The Number of Victims of Auschwitz

For the German original article, click here.

In 1945 the Soviet investigative committee counted four million victims of the National Socialist labor and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau – a product of war propaganda. The commandant of the camp, Höß, spoke of three million victims under pressure and withdrew his statement. How many people indeed fell victim to this unique mass murder could only be estimated up until now. The first Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger reckoned one million, the latest research estimates several hundred thousand less. Two new documents on the capacity of the crematoria now confirm the extant documents on the internments into the camp. With this, the dimensions of this break with civilization at last move into the realm of the imaginable and thus only now become a convincing portent for future generations.

A key document which gives information about the capacity of the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau has now been found. Simultaneously to the length of time for which these were in use, a statement by Rudolf Höß has come to light. In connection with the extant documents, which have to a large extent been ignored, concerning themselves with those who were interned into this camp, it is now possible to calculate more accurately how many people were murdered in Auschwitz. To indicate it in advance: Half a million fell victim to the genocide.

This breakthrough was made possible by Robert-Jan van Pelt, Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He distinguished himself with his outstanding book “Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present”[1] which he co-wrote with Debórah Dwork. In David Irving’s London court case against Deborah Lipstadt, who had classified him as an Auschwitz denier, van Pelt appeared as an expert for the defendant. Just recently, van Pelt has published a very important book on the hearing and the preparations for his expert’s report (including excerpts from the report)[2]. Irving lost {632} the case, and deservedly so, since the author Irving, who has proven himself to be a successful researcher and who has associated himself with the increasingly weird opinions of his NS conversational friends, also insisted on the silly view-point in front of the court that there were no gas chambers for the purpose of killing humans in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The arguments which he put forward for the unsuitability of the mortuary I of the crematoria I and II were not able to convince. Justice Charles Gray concluded that “no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious doubt that they were operated an a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews”.

On the whole, that was a fair judgement. We cannot enter into the details here that the extant written evidence, namely documents about a refit of buildings which were originally not designed for such a purpose into “gas cellars” (e.g. chutes for throwing the gas in and gas TCU), as well as the relevant eye witness statements, rather points towards attempts in March/April 1943 to use the mortuaries for the mass murders, after the crematoria were completed in the early summer of 1943. This obviously failed, because the ventilation was counter-productive,[3] and because the expected mass of victims did not arrive in the following eleven months.[4] The actually perpetrated genocide probably took place mainly in the two converted farm houses outside the camp; the foundations of the first house, the “White House”, or “Bunker I”, have only recently been unearthed.[5]

It was possible to drive over 400 people into the two rooms of this gas chamber which together had an area of 90 square meters, and from early 1942 this took place daily, generally in the evenings.[6] The “Red House”, or “Bunker II”, which has an area of 105 square meters for a maximum of 500 victims,[7] was probably operated from December 1942 up until the termination of the murders with gas on 02 November 1944. The Internment {633} Camp Commander (Schutzhaftlagerführer) SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Aumeier testified on 29.10.1945:[8] “In November 1942, 50-80 prisoners were top secretly killed with gas in the mortuary of the crematorium of the main camp. The next day, Höß revealed to him, the head of the Camp Gestapo-Chief Grabner, the Camp Commanding Officer (Lagerführer) Hößler, the Labour Commander (Arbeitseinsatzführer) Schwarz, and the camp physician, under absolute secrecy that he had received orders from Himmler through the RSHA “to gas” all Jewish prisoners who are weak, ill or unfit for work, in order to prevent the further spread of epidemics. Höß reported that he had executed the first exterminations the previous night and that it had become apparent that the improvised gas chambers did not at all meet the requirements. For this reason, gas chambers are to be built as permanent accessories with the construction of the new crematoria of Birkenau. The whole affair is a secret matter of the Reich; indiscretions or careless chatter will be punished with death, which all present, including the military personnel who had been consulted had to confirm in writing.

As far as the capacity is concerned, 350 000 people could have been gassed alone in the “Red House”, or “Bunker II”, within two years. Of course Irving, and thus also van Pelt, only examined the cellars of the crematoria, even though the rate of murder sank dramatically with their being brought into service, for the period of one year due to an order by Himmler, who terminated the supposed euthanasia action “14 f 13” and with this, also the gas murders in the extermination camps along the German-Soviet demarcation line of 1939: Belzec, Sobibôr and Treblinka.[9]

At the hearing in London on 25 January 2000, the plaintiff greeted the expert witness with a compliment to his book over the history of Auschwitz: “It is one of the few books that I have read from cover to cover and it was a book that I found very difficult to put down.” The two then immersed themselves in the question whether the openings for throwing the Zyklon B in, which were later forced into the ceiling of the mortuary during its conversion, were still visible or not (they are, which van Pelt did not yet know at that time).

The second decisive point of contention was the question whether the key document is a forgery: the writing of the SS building site manager Bischoff from 2 June 1943 to the WVHA in Berlin, in which he reports the completion of all four crematoria in Birkenau, of the {634} two big crematoria I and II with 15 muffles (chambers for incinerating a corpse) each as well as the two smaller crematoria III and IV (which are only above ground) in Birkenau with 8 muffles each.[10] In this letter Bischoff assiduously establishes an incinerating performance (which was not at all substantiated through reality) of the crematoria I and II of 1440 people each, and of the crematoria III and IV of 768 people each in an operating time of 24 hours; in total (inclusive of the old crematorium in the main camp of Auschwitz, which was, however, out of service) 4756 corpses daily. Irving was not at all able to substantiate the doubts concerning the authenticity of the document which in this case are indeed permissible; van Pelt’s objection was more serious, although it was also not necessarily convincing: The French expert Jean-Claude Pressac had already called this writing “an internal propaganda lie” of the SS seven years previously.[11]

In his report on the trial, van Pelt has now included two pieces of information which are truly sensational: In connection with material that is available, but has so far been hardly observed, these two sources now permit us to calculate the total number of victims of Auschwitz fairly accurately. Van Pelt has almost hidden these two pieces of evidence in his 570 page book, and has hardly evaluated them, and also did not include them in the trial. They contradict his expert’s report without, however, confirming Irving. At first, van Pelt quotes a document (for which there is to my knowledge no evidence in the literature) which questions the writing by Bischoff from 28 June 1943, by halving Bischoff’s numbers.[12]

According to this, a letter from the chief engineer of the site in Auschwitz, Kurt Prüfer has been found in the archive of the crematoria firm Topf & Söhne (now: Erfurter Malzerei und Speicherbau), folder 241, which is dated 8 September 1943, i.e. nine weeks after Bischoff’s writing and after completion of the crematoria, therefore due to the first operating results. According to Prüfer, each of the two crematoria I and II incinerated 800 corpses per day, and each of the smaller crematoria III and IV cremated 400 bodies, in total 2400.

The incineration time was one and a half hours[13] in a muffle which had been designed for the dignified cremation of a corpse for the sole purpose of obtaining its ash. In a hypothetical operation time of 24 hours, 16 could have been incinerated in each muffle, therefore 240 in the 15 muffles of a large crematorium. If Prüfer claimed 800, then he probably assumed that under concentration camp conditions, a muffle can be filled with at least two corpses, and he rounded the capacity of 720 or rather 384 bodies up. In fact, up to three of the usually extremely emaciated victims (with a possible technological slowing down of 30 minutes each) {635} were put into a muffle.[14] Thus 720 corpses could be cremated in I and II each within 24 hours, together 1440, and in III/IV 384 each (Prüfer: 400), together 768. It is precisely these figures which had been given for one crematorium each in the writing of the SS building site manager Bischoff from 28 June 1943, and which had thus been doubled. According to Prüfer’s report, however, 2400 bodies could in total be cremated each day in all four crematoria; according to the calculation above 2208.

Of course the crematoria were not in service permanently, but often broke down. The crematorium I which had been taken into service on 15 March 1943 was already damaged after nine days, and the repair work only “neared completion” on 18 July.[15] The repair of 20 oven doors of the two big crematoria was ordered on 3 April 1944 and completed only on 17 October.[16] The chimney of crematorium III, which had been in working order since 22 March, already showed cracks on 3 April and was unusable by mid May.[17] After the war, the commandant of the camp, Rudolf Höß, reported: “After a short while, III totally broke down and was later not at all used. IV [taken into service on 4 April 1943, F. M.] had to be shut down repeatedly as the chimneys or ovens were burnt out after a short time in service of four to six weeks”; this gives a working time of 509 days for I, 462 days for II, only 50 days for III and 309 days for IV,[18] thus 971 days in 15 muffles and 359 days in 8 muffles.[19]

Van Pelt now delivers the second surprising information with a statement by Höß during the cross-examination before the Cracow court in 1947: “After eight or ten hours of operation the crematoria were unfit {636} for further use. It was impossible to operate them continuously.”[20] With the average value of this detail, i.e. nine hours daily operating time, we get per muffle with three bodies 18 cremations daily, in I/II thus 270, together 540; in III/IV 144 each, together 288, therefore 828 in total per day. The conclusion is simple: during the 971 days of operation 262 170 bodies in total were able to be cremated in I/II; in III/IV in 359 days 51 696, together 313 866 dead who were cremated in the crematoria of Birkenau. This is not yet all who lost their lives in Auschwitz. According to Höß, 107 000 corpses out of the mass graves were incinerated on pyres up until the end of November 1942.[21] Pressac disputes this figure; he counts 50 000.[22] Since it has so far not been established and not even been recognized as a problem, where the victims of the specially excessive gas murder of the winter of 1942/43 remained up until the crematoria were brought into service, it can be assumed with absolute justification that 57 000 of the 100 000 victims who arrived at Auschwitz between December 1942 and March 1943 without being registered, were burnt outdoors, and that Höß included them in the details he gave.

Without the victims of the Hungary-action (who were incinerated on pyres), but in addition of the estimated 12 000 who were cremated[23] in the old crematorium of the main camp, roughly 433 000 corpses were cremated in total in Auschwitz. This figure corresponds almost exactly to the sum that is obtained from the internments into the camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, minus those handed over to other camps – a grave confirmation.

According to the calendar by Danuta Czech,[24] 735 000 people were brought to the scene of the crime (without the transports from Hungary,[25] which she does not count). Of these, 15 000 {637} were Soviet prisoners of war;[26] of the remaining 720 000, 346 000 were registered according to Czech, i.e. taken into the camp, and 374 000 were not registered. Czech assumed the death of these unregistered prisoners in the gas chamber, even though there is no documentary evidence for this;[27] there were also prisoners without registration numbers living in the camp.[28] Since the total number of registered prisoners was 405 000,[29] 59 000 of the 374 000 who were not at first registered must have been registered later, so that 315 000 were left without a registration number. 225 000 of the 720 000 were handed over to other camps[30] – Czech has only noted a tenth of these. When the camp was dissolved, 58 000 were evacuated and 8500 were left behind,[31] so that 428 500 remain, a figure which, added to the prisoners of war, comports with the 433 000 dead estimated in part from the capacity of the crematoria: They were murdered.[32]

{638}

Assuming all 315 000 unregistered prisoners were killed in the gas as “unproductive persons” (where the number of those who died due to other reasons has to be offset against those in the camp who were registered and selected for death in the gas chamber), then it is shown that the two farming houses which were converted to gas chambers would have sufficed. Other instruments of murder only needed to be found once the transports from Hungary arrived in the early summer of 1944, such as crematorium III which had been put out of use, or the gas vans which had already been used by the Einsatzgruppen on the Soviet territory and in the death center Chelmo in the Wartheland by Gauleiter Greiser, with Himmler’s and most certainly also Hitler’s permission.[33]

The fate of those deported from Hungary in 1944 requires an own investigation. If we consider only the information of Danuta Czech, then 60 trains reached Birkenau between mid May and the beginning of July.[34] Each transport comprised of 3000 persons, so that accordingly 180 000 would have arrived of which, according to Czech, 29 210 received a registration number. 110 000 were handed over to other camps;[35] according to Czech probably 40 564 people were killed in the gas alone in the month of October 1944.[36]

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These considerations here lead to the conclusion, that roughly half a million people were murdered in Auschwitz, of which approximately 356 000 in the gas.[37]

The discussion concerning the number of victims of Auschwitz had many repercussions over the last years, and have until now not led to any result. Thus the research curator of the APMO, Waclaw Dlugoborski stated in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in September 1998 concerning the number of victims:

Shortly after the end of the war, the figure was determined by a Soviet investigating committee as four million, without any further research. Even though there were doubts about the accuracy of the estimates from the very beginning, it became a dogma. Up until 1989 it was prohibited in Eastern Europe to question the figure of the four million killed; at the memorial site of Auschwitz, employees who doubted the correctness of the estimates were threatened with disciplinary measures.[38]

In Nuremberg, the Soviet prosecutor Smirnov presented the four million figure on 19 February 1946.[39] Shortly afterwards, on 11 March 1946, Höß, who had previously been convicted in 1924 for murder by the National Court of Justice, was arrested. He admitted to the accusation of being responsible for the death of approximately two million people.[40] The first interrogation took place after three days of sleep withdrawal,[41] torture, beaten after each answer, naked and partially forcibly inebriated,[42] and presented “compelling proof”. Höß himself states: I don’t know what it says in the protocol, even though I signed it. But alcohol and the whip were too much for me as well.”[43] At 2.30 a.m. he wrote the following sentences with much effort:

{640}

In Auschwitz itself, cca [sic] 3 000 000 people lost their lives, according to my estimate. I assume this [sic] roughly 2 500 000 of these were gassed.[44]

If the results of this study are correct, then Höß’s information should truthfully have been: Far more than 300 000 people were gassed and in total, 500 000 lost their lives. With two additional zeroes and a 2, his contrary figure approaches the figure given in the Soviet protocol.

During the interrogation on 1/2 April 1946 Höß first mentioned 1.1 million killed, then again 2.5 million.[45] Under threat of being handed over to Poland and being executed,[46] Höß stuck to this figure in front of the Nuremberg military tribunal: three million victims, of which 2.5 million were “gassed and cremated”,[47] but corrected this figure in front of the American prison psychologist[48] and later in his record in Cracow (“Had the prosecutor’s office not intervened, they would have finished me off”[49]) as “far too high” to 1.13 million who had been sent “to the extermination”, in addition to the “smaller operations”.[50] With this he is approaching the results of this study, with almost 900 000, but is still in detail highly exaggerated – corresponding precisely to his first protocol: He mentioned about 110 000 victims for France – in total 75 721 were interned. According to Höß, 95 000 came from the Netherlands, but it was only 60 026,[51] for Slovakia he estimated approximately 90 000 although only 26 661 Slovakian Jews were sent to Auschwitz.[52] For Greece he reckoned 65 000 though in fact 53 789 were deported.[53] Höß gives 20 000 for Belgium,[54] 400 000 allegedly from Hungary, 250 000 from Poland (according to Piper 300 000[55]) and 100 000 from Germany – excluding Upper Silesia, which Höß or his interrogator Jan Selm counted to Poland, but including Theresienstadt (in total 69 000 according to Piper).

The unreliability of Höß’s million-figures is so serious that Martin Broszat simply omits them at one place in his edition of Höß’s papers.[56] The wording of the missing passages is: “The next country on the list was Rumania. Eichmann expected ca. 4 million Jews from Bukarest according to the information of his representative […].”[57]More than a zero too much: In 1940 only 342 000 Jews lived in Rumania, according to “Enzyklopädie des Holocaust”[58] and the protocol of the Wannsee Conference from 20 January 1942. Höß continues: “Simultaneously, or in the mean time Bulgaria was to follow with an estimated 2 1/2 million Jews.” {641} This figure is 50 times too high: There were only 63 403 Jews in Bulgaria in 1943,[59] according to the Wannsee protocol, it was 48 000.

Already in 1953 Gerald Reitlinger estimated the number of human victims in Auschwitz as one million in total, of which up to 750 000 were murdered in the gas, of which 550 000-600 000 were killed directly on arrival.[60] According to Piper, 1 110 000 people died in the camp, of which 202 000 were registered and 880 000 unregistered, from which 95 000 were registered and 865 000 unregistered Jews.[61] However, Piper’s figure for those interned from Poland, which he gives as 300 000, is probably far too high. The figure of those surviving from Hungary, also remains unclear in his work.

The results of the most recent research are given by Pressac as 631 000 to 711 000 dead in total, of which 470 000 to 550 000 were unregistered Jews who were murdered in the gas.[62] The result of this study, with an estimated 510 000 dead, of which probably 356 000 were murdered in the gas,[63] does not diverge too strongly from the most recent research. These results do not relativize the barbarity, but verify it: a hardened warning against a new break with civilization.

Notes

See also the revisionist responses to this article:

• Germar Rudolf: “Cautious Mainstream Revisionism”, The Revisionist 1(1) (2003), pp. 23-30
• Carlo Mattogno: “Auschwitz. Fritjof Meyer’s New Revisions”, The Revisionist 1(1) (2003), pp. 30-37
• Carlo Mattogno: “On the Piper-Meyer-Controversy: Soviet Propaganda vs. Pseudo-Revisionism”, The Revisionist 2(2) (2004), pp. 131-139