The curious death of Richard Baer

[Laurentz Dahl]

I recently began to read some old revisionist texts (after going through the Holocaust Handbooks series) just to see how revisionism got started, and happened upon the book Der Auschwitz-Mythos in its English translation entitled Auschwitz - A Judge Looks at the Evidence, which can be downloaded here:

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/WSeng.pdf

This book was published in 1978, so its obviously pretty dated on some points, but its section on the Frankfurt Auschwitz show trials makes a very interesting read and must, until the probably much delayed publication of Germar Rudolf's The Auschwitz Trial. An Analysis of the World's Largest Show Trial, be considered as one of the most important revisionist text on the subject.

On pp. 233-5 Stäglich writes about the suspicious death in jail of Richard Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz:

Particularly noteworthy is the fate of the most prominent of the defendants, Richard Baer, the last commendant of Auschwitz. He did not live to see the beginning of the trial. In December of 1960. Baer was arrested in the vicinity of Hamburg, where he was employed as a lumberjack. He died in June of 1963, under mysterious circumstances while being held in pre-trial custody.[524]

According to various sources, which, in turn, rely on reports that appeared in the French press, Baer adamantly refused to confirm the existence of "gas chambers" at the camp he once administered. Although it has been alleged that he was eliminated by poisoning on account of this refusal, the cause of his death has never been established. His wife claimed that he was in excellent health.

While Langbein merely states that an autopsy revealed that he died of "natural causes," Naumann specifies a "circulatory ailment" as the cause of death. Of course, a circulatory ailment is only a symptom of preexisting disease that has causes of its own. It is quite possible, however, that the physical condition of this strong and healthy outdoor labourer deteriorated as a result of his treatment in prison. [525] That would be damning enough to those suspicious of the whole affair when one reads the report on the autopsy performed at the Frankfurt-Main University School of Medicine: "The ingestion of an odourless, non-corrosive poison... cannot be ruled out." [526] Nevertheless, there was no further probe into the cause of Baer's death, and Chief Public Prosecutor bauer ordered his body cremated. One may dismiss the possibility that Baer commited suicide, since, according to his wife, he was counting on an acquittal. Moreover, shortly before his death Baer complained to the guards that he was feeling ill and asked for a physician. That is hardly the action of someone who intends to take his own life.

This very mysterious event hardly attracted public attention, and presumably the affair was systematically hushed up. When one considers the reaction the death of an inmate in a German prison usually calls forth among officials, legislators, and the mass media, it seems astounding that this case was kept so quiet, all the more so because Baer was no ordinary prisoner, but a man whose testimony could have had the greatest impact in the upcoming trial.

The suspicion that interested parties had Baer removed by means of poision - as has often been claimed - cannot be dismissed. The motives for such an action are obvious. If anyone at all knew the truth about the "gas chamber" allegation, it was Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz. That he refused to give his authorative confirmation to the "gas chamber" story is shown by the fact that the statements he made during his interrogation were not read into the trial record. They must have been of no value to the prosecution. What the main defendant had to say about the central accusation regarding Auschwitz was anything but a matter of indifference to the initiators of the trial. Had Baer [239] resolutely contested this allegation and been able to show its absurdity, he would not only have made it difficult form them to attain their primary objective - to reinforce the "gas chamber" myth and establish it as an unassailable "historical fact" - but he might also have caused the proceedings to take an entirely different course. By his steadfastness, Baer would have set an example for the co-defendants to follow, and perhaps even influenced some of the other participants in the trial. Hence one should give some credence to the charge that Baer's refusal to play the role assigned him in the script is the reason the trial could not begin until after his death. [527] We shall not delve into this matter. The fact is that the Auschwitz Trial did begin almost immediately after Baer's death. Laternser is of the opinion that there was too much haste involved.[528] However, the preliminary investigations were completed on October 19, 1962, as Langbein informs us, [529] so nothing much really could have stood in the way of the start of the trial - except, of course, Baer's "stubbornness."

Was Baer murdered in jail? Ever since the brutal abduction of Adolf Echmann in Argentina - as a matter of fact, even before it . it has been common knowledge that the Israeli secret service is capable of just about anything.[530] Given such circumstances as the fact that Chief Public Prosecutor Bauer was a Zionist - for which reason he should not have been permitted to head the combined investigation - it is quite possible that the mighty arm of international Jewry was able to reach into Baer's jail cell, though for lack of conclusive proof, this question must remain open. At any rate, one may assume that Baer's sudden death came as a great schock to the other defendants. Since his position on the "gas chambers" allegation must have been known to them, some of the defendants may have taken his unexpected and mysterious demise as a warning, and altered their own stance accordingly. For the promoters of the trial Baer's death could only have been a welcome development.

[524] See on this and on the following: Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozess p.33; Nauman, op cit, p.14, Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, vol. 4, pp. 115ff; Heinz Roth, Der makaberste Betrug, pp.132ff; Deutsche Wochenzeitung of October 19, 1963, p.3; Deutsche Hochsschulleherezeitung Nr.111/1963.

[525] Treatment with drugs does not appear to be excluded either. One is inclined to attribute such methods only to the Russians. Rassinier, however, gives an instance for this also having occured in the prisons of the western Allies (see Drama der Juden Europas, p.41f.).

[526] The Nuremberg attorney Eberhard Engelhardt cites this part of the autopsy report in a letter to the State Prosecutor's Office in Frankfurt on November 12, 1973 (copy in the archive of this author) in alleging that Baer was poisoned while in prison pending trial. The prosecutor's office denied the poisoning theory, but did not challenge the autopsy report.

[527] Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, p.120; Roth, Der makaberste Betrug, p.136.

[528] Die andere Seite im Auschwitz-Prozess, p.23.

[529] Der Auschwitz-Prozess, vol.1, p.33

[530] One should be reminded in this connection of the poisoning of thousands of SS men in a Nuremberg internment camp, which could not be kept secret only because of its extraordinary magnitude. These and other misdeeds of Zionist covert organizations were later made public by Jews (Bar-Zohar, Die Rächer. See Deutsche Wochenzeitung of January 3, 1969, p.16. An eyewitness report to the poison murder in the Nuremberg internment camp appeared in the Deutsche National Zeitung of June 25, 1976 (Page 11; letter to the editor by H. Lies, Hannover).

Since this work by Stäglich was published, has there been any new information revealed on the suspicious demise of Baer?

Also, does anyone no in which newspapers or journals the "French reports" on Baer's stance toward the "gas chamber" allegation were published? I suppose those are referred to in the book Der makaberste Betrug that Stäglich gives reference to in footnote 524, but I have no idea of where to find this book - I suppose it's not in print and it does not seem to be available online.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Me and you are on the "same page" Dahl. I've been wanting to read that passage for years, and thanks to you, just did.

That book is one of the first revisionist works ever. It came out in Germany before Butz's work was published. When Butz was working on his book, Staglich's book was one of the only books he could use for reference.

Can you imagine? The man is in jail for 2 and a half years, and I know of no deposition or statement ever released. Who was his lawyer? In response to lack of info, most just call Hoess the "Commandant at Auschwitz." As if there was only one.

Dahl, one thing I want to mention: when you wonder if anyone has this or that document, you have to realize that we are such an incredibly small group, that there's amazing areas no one has even covered. When I read the IHR site and read really important articles, there are important words missing and stuff like that. There's just not many of us. And that's why these things that one would think should be "out there" aren't. Even the most important works for revisionism from the Journal of Historical Review, have words missing. No one's bothered to fix them!

Nice work for posting this Dahl!

[Reinhard]

Also, does anyone know in which newspapers or journals the "French reports" on Baer's stance toward the "gas chamber" allegation were published?

The French reports were published in the weekly "Rivarol" in an article entitled "Six Millions - oui ou non?". In this article "Rivarol" reportedly has written: "Il n'y avait jamais vu ni su qu'il y existait des chambres à gaz" ("He never has seen nor has he known of the existance of gas chambers").
[Source: Dr. Dr. Franz Scheidl, "Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands", Vol. 4, Wien o.J., pp.115-120]

Online at: http://vho.org/D/gdvd_4/I6.html

[Laurentz Dahl]

Found a text on C.W. Porter's website about Baer's death:

http://www.cwporter.com/b1.htm

[jnovitz]

On the Frankfurt trial CD there are a couple of very short interogation protocols of Baer where he appears to not to deny that there were gas chambers in Birkenau but he was not responsible because he was in charge of Auschwitz I.

I should point out that only half a dozen pages are included on this CD from his interogations and considering he was to be the star defendent in the trial and he was in custody for several years these can only represent a tiny fraction of his transcripts.

[nathan]

As a formal defence strategy it would have been folly for Baer to claim that all gas chambers were a myth. All he need do was to deny any wartime knowledge of or direct involvement with them. That is what he did In his interrogatory submitted the Eichmann trial on 9 June 1961, six months after his arrest, presumably on advice of his lawyer:

" ------ From around mid-May 1944 until evacuation and dissolution, I was Commandant of the Auschwitz I concentration camp. Auschwitz I included only the camp which was situated close to the town of Auschwitz. I was therefore not the Commandant of all the camps which belonged to the Auschwitz complex, but merely Commandant of this one camp. In addition, during my time there were two other independent camps: Auschwitz II (Birkenau), under Commandant Hauptsturmführer Kramer, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), under Commandant Hauptsturmführer Schwarz. As far as I know, this arrangement of these three camps, existing independently of one another, each under its own Commandant, was only introduced when I became Commandant of Auschwitz I; it certainly was not introduced later. As far as I know, the Commandants who had held office previously, Hoess and Liebehenschel, had been in charge of the entire complex, but I am not entirely sure of this"

Baer’s unexplained death, two years later, expedited a long-delayed trial and spared the prosecution the embarrassment of acquitting the “last commandant of Auschwitz” . What else could they have done but acquit him? No doubt there existed Polish citizens with a distinct memory of having witnessed Baer throw babies into flames twenty years ago – or whatever. But Baer would certainly have contested any alleged crimes committed at Auschwitz 1 between May 1944 and the evacuation.

Fritz Bauer wanted the trial to serve as a history lesson about a transcendental genocide, as established by the reports of court historians. But German criminal law required proof of an intentional homicidal act, carried out voluntarily and with conscious malice. In the absence of hard evidence or credible eyewitnesses it therefore had to depend heavily on pre-trial statements. If Baer made a pre-trial confession we would surely have heard of it.

[Hektor]

On the Frankfurt trial CD there are a couple of very short interogation protocols of Baer where he appears to not to deny that there were gas chambers in Birkenau but he was not responsible because he was in charge of Auschwitz I.

I recall Holocaustians quoting something out of a statement of Baer pointing to gas chambers in Birkenau.

I should point out that only half a dozen pages are included on this CD from his interogations and considering he was to be the star defendent in the trial and he was in custody for several years these can only represent a tiny fraction of his transcripts.

... or one didn't spent to much time with him, since he was more defiant. Remember that he was in a more responsible position and that he likely was of less meek character then the low ranking guards. I mean let's face it, those working in any prison system are usually social bottom feeder who are lucky to get such a job. Still you need people of some strength to lead them.

Then there is the thing with the "Why-was-there-no-scientific-research-proving-the-Holocaust-wrong?". Or put more bluntly "Why-did-the-Germans-not-dispute-it?". These arguments are used, as if silence on the subject and lack of dipute would proof anything. Fact that it makes no sense to disprove or dispute anything that actually didn't happen. This actually makes innocently accused people very weak targets. The rumours and accusation however were already going around. All what members of the German war time generation could reply was that they did not know anything of this.

[nathan]

The inexact notion that Baer denied the very existence of gas chambers has been carelessly sourced to the far right Parisian weekly Rivarol. In late 63 and early 64 it carried a series of articles by one Jean-Pierre Bermont, who was none other than Paul Rassinier. These articles were trimmed and pasted into later editions of his 1962 pamphlet “The Real Eichmann” , where they figure as a chapter about the about Auschwitz trial.

Writing in late 1962, Rassinier had written:

“In Germany at the moment the commandant who replaced Hoess as the director of the camp has been in prison for two years. This trial is postponed every to or three months because......
....among all those witnesses whom ....[ Fritz Bauer] ..has found the only reliable ones unanimously believed that during the time they were in the camp between Autumn 1943 and the autumn of 1944 they never saw the gas chamber in operation, although - surprise, surprise!- not one of them denies their existence(!).

These typically confident judgements were perhaps inferred from announcements and leaks made during 1962 in response to public impatience with the ongoing investigation. Observe that Rassinier takes it as given that nobody would be so foolish as to provoke the court by challenging its raison d’etre.

Writing over a year later at the beginning of the trial he says:

“It seems that from the first he [Baer] declared that there had never been any gas chambers at Auschwitz, while he was in command, that he had for the first time heard a mention of them as an echo of the Nuremberg trial.... Fritz Baer brought up the statements of R. Hoess . Baer replied that he did not know what had taken place during the command of Hoess, that he could only answer for what happened when he was in command, and he mentioned witnesses. One after another the prosecuting attorney had them charged with complicity and imprisoned....

....”But right to the end Baer stuck to his position and they were never able to budge him from it.

... “the trial, scheduled for the autumn of 1961, was first postponed to the spring of 1962, a second time for the autumn of 1962, a third time for the spring of 1963, and a fourth time for the spring of 1964. Suddenly on June 17....[it was announced by Fritz Bauer] ... that Baer had died of heart failure; less than a week later it was learned that the Auschwitz trial would be moved up from the Spring of 1964 to the winter of 1963......

The chronology of these postponements ought to be verifiable. Rassinier did not attend the trial because he was forbidden to enter Germany. He is too erratic and polemical a writer to be taken on trust, although his claims about Baer’s pre-trial statements sound too specific to have been mere guesswork. But he gives no sources, and he makes the sort of factual mistake that derive from newspaper accounts. He believes that Baer was in charge of Auschwitz 1 from the beginning of 1944 and seems to imply that Baer’s authority extended over Auschwitz 2. We are clear now that Baer took over the main camp Auschwitz 1 - and only that - in early May, just before hundreds of thousands of Hungarians were taken to Auschwitz 2 and allegedly murdered there. So Baer’s defence would write itself: murders in Auschwitz 2 had nothing to do with me. His affidavit submitted to Eichmann trial (posted by me above) suggests that his lawyer took this line from the first.

The legend of Baer’s stubbornness must have some basis in fact. He was the lead villain, yet during two and a half years of interrogation he said nothing that would convict him posthumously. If he had done so, we would surely know of it. Adjutant Mulka had admitted only to tenuously hearsay knowledge of murders - not far short of a denial of the fact - but he had been placed by eyewitnesses on the ramp during selections, and his signature was on a procurement form for Zyklon. That was enough to get him 14 years (never served). Baer very probably attended staff meetings with Hoess during the Hungarian deportations. But if he could not be personally connected with homicidal doings at Auschwitz 2 then a German Assize court would have been bound to acquit him. “Auschwitz’s last Commandant Acquitted” would have made an intolerable headline for the authorities. On that ground alone his mysterious demise can be counted among the convenient deaths.

What we know of this trial comes from writers who think the essential defect of the process was its inadequacy. It was obliged to limit itself to punishing individuals – too leniently - according to the German criminal code instead of educating the German people in a sense of their own sin.

“The understanding of agents as individuals disguised the way in which the vast majority of Germans as an organised collectivity, where implicated in that same process of genocide, they could quite plausibly insist that they did not know of their own involvement. Most Germans, by and large, had not killed any Jews directly... and this was reinforced by the law as a kind of innocence.

- David Own Pendas. The Frankfurt Aus trial; genocide history and the limits of law.

So in the absence of transcripts, we have to read the Frankfurt trial thru spectacles supplied by partisan authors such as Bernt Naumann and Hermann Langbein. Pre-trial statements figure in these accounts when accused persons have the boldness to dispute them. If Baer had declared the gas chambers to be a myth, then he would have been regarded as a madman. So how would he have avoided provoking the court? He might have used any of several well-worn formulae: “I only found out after the war” “I heard it on allied broadcasts and didn’t believe it at the time” or “Yes, it was common gossip around the camp” or “I only heard about the gas chambers from X, who told me about it afterwards ” – X being a superior officer who had died or disappeared - or “I did once accidentally witness a gassing, but from a distance.” He may even have tried some yarn about protesting against the crime and saving some victims.

Perhaps we shall never know what kind of hearsay knowledge was admitted by Baer. Statements in the German legal system are not verbatim transcriptions, but a summary prepared by the interrogator; they are not the words of the person himself, and only in some cases are direct quotations inserted. Mr jnovitz above says there exist on CD pages from Baer’s pre-trial statements. Can these be found online? I shall be surprised if these are comprehensive, especially if they were selected by colleagues of Langbein and Ruckerl and other educators.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi Nathan, you wrote:

"If he had done so, we would surely know of it." Meaning if he had discussed gas chambers. That's a good point.

Where are your sources and page numbers? You write "Writing over a year later at the beginning of the trial he says:" Where does Rassinier say that?

[nathan]

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/ital/arrass/P ... forte.html
(Rassinier il processo Auschwitz)

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/RassArch/realET6.html

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/PRreal.pdf -

pages 83,107 ,108

Anyone who can read French can also read Italian. Others may at least discern that the first Aaargh link establishes the sequence of the Rivarol articles.

The “1962” online version of "The Real Eichmann" has no pages. Some genuinely 1962 passages – quoted by me - speak of Baer as still alive; others refer to his death.

The later edition of the Real Eichmann (“Incorrigible Victors”) is paginated. Pages 83, and Chapter VIII p107, 108 are relevant, maybe others. Inconsistencies and repetitions are what you find when you cobble a series of articles into one piece. I excerpted only those sentences showing what Rassinier believed to be the causes of Frankfurt trial’s delay.
................................


On the general point, what Baer’s interrogators needed was evidence to connect Baer with murder. It looks as though they did not get it. I myself don’t think they would have been concerned with finding evidence for gas chambers; I think they could have no more doubted the existence of gas chambers than a medieval intellectual could have doubted the existence of God. In my view the grand objective of the trial was not to establish facts but to raise consciousness. The only mover and shaker with real knowledge of whatever happened in Auschwitz was Herman Langbein; nobody can say what he had come to believe by 1964, and he was not an interrogator. But my speculation - purely - is that Langbein could not have failed to make public pronouncements while Baer was in remand, and Rassinier may have thought that he was reading between the lines of these pronouncements. He must have got his notions from somewhere.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Thanks. I guess the question is what happened to this guy during all that time in jail and where are his statements?

[nathan]

A correspondent has taken me as saying that Baer would have been acquitted if he lived. Perhaps I should have been clearer. I was trying to imagine the prospect confronting the prosecution on the eve of the much-postponed trial.

In the event, survivor testimony delivered in court proved to be the overwhelming source of evidence in this trial. Prosecutors joining battle against Mulka were no doubt glad to be forearmed with some contemporary documentary evidence (procurements for Zyklon, for gastight doors) which they would have judged conclusive in itself. But it turned out that they did not need it. The crucial factor against Mulka proved to be that different eyewitnesses, including the star eyewitness Dr Vrba, showed up who remembered seeing him twenty years ago dealing death on the Birkenau ramp. The court was able to sentence Baer’s Number 2 Hoecker on the thinnest of testimony to a formal sentence of seven years. Baer would certainly have gone down - but not on the basis of pre-trial evidence.

Divergence between pre-trial testimony and open court testimony is the strongest leitmotif of this trial. But I notice that the pattern of divergence differs. Away from the interrogation rooms, SS courtroom statements become vaguer - I don’t remember saying this, I don’t remember seeing that. Eg an SS witness “says he did not see Baretzki kill prisoners. How does he explain his pre-trial deposition, in which he said the opposite? Witness: I cannot understand how I gave such testimony.” (Bernd Naumann Auschwitz, p203]

With ex-prisoners it goes the other way round: statements become more detailed and more lurid when they reach courtroom. Clearer than ever become those memories of babies being battered against walls and cast into open fires. “My pretrial statement was of a more general nature. I now remember more and more details.” Thus spoke a prisoner now distinctly remembering the detail that Pery Broad personally had helped to pour the Zyklon into the roof of the Old Crematorium. The evident purpose of this memory was to get Broad’s bail revoked, although this particular memory was too opportune even for the Frankfurt court to swallow. Another newly surfacing memory, this time of a multiple shooting by Mulka, was enough for an additional charge to be laid and so for him to be remanded for several demoralising months. This shooting charge was dropped, but that did not help Mulka to prove that he was never on the Birkenau ramp.

If witnesses could be found to prevent bail, they would certainly be found to prevent acquittal. Had Baer faced a courtroom I have no doubt that an army of Polish citizens would have felt it their duty to remember seeing Baer on the ramp rather than permit the scandal of allowing one of their oppressors to walk free. So he would have gone down. If he was as obstreperous as his reputation, then he might even have added years to his formal sentence by challenging his accusers more robustly than lesser fry such as Klehr, would dare do.

[Judge Hofmeyer to Klehr]

,,,,, “There are professors, doctors, prisoners, all kinds of prisoners and all of them remember that you selected on your own and that you trampled someone to death for “fun” and that you threw women into the flames. How is it that people from all walks of life of accuse you.”

Klehr does not know.

(Naumann p74)

[ferrum35]

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/ital/arrass/PRfrancoforte.html
(Rassinier il processo Auschwitz)

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/RassArch/realET6.html

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/PRreal.pdf -

pages 83,107 ,108

Anyone who can read French can also read Italian. Others may at least discern that the first Aaargh link establishes the sequence of the Rivarol articles.

The “1962” online version of "The Real Eichmann" has no pages. Some genuinely 1962 passages – quoted by me - speak of Baer as still alive; others refer to his death.

The later edition of the Real Eichmann (“Incorrigible Victors”) is paginated. Pages 83, and Chapter VIII p107, 108 are relevant, maybe others. Inconsistencies and repetitions are what you find when you cobble a series of articles into one piece. I excerpted only those sentences showing what Rassinier believed to be the causes of Frankfurt trial’s delay.
................................


On the general point, what Baer’s interrogators needed was evidence to connect Baer with murder. It looks as though they did not get it. I myself don’t think they would have been concerned with finding evidence for gas chambers; I think they could have no more doubted the existence of gas chambers than a medieval intellectual could have doubted the existence of God. In my view the grand objective of the trial was not to establish facts but to raise consciousness. The only mover and shaker with real knowledge of whatever happened in Auschwitz was Herman Langbein; nobody can say what he had come to believe by 1964, and he was not an interrogator. But my speculation - purely - is that Langbein could not have failed to make public pronouncements while Baer was in remand, and Rassinier may have thought that he was reading between the lines of these pronouncements. He must have got his notions from somewhere.

Thanks for the links. Very useful information.