In Defense of Ursula Haverbeck

“We know this from the Holocaust deniers: this is a highly selective reading. They merely read what they want to read. They pick out some details and try to generalize them.”
—Prof. Dr. Norbert Frei (Bongen 2015b)

In early 1991, as a chemist, I was asked by the Düsseldorf defense lawyer Hajo Herrmann to compile an expert report, which was to be introduced as evidence in criminal proceedings against one of his clients. The report was meant to clarify whether the Zyklon-B mass gassings claimed for Ausch­witz would have led to chemically detectable traces in the walls of the alleged gas chambers, whether such traces would have been detectable up to that time (1991), and in case both conditions were met, whether such traces could be found there.[1]

When the first version of my report was completed in early 1992, Hajo Herrmann‘s defense team decided to prepare a few photocopies of it and mail them to some of Germany’s leading personalities and to some potentially interested professors.[2]

Among the latter was Prof. Dr. Werner Georg Haverbeck. After reading my report, Prof. Haverbeck wrote to me the following lines, among others, in a letter dated January 31, 1992:

“I count the reception of your study among the highlights of enlightenment that can still be experienced during this time. With many colleagues in the field of contemporary history, I share joy and gratitude for the research activity you have started and of course especially with regard to the result of your correct scientific investigation.”

When Prof. Haverbeck died in 1999, his widow Dr. Ursula Haverbeck took up his legacy. For example, she was the deputy chairwoman of the “Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Denying the Holocaust”, a human-rights organization that was banned as unconstitutional in 2008 by the German Minister for the Interior.[3]

The current rulers in Berlin insist that belief in the “Holocaust” is constitutionally required, although the exact opposite is the case. Here are Articles 4 and 5 of Germany’s Basic Law, which is its surrogate constitution:

Article 4

(1) Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed, shall be inviolable.
(2) The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed. […]

It is therefore clearly unconstitutional to force anyone to profess belief in anything. Further on we read:

Article 5

(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.

(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws [nota bene!], in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour.

(3) Arts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.

The German law against historical revisionism – that is, Article 130 of the German Criminal Code – prohibits only certain views on only narrowly limited topics. This is therefore not a “general law”, but clearly a “special law,” and such laws are expressly unconstitutional. And no matter what they try and how hard they argue, not even the judges of the German Federal Constitutional High Court can change that fact, even though they tried not too long ago.[4]

In addition, most revisionist publications are products of science and research, and are therefore immune to any limits provided by general laws. The Federal German judiciary, however, fundamentally and categorically bars dissident publications from recognition as being scholarly in nature, but that too is not done after considering the facts of the matter but apodictically and without any evidence, indeed by means of the violent suppression of evidence, because anyone who tries to file a motion to submit evidence in German courtrooms will learn that, on principle, all such motions are denied, and if a defense team moreover has the temerity to file such motions in an attempt to substantiate the defendant’s historical views, they can even expect to be prosecuted for it – including the defense lawyers! Yes, in Germany you are FORBIDDEN to defend yourself (or your client) in this matter with factual arguments! This is clearly not the hallmark of a state under the rule of law![5]

It is therefore the German Ministry of the Interior as the representative of the German executive, the German Federal Constitutional High Court as head of the German judiciary, and the German legislature (Bundesrat and Bundestag) enacting such laws, which have clearly proven to be unconstitutional! The only thing stopping them from disappearing into oblivion is the fact that they forcibly impose their politics on Germany at gunpoint. Those who don’t toe the line simply are sent to jail. This is democracy German style!

Although Dr. Haverbeck could no longer work in the aforementioned, now-disbanded human-rights organization, that did not prevent her from expressing iconoclastic views on the Holocaust. The peak of her public impact was reached in March 2015 when the German government-owned TV channel ARD, during its news feature Panorama, broadcast excerpts from a long interview with her, in which Dr. Haverbeck had the opportunity to present her views to an audience of millions.[6]For this, she was later sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment without parole (Feldmann 2015). Since she refuses to shut up about this even while in prison, Dr. Haverbeck is still incarcerated today, as I write these lines, at the age of 91. And anyone who protests against this can join her behind bars right away. You don’t have to look to China to find gross human-rights violations by dictatorial regimes…

In the context of the present study, the relevant aspect of the Panorama interview with Dr. Haverbeck is her repeated references to a book by the Munich Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, IfZ), which contains the text of hundreds of garrison and headquarters orders from the former Ausch­witz Camp on over 500 pages (Frei et al., 2000). Dr. Haverbeck repeatedly quoted from this book during that interview in her effort to substantiate her revisionist views on Ausch­witz. The main editor of the book, historian Dr. Norbert Frei, was, of course, not pleased by this utilization of his source edition (Bongen 2015b). Some of the reasons given by Dr. Frei in 2015 as to why he considers Dr. Haverbeck‘s arguments to be wrong correspond to those already contained in the introduction to the source edition. They are therefore listed and discussed in the main part of the present book.

Some statements by Dr. Frei, however, are not related to the orders issued by the Ausch­witz camp administration and are therefore not dealt with in the main part of this book, hence I will address them here.

The following is a question asked by ARD journalist Bongen, followed by Dr. Frei‘s answer:

“[Bongen:] Right-wing extremists repeatedly refer to studies by supposedly reputable scientists who deny the use of Zyklon B to gas people. What is to be made of this?

Frei: These pieces of information, often even referred to as ‘expert reports’, written by alleged experts of the exact sciences, regularly turn out, on closer inspection, to be ordered productions by sympathizers of Holocaust denial.”

That was a polemical jab against me and my expert report (Rudolf 1993/2017a). However, as a graduate chemist, I am undoubtedly an expert of the exact sciences in the field in question. So why “alleged”? In addition, legal expert reports are always and without exception ordered, either by the court, by the prosecution or by the defense. It is also obvious that an expert witness is sympathetic in matters of fact (but not necessarily politically) to the views of that party in a dispute whose views are closest to those to which the expert conscientiously and with the best of his or her knowledge has arrived at. So we can turn the tables:

“These pieces of information, which are often even referred to as ‘expert reports’ by alleged historical experts, regularly turn out, on closer inspection, to be ordered productions by sympathizers of the Holocaust orthodoxy.”

Furthermore, many historians who do not officially question the orthodox teaching on the Holocaust always come to the politically desirable conclusions because otherwise they would have to reckon with the end of their career (as mine ended, or never started), and in many countries even with imprisonment (cf. the statements of some historians in the Appendix to Rudolf 2016). I myself have been threatened by a judge with criminal prosecution as an expert witness in the courtroom should I dare to present my research results to the court (see Rudolf 2016, pp. 105f.). Therefore, one would even have to phrase it like this:

“These pieces of information, which are often even referred to as ‘expert reports’ by alleged historical experts, regularly turn out, on closer inspection, to be either ordered productions by sympathizers of the Holocaust orthodoxy or perjurious false testimonies coerced under the threat of punishment.”

But no matter what the sympathies of an author are or whatever social group may be pressuring him, ultimately only the arguments count, and this is something that orthodox historians such as Dr. Frei don’t seem to recognize. In scholarly discourses, personal attacks and argumentative blows below the belt lead to disqualifications at best.

Another question put to Dr. Frei was:

“Ausch­witz deniers use the correction on the plaques at the Ausch­witz Memorial to prove that far fewer people were killed in Nazi concentration camps. There was once talk of four million victims. After the collapse of the Soviet Union [1990], the number of Jewish victims in Ausch­witz was reduced by three million – so the total number of six million Jewish victims should have been reduced accordingly. What is your take on that argument?

Frei: The number of around four million victims came about immediately after the end of the war in 1945 through investigations and capacity calculations by a Soviet and a Polish investigative commission. This number was then adopted by the Ausch­witz State Museum and was not corrected until the end of communist rule. Based on extant transport lists, however, Western research has arrived at lower numbers already since the 1960s. Based on the available sources, a minimum number of 1.1 million Jews murdered at Ausch­witz is now considered to be certain; however, possibly up to 1.5 million people may have died there alone. Since the opening of the Eastern European archives in the 1990s, research on the total number of victims of the Holocaust has made use of previously unknown sources. International science has meanwhile been able to determine very precise figures for individual countries and subsections of the Holocaust, but is still dependent on estimates in some areas – for example with regard to the executions by the SS Einsatz­gruppen. Today, a total of at least 5.6 and up to 6.3 million victims is assumed.”

The problem of excessive victim numbers and the related total death toll of the Holocaust cannot be limited to Ausch­witz. In fact, the number of victims of almost every crime scene of the Third Reich was greatly exaggerated at the end of the war and gradually reduced during subsequent years and decades. Here are a few examples:

We need to add to this the victims in all the other camps and ghettos not listed here, as well as the victims of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union and Serbia. Accordingly, there have been claims, especially after the war but also in subsequent years and decades, that the Holocaust actually claimed many more victims than “only” 6 million, with 21 million being the upper limit as far as I know (see Scott 2017).

What is striking about all the initial death-toll numbers is that, without exception, they are significantly above what is assumed today. If this were a matter of simple errors, one would have to expect that these figures are equally likely to deviate upward and downward from the actual value. Here, however, all the initially announced official death-toll numbers have always been far above the official numbers adopted today. That is clearly tendentious.

The same applies to the murder methods claimed for these camps. In the second column, the next table lists murder weapons that were claimed during or shortly after the war, but are no longer claimed today. The last column contains the murder weapon claimed today.

What may we learn from this? Reports and claims about the alleged extermination camps of the Third Reich were riddled with exaggerations and inventions from the beginning. Given this, it is irresponsible and extremely unscholarly to take any horror claims about these camps at face value, and it is criminal to ostracize or even prosecute skeptical doubters.

The situation is no different today than right after the Second World War. The hysteria of the immediate post-war anti-German hate fest has abated in the meantime, but it has only been replaced by a hysteria of the anti-revisionist (“denier”) hate fest. After the war, it was not a criminal offense to doubt or even refute atrocity claims about the camps of the Third Reich, but this is exactly the case in many countries today. The hysterical reaction of many if not most people when anyone expresses doubt of the sacred Saint Holocaust or even commits the sacrilege of questioning the existence of the very gas chambers themselves shows that one is not dealing merely with matter-of-fact issues, but with doctrinally internalized taboos.

After reading this critical review of the Ausch­witz garrison and headquarters orders, and what Frei and his colleagues have made of them, the reader will understand when I judge these court historians as follows:

“We know this from the orthodox Holocaust liars: their interpretation of the documents is based on a highly selective reading. They merely read what they want to read out of it. They pick out some details, distort their meaning and then try to generalize this.”

—Prof. Dr. Norbert Frei, paraphrased

* * *

The present work on the garrison and headquarters orders of Ausch­witz is based on an initial overview compiled by an industrious German, which was posted under the title Kommandanturbefehle – eine Betrachtung (Head­quarters Orders – A Reflection) online in 2018 as a PDF file for downloading free of charge. The author chose the pen name “Ernst Böhm.“ His work has been greatly expanded, corrected and revised here. Out of gratitude for his preparatory work, I include him as co-author of this book. I am not revealing his real name here, because we all know that, as long as the current repressive regime in Berlin prevails, everyone in Germany must fear for their existence, including, be it noted, Dr. Frei himself, if they venture out to find the truth in this area of research. Anyone who helps to open the eyes of any reader by virtue of such work may protect themselves and their families from unlawful persecution when nevertheless publishing what they have found out.

I prefer such individuals many times over the kind of “patriots” who boast of their patriotism in public, but who give this taboo topic a wide berth. For Germany, the Holocaust is the Mother of all Taboos, paralyzing much of its society’s ability to address and resolve existential threats. Any German who does not deal with this taboo betrays the rights and the survival of the German people. These “patriots” gesticulate a little with blank cartridges and hope to escape the system bullies’ condemnation and persecution. Their own prosperity and a comfortable career are evidently more important to them than a secure future for their descendants.

Any government in Germany, no matter what color or flag it reigns under, can only be a constitutional government and a German government if it unconditionally and without limits allows discussion of all topics of the German past without any taboos. Because only this freedom enables us to find out the truth and make it known.

Keep your eyes open, because only the truth will set us free!

Germar Rudolf
March 31, 2020

Endnotes