renegadetribune--2020-05-11--Auschwitz: Eyewitness Reports and Perpetrator Confessions of the Holocaust Scrutinized

Auschwitz : Eyewitness Reports and Perpetrator Confessions of the Holocaust : 30 Gas-Chamber Witnesses Scrutinized The Reports by the Polish Resistance Movement about the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz ( 1941-1944 ) In September 1939 , western Poland was overrun by the Germans , and the eastern part by the Soviet armies .
Soon thereafter , Poland disappeared as an independent state .
The government in Warsaw went into exile in Britain .
From 1940 to 1945 , the Delegatura held office , in the underground , as the Polish government ’ s representative in the areas that were occupied by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual provinces and districts .
The Delegatura was de facto a shadow government contesting the command of the country with the German occupying power .
It was an underground state with its own educational system , own judiciary as well as its own armed forces , the Armia Krajowa .
It was obvious that the “ German crimes ” formed a central part of the reports , and that the concentration camps , especially Auschwitz as the largest of these , drew the special attention of the “ Department for Information and Press.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been published in the Polish book Obóz koncentracyjny Oświęcim w świetle akt delegatury rządu RP na kraj ( Concentration Camp Auschwitz in the Light of Documents of the Delegation of the Government of the Polish Republic in the Homeland ) .
We are dealing with a total of 32 reports that fall into the period from October 24 , 1941 until July 7 , 1944 .
For unknown reasons , no documents have been preserved of the period July 1944 until January 1945 .
Here now the documents , with their respective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the beginning of October , 850 Russian officers and NCOs ( prisoners of war ) were taken to Auschwitz and killed by gas to test a new type of combat gas to be used on the Eastern Front.
” Title : “ Situation Report for the period from August 15 to November 15 , 1941.
” “ The camp became the scene of a gruesome crime when , during the night of 5 to 6 September , about 600 Soviet prisoners , including ‘ Politruks ’ of the army , and about 200 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after the bunker was sealed , they were poisoned with gas , the bodies were taken to the crematorium and burned.
” “ Auschwitz .
The news of a sinister crime committed in the camp is confirmed .
On the night of September 5 to 6 , 1941 , about 600 Soviet civilian prisoners brought there were driven into the bunker in Auschwitz , whereby their hands and feet were broken with clubs .
Included were about 250 Poles .
All openings of the bunker were sealed off , and the trapped people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the corpses of the poisoned were hauled on 80 wagons into the crematorium , where they were burned.
” Title : “ Supplement to appendix No .
21 for the period December 1–15 , 1941.
” “ Using a combat gas , about 500 prisoners were poisoned in a concrete bunker.
” “ There are very many murder methods , namely shooting by a firing squad , murder with Hammerluft [ hammer air ; German in the text ] , and finally gassing in gas chambers .
The first as well as in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have been sentenced to death and sent [ to Auschwitz ] by the Gestapo ; the third method is used with those who are unable to work , and those arriving with the transports already slated for this fate ( Bolsheviks and , more recently , transports of jews ) .
” Published in Polish Fortnightly Review , No .
47 , p. 2 ( the Polish template has not been preserved ) .
Title : “ Documents from Poland .
German attempts to murder a nation .
The Pawiak prison in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Auschwitz.
” “ Among the other experiments being tried on the prisoners is the use of poison gas .
It is generally known that during the night of September 5th to 6th last year about a thousand people were driven down to the underground shelter in Oswięcim , among them seven hundred Bolshevik prisoners of war and three hundred Poles .
As the shelter was too small to hold this large number , the living bodies were simply forced in , regardless of broken bones .
When the shelter was full , gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the prisoners died during the night .
All night the rest of the camp was kept awake by the groans and howls coming from the shelter .
Next day other prisoners had to carry out the bodies , a task which took all day .
One hand-cart on which the bodies were being removed broke down under the weight.
” “ The most terrible thing is the mass executions by gas in special chambers built for this purpose .
There are two of them , and they can hold 1,200 people .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfortunately emit gas instead of water .
In this way , they execute predominantly whole transports of people who are not prepared for it .
They are told that they enter a bathroom , even give them towels – in this way , they have already sent 300,000 to their deaths .
They used to be buried in ditches ; today , they are burned in specially excavated ditches outdoors .
Death is caused by suffocation , because blood comes out of the nose and mouth.
” Title : “ Report about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from August 26 – October 10 , 1942.
” “ Gas chambers .
The first use of gas chambers took place in June 1941 .
They assembled a transport of 1,700 terminally ill patients and sent them ‘ officially ’ to a sanatorium in Dresden , but actually to a building that had been converted into a gas chamber .
The building , however , proved too small and impractical .
It was decided to build 5 new chambers in Brzezinka , 7 kilometers from the camp .
Their construction was completed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ five buildings without windows , with a double door sealed by screws , as well as devices for the introduction of gas and for ventilation ; each building is designed for 700 people .
Between the buildings are laid the rails of a railway , with which the corpses are brought to the ditches which have been excavated in the nearby woods .
The gassing of 3,500 people including all preparatory and subsequent work takes 2 hours .
They mainly gas Bolshevist prisoners and jews .
Among the Poles especially those [ who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reports sent from the camp to Berlin the number of those gassed is not indicated.
” “ Up to the 15th of August , the ‘ death book ’ officially registered 18,800 cremations .
But apart from this official figure ( inmates from Poland and the Reich ) , thousands of jews from Poland , France , Holland and Germany died , as well as Serbs , Czechs , Slovaks , Hungarians , even Italians ; furthermore a certain number of Polish ‘ resettlers , ’ and finally Russian prisoners of war : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the course of the year , and none of them survived : they tested the effects of battle gases on them .
The property robbed in the camp of the jews from France and Holland exceeds the value of 60 million prewar Reichsmark ; it consists of gold and valuables .
According to the report of an SS man deployed at the electric chambers , the number of these victims unofficially amounts up to 2,500 per night .
They are executed by an electric bath as well as in gas chambers .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of victims.
” Title “ To headquarters .
Copies of reports and memories from the penal camp Auschwitz.
” “ The first use of gas chambers ( Degasungskammer ) [ sic ! ]
took place in June 1941 .
A transport of 1,700 people was put together ( terminally ill persons , those suffering from venereal diseases , Körperschwäche [ German in original ; physically weak persons ] , cripples , patients recovering from chest surgery , meningitis patients ) and they were sent to a sanatorium in Dresden ( so the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were transported to a building that had been converted into a gas chamber .
The building proved too small and impractical .
It was decided to build five modern chambers in Brzezinka ( Birkenau ) , 7 kilometers from the camp .
The construction was completed in April 1942 .
There are 6 blocks ( without windows , double doors shut with screws , modern gas-supply and ventilation systems ) for 700 persons each .
Between the blocks , a narrow-gauge railway hauls the bodies to ditches , each 4 km long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brings lime to sprinkle over the bodies .
The whole area of the D-chamber [ sic ] is a restricted area ; anyone who does not work there but is present on the territory anyway faces the death penalty ( this also applies to the SS , the Wehrmacht , civilians and prisoners ) .
The gassing of 3,500 people takes 2 hours.
” Title : “ To headquarters .
From the letter of an Auschwitz detainee.
” “ Usually two transports arrive every week with jews from Slovakia , France , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Government General .
jews from the coal-mining area as well as from the Government General are poisoned en masse ; it is difficult for us to determine the number , but it [ is ] so huge that they can not keep up with removing the clothing of those poisoned .
Some 15,000 of them were lying next to the gas chambers , although corpses were removed daily with carts .
There are two poisoning sites : in the camp crematorium [ 40 ] ( capacity 400 people ) and in Birkenau , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been prepared for this purpose in the forest .
The gassing victims are buried in large pits , to which a dedicated railway line was laid to facilitate transportation .
To fill them [ the pits ] , civilian jews are used who are themselves poisoned after some time.
” “ When the squad is sent to work , they [ the doomed ] are taken to the yard of the penal company , where the executions take place through the ‘ Hammerluft ’ [ so in the original ; “ hammer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hands are tied behind their backs , and they are led individually into the yard .
There the barrel of this air rifle is aimed [ at the back of their heads ] , and a silent shot is fired .
The hammer hits the lower part of the skull , and the compressed air crushes the whole brain .
The corpses are thrown onto a pile , and then it ’ s the next victim ’ s turn .
According to accounts received , terrible scenes are taking place there.
” Title @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
No .
3 – Part I.
” “ Numerical statistics for the existence of the Auschwitz Camp up to the 15th of December 1942 .
[ … ] jews : Gassing victims from France , Belgium and Holland : 502,000 Gassing victims from Poland : 20,000.
” Title : “ Report about the situation in the govenor generalship for the period from January 24 – February 24 , 1943.
” “ jews poisoned with gas 520,000 , some 20,000 of them from Poland , the rest from France , Belgium , Holland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ Appendix No .
48 for the period from February 16 – 28 , 1943.
” “ Outside of the numbering [ meaning death cases not numerically registered ] , there are the transports destined for the gas , mainly jews , to date more than 500,000.
” “ The Auschwitz Camp lacks gas to poison the inmates ; for reasons of economy , people remain half-poisoned and are then burned .
In the crematorium , the walls are stained with blood – if a person stunned by the effect of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he scratches the concrete with his fingers while fighting against death .
The same happens during open-air incinerations , where the poisoned people inside the cremation pits regain consciousness after some time .
Legends circulate about these cremation pits – they are known as ‘ eternal fires ’ because they are blazing day and night.
” Title : “ Report on the most important events in the nation during the period from March 28 to April 2 , 1943 No .
12/43.
” “ The data mentioned does not include the transports of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have a separate numbering .
Here , the numbering already exceeds 500,000 people , mostly jews.
” Title : “ Report compiled April 18 in London .
I personally know the informant.
” “ Auschwitz .
I lived in Auschwitz for a few weeks .
I know the conditions exactly because I ’ ve been researching them and I have been there for that purpose .
From those released from Auschwitz , I obtained extremely accurate information about what is going on there .
When I left Auschwitz at the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already been registered , but there were also non-registered inmates .
Among them were 20,000 Bolshevik prisoners of war who had been brought there in the summer of 1940 [ sic ; no doubt 1941 was meant ] , as well as large masses of jews deported there from other countries .
The prisoners of war died of starvation .
The jews were executed en masse .
When I left , there were about 15,000 prisoners at Auschwitz .
Of those registered , at least 60,000 had been murdered .
Based on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I can assert that the Germans used the following killing systems : a/ gas chambers .
The victims have to strip naked , then they are jammed into the chambers and poisoned ; b/ electric chambers : These chambers had metal walls ; the victims were led in , and they were exposed to high voltage ; c/ the system of the so-called Hammerluft [ German in original ] : This is an air hammer .
There were special chambers where the hammer drops down from the ceiling , and where the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by means of a special device .
d/ shootings : This is mainly used as a form of collective punishment in cases of disobedience , with one in ten being shot .
The first three methods are used most frequently , the last more rarely .
The Gestapo men , with gas masks donned , stood in a place higher than the gas chambers , cynically reveling in the mass killing of the victims .
The Germans loaded the bodies [ on vehicles ] and took them away ; outside of Auschwitz , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid of gigantic diggers and sprinkled lime on the bodies .
Cremation of the victims by means of electric furnaces is practiced less often because only 250 bodies could be burned in these furnaces within 24 hours.
” Unpublished .
Polish Underground Movement ( 1939-1945 ) Study Trust , a reference number was not given .
Title : “ Fragment of a report by the [ Polish ] State Department [ in Exile ] for the first half of the year 1943.
” “ jews poisoned with gas 520,000 , among them 20,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Belgium , Holland , Yugoslavia and other countries.
” Title : “ Report broadcast by the BBC for the world.
” “ By the end of 1942 , 468,000 jews had been poisoned with gas in the Auschwitz Camp without having been registered previously .
This is an officially confirmed figure .
[ … ] From September of last year until the beginning of June of this year , 181,000 jews from Poland , Greece , France , Belgium , Holland and Czechoslovakia were brought to Auschwitz .
Of these , 177,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … ] Lately , killings by decapitation have also been carried out in Auschwitz.
” Title : “ Letter of a detainee of Auschwitz .
Appendix No .
1 to I.B .
No .
32 ( 105 ) .
” “ Whole transports are sent directly into the gas without any numbering [ = registration ] .
The number of those affected already exceeds 500,000 .
Mainly jews .
Recently , transports of Poles from the Lublin area are going directly into the gas ( men and women ) .
The children are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Birkenau burns the so-called ‘ eternal fire ’ – a pile of corpses under the open sky – because the crematories can not handle the workload .
Recently , for military purposes , experiments have been conducted with gassings in the open air instead of in the chamber .
[ … ] The new crematorium burns about 5,000 people daily , mostly jews.
” Title : “ Report on the most important events in the camp .
Weekly report for the period from 27th of August 43 – 33/43 .
Numbers for Auschwitz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ the other victims ] , jews who are not recorded by the registration are poisoned in the gas chambers ( so far , half a million ) .
[ … ] In the crematorium , 5,000 bodies are cremated daily , and when the number of victims is greater , the others are burned alive in the ‘ eternal fire ’ in the open air at Birkenau – children are thrown alive into the fire.
” Title : “ Appendix No .
1 to I.B .
No .
37 ( 110 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the reports of an SS functionary at the headquarters of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp ( when publishing , round the numbers , do not mention source ! )
.
” Up to Sept. 1942 , 468,000 unregistered jews were poisoned with gas in Auschwitz .
From Sept. 1942 to June 1943 , some 60,000 jews arrived from Greece ( Thessaloniki , Athens ) ; from Slovakia and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia : 50,000 ; from Holland , Belgium and France : some 60,000 ; from Chrzanova : 6,000 ; from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Slemien and surroundings : 5,000 .
Of these , 2 % are still alive today .
Of the remaining 98 % , entirely healthy and young people were frequently sent into the gas , who were often burned while only half-dead .
Every transport arriving at Auschwitz is unloaded ; men and women are separated , and then 98 % of them ( mainly women and children ) are loaded ( en masse ) onto trucks without selection and taken to the gas chambers in Birkenau ; after horrible agonies ( asphyxiation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the corpses are thrown through an opening and burned on a pyre .
It should also be mentioned that those doomed are forced to take a bath before entering the gas chamber .
As a result of the lack of toxic gases , they often burn people who are still half alive .
There are currently three large crematories in Brzezinka for the cremation of 10,000 people a day , which are constantly cremating bodies and are called the ‘ eternal fire ’ by the local population .
[ … ] In addition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men ’ s camp near Rajsko , where predominantly the bodies of those are burned who had been executed from the prisons of Katowice and other places are .
[ … ] Since the crematories could not handle such a mass of bodies , the corpses were usually incinerated in an open pit in a field near Brzezinka , and after three days there was nothing else to see but flames that were ablaze where people were being burned .
[ … ] Brzezinka celebrated its record with the gassing of 30,000 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Appendix No .
61 for the period from 1st to 30th of November 1943.
” “ Mass murders of jews , mainly women , continue to take place in the gas chambers .
[ … ] During the gassing of 30,000 jews from Zagłębie Dabrowskie , the crematories could not keep up with cremating the bodies so that they were burned on pyres , and the children were thrown alive into the fire.
” Unpublished .
Polish Underground Movement ( 1939-1945 ) Study Trust ; a reference number was not given .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is built following the pattern of an air raid shelter .
Only the chimney protrudes above ground , in whose construction the informant was also involved .
The informant does not know where the gas chambers are located ; he merely heard that they are underground , built on the pattern of the crematorium.
” “ Thousands of jews from all Western countries , such as Holland , Belgium , France , were sent to Auschwitz .
There was a selection ; the strongest were sent to work , and they were admitted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those unfit for work , the physically weakest , were sent to the so-called disinfection – often entire families at once .
But these were actually execution chambers .
The people were told to undress , their hair was shorn off , and they were driven into immense halls where the disinfection took place .
There were seven of these halls .
Each of them could hold about 1,500 people .
After the halls had been filled with people , the air was pumped out , and then an agent – Kreuzolit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a small window .
After three to five minutes , the people inside were executed .
There were seven furnaces nearby to burn the bodies ; each furnace had seven openings for throwing in the bodies .
The combustion process lasted only a few seconds.
” Unpublished in the Polish language .
Translation into English : Polish Fortnightly Review , No .
115 , May 1 , 1945 , pp .
1-6 ; Polish Underground Movement ( 1939-1945 ) Study Trust , 3 .
16 .
Title : “ Letter to ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
” “ In Brzezinka there are six ‘ chimneys , ’ or crematoria .
They are never idle .
[ … ] Cremating the bodies of those who die in the camp is only a small part of the crematoria ’ s function .
The chimneys are intended for the living , not the dead .
And every day , yes indeed , every day , trains with jews from Bulgaria , Greece , Romania , Hungary , Italy , Germany , Holland , Belgium , France , Poland and until recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ railroad track leading into the camp area .
The transports include men , women and children .
10 % of the women from each transport are admitted to the camp , have a number tatooed , a star put onto their clothes , and increase the camp ’ s strength .
The rest is simply sent to the gas chamber .
It is impossible to describe the scenes unfolding during this .
[ … ] It is terrible to think about it , terrible to see when trucks are rolling on the camp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under the age of 10 ( children from the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Bohemia ) .
Some of them wept and cried : Mama !
Others , however , smiled at passerbys and waved their little hands .
A quarter hour later , none of them was left alive , and the little bodies stunned by the gas burned in ghastly furnaces .
And again , who would have thought such scenes possible ?
But I assure and guarantee you that this is really how it was , and I call upon the living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the gas… Yes , because gas was expensive , and the ‘ Sonderkommando ’ who operated the death chamber used it sparingly .
The doses used killed the weaker ones , but the stronger ones were put to sleep only for a moment .
The latter regain consciousness on the cremation carts and fall alive into the humming fiery maw.
” “ Every day , about 3,000 jews are gassed and then burned in the crematorium .
The Poles quartered in brick barracks claim that these barracks are mined .
Underneath the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large metal pipes that run parallel to the barracks and are connected to the electrical wires leading to Block No .
11 of the Political Department.
” “ The liquidation of the jews is organized as follows : Sealed trains are waiting on a special track to be unloaded .
The transports that the gas halls are unable to process had to camp out in a nearby forest , closely guarded by SS men .
The wait for death sometimes lasted several days .
Between the railroad ramp and the gassing facility , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turn it is now , passes by day and night , depending on how quickly the bodies are pulled out .
Trucks are rolling in the middle of the avenue , taking the weak , the old and the children off the ramp .
The healthy march on foot and are unaware to the last moment that they are going to their deaths .
SS men with machine guns are in rifle pits along the road .
All suitcases and any private property remain on the railway ramp .
They are then taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ where a special team of inmates sort them .
At the ramp , a mass of suitcases and packages is piling up , 300 m long , 20 m wide and as high as one floor .
In front of the enormous barracks labeled ‘ Personal Effects Chamber ’ are heaps of clothes ; they fail to keep up with sorting and packing them .
At the entrance to the gas chamber , the people have to surrender everything ; the money and the valuables they carry must be ‘ deposited , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over their clothes , which are later examined to see if any valuables are sewn into them .
After surrendering their clothes , the unfortunates are taken to the bath , i.e .
the gas chamber , in groups of 1,000 people .
They are not even given towels and soap , as was formerly the case , because there is no time for that .
Both gas chambers are in continuous operation day and night , yet still can not cope with the crowds .
Between the killing of each group , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remove the corpses , which are thrown to the other side of the chamber where the doomed don ’ t see them .
Entire mountains of corpses are on that side of the chamber .
The crematories can not keep up with the cremations .
The hair of all victims is shorn off by a special crew of hairdressers ; the hair is stuffed in bags as raw material .
A team of dentists carefully examines the mouth openings of all victims , tearing out gold and platinum crowns ; since there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off .
Another team of ‘ specialists ’ sticks their hands into the vaginas of female corpses in search of hidden valuables .
Then the bodies thusly ravished and examined get cremated .
There are 4 crematories in operation , 1 brick-firing kiln , and they also incinerate on pyres outdoors .
The black , dense billows of smoke can be seen from afar .
One crematorium is temporarily out of order , but is being repaired at an accelerated pace .
The need for repairs was the natural consequence of burned-out grates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the constant strain .
The crew charged with robbing , murdering and removing the corpses is called ‘ Sonderkommando ’ and is 2,000 strong .
These are healthy and strong jews who will also face death after having completed their work .
At present , the number of gassed ‘ Hungarian ’ jews exceeds 100,000 and continues to grow every day .
In the near future , Auschwitz is to destroy 1,200,000 ‘ Hungarian ’ jews.
” “ Immediately upon arrival , they have to hand over all the valuables and their money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for that ; then they wait for the ‘ bath.
’ Before the bath , they shear off the women ’ s hair , which is then sorted by a special unit and sent in packages to the Reich .
The clothes are also sorted by another unit , apparently for disinfection .
The entire time until the gas chamber is closed , they are treated politely and calmly .
After the gassing ( hydrogen cyanide ) , the corpses are once more searched by a unit under close observation of SS men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the gold teeth .
The daily yield of gold from the bodies is 10-13 kg .
Then the bodies are burned .
Since May 1 , four crematories are in operation day and night , as well as a brick-firing kiln , and sometimes they also cremate on pyres .
The daily liquidation rate is 10,000 .
All “ Hungarian ” jews are to be finished off in this way – their number is 1,200,000 .
[ … ] Among the SS men there are nervous breakdowns and cases of mental derangement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the jews to the crematorium .
There is a mild regiment inside the camp .
After a new commander took over in October , the death penalty for escape attempts was abolished .
But on May 1 , the old commander Grabner returned , the infamous organizer of mass executions , who is now all of a sudden involved in liquidating the jews.
” “ So far , several hundred thousand ‘ Hungarian ’ jews have been gassed in Auschwitz .
Until the very end , the victims are convinced that they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be exchanged for German prisoners of war in England .
The transports are subjected to a selection : men , women , children .
Suitcases , clothes , valuables and money are handed over ‘ for safekeeping , ’ and after the victims have stripped naked , they go in groups into the ‘ bath , ’ meaning to their death in the gas chamber .
Special units shear off the corpses ’ hair and collect it , tear out teeth with gold crowns , and look for valuables in the women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not keep up with burning the bodies .
There were jams , and some had to wait a few days for the ‘ bath.
’ 2,000 healthy jews were separated from the rest , were admitted to the Gleiwitz Camp , and were ordered to write optimistic letters to Hungary .
They know nothing about the fate of the others.
” As we ’ ve seen previously , from October 1941 on , the Polish resistance regularly distributed reports of mass murders in Auschwitz in which gas was mentioned as one of several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forwarded to the Polish government in exile in London , and without a shadow of a doubt were made accessible to Allied politicians and journalists – obviously without a response of any kind .
The horror stories about “ Kreuzolit ” , “ Hammerluft ” and “ electric bath ” were clearly too incredible to provoke more than a yawn among the Allies .
Very well-noted , however , were the three reports that in the historical literature are generally referred to as the “ Auschwitz Protocols.
” Their foundations were the testimonies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Via detours they arrived at the War Refugee Board ( WRB ) , an organization established by the Roosevelt administration and led by the jewish US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau that published these testimonies in English in November 1944 .
This “ WRB Report ” ( an alternative term referring to the “ Auschwitz Protocols ” ) consisted of three parts : • None : The two young Slovak jews Rudolf Vrba ( original name Walter Rosenberg ) and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz on April 7 , 1944 and fled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bratislava ] , Oskar Krasnansky , representative of the Jewish Council in Pressburg , wrote a report in German based on the testimonies of these two escapees .
Vrba and Wetzler depicted the way the camp was organized and made estimations with regards to the number of Jews who had been gassed up to the moment of their escape .
• None : The two jews Czesław Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz on May 27 , 1944 , got to the Slovak border on June 6 , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which they described the mass murder of Hungarian jews , among other things .
• None : Tabeau had escaped from Auschwitz already in November 1943 .
It seems extremely strange that none of the five authors was called as a witness before the Nuremberg court – what first-class witnesses were missed out on !
However , Vrba and Wetzler were witnesses at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial .
At the time of the Nuremberg Trial , the perception of Auschwitz as the largest human slaughterhouse of all times had already begun to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court as Document 008-USSR the article published May 7 , 1945 in Pravda that spoke of four million victims in Auschwitz .
Hence , one might assume that the Nuremberg judges were trying to get as many eyewitnesses of the mass murders as possible onto the witness stand , but strangely enough , this was not the case : neither the authors of the “ Auschwitz Protocols ” nor the members of the Sonderkommando , who – according to the reports – had been permanently at work in the gas chambers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most credible witnesses of the “ industrial genocide ” , was summoned to Nuremberg .
The only two former Auschwitz inmates to take the Nuremberg witness stand were the Frenchwoman Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier and the Polish woman Seweryna Szmaglewska ( whose short and inconsequential testimony will not be dealt with here ) .
Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier , later a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party , had been deported to Auschwitz in January 1943 as a resistance fighter .
In August 1944 , she was transferred from there to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 28 , 1946 , she appeared in Nuremberg as a witness for the prosecution .
In summary it can be said that in Nuremberg Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier presented her private Auschwitz version .
Madame ’ s version is a proven fantasy… What is revealing about the buried manuscript of Chaim Herman is not so much what he mentions in it , but what he doesn ’ t mention .
Strangely enough , he only writes about the extermination of his fellow sufferers who “ went to the gas and then to the ovens ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regard to an event immediately upon his arrival at the camp at a moment when he couldn ’ t have had first-hand experience .
He rather lends more space to “ shaving the head , to speak nothing of the beard and moustaches.
” For 20 months Herman was with the Sonderkommando .
If the commonly accepted idea about Auschwitz is correct , he therefore was an involuntary part of an infernal extermination machine .
Day after day he had to witness how his fellow sufferers were sent into the gas ; he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gas chamber and to the furnaces .
The gruesome height of the murdering was reached in the spring and summer of 1944 , when , so we are told by orthodox Holocaust historians , about 400,000 “ Hungarian ” jews were gassed , and their remains were incinerated partly in the crematories , partly in pits .
But about all these eerie things , no word from Chaim Herman .
To him , pointing out that he is well dressed and fed , has good quarters , is in perfect health , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as has a youthful look is a lot more important .
The worn-out metaphor of “ hell ” , that in comparison to this “ Dante ’ s hell ” appears ridiculous , seems to be somewhat misplaced considering the described conditions ( “ we have a sufficiency of everything ( except of dear freedom ) ” ) , all the more so as in July 1944 he was able to receive mail from his family .
We can be brief here .
The author had been active as a member of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t give the reader a clue about the kind of work he did .
Gas chambers and crematories melt into the mystical “ gas furnaces ” that occasionally lurk through the media cracks to this day .
On the one hand , Gradowski ’ s family was “ burnt alive ” , on the other hand these “ gas ovens ” “ swallow people alive and throw away their dead , cold bodies.
” While reading this account , the inescapable conclusion arises that it wasn ’ t buried by members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Auschwitz Camp , but by totally different people after its liberation , “ so that the world should find material traces of the millions of murdered people.
” This becomes a near certainty , when we read that he writes in the past tense about having buried this text .
How can he write something on a piece of paper that has been buried already ?
Let us now turn to those members of the Sonderkommando who survived the war and testified about their experiences .
Several of these men already testified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the first .
In April of that year , he testified before the Polish Commission for the Investigation of “ Nazi ” Crimes in Krakow .
Feinsilber occasionally called himself Stanisław Jankowski or Kaskowiak ; in September 1980 he handed a written testimony to lawyer Pierre Atal in Paris , this time using the name Alter Szmul Fajnzylberg .
Just as his name , he also appears to have occasionally changed his date of birth ; according to his Krakow testimonies he was born on October 23 , 1910 , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 23 , 1911 .
As an adolescent already , Feinsilber ( alias Jankowski , alias Kaskowiak , alias Fajnzylberg ) had become a member of the Communist Party in his Polish homeland for which he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment .
After an interlude in Spain , where he had fought on the side of the Republicans , he was detained in France in several camps but managed to escape .
End of 1941 or beginning 1942 he was apprehended again and sent via the transit camp Drancy to Auschwitz , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Therefore , as is so often the case , we depend on eyewitness reports .
Key witness of the bunkers is , without any question , the “ Polish ” jew Szlama Dragon , born in 1920 and a tailor by profession .
On February 26 , 1945 , hence already one month after the Soviet occupation of Auschwitz , Dragon was questioned by a judge of the Soviet military judiciary , Captain Levin .
During that interrogation , Dragon elaborated liberally on the two “ gas chambers.
” ( For these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Bunker ” ; apparently this term became customary only later . )
The four million gassing victims claimed by Dragon indicate to whose tune he had been singing .
In order to make these numbers seem plausible , he , too , made the usual outrageous statements about the cremation capacity of the furnaces : three corpses concurrently within 15-20 minutes , instead of one per hour .
Try to picture this action : 1,500 corpses had to be dragged through a small corridor to the undressing room and then to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a perfectly organized genocide !
This truly German perfection is also proven by the fact that the cremation of a corpse in Auschwitz was performed nine times faster than anywhere else , that a single barber sufficed to cut the hair of 1,500 corpses , and as well only a single dentist was needed to pull their ( gold ) teeth .
Another member of the Sonderkommando who testified before the Commission for the Investigation of “ Nazi ” Crimes was the “ Polish ” jew Henryk Tauber , born in 1917 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Auschwitz Camp on January 19 , 1943 .
His testimony was given in Krakow on May 24 , 1945 .
Again , we stumble across more than 4 million murder victims .
Although none of the former Auschwitz detainees dealt with in the present book had been capable of having even the slightest knowledge of the total number of Auschwitz victims , this number emerges over and over again in their testimonies .
The fact that these witnesses mentioned the same number of victims as the Soviet “ experts ” did in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , clearly shows that their testimonies had been coordinated by the Soviets and/or by their Polish communist puppets .
The non-jewish Pole Michał Kula , born in 1912 , occupation mechanic , was employed as a lathe operator in the inmate metal workshop of Auschwitz and later of Birkenau where he came into contact with Sonderkommando people .
In Krakow , on June 11 , 1945 Kula appeared before the Commission for the Investigation of “ Nazi ” Crimes .
In 1963 in Vienna , Dov Paisikovic , former member of the Sonderkommando @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his term in that camp which then was used at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial .
The French historian Léon Poliakov , who for many years was seen as one of the leading experts on the “ Final Solution ” , reproduced Paisikovic ’ s statements in his book Auschwitz published in 1964 .
Paisikovic , born in 1924 in Carpatho-Ukraine , had in May 1944 been deported from the Munkacs Ghetto to Auschwitz .
Exactly as the other members of the Sonderkommando , Paisikovic reports things that are technically impossible and against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insult to common sense : • None “ We senselessly had to drag stones back and forth ” – in the light of the scarcity of manpower for the important war industries of the region , it ’ s extremely implausible that the SS would have allowed this .
• None “ SS Hauptscharführer Moll [ … ] in a white uniform ” – the SS did not wear white uniforms .
• None According to Paisikovic , the gassing took three to four minutes ; then ventilation took place after opening the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evaporation time and the difficulty of ventilating Zyklon ) , these given times are completely unrealistic .
• None “ Often the bodies were in tatters ” – possibly caused by Zyklon bombs ?
• None Paisikovic indicates the number of people crammed into the gas chamber to be 3,000 , which – at a surface area of 210 m² – results in 13 people per square meter .
An impressive number ; one is to experimentally verify whether this can be correct .
• None The author himself makes it clear that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so closely pressed together .
A few sentences earlier , however , some of the victims were lying on the floor in front of the gas-chamber door .
• None “ Most victims did not know what to expect .
But some already knew what fate awaited them.
” Imagine it : Three thousand people standing in a chamber packed like sardines in a can , but most of them still do not sense what is going to happen to them , because they think they would soon be taking a shower !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be that he expected them to believe such imbecility ?
• None The most ludicrous of all of Paisikovic ’ s statements is that the cremation of a corpse took four minutes on average .
( 3,000 corpses within 183 hours in 15 muffles = 16,67 corpses per hour and muffle , or 3.6 minutes per corpse = 216 seconds . )
This claim alone reduces the credibility of the whole “ witness report ” to zero .
If despite the previous , Poliakov thought Paisikovic to be worthy of including him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because nothing better had been available to him .
Of all the members of the Sonderkommando , the “ Slovak ” jew Filip Müller undoubtedly has gained the most publicity .
Raul Hilberg quotes him in his definitive book The Destruction of European Jewry no less than twenty times as witness to the mass murders in Auschwitz ( cf .
Graf 2015 , p. 98 ) .
Müller , born in 1922 in Sered , had been deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 , where he was soon admitted to the Sonderkommando , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end .
After the evacuation of Auschwitz , he was transferred to Mauthausen , where he was liberated at the end of the war .
Thirty-four years later in 1979 , Müller published his book Sonderbehandlung : Drei Jahre in den Krematorien und Gaskammern von Auschwitz ( Müller 1979a ) , which he wrote with the help of the ghostwriter Helmut Freitag .
An English translation with the title Auschwitz Inferno : The Testimony of a Sonderkommando appeared that same year ( Müller 1979b ) .
In this book , Müller depicts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I in the Main Camp as well as in the crematoria of Birkenau ( but not in the bunkers ) in greater detail than any other witness .
It ’ s now time to draw an interim recap : As already emphasized several times , the members of the Sonderkommando – provided the orthodox Auschwitz version is correct – must have been the most credible of all witnesses , as they would have known all details of the extermination process very well .
Up to now , I have quoted nine reports of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aside here the four “ buried manuscripts ” for reason of their dubious origin , five reasonably detailed reports by key witnesses remain : Alter Feinsilber ; Szlama Dragon ( the most important witness with regard to the bunkers by far ) ; Henryk Tauber ( for Jean-Claude Pressac the most credible witness bar none ) ; Dov Paisikovic ( who was extensively cited by the famous Holocaust scholar Léon Poliakov in his Auschwitz book ) and Raul Hilberg ’ s favorite witness Filip Müller .
The results are devastating : All these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mass of absurdities and shameless lies , with the lowlight being reached with Filip Müller whose performance can hardly be undercut .
The witnesses contradict each other and at times even themselves on all manner of points .
With these eyewitnesses , the entire orthodox Auschwitz narrative collapses like a house of cards .
Rudolf Höss , born in 1900 , the first commander of Auschwitz , had served in concentration camps without interruption since 1934 , initially as a simple guard in Dachau and later in Sachsenhausen , where he moved up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ camp commandant .
On May 1 , 1940 , then an SS captain , he was charged with setting up the Auschwitz Camp , which he commanded until November 1943 ; he then was appointed Head of Department D 1 of Office Group D of the RSHA ( concentration camps ) .
After the end of the war he fell into British captivity , but was soon released , as the British apparently were not aware of his identity .
Höss then went underground , but was arrested on March 11 , 1946 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been put on the wanted-persons list of the victorious powers .
After he had made several confessions and had testified as a witness during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg , he was extradited to Poland on May 25 , 1946 .
While in prison at Krakow , he wrote his “ autobiographical notes ” that are considered to be the central proof for the extermination of the jews in Auschwitz .
In March of 1947 , Höss was put on trial in Warsaw and sentenced to death .
On April 16 of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the premises of the former Auschwitz Main Camp .
The editors of the anthology “ Nazi ” Mass Murder presented SS Sergeant Pery Broad as the second most important Auschwitz witness among the SS men , immediately after Rudolf Höss ( Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl 1994 , p. 140 ) .
Broad , born in 1921 in Brazil as the son of a Brazilian merchant and a German woman , emigrated with his family to Germany at the age of five and joined the SS in 1941 .
In the beginning of 1942 , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Waffen SS , but was soon discharged for being unfit for active duty due to his nearsightedness .
He was transferred to Auschwitz , where he initially served as a guard .
On May 6 , 1945 , he was apprehended by the British .
Due to his excellent command of the English language , he was employed as an interpreter .
On July 13 , 1945 , he gave his employers a long “ memorandum ” about Auschwitz , which he confirmed with an affidavit in December of the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Broad once again issued a statement in Nuremberg .
He was released from custody during the same year .
Titled “ Reminiscences , ” Broad ’ s text was made part of the collection KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS published by the Auschwitz Museum ( Bezwińska/Czech , pp .
139-198 ) .
I will now quote several excerpts that appear to be particularly relevant : “ Auschwitz was an extermination camp !
The biggest to exist in the history of the world .
Two or three million jews were murdered there in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( p. 143 ) Broad – who , it can not be denied , had a certain literary talent – portrays the gassing procedure in Crematory I quite elaborately .
It is indeed evident that Broad doesn ’ t sound like an SS man .
It stands to reason that he wanted to assure himself of mild treatment by his captors with his “ memorandum.
” He did succeed in this : As had happened to many of Broad ’ s former companions , the British could have readily hanged him , sentenced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extradited him to Poland : But no : as a trade-off for having provided them with conclusive “ evidence ” of mass extermination in Auschwitz , they released him in 1947 already .
In order to obtain such an advantageous special treatment , Broad had adopted the parlance of the victors already at an early stage .
For many decades , Dr. Johann Paul Kremer has been one of the most mentioned key witnesses of the homicidal gassings in Auschwitz .
Kremer , born December 26 , 1883 , was a professor of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1936 until 1945 .
From the end of August until mid-November 1942 , he was stationed in Auschwitz as a temporary substitute for a sick camp physician .
He kept a diary , which also covers this period .
In August 1945 , he was arrested by the British and detained in the former National Socialist Concentration Camp Neuengamme .
They confiscated his diary and later handed it over to the Polish authorities .
Because he had served at Auschwitz , Kremer was extradited to Poland , and in December 1947 sentenced to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former SS men of Auschwitz .
The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment , and in 1958 Kremer was released on grounds of his age and of his good conduct .
In West Germany he was soon put on trial again , and in 1960 sentenced by the Münster District Court to 10 years of imprisonment , which was considered served due to his prison time in Poland .
Here are Kremer ’ s diary entries in which he mentions “ special actions ” ( according to the orthodox narrative , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ page numbers from Bezwińska/Czech 1984 , unless stated otherwise ) : 2 September : “ Was present for first time at special action at 3 a.m .
In comparison with it Dante ’ s Inferno seems to be almost a comedy .
Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp !
” ( p. 214 ) When he admitted to the gassings before the Polish court , he did so simply to save his life .
The strategy had been successful , as he avoided the gallows by it , and after ten years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Germany , where he was put on trial again and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment , which he did not have to serve , however .
The fact that the 77-year-old man in this instance told his prosecutors what they wanted to hear as well is not surprising .
Who would blame him for not wanting to spend the last years of his life behind bars ?
In the verdict of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial ( 1963-1965 ) – already quoted in the introduction of this book – we read ( Sagel-Grande/Fuchs/ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The court lacked almost all possibilities of discovery available in a normal murder trial to create a true picture of the actual event at the time of the murder .
It lacked the bodies of the victims , autopsy records , expert reports on the cause of death and the time of death ; it lacked any trace of the murderers , murder weapons , etc .
An examination of the eyewitness testimony was possible only in rare cases .
[ … ] The general findings [ … ] rest on [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnesses [ followed by several names ] Böck , furthermore on the handwritten accounts of the first camp commandant Höss.
” Let us now look at Richard Böck ’ s testimonies which the court assessed as credible .
Böck , an SS truck driver of low rank , testified as follows on the 73rd day of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial ( Aug. 3 , 1964 ) .
The German original is rather awkward , as Böck ’ s language skills were evidently quite poor , pointing to a low IQ .
Comparing this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the preliminary investigation leading up to the Auschwitz Trial – on February 5 , 1959 and November 2 , 1960 – it is clear that the language of these transcripts must have been heavily corrected by the recording clerk .
But even after that , it is evident that clear thoughts were not Böck ’ s forte .
He contradicts himself with regard to the date of the gassing he allegedly attended in one of the so-called bunkers , because during his first testimony Böck had specifically said that this gassing had occurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ( Public Prosecutor ’ s Office… , Vol .
3 , p. 453 ) while during the second interrogation he had this one occured “ in the winter of 1942/43 ” ( ibid.
, Vol .
29 , p. 6881 ) .
By their actions , the engineers responsible for the design , construction and equipment of the crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau did not extinguish a single human life , but on the contrary saved people : Without the crematories , further epidemics would certainly have broken out sooner or later due to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many more detainees would have died in Auschwitz than the approximately 140,000 who perished there from 1940 to 1945 according to the documents .
The prevention of epidemics had been the main reason , by the way , that cremation had become the main competitor of burial from the 19th century on .
It is indicative that a paper published in 1875 about this subject was titled “ Cremation .
Of All Currently Achievable Ways of Funeral the Best Public Health Measure with Regard to the Soil , and the Strongest Safeguard against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Therefore , under normal conditions nobody would have even thought of taking the men to court who had created such sanitary installations in Auschwitz .
But the post-war conditions just weren ’ t normal .
With an unprecedented propaganda campaign , the eastern and western conquerors of National Socialist Germany hammered upon the world since 1945 that the defeated nation had committed a monstrous genocide in “ extermination camps ” : millions of people were said to have been killed in these camps .
The Upper Silesian concentration camp at Auschwitz was soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ propaganda .
This was so for obvious reasons .
Auschwitz was by far the largest camp ; it had – primarily due to typhus epidemics – at times an enormously high mortality , and moreover had served as transit camp for detainees transferred to other places .
A large camp complex , high mortality , a large number of detainees deported to Auschwitz , many of whom apparently disappeared without a trace after just a short while , large quantities of Zyklon-B deliveries , and four crematoria erected in haste : the architects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have wished for more ideal prerequisites .
Under these circumstances , every German who had participated in the construction of this camp , or had at any time served there , was automatically suspect of being complicit in mass murder , especially those who had built and equipped the crematories .
It therefore was only logical that the owners of the company Topf & Söhne , as well as the engineers responsible for constructing and equipping the crematories were put on the wanted list of the occupying forces .
Shortly after the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owner and director of the company , committed suicide in order to avoid imminent apprehension in the city of Erfurt , which at that time was occupied by the Americans , while four of his leading staff were arrested there in March 1946 by the Soviets , who in the meantime had replaced the Americans as the occupying force .
These men were : – Fritz Sander , main engineer of the company and head of the department for crematory construction .
– Karl Schultze , chief engineer for ventilation systems and constructor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Braun , construction engineer and the company ’ s head of production .
After their arrest , the four engineers were interrogated several times by officers of the Soviet anti-espionage organization Smersh ( an abbreviation of Smert shpionam , “ Death to the spies ” ) about their role in constructing and equipping the crematories and in the alleged “ gas chambers ” of Auschwitz .
The already-70-year-old Fritz Sander died March 26 of severe exhaustion after three interrogations – a clear sign as to the conditions under which these interrogations were conducted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has described in detail and from his own experience what the typical Soviet treatment of such detainees looked like at that time : they were systematically deprived of sleep in order to be put into a state of complete exhaustion and mental disorientation so that they would confess and parrot all that was demanded from them by their prosecutors .
Sander ’ s three colleagues were subjected to intensive interrogations in 1946 in Erfurt and in 1948 in Moscow .
On April 3 , 1948 , Kurt Prüfer , Karl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 25 years of forced labor .
While Prüfer died October 24 , 1952 at the age of 61 in a Soviet camp , Braun , by then 67 years of age , as well as Schultze , 56 years of age , were granted amnesty together with numerous other Germans in Soviet post-war internment ; they were released and handed over to the communist East German government .
I don ’ t have information as to their further fate .
One of the German prisoners who was apprehended by the British after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Captain Hans Aumeier .
On February 2 , 1942 , Aumeier had been transferred to Auschwitz , and was the head of the protective-custody department of the Main Camp until August 15 , 1943 .
In October 1943 , he was transferred to Estonia , and in February 1945 to Norway , where he was arrested by the British after the war .
In March 1946 he was taken by them to the “ London Cage ” and interrogated there – one can imagine the conditions .
Below I quote the section of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relevant to the present context ( cf .
Mattogno 2016g , pp .
138-140 ) : “ In the fall of 1942 , typhus occurred in the camp , so that all camps were closed for about 8-10 weeks .
The mortality increased , about 40 SS men also died during this time .
In the spring of 1943 , paratyphoid fever occurred as well , caused by bad water , which continued to keep the mortality excessively high .
As far as I know , about 3,000 to 3,500 prisoners died during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ died before my time had been buried for the most part and were dug up again and burned in the early summer of 1942 until the spring of 1943 .
In the Main Camp , there was a crematorium consisting of two furnaces .
Corpses were burned there .
The crematorium was under the responsibility of the head of the Political Department and the camp surgeon .
During my time , 2 or 3 crematoria were under construction at Birkenau .
I have no knowledge of gas chambers and during my time no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of my transfer , there were some 54,000 detainees at Auschwitz and Birkenau , among them about 15,000 women and children .
Detainees who fell ill were moved to the infirmary , which was under the exclusive responsibility of the camp surgeon.
” Of course , the British didn ’ t like that at all , so they applied their proven methods which made Aumeier answer a questionnaire they gave him on the gas chambers and homicidal gassings in such a way as the British expected him to .
Aumeier must have done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a British memo of August 10 , 1945 about Aumeier ’ s second , “ improved ” testimony we read ( ibid . )
: “ The interrogator is satisfied that the major part of the material of this report is in conformity with the truth as far as the facts are concerned , but the personal reactions of Aumeier and his way of thinking may change a bit when his fate gets worse.
” ( Emphasis added ) It is of course unknown what this ominous note was referring to , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t forebode anything good .
In any case , Aumeier was ultimately extradited to Poland in 1946 , where he was put to trial together with other former staff members of the Auschwitz Camp , and sentenced to death .
He was executed January 28 , 1948 .
From May 1940 until September 1943 , SS First Lieutenant Grabner had been head of the political department of Auschwitz , that is to say , the highest-ranking Gestapo man of the camp .
As such he was responsible for interrogations , the carrying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the operation of the crematories .
In other words : If torture , mass-murder and extermination actions in the crematories occurred in Auschwitz , Grabner was the responsible person at the site for the organization and control of it all .
Accordingly , the statements of the Auschwitz survivors are full of allegations against Grabner .
He mistreated , tortured , murdered at will , and saw to it that the gassing and mass incinerations were carried out swiftly … indeed , while Höss was the commandant of the camp , he himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For that he allegedly had his executioners , and the first among them was Grabner .
After the war , Grabner was arrested and interrogated in Austria by the Allied occupation forces before he was extradited to Poland , where he was put on trial with Aumeier and other former senior staff members of the Auschwitz Camp .
He was sentenced to death and executed on January 28 , 1948 .
In view of the flood of absurd , grotesque and perverted accusations made by a vast number of former Auschwitz detainees which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-war interrogations , he ultimately must have lost his mind in Poland .
There is otherwise no way to explain his engine-oil fairy tale .
Exactly what methods were used to drive him mad will probably forever remain the secret of his Polish dungeon masters .
Grabner attempted to please his persecutors by showing anti-fascist zeal .
He exaggerated the numbers of victims of Auschwitz excessively , raised wild accusations against all other senior camp staff members and claimed to have carried out heroic acts of sabotage against the evil “ Nazis.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempts to deliver more to his prosecutors than was expected of him .
We therefore had to expect that the man who was the main officer responsible for implementing the claimed mass murders and the disposal of the corpses would be able to convey a wealth of details about the facilities and procedures used .
But the things Grabner reports are superficial , inaccurate and erroneous or even completely false minutiae ; this even measured against the present day ruling orthodox narrative .
In other words : Grabner couldn ’ t present any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Had they existed , he would surely have had knowledge about them , and in view of his mental condition he undoubtedly would have shared it with his interrogators .

Auschwitz: Eyewitness Reports and Perpetrator Confessions of the Holocaust: 30 Gas-Chamber Witnesses Scrutinized
By Jürgen Graf
The Eyewitness Reports
The Reports by the Polish Resistance Movement about the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz (1941-1944)
In September 1939, western Poland was overrun by the Germans, and the eastern part by the Soviet armies. Soon thereafter, Poland disappeared as an independent state. The government in Warsaw went into exile in Britain. From 1940 to 1945, the Delegatura held office, in the underground, as the Polish government’s representative in the areas that were occupied by Germany. It had representatives in the individual provinces and districts. The Delegatura was de facto a shadow government contesting the command of the country with the German occupying power. It was an underground state with its own educational system, own judiciary as well as its own armed forces, the Armia Krajowa.
It was obvious that the “German crimes” formed a central part of the reports, and that the concentration camps, especially Auschwitz as the largest of these, drew the special attention of the “Department for Information and Press.” The bulk of the respective reports has been published in the Polish book Obóz koncentracyjny Oświęcim w świetle akt delegatury rządu RP na kraj (Concentration Camp Auschwitz in the Light of Documents of the Delegation of the Government of the Polish Republic in the Homeland).
We are dealing with a total of 32 reports that fall into the period from October 24, 1941 until July 7, 1944. For unknown reasons, no documents have been preserved of the period July 1944 until January 1945.
Here now the documents, with their respective excerpts in chronological order:
Document No. 1
Published in: Obóz, p. 11.
Date: October 24, 1941.
Header: 1631. Title: –
“At the beginning of October, 850 Russian officers and NCOs (prisoners of war) were taken to Auschwitz and killed by gas to test a new type of combat gas to be used on the Eastern Front.”
Document No. 2
Published in: Obóz, p. 14.
Date: November 15, 1941.
Header: –
Title: “Situation Report for the period from August 15 to November 15, 1941.”
“The camp became the scene of a gruesome crime when, during the night of 5 to 6 September, about 600 Soviet prisoners, including ‘Politruks’ of the army, and about 200 Poles were driven into a bunker; after the bunker was sealed, they were poisoned with gas, the bodies were taken to the crematorium and burned.”
Document No. 3
Published in: Obóz, p. 14.
Date: November 17, 1941.
Header: 1631. Informacja bieżąca 21.
Title: –
“Auschwitz. The news of a sinister crime committed in the camp is confirmed. On the night of September 5 to 6, 1941, about 600 Soviet civilian prisoners brought there were driven into the bunker in Auschwitz, whereby their hands and feet were broken with clubs. Included were about 250 Poles. All openings of the bunker were sealed off, and the trapped people were poisoned with gases. Overnight, the corpses of the poisoned were hauled on 80 wagons into the crematorium, where they were burned.”
Document No. 4
Published in: Obóz, p. 16.
Date: December 15, 1941.
Header: –
Title: “Supplement to appendix No. 21 for the period December 1–15, 1941.”
“Using a combat gas, about 500 prisoners were poisoned in a concrete bunker.”
Document No. 5
Published in: Obóz, p. 32.
Date: June 1942.
Header: –
Title: “Auschwitz.”
“There are very many murder methods, namely shooting by a firing squad, murder with Hammerluft [hammer air; German in the text], and finally gassing in gas chambers. The first as well as in the second are used to murder those who have been sentenced to death and sent [to Auschwitz] by the Gestapo; the third method is used with those who are unable to work, and those arriving with the transports already slated for this fate (Bolsheviks and, more recently, transports of jews).”
Document No. 6
Published in Polish Fortnightly Review, No. 47, p. 2 (the Polish template has not been preserved).
Date: July 1, 1942.
Header: –
Title: “Documents from Poland. German attempts to murder a nation. The Pawiak prison in Warsaw as well as the concentration camp Auschwitz.”
“Among the other experiments being tried on the prisoners is the use of poison gas. It is generally known that during the night of September 5th to 6th last year about a thousand people were driven down to the underground shelter in Oswięcim, among them seven hundred Bolshevik prisoners of war and three hundred Poles. As the shelter was too small to hold this large number, the living bodies were simply forced in, regardless of broken bones. When the shelter was full, gas was injected into it, and all the prisoners died during the night. All night the rest of the camp was kept awake by the groans and howls coming from the shelter. Next day other prisoners had to carry out the bodies, a task which took all day. One hand-cart on which the bodies were being removed broke down under the weight.”
Document No. 7
Published in Obóz, p. 43.
Date: August 29, 1942.
Header: –
Title: “Letter written in the Auschwitz Camp.”
“The most terrible thing is the mass executions by gas in special chambers built for this purpose. There are two of them, and they can hold 1,200 people. They are set up like showers, which unfortunately emit gas instead of water. In this way, they execute predominantly whole transports of people who are not prepared for it. They are told that they enter a bathroom, even give them towels – in this way, they have already sent 300,000 to their deaths. They used to be buried in ditches; today, they are burned in specially excavated ditches outdoors. Death is caused by suffocation, because blood comes out of the nose and mouth.”
Document No. 8
Published in: Obóz, p. 48.
Date: October 10, 1942.
Header: D.I.
Title: “Report about the situation in the nation for the period from August 26 – October 10, 1942.”
“Gas chambers. The first use of gas chambers took place in June 1941. They assembled a transport of 1,700 terminally ill patients and sent them ‘officially’ to a sanatorium in Dresden, but actually to a building that had been converted into a gas chamber. The building, however, proved too small and impractical. It was decided to build 5 new chambers in Brzezinka, 7 kilometers from the camp. Their construction was completed in April 1942. These 5 chambers are five buildings without windows, with a double door sealed by screws, as well as devices for the introduction of gas and for ventilation; each building is designed for 700 people. Between the buildings are laid the rails of a railway, with which the corpses are brought to the ditches which have been excavated in the nearby woods. The gassing of 3,500 people including all preparatory and subsequent work takes 2 hours. They mainly gas Bolshevist prisoners and jews. Among the Poles especially those [who are] terminally ill. In the reports sent from the camp to Berlin the number of those gassed is not indicated.”
Document No. 9
Published in: Obóz, p. 52.
Date: October 23, 1942.
Header: “163-A/1. Informacja bieżąca No. 39 (64).”
Title: –
“Up to the 15th of August, the ‘death book’ officially registered 18,800 cremations. But apart from this official figure (inmates from Poland and the Reich), thousands of jews from Poland, France, Holland and Germany died, as well as Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, even Italians; furthermore a certain number of Polish ‘resettlers,’ and finally Russian prisoners of war: of these, about 60,000 arrived in the course of the year, and none of them survived: they tested the effects of battle gases on them. The property robbed in the camp of the jews from France and Holland exceeds the value of 60 million prewar Reichsmark; it consists of gold and valuables. According to the report of an SS man deployed at the electric chambers, the number of these victims unofficially amounts up to 2,500 per night. They are executed by an electric bath as well as in gas chambers. The camp dogs have also destroyed a large number of victims.”
Document No. 10
Published in: Obóz, pp. 60f.
Date: November 10, 1942.
Header: –
Title “To headquarters. Copies of reports and memories from the penal camp Auschwitz.”
“The first use of gas chambers (Degasungskammer) [sic!] took place in June 1941. A transport of 1,700 people was put together (terminally ill persons, those suffering from venereal diseases, Körperschwäche [German in original; physically weak persons], cripples, patients recovering from chest surgery, meningitis patients) and they were sent to a sanatorium in Dresden (so the official announcement). In reality, they were transported to a building that had been converted into a gas chamber. The building proved too small and impractical. It was decided to build five modern chambers in Brzezinka (Birkenau), 7 kilometers from the camp. The construction was completed in April 1942. There are 6 blocks (without windows, double doors shut with screws, modern gas-supply and ventilation systems) for 700 persons each. Between the blocks, a narrow-gauge railway hauls the bodies to ditches, each 4 km long, in nearby forests. Another train brings lime to sprinkle over the bodies. The whole area of the D-chamber [sic] is a restricted area; anyone who does not work there but is present on the territory anyway faces the death penalty (this also applies to the SS, the Wehrmacht, civilians and prisoners). The gassing of 3,500 people takes 2 hours.”
Document No. 11
Published in: Obóz, p. 69.
Date: November 1942.
Header: –
Title: “To headquarters. From the letter of an Auschwitz detainee.”
“Usually two transports arrive every week with jews from Slovakia, France, the coal-mining area[39] or the Government General. jews from the coal-mining area as well as from the Government General are poisoned en masse; it is difficult for us to determine the number, but it [is] so huge that they cannot keep up with removing the clothing of those poisoned. Some 15,000 of them were lying next to the gas chambers, although corpses were removed daily with carts. There are two poisoning sites: in the camp crematorium[40] (capacity 400 people) and in Birkenau, where several houses with considerably larger capacities have been prepared for this purpose in the forest. The gassing victims are buried in large pits, to which a dedicated railway line was laid to facilitate transportation. To fill them [the pits], civilian jews are used who are themselves poisoned after some time.”
Document No. 12
Published in: Obóz, p. 54.
Date: November 1, 1942.
Header: –
Title: “About life in the camp.”
“When the squad is sent to work, they [the doomed] are taken to the yard of the penal company, where the executions take place through the ‘Hammerluft’ [so in the original; “hammer air”]. The prisoners’ hands are tied behind their backs, and they are led individually into the yard. There the barrel of this air rifle is aimed [at the back of their heads], and a silent shot is fired. The hammer hits the lower part of the skull, and the compressed air crushes the whole brain. The corpses are thrown onto a pile, and then it’s the next victim’s turn. According to accounts received, terrible scenes are taking place there.”
Document No. 13
Published in: Obóz, pp. 79f.
Date: January 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Addition to K.B./r. O.K. No. 3 – Part I.”
“Numerical statistics for the existence of the Auschwitz Camp up to the 15th of December 1942. […] jews: Gassing victims from France, Belgium and Holland: 502,000 Gassing victims from Poland: 20,000.”
Document No. 14
Published in: Obóz, p. 89.
Date: February 24, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Report about the situation in the govenor generalship for the period from January 24 – February 24, 1943.”
“jews poisoned with gas 520,000, some 20,000 of them from Poland, the rest from France, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia and other countries.”
Document No. 15
Published in: Obóz, p. 90.
Date: February 28, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Appendix No. 48 for the period from February 16 – 28, 1943.”
“Gassed jews from Poland 20,000; from France, Belgium, Holland 502,000.”
Document No. 16
Published in: Obóz, p. 97.
Date: March 26, 1943.
Header: 252-A/1. Informacja bieżąca No. 12 (85).
Title: –
“Outside of the numbering [meaning death cases not numerically registered], there are the transports destined for the gas, mainly jews, to date more than 500,000.”
Document No. 17
Published in: Obóz, pp. 100f.
Date: April, 1943.
Header: IV. 33.
Title: –
“The Auschwitz Camp lacks gas to poison the inmates; for reasons of economy, people remain half-poisoned and are then burned. In the crematorium, the walls are stained with blood – if a person stunned by the effect of the gas comes to in the furnace, he scratches the concrete with his fingers while fighting against death. The same happens during open-air incinerations, where the poisoned people inside the cremation pits regain consciousness after some time. Legends circulate about these cremation pits – they are known as ‘eternal fires’ because they are blazing day and night.”
Document No. 18
Published in: Obóz, p. 98.
Date: April 2, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Report on the most important events in the nation during the period from March 28 to April 2, 1943 No. 12/43.”
“The data mentioned does not include the transports of those destined for the gas chambers, who have a separate numbering. Here, the numbering already exceeds 500,000 people, mostly jews.”
Document No. 19
Unpublished. Yad Vashem, M-2/261.
Date: April 18, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Report compiled April 18 in London. I personally know the informant.”
“Auschwitz. I lived in Auschwitz for a few weeks. I know the conditions exactly because I’ve been researching them and I have been there for that purpose. From those released from Auschwitz, I obtained extremely accurate information about what is going on there. When I left Auschwitz at the end of September, more than 95,000 inmates had already been registered, but there were also non-registered inmates. Among them were 20,000 Bolshevik prisoners of war who had been brought there in the summer of 1940 [sic; no doubt 1941 was meant], as well as large masses of jews deported there from other countries. The prisoners of war died of starvation. The jews were executed en masse. When I left, there were about 15,000 prisoners at Auschwitz. Of those registered, at least 60,000 had been murdered. Based on the certain information I obtained on the spot, I can assert that the Germans used the following killing systems:
a/ gas chambers. The victims have to strip naked, then they are jammed into the chambers and poisoned;
b/ electric chambers: These chambers had metal walls; the victims were led in, and they were exposed to high voltage;
c/ the system of the so-called Hammerluft [German in original]: This is an air hammer. There were special chambers where the hammer drops down from the ceiling, and where the victims were killed by the air pressure by means of a special device.
d/ shootings: This is mainly used as a form of collective punishment in cases of disobedience, with one in ten being shot. The first three methods are used most frequently, the last more rarely. The Gestapo men, with gas masks donned, stood in a place higher than the gas chambers, cynically reveling in the mass killing of the victims. The Germans loaded the bodies [on vehicles] and took them away; outside of Auschwitz, they excavated graves and pits with the aid of gigantic diggers and sprinkled lime on the bodies. Cremation of the victims by means of electric furnaces is practiced less often because only 250 bodies could be burned in these furnaces within 24 hours.”
Document No. 20
Unpublished. Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust, a reference number was not given.
Date: 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Fragment of a report by the [Polish] State Department [in Exile] for the first half of the year 1943.”
“jews poisoned with gas 520,000, among them 20,000 from Poland, the rest from France, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia and other countries.”
Document No. 21
Published in: Obóz, p. 107.
Date: July 15, 1943.
Header: S.Z. S. I.
Title: “Report broadcast by the BBC for the world.”
“By the end of 1942, 468,000 jews had been poisoned with gas in the Auschwitz Camp without having been registered previously. This is an officially confirmed figure. […] From September of last year until the beginning of June of this year, 181,000 jews from Poland, Greece, France, Belgium, Holland and Czechoslovakia were brought to Auschwitz. Of these, 177,000 were executed by gas poisoning. […] Lately, killings by decapitation have also been carried out in Auschwitz.”
Document No. 22
Published in: Obóz, pp. 111f.
Date: August 18, 1943.
Header: s.z.
Title: “Letter of a detainee of Auschwitz. Appendix No. 1 to I.B. No. 32 (105).”
“Whole transports are sent directly into the gas without any numbering [= registration]. The number of those affected already exceeds 500,000. Mainly jews. Recently, transports of Poles from the Lublin area are going directly into the gas (men and women). The children are just thrown into the fire. Behind Birkenau burns the so-called ‘eternal fire’ – a pile of corpses under the open sky – because the crematories cannot handle the workload. Recently, for military purposes, experiments have been conducted with gassings in the open air instead of in the chamber. […] The new crematorium burns about 5,000 people daily, mostly jews.”
Document No. 23
Published in: Obóz, pp. 119f.
Date: August 27, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Report on the most important events in the camp. Weekly report for the period from 27th of August 43 – 33/43. Numbers for Auschwitz and Trawniki.”
“Apart from them [the other victims], jews who are not recorded by the registration are poisoned in the gas chambers (so far, half a million). […] In the crematorium, 5,000 bodies are cremated daily, and when the number of victims is greater, the others are burned alive in the ‘eternal fire’ in the open air at Birkenau – children are thrown alive into the fire.”
Document No. 24
Published in: Obóz, pp. 124f, 129.
Date: Sept. 22, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Appendix No. 1 to I.B. No. 37 (110). 22nd of Sept. 43. Translation of the reports of an SS functionary at the headquarters of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp (when publishing, round the numbers, do not mention source!).”
“jews.
Up to Sept. 1942, 468,000 unregistered jews were poisoned with gas in Auschwitz. From Sept. 1942 to June 1943, some 60,000 jews arrived from Greece (Thessaloniki, Athens); from Slovakia and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: 50,000; from Holland, Belgium and France: some 60,000; from Chrzanova: 6,000; from Ket, Zywca, Suchj as well as Slemien and surroundings: 5,000. Of these, 2% are still alive today. Of the remaining 98%, entirely healthy and young people were frequently sent into the gas, who were often burned while only half-dead. Every transport arriving at Auschwitz is unloaded; men and women are separated, and then 98% of them (mainly women and children) are loaded (en masse) onto trucks without selection and taken to the gas chambers in Birkenau; after horrible agonies (asphyxiation) lasting 10 to 15 minutes, the corpses are thrown through an opening and burned on a pyre. It should also be mentioned that those doomed are forced to take a bath before entering the gas chamber. As a result of the lack of toxic gases, they often burn people who are still half alive. There are currently three large crematories in Brzezinka for the cremation of 10,000 people a day, which are constantly cremating bodies and are called the ‘eternal fire’ by the local population. […] In addition, there is a crematorium in the men’s camp near Rajsko, where predominantly the bodies of those are burned who had been executed from the prisons of Katowice and other places are. […] Since the crematories could not handle such a mass of bodies, the corpses were usually incinerated in an open pit in a field near Brzezinka, and after three days there was nothing else to see but flames that were ablaze where people were being burned. […] Brzezinka celebrated its record with the gassing of 30,000 people on a single day.”
Document No. 25
Published in: Obóz, p. 142.
Date: November 30, 1943.
Header: –
Title: “Appendix No. 61 for the period from 1st to 30th of November 1943.”
“Mass murders of jews, mainly women, continue to take place in the gas chambers. […] During the gassing of 30,000 jews from Zagłębie Dabrowskie, the crematories could not keep up with cremating the bodies so that they were burned on pyres, and the children were thrown alive into the fire.”
Document No. 26
Unpublished. Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust; a reference number was not given.
Date: February 2, 1944.
Header: –
Title: “The concentration camp in Auschwitz.”
“The crematorium is underground; it is built following the pattern of an air raid shelter. Only the chimney protrudes above ground, in whose construction the informant was also involved. The informant does not know where the gas chambers are located; he merely heard that they are underground, built on the pattern of the crematorium.”
Document No. 27
Unpublished. Archive: Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust; no archival reference given
Date: April 12, 1944.
Header: –
Title: “Lichtenstein. Memorandum from a conversation on 12 April. 44.”
“Thousands of jews from all Western countries, such as Holland, Belgium, France, were sent to Auschwitz. There was a selection; the strongest were sent to work, and they were admitted to the labor camp. The majority of those unfit for work, the physically weakest, were sent to the so-called disinfection – often entire families at once. But these were actually execution chambers. The people were told to undress, their hair was shorn off, and they were driven into immense halls where the disinfection took place. There were seven of these halls. Each of them could hold about 1,500 people. After the halls had been filled with people, the air was pumped out, and then an agent – Kreuzolit – was thrown into the disinfection locality through a small window. After three to five minutes, the people inside were executed. There were seven furnaces nearby to burn the bodies; each furnace had seven openings for throwing in the bodies. The combustion process lasted only a few seconds.”
Document No. 28
Unpublished in the Polish language. Translation into English: Polish Fortnightly Review, No. 115, May 1, 1945, pp. 1-6; Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust, 3. 16.
Date: May 24, 1944.
Header: –
Title: “Letter to ‘Mister President of the Polish Republic’.”
“In Brzezinka there are six ‘chimneys,’ or crematoria. They are never idle. […] Cremating the bodies of those who die in the camp is only a small part of the crematoria’s function. The chimneys are intended for the living, not the dead. And every day, yes indeed, every day, trains with jews from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Poland and until recently also from Russia are arriving on the railroad track leading into the camp area. The transports include men, women and children. 10% of the women from each transport are admitted to the camp, have a number tatooed, a star put onto their clothes, and increase the camp’s strength. The rest is simply sent to the gas chamber. It is impossible to describe the scenes unfolding during this. […] It is terrible to think about it, terrible to see when trucks are rolling on the camp road driving to their death 4,000 children under the age of 10 (children from the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Bohemia). Some of them wept and cried: Mama! Others, however, smiled at passerbys and waved their little hands. A quarter hour later, none of them was left alive, and the little bodies stunned by the gas burned in ghastly furnaces. And again, who would have thought such scenes possible? But I assure and guarantee you that this is really how it was, and I call upon the living and the dead as witnesses. Stunned by the gas… Yes, because gas was expensive, and the ‘Sonderkommando’ who operated the death chamber used it sparingly. The doses used killed the weaker ones, but the stronger ones were put to sleep only for a moment. The latter regain consciousness on the cremation carts and fall alive into the humming fiery maw.”
Document No. 29
Published in: Obóz, p. 162.
Date: June 4, 1944.
Header: –
Title: “Report from the territory, June 4, 1944.”
“Every day, about 3,000 jews are gassed and then burned in the crematorium. The Poles quartered in brick barracks claim that these barracks are mined. Underneath the floor there are reported to be two large metal pipes that run parallel to the barracks and are connected to the electrical wires leading to Block No. 11 of the Political Department.”
Document No. 30
Published in: Obóz, p. 168.
Date: June 17, 1944.
Header: KW.
Title: “Extermination of ‘Hungarian’ jews in Auschwitz.”
“The liquidation of the jews is organized as follows: Sealed trains are waiting on a special track to be unloaded. The transports that the gas halls are unable to process had to camp out in a nearby forest, closely guarded by SS men. The wait for death sometimes lasted several days. Between the railroad ramp and the gassing facility, a continuous stream of people, whose turn it is now, passes by day and night, depending on how quickly the bodies are pulled out. Trucks are rolling in the middle of the avenue, taking the weak, the old and the children off the ramp. The healthy march on foot and are unaware to the last moment that they are going to their deaths. SS men with machine guns are in rifle pits along the road. All suitcases and any private property remain on the railway ramp. They are then taken to the warehouses called ‘Canada,’ where a special team of inmates sort them. At the ramp, a mass of suitcases and packages is piling up, 300 m long, 20 m wide and as high as one floor. In front of the enormous barracks labeled ‘Personal Effects Chamber’ are heaps of clothes; they fail to keep up with sorting and packing them. At the entrance to the gas chamber, the people have to surrender everything; the money and the valuables they carry must be ‘deposited,’ whereupon they strip naked and hand over their clothes, which are later examined to see if any valuables are sewn into them. After surrendering their clothes, the unfortunates are taken to the bath, i.e. the gas chamber, in groups of 1,000 people. They are not even given towels and soap, as was formerly the case, because there is no time for that. Both gas chambers are in continuous operation day and night, yet still cannot cope with the crowds. Between the killing of each group, only a short break is taken to remove the corpses, which are thrown to the other side of the chamber where the doomed don’t see them. Entire mountains of corpses are on that side of the chamber. The crematories cannot keep up with the cremations. The hair of all victims is shorn off by a special crew of hairdressers; the hair is stuffed in bags as raw material. A team of dentists carefully examines the mouth openings of all victims, tearing out gold and platinum crowns; since there is little time, entire jaws are torn off. Another team of ‘specialists’ sticks their hands into the vaginas of female corpses in search of hidden valuables. Then the bodies thusly ravished and examined get cremated. There are 4 crematories in operation, 1 brick-firing kiln, and they also incinerate on pyres outdoors. The black, dense billows of smoke can be seen from afar. One crematorium is temporarily out of order, but is being repaired at an accelerated pace. The need for repairs was the natural consequence of burned-out grates and furnace parts as a result of the constant strain. The crew charged with robbing, murdering and removing the corpses is called ‘Sonderkommando’ and is 2,000 strong. These are healthy and strong jews who will also face death after having completed their work. At present, the number of gassed ‘Hungarian’ jews exceeds 100,000 and continues to grow every day. In the near future, Auschwitz is to destroy 1,200,000 ‘Hungarian’ jews.”
Document No. 31
Published in: Obóz, p. 168.
Date: June 17, 1944.
Header: KW.
Title: “Camp. Auschwitz.”
“Immediately upon arrival, they have to hand over all the valuables and their money, and they receive a proper receipt for that; then they wait for the ‘bath.’ Before the bath, they shear off the women’s hair, which is then sorted by a special unit and sent in packages to the Reich. The clothes are also sorted by another unit, apparently for disinfection. The entire time until the gas chamber is closed, they are treated politely and calmly. After the gassing (hydrogen cyanide), the corpses are once more searched by a unit under close observation of SS men; above all, they carefully pull all the gold teeth. The daily yield of gold from the bodies is 10-13 kg. Then the bodies are burned. Since May 1, four crematories are in operation day and night, as well as a brick-firing kiln, and sometimes they also cremate on pyres. The daily liquidation rate is 10,000. All “Hungarian” jews are to be finished off in this way – their number is 1,200,000. […] Among the SS men there are nervous breakdowns and cases of mental derangement – those affected then go together with the jews to the crematorium. There is a mild regiment inside the camp. After a new commander took over in October, the death penalty for escape attempts was abolished. But on May 1, the old commander Grabner returned, the infamous organizer of mass executions, who is now all of a sudden involved in liquidating the jews.”
Document No. 32
Published in: Obóz, p. 174.
Date: July 7, 1944.
Header: 362/A-1. Informacja bieżąca No. 27 (151).
Title: “Massacre of ‘Hungarian’ jews in Auschwitz.”
“So far, several hundred thousand ‘Hungarian’ jews have been gassed in Auschwitz. Until the very end, the victims are convinced that they are destined to be resettled to Silesia or to be exchanged for German prisoners of war in England. The transports are subjected to a selection: men, women, children. Suitcases, clothes, valuables and money are handed over ‘for safekeeping,’ and after the victims have stripped naked, they go in groups into the ‘bath,’ meaning to their death in the gas chamber. Special units shear off the corpses’ hair and collect it, tear out teeth with gold crowns, and look for valuables in the women’s vaginas. The crematories cannot keep up with burning the bodies. There were jams, and some had to wait a few days for the ‘bath.’ 2,000 healthy jews were separated from the rest, were admitted to the Gleiwitz Camp, and were ordered to write optimistic letters to Hungary. They know nothing about the fate of the others.”
The Vrba-Wetzler Report and Rudolf Vrba’s 1964 Book
As we’ve seen previously, from October 1941 on, the Polish resistance regularly distributed reports of mass murders in Auschwitz in which gas was mentioned as one of several means of execution. The reports were forwarded to the Polish government in exile in London, and without a shadow of a doubt were made accessible to Allied politicians and journalists – obviously without a response of any kind. The horror stories about “Kreuzolit”, “Hammerluft” and “electric bath” were clearly too incredible to provoke more than a yawn among the Allies.
Very well-noted, however, were the three reports that in the historical literature are generally referred to as the “Auschwitz Protocols.” Their foundations were the testimonies of detainees who had escaped Auschwitz. Via detours they arrived at the War Refugee Board (WRB), an organization established by the Roosevelt administration and led by the jewish US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau that published these testimonies in English in November 1944. This “WRB Report” (an alternative term referring to the “Auschwitz Protocols”) consisted of three parts:
Vrba-Wetzler Report : The two young Slovak jews Rudolf Vrba (original name Walter Rosenberg) and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944 and fled to Slovakia. In Pressburg [present-day Bratislava], Oskar Krasnansky, representative of the Jewish Council in Pressburg, wrote a report in German based on the testimonies of these two escapees. Vrba and Wetzler depicted the way the camp was organized and made estimations with regards to the number of Jews who had been gassed up to the moment of their escape. Mordowicz-Rosin Report : The two jews Czesław Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz on May 27, 1944, got to the Slovak border on June 6, and also compiled a report about Auschwitz in which they described the mass murder of Hungarian jews, among other things. Report by the Polish Major Jerzy Tabeau : Tabeau had escaped from Auschwitz already in November 1943.
It seems extremely strange that none of the five authors was called as a witness before the Nuremberg court – what first-class witnesses were missed out on! However, Vrba and Wetzler were witnesses at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial.
Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier
At the time of the Nuremberg Trial, the perception of Auschwitz as the largest human slaughterhouse of all times had already begun to take shape. The Soviets had submitted to the court as Document 008-USSR the article published May 7, 1945 in Pravda that spoke of four million victims in Auschwitz. Hence, one might assume that the Nuremberg judges were trying to get as many eyewitnesses of the mass murders as possible onto the witness stand, but strangely enough, this was not the case: neither the authors of the “Auschwitz Protocols” nor the members of the Sonderkommando, who – according to the reports – had been permanently at work in the gas chambers and crematories, and thus had to be the most credible witnesses of the “industrial genocide”, was summoned to Nuremberg. The only two former Auschwitz inmates to take the Nuremberg witness stand were the Frenchwoman Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier and the Polish woman Seweryna Szmaglewska (whose short and inconsequential testimony will not be dealt with here).
Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier, later a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, had been deported to Auschwitz in January 1943 as a resistance fighter. In August 1944, she was transferred from there to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. On January 28, 1946, she appeared in Nuremberg as a witness for the prosecution.
In summary it can be said that in Nuremberg Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier presented her private Auschwitz version. Madame’s version is a proven fantasy…
Chaim Herman
What is revealing about the buried manuscript of Chaim Herman is not so much what he mentions in it, but what he doesn’t mention. Strangely enough, he only writes about the extermination of his fellow sufferers who “went to the gas and then to the ovens” in a short phrase and only with regard to an event immediately upon his arrival at the camp at a moment when he couldn’t have had first-hand experience. He rather lends more space to “shaving the head, to speak nothing of the beard and moustaches.”
For 20 months Herman was with the Sonderkommando. If the commonly accepted idea about Auschwitz is correct, he therefore was an involuntary part of an infernal extermination machine. Day after day he had to witness how his fellow sufferers were sent into the gas; he had to drag their corpses out of the gas chamber and to the furnaces. The gruesome height of the murdering was reached in the spring and summer of 1944, when, so we are told by orthodox Holocaust historians, about 400,000 “Hungarian” jews were gassed, and their remains were incinerated partly in the crematories, partly in pits. But about all these eerie things, no word from Chaim Herman. To him, pointing out that he is well dressed and fed, has good quarters, is in perfect health, is very thin and muscular as well as has a youthful look is a lot more important. The worn-out metaphor of “hell”, that in comparison to this “Dante’s hell” appears ridiculous, seems to be somewhat misplaced considering the described conditions (“we have a sufficiency of everything (except of dear freedom)”), all the more so as in July 1944 he was able to receive mail from his family.
Salmen Gradowski
We can be brief here. The author had been active as a member of the Sonderkommando for a while, but he doesn’t give the reader a clue about the kind of work he did. Gas chambers and crematories melt into the mystical “gas furnaces” that occasionally lurk through the media cracks to this day. On the one hand, Gradowski’s family was “burnt alive”, on the other hand these “gas ovens” “swallow people alive and throw away their dead, cold bodies.” While reading this account, the inescapable conclusion arises that it wasn’t buried by members of the Sonderkommando during the existence of the Auschwitz Camp, but by totally different people after its liberation, “so that the world should find material traces of the millions of murdered people.” This becomes a near certainty, when we read that he writes in the past tense about having buried this text. How can he write something on a piece of paper that has been buried already?
Alter Feinsilber, alias Stanisław Jankowski, alias Kaskowiak, alias Alter Szmul Fajnzylberg
Let us now turn to those members of the Sonderkommando who survived the war and testified about their experiences. Several of these men already testified in 1945, of whom Alter Feinsilber was the first. In April of that year, he testified before the Polish Commission for the Investigation of “Nazi” Crimes in Krakow. Feinsilber occasionally called himself Stanisław Jankowski or Kaskowiak; in September 1980 he handed a written testimony to lawyer Pierre Atal in Paris, this time using the name Alter Szmul Fajnzylberg. Just as his name, he also appears to have occasionally changed his date of birth; according to his Krakow testimonies he was born on October 23, 1910, according to his testimony in Paris this was October 23, 1911. As an adolescent already, Feinsilber (alias Jankowski, alias Kaskowiak, alias Fajnzylberg) had become a member of the Communist Party in his Polish homeland for which he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. After an interlude in Spain, where he had fought on the side of the Republicans, he was detained in France in several camps but managed to escape. End of 1941 or beginning 1942 he was apprehended again and sent via the transit camp Drancy to Auschwitz, where he arrived March 27, 1942.
Szlama Dragon
Therefore, as is so often the case, we depend on eyewitness reports. Key witness of the bunkers is, without any question, the “Polish” jew Szlama Dragon, born in 1920 and a tailor by profession. On February 26, 1945, hence already one month after the Soviet occupation of Auschwitz, Dragon was questioned by a judge of the Soviet military judiciary, Captain Levin. During that interrogation, Dragon elaborated liberally on the two “gas chambers.” (For these he does not yet use the term “Bunker”; apparently this term became customary only later.)
The four million gassing victims claimed by Dragon indicate to whose tune he had been singing. In order to make these numbers seem plausible, he, too, made the usual outrageous statements about the cremation capacity of the furnaces: three corpses concurrently within 15-20 minutes, instead of one per hour.
Try to picture this action: 1,500 corpses had to be dragged through a small corridor to the undressing room and then to the furnaces. Truly a stupendous proof of a perfectly organized genocide! This truly German perfection is also proven by the fact that the cremation of a corpse in Auschwitz was performed nine times faster than anywhere else, that a single barber sufficed to cut the hair of 1,500 corpses, and as well only a single dentist was needed to pull their (gold) teeth.
Henryk Tauber and Michał Kula
Another member of the Sonderkommando who testified before the Commission for the Investigation of “Nazi” Crimes was the “Polish” jew Henryk Tauber, born in 1917, occupation shoemaker. He was admitted to the Auschwitz Camp on January 19, 1943. His testimony was given in Krakow on May 24, 1945.
Again, we stumble across more than 4 million murder victims. Although none of the former Auschwitz detainees dealt with in the present book had been capable of having even the slightest knowledge of the total number of Auschwitz victims, this number emerges over and over again in their testimonies. The fact that these witnesses mentioned the same number of victims as the Soviet “experts” did in their report of May 7, 1945, clearly shows that their testimonies had been coordinated by the Soviets and/or by their Polish communist puppets.
The non-jewish Pole Michał Kula, born in 1912, occupation mechanic, was employed as a lathe operator in the inmate metal workshop of Auschwitz and later of Birkenau where he came into contact with Sonderkommando people. In Krakow, on June 11, 1945 Kula appeared before the Commission for the Investigation of “Nazi” Crimes.
Dov Paisikovic
In 1963 in Vienna, Dov Paisikovic, former member of the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, issued a statement about his term in that camp which then was used at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. The French historian Léon Poliakov, who for many years was seen as one of the leading experts on the “Final Solution”, reproduced Paisikovic’s statements in his book Auschwitz published in 1964. Paisikovic, born in 1924 in Carpatho-Ukraine, had in May 1944 been deported from the Munkacs Ghetto to Auschwitz.
Exactly as the other members of the Sonderkommando, Paisikovic reports things that are technically impossible and against the laws of nature, and are an insult to common sense:
“We senselessly had to drag stones back and forth” – in the light of the scarcity of manpower for the important war industries of the region, it’s extremely implausible that the SS would have allowed this. “SS Hauptscharführer Moll […] in a white uniform” – the SS did not wear white uniforms. According to Paisikovic, the gassing took three to four minutes; then ventilation took place after opening the door. Due to already-mentioned reasons (evaporation time and the difficulty of ventilating Zyklon), these given times are completely unrealistic. “Often the bodies were in tatters” – possibly caused by Zyklon bombs? Paisikovic indicates the number of people crammed into the gas chamber to be 3,000, which – at a surface area of 210 m² – results in 13 people per square meter. An impressive number; one is to experimentally verify whether this can be correct. The author himself makes it clear that victims could not fall down when being so closely pressed together. A few sentences earlier, however, some of the victims were lying on the floor in front of the gas-chamber door. “Most victims did not know what to expect. But some already knew what fate awaited them.” Imagine it: Three thousand people standing in a chamber packed like sardines in a can, but most of them still do not sense what is going to happen to them, because they think they would soon be taking a shower! How stupid did Poliakov think his readers would be that he expected them to believe such imbecility? The most ludicrous of all of Paisikovic’s statements is that the cremation of a corpse took four minutes on average. (3,000 corpses within 183 hours in 15 muffles = 16,67 corpses per hour and muffle, or 3.6 minutes per corpse = 216 seconds.) This claim alone reduces the credibility of the whole “witness report” to zero. If despite the previous, Poliakov thought Paisikovic to be worthy of including him in his book, then surely only because nothing better had been available to him.
Filip Müller
Of all the members of the Sonderkommando, the “Slovak” jew Filip Müller undoubtedly has gained the most publicity. Raul Hilberg quotes him in his definitive book The Destruction of European Jewry no less than twenty times as witness to the mass murders in Auschwitz (cf. Graf 2015, p. 98). Müller, born in 1922 in Sered, had been deported to Auschwitz in April 1942, where he was soon admitted to the Sonderkommando, of which he was a member until the end. After the evacuation of Auschwitz, he was transferred to Mauthausen, where he was liberated at the end of the war.
Thirty-four years later in 1979, Müller published his book Sonderbehandlung: Drei Jahre in den Krematorien und Gaskammern von Auschwitz (Müller 1979a), which he wrote with the help of the ghostwriter Helmut Freitag. An English translation with the title Auschwitz Inferno: The Testimony of a Sonderkommando appeared that same year (Müller 1979b). In this book, Müller depicts the gassing and cremation process in Crematory I in the Main Camp as well as in the crematoria of Birkenau (but not in the bunkers) in greater detail than any other witness.
It’s now time to draw an interim recap: As already emphasized several times, the members of the Sonderkommando – provided the orthodox Auschwitz version is correct – must have been the most credible of all witnesses, as they would have known all details of the extermination process very well. Up to now, I have quoted nine reports of such Sonderkommando men. If we put aside here the four “buried manuscripts” for reason of their dubious origin, five reasonably detailed reports by key witnesses remain: Alter Feinsilber; Szlama Dragon (the most important witness with regard to the bunkers by far); Henryk Tauber (for Jean-Claude Pressac the most credible witness bar none); Dov Paisikovic (who was extensively cited by the famous Holocaust scholar Léon Poliakov in his Auschwitz book) and Raul Hilberg’s favorite witness Filip Müller.
The results are devastating: All these reports turn out to be a tangled mass of absurdities and shameless lies, with the lowlight being reached with Filip Müller whose performance can hardly be undercut. The witnesses contradict each other and at times even themselves on all manner of points.
With these eyewitnesses, the entire orthodox Auschwitz narrative collapses like a house of cards.
The Perpetrator Confessions
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Höss, born in 1900, the first commander of Auschwitz, had served in concentration camps without interruption since 1934, initially as a simple guard in Dachau and later in Sachsenhausen, where he moved up the ladder to the position of assistant camp commandant. On May 1, 1940, then an SS captain, he was charged with setting up the Auschwitz Camp, which he commanded until November 1943; he then was appointed Head of Department D 1 of Office Group D of the RSHA (concentration camps). After the end of the war he fell into British captivity, but was soon released, as the British apparently were not aware of his identity. Höss then went underground, but was arrested on March 11, 1946 by a British unit after he had been put on the wanted-persons list of the victorious powers.
After he had made several confessions and had testified as a witness during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, he was extradited to Poland on May 25, 1946. While in prison at Krakow, he wrote his “autobiographical notes” that are considered to be the central proof for the extermination of the jews in Auschwitz. In March of 1947, Höss was put on trial in Warsaw and sentenced to death. On April 16 of the same year, he was hanged on the premises of the former Auschwitz Main Camp.
Pery Broad
The editors of the anthology “Nazi” Mass Murder presented SS Sergeant Pery Broad as the second most important Auschwitz witness among the SS men, immediately after Rudolf Höss (Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl 1994, p. 140). Broad, born in 1921 in Brazil as the son of a Brazilian merchant and a German woman, emigrated with his family to Germany at the age of five and joined the SS in 1941. In the beginning of 1942, he was at the front as a member of the Waffen SS, but was soon discharged for being unfit for active duty due to his nearsightedness. He was transferred to Auschwitz, where he initially served as a guard. On May 6, 1945, he was apprehended by the British. Due to his excellent command of the English language, he was employed as an interpreter. On July 13, 1945, he gave his employers a long “memorandum” about Auschwitz, which he confirmed with an affidavit in December of the same year. October 20, 1947, Broad once again issued a statement in Nuremberg. He was released from custody during the same year.
Titled “Reminiscences,” Broad’s text was made part of the collection KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS published by the Auschwitz Museum (Bezwińska/Czech, pp. 139-198). I will now quote several excerpts that appear to be particularly relevant:
“Auschwitz was an extermination camp! The biggest to exist in the history of the world. Two or three million jews were murdered there in the course of its existence!” (p. 143)
Broad – who, it cannot be denied, had a certain literary talent – portrays the gassing procedure in Crematory I quite elaborately. It is indeed evident that Broad doesn’t sound like an SS man. It stands to reason that he wanted to assure himself of mild treatment by his captors with his “memorandum.” He did succeed in this: As had happened to many of Broad’s former companions, the British could have readily hanged him, sentenced him to many years of imprisonment or extradited him to Poland: But no: as a trade-off for having provided them with conclusive “evidence” of mass extermination in Auschwitz, they released him in 1947 already. In order to obtain such an advantageous special treatment, Broad had adopted the parlance of the victors already at an early stage.
Johann Paul Kremer
For many decades, Dr. Johann Paul Kremer has been one of the most mentioned key witnesses of the homicidal gassings in Auschwitz. Kremer, born December 26, 1883, was a professor of medicine at the University of Münster from 1936 until 1945. From the end of August until mid-November 1942, he was stationed in Auschwitz as a temporary substitute for a sick camp physician. He kept a diary, which also covers this period. In August 1945, he was arrested by the British and detained in the former National Socialist Concentration Camp Neuengamme. They confiscated his diary and later handed it over to the Polish authorities. Because he had served at Auschwitz, Kremer was extradited to Poland, and in December 1947 sentenced to death at the Krakow trial against 40 former SS men of Auschwitz. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1958 Kremer was released on grounds of his age and of his good conduct. In West Germany he was soon put on trial again, and in 1960 sentenced by the Münster District Court to 10 years of imprisonment, which was considered served due to his prison time in Poland.
Here are Kremer’s diary entries in which he mentions “special actions” (according to the orthodox narrative, this term stands for “gassings”; page numbers from Bezwińska/Czech 1984, unless stated otherwise):
2 September: “Was present for first time at special action at 3 a.m. In comparison with it Dante’s Inferno seems to be almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp!” (p. 214)
When he admitted to the gassings before the Polish court, he did so simply to save his life. The strategy had been successful, as he avoided the gallows by it, and after ten years of imprisonment he was deported to West Germany, where he was put on trial again and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment, which he did not have to serve, however. The fact that the 77-year-old man in this instance told his prosecutors what they wanted to hear as well is not surprising. Who would blame him for not wanting to spend the last years of his life behind bars?
Richard Böck
In the verdict of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965) – already quoted in the introduction of this book – we read (Sagel-Grande/Fuchs/ Rüter 1979, p. 434):
“The court lacked almost all possibilities of discovery available in a normal murder trial to create a true picture of the actual event at the time of the murder. It lacked the bodies of the victims, autopsy records, expert reports on the cause of death and the time of death; it lacked any trace of the murderers, murder weapons, etc. An examination of the eyewitness testimony was possible only in rare cases. […] The general findings […] rest on […] the credible testimonies of the witnesses [followed by several names] Böck, furthermore on the handwritten accounts of the first camp commandant Höss.”
Let us now look at Richard Böck’s testimonies which the court assessed as credible. Böck, an SS truck driver of low rank, testified as follows on the 73rd day of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (Aug. 3, 1964). The German original is rather awkward, as Böck’s language skills were evidently quite poor, pointing to a low IQ.
Comparing this with the two interrogation transcripts recorded during the preliminary investigation leading up to the Auschwitz Trial – on February 5, 1959 and November 2, 1960 – it is clear that the language of these transcripts must have been heavily corrected by the recording clerk. But even after that, it is evident that clear thoughts were not Böck’s forte. He contradicts himself with regard to the date of the gassing he allegedly attended in one of the so-called bunkers, because during his first testimony Böck had specifically said that this gassing had occurred “in the summer of 1943”, (Public Prosecutor’s Office…, Vol. 3, p. 453) while during the second interrogation he had this one occured “in the winter of 1942/43” (ibid., Vol. 29, p. 6881).
Kurt Prüfer and Karl Schultze
By their actions, the engineers responsible for the design, construction and equipment of the crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau did not extinguish a single human life, but on the contrary saved people: Without the crematories, further epidemics would certainly have broken out sooner or later due to infestation of the groundwater, and thus many more detainees would have died in Auschwitz than the approximately 140,000 who perished there from 1940 to 1945 according to the documents. The prevention of epidemics had been the main reason, by the way, that cremation had become the main competitor of burial from the 19th century on. It is indicative that a paper published in 1875 about this subject was titled “Cremation. Of All Currently Achievable Ways of Funeral the Best Public Health Measure with Regard to the Soil, and the Strongest Safeguard against Epidemics” (Küchenmeister 1875).
Therefore, under normal conditions nobody would have even thought of taking the men to court who had created such sanitary installations in Auschwitz. But the post-war conditions just weren’t normal. With an unprecedented propaganda campaign, the eastern and western conquerors of National Socialist Germany hammered upon the world since 1945 that the defeated nation had committed a monstrous genocide in “extermination camps”: millions of people were said to have been killed in these camps.
The Upper Silesian concentration camp at Auschwitz was soon to be the centerpiece of the atrocity propaganda. This was so for obvious reasons. Auschwitz was by far the largest camp; it had – primarily due to typhus epidemics – at times an enormously high mortality, and moreover had served as transit camp for detainees transferred to other places. A large camp complex, high mortality, a large number of detainees deported to Auschwitz, many of whom apparently disappeared without a trace after just a short while, large quantities of Zyklon-B deliveries, and four crematoria erected in haste: the architects of the atrocity propaganda couldn’t have wished for more ideal prerequisites. Under these circumstances, every German who had participated in the construction of this camp, or had at any time served there, was automatically suspect of being complicit in mass murder, especially those who had built and equipped the crematories.
It therefore was only logical that the owners of the company Topf & Söhne, as well as the engineers responsible for constructing and equipping the crematories were put on the wanted list of the occupying forces. Shortly after the end of the war, Ludwig Topf, owner and director of the company, committed suicide in order to avoid imminent apprehension in the city of Erfurt, which at that time was occupied by the Americans, while four of his leading staff were arrested there in March 1946 by the Soviets, who in the meantime had replaced the Americans as the occupying force. These men were:
– Fritz Sander, main engineer of the company and head of the department for crematory construction.
– Kurt Prüfer, chief engineer for crematory construction and heating.
– Karl Schultze, chief engineer for ventilation systems and constructor of ventilation for crematories.
– Gustav Braun, construction engineer and the company’s head of production.
After their arrest, the four engineers were interrogated several times by officers of the Soviet anti-espionage organization Smersh (an abbreviation of Smert shpionam, “Death to the spies”) about their role in constructing and equipping the crematories and in the alleged “gas chambers” of Auschwitz. The already-70-year-old Fritz Sander died March 26 of severe exhaustion after three interrogations – a clear sign as to the conditions under which these interrogations were conducted. In his trilogy The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has described in detail and from his own experience what the typical Soviet treatment of such detainees looked like at that time: they were systematically deprived of sleep in order to be put into a state of complete exhaustion and mental disorientation so that they would confess and parrot all that was demanded from them by their prosecutors.
Sander’s three colleagues were subjected to intensive interrogations in 1946 in Erfurt and in 1948 in Moscow. On April 3, 1948, Kurt Prüfer, Karl Schultze and Gustav Braun were all sentenced to 25 years of forced labor. While Prüfer died October 24, 1952 at the age of 61 in a Soviet camp, Braun, by then 67 years of age, as well as Schultze, 56 years of age, were granted amnesty together with numerous other Germans in Soviet post-war internment; they were released and handed over to the communist East German government. I don’t have information as to their further fate.
Hans Aumeier
One of the German prisoners who was apprehended by the British after the end of the war was SS Captain Hans Aumeier. On February 2, 1942, Aumeier had been transferred to Auschwitz, and was the head of the protective-custody department of the Main Camp until August 15, 1943. In October 1943, he was transferred to Estonia, and in February 1945 to Norway, where he was arrested by the British after the war. In March 1946 he was taken by them to the “London Cage” and interrogated there – one can imagine the conditions.
Below I quote the section of Aumeier’s first testimony109 which is relevant to the present context (cf. Mattogno 2016g, pp. 138-140):
“In the fall of 1942, typhus occurred in the camp, so that all camps were closed for about 8-10 weeks. The mortality increased, about 40 SS men also died during this time. In the spring of 1943, paratyphoid fever occurred as well, caused by bad water, which continued to keep the mortality excessively high. As far as I know, about 3,000 to 3,500 prisoners died during my time there. The prisoners who died before my time had been buried for the most part and were dug up again and burned in the early summer of 1942 until the spring of 1943. In the Main Camp, there was a crematorium consisting of two furnaces. Corpses were burned there. The crematorium was under the responsibility of the head of the Political Department and the camp surgeon. During my time, 2 or 3 crematoria were under construction at Birkenau. I have no knowledge of gas chambers and during my time no detainee was gassed. At the time of my transfer, there were some 54,000 detainees at Auschwitz and Birkenau, among them about 15,000 women and children. Detainees who fell ill were moved to the infirmary, which was under the exclusive responsibility of the camp surgeon.”
Of course, the British didn’t like that at all, so they applied their proven methods which made Aumeier answer a questionnaire they gave him on the gas chambers and homicidal gassings in such a way as the British expected him to. Aumeier must have done that with openly displayed discontent, because in a British memo of August 10, 1945 about Aumeier’s second, “improved” testimony we read (ibid.):
“The interrogator is satisfied that the major part of the material of this report is in conformity with the truth as far as the facts are concerned, but the personal reactions of Aumeier and his way of thinking may change a bit when his fate gets worse.” (Emphasis added)
It is of course unknown what this ominous note was referring to, but the previously documented interrogation methods don’t forebode anything good. In any case, Aumeier was ultimately extradited to Poland in 1946, where he was put to trial together with other former staff members of the Auschwitz Camp, and sentenced to death. He was executed January 28, 1948.
Maximilian Grabner
From May 1940 until September 1943, SS First Lieutenant Grabner had been head of the political department of Auschwitz, that is to say, the highest-ranking Gestapo man of the camp. As such he was responsible for interrogations, the carrying out of executions as well as for the operation of the crematories. In other words: If torture, mass-murder and extermination actions in the crematories occurred in Auschwitz, Grabner was the responsible person at the site for the organization and control of it all. Accordingly, the statements of the Auschwitz survivors are full of allegations against Grabner. He mistreated, tortured, murdered at will, and saw to it that the gassing and mass incinerations were carried out swiftly … indeed, while Höss was the commandant of the camp, he himself didn’t dirty his hands. For that he allegedly had his executioners, and the first among them was Grabner.
After the war, Grabner was arrested and interrogated in Austria by the Allied occupation forces before he was extradited to Poland, where he was put on trial with Aumeier and other former senior staff members of the Auschwitz Camp. He was sentenced to death and executed on January 28, 1948.
In view of the flood of absurd, grotesque and perverted accusations made by a vast number of former Auschwitz detainees which were undoubtedly shown to Grabner during his post-war interrogations, he ultimately must have lost his mind in Poland. There is otherwise no way to explain his engine-oil fairy tale. Exactly what methods were used to drive him mad will probably forever remain the secret of his Polish dungeon masters.
Grabner attempted to please his persecutors by showing anti-fascist zeal. He exaggerated the numbers of victims of Auschwitz excessively, raised wild accusations against all other senior camp staff members and claimed to have carried out heroic acts of sabotage against the evil “Nazis.” He figuratively bent over backwards in his attempts to deliver more to his prosecutors than was expected of him. We therefore had to expect that the man who was the main officer responsible for implementing the claimed mass murders and the disposal of the corpses would be able to convey a wealth of details about the facilities and procedures used.
But the things Grabner reports are superficial, inaccurate and erroneous or even completely false minutiae; this even measured against the present day ruling orthodox narrative. In other words: Grabner couldn’t present any precise knowledge about the extermination mechanisms. Had they existed, he would surely have had knowledge about them, and in view of his mental condition he undoubtedly would have shared it with his interrogators.
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Author: Aryan - "National Socialist" - Musician Aryan - "National Socialist" - Musician