Nuremberg document PS-1515: Where is it?

[Hieldner]

In The Second Leuchter Report (about the alleged gas chambers in Dachau, Mauthausen and Hartheim), Robert Faurisson quotes from IMT document PS-1515 (another version of Hans Marsaleks invented confession of Mauthausen camp commander Franz Ziereis, document PS-3870), but does not give the volume or page where it can be found.

Document PS-1515, 24 May 1945 (original language: German). The so-called "Deposition of the Camp Commander of Mauthausen Concentration Camp, SS Colonel (Standartenführer) Franz Ziereis." In its original form, this ten page document, typewritten in German, does not bear any signature. It says: "Franz Ziereis, lying on a straw pallet, wounded in the stomach and the left arm by two shots made the following declaration to questions put to him by two persons of Intelligence." Franz Ziereis was interrogated for six to eight hours, then he died. That torture session took place in the presence of the American General Seibel, Commandant of the 11th Armored Division (still living in 1989, in Defiance, Ohio). One of the two interrogators was Hans Marsalek, a former prisoner, who now lives in Vienna, Austria, a high official of the police and the author of numerous works on Mauthausen:

By order of the SS-Haupsturmführer Dr. Krebsbach, a chamber camouflaged as a bath-room was built in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The prisoners were gassed in that camouflaged bath-room [ . . . ]. Actually the gas chamber was constructed in Mauthausen by order of SS-Obergruppenführer Glucks, who advocated the viewpoint that it was more humane to gas prisoners than to shoot them.

This "deposition" is sometimes interrupted by remarks on the part of the interrogators, e.g., about the "insolent arrogance" of Ziereis. It ends with the following words: "Furthermore, Ziereis declares that, according to his estimation some 16,000,000 (??) people have been murdered in the entire territory of Warsaw, Kowno, Riga and Libau."

For the comments that Ziereis supposedly had on Hartheim Castle, see below, "Hartheim Castle."

An extra page says:

Do not use 1515-PS - This statement has been corrected and superseded. - See: 3870-PS. - [Signed:] D. Spencer.

https://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/10/3/LeuchterFaurisson261-322.html

Faurisson furthermore writes that Simon Wiesenthal partly and incorrectly reproduces the document in his book KZ-Mauthausen

Simon Wiesenthal, KZ-Mauthausen, Linz & Vienna, Ibis Verlag, 1946 (original language: German). The author reproduces what he calls the "confession" of the commandant of Mauthausen, pp. 7-13. In reality, he reproduces document PS-1515, but only in part and with strange changes; for example, the number of 16,000,000 persons put to death in the whole of the territory of Warsaw, Kowno, Riga, and Libau is reduced by Wiesenthal to "10,000,000" (p. 13).

It should be in IMT volume XXVII, however, document PS-1514 (pp. 261–269) is immediately followed by PS-1517 (pp. 270–273), with the document number skipping two digits. I haven’t been able to locate it or find other, independent sources which quote from this document. Is it in the French edition of the Nuremberg proceedings?

[Archie]

You are correct that PS-1515 is not in the IMT volumes since it was replaced by PS-3870. Faurisson did research at NARA around that time, so he probably saw a copy there. Or maybe he'd seen it at the CDJC in Paris which had a large document collection (I think Faurisson was banned from there during the Faurisson affair, but before that he was a regular over there). The IMT document volumes are relatively complete in terms of providing the documents cited during the IMT proceedings (with the exception of numerous missing Soviet exhibits). But it definitely does not provide all the documents in the PS series etc.

The earlier May 1945 Ziereis statement was also submitted as D-626 and NO-1973 (which is a Polish version with an English translation). There is a digitized copy of the statement at USHMM in the "Sidney Etkin collection." I have never seen "PS-1515" but I feel pretty confident it will be the same or very close to the Etkin copy.
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn501228

FYI the NARA website has digitized a lot of stuff and this is an ongoing project, so it's often worth checking over there although things are NOT necessarily easy to find.

They have digitized all of the T988 microfilm series which is a large collection of IMT prosecution documents It even has the USSR exhibits (in Russian). I don't think PS-1515 is in there since they didn't use it, but it's a little hard to tell since it's all arranged by exhibit number, not the document number. I don't know if PS-1515 ever got an exhibit number.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6109963

They have digitized some NMT stuff as well. Here is the NG-series for example (T1139 microfilm). For NMT documents the Harvard Nuremberg site is fairly useful.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/643701

[Hieldner]

Great answer Archie, thanks a lot! I will look into those archives.

It’s really strange how many versions of this “confession” exist. You’d be thinking, the fakers would be at least a little bit careful. I think there are eleven (!!) already in the Sidney Etkin collection you mentioned. I would have to check if some of them contain the same text. In addition to this, Holocaustian Pierre-Serge Choumoff writes in this article https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-monde-juif-1986-3-page-104.htm

Il en existe au moins deux rédactions en allemand portant la même référence; une version incomplète a été publiée sous le nom de H. Marsalek le 8-4-1946 [67]

There are at least two German drafts with the same reference; an incomplete version was published under the name H. Marsalek on 8-4-1946 [67]

Where footnote 67 refers to

67. 3870 - PS in I.M.T. XXXIII, p. 279 à 286 (document incomplet).

So the official document introduced at Nuremberg “under the name” H. Marsalek, who signed every single page – Ziereis himself was obviously incapacitated, is also an incomplete version. The “complete” version is ostensibly this until today unseen document in the Yad Vashem archives mentioned in the unreferenced footnote 66.

66. 3870 - PS. Y.[ad] V.[ashem] - 018/288.

Then there’s this

https://oublions-pas1945.skyrock.com/2966126037-Interrogatoire-de-Franz-Ziereis.html It looks like it wants to resemble an original document, but is without source. Vincent Reynouard quotes from the text in his article on Mauthausen and says, it was sent to Pierre Daix, whoever that is.

Oh, and it’s really conspicuous how few corpses there are in the photos of the Sidney Etkin collection, who was a medical doctor assigned to treat prisoners at Mauthausen. The Mauthausen liberation segment in Nazi Concentration Camps is one of those where most corpses are shown.

[Wilbur]

According to Tomaz Jardim's The Mauthausen Trial, Ziereis is said to have been questioned by American war crimes investigators with the aid of former prisoners. Hans Marsalek, one of those prisoners, an "Austrian political prisoner," later said he did most of the interrogation (5-6 hours) and it was unstructured. Ziereis was sometimes lucid, sometimes passing out.

According to UNWCC Documents Series No. 21, the questioning is attributed to two intelligence officers and Marsalek (who presumably also typed it?) would only certify the document is correct "under date 25th September, 1945." https://search.archives.un.org/unwcc-do ... complete-2

[Archie]

It goes without saying that it is absurd to have a former prisoner perform the interrogation as you can't expect such a person to be objective or honest. It's amazing to me that the rewritten statement of a dead man was accepted into evidence at Nuremberg.

The link below has a photo of Zeireis's body after he died. They strung him up naked and defaced his body. It doesn't inspire much confidence in the interrogation, does it?
https://www.ww2incolor.com/api/image/02 ... d817b.jpeg

Combine the above with the fact that the content of the statements is also very questionable. For example, both statements say 1.5M people were killed at Hartheim which is of course absurd.

Even in the "corrected" second statement (PS-3870), there are a number of strange claims. Like where "Zeireis" says that he personally drove the gas van. Why would the camp commandant be driving a van around? He couldn't have someone else do that?

Apart from that a specially built automobile commuted between Mauthausen and Gusen, in which prisoners were gassed while travelling. The idea for the construction of this automobile was Dr. Wasicki's, SS Untersturmfuehrer and pharmacist. I, myself, never put any gas into this automobile, I only drove it, but I knew that prisoners were being gassed. The gassing of the prisoners was done on the urging of SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dr. Krebsbach.

And then there this bit:

Chemielskwy and Seidler in Gusen had human skin specially tanned on which there were tattoos. From this leather they had books bound, and they had lampshades and leather cases made.

Human lampshades! At Mauthausen! Sometimes it's like they aren't even trying.

PS-3870 is in German in the IMT volumes but an English copy can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220628215827/https://www.historiography-project.com/nca/nca06/3870-PS.php

[Hektor]

Sorry, I'm not really interested in statements you can extract from prisoners. If I would, I'd have to accept a lot of BS that is clearly coerced statements for some self-serving reason.
What forensic investigation did they do? What did it show? Is it actually verifiable and plausible?

And that's where they need to give it a pass. They'll use the health disaster photos (etc.) to muddy the waters and then bring up 'witness statements' that can not be challenged or verified any longer. That's how a scam works, not serious historiography.

Well and not forget what they present as homicidal gas chamber in Mauthausen. It is pretty obviously a fraud, which is why they have to jail critics of that assertion. Proving that the opposite of what they claim has to be considered true.