Just Call Me Meyer – A Farewell to “Obviousness”

Holocaust-related current events in Germany provide an occasion for cautious optimism. Two articles by a leading journalist for Der Spiegel, Fritjof Meyer, the first of which appeared in May 2002 and the second in November 2003, may have unforeseen consequences for the Auschwitz “gas chamber myth,” although only an extremely small minority of the German general public appear even aware of them. The two articles are the result of the immense pressure exerted upon the keepers of the Holocaust “Holy Grail” by the revisionists and their research findings, although unnoticed by the general public.

The first article appeared in the May 2002 issue of Osteuropa magazine under the title “The Number of Victims of Auschwitz: New Findings in the Light of Newly-Discovered Documents,” in which the official version of events at Auschwitz was revised in regards to two central points.[1] First, Meyer estimated the total number of camp victims at 510,000 (including 356,000 “gassing” victims). This is less than half the 1.1 million victims alleged by Franciszek Piper, Historical Research Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum,[2] and 120,000 lower than that estimated by Jean-Claude Pressac in his book The Crematoria of Auschwitz, published in 1994, i.e., at least 630,000 deaths.[3]

Meyer's basis of computation was exceptionally eccentric: he began with the maximum capacity of the crematoria, and simultaneously assumed that the crematoria were operated at full capacity, at all times, for as long as they remained in operation. A similar argument, somewhat more banal, might run as follows: Mr. Meyer's automobile has a top speed of 200 km an hour. Mr. Meyer drives 200 km per hour from the moment he puts the key in the ignition until the time he stops, even on winding forest roads at night or in the midst of city traffic jams. These – and other – nonsensical features of Meyer's method of calculation have been remarked upon by Carlo Mattogno.[4] This does not, of course, alter the fact that Meyer's estimate – which is still more than triple the actual figure of 136,000 deaths at Auschwitz according to the documents[5] – is by far the lowest total ever served up so far by any representative of the official dogma of the “Extermination of the Jews” in “Gas Chambers.”

Meyer's second revision was even more important in terms of consequences. Meyer concluded that the Birkenau crematoria were only used for “test gassings,” which supposedly failed, due, among other things, to the insufficient ventilation. The mass gassings, therefore, took place “largely” – in plain English, almost exclusively – in the two Birkenau farmhouses usually referred to, in the relevant literature, as the “Red House” and the “White House,” or combined as the “Bunkers of Birkenau.”[6] This argument turns the whole traditional version of history upside down. In The Case for Auschwitz, Robert Jan van Pelt, who has for several years now been the best-known defender of the official version of events at Auschwitz, writes as follows in relation to the (alleged) gas chamber in Crematorium II at Birkenau:[7]

Let us not detain ourselves for the moment with the question of the psychological makeup of anyone who would make such a warped comparison; let us content ourselves with noting that, according to the leading representative of the official Auschwitz story, approximately one half million people were killed in the “gas chamber” of Auschwitz II. But since mass murders are supposed to have occurred on a mass-production basis in the Crematoria of I, III, IV and V as well, this means that the overwhelming majority of the victims must have been gassed in the five crematoria – and not in the farmhouses.

The German mass media hardly reacted to the Meyer articles: Die Welt raised a howl of indignation on August 28, 2002, followed by two columns in the nationalist Nationalzeitung, published by Dr. Gerhard Frey, which praised Meyer's findings as “the truth,” thus expressly recognizing the alleged “homicidal gassings” as an historical reality. Apart from this, the discomfiting articles were met with awkward silence – a silence only too understandable. According to prevailing legal custom in Germany, Meyer should have been hauled into court for his articles, along with the entire editorial staff of Osteuropa – which is published under the patronage of former President of the German Parliament Rita Süßmuth – for permitting Meyer to publish his arguments, thereby committing the crime of “aiding and abetting.”

In all trials of revisionists, the German legal authorities regularly assume that the homicidal mass gassings in the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau are an “obvious fact requiring no further proof.” All motions by the defense to introduce evidence to the contrary in such trials are accordingly rejected based on the doctrine of “obviousness.” Germar Rudolf, for example, was sentenced to 14 months 'hard time' by a Stuttgart court in 1995 for his now-famous expert report, published in 1993, in which he came to the conclusion – on architectural grounds and, in the case of Crematorium II, on chemical grounds as well – that no homicidal “mass gassings” ever occurred in the Crematoria.[8] The conclusions of his expert report were brushed off as “Holocaust denial” by the court and consequently declared to be punishable as “Volksverhetzung,” i.e., incitement of the masses. Rudolf's report did not discuss the question of the number of victims and did not expressly dispute the possibility of occasional gassings in the farmhouses (after all, buildings that no longer exist, and for which no structural diagrams can be found, can hardly be examined architecturally or chemically).

It was truly a masterstroke on the part of Horst Mahler and his comrades in arms to serve a criminal writ on Fritjof Meyer for distributing his article. Since the Federal German establishment needs a political trial of a leading Spiegel journalist and Rita Süßmuth's Osteuropa about as much as it needs a hole in the head, the legal authorities had no choice but to reject all criminal proceedings. In so doing, they acknowledged that reducing the number of Auschwitz victims to less than half of today's official number – particularly by disputing the mass gassings in the crematoria – is no longer equivalent to “Holocaust denial” and “incitement of the masses.” The result is a fundamental change in the legal position.

A logical consequence is that Rudolf's conviction should be set aside as well as all other guilty verdicts based on reference to the “doctrine of obviousness” by prosecutors and judges in similar trials. As Horst Mahler correctly points out, future revisionist trials will turn into a boomerang for the Federal German legal system. Any judge who sentences a defendant on grounds of “obviousness” will be aware that he is committing a flagrant breach of law and will be barred from any claim to mitigating circumstances, if he is ever brought to justice for his actions.

When Franciszek Piper, head of the Historical Research Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, attacked Meyer for his article in November 2003, Meyer answered shortly afterwards with a Reply to Piper. Both articles, as well as Meyer's Osteuropa article, which sparked the controversy in the first place, were published for the first time on the website of the German watchdog organization IDGR (Informationsdienst gegen Rechtsextremismus, Information Service Against Right-Wing Extremism) – thereby doing something useful for the first time in its existence by making the articles available for study.[9]

I shall refrain from discussing the crude tricks, by means of which the High Priest of the Lie Temple in Upper Silesia defended his allegation of 1.1 million deaths at Auschwitz, since Carlo Mattogno discusses this matter in the following article with the characteristic precision. Instead, I merely wish to mention the new and truly astonishing concessions made by Meyer to the revisionists in his reply. That this was not performed without numerous genuflections to the idols of political correctness must be excused in view of the prevalent climate of political terror in Germany: if he had failed to phrase the tale of his “re-education” at least partly in Newspeak, no one would have published it. It is, of course, irritating that Meyer makes unnecessary concessions to the political orthodoxy, for example, by dismissing Carlo Mattogno – upon whose writing he relies as strongly in his reply as he did in his original articles – simply as an “Italian Holocaust Denier” and by even conjuring up the “Himmler order to stop the extermination of the Jews,” which has been haunting Holocaust literature for decades:

Meyer quite naturally neglects to quote any text of this phantasmagorical “document”!

Let us now cite just a few of the most informative concessions made by Meyer to the revisionists.

This sentence, which appears at the immediate beginning of the article, seems quite orthodox at first glance; but, in fact – in the jargon of the “re-educators” – it represents a very subtle form of “trivialization.” If the “gassing” of 360,000 people at Auschwitz really is, as alleged by Meyer, “without parallel in terms of scope,” the inescapable conclusion is that far fewer people than 365,000 must have been killed in all the other so-called “extermination camps,” i.e., that the official death toll for Treblinka (750,000 to 870,000) and Belzec (600,000) are grossly exaggerated, and that re-examination is urgently needed in regard to these camps as well.

“Just call me Meyer!”

Meyer says that the Soviets did not allow any foreign expert reports after the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp – “the way the Nazis did at Katyn.” No wonder! The German forensic experts at Katyn were in a position to produce the corpus delicti, the corpses of over 4,000 of Polish officers shot by the Bolsheviks, while the Soviets were unable to produce any tangible, i.e., material or documentary proof of the alleged mass extermination. Of course, they could have produced proof of the death of about 150,000 inmates, mostly from disease, but that would have been insufficient for their intended purpose.

Piper's ridiculous lie, according to which the documentation was “destroyed” by the camp administration prior to the liberation of Auschwitz, is countered by Meyer with plain facts:

With that Meyer is saying approximately the same thing as Gaston Armand Amaudruz, an 81-year old Swiss revisionist who was, in contrast to Meyer, sentenced to three months' imprisonment early in 2003 for “denying” the Six Million figure (after having been sentenced to one year by a lower court).

Well, why not? Didn't the many thousands of inmates who remained behind to greet the Russians consider the “extermination” important enough to tell their “liberators” about it?

Once again, in connection with the Soviet Commission report, Meyer writes that, after the liberation of Auschwitz:

Why didn't the Commission Report contain any mention of the alleged mass murder of Hungarian Jews? To ask the question is to answer it.

What a shame that the leading journalist of Germany's most famous news magazine couldn't publish this in his own news magazine…

Meyer defines a “gassing witness” as a person having witnessed both the entry of the victims into the gas chambers, the pouring of Zyklon B granules through the roof, and finally the removal of the bodies, “all in one uniform procedure.” Any revisionist could easily accept such a definition. According to this criterion, in Meyer's opinion, there are a total of six (!) “eyewitnesses” to the gassings in the crematoria: [Hendryk] Tauber, during the “experimental phase” (???), the “questionable observers” R. Höß, C.S. Bendel, M. Nyiszli, and F. Müller, and then “possibly” D. Paisikovic. In other words, there is not even one really reliable witness, and the 500,000 corpses “produced” by the Germans in Morgue 1 of Crematory II alone, according to van Pelt, are a product of imagination. The compelling factors behind this huge concession are only too clear: these concessions are due to the technical and chemical arguments of the revisionists, men whom Meyer dare not even acknowledge for fear of violating the principles of “political correctness.”

Anyone wishing to salvage what remains of the “gassing” yarn has no choice but to seek shelter in the farmhouses at Birkenau; after all, no Fred Leuchter – and no Germar Rudolf – is ever going to come along and take masonry samples from walls that no longer exist and have them analyzed for ferric-ferrocyanide content; nor will it be possible to obtain information about the location of any possible “Zyklon B introduction holes” in non-existent buildings. This is precisely the escape route taken by Meyer, who then adds:

We would be very happy to publish it, Mr. Meyer, very happy indeed! We are quite pleased with your articles so far; and if your “examination” is almost ready, we will be pleased to compare it to Carlo Mattogno's analysis of the “bunkers,” to be available in English around the end of 2004.[6]

Just why the “bunker eyewitnesses” should be any more credible than the washed-out “crematoria eyewitnesses,” is very difficult to imagine, all the more so since, in many cases, these are precisely the same people! For example, if the French-Jewish Auschwitz inmate André Lettich claims that six corpses were burnt simultaneously in each of the muffles of the crematoria, Meyer will, quite correctly, denounce this claim as a lie – but is Lettich rendered any more credible by the technically no less absurd claim that, after the gassings in the farmhouses, the doors were opened and the corpses removed after only 20-25 minutes ventilation time, even though the hydrocyanic acid content of Zyklon takes approximately two hours to evaporate from the granular carrier base, rendering any successful ventilation prior to the expiration of a two-hour time period absolutely inconceivable?

Does Meyer intend to “prove” the murders in the farmhouses by reference to claims made by Lettich? Or how about the “testimony” of Richard Böck, who claimed he saw a “cloud of blue vapor” hovering over the bodies, although hydrocyanic acid is an absolutely colorless liquid, which evaporates as an invisible gas? And how about the “testimony” of the Milton Buki “eyewitness report,” which claims that the bodies of the gassing victims exhibited “blue spots,” even though the bodies of persons killed by the inhalation of cyanide gas are not blue, but red? And what about the crack-brained claims of Maurice Moshe Garbarz, according to whom a Birkenau grave-digging commando dug a swimming pool (mass grave) of 1,500 to 2,700 m³ in one night?[10] Mr. Meyer, following the principle of “quantity before quality,” lists no fewer than 41 (!) “eyewitnesses” to the “farm houses of horror.” That's a lot more than Hilberg and Pressac can come up with for all the alleged gassing installations in Auschwitz put together, so that these 41 “eyewitnesses” must include a great many the significance of whom has escaped even the most diligent of “Holocaust” researchers. Meyer, in a hopeful gesture, quotes as many extracts from the reports as he possibly can, which are at least good for a laugh.

What is absurd about all this is that, if one accepts the structure of Meyer's argumentation, there is no longer any logical necessity to postulate any gassings at all. This is most evident from the case of the Hungarian Jews, 41,000 of whom, according to Meyer, are supposed to have been gassed (i.e., less than one quarter of the figure of 180,000 given by Raul Hilberg in his standard work[11]). Of the deported Hungarian Jews, according to a report Eberhard von Thaddens, only one third were able to work.[12] A total of 438,000 deported persons, therefore, implies a total of 292,000 (one third) who were “unfit.” Deducting the 41,000 “gassing victims” from the 292,000 persons unable to work, according to Meyer, still leaves 251,000 un-gassed Hungarian Jews who were still unable to work! These persons evidently a) never arrived at Auschwitz at all; or b) were transferred from Auschwitz to other locations; or c) died of natural causes at Auschwitz; or d) were liberated by the Red Army at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, in which case the overwhelming majority must have belonged to categories a) and b). Why would the Germans murder 41,000 Hungarian Jews who were unable to work, if they were going to leave six times that many alive, while simultaneously providing medical care for thousands of diseased Hungarian Jews in Birkenau?[13]Why can't we simply assume that these 41,000 were also transferred someplace else?

I regard it as highly improbable that a man like Fritjof Meyer, a highly intelligent man who is well-versed on the subject of the “Holocaust,” should fail to grasp this. I therefore prefer to advance a hypothesis of my own as to the motivation behind the publication of Meyer's articles. One should normally refrain from speculating as to a writer's motivation, since factual matters are the only ones that really count, but in the present case a deviation from this rule appears to be justifiable.

The principal beneficiaries of the “Holocaust Lie” in general and the “Auschwitz Lie” in particular are the State of Israel, international Zionism, and the leadership cadres of the Federal Republic of Germany. The more intelligent of these lie-profiteers know that, long-term, the orthodox version of the history of the Jews under the Third Reich cannot be salvaged, and they are now attempting to jettison the ballast. To accomplish this aim, they are hedging their bets – backing a man who, as a leading journalist for the best-known news magazine in Germany, possesses considerable prestige – in addition to a certain amount of courage – and is familiar with the topic of Auschwitz, including revisionist argumentation. If this hypothesis is correct, then the media are about to be fine-tuned to accept a “new, improved,” more moderate version of the “Holocaust” – a sort of “Holocaust-Lite.” As of January 27, 2004, nonetheless, everybody was still talking about “one and a half million” victims at Auschwitz, a number, which, even according to Franciszek Piper, is 200,000 higher than the sum total of all inmates ever even sent to Auschwitz.

That Fritjof Meyer should be selected to dish up a semi-revisionist position in this connection could, of course, be explained in some other way. In particular, in closing his reply to Piper, Meyer hints that he had relatives of his own who died at Auschwitz. Since we do not wish to imply that Meyer's relatives were imprisoned as criminals, “asocials,” or homosexuals, the only alternative is that they were imprisoned on political – i.e., as Jehovah's Witnesses or enemies of National Socialism – or racial grounds.

If the latter hypothesis is correct, this would mean that Fritjof Meyer, despite his purely German first name, is part-Jewish. If the Holocaust bubble ever bursts – for example, if the Russian government, goaded beyond endurance by American encirclement policies, allows the whole swindle to collapse – then perhaps the plan is, that the truth – or semi-truth – should, if it cannot be avoided, be discovered, at long last, by a wonderful “Jewish researcher” named Fritjof Meyer, who is then unfortunately prohibited – by German narrow-mindedness alone, mind you – from publishing his findings for the benefit of the general public. The future will reveal whether this hypothesis is correct. But one thing is clear: without protection from the top, Meyer could never have published his articles at all. Forthcoming developments are awaited with great interest.

Notes