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.
|