In early 1945 the Soviets had no physical evidence, documentary evidence, or eye-witness statements that mass-murder had occurred at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
No foreign experts were allowed into Birkenau because the Soviets had no documentary evidence of mass murders, even though they had 127,000 documents, including the Death Books.
The 1945 Soviet War Crimes Commission report contains not one allegation from interviewed inmates about mass-murders. For example Hungarian inmate Anna Keppich described the arrival of 3,000 Hungarian prisoners, but nothing about mass murders.
Why havn't Revisionists written more about these facts?
http://globalfire.tv/nj/05en/history/gosh_meyer.htm
No Soviet evidence or eye-witnesses at Birkenau in 1945
Moderator: Moderator
Forum rules
Be sure to read the Rules/guidelines before you post!
Be sure to read the Rules/guidelines before you post!
theTRUTH wrote: The 1945 Soviet War Crimes Commission report contains not one allegation from interviewed inmates about mass-murders. For example Hungarian inmate Anna Keppich described the arrival of 3,000 Hungarian prisoners, but nothing about mass murders.
Why havn't Revisionists written more about these facts?
I don’t know.
If there really were no homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz/Birkenau, there must be thousands of survivors who could testify to this.
But to my knowledge nobody did.
And I myself really don’t believe in the idea of a conspiracy on this.
Maybe Paul Eisen got it right when he wrote in ‘The Holocaust Wars’:
The first reports of the mass slaughter of Jews by the Germans were propagated in the spring of 1942 by Jewish and Zionist agencies and published in the Jewish press. These entirely uncorroborated reports received immediate and unmatched credibility by being broadcast (on one occasion in Yiddish) back into Poland by the BBC, and by repetition in the American press, particularly the New York Times.
If I were an inmate in Auschwitz/Birkenau at that time, I would probably also have believed these stories, which were actually based on nothing but hearsay.
I would have believed it and I would not have had any reason to speak up against these homicidal gas chambers.
Paul Rassinier who was an inmate in Buchenwald and who spoke up against the existence of homicidal gas chambers in that camp was an exceptional man, in my opinion.
A Pravda reporter who entered Auschwitz with the first Russian troops reported that the main instrument of death at the camp was the conveyor belt of death, whereby inmates were laid on the belt and electrocuted as they went along, their bodies being tossed at the end of the belt into a great furnace.
Unfortunately no photographs exist of this conveyor belt of death, nor of the furnace.
At the time death by gassing was number 6 on the list of means of death.
Unfortunately no photographs exist of this conveyor belt of death, nor of the furnace.
At the time death by gassing was number 6 on the list of means of death.
-
Richard Perle
- Valuable asset
- Posts: 647
- Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2005 9:45 am
Found this on the CODOH site some time back. Just tried the link but it seems to be inactive.
The First Press Report From Auschwitz
Translated from the Russian with commentary by Samuel Crowell
THE ARGUMENT BETWEEN REVISIONISTS AND NON-REVISIONISTS
is that the Nazi record of atrocity, though no doubt
based in fact, contains significant amounts of
fiction. It follows therefore that we should analyze
the record of these alleged atrocities not only as
fact, but also as fiction. Whether fact or fiction,
any German atrocity claim should be placed in its
proper historical context so that the researcher can
understand either how the facts came to be known or
how the fiction evolved in the popular mind.
The first press reporting on the Auschwitz Birkenau
camp is therefore bound to be of interest to
historians, regardless of how they regard the
Auschwitz claims. The following article, by Boris
Polevoi, was originally published on Friday, February
2, 1945, in the Soviet national paper Pravda, less
than a week after the camp had been liberated (January
27, 1945), and a full three months before the official
Soviet report on Auschwitz (May 6, 1945), known by its
designation at the International Military Tribunal
(IMT) as USSR-08.
What is most striking about this press report is
that it is totally at variance with the version of
Auschwitz that we have come to know, substituting the
traditional atrocity record with another, completely
imaginary one. That the first non-anonymous observer
at the Auschwitz camp could be so far from the current
narrative speaks not only to the inaccuracy of this
initial report, but also to the artifice of all
subsequent ones.
THE FACTORY OF DEATH AT AUSCHWITZ [1]
IT WILL TAKE WEEKS of long and careful investigations
by special commissions before a full picture of the
truly unparalleled German outrages at Auschwitz is
established. What is noted here are only the outlines
coming from a first glance acquaintanceship with the
site of the monstrous outrages of the Hitlerite
hangmen.
The name of the town "Auschwitz" has long been a
synonym for bloody German atrocities in the lexicon of
the peoples of the world. Few of its prisoners escaped
the fires of its notorious "ovens." [2] From behind
the wire of its numerous camps only a phantom echo had
filtered of the wails from the lips of its thousands
of prisoners. Only now, when the troops of the First
Ukrainian Front had liberated Auschwitz, was it
possible to see with one's own eyes the entirety of
this terrible camp, in which many of its tens of
square kilometers of fields were soaked in human
blood, and literally fertilized with human ash.
The first thing that strikes one about Auschwitz,
and which distinguishes it from other known camps, is
its enormous expanse. The territory of the camp
occupied tens of square kilometers and in recent years
had grown to absorb the towns of Makowice, Babice, and
others.
It was an enormous industrial plant, having its own
branch facilities, each of which received its own
special charge. In one, the processing of the arrivals
took place: prisoners were made of those who, before
death, could be put to work, while the elderly, the
children, and the infirm were sentenced to immediate
extermination. In another, a division for those who
were so exhausted and worn out as to be barely fit for
physical labor, they were assigned the task sorting
the clothes of the exterminated, and of sorting their
shoes, taking apart uppers, soles, linings. It is fair
to say that all prisoners entering the branches of the
industrial plant were to be killed and burned, either
by being killed outright or through the many ordeals
of confinement.
Around this industrial plant enormous fields and
enclosures were established in the Sola and Vistula
river valleys. The remains of the prisoners, burned in
the "ovens", had their ash and bones crushed in
rolling mills and converted to meal, and this meal
went to the fields and enclosures.
Auschwitz! Impartial commissions will establish the
precise number of the people killed or tortured to
death here. But already we can assert, based on
discussions with Poles, that in 1941-1942 and at the
beginning of 1943 five to eight trains of people
arrived every day, indeed on some days so many came
that the station could not handle them.
The people came from the surrounding territories
occupied by the Germans, from the USSR, from Poland,
from France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The wagons
were tightly packed with people and were always
locked. At the station, the Polish railway workers
were replaced by a crew from the camp, which included
several special railway detachments. The wagons would
disappear behind the gates and return empty. In the
first four years of the camp's existence the railway
workers did not see a single wagon coming back from
the camp carrying people.
Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world
the terrible and abominable secrets of Majdanek, the
Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe out the traces of
their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called
"old" [3] graves in the Eastern [4] part of the camp,
tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric
conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were
simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto
the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to
the top of the blast furnace [5] where they fell in,
were completely burned, their bones converted to meal
in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding
fields.
In retreat were taken the special transportable
apparatuses for killing children. The stationary gas
chambers in the eastern part of the camp were
restructured, even little turrets and other
architectural embellishments were added so that they
would look like innocent garages.
But even so one can see the traces of the murder of
millions of people! From the stories of prisoners,
liberated by the Red Army, it is not difficult to make
out all that the Germans tried so carefully to
conceal. This gigantic industrial plant of death was
equipped with the last word in fascist technology and
was furnished with all of the instruments of torture
which the German monsters could devise.
In the first years of the camp, the Germans
maintained only a cottage industry of death [6]: they
simply led prisoners to a large open pit, forced them
to lie down and shot them in the back of the head.
When one layer was full, the next would be forced to
lie down head-to-foot on the layer below. And so was
filled the second layer, and the third, and the fourth
... When the grave was full, to make sure that all of
the people were dead, it was raked with submachine gun
fire several times, while those for whom there was no
room in the grave covered it up. Thus were filled
hundreds of enormous pits in the eastern part of the
camp, which bore the name of the "old" graves.
The German hangmen, noting the primitiveness of this
method of killing, decided to increase the
productivity of the industrial plant of death by
mechanizing it, leading to the gas chambers, the
electric conveyor belt, the construction of the blast
furnace for burning bodies and the so-called "ovens."
But for the prisoners of Auschwitz death itself was
not the most terrible thing. The German sadists,
before killing their confinees, tormented them with
hunger, cold, 18 hour days, and monstrous punishments.
They showed me leather-covered steel rods that they
used to be beat the confinees. On the handle -- the
mark of the Krupp factory in Dresden. These articles
were produced on an industrial scale. I saw, in
facilities in the southern part of the camp, benches
with straps on which people were beaten to death. They
were covered with zinc so the blood of the victims
could be washed off: the hangmen had a care for
hygiene! I saw a specially constructed oaken chair, in
which people were killed, after having had their backs
broken. I saw massive rubber truncheons, all bearing
the stamp of the Krupp factory, with which the
confinees were beaten about the head and genitals.
I saw thousands of martyrs at Auschwitz -- people,
so worn out that they swayed like shadows in the wind,
people, whose age it was impossible to determine.
The Red Army saved them, and pulled them from hell.
They honor the Red Army as the avengers for Auschwitz,
for Majdanek, and for all the pain and suffering which
the fascist hangmen have brought to the people of
Europe.
B. Polevoi
at Auschwitz (by wire)
Comments: As noted above, Polevoi's narrative has
nothing in common with the Soviet Special Commission
on Auschwitz, issued three months later on May 6,
1945. That report, in turn, would show the influence
of the War Refugee Board (WRB) Report of November 26,
1945, issued in Washington, D.C. An obvious inference
is that the Soviet Auschwitz narrative was revised
subsequent to this report to make it harmonize with
the various anonymous messages which comprised the WRB
report. Nevertheless, Polevoi's report shows other
influences and connections.
1. The concept of the "factory of death" is today
well-known in the Holocaust literature, but
appears to have its beginnings here. That concept
in turn seems clearly linked to Russian, Soviet,
and Western symbolism rejecting the industrial
factory system, cf. the short stories of Anton
Chekhov or various writings of Maxim Gorky.
2. The somewhat fantastic concept of fertilizing the
ground with the ash of crematees was a common
notion, compare Huxley's Brave New World, and
usually went hand in hand with a rejection of
cremation as a means of disposal of the dead, a
means which was gradually re-emerging at this
time. In World War Two propaganda, it seems to
have been mentioned first by the Soviets in
connection with the liberation of Majdanek in
August, 1944.
3. The concept of the Germans "wiping out the traces
of their crimes" goes back, paradoxically, to the
Katyn Forest revelations of 1943, when the
Germans exhumed the bodies of 4,400 Polish
officers slain there by the NKVD. At the time the
Soviets claimed that the Germans had dug up the
remains of the Polish officers, taken them to
Katyn, gone through their pockets, planted
documents, reburied them, planted trees over
them, and then dug them up again, all in order to
embarrass the Soviet Union. (A Soviet Special
Commission attesting to these claims was later
submitted "as a fact of common knowledge" at the
International Military Tribunal.)
4. Having thus established the principle of the
Germans' crafty plotting, the Soviets would then
apply the same thinking to many other cases in
order to explain, not the presence of forensic
remains, but rather their absence: at Krasnodar
(July, 1943), Kharkov (September, 1943), Babi Yar
(November, 1943), and Majdanek (August, 1944).
5. It need hardly be mentioned that the "electric
conveyor belt" has no place in any subsequent
Auschwitz narratives, but, at the time, it was
commonly believed that the Germans had massacred
millions of people in large electric chambers at
Belzec and elsewhere.
6. The "blast furnace" into which the people would
fall and be burned does not appear in any
previous propaganda, to our knowledge. However,
it is mentioned in one version of the "Gerstein
Statement", composed by a former SS hygienist
(and thus Zyklon B handler) three months later,
at then end of April, beginning of May, 1945. The
"blast furnace" trope in turn probably looks back
to such anti-industrial metaphors as the "Moloch"
scene in Fritz Lang's silent film classic,
"Metropolis" (1925).
7. The "special transportable apparatuses for
killing children" are probably references to gas
vans, their special utilization for that purpose
first attested at the Krasnodar-Kharkov trials in
1943. While the documentary evidence for these
vans seems relatively decent, no one has ever
located one; Gerald Fleming, in his Hitler and
the Final Solution, reproduces a photo of a van
alleged to be a gas van in the hands of a
post-war Polish commission, the present location
of the vehicle is unknown. Their usage is not
attested at Auschwitz today.
8. The "stationary gas chambers" is apparently a
reference to either the delousing stations BW 5/A
and 5/B at Birkenau, or else Crematoria IV and V.
If the latter, the ornamental turrets might be a
reference to the "gasdichte Tuerme" (probably
chimneys with gas protection features) with which
those crematoria were known to be equipped. But
if the reference is to Crematoria IV and V, that
contradicts current lore, which holds that the
Germans destroyed the crematoria before
retreating in order to "wipe out the traces of
their crimes."
9. The reference to the "gas chambers" as "garages"
("garazhi") was a characterization first made of
the "gas chambers" at Majdanek, which were
actually delousing chambers equipped with air
raid shelter doors to give them an additional
civil defense and decontamination function. The
"garage" characterization would also resurface in
the "Gerstein Statement", noted above. While
there are no doubt significant remains located in
the Auschwitz area, no mass graves of the type
described in the text have ever been located.
Notes: Throughout I have used the same word for terms,
thus "palacha" is always "hangmen", "zlodeyanie" is
always "outrage" (the more typical term for "crime"
being "prestuplenie"), "prisoner" for "uznik", but
"confinee" for "zakliuchenniy", and so forth, with one
exception. The word "kombinat" in the title is
translated as "factory" although the sense of the word
is of an industrial plant, and it is in the latter
sense that it is translated throughout the rest of the
article.
1. "Kombinat smerti v Osventsime", Pravda, 2 Feb 45,
p. 4. The Polish Historical Society is credited
with re-discovering this article.
2. "kaminakh", lit., "fireplaces", the quotation
marks are in the original whenever this word is
used.
3. "starykh", lit., "old", the quotation marks are
in the original.
4. "vostochnyi", and throughout Polevoi designates
"East", although strictly speaking there was no
Eastern extremity of the camp, Birkenau lay to
the North-West of the Auschwitz Stammlager and
the crematoria were at the western extremity of
that camp.
5. "shakhtnyi pech", lit., "shaft oven", possibly
cognate to the German "Schachtofen", not
precisely a blast furnace but still a top-loading
furnace in the metallurgical industry.
6. Here we have allowed ourselves some liberties
with Polevoi's use of words in order to better
convey his sense. "Kustarnichali", the verb, from
"kustar", "handicraftsman", has connotations of
desultory muddling in Russian, but is more
typically encountered in the term "kustarnyi
promyshlennost", that is, "cottage industry";
such home manufacture, notorious for its
irregularity, being the principal means whereby
the Russian peasant supplemented his income.
Since Polevoi clearly wishes to contrast this
inefficient labor with the factory concept, we
have rendered the more frequent usage.
http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconosven2.html
The First Press Report From Auschwitz
Translated from the Russian with commentary by Samuel Crowell
THE ARGUMENT BETWEEN REVISIONISTS AND NON-REVISIONISTS
is that the Nazi record of atrocity, though no doubt
based in fact, contains significant amounts of
fiction. It follows therefore that we should analyze
the record of these alleged atrocities not only as
fact, but also as fiction. Whether fact or fiction,
any German atrocity claim should be placed in its
proper historical context so that the researcher can
understand either how the facts came to be known or
how the fiction evolved in the popular mind.
The first press reporting on the Auschwitz Birkenau
camp is therefore bound to be of interest to
historians, regardless of how they regard the
Auschwitz claims. The following article, by Boris
Polevoi, was originally published on Friday, February
2, 1945, in the Soviet national paper Pravda, less
than a week after the camp had been liberated (January
27, 1945), and a full three months before the official
Soviet report on Auschwitz (May 6, 1945), known by its
designation at the International Military Tribunal
(IMT) as USSR-08.
What is most striking about this press report is
that it is totally at variance with the version of
Auschwitz that we have come to know, substituting the
traditional atrocity record with another, completely
imaginary one. That the first non-anonymous observer
at the Auschwitz camp could be so far from the current
narrative speaks not only to the inaccuracy of this
initial report, but also to the artifice of all
subsequent ones.
THE FACTORY OF DEATH AT AUSCHWITZ [1]
IT WILL TAKE WEEKS of long and careful investigations
by special commissions before a full picture of the
truly unparalleled German outrages at Auschwitz is
established. What is noted here are only the outlines
coming from a first glance acquaintanceship with the
site of the monstrous outrages of the Hitlerite
hangmen.
The name of the town "Auschwitz" has long been a
synonym for bloody German atrocities in the lexicon of
the peoples of the world. Few of its prisoners escaped
the fires of its notorious "ovens." [2] From behind
the wire of its numerous camps only a phantom echo had
filtered of the wails from the lips of its thousands
of prisoners. Only now, when the troops of the First
Ukrainian Front had liberated Auschwitz, was it
possible to see with one's own eyes the entirety of
this terrible camp, in which many of its tens of
square kilometers of fields were soaked in human
blood, and literally fertilized with human ash.
The first thing that strikes one about Auschwitz,
and which distinguishes it from other known camps, is
its enormous expanse. The territory of the camp
occupied tens of square kilometers and in recent years
had grown to absorb the towns of Makowice, Babice, and
others.
It was an enormous industrial plant, having its own
branch facilities, each of which received its own
special charge. In one, the processing of the arrivals
took place: prisoners were made of those who, before
death, could be put to work, while the elderly, the
children, and the infirm were sentenced to immediate
extermination. In another, a division for those who
were so exhausted and worn out as to be barely fit for
physical labor, they were assigned the task sorting
the clothes of the exterminated, and of sorting their
shoes, taking apart uppers, soles, linings. It is fair
to say that all prisoners entering the branches of the
industrial plant were to be killed and burned, either
by being killed outright or through the many ordeals
of confinement.
Around this industrial plant enormous fields and
enclosures were established in the Sola and Vistula
river valleys. The remains of the prisoners, burned in
the "ovens", had their ash and bones crushed in
rolling mills and converted to meal, and this meal
went to the fields and enclosures.
Auschwitz! Impartial commissions will establish the
precise number of the people killed or tortured to
death here. But already we can assert, based on
discussions with Poles, that in 1941-1942 and at the
beginning of 1943 five to eight trains of people
arrived every day, indeed on some days so many came
that the station could not handle them.
The people came from the surrounding territories
occupied by the Germans, from the USSR, from Poland,
from France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The wagons
were tightly packed with people and were always
locked. At the station, the Polish railway workers
were replaced by a crew from the camp, which included
several special railway detachments. The wagons would
disappear behind the gates and return empty. In the
first four years of the camp's existence the railway
workers did not see a single wagon coming back from
the camp carrying people.
Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world
the terrible and abominable secrets of Majdanek, the
Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe out the traces of
their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called
"old" [3] graves in the Eastern [4] part of the camp,
tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric
conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were
simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto
the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to
the top of the blast furnace [5] where they fell in,
were completely burned, their bones converted to meal
in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding
fields.
In retreat were taken the special transportable
apparatuses for killing children. The stationary gas
chambers in the eastern part of the camp were
restructured, even little turrets and other
architectural embellishments were added so that they
would look like innocent garages.
But even so one can see the traces of the murder of
millions of people! From the stories of prisoners,
liberated by the Red Army, it is not difficult to make
out all that the Germans tried so carefully to
conceal. This gigantic industrial plant of death was
equipped with the last word in fascist technology and
was furnished with all of the instruments of torture
which the German monsters could devise.
In the first years of the camp, the Germans
maintained only a cottage industry of death [6]: they
simply led prisoners to a large open pit, forced them
to lie down and shot them in the back of the head.
When one layer was full, the next would be forced to
lie down head-to-foot on the layer below. And so was
filled the second layer, and the third, and the fourth
... When the grave was full, to make sure that all of
the people were dead, it was raked with submachine gun
fire several times, while those for whom there was no
room in the grave covered it up. Thus were filled
hundreds of enormous pits in the eastern part of the
camp, which bore the name of the "old" graves.
The German hangmen, noting the primitiveness of this
method of killing, decided to increase the
productivity of the industrial plant of death by
mechanizing it, leading to the gas chambers, the
electric conveyor belt, the construction of the blast
furnace for burning bodies and the so-called "ovens."
But for the prisoners of Auschwitz death itself was
not the most terrible thing. The German sadists,
before killing their confinees, tormented them with
hunger, cold, 18 hour days, and monstrous punishments.
They showed me leather-covered steel rods that they
used to be beat the confinees. On the handle -- the
mark of the Krupp factory in Dresden. These articles
were produced on an industrial scale. I saw, in
facilities in the southern part of the camp, benches
with straps on which people were beaten to death. They
were covered with zinc so the blood of the victims
could be washed off: the hangmen had a care for
hygiene! I saw a specially constructed oaken chair, in
which people were killed, after having had their backs
broken. I saw massive rubber truncheons, all bearing
the stamp of the Krupp factory, with which the
confinees were beaten about the head and genitals.
I saw thousands of martyrs at Auschwitz -- people,
so worn out that they swayed like shadows in the wind,
people, whose age it was impossible to determine.
The Red Army saved them, and pulled them from hell.
They honor the Red Army as the avengers for Auschwitz,
for Majdanek, and for all the pain and suffering which
the fascist hangmen have brought to the people of
Europe.
B. Polevoi
at Auschwitz (by wire)
Comments: As noted above, Polevoi's narrative has
nothing in common with the Soviet Special Commission
on Auschwitz, issued three months later on May 6,
1945. That report, in turn, would show the influence
of the War Refugee Board (WRB) Report of November 26,
1945, issued in Washington, D.C. An obvious inference
is that the Soviet Auschwitz narrative was revised
subsequent to this report to make it harmonize with
the various anonymous messages which comprised the WRB
report. Nevertheless, Polevoi's report shows other
influences and connections.
1. The concept of the "factory of death" is today
well-known in the Holocaust literature, but
appears to have its beginnings here. That concept
in turn seems clearly linked to Russian, Soviet,
and Western symbolism rejecting the industrial
factory system, cf. the short stories of Anton
Chekhov or various writings of Maxim Gorky.
2. The somewhat fantastic concept of fertilizing the
ground with the ash of crematees was a common
notion, compare Huxley's Brave New World, and
usually went hand in hand with a rejection of
cremation as a means of disposal of the dead, a
means which was gradually re-emerging at this
time. In World War Two propaganda, it seems to
have been mentioned first by the Soviets in
connection with the liberation of Majdanek in
August, 1944.
3. The concept of the Germans "wiping out the traces
of their crimes" goes back, paradoxically, to the
Katyn Forest revelations of 1943, when the
Germans exhumed the bodies of 4,400 Polish
officers slain there by the NKVD. At the time the
Soviets claimed that the Germans had dug up the
remains of the Polish officers, taken them to
Katyn, gone through their pockets, planted
documents, reburied them, planted trees over
them, and then dug them up again, all in order to
embarrass the Soviet Union. (A Soviet Special
Commission attesting to these claims was later
submitted "as a fact of common knowledge" at the
International Military Tribunal.)
4. Having thus established the principle of the
Germans' crafty plotting, the Soviets would then
apply the same thinking to many other cases in
order to explain, not the presence of forensic
remains, but rather their absence: at Krasnodar
(July, 1943), Kharkov (September, 1943), Babi Yar
(November, 1943), and Majdanek (August, 1944).
5. It need hardly be mentioned that the "electric
conveyor belt" has no place in any subsequent
Auschwitz narratives, but, at the time, it was
commonly believed that the Germans had massacred
millions of people in large electric chambers at
Belzec and elsewhere.
6. The "blast furnace" into which the people would
fall and be burned does not appear in any
previous propaganda, to our knowledge. However,
it is mentioned in one version of the "Gerstein
Statement", composed by a former SS hygienist
(and thus Zyklon B handler) three months later,
at then end of April, beginning of May, 1945. The
"blast furnace" trope in turn probably looks back
to such anti-industrial metaphors as the "Moloch"
scene in Fritz Lang's silent film classic,
"Metropolis" (1925).
7. The "special transportable apparatuses for
killing children" are probably references to gas
vans, their special utilization for that purpose
first attested at the Krasnodar-Kharkov trials in
1943. While the documentary evidence for these
vans seems relatively decent, no one has ever
located one; Gerald Fleming, in his Hitler and
the Final Solution, reproduces a photo of a van
alleged to be a gas van in the hands of a
post-war Polish commission, the present location
of the vehicle is unknown. Their usage is not
attested at Auschwitz today.
8. The "stationary gas chambers" is apparently a
reference to either the delousing stations BW 5/A
and 5/B at Birkenau, or else Crematoria IV and V.
If the latter, the ornamental turrets might be a
reference to the "gasdichte Tuerme" (probably
chimneys with gas protection features) with which
those crematoria were known to be equipped. But
if the reference is to Crematoria IV and V, that
contradicts current lore, which holds that the
Germans destroyed the crematoria before
retreating in order to "wipe out the traces of
their crimes."
9. The reference to the "gas chambers" as "garages"
("garazhi") was a characterization first made of
the "gas chambers" at Majdanek, which were
actually delousing chambers equipped with air
raid shelter doors to give them an additional
civil defense and decontamination function. The
"garage" characterization would also resurface in
the "Gerstein Statement", noted above. While
there are no doubt significant remains located in
the Auschwitz area, no mass graves of the type
described in the text have ever been located.
Notes: Throughout I have used the same word for terms,
thus "palacha" is always "hangmen", "zlodeyanie" is
always "outrage" (the more typical term for "crime"
being "prestuplenie"), "prisoner" for "uznik", but
"confinee" for "zakliuchenniy", and so forth, with one
exception. The word "kombinat" in the title is
translated as "factory" although the sense of the word
is of an industrial plant, and it is in the latter
sense that it is translated throughout the rest of the
article.
1. "Kombinat smerti v Osventsime", Pravda, 2 Feb 45,
p. 4. The Polish Historical Society is credited
with re-discovering this article.
2. "kaminakh", lit., "fireplaces", the quotation
marks are in the original whenever this word is
used.
3. "starykh", lit., "old", the quotation marks are
in the original.
4. "vostochnyi", and throughout Polevoi designates
"East", although strictly speaking there was no
Eastern extremity of the camp, Birkenau lay to
the North-West of the Auschwitz Stammlager and
the crematoria were at the western extremity of
that camp.
5. "shakhtnyi pech", lit., "shaft oven", possibly
cognate to the German "Schachtofen", not
precisely a blast furnace but still a top-loading
furnace in the metallurgical industry.
6. Here we have allowed ourselves some liberties
with Polevoi's use of words in order to better
convey his sense. "Kustarnichali", the verb, from
"kustar", "handicraftsman", has connotations of
desultory muddling in Russian, but is more
typically encountered in the term "kustarnyi
promyshlennost", that is, "cottage industry";
such home manufacture, notorious for its
irregularity, being the principal means whereby
the Russian peasant supplemented his income.
Since Polevoi clearly wishes to contrast this
inefficient labor with the factory concept, we
have rendered the more frequent usage.
http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconosven2.html
Some more on the Pravda reports from Udo Walendy.
THE SOVIET ‘DISCOVERIES’ IN AUSCHWITZ
By UDO WALENDY
The following has been excerpted from issue No. 31 in the series of
brochures (now over 70 in number) entitled Historische Tatsachcn
("historical facts") in which German history in the first half of the
20th century has been accorded the most thorough revisionist
reexamination achieved by any contemporary German historian. For several
decades, Udo Walendy was permitted to freely publish the results of his
research and analysis without undue harassment. However, in the wake of
the recent environment of anti-revisionist laws, and much to the
disgrace of the German judiciary and the entire German nation, Mr.
Walendy has been arraigned, found guilty of "inciting racial hatred" and
is currently incarcerated.
Start
On February 1 and 2,1945, the Soviet propaganda organ Pravda published
lengthy initial accounts of the findings of the Red Army upon its
occupation of the Auschwitz camp sites on January 27, 1945. These
initial reports and the treatment accorded them are of particular
significance for historical analysis, because they had not yet been
adapted to Allied propaganda of the time, at least not in detail. The
lengthiest first-hand report was published in the issue of February 2,
1945, and began in this manner:
City of Auschwitz—An impartial committee will investigate the accurate
number of people killed or tortured to death... After the Red Army
disclosed the horrible and
ing secrets of Majdanek [another
concentration camp—Ed.] before the world, the Germans in Auschwitz began
to remove the traces of their crimes. They leveled the burial mounds of
the so-called "old graves" in the eastern part of the camp. Likewise
they removed and destroyed all traces of the electric conveyor system,
where hundreds of people at one time were electrocuted.
The bodies fell onto a slow-moving transport belt, taking them to a
blast furnace. There they were burnt completely, the bones ground in a
roller mill and the remains spread on the fields as fertilizer. The
special mobile devices to kill children were relocated to the back
fields.
The stationary gas chambers in the east side of the camp were remodeled.
They were ornamented and decorated with little towers, placed on top of
the roof, so they looked like harmless garages.
But it is still possible to assemble traces of the murder of millions.
Based upon descriptions by prisoners liberated by the Red Army, it is
not difficult to verify everything the Germans tried so carefully to
keep secret. This huge death mill was equipped with the latest style of
fascist technology and supplied with all those testing devices which
only the German brutes are able to invent.
In the first years of the camp the Germans still performed
[inefficiently]. They simply led the prisoners to a pit and ordered them
to lie face down in the pit and shot them in the neck. After the first
row was murdered, the second was forced to lie on top of the first one
and was shot; then the third row and so forth. When the grave was full,
they shot again at the whole pile of dead people with automatic rifles,
just to make sure. The people who did not find room in the graves were
also shot and buried [sic]. In this way hundreds of huge graves were
filled in the eastern part of the camp. Customarily, these were termed
the "old graves."
Then the Germans recognized this procedure as being primitive and
decided to increase the productivity of the murder process. It was
mechanized; gas chambers, and electric conveyor systems were installed,
they built blast furnaces for cremation and so-called ‘chimneys."
But the most terrible thing for the prisoners in Auschwitz was not even
death. The sadistic Germans
(continued on Page 3)
[Birkenau]
Aerial photograph of Birkenau said to have been taken on August 25,
1944. Birkenau (named after a nearby Polish hamlet) was an extension of
Auschu’itz ordered by Reichfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler and was opened in
August 1942. In 1981 the British holocaust scholar and official
Churchill biographer, Martin Gilbert, published a detailed sketch map of
Birkenau. It designates "Gas Chamber and Crematorium II" through "Gas
Chamber and Crematorium V." The concentration camp was behind the Iron
Curtain at that time (1981), making it difficult for Western experts to
determine the actual function of the buildings seen in the photo and
sketch map.
Page 3
let them starve in the cold, while working 18 hours and
punished them most cruely. I was shown steel cudgels, covered
with leather, on the handles of which the factory brand "Krupp
Dresden" was engraved. These torture tools were manufactured
in mass production. To the south of the adjoining section, I
saw compartments with benches, covered with tin and leather
strips attached. On these, people were beaten to death. Tin
covering was used, so the blood of the victims could be washed
off. Fastidious henchmen caring about sanitation.
I saw a specially constructed chair with steel teeth to break
the back of the victim to be killed. I saw massive rubber
cudgels, all marked with the brand name "Krupp," with which
the heads and genitals of the prisoners were beaten.
I saw thousands of ghost-like wretches in Auschwitz, so
emaciated they staggered like shadows in the wind. They
praised the Red Army who had saved them and tore them away
from the hell, bringing revenge to the fascist henchmen for
Majdanek, Auschwitz, and for all the tortures and sufferings
caused to the people of Europe.
Polewoj (via telegram)
The Soviet "reporters" knew what was expected of them regarding their
communiques after taking the concentration camps. Anybody naive enough
to believe that the Soviets, in performing this "duty," were concerned
with "honesty and truth in reporting." should be reminded of the Soviet
record of always trying to avoid culpability for any misdeeds. 1
It is therefore not at all surprising that the Soviet reports on
Auschwitz were strictly in line with wartime atrocity propaganda, and
that they later, in spite of the obvious falsity, clung to them with
relentless perseverance.
Note that neither of the two Pravda articles examined here brings out a
single detail of what the Red Army really discovered when occupying the
camp. In the article of February 1, only the account of one former
prisoner from Auschwitz, identified as "Lukaschew, from the Woronesch
area," was offered; and this contained nothing but unprovable
statements—this is, at best, hearsay. Furthermore, this prisoner was not
even able to describe how and when the Germans performed these various
alleged atrocities.
In connection with the article in Pravda from February 2,1945, we do not
want to forget to quote the United Press correspondent, Henry Shapiro,
who obediently echoed the Soviets. Referring to the Pravda articles, he
wrote on February 2, 1945, in the Washington Daily News, the following:
"Ghosts" with undefinable age or sex freed from the death mill [quote
marks added—Ed.]. The semi-official [Soviet] newspaper Pravda reports
today that the Red Army has saved several thousand tortured, emaciated
inmates of the largest German murder factory in southwest Poland. They
all were of ghostlike appearance, nearly undefinable in their age or
sex, thrown to the ground at the slightest wind, as Pravda correspondent
Boris Polewoj reports.
Fragmentary reports say that at least 1.5 million people were killed in
Auschwitz, says Polewoj. During 1941, 1942 and early 1943, he says,
daily, five trains reached Auschwitz (continued on Page 4)
The October 17, 1943 front page of the leftist English newspaper The
People. The story at the bottom of the left column is beaded "Hitler
Murdered Three Million Jews in Europe." It said the figure was that of
"the Institute of Jewish Affairs, published in the United States." The
People story continued: "Russia and other countries have given asylum to
2,000,000 exiles," leaving "3,330,000 of Europe’s prewar Jewish
population of 8,300,000 unaccounted for."
Page 4
with Russians, Poles, Jews, Czechs, French and Yugoslavs, forced into
sealed cars. The trains always left Auschwitz empty.
The first shock in Auschwitz is its size. Dozens of square miles are
soaked with human blood and literally blanketed with human ashes. This
was a huge industry with many departments and arrangements, each one
specially designed for its function. The victims were classified
according to age and ability to work before deciding on execution. The
main station was the smelter where the victims were burnt after
sophisticated tortures.
Not satisfied with the earlier methods of killing with automatic guns in
pits, the Germans themselves "increased the production" and mechanized
the murder machinery, he said. The most perfected equipment was an
electric conveyor where hundreds of people could be electrocuted at one
time and then conveyed into the smelter furnace. They burned up at once
and subsequently were spread as fertilizer on the nearby cabbage fields,
says Polewoj.
But the released prisoners say death almost was merciful, compared with
the tortures of hunger, cold, and physical drudgery the victims were
exposed to before execution, he added. [Apparently paraphrasing
Polewoj:] I saw leather-covered cudgels that were mass produced in the
"Krutz" [sic] factories in Dresden, for the sole purpose to beat
prisoners. I saw tin-covered benches with leather strips, where the
victims were beaten to a [pulp]. I saw heavy oak chairs, where the
victims were killed, after the backbone was broken. I saw rubber cudgels
with the trade name "Krutz" [sic] for beating the head or genitals.
Polewoj said the Germans had tried to remove the traces in Auschwitz.
They destroyed the conveyors, leveled the high grave mounds, full of
skeletons, removed the mobile equipment for killing children, and
rebuilt the gas chambers to make them look like harmless garages, he
said. But the evidence for the destruction of a million people could not
completely be wiped out, he said. A special committee of investigation
will need several weeks of careful, intensive study, to understand the
meaning of these atrocities to the fullest extent.
In the early June of 1944, the British Ministry of Information had
issued a directive to the Anglo-American press to intensify horror
propaganda. Auschwitz in particular was to be singled out to personify
the evil of everything German. The British knew that propaganda stories
were most effective when promptly released after whatever event
initiated it. Or, expressed the other way, if there was a long delay,
the story lost most of its impact. The British were, therefore, curious
as to why the Soviets did not immediately supply photos, film material
and other evidence after they occupied Auschwitz. The British government
had already sent two inquiries to Moscow for such information. Now the
reason for the lack of evidence is clear. The first two articles of
Pravda— February 1 and 2,1945—were pure atrocity propaganda.
The Soviets who overran the camp and made the accusations published in
Pravda failed to produce any concrete evidence such as the alleged
mobile apparatus to kill children, let alone the "disguised gas
chambers." There are vague hints about various delegations arriving at
the camp and inspecting the traces of the crimes, but no reports or
pictures. Most of what the Soviets purport to have found does not appear
in contemporary Auschwitz literature; on the other hand, and most
importantly, what we read in today’s books was not found by the
Soviets—a grotesque situation.
Now let’s check the Pravda articles in detail:
The implication of extreme murderousness during 1941, 1942 and
early 1943 is remarkable. No mention was made by Pravda of
1944, when according to the various establishment "holocaust
researchers" the real climax of mass annihilation occurred,
with the killing and cremation of up to 20,000 prisoners per
day. Of this, the Pravda fabricators did not know anything. If
they had, it is certain they would have reported it
immediately.
It is quite true that from 1941 till spring 1943, many persons arrived
at Auschwitz. It was at this time that its huge industrial installations
were built. Toward the end of the war the work force had increased
(continued on Page 5)
[Birkenau Building Complex]
This building complex was referred to as "Crematorium IV at Birkenau,
shortly before it was ready to be put into operation in the spring of
1943," by holocaust historian Martin Gilbert. It offers the visual
impression of an expansive complex that would accommodate large numbers
of corpses simultaneously. Yet photographic evidence of actual
concentration camp crematory ovens shows small chambers totally
incapable of the mass processing that would have been necessary to
justify any figures remotely approaching the claims of the professional
"holocaust theory" promoters.
Page 5
to about 100,000—some of it contracted, but mostly forced labor.
Besides German foremen and technicians there were Poles, Czechs, French,
Russians, Yugoslavs and Jews. It is strange that nowhere in the Pravda
article is there any mention of these ongoing industries, nor did the
Poles point this out when later questioned. The "huge expanse of the
Auschwitz complex" is ascribed by the allegedly astonished Polewoj
entirely to the "murder machine." There is not a single word that
indicates that the camp is a part of the German armament industries, as
we now know it clearly was.
The Germans are said to have begun to remove the traces of mass murder
in Auschwitz when the Soviets occupied Majdanek concentration camp,
which occurred on July 24, 1944. This means the Germans had barely six
months left to destroy evidence, including three months of winter, with
the ground frozen solid. In this short time, they supposedly removed
"the old graves in the eastern part of the camp" and dismantled the
mechanisms of the murder of millions of individuals.
These were said to have included hundreds of huge grave pits and high
mounds above them with countless layers of bodies. The graves are said
to have been quickly "leveled" by the Germans, and this means that,
therefore, the bodies would still have been present, especially those
bodies that were originally in the pits. However, anyone familiar with
the matter knows that in Auschwitz no grave sites were ever found, and
in particular none of the alleged mass graves.
The contemporary version published for several decades, is that the
Germans burned all the bodies and ground the remains into dust and then
dumped everything into the Vistula River, where it floated away, an
impossibility.
Mass graves in the Auschwitz area were not possible, due to the high
level of the water table. Even individual grave sites in the area had to
be removed later because of ground water contamination. As early as 1942
there were extended periods of typhus epidemics because of ground water
contamination.
Mass graves simply could not be tolerated near the Monowitz (Auschwitz
III) site, without serious risk to the operations of the armament
industries.
Also, it is a delusion to think such clues can be removed that easily.
Even if graves had been cleaned out and refilled, any soil expert could
easily verify the excavations by cutting across with trenches. Such
findings, witnessed by independent Swiss or Swedish observers, would
constitute irrefutable proof that something had happened at the site.
But there is no such evidence.
‘What else did the Germans "remove"? The traces of the "electric
conveyor system." That is to say, not just the supposed electric
conveyors, but all accessories, the power plant, the electric power
lines, the one or several "blast furnaces" or "smelter furnaces." How
credible is the story that all of this heavy apparatus was removed at
the last moment by the Germans?
The vanished facilities must have been of such a "high fascist
technology" that even today similar hardware has yet to be reinvented,
which could facilitate the cremation of, as stated by Polewoj, "hundreds
of people completely..."
Also the grinding mills for bones, the huge conveyor belt, the piles of
coal or other fuel. Are we to believe that everything was wiped off the
face of the earth in less than six months, including three months of
winter, and nothing was ever found? Not even any construction
blueprints?
In other words, the Soviets did not find traces of any of that, or else
they would have said so. All this was an invention masquerading as
historical truth, to be used against a prostrate German nation.
Even the most German-hating agitators have long ago distanced themselves
from these fantastic stories. They did not believe them from the first
day.
The fact remains, however, that the Allied power that alone conquered
and occupied Auschwitz (the USSR) at the same time shielded the camp
from any inspection by foreign observers for many months afterward, and
this same ally was the only one to publish stories about what it claims
to have found in Auschwitz.
The eastern part of the camp was Monowitz. However, not one of the
"holocaustorians" has ever insisted that there were gas chambers in
Monowitz. Instead, they all speak of a gas chamber within the main camp
only in the beginning—surprisingly, in the immediate neighborhood of the
camp kitchen and in the center of the whole complex. It is said to have
served later as an air raid shelter. But the holocaust experts all talk
about Birkenau, a part of the camp far to the west of the huge
industrial complex. And here again the gas chambers supposedly were in
the western part. This is quite different from where the "liberators"
claim they found them.
But then the story becomes even more complicated.
The Soviet "liberator" has supposedly found the gas chambers, decorated
with ornaments and little turrets, to look like harmless garages. All
the holocaust experts, however, seem to agree that the Soviets did not
find the gas chambers, because (allegedly) they all were completely
destroyed in advance of the Soviet "liberation" by the Germans.
Why, after all, should the Germans have spared just these gas chambers
from destruction? The Germans otherwise were so obsessed with removal of
all traces of the alleged genocide, and yet they decorated them with
ornaments and little turrets for the reception of the Soviets.
Not once did the Soviets provide illustrative evidence of these "gas
chambers, looking like harmless garages," to the outside world. Not even a photo
was taken of these remarkable structures, despite their obviously
tremendous importance.
In a Soviet film on the liberation of Auschwitz, shown on West German
television on November 16, 1986, of course, these "gas chambers" were
not shown. More surprisingly, the Soviets did not even search for gas
chambers, though the film’s contemporary background narration did talk
about them constantly.
As to the allegation that refers to the killing by shots into the neck
as found in the mass graves in the first years of Auschwitz, at once one
is reminded of the Katyn Forest and other Soviet crime scenes, where the
NKVD executed thousands of Polish officers in April-May 1940, using
exactly the methods they charged against the Germans. And it is typical
that people such as Polewoj, a Pravda reporter, and other Soviet organs
of publication, were involved in the manipulation of the Katyn case for
propaganda.
A Soviet document later produced by the Soviets in Nuremberg, "Doc.
USSR008,"2 carries the signatures of people such as Mytrolitos Nikolaus
and Lyssenko, who, in spite of their knowledge of the true perpetrators
of the mass murder at Katyn, lied and assigned blame for this genocidal
act on Germany.
The compartments with benches, torture chairs to break backbones, steel
cudgels from Krupp, etc. were never "shown to the world," though Polewoj
has "found and seen them." Not even a photograph was made. United Press
staff correspondent Henry Shapiro did not believe this deception, but
changed the brand name Krupps into the fantasy product Krutz—exchanging
one lie for another.
Polewoj saw "thousands of martyrs in Auschwitz, so emaciated that they
staggered like shadows in the wind." Whoever looks at the physical
condition of the prisoners in the Soviet film shown recently on the West
German television cannot help feeling that—besides really sick ones— the
prisoners looked well fed. These pictures have been known throughout the
holocaust literature. One gets the impression that these prisoners
appeared in better physical condition than the German soldiers of
January 1945.
In this context we remember the British inquiries of February 15 and of
April 25, 1945 to Moscow, to request release of the information as to
what they really did find in Auschwitz III. So far none of the holocaust
experts has taken the meager Soviet answer of May 7,1945 seriously, and
so did not publish it. And this in spite of the fact that they accepted
the Soviet figure of 4 million Auschwitz dead without hesitation.
It is worth noting in the Pravda article of February 2,1945 what Polewoj
did not state and did not find: He did not find piles of eyeglasses; he
found no piles of dentures, no piles of human hair; no piles of shoes,
no piles of worn clothing. Such photos were later published officially
by the Soviets but these were mostly faked—some drawn or painted as
collages, composed of various parts, which were exhibited as being
actual photos. The Pravda reporter, who spent several days at Auschwitz
to search for material with which to make accusations against the
"German fascists," had seen nothing of underground "gas chambers and
dressing rooms," not even heard of them. More surprisingly yet, he had
not even singled out "Birkenau," or found anything worth mentioning
about the camp to pass on to the world.
He had not seen or heard anything of the alleged "farmhouses, remodeled
already in 1942" to become gas chambers west of Birkenau, and supposedly
in operation until October 1944. Not one of the liberated prisoners in
the euphoria of liberation reported about them, none mentioned Birkenau,
none talked of what had been going on there in 1944.
This is surprising.
He did not see the station platform strewn with suitcases and worn
clothing or pilfered freight cars; he saw no mass graves, no rivers
(Vistula and Sola) clogged with human ashes, no fields covered with
human ashes and bone fragments used as fertilizer, no "mobile gallows."
In summary it can be said that Polewoj was the first Soviet reporter on
the scene; what he saw and reported, was not seen and reported by the
subsequent Extraordinary Soviet Commission.
What the later commission saw and what their cameramen filmed and
recorded, was not seen by Polewoj, the first reporter on the spot.
What they did have in common was a devotion to atrocity propaganda.
FOOTNOTES
1 Soviet responsibility for many massacres has been well established,
as at Lemberg (Lwow), 1941; in the Baltic states, in 1939-40 and again
in 1945-48; Vinitsya, Ukraine; Katyn Forest near Smolensk, where the
Germans in 1943 found the bodies of 4,253 Polish officers in several
mass graves. These are the only remains yet uncovered from a known group
of 15,000 men who disappeared while in Soviet captivity after the
communist takeover of Eastern Poland in April and May of 1940. The new
government of the Russian Federation has yet to dig into the former
Soviet NKVD archives and disclose the location of the mass grave sites
where the remainIng 10,000 men rest.
2 Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military
Tribunal, Nuremberg, Nov. 14, 1945 to Oct. 1, 1946. Nuremberg, 1947, voL
XXXIX, pp. 241-261.
3 Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz und die Allierten, Munich, 1982, pp.
395-396. Compare Historische Tatsachen No. 15, p. 35.
All decent Americans should be outraged at the German government's
barbaric treatment of an honest historian.
While for the time being we still enjoy freedom of speech in America, in
the so-called democratic Germany the books and writings of revisionist
historians are buried and special laws are enforced that apply only to
them, limiting thier freedom and their ability to make a living.
However, when these tactics fail to silence those who seek the truth,
then, as in the case of Udo Walendy, they are put in jail.
Readers may contact the German Embassy in Washington to protest the
ongoing persecution of Udo Walendy. Call (202) 298-4000 and ask for the
ambassador.
Also, if you have a German consulate near you, ask to speak to the
consul general. Ask questions, and politely make your position clear.
Remember, they will deny any of the facts above, but most likely will
tell you only lawbreakers go to jail. Ask them what law(s) Udo Walendy
has broken.
Please write words of encouragement to:
Udo Walendy
JVA Muenster Gartenstrasse 26
48147 Muenster, Germany
Supporters can write him but cannot send enclosures. Remember, his mail
will be scrutinized.
THE SOVIET ‘DISCOVERIES’ IN AUSCHWITZ
By UDO WALENDY
The following has been excerpted from issue No. 31 in the series of
brochures (now over 70 in number) entitled Historische Tatsachcn
("historical facts") in which German history in the first half of the
20th century has been accorded the most thorough revisionist
reexamination achieved by any contemporary German historian. For several
decades, Udo Walendy was permitted to freely publish the results of his
research and analysis without undue harassment. However, in the wake of
the recent environment of anti-revisionist laws, and much to the
disgrace of the German judiciary and the entire German nation, Mr.
Walendy has been arraigned, found guilty of "inciting racial hatred" and
is currently incarcerated.
Start
On February 1 and 2,1945, the Soviet propaganda organ Pravda published
lengthy initial accounts of the findings of the Red Army upon its
occupation of the Auschwitz camp sites on January 27, 1945. These
initial reports and the treatment accorded them are of particular
significance for historical analysis, because they had not yet been
adapted to Allied propaganda of the time, at least not in detail. The
lengthiest first-hand report was published in the issue of February 2,
1945, and began in this manner:
City of Auschwitz—An impartial committee will investigate the accurate
number of people killed or tortured to death... After the Red Army
disclosed the horrible and
ing secrets of Majdanek [another
concentration camp—Ed.] before the world, the Germans in Auschwitz began
to remove the traces of their crimes. They leveled the burial mounds of
the so-called "old graves" in the eastern part of the camp. Likewise
they removed and destroyed all traces of the electric conveyor system,
where hundreds of people at one time were electrocuted.
The bodies fell onto a slow-moving transport belt, taking them to a
blast furnace. There they were burnt completely, the bones ground in a
roller mill and the remains spread on the fields as fertilizer. The
special mobile devices to kill children were relocated to the back
fields.
The stationary gas chambers in the east side of the camp were remodeled.
They were ornamented and decorated with little towers, placed on top of
the roof, so they looked like harmless garages.
But it is still possible to assemble traces of the murder of millions.
Based upon descriptions by prisoners liberated by the Red Army, it is
not difficult to verify everything the Germans tried so carefully to
keep secret. This huge death mill was equipped with the latest style of
fascist technology and supplied with all those testing devices which
only the German brutes are able to invent.
In the first years of the camp the Germans still performed
[inefficiently]. They simply led the prisoners to a pit and ordered them
to lie face down in the pit and shot them in the neck. After the first
row was murdered, the second was forced to lie on top of the first one
and was shot; then the third row and so forth. When the grave was full,
they shot again at the whole pile of dead people with automatic rifles,
just to make sure. The people who did not find room in the graves were
also shot and buried [sic]. In this way hundreds of huge graves were
filled in the eastern part of the camp. Customarily, these were termed
the "old graves."
Then the Germans recognized this procedure as being primitive and
decided to increase the productivity of the murder process. It was
mechanized; gas chambers, and electric conveyor systems were installed,
they built blast furnaces for cremation and so-called ‘chimneys."
But the most terrible thing for the prisoners in Auschwitz was not even
death. The sadistic Germans
(continued on Page 3)
[Birkenau]
Aerial photograph of Birkenau said to have been taken on August 25,
1944. Birkenau (named after a nearby Polish hamlet) was an extension of
Auschu’itz ordered by Reichfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler and was opened in
August 1942. In 1981 the British holocaust scholar and official
Churchill biographer, Martin Gilbert, published a detailed sketch map of
Birkenau. It designates "Gas Chamber and Crematorium II" through "Gas
Chamber and Crematorium V." The concentration camp was behind the Iron
Curtain at that time (1981), making it difficult for Western experts to
determine the actual function of the buildings seen in the photo and
sketch map.
Page 3
let them starve in the cold, while working 18 hours and
punished them most cruely. I was shown steel cudgels, covered
with leather, on the handles of which the factory brand "Krupp
Dresden" was engraved. These torture tools were manufactured
in mass production. To the south of the adjoining section, I
saw compartments with benches, covered with tin and leather
strips attached. On these, people were beaten to death. Tin
covering was used, so the blood of the victims could be washed
off. Fastidious henchmen caring about sanitation.
I saw a specially constructed chair with steel teeth to break
the back of the victim to be killed. I saw massive rubber
cudgels, all marked with the brand name "Krupp," with which
the heads and genitals of the prisoners were beaten.
I saw thousands of ghost-like wretches in Auschwitz, so
emaciated they staggered like shadows in the wind. They
praised the Red Army who had saved them and tore them away
from the hell, bringing revenge to the fascist henchmen for
Majdanek, Auschwitz, and for all the tortures and sufferings
caused to the people of Europe.
Polewoj (via telegram)
The Soviet "reporters" knew what was expected of them regarding their
communiques after taking the concentration camps. Anybody naive enough
to believe that the Soviets, in performing this "duty," were concerned
with "honesty and truth in reporting." should be reminded of the Soviet
record of always trying to avoid culpability for any misdeeds. 1
It is therefore not at all surprising that the Soviet reports on
Auschwitz were strictly in line with wartime atrocity propaganda, and
that they later, in spite of the obvious falsity, clung to them with
relentless perseverance.
Note that neither of the two Pravda articles examined here brings out a
single detail of what the Red Army really discovered when occupying the
camp. In the article of February 1, only the account of one former
prisoner from Auschwitz, identified as "Lukaschew, from the Woronesch
area," was offered; and this contained nothing but unprovable
statements—this is, at best, hearsay. Furthermore, this prisoner was not
even able to describe how and when the Germans performed these various
alleged atrocities.
In connection with the article in Pravda from February 2,1945, we do not
want to forget to quote the United Press correspondent, Henry Shapiro,
who obediently echoed the Soviets. Referring to the Pravda articles, he
wrote on February 2, 1945, in the Washington Daily News, the following:
"Ghosts" with undefinable age or sex freed from the death mill [quote
marks added—Ed.]. The semi-official [Soviet] newspaper Pravda reports
today that the Red Army has saved several thousand tortured, emaciated
inmates of the largest German murder factory in southwest Poland. They
all were of ghostlike appearance, nearly undefinable in their age or
sex, thrown to the ground at the slightest wind, as Pravda correspondent
Boris Polewoj reports.
Fragmentary reports say that at least 1.5 million people were killed in
Auschwitz, says Polewoj. During 1941, 1942 and early 1943, he says,
daily, five trains reached Auschwitz (continued on Page 4)
The October 17, 1943 front page of the leftist English newspaper The
People. The story at the bottom of the left column is beaded "Hitler
Murdered Three Million Jews in Europe." It said the figure was that of
"the Institute of Jewish Affairs, published in the United States." The
People story continued: "Russia and other countries have given asylum to
2,000,000 exiles," leaving "3,330,000 of Europe’s prewar Jewish
population of 8,300,000 unaccounted for."
Page 4
with Russians, Poles, Jews, Czechs, French and Yugoslavs, forced into
sealed cars. The trains always left Auschwitz empty.
The first shock in Auschwitz is its size. Dozens of square miles are
soaked with human blood and literally blanketed with human ashes. This
was a huge industry with many departments and arrangements, each one
specially designed for its function. The victims were classified
according to age and ability to work before deciding on execution. The
main station was the smelter where the victims were burnt after
sophisticated tortures.
Not satisfied with the earlier methods of killing with automatic guns in
pits, the Germans themselves "increased the production" and mechanized
the murder machinery, he said. The most perfected equipment was an
electric conveyor where hundreds of people could be electrocuted at one
time and then conveyed into the smelter furnace. They burned up at once
and subsequently were spread as fertilizer on the nearby cabbage fields,
says Polewoj.
But the released prisoners say death almost was merciful, compared with
the tortures of hunger, cold, and physical drudgery the victims were
exposed to before execution, he added. [Apparently paraphrasing
Polewoj:] I saw leather-covered cudgels that were mass produced in the
"Krutz" [sic] factories in Dresden, for the sole purpose to beat
prisoners. I saw tin-covered benches with leather strips, where the
victims were beaten to a [pulp]. I saw heavy oak chairs, where the
victims were killed, after the backbone was broken. I saw rubber cudgels
with the trade name "Krutz" [sic] for beating the head or genitals.
Polewoj said the Germans had tried to remove the traces in Auschwitz.
They destroyed the conveyors, leveled the high grave mounds, full of
skeletons, removed the mobile equipment for killing children, and
rebuilt the gas chambers to make them look like harmless garages, he
said. But the evidence for the destruction of a million people could not
completely be wiped out, he said. A special committee of investigation
will need several weeks of careful, intensive study, to understand the
meaning of these atrocities to the fullest extent.
In the early June of 1944, the British Ministry of Information had
issued a directive to the Anglo-American press to intensify horror
propaganda. Auschwitz in particular was to be singled out to personify
the evil of everything German. The British knew that propaganda stories
were most effective when promptly released after whatever event
initiated it. Or, expressed the other way, if there was a long delay,
the story lost most of its impact. The British were, therefore, curious
as to why the Soviets did not immediately supply photos, film material
and other evidence after they occupied Auschwitz. The British government
had already sent two inquiries to Moscow for such information. Now the
reason for the lack of evidence is clear. The first two articles of
Pravda— February 1 and 2,1945—were pure atrocity propaganda.
The Soviets who overran the camp and made the accusations published in
Pravda failed to produce any concrete evidence such as the alleged
mobile apparatus to kill children, let alone the "disguised gas
chambers." There are vague hints about various delegations arriving at
the camp and inspecting the traces of the crimes, but no reports or
pictures. Most of what the Soviets purport to have found does not appear
in contemporary Auschwitz literature; on the other hand, and most
importantly, what we read in today’s books was not found by the
Soviets—a grotesque situation.
Now let’s check the Pravda articles in detail:
The implication of extreme murderousness during 1941, 1942 and
early 1943 is remarkable. No mention was made by Pravda of
1944, when according to the various establishment "holocaust
researchers" the real climax of mass annihilation occurred,
with the killing and cremation of up to 20,000 prisoners per
day. Of this, the Pravda fabricators did not know anything. If
they had, it is certain they would have reported it
immediately.
It is quite true that from 1941 till spring 1943, many persons arrived
at Auschwitz. It was at this time that its huge industrial installations
were built. Toward the end of the war the work force had increased
(continued on Page 5)
[Birkenau Building Complex]
This building complex was referred to as "Crematorium IV at Birkenau,
shortly before it was ready to be put into operation in the spring of
1943," by holocaust historian Martin Gilbert. It offers the visual
impression of an expansive complex that would accommodate large numbers
of corpses simultaneously. Yet photographic evidence of actual
concentration camp crematory ovens shows small chambers totally
incapable of the mass processing that would have been necessary to
justify any figures remotely approaching the claims of the professional
"holocaust theory" promoters.
Page 5
to about 100,000—some of it contracted, but mostly forced labor.
Besides German foremen and technicians there were Poles, Czechs, French,
Russians, Yugoslavs and Jews. It is strange that nowhere in the Pravda
article is there any mention of these ongoing industries, nor did the
Poles point this out when later questioned. The "huge expanse of the
Auschwitz complex" is ascribed by the allegedly astonished Polewoj
entirely to the "murder machine." There is not a single word that
indicates that the camp is a part of the German armament industries, as
we now know it clearly was.
The Germans are said to have begun to remove the traces of mass murder
in Auschwitz when the Soviets occupied Majdanek concentration camp,
which occurred on July 24, 1944. This means the Germans had barely six
months left to destroy evidence, including three months of winter, with
the ground frozen solid. In this short time, they supposedly removed
"the old graves in the eastern part of the camp" and dismantled the
mechanisms of the murder of millions of individuals.
These were said to have included hundreds of huge grave pits and high
mounds above them with countless layers of bodies. The graves are said
to have been quickly "leveled" by the Germans, and this means that,
therefore, the bodies would still have been present, especially those
bodies that were originally in the pits. However, anyone familiar with
the matter knows that in Auschwitz no grave sites were ever found, and
in particular none of the alleged mass graves.
The contemporary version published for several decades, is that the
Germans burned all the bodies and ground the remains into dust and then
dumped everything into the Vistula River, where it floated away, an
impossibility.
Mass graves in the Auschwitz area were not possible, due to the high
level of the water table. Even individual grave sites in the area had to
be removed later because of ground water contamination. As early as 1942
there were extended periods of typhus epidemics because of ground water
contamination.
Mass graves simply could not be tolerated near the Monowitz (Auschwitz
III) site, without serious risk to the operations of the armament
industries.
Also, it is a delusion to think such clues can be removed that easily.
Even if graves had been cleaned out and refilled, any soil expert could
easily verify the excavations by cutting across with trenches. Such
findings, witnessed by independent Swiss or Swedish observers, would
constitute irrefutable proof that something had happened at the site.
But there is no such evidence.
‘What else did the Germans "remove"? The traces of the "electric
conveyor system." That is to say, not just the supposed electric
conveyors, but all accessories, the power plant, the electric power
lines, the one or several "blast furnaces" or "smelter furnaces." How
credible is the story that all of this heavy apparatus was removed at
the last moment by the Germans?
The vanished facilities must have been of such a "high fascist
technology" that even today similar hardware has yet to be reinvented,
which could facilitate the cremation of, as stated by Polewoj, "hundreds
of people completely..."
Also the grinding mills for bones, the huge conveyor belt, the piles of
coal or other fuel. Are we to believe that everything was wiped off the
face of the earth in less than six months, including three months of
winter, and nothing was ever found? Not even any construction
blueprints?
In other words, the Soviets did not find traces of any of that, or else
they would have said so. All this was an invention masquerading as
historical truth, to be used against a prostrate German nation.
Even the most German-hating agitators have long ago distanced themselves
from these fantastic stories. They did not believe them from the first
day.
The fact remains, however, that the Allied power that alone conquered
and occupied Auschwitz (the USSR) at the same time shielded the camp
from any inspection by foreign observers for many months afterward, and
this same ally was the only one to publish stories about what it claims
to have found in Auschwitz.
The eastern part of the camp was Monowitz. However, not one of the
"holocaustorians" has ever insisted that there were gas chambers in
Monowitz. Instead, they all speak of a gas chamber within the main camp
only in the beginning—surprisingly, in the immediate neighborhood of the
camp kitchen and in the center of the whole complex. It is said to have
served later as an air raid shelter. But the holocaust experts all talk
about Birkenau, a part of the camp far to the west of the huge
industrial complex. And here again the gas chambers supposedly were in
the western part. This is quite different from where the "liberators"
claim they found them.
But then the story becomes even more complicated.
The Soviet "liberator" has supposedly found the gas chambers, decorated
with ornaments and little turrets, to look like harmless garages. All
the holocaust experts, however, seem to agree that the Soviets did not
find the gas chambers, because (allegedly) they all were completely
destroyed in advance of the Soviet "liberation" by the Germans.
Why, after all, should the Germans have spared just these gas chambers
from destruction? The Germans otherwise were so obsessed with removal of
all traces of the alleged genocide, and yet they decorated them with
ornaments and little turrets for the reception of the Soviets.
Not once did the Soviets provide illustrative evidence of these "gas
chambers, looking like harmless garages," to the outside world. Not even a photo
was taken of these remarkable structures, despite their obviously
tremendous importance.
In a Soviet film on the liberation of Auschwitz, shown on West German
television on November 16, 1986, of course, these "gas chambers" were
not shown. More surprisingly, the Soviets did not even search for gas
chambers, though the film’s contemporary background narration did talk
about them constantly.
As to the allegation that refers to the killing by shots into the neck
as found in the mass graves in the first years of Auschwitz, at once one
is reminded of the Katyn Forest and other Soviet crime scenes, where the
NKVD executed thousands of Polish officers in April-May 1940, using
exactly the methods they charged against the Germans. And it is typical
that people such as Polewoj, a Pravda reporter, and other Soviet organs
of publication, were involved in the manipulation of the Katyn case for
propaganda.
A Soviet document later produced by the Soviets in Nuremberg, "Doc.
USSR008,"2 carries the signatures of people such as Mytrolitos Nikolaus
and Lyssenko, who, in spite of their knowledge of the true perpetrators
of the mass murder at Katyn, lied and assigned blame for this genocidal
act on Germany.
The compartments with benches, torture chairs to break backbones, steel
cudgels from Krupp, etc. were never "shown to the world," though Polewoj
has "found and seen them." Not even a photograph was made. United Press
staff correspondent Henry Shapiro did not believe this deception, but
changed the brand name Krupps into the fantasy product Krutz—exchanging
one lie for another.
Polewoj saw "thousands of martyrs in Auschwitz, so emaciated that they
staggered like shadows in the wind." Whoever looks at the physical
condition of the prisoners in the Soviet film shown recently on the West
German television cannot help feeling that—besides really sick ones— the
prisoners looked well fed. These pictures have been known throughout the
holocaust literature. One gets the impression that these prisoners
appeared in better physical condition than the German soldiers of
January 1945.
In this context we remember the British inquiries of February 15 and of
April 25, 1945 to Moscow, to request release of the information as to
what they really did find in Auschwitz III. So far none of the holocaust
experts has taken the meager Soviet answer of May 7,1945 seriously, and
so did not publish it. And this in spite of the fact that they accepted
the Soviet figure of 4 million Auschwitz dead without hesitation.
It is worth noting in the Pravda article of February 2,1945 what Polewoj
did not state and did not find: He did not find piles of eyeglasses; he
found no piles of dentures, no piles of human hair; no piles of shoes,
no piles of worn clothing. Such photos were later published officially
by the Soviets but these were mostly faked—some drawn or painted as
collages, composed of various parts, which were exhibited as being
actual photos. The Pravda reporter, who spent several days at Auschwitz
to search for material with which to make accusations against the
"German fascists," had seen nothing of underground "gas chambers and
dressing rooms," not even heard of them. More surprisingly yet, he had
not even singled out "Birkenau," or found anything worth mentioning
about the camp to pass on to the world.
He had not seen or heard anything of the alleged "farmhouses, remodeled
already in 1942" to become gas chambers west of Birkenau, and supposedly
in operation until October 1944. Not one of the liberated prisoners in
the euphoria of liberation reported about them, none mentioned Birkenau,
none talked of what had been going on there in 1944.
This is surprising.
He did not see the station platform strewn with suitcases and worn
clothing or pilfered freight cars; he saw no mass graves, no rivers
(Vistula and Sola) clogged with human ashes, no fields covered with
human ashes and bone fragments used as fertilizer, no "mobile gallows."
In summary it can be said that Polewoj was the first Soviet reporter on
the scene; what he saw and reported, was not seen and reported by the
subsequent Extraordinary Soviet Commission.
What the later commission saw and what their cameramen filmed and
recorded, was not seen by Polewoj, the first reporter on the spot.
What they did have in common was a devotion to atrocity propaganda.
FOOTNOTES
1 Soviet responsibility for many massacres has been well established,
as at Lemberg (Lwow), 1941; in the Baltic states, in 1939-40 and again
in 1945-48; Vinitsya, Ukraine; Katyn Forest near Smolensk, where the
Germans in 1943 found the bodies of 4,253 Polish officers in several
mass graves. These are the only remains yet uncovered from a known group
of 15,000 men who disappeared while in Soviet captivity after the
communist takeover of Eastern Poland in April and May of 1940. The new
government of the Russian Federation has yet to dig into the former
Soviet NKVD archives and disclose the location of the mass grave sites
where the remainIng 10,000 men rest.
2 Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military
Tribunal, Nuremberg, Nov. 14, 1945 to Oct. 1, 1946. Nuremberg, 1947, voL
XXXIX, pp. 241-261.
3 Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz und die Allierten, Munich, 1982, pp.
395-396. Compare Historische Tatsachen No. 15, p. 35.
All decent Americans should be outraged at the German government's
barbaric treatment of an honest historian.
While for the time being we still enjoy freedom of speech in America, in
the so-called democratic Germany the books and writings of revisionist
historians are buried and special laws are enforced that apply only to
them, limiting thier freedom and their ability to make a living.
However, when these tactics fail to silence those who seek the truth,
then, as in the case of Udo Walendy, they are put in jail.
Readers may contact the German Embassy in Washington to protest the
ongoing persecution of Udo Walendy. Call (202) 298-4000 and ask for the
ambassador.
Also, if you have a German consulate near you, ask to speak to the
consul general. Ask questions, and politely make your position clear.
Remember, they will deny any of the facts above, but most likely will
tell you only lawbreakers go to jail. Ask them what law(s) Udo Walendy
has broken.
Please write words of encouragement to:
Udo Walendy
JVA Muenster Gartenstrasse 26
48147 Muenster, Germany
Supporters can write him but cannot send enclosures. Remember, his mail
will be scrutinized.
I saw thousands of ghost-like wretches in Auschwitz, so emaciated they staggered like shadows in the wind. They praised the Red Army who had saved them and tore them away from the hell, bringing revenge to the fascist henchmen for Majdanek, Auschwitz, and for all the tortures and sufferings caused to the people of Europe.
however:
Healthy Jews of Auschwitz greet the Soviets
and however:
Healthy Jewish children alive in the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) upon Soviet arrival. Still from a postwar Soviet film.
words of advice:
'Tell the truth, it's easier to remember.'
- Hannover
If it can't happen as alleged, then it didn't.
Return to “'Holocaust' Debate / Controversies / Comments / News”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests
