The BBC’s Oskar Groening “I Saw the Gas Chambers” Lie
The announcement that former SS so-called “Auschwitz bookkeeper” Oskar Groening will go on trial on April 21, 2014, in Germany, has allowed the mass media—and the BBC in particular—to recycle yet another old hoary lie on the topic: namely that he said in a documentary that he had “seen the gas chambers.”
The BBC’s breathless coverage of Groening’s court date, as contained in their article of February 2, 2015, titled “Trialdate set for 'Auschwitz bookkeeper' Groening” is clearly designed to be an attempt to beat back the growing Holocaust revisionist tide.
The BBC article, in a sub-heading called “I saw the gas chambers,” tells its readers that:
“Groening, who began work at Auschwitz aged 21, does not deny witnessing the mass killing at Auschwitz. In 2005 he told the BBC: "I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place."I would like you to believe these atrocities happened—because I was there."
The documentary to which this article refers is the six-episode “Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution'” produced by the BBC and distributed all over the world.
As usual with these sorts of Holocaust stories, the truth is very far from reality.
Groening was a lower-ranking SS man at Auschwitz—but in the BBC documentary, he actually never used the words “gas chambers.”
This is a complete fiction, a made-up insertion.
This overt lie was first pointed out by an alert viewer of the program from Portugal, one A. S. Marques, in a letter to historian David Irving, which was published on the latter’s website.
Marques’ masterful treatment of the “Groening confession” lie cannot be bettered, so here it is, verbatim, asoriginally published:
A. S. Marques of Portugal has spotted, Saturday, April 16, 2005, how BBC producer Laurence Rees faked what a German "eye-witness of gas chambers" actually said.
What Gröning actually said
I HAVE just read the article "The fight against Holocaust denial" by Raffi Berg, quoted by your site from BBC News. In that article, we read the following:
"The fear that deniers could gain the upper hand led an SS camp guard, Oskar Gröning, to break a lifetime of silence earlier this year in a BBC documentary, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. ‘I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place,' said Mr Gröning, now in his 80s. 'I would like you to believe these atrocities happened— because I was there.'"
Mr. Berg's quote is intriguing. I happen to have not only watched, but also tape-recorded, the BBC documentary he mentions, when it was broadcast last March 8 [2005] on the Portuguese channel RTP-2, in its original English version subtitled in Portuguese, and I was struck by the contradiction between the subtitles and the actual words one can hear in the film.
They differ in one important detail from what one can distinctly hear, both in the German words spoken by Gröning and their superposed English translation.
The Portuguese subtitles, like Mr. Berg's quote, follow what I gather to be the BBC-distributed text that one can findhere (Groening speaking):
"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the gas chambers, I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits—and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there."
Now here are the actual words one gets in the English superposed commentary, which is a faithful translation of the German words one is also able to hear beneath the English:
"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits—and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there."
Spot the difference.
Tough luck. Back to Höss's "confessions" (never mind Richard Baer or Arthur Liebehenschel) and, of course, the Germans that also confessed to have seen the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: Hans Stark (10 years for gassing Jews, under juvenile law due to his age, in the Frankfurt 1963-65 "Auschwitz Trial") and Pery Broad (5 years, same trial)...
A. S. Marques
Lisbon, Portugal.
Here is the actual interview as it appeared on the BBC documentary, where Groening’s actual words can be heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... VfFHJE0e1g Once again, we have a classic case of outright lies, combined with a “don’t-deny-it-happened-but-I-was-not-involved” type confession, the sort of which I detailed in Chapter 8: The Psychology of Confessions in The Six Million: Fact orFiction.
Critically, Groening talked about his time at the camp, but denies ever having committed any murders or atrocities himself.
Equally critically, he would of course have seen crematoria, and cremations—these were installations at every single German concentration camp.
The existence of crematoria does not, however, “prove” a mass extermination program, and it is clear that Groening was talked into making his remarks in some type of belief that he would not be prosecuted if he admitted being at the camp.
Now, however, he will soon regret having been willing to comment at all, because his appearance on the BBC documentary, and his resultant “fame” has landed him in court facing no less than 300,000 murder charges.
The only logical—and best—defense against this incredible charge, is of course to show that there were no mass exterminations.
However, unfortunately for Groening—and he has played along with the game, never thinking it would land him in court—this obvious, and only, real defense is illegal in Germany.
Groening now has talked himself into a serious court case, in which his only real defense is against the law. He will have little alternative except to accept that there was a mass extermination program, but claim that he had nothing to do with it.
