SS Testimonies

[Dan B]

Hi all, this is my first post. I have been interested in Holocaust Revisionism since 1996 and also had the honour of being jailed for two months for expressing my views at Umeå University, Sweden, in December 1997. I consider myself a sceptic and will listen to both sides of any argument. I'm planning on writing a Revisionist booklet sooner or later and have registered here (after being advised to do so by Bradley Smith) in order to get a few questions answered before that.

My first few questions relate to the testimonies of SS personnel. For whatever reason, in all my forum discussions I have never been forced to address the issue of the testimony of SS personnel who have stated, under oath, that they were present at the site of gassings.

According to Exterminationists, there have apparently been 69 SS witnesses who testified to the existence of gas chambers and none of them ever recanted their statements. A list has been published, among other places, at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=883337.

One statement (from Kogon) reads: "We have the testimony of the forty SS men from Auschwitz who were tried in Poland in 1946 and 1947, and that of Höss as well; we have the testimony of nineteen SS men tried in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1963 to 1965; and we have that of Baer and Dejaco and seven other SS men, questioned as witnesses, who admitted having seen the Birkenau gas chambers functioning. This makes a total of sixty-nine witnesses who had been members of the SS."

As far as I know, no actual records of the statements or testimonies of the accused were preserved from trials in Poland, only a statement by the judge summarizing what had transpired in the trial, making this evidence rather flimsy -- and most of the defendants were hanged afterwards, which provides a pretty good explanation for them not having recanted afterwards. The testimony of Höss is unreliable for well-known reasons. But what about the remaining 28? Do their testimonies corroborate one another as the Exterminationists claim, or are they distorting the facts?

This is actually the first time I'm having serious problems debunking "evidence" for the supposed gas chambers. To be honest, I can't seem to find anytning really convincing from the Revisionist side. I have read Faurisson's "Confessions of SS Men who were at Auschwitz" and all I can say is that while a non-homicidal interpretation of Kremer's diary is quite possible, it depends heavily on whether the testimonies of other supposed SS eyewitnesses corroborate or contradict his later testimony before the courts.

Of course, supposed eyewitness testimony from people who were (at least in some cases) subjected to torture, threats etc is not very compelling evidence by itself -- but I have to concede that many testimonies put together, and most of all the fact that none of them seem to have recanted said testimony even after being set free, is at least strong circumstantial evidence.

Now, my questions are (in order of importance):

1) Do the testimonies of SS guards contradict one another? If so, how?

2) Did any SS guards recant their testimonies?

3) Did any Revisionists get in touch with any of the SS who gave this testimony before they passed away?

4) Did any SS guards (at the camps in question) flat out deny the existence of gas chambers? (I know of Thies Christophersen but haven't read any of his work yet. Is any of it available online?)

Sources for any claims that are not undisputed would be much appreciated.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi, these are good questions but tough to answer. If there was a website that had the SS person's name, their testimony, and their bio, then that would be something to start with. Without that I do know of a revisionist take on the subject in the movie "One Third of the Holocaust" episodes 27 and 28, called "Confessing Germans" part 1 and 2.
http://www.holocaustdenialvideos.com/on ... caust.html

The bartender that Claude Lanzman interviews would be one of those people. Eichman would be a major one, as would Konrad Morgen.

[SevenUp]

Well, there's good news and bad news. First the bad news, there was a trial in Berlin of the Sachsenhausen commandant and 20 or so camp guards, and the commandant, Anton Kaindl, confessed to building a gas chamber and gassing prisoners.

The good news, from the denier perspective, is that at the trial the operation of the gas chamber was described in detail including the method of using shower pipes to pipe the gas into the shower room. Since the claims of gas chambers in Germany proper have been abandoned, and the method of using the shower pipes to pipe gas into a gas chamber has also been abandoned (to be replaced by throwing in tins on Zyklon pellets), this trial can now be seen to be a hoax.

There is a brief description of the trial, with pictures, at www.holohoax101.com/103/ and more info on scrapbookpages.com

[Balsamo]

there is a DVD of the Frankfurt trials

[Kingfisher]

Welcome Dan.

but I have to concede that many testimonies put together, and most of all the fact that none of them seem to have recanted said testimony even after being set free, is at least strong circumstantial evidence.

It depends how independent the testimonies are. Could they have colluded? Can some be derivative of others, or can they all have a common source? They all can be considered derivative of the established view at the time of their trial, and of everything that went before. Convergence is only confirmatory if the stories are entirely independent. Samuel Crowell (Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes) is very good on this aspect.

There can be good reasons for "confessing" to what the courts and their interrogators wanted to hear, other than maltreatment. Their lawyers would tell them it was a waste of time denying matters of common knowledge that the courts the court "took judicial notice of". (The same thing happened when David Irving was tried in Vienna. He followed his lawyer's advice and agreed the gas chamber at Auschwitz 1 was genuine, and told the court he "regretted his error"; if he hadn't he could have got 10 years instead of 3. He withdrew it after returning to England.) Some of the sentences were remarkably light, suggesting plea bargaining. Of course they would not recant later or they could be rearrested for denying the holocaust. The bartender CCS referred to is a case in point. He clearly has no intention of talking.

Sorry not to give detailed references but I'm sure more knowledgeable posters can.

How did you come to get done in Sweden? I didn't think they had anti-denial laws.

[Kingfisher]

Sevenup,

First the bad news, there was a trial in Berlin of the Sachsenhausen commandant and 20 or so camp guards, and the commandant, Anton Kaindl, confessed to building a gas chamber and gassing prisoners.

Can't this be good news? I understood that, as there were no gas chambers anywhere in the old Reich, Sachsenhausen was now debunked. So we have 20 plus eyewitnesses for something the mainstream agrees never happened.

[Dan B]

Thank you for your contributions. To summarize:

"One Third of the Holocaust" takes the obvious approach of examining some of the most important SS testimonies (Gerstein, Suchomel and Eichmann) and demolishes them quite effectively in my opinion.

Follow-up question: What other SS testimonies have actually been used in Exterminationist literature?

The Sachsenhausen trial in Berlin doesn't really prove anything in either direction, since Exterminationists are now claiming that gassings did occur on a small scale (for instance, http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/ ... ausen.html). I find their claims pretty hollow, to say the least, and it's quite suspicious that the SS would use an entirely different gassing technology for Sachsenhausen than for other camps. But of course, demolishing this claim entirely would require taking a look at the details of the testimonies from the Berlin/Sachsenhausen trial -- and conveniently enough for Exterminationists (unless I'm completely mistaken on this?) the Soviet trials didn't keep any actual records of the testimonies.

Follow-up question: Does anyone know a source where the records from the Soviet trials (or at least the judges' summaries of the trials, if I am right in believing no actual testimonies were preserved by the Soviets) are available online?

Also, again, I would like any info at all which you can point me to regarding these testimonies: "we have the testimony of nineteen SS men tried in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1963 to 1965; and we have that of Baer and Dejaco and seven other SS men, questioned as witnesses, who admitted having seen the Birkenau gas chambers functioning."

Who were those nineteen SS men, who were those seven SS men, and can you tell me anything about Baer and Dejaco? I will try to search myself tomorrow as far as time permits, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dan B]

Welcome Dan.

but I have to concede that many testimonies put together, and most of all the fact that none of them seem to have recanted said testimony even after being set free, is at least strong circumstantial evidence.

It depends how independent the testimonies are. Could they have colluded? Can some be derivative of others, or can they all have a common source? They all can be considered derivative of the established view at the time of their trial, and of everything that went before. Convergence is only confirmatory if the stories are entirely independent. Samuel Crowell (Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes) is very good on this aspect.

There can be good reasons for "confessing" to what the courts and their interrogators wanted to hear, other than maltreatment. Their lawyers would tell them it was a waste of time denying matters of common knowledge that the courts the court "took judicial notice of". (The same thing happened when David Irving was tried in Vienna. He followed his lawyer's advice and agreed the gas chamber at Auschwitz 1 was genuine, and told the court he "regretted his error"; if he hadn't he could have got 10 years instead of 3. He withdrew it after returning to England.) Some of the sentences were remarkably light, suggesting plea bargaining. Of course they would not recant later or they could be rearrested for denying the holocaust. The bartender CCS referred to is a case in point. He clearly has no intention of talking.

Sorry not to give detailed references but I'm sure more knowledgeable posters can.

How did you come to get done in Sweden? I didn't think they had anti-denial laws.

Good points. However, if there are many SS testimonies (I would really like to know names and details here) I would think that at least some of them would have recanted later, or maybe left a little note behind in an envelope to be opened after their deaths. Problem is, I don't have those names and details yet, and I would like to have as much information as possible on them.

We don't have anti-denial laws as such in Sweden, but we do have a law against "inciting racial hatred" (hets mot folkgrupp) which is so loosely formulated it can pretty much be bent to convict anyone they wish to make an example of. In principle, you can get up to four years in prison, but as far as I know no one has been sentenced to more than two years, perhaps not even that much.

[Barncat]

I agree that it is odd that SS men did not recant their coerced testimony.
There is no other historical event, to my knowledge, that exacted such
extreme compliance - indeed, lifelong cooperation with mendacity.

Even persecuted Soviets often resisted the system and risked death or
worse.

I believe that these innocent SS men did not recant because they were so
ashamed of themselves for their coerced lies that they simply avoided any
return to the perjured testimony.

For example:

Testimony of SS Oberscharführer Heinrich Matthes, chief officer commanding T-II and of the gas chambers:

During the entire time I was in Treblinka, I served in the upper camp. The upper camp was that part of Treblinka with the gas chambers, where the Jews were killed and their corpses laid in large pits and later burned.
About fourteen Germans carried out services in the upper camp. There were two Ukrainians permanently in the upper camp. One of them was called Nikolai, the other was a short man, I don't remember his name... These two Ukrainians who lived in the upper camp served in the gas chambers. They also took care of the engine room when Fritz Schmidt was absent. Usually this Schmidt was in charge of the engine room. In my opinion, as a civilian he was either a mechanic or a driver...

All together, six gas chambers were active. According to my estimate, about 300 people could enter each gas chamber. The people went into the gas chamber without resistance. Those who were at the end, the Ukrainian guards had to push inside. I personally saw how the Ukrainians pushed the people with their rifle butts...

The gas chambers were closed for about thirty minutes. Then Schmidt stopped the gassing, and the two Ukrainians who were in the engine room opened the gas chambers from the other side.59

We have the above testimony despite the likelyhood that Treblinka did not even exist.
Would Mathes have been apt to recant or to shamefully avoid the thought of how badly
history and the Jews had abused him?

For more on the theory that Treblinka did not even exist, check out "The Falseness of
the Reinhard Camps" - a thread started by Kurland that offers a radical revisionist
perspective. It is still listed on the first page of our forum, Dan B, and welcome.

[Malle]

Also, again, I would like any info at all which you can point me to regarding these testimonies: "we have the testimony of nineteen SS men tried in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1963 to 1965; and we have that of Baer and Dejaco and seven other SS men, questioned as witnesses, who admitted having seen the Birkenau gas chambers functioning."

Hi Dan and welcome. As Balsamo suggested, the DVD from the Frankfurt Auschwitz Process contains lot of information on for example Baer if you read and understand German. As I understand it, it’s ONLY excerpts from the trial, not the complete trial. How convenient.

Some small notes from Thomas Kues about Baer:

Richard Baer (b. 1911) was commandant of Auschwitz I from May 11, 1944 and of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) from the end of 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. After the war he lived near Hamburg under the assumed name Carl Neumann, working as a forester. He was arrested on December 21, 1960, and soon became the main prosecuted at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, then in preparation. Baer however never testified before the court, since he died in his prison cell in June 1963. The cause of death is variously given by historians as “natural causes” or “circulatory ailments,” but the autopsy did not rule out “ingestion of an odorless, non-corrosive poison” (cf. W. Stäglich, Auschwitz: A judge looks at the evidence, pp. 233-5). According to a brief article in the French right-wing newspaper Rivarol Baer had denied any knowledge of homicidal gas chambers during his pre-trial interrogations.
http://www.codoh.com/newrevoices/nrtkdecease.html

And from Walter Lüftl about the trial Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl 1972:

Question: Is this the reason why the files of the trial described here cannot be found?
http://www.vho.org/tr/2004/3/Lueftl294f.html

Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl were acquitted and no trial records seem to be found. How can anyone claim that Dejaco admitted that he was an eyewitness to the Birkenau gas chambers?

[SevenUp]

The Sachsenhausen trial in Berlin doesn't really prove anything in either direction, since Exterminationists are now claiming that gassings did occur on a small scale (for instance, http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/ ... ausen.html)..... But of course, demolishing this claim entirely would require taking a look at the details of the testimonies from the Berlin/Sachsenhausen trial.

From scrapbookpages.com on the Sachsenhausen trial ...

On the second day of the proceedings, a film made in 1946 by the Soviets, entitled "Sachsenhausen Death Camp," was shown in the courtroom. Similar to the film made by the Americans at Dachau, the Sachsenhausen movie showed how poison gas was introduced into the gas chamber through large pipes with control wheels. The Sachsenhausen gas chamber was disguised as a shower room, just like the gas chamber at Dachau, and the pipes resembled water pipes going into a real shower room. Paul Sakowski was shown in the film, as he explained how the gas flowed through the pipes.

The Dachau film showed exactly the same method of administering the gas at the Dachau hoax gas chamber, the film is available online on PBS. This shower room is still in existence but the hoaxers were not able to dream up a method whereby shower pipes could be used to pump gas into the shower room, and this absurd hoax was abandoned. Theoretically you could examine the pipes at Dachau and you would find out that they are real shower pipes; there is no lack of actual physical evidence of the hoax, but you will not be permitted to examine it in this instance. At Dachau the pipes hoax was replaced by the equally absurd hoax that Zyklon pellets were tossed directly into the shower room. Even that particular hoax has been abandoned at Dachau, and it is admitted that there is no 'credible evidence' that anyone was gassed in the shower room. But the point is that the method of pumping gas into a shower room through the shower pipes was preposterous to begin with and has been abandoned. Yet, at the Sachsenhausen trial they confessed that this was the method used to gas prisoners. Thus, the trial was an obvious hoax and the confessions false.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi SevenUp: Yes, I think one thing you're trying to say is Zyklon B was never used in accordance with pipes. How this ties in with the original post, is that if that was alleged in a Sachsenhausen trial, then what are the SS who testified going to say regarding that.

[SevenUp]

Hi SevenUp: Yes, I think one thing you're trying to say is Zyklon B was never used in accordance with pipes. How this ties in with the original post, is that if that was alleged in a Sachsenhausen trial, then what are the SS who testified going to say regarding that.

I just checked, and the film Sashenhausen Death Camp movie, the one shown in the trial, is still being shown .... but not online.... at

http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/museumspaedagogik/paedagogik02.htm

This movie is no doubt exactly like the British Dachau movie which can be seen on the "Memory of the Camps" PBS website. This movie shows the valves and pipes in the control room for the shower and says that they were used to control the flow of gas into the shower. The clip shown on the scrapbookpages site shows a pipe and valve just like the ones in the Dachau movie.

So, at the Sachsenhausen trial the witnesses testified, either at the trial or in the movie shown at the trial, that the gas was sent into the gas chamber via the shower pipes. Just like at Dachau. But, this is absurd. Therefore, the trial was a hoax and the confessions phony.

Scrapbookpages has a blog where he tells what happened to the defendants in the comments section ..... not pretty ....

http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/ ... senhausen/

Also, as scrapbookpages notes, at the Soviet trials the confessions came first, then the trial. No confession, no trial. What the SS would have said after the trial is of no consequence, as their testimony was demonstrably absurd.

[The Warden]

I don't think my comment warrants a new thread, but reading through the link provided by sevenup, it stated:

The photo above shows a booth behind the wall where a stick for measuring height was mounted. The executioner stood in the booth and shot POWs through a slit in the wall. Eight thousand Soviet POWs were executed in this manner at Buchenwald, according to the Memorial Site, which I visited in 1999. After each POW was executed, the floor had to be cleaned before the next POW was shot
http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/ ... senhausen/

Really?

[Lohengrin]

Hello Dan, Welcome.

I will try to give you some answers on the questions you made.

Yes, I know of some SS-men who recanted earlier "confessions" about gassing. One of those is Wilhelm Pfannenstiel known as the man who 'verified' for German 'Justice' the Gerstein statement. He wrote a letter to Paul Rassinier, in which he stated: "Your assumption about the origin of his [Gerstein's] statement - that incredible piece of filth - in which inventions exceed by far the truth is in my opinion very correct."
Pfannenstiel insisted to not make his reaction public because of the imminent persecution of former accused and 'witnesses' not to recant their statements to not for a second (or third) time to be convicted by 'Justice'.
(You can find some information of this in "NS Bewaltigung. Deutsche Schreibtischtater" Historische Tatsachen No. 5, Historical Review Press, Brighton 1977, p. 20, from W. Staglich and U. Walendy.)

Another example of 'recant' is that of Jupp Aschenbrenner, who signed a document (in Russian which he did not understand) in which he confessed to have worked in a "gas van". In 1954 he was able to prove that at the time he was in Munchen. (You can find this also in Solzjenitsyn, The Goelag Archipelago.)

The case of Baer I suppose sufficiently known on this forum.

About the nonsensical claims about Sachsenhausen (in very short) this: the Sachsenhausen "gas chamber" is a dirty Soviet fake from beginning till end.
Gerhart Schirmer, an officer of the Bundeswehr, was after the War 10 years in Sachsenhausen as a prisoner of the Soviets. (The Soviets called this camp Spezial Lager Nr. 7)
He declared under oath in a notarial certificate that he and 7 other prisoners in October-November 1945 by order of the Soviets, build a "Gas chamber" and a "genickschuss anlage" (neck-shot installation) in a shower room. (Schirmer, Colonel Gerhart. Sachsenhausen-Workuta. Zehn Jahre in den Fangen der Sowjets). He gave numerous details of this fakery, including the guided tours of high Soviet authorities and military officers (of which many doubted the veracity of the facilities showed!) [Schirmers book is in 2002 forbidden by German 'Justice'. He was accused of "racial Hatred"(!!!) and could choose between a long-term in prison or a very high fine. He choose paying the fine, because he was 90 years old, 10 years of his life in a Soviet prison and not willing to go again in jail in 'democratic' Germania Absurdistan.]
No "gas chamber and "genickschuss anlage" other than brutal fake in Sachsenhausen!

By the way, this in 'Holocaust circles highly popular "genickschuss anlage" is also to be seen in Buchenwald. O yea, of course, only to be found in camps taken over by the Soviets, because of the KGB, which had a very popular custom called "8 grams of lead in the neck", by which they use to murder hundreds of thousands of their own folk.

Finally something about "confessions" and not recanting of SS-men in the Sixties of the past Century.
Those 'processes' were nothing else than an attempt to create "proof" for 'the Holocaust'. Until then, there wasn't any proof at all for 'mass gassing', nope, so they had to be proved yet.
The first thing accused were told (most of them were earlier in prison in Soviet territory and had build up a proper civilian career already) was that 'the Holocaust' in the Courts eyes was "common knowledge" ('juridical notice') and denying to be absolute senseless. On the contrary, denying would be regarded as an extra crime and should undoubtedly lead to very high punishments.
In this way, the first part of the "confession" was already scored by the prosecution and the Holocaust Mafia.
In the second place, cooperation and subjection were abundantly rewarded, see the many acquittals, early releases and very, very mild sentences.
In the third place, the accused - if they ware sensible - "confessed" that they "saw" the mass gassing, but. . . , but they themselves did nothing wrong, because other colleagues (what a pity, nearly all of those already dead or missing) did all the dirty work.
What a good chance! The accused happy (they get off with a fright) and the prosecutors happy (at last they now got 'proof' of 'the Holocaust')!
Before leaving, the accused was threatened to be jailed still if (only if) he dared to recant or criticize his "confession" later.

O yea, he who thinks any of the accused would feel the slightest desire to tell the truth at last, is not of this world and knows nothing of "justice" in Germany nowadays.