buttered his bread. Shortly after Gorzelezyk wrote his letter of recommendation, Hirsch was employed by the VVN as a secretary.

Decency

During the war, Alfred Korn had initially been incarcerated in the Plazow camp, where he enjoyed many liberties, because Plazow turned into a closed camp only as late as 1943. During his interrogation in 1959, he also stated that he had volunteered(!) to be transferred to the Auschwitz camp at the end of 1943, where he claims to have been treated decently by the SS guards. He had been interrogated by the Auschwitz Political Section once, but this did not have any consequences for him. Although he knew about cruelties in general due to camp chatter, he could not give any detailed accounts about them. The only concrete memory this witness claimed to have about atrocities are in regards to an alleged gassing in November 1944, that is, at a time when, according to official historiography, all gassing installations had already been decommissioned and were being dismantled.[12]

Witness Otto Locke reports how he had been mistreated by Boger on the “swing” – according to his account a simple rod put on two desks on either side in Boger's office. Interesting is his statement that he spent many weeks in the inmate hospital, partly due to a sickness he contracted during time he had to spend in the penal bunker, partly because of typhus.[13] Locke also reports that from spring 1943 onward, Boger was behaving decently due to an order given by camp commander Liebehenschel, because it had been ordered that inmates may not be subjected to corporal punishment. According to Locke, Boger's bad reputation is a result of the temporary use of the “swing.” Locke refused to file a criminal complaint against Boger.

Chief Propagandists

Hermann Langbein and Dr. Franz Danimann of the communist Auschwitz Committee were interrogated on Jan. 27 and Jan. 9, 1959, respectively.[14] Considering the broad “knowledge” both must have acquired during their activities for this committee about the Auschwitz camp and all the rumors and legends surrounding it, one would expect detailed statements, yet their accounts are astonishingly short. Danimann describes himself as a member of the camp underground group “Kampfgruppe Auschwitz” (battle group Auschwitz), whose activity was probably much less the engagement in battles, but rather the spreading of propaganda, as the former Auschwitz inmate Bruno Baum described.[15]

Both testimonies were given as a result of criminal complaints filed by the Auschwitz Committee against SS Unterscharführer Lachmann, who was accused by both Langbein and Danimann of having committed similar crimes as many other witnesses accused Boger of having committed. Thus, their move is a measure to expand the investigations to other suspects. Langbein, however, reports that he himself was once interrogated by Lachmann, but that he was treated decently by Lachmann.

Similar to Frau Rosenthal, the Dutch witness Spora Stark was also employed in the Political Section as a secretary. In contrast to Frau Rosenthal, however, she claims to have frequently seen inmates in a miserable condition, after they had been tortured under terrible screams on the “swing” in an adjacent room.[16] The secretaries themselves, however, are said to have been treated decently. She also insisted that she never saw the killing of an inmate with her own eyes, and about the alleged death “in the gas chambers” of many of the Jews, who had been deported to Auschwitz together with her, she knows only from hearsay (“as I have learned”). In addition to that, she knows to list the names and addresses of a long list of other former secretary colleagues – all of them survivors, who were treated decently and who somehow kept in touch after the war.

Beginning on page 616 and right until the end of volume 4 of the investigation files, several testimonies of various Polish witnesses can be found, which altogether follow a similar pattern, that is, to accuse as many SS men as possible of as many crimes as possible in as little space as possible. Most of these testimonies are neither dated nor is a location given where they were made. A longer statement by Feliks Mylyk, however, was made on Aug. 28, 1947, in Auschwitz in front of the investigating judge Jan Sehn, one of the most prominent Stalinist Holocaust propagandists of the immediate postwar period in Poland. Thus, it may be concluded that all of these testimonies are mere translations of statements by witnesses who testified during Stalinist show trials in the immediate postwar era. Since all these statements are very superficial, I will not analyze them here.

Notes