Comments | "Did Six Million Really Die?" By Richard E. Harwood

COMMENTS ABOUT
"Did Six Million Really Die?"

Dr. Kuang Fann, Professor of Philosophy at York University of Canada, formerly China: "The whole pamphlet . . . obviously should be classified as a political opinion . . ."

Ditlieb Felderer, Historical Researcher, Writer, Sweden: ". . . the booklet has proven to be more true as the years have gone by, and it is exterminationists who are coming now to start arguing like Harwood did when the booklet was first published, so the exterminationists are moving . . . toward the booklet more and more."

Dr. Robert Faurisson, Expert of Ancient Texts and Documents, Lyon University: "The thesis of the book is that it's not true that six million Jews died, and it is not true that there was an extermination plan, and it is not true that there were gas chambers. What I find right is, first, the title. The title is good. Did Six Million Really Die?" That's really the problem . . . This man, Richard Harwood, brought plenty of information for the layman in '74. He said in '74 that there were no order(s) from Hitler to exterminate the Jews. Three years after, when David Irving said it, it was an uproar, so it was really new and true. We know it now in 1988 . . . this . . . was so important that when it was published in France, the man who distributed (it was) murdered . . . Francoise Duprat. We don't know who exactly did that, but the interesting point is, first, that it has been done by people very clever in those kind of bomb handling, and what was published in the journal Le Monde after was interesting. This murder was revindicated by a so-called "Memory of Auschwitz" organization. It was justified by a man called Patrick Chairoff - saying that Francoise Duprat, in distributing this kind of pamphlet, had taken a responsibility which kills."

David Irving, British Historian, author of over 30 books on WW II and its aftermath: ". . . I read it with great interest and I must say that I was surprised by the quality of the arguments that it represented. It has obvious flaws. It uses sources that I personally would not use. In fact, the entire body of sources is different. This is based entirely on secondary literature, books by other people, including some experts, whereas I use no books. I use just the archives. But independently, the author of this came to conclusions and asked questions of a logical nature which I had arrived at by an entirely different route, so to speak. . . And if I was to ask what is the value of a brochure like this, I think it is that it provokes people to ask questions, rather as my book on Hitler's War provoked the historians. . . This is the kind of value which I found this brochure to have. It was asking proper questions on the basis of an entirely different set of sources."

Mark Weber, American Historian, Author: "I believe that the thesis of the booklet is accurate. . . that there was no German policy or program to exterminate the Jews during the Second World War. . . The booklet is a journalistic or a polemic account that is designed to convince people, and it does not purport to be a work that can be held up to the same standards of rigid scrutiny that a scholarly work and a detailed work by someone who is a historian normally would be. . its main value lies in encouraging further discussion and thought and debate on the subject it raises."

Colin Wilson, well known British author: ". . . I received in the post a pamphlet. . . entitled Did Six Million Really Die? I must admit that it has left me thoroughly bewildered. What Harwood says, briefly, is that Hitler had no reason to murder Jews when he needed them for forced labor. . . it is worth asking the question: Did the Nazis really exterminate six million Jews? Or is this another sign of the emotional historical distortion that makes nearly all the books on Hitler so far almost worthless?. . . Is there, then, any reason why we should be afraid to dig down until we get at the truth?"

WHAT'S WRONG WITH DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE?

After 10 years of wrangling, what follows is the essence of what was found wrong with the pamphlet by the prosecution witnesses. In italics are the primary parts of the pamphlet disputed by the prosecution followed by evidence given by expert witnesses on both sides.

1. By 1939, the great majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizeable proportion of their assets. Never at any time had the Nazi leadership even contemplated a policy of genocide towards them. . . Had Hitler cherished any intention of exterminating the Jews, it is inconceivable that he would have allowed more than 800,000 to leave Reich territory with the bulk of their wealth . . . (p. 5,6)

Prosecution historian Christopher Browning's opinion was that slightly over half of German Jews emigrated by 1939. Browning testified that the figure 800,000 was an exaggeration; by 1941, the total of Jews who had left Germany, Austria and the Protectorates was 530,000. Because of measures taken against them, it was false to say they left with a "sizeable proportion" of their assets. Browning admitted under cross-examination, however, that he was not a demographer nor a statistition and that any population statistics concerning Jews could only be estimates. He also admitted that he could not give a precise percentage or even proportion of their assets Jews left with. He only knew that considerable efforts were made to prevent property getting out.

2. The founder of political Zionism in the 19th century, Theodore Herzl, in his work The Jewish State, had originally conceived of Madagascar as a national homeland for the Jews, and this possibility was seriously studied by the Nazis. It had been a main plank of the National Socialist party platform before 1933 and was published by the party in pamphlet form. (p.5)

Browning testified it was not a plank of the Nazi Party platform before 1933 that the Jews go to Madagascar as a national homeland. The first time a Nazi leader mentioned Madagascar was 1938. The first time there was a plan for madagascar was 1940.

3. The fall of France in 1940 enabled the German Government to open serious negotiations with the French for the transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum of August, 1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in the German Foreign Office, reveals that he had conducted these negotiations between July and December 1940, when they were terminated by the French. (p.7)

Browning testified that there were no such negotiations with the French. The Madagascar Plan failed because of continuing British control of the high seas.

4. Reitlinger and Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded supposition that because the Madagascar Plan had been shelved, the Germans must necessarily have been thinking of "extermination". Only a month later, however, on March 7th, 1942, Goebbels wrote a memorandum in favour of the Madagascar Plan as a "final solution" of the Jewish question (Manvell and Frankl, Dr. Goebbels, London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he approved of the Jews being "concentrated in the East". Later Goebbels memoranda also stress deportation to the East (i.e. the Government-General of Poland) and lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labor there; once the policy of evacuation to the East had been inaugurated, the use of Jewish labor became a fundamental part of the operation. (p.7)

Browning said that Goebbels did not write a "memorandum", he wrote a "diary entry." Goebbels did not lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labor but said exactly the opposite; for example, on March 27, 1942, he wrote that 60% of the Jews will have to be liquidated and 40% used for forced labor. Browning admitted he had never checked the authenticity of the original Goebbels diaries but had accepted the commercial printed version. Historian Weber testified there was great doubt about the authenticity of the entire Goebbels diaries because they were typewritten. There was therefore no way to verify their authenticity. The U.S. Government itself indicated that it would take no responsibility for the accuracy of the diaries: the original clothbound edition contained a U.S. Government statement that it "neither warrants nor disclaims the authenticity of the manuscript". Browning relied on other documents such as the Seraphim report to show that the Germans did not put priority on using Jews for labor. Historian Weber disagreed with this opinion. In his view, the Jews were a valuable source of labor for the Germans; Himmler himself ordered that concentration camp inmates be used as extensively as possible in war production.

5. Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere known in precise detail, approximations for various countries differing widely, and it is also unknown exactly how many Jews were deported and interned at any one time between the years 1939-1945. In general, however, what reliable statistics there are, especially those relating to emigration, are sufficient to show that not a fraction of six million Jews could have been exterminated. (p.7)

Browning testified that contemporary German statistical studies showed that there were enough Jews in Europe to exterminate 6 million of them. These studies were: (a) the Burgdörfer Study (estimated that there were about 10.72 million Jews in Europe); (b) Madagascar Plan (4 million Jews under German control in 1940); (c) Wannsee conference protocol (11 million Jews). In Browning's opinion, even the German studies done at the time showed in the area of 10 million Jews under German control in Europe. Therefore, 6 million could have been exterminated. He admitted, again, that he was not a demographer or a statistician and that the problem of changing borders and the various definitions of "Jew" made any conclusions in this area difficult to the point that they could only be estimates.

6. According to Chambers Encyclopaedia the total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe was 6,500,000. (p.7)

Chambers Encyclopedia dealt only with the total number of Jews living ont he continent of Europe apart from Russia, not the total number living in pre-war Europe as stated by the pamphlet.

7. In addition to the German Jews, 220,000 of the total 280,000 Austrian Jews had emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the Institute for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the emigration of 260,000 Jews from former Czechoslovakia. In all, only 360,000 Jews remained in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia after September 1939. (p.7,8)

These numbers did not accord with the German studies done at the time, Browning testified. A comparison with the Wannsee Conference protocol statistics showed that 360,000 Jews had emigrated from Germany; 147,000 had emigrated from Austria; 30,000 had emigrated from the Protectorate. These figures were all much lower than Harwood's figures.

8. In addition to these emigrants, we must also include the number of Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were later evacuated beyond reach of the German invaders. It will be shown below that the majority of these, about 1,250,000, were migrants from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger admits that 300,000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory between 1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants to the Soviet Union to about 1,550,000. (p.8)

Browning testified that the reference to Reitlinger was a mis-cite; Reitlinger said that 300,000 Polish Jews in total fled to the Soviet Union, not "other European Jews" as stated by Harwood. The figure of 1,250,000 given by Harwood was therefore 5 times too high.

9. The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of Jews at 2,732,600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, p. 36). (p.8)

Hilberg testified that this was wrong; in fact, the figure of 2,732,600 came from a census taken in the 1920s.

10. When the Jewish populations of Holland (140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy (50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000), Hungary (380,000) and Roumania (725,000) are included, the figure does not much exceed 3 million. (p.8)

These statistics were not in accord with the Nazis' own statistics, said Browning. For example, the German statistics for 1942 listed the Jewish population of Hungary at 743,800. German records of the deportations from Hungary showed more Jews were deported than the number given by Harwood as the Jewish population of Hungary.

11. So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of the mass murder of Jews in war-time Europe was made by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in New York in 1943. (p.9)

The first accusation of mass murder of the Jews was made on December 17, 1942 by the Allies in a Joint Declaration. Lemkin, as far as Browning knew, never used the 6 million figure in his book. Weber pointed out this mistake made no difference to the substance of the thesis of the pamphlet.

12. Gerstein's sister was congenitally insane and died by euthenasia, which may well suggest a streak of mental instability in Gerstein himself. . . Gerstein's fantastic exaggerations have done little but discredit the whole notion of mass extermination. Indeed, Evangelical Bishop Wilhelm Dibelius of Berlin denounced his memoranda as "Untrustworthy" (p.9)

It was not Gerstein's sister, but his sister-in-law, who was killed in the euthenasia program. Dibelius in fact stated that he was convinced of the trustworthiness of Gerstein, the opposite of what Harwood had written. However, Hilberg admitted that he would not characterize Gerstein as being totally rational and that there was no question that he was capable of adding imagination to fact. Browning acknowledged there were "problems" with Gerstein's testimony; his obvious exaggerations resulted because he was "traumatized" by his experiences, said Browning.

13. It should be emphasised straight away that there is not a single document in existence which proves that the Germans intended to, or carried out, the deliberate murder of Jews. (p.10)

In Browning's opinion, there were such documents, including the Hans Frank diary, the Wannsee Conference protocol, and the 1943 Posen speech of Himmler. Historian Robert Faurisson pointed out that if these documents "proved" the existence of a deliberate plan to murder the Jews, there would be no debate between the "functionalists" and "intentionalists" in the Holocaust academic circles. This debate in and of itself showed that no proof of a deliberate plan existed. Hilberg had testified in the 1985 Zündel trial that there were two oral orders from Hitler for the extermination of the Jews. He denied that he had changed this view in his then forthcoming second edition of his book The Destruction of the European Jews, which was to be published shortly thereafter. In 1988, Hilberg refused to testify at the second Zündel trial, citing in a confidential letter to the prosecutor that he had "grave doubts" about testifying again; 'the defence,' he wrote, '. . . would . . . make every attempt to entrap me by pointing to any seeming contradiction, however trivial the subject might be, between my earlier testimony and an answer that I might give in 1988." Browning admitted in his testimony that Hilberg had made a "significant" change regarding the role of Hitler in the decision-making process between his first edition and the second edition, published in 1985. In an article entitled "The Revised Hilberg", Browning wrote that in his second edition, Hilberg had "systematically excised" all references in the text to a Hitler decision or a Hitler order for the "Final Solution". In the new edition, wrote Browning, "decisions were not made and orders were not given".

14. Attempts to find "veiled allusions" to genocide in speeches like that of Himmler's to his S.S. Obergruppenführers at Posen in 1943 are likewise quite hopeless. (p.11)

Browning testified that the Posen speech contained explicit references to exterminating the Jews. Historian David Irving testified, however, that those portions of the original manuscript of the Posen speech which dealt with "extermination" had been tampered with; they were written in a different typescript using different carbon paper and were numbered in pencil. Irving also pointed out that the Israelis had Himmler's private diary but refused to allow any historians to have access to it. If Himmler's diary supported the "Holocaust", Irving said, the Israelis would be the first to release it.

15. Most incredible of all, perhaps, was the fact that defence lawyers at Nuremberg were not permitted to cross-examine prosecution witnesses. (p.12)

Hilberg testified that defense lawyers were allowed to cross-examine witnesses at Nuremberg. Weber testified that many affidavits were entered into evidence, however, upon which no cross-examination was possible.

16. The Soviet charge that the Action Groups had wantonly exterminated a million Jews during their operations has been shown subsequently to be a massive falsification. In fact, there had never been the slightest statistical basis for the figure. (p.14)

Browning testified that on the basis of the Einsatzgruppen reports and the works of other historians that at least 1 million Jews were killed by the Einsatztruppen. Historian Weber testified, however, that in the major work on the Einsatztruppen, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges, the two authors calculated that if all the figures in the Einsatztruppen reports were added up, there would be a total of 2.2 million Jewish dead. The authors admitted this was impossible and conceded that the Einsatztruppen report figures were exaggerated. In Weber's opinion, the figure of about 1 million was not believable because it was known that the great majority of Jews fled or were evacuated from the eastern territories before the German invasion in 1941.

17. 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. . . A total, however, of 56,065 inhabitants were captured and peacefully resettled in the area of the Government-General. (p. 19)

Browning stated that reports of the Warsaw Ghetto clearing indicated it was done brutally and not "peacefully" as alleged by Harwood. In Browning's opinion, they were not resettled but taken to Treblinka and Majdanek and either gassed or shot. Historian Mark Weber testified that the record as to what happened to these Jews was still unclear. In Weber's opinion, Treblinka and Majdanek were simply concentration and/or transit camps.

18. Of course, no Jew would ever be found who claimed to have been a member of this gruesome "special detachment", so that the whole issue is left conveniently unprovable. It is worth repeating that no living, authentic eye-witness to these events has ever been produced. (p.20)

One of Browning's main differences with the pamphlet was that it denied the existence of the homcidal gas chambers for the purpose of killing Jews. He testified Jews had come forward claiming to be members of the Sonderkommando, such as Filip Mueller, whose accounts he found to be "moving". Browning admitted under cross-examination, however, that he had never seen a technical plan that purported to be either a gas chamber or gas van. He had never enquired about cremation processes or how much heat or how long it took to cremate a human body. Browning had not looked at the aereal photographs taken by the Allies of Auschwitz during the war except for one on the wall of Yad Vashem. Neither Browning nor Hilberg knew of any autopsy report showing that any camp inmate was killed by Zyklon B. Hilberg and Browning visited the concentration camps only for the purpose of looking at memorials or as members of Holocaust Commissions. Witnesses Leuchter and Roth gave evidence which showed that samples taken from the walls and floor of the alleged "gas chambers" at Auschwitz and Birkenau showed either no traces or only minute traces of cyanide, while the walls of a known fumigation chamber at Birkenau which had used Zyklon B had over 1000 times as much traceable cyanide. In Leuchter's opinion, as an expert in gas chamber technology, the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek were incapable of being used as gas chambers for the killing of human beings because of their structure, including such factors as lack of exhaust systems, stacking and sealants. Ivan Lagace, a cremation expert, testified that in modern crematories it took a minimum of 1 1/2 hours to cremate a human body in one retort; he termed "ludicrous" the extermination claim that over 4.400 bodies were cremated in 46 retorts at Birkenau per day. With respect to the veracity of "eyewitness" testimony, Weber testified that Yad Vashem had admitted that over half of the "survivor" accounts on record there were unreliable as many had "let their imagination run away with them." Historian Faurisson quoted from the Jewish writer Michel de Bouard, who admitted in 1986 that "the record is rotten to the core" with obstinately repeated "fantasies' and inaccuracies.

19. Of course, no Jew would ever be found who claimed to have been a member of this gruesome "special detachment", so that the whole issue is left conveniently unprovable. It is worth repeating that no living, authentic eye-witness to these events has ever been produced. (p.20)

Browning believed Eichmann to be the highest central figure in the plan to exterminate the Jews who survived the war and testified. Eichmann testified that Heydrich told him that Hitler had ordered the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Browning admitted, however, that Eichmann had "more than a little trouble" in sorting out events in his mind. In historian Irving's opinion Eichmann was on trial and under considerable physical and mental coercion; such testimony did not advance historical knowledge but polluted it.

20. . . . only seven years after its initial publication, a New York Supreme Court case established that the book was a hoax. . . It established that the Jewish novelist Meyer Levin had written the dialogue of the "diary" and was demanding payment for his work in a court action against Otto Frank. (p.21)

This was not true; in fact Levin had sued for payment for writing a play based on the diary itself. Faurisson and Irving testified that other proof existed, however, that the diary's authenticity was suspect. Expert examinations of the original diary by graphologists and West German criminal laboratories showed that one person had written the diary and part of it was written in ball-point pen ink, which only came into use in the 1950s. Faurisson believed the diary was written by Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank.

21. As a result, eastern camps in the Russian zone of occupation such as Auschwitz and Treblinka gradually came to the fore as horrific centres of extermination (though no one was permitted to see them), and this tendency has lasted to the present day. (p.23)

Browning testified that it was false to say no one was permitted to see the camps in the Soviet zone. He cited a New York Times article by journalist W. Lawrence of a tour of Majdanek given to journalists by the Soviets in 1944. Browning admitted that the article had significant errors regarding the numbers of people who allegedly died there and how Zyklon B worked. Historian Weber testified that Western Allied investigators were not allowed to investigate concentration camps in the Soviet zone of occupation after the war. The visit to Majdanek by newspaper reporters was a guided tour by the Soviets for propaganda purposes; it was not an investigation by any specialized person.

22. Finally, Professor Rassinier draws attention to an important admission by Dr. Kubovy, director of the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Tel-Aviv, made in La Terre Retrouvée, December 15th, 1960. Dr. Kubovy recognised that not a single order for extermination exists from Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich or Goering (Le Drame des Juifs européen, p. 31, 39).(p.29)

Browning had never heard of Kubovy or the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. But both Faurisson and Irving knew of Kubovy and Irving had cited Kubovy's quote from La Terre Retrouvee in his book, Hitler's War.

23. However, {Rassinier} regards such a figure as a maximum limit, and refers to the lower estimate of 896,892 casualties in a study of the same problem by the Jewish statistician Raul Hilberg. (p.29)

Hilberg testified that he was not a statistician and had never given an estimate of 896,892. His own calculation in fact was over 5 million. Weber testified that Harwood had taken this information from Paul Rassinier's boos; the original mistake was therefore Rassinier's and not Harwood's.

24. ... Professor Rassinier concludes . . . that the number of Jewish casualties during the Second World War could not have exceeded 1,200,000, and he notes that this has finally been accepted as valid by the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Paris. (p.29)

Hilberg testified he had never heard of this Centre or the figure cited by Harwood.

25. RICHARD HARWOOD is a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War. At present he is with the University of London. (p.30)

Historian Weber testified that the author of the pamphlet was a man named Richard Verrall, who had used the pseudonym "Richard Harwood". Verrall was a graduate of the University of London with High Honours; he was a writer and had a specialized interest in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War. Verrall relied upon secondary sources published in the 1950s and 1960s in writing the pamphlet, which was published in 1974. Most errors made by the author were errors originally made by Paul Rassinier, the pioneer revisionist historian, whose works Verrall had relied upon heavily.

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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