German Ho£ohoax promulgator—Professor
Heinz Peter Longerich
Longerich was an expert witness at the 2000 Irving vs. Lipstadt
trial,
he was paid £76,195 for his expert report and testimony by Lipstadt's
billionaire backers, but I bet they'd wished they'd saved their money.
he was paid £76,195 for his expert report and testimony by Lipstadt's
billionaire backers, but I bet they'd wished they'd saved their money.
Longerich wrote in his report for the trial:
Jews deemed "fit for work" were as a general rule not murdered immediately but selected either before the deportation, during the course of the deportation (when trains were stopped near labour camps - for instance in Lublin, near Majdanek or in Kosel, in Upper Silesia340) or at the final destination, in particular in Auschwitz. Jews labelled "fit for work" were usually subjected to heavy and exhausting labour under completely inhumane conditions. Life expectancy for a Jewish prisoner assigned to hard labour was generally only a few weeks, seldom more than a few months. The SS invented the expression "annihilation through labour" (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) for this method of exploiting people to the point of death. "Annihilation through labour", along with murder by execution commandos and in gas chambers became an important element in the comprehensive murder programme of the SS.His report, part V, subsection: 7
Longerich also claimed in the witness box that annihilation
through labour was a Nazi term and the Nazi
policy
Well, they started in the concentration camps a programme which they called "extermination through work". So they used hard labour as a tool, as a means to kill prisoners. Day 25, page 23/4
When pressed by Irving to provide proof the SS used the term
'Vernichtung durch Arbeit" Longerich had to admit that he lied:
IRVING: Can we be absolutely specific and make quite plain for the record that this phrase Vernichtung durch Arbeit is not a wartime phrase used by SS, but is a title of a post-war book, a secondary source on which you relied, is that right?
LONGERICH. No, this is one of the major studies about this problem and it refers to a wartime phrase which was currently used among the SS.
IRVING. You have not referenced the actual wartime document, you just referenced somebody's secondary source, the title of a book?
LONGERICH. My report tries to explain how this system of systematic murder was built up. Maybe it was mistake, and also you did not have the chance to ask me for more evidence for that a month ago, it was not my intention here to explain in great detail the existing system of extermination after 1942, because I thought that this is something which is generally acknowledged and there is no major dispute about that. I am trying to explain that the building up of the system mainly through the years 1940, 1941 and 1942. Then the system is in operation and the annihilation through work is one aspect of this system. I am referring to second-hand literature. I did not go into detail here; I am just referring to general works on this topic in which this is described in full detail. Day 25, page 56/7
