Did Six Million Really
Die?
By Richard E.
Harwood
6
AUSCHWITZ
AND POLISH JEWRY
The concentration camp at Auschwitz near
Cracow in Poland has remained at the centre of the alleged
extermination of millions of Jews. Later we shall see how, when it
was discovered by honest observers in the British and American zones
after the war that no "gas chambers" existed in the German camps such
as Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, attention was shifted to the eastern
camps, particularly Auschwitz. Ovens definitely existed here, it was
claimed. Unfortunately, the eastem camps were in the Russian zone of
occupation, so that no one could verify whether these allegations
were true or not. The Russians refused to allow anyone to see
Auschwitz until about ten years after the war, by which time they
were able to alter its appearance and give some plausibility to the
claim that millions of people had been exterminated there. If anyone
doubts that the Russians are capable of such deception, they should
remember the monuments erected at sites where thousands of people
were murdered in Russia by Stalin's secret police -- but where the
monuments proclaim them to be victims of German troops in World War
Two. The truth about Auschwitz is that it was the largest and most
important industrial concentration camp, producing all kinds of
material for the war industry. The camp consisted of synthetic coal
and rubber plants built by I. G. Farben Industrie, for whom the
prisoners supplied labour. Auschwitz also comprised an agricultural
research station, with laboratories, plant nurseries and facilities
for stock breeding, as well as Krupps armament works. We have already
remarked that this kind of activity was the prime function of the
camps; all major firms had subsidiaries in them and the S.S. even
opened their own factories. Accounts of visits by Himmler to the
camps show that his main purpose was to inspect and assess their
industrial efficiency. When he visited Auschwitz in March 1941
accompanied by high executives of I.G. Farben, he showed no interest
in the problems of the camp as a facility for prisoners, but merely
ordered that the camp be enlarged to take 100,000 detainees to supply
labour for I.G. Farben. This hardly accords with a policy of
exterminating prisoners by the million.
MORE AND MORE MILLIONS
It was nevertheless at this single camp that
about half of the six million Jews were supposed to have been
exterminated, indeed, some writers claim 4 or even 5 million. Four
million was the sensational figure announced by the Soviet Government
after the Communists had "investigated" the camp, at the same time as
they were attempting to blame the Katyn massacre on the Germans.
Reitlinger admits that information regarding Auschwitz and other
eastern camps comes from the post-war Communist regimes of Eastem
Europe: "The evidence concerning the Polish death camps was mainly
taken after the war by Polish State commissions or by the Central
Jewish Historical Commission of Poland" (The Final Solution, p .
631). However, no living, authentic eye-witness of these "gassings"
has ever been produced and validated. Benedikt Kautsky, who spent
seven years in concentration camps, including three in Auschwitz,
alleged in his book Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned, Zurich,
1946) that "not less than 3,500,000 Jews" had been killed there. This
was certainly a remarkable statement, because by his own admission he
had never seen a gas chamber. He confessed: "I was in the big German
concentration camps. However, I must establish the truth that in no
camp at any time did I come across such an installation as a gas
chamber" (p. 272- 3). The only execution he actually witnessed was
when two Polish inmates were executed for killing two Jewish inmates.
Kautsky, who was sent from Buchenwald in October, 1942 to work at
Auschwitz-Buna, stresses in his book that the use of prisoners in war
industry was a major feature of concentration camp policy until the
end of the war. He fails to reconcile this with an alleged policy of
massacring Jews. The exterminations at Auschwitz are alleged to have
occurred between March 1942 and October 1944; the figure of half of
six million, therefore, would mean the extermination and disposal of
about 94,000 people per month for thirty two months - approximately
3,350 people every day, day and night, for over two and a half years.
This kind of thing is so ludicrous that it scarcely needs refuting.
And yet Reitlinger claims quite seriously that Auschwitz could
dispose of no less than 6,000 people a day. Although Reitlinger's
6,O00 a day would mean a total by October 1944 of over 5 million, all
such estimates pale before the wild fantasies of Olga Lengyel in her
book Five Chimneys (London, 1959). Claiming to be a former inmate of
Auschwitz, she asserts that the camp cremated no less than "720 per
hour, or 17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift." She also alleges
that, in addition, 8,000 people were burned every day in the
"death-pits", and that therefore "In round numbers, about 24,000
corpses were handled every day" (p. 80-1). This, of course, would
mean a yearly rate of over 8-1/2 million. Thus between March 1942 and
October 1944 Auschwitz would finally have disposed of over 21 million
people, six million more than the entire world Jewish population.
Comment is superfluous. Although several millions, were supposed to
have died at Auschwitz alone, Reitlinger has to admit that only
363,000 inmates were registered at the camp for the whole of the
period between January 1940 and February 1945 (The S.S. Alibi of a
Nation, p. 268 ff), and by no means all of them were Jews. It is
frequently claimed that many prisoners were never registered, but no
one has offered any proof of this. Even if there were as many
unregistered as there were registered, it would mean only a total of
750,000 prisoners -- hardly enough for the elimination of 3 or 4
million. Moreover, large numbers of the camp population were released
or transported elsewhere during the war, and at the end 80,000 were
evacuated westward in January 1945 before the Russian advance. One
example will suffice of the statistical frauds relating to casualties
at Auschwitz. Shirer claims that in the summer of 1944, no less than
300,000 Hungarian Jews were done to death in a mere forty-six days
(ibid. p. 1156). This would have been almost the entire Hungarian
Jewish population, which numbered some 380,000. But according to the
Central Statistical Office of Budapest, there were 260,000 Jews in
Hungary in 1945 (which roughly conforms with the Joint Distribution
Committee figure of 220,000), so that only 120,000 were classed as no
longer resident. Of these, 35,000 were emigrants from the new
Communist regime, and a further 25,000 were still being held in
Russia after having worked in German labour battalions there. This
leaves only 60,000 Hungarian Jews unaccounted for, but M. E. Namenyi
estimates that 60,000 Jews retumed to Hungary from deportation in
Germany, though Reitlinger says this figure is too high (The Final
Solution, p. 497). Possibly it is, but bearing in mind the
substantial emigration of Hungarian Jews during the war (cf Report of
the ICRC, Vol. I, p. 649), the number of Hungarian Jewish casualties
must have been very low indeed.
AUSCHWITZ: AN EYE-WITNESS
ACCOUNT
Some new facts about Auschwitz are at last
beginning to make a tentative appearance. They are contained in a
recent work called Die Auschwitz-Lüge: Ein Erlebnisbericht von
Theis Christopherson (The Auschwitz Legends: An Account of his
Experiences by Thies Christopherson, Kritik Verlag/Mohrkirch, 1973).
Published by the German lawyer Dr. Manfred Roeder in the periodical
Deutsche Bürger-Iniative, it is an eye-witness account of
Auschwitz by Thies Christopherson, who was sent to the Bunawerk plant
laboratories at Auschwitz to research into the production of
synthetic rubber for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. In May 1973, not
long after the appearance of this account, the veteran Jewish
"Nazi-hunter" Simon Wiesenthal wrote to the Frankfurt Chamber of
Lawyers, demanding that the publisher and author of the Forward, Dr.
Roeder, a member of the Chamber, should be brought before its
disciplinary commission. Sure enough, proceedings began in July, but
not without harsh criticism even from the Press, who asked "Is Simon
Wiesenthal the new Gauleiter of Germany?" (Deutsche Wochenzeitung,
July 27th, 1973). Christopherson's account is certainly one of the
most important documents for a re-appraisal of Auschwitz. He spent
the whole of 1944 there, during which time he visited all of the
separate camps comprising the large Auschwitz complex, including
Auschwitz-Birkenau where it is alleged that wholesale massacres of
Jews took place. Christopherson, however, is in no doubt that this is
totally untrue. He writes: "I was in Auschwitz from January 1944
until December 1944. After the war I heard about the mass murders
which were supposedly perpetrated by the S.S. against the Jewish
prisoners, and I was perfectly astonished. Despite all the evidence
of witnesses, all the newspaper reports and radio broadcasts I still
do not believe today in these horrible deeds. I have said this many
times and in many places, but to no purpose. One is never believed"
(p. 16). Space forbids a detailed summary here of the author's
experiences at Auschwitz, which include facts about camp routine and
the daily life of prisoners totally at variance with the allegations
of propaganda (pp. 22-7). More important are his revelations about
the supposed existence of an extermination camp. "During the whole of
my time at Auschwitz, l never observed the slightest evidence of mass
gassings. Moreover, the odour of burning flesh that is often said to
have hung over the camp is a downright falsehood. In the vicinity of
the main camp (Auschwitz I) was a large farrier's works, from which
the smell of molten iron was naturally not pleasant" (p. 33-4).
Reitlinger confirms that there were five blast furnaces and five
collieries at Auschwitz, which together with the Bunawerk factories
comprised Auschwitz III (ibid. p. 452). The author agrees that a
crematorium would certainly have existed at Auschwitz, "since 200,000
people lived there, and in every city with 200,000 inhabitants there
would be a crematorium. Naturally people died there - but not only
prisoners. In fact the wife of Obersturmbannführer A.
(Christopherson's superior) also died there" (p. 33). The author
explains: "There were no secrets at Auschwitz. In September 1944 a
commission of the International Red Cross came to the camp for an
inspection. They were particularly interested in the camp at
Birkenau, though we also had many inspections at Raisko" (Bunawerk
section, p. 35). Christopherson points out that the constant visits
to Auschwitz by outsiders cannot be reconciled with allegations of
mass extermination. When describing the visit of his wife to the camp
in May, he observes: "The fact that it was possible to receive visits
from our relatives at any time demonstrates the openness of the camp
administration. Had Auschwitz been a great extermination camp, we
would certainly not have been able to receive such visits" (p. 27).
After the war, Christopherson came to hear of the alleged existence
of a building with gigantic chimneys in the vicinity of the main
camp. "This was supposed to be the crematorium. However, I must
record the fact that when I left the camp at Auschwitz in December
1944, I had not seen this building there" (p. 37). Does this
mysterious building exist today? Apparently not; Reitlinger claims it
was demolished and "completely burnt out in full view of the camp" in
October, though Christopherson never saw this public demolition.
Although it is said to have taken place "in full view of the camp",
it was allegedly seen by only one Jewish witness, a certain Dr.
Bendel, and his is the only testimony to the occurrence (Reitlinger,
ibid, p. 457). This situation is generally typical. When it comes
down to hard evidence, it is strangely elusive; the building was
"demolished", the document is "lost", the order was "verbal". At
Auschwitz today, visitors are shown a small furnace and here they are
told that millions of people were exterminated. The Soviet State
Commission which "investigated" the camp announced on May 12th, 1945,
that "Using rectified coefficients . . . the technical expert
commission has ascertained that during the time that the Auschwitz
camp existed, the German butchers exterminated in this camp not less
than four million citizens . . ." Reitlinger's surprisingly frank
comment on this is perfectly adequate: "The world has grown
mistrustful of 'rectified coefficients' and the figure of four
millions has become ridiculous" (ibid, p. 460). Finally, the account
of Mr. Christopherson draws attention to a very curious circumstance.
The only defendant who did not appear at the Frankfurt Auschwitz
Trial in 1963 was Richard Baer, the successor of Rudolf Hoess as
commandant of Auschwitz. Though in perfect health, he died suddenly
in prison before the trial had begun, "in a highly mysterious way"
according to the newspaper; Deutsche Wochenzeitung (July 27th, 1973).
Baer's sudden demise before giving evidence is especially strange,
since the Paris newspaper Rivarol recorded his insistence that
"during the whole time in which he governed Auschwitz, he never saw
any gas chambers nor believed that such things existed," and from
this statement nothing would dissuade him. In short, the
Christopherson account adds to a mounting collection of evidence
demonstrating that the giant industrial complex of Auschwitz
(comprising thirty separate installations and divided by the main
Vienna-Cracow railway line) was nothing but a vast war production
centre, which, while admittedly employing the compulsory labour of
detainees, was certainly not a place of "mass
extermination".
THE WARSAW GHETTO
In terms of numbers, Polish Jewry is
supposed to have suffered most of all from extermination, not only at
Auschwitz, but at an endless list of newly-discovered "death camps"
such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Maidanek, Chelmno and at many
more obscure places which seem suddenly to have gained prominence. At
the centre of the alleged extermination of the Polish Jews is the
dramatic uprising in April 1943 of the Warsaw Ghetto. This is often
represented as a revolt against being deported to gas ovens;
presumably the alleged subject of Hitler and Himmler's "secret
discussions" had leaked out and gained wide publicity in Warsaw. The
case of the Warsaw Ghetto is an instructive insight into the creation
of the extermination legend itself. Indeed, its evacuation by the
Germans in 1943 is often referred to as the "extermination of the
Polish Jews" although it was nothing of the kind, and layers of
mythology have tended to surround it after the publication of
sensational novels like John Hersey's The Wall and Leon Uris' Exodus.
When the Germans first occupied Poland, they confined the Jews, not
in detention camps but in ghettos for reasons of security. The
interior administration of the ghettos was in the hands of Jewish
Councils elected by themselves, and they were policed by an
independent Jewish police force. Special currency notes were
introduced into the ghettos to prevent speculation. Whether this
system was right or wrong, it was understandable in time of war, and
although the ghetto is perhaps an unpleasant social establishment, it
is by no means barbaric. And it is certainly not an organisation for
the destruction of a race. But, of course, it is frequently said that
this is what the ghettos were really for. A recent publication on the
Warsaw Ghetto made the brazen assertion that concentration camps
"were a substitute for the practice of cramming the Jews into
overcrowded ghettos and starving them to death." It seems that
whatever security system the Germans used, and to whatever lengths
they went to preserve a semblance of community for the Jews, they can
never escape the charge of "extermination". It has been established
already that the 1931 Jewish population census for Poland placed the
number of Jews at 2,732,600, and that after emigration and flight to
the Soviet Union, no more than 1,100,000 were under German control.
These incontrovertible facts, however, do not prevent Manvell and
Frankl asserting that "there had been over three million Jews in
Poland when Germany began the invasion" and that in 1942 "some two
million still awaited death" (ibid, p. 140). In reality, of the
million or so Jews in Poland, almost half, about 400,000 were
eventually concentrated in the ghetto of Warsaw, an area of about two
and a half square miles around the old mediaeval ghetto. The
remainder had already been moved to the Polish Government-General by
September 1940. In the summer of 1942, Himmler ordered the
resettlement of all Polish Jews in detention camps in order to obtain
their labour, part of the system of general concentration for labour
assignment in the Government-General. Thus between July and October
1942, over three quarters of the Warsaw Ghetto's inhabitants were
peacefully evacuated and transported, supervised by the Jewish police
themselves. As we have seen, transportation to camps is alleged to
have ended in "extermination", but there is absolutely no doubt from
the evidence available that it involved only the effective
procurement of labour and the prevention of unrest. In the first
place, Himmler discovered on a surprise visit to Warsaw in January
1943 that 24,000 Jews registered as armaments workers were in fact
working illegally as tailors and furriers (Manvell & Frankl,
ibid, p. 140); the Ghetto was also being used as a base for
subversive forays into the main area of Warsaw. After six months of
peaceful evacuation, when only about 60,000 Jews remained in the
residential ghetto, the Germans met with an armed rebellion on 18th
January, 1943. Manvell and Frankl admit that "The Jews involved in
planned resistance had for a long time been engaged in smuggling arms
from the outside world, and combat groups fired on and killed S.S.
men and militia in charge of a column of deportees." The terrorists
in the Ghetto uprising were also assisted by the Polish Home Army and
the PPR - Polska Partia Robotnicza, the Communist Polish Workers
Party. It was under these circumstances of a revolt aided by
partisans and communists that the occupying forces, as any army would
in a similar situation, moved in to suppress the terrorists, if
necessary by destroying the residential area itself. It should be
remembered that the whole process of evacuation would have continued
peacefully had not extremists among the inhabitants planned an armed
rebellion which in the end was bound to fail. When S.S.
Lieutenant-General Stroop entered the Ghetto with armoured cars on
19th April, he immediately came under fire and lost twelve men;
German and Polish casualties in the battle, which lasted four weeks,
totalled 101 men killed and wounded. Stubborn resistance by the
Jewish Combat Organisation in the face of impossible odds led to an
estimated 12,000 Jewish casualties, the majority by remaining in
burning buildings and dug-outs. A total, however, of 56,065
inhabitants were captured and peacefully resettled in the area of the
Government-General. Many Jews within the Ghetto had resented the
terror imposed on them by the Combat Organisation, and had attempted
to inform on their headquarters to the German authorities.
SUDDEN SURVIVORS
The circumstances surrounding the Warsaw
Ghetto revolt, as well as the deportations to eastern labour camps
such as Auschwtiz, has led to the most colourful tales concerning the
fate of Polish Jews, the largest bloc of Jewry in Europe. The Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee, in figures prepared by them for the
Nuremberg Trials, stated that in 1945 there were only 80,000 Jews
remaining in Poland. They also alleged that there were no
Polish-Jewish displaced persons left in Germany or Austria, a claim
that was at some variance with the number of Polish Jews arrested by
the British and Americans for black market activities. However, the
new Communist regime in Poland was unable to prevent a major
anti-Jewish pogrom at Kielce on July 4th, 1946 and more than 150,000
Polish Jews suddenly fled into Western Germany. Their appearance was
somewhat embarrassing, and their emigration to Palestine and the
United States was carried out in record time. Subsequently, the
number of Polish Jewish survivors underwent considerable revision; in
the American-Jewish Year Book 1948-1949 it was placed at 390,000
quite an advance on the original 80,000. We may expect further
revisions upwards in the future.
Index
Introduction
1. German policy toward the Jews prior to the
war
2. German policy toward the Jews after the outbreak
of war
3. Population and Emigration
4. The Six Million: Documentary Evidence
5. The Nuremberg Trials
6. Auschwitz and Polish Jewry
7. Some Concentration Camps Memoires
8. The Nature & Condition of War Time
Concentration Camps
9. The Jews and The Concentrations Camps: A Factual
Appraisal by the Red Cross
10. The truth at last: The work of Paul
Rassinier
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