By Thomas Kues

1. Introduction

According to orthodox holocaust historiography, carbon monoxide from engine exhaust was used to kill nearly 2 million Jews in Poland, Serbia and on occupied Soviet territory between late 1941 and the summer of 1944. The majority of these supposed victims were allegedly killed in stationary gas chambers located in three “pure extermination camps” in the Polish General Government – Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka – while the remainder is said to have been killed in mobile “gas vans” that were either stationed at the Chełmno (Kulmhof) camp in the Warthegau area of occupied Poland or employed by Einsatzgruppen or SD units operating in Serbia and on occupied Soviet territory. Below is listed the victim figures for each “killing center” as currently held by the orthodox historians.

Bełżec 434,501[1]

Sobibór 170,000[2]

Treblinka 750,000-900,000[3]

Chełmno (Kulmhof) 152,000-360,000[4]

Other “gas vans” 100,000 approx.

Total: 1,606,501-1,964,501

According to most eyewitness testimony, Diesel engines from captured Soviet tanks were used as killing agents Bełżec and Treblinka, while at Sobibór, the historians claim, a petrol (gasoline) engine of unclear origin was used to produce the lethal carbon monoxide gas. As for the “gas vans” supposedly employed at Chełmno, those are commonly held to have been modified Saurer or Diamond trucks.

The danger of Diesel exhaust has long been debated by revisionist scholars. Since the early 1980s, American revisionist writer and engineer F.P. Berg has published a number of articles dealing with this issue. Their conclusion: Because Diesel engines only generate small amounts of carbon monoxide, and since Diesel exhaust contains much oxygen, the use of diesel engines as killing agents in homicidal gas chambers is preposterous. Witness testimony claiming that Diesel engines were utilized for murderous purposes are thus objectively false. To those witnesses belongs Kurt Gerstein, a certified mining engineer.

This article will not further discuss the Diesel engine issue – it will suffice to say that a number of holocaust historians cling on to the notion that Diesel engines were used for killings,[5] at least at Treblinka, while others have tried to cautiously distance themselves from the Diesel claim.[6] Instead, I will for reason of argument follow the assumption that the (hypothetical) German perpetrators used engines capable of producing lethal amounts of carbon monoxide gas. Given this, I will pose a number of questions related to the physical effects of the poison gas. How would the carbon monoxide (CO) affect the bodies of the victims? What would they look like post mortem? And, most importantly: what does the eyewitnesses to the alleged carbon monoxide gas chambers have to say about the appearance of the corpses?

2. Previous research

The main revisionist study on the issue of skin discoloration caused by carbon monoxide consists of an online article by revisionist and engineer F.P. Berg, entitled “Blue Women on the Beach – and the False Toxicity of CO2 in Diesel Exhaust”. It was written as a rebuttal to an article by Charles D. Provan, “The Blue Color of the Jewish Victims at Belzec Death Camp – and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning”, which had previously appeared in the May 2004 issue of The Revisionist. Below I will provide a summary of the relevant articles written by Berg and Provan between 1983 and 2007.

2.1. Berg’s first articles on the issue of Diesel gas chambers

The first of F.P. Berg’s writings to deal with the issue of the alleged carbon monoxide gas chambers, and especially the claim that Diesel engines were used to generate the lethal gas, was an article originally presented at the 1983 International Revisionist Conference and later, in 1984, published in The Journal for Historical Review, “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within a Myth”. In it he among other things dissected the witness account of a supposed mass gassing at Bełżec in 1942 that was left by the former SS hygiene technician Kurt Gerstein in French prison in 1945. Referring to the text of one of Kurt Gerstein’s “reports”, Berg writes:

“According to the last sentence of the text quoted, ‘the bodies were tossed out blue, wet with sweat and urine.’ Here we have a flaw as far as the death-from-carbon-monoxide theory is concerned because victims of carbon monoxide poisoning are not blue at all. On the contrary, victims of carbon monoxide poisoning are a distinctive ‘cherry red,’ or ‘pink.’ This is clearly stated in most toxicology handbooks and is probably well known to every doctor and to most, if not all, emergency medical personnel. Carbon monoxide poisoning is actually very common because of the automobile and accounts for more incidents of poison gas injury than all other gases combined.”[7]

As sources Berg gave references to two standard works on toxicology.[8] The above argument was then reiterated in a revised and expanded version of the same article which originally appeared in the revisionist anthology Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (1994) under the same title and later in translation (in Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press 2003) as “Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture – Absurd for Murder”. In this appearance the above quoted passage was complemented with a further reference to recently published specialist literature.[9]

2.2. The 2004 article by Charles D. Provan

In his article The Blue Color of the Jewish Victims at Belzec Death Camp – and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning[10] Provan asserts that bluish color or bluish tinge attributed to the Bełżec victims by Gerstein and later Pfannenstiel can be explained as cyanosis. “Blue”, Provan writes, “is a regular (and documented) color for carbon monoxide poisoning, especially when the victims are alive, but also when the victims are dead.” In regard to fatal cases of CO poisoning, Provan quotes a number of studies indicating that “in some cases” of fatal poisoning there is “no cherry-red coloring of the skin”, that in some cases the appearance of the victim is instead “cyanotic”, and that the cherry-red discoloration might be “slight” due to low saturation (i.e. low carboxyhemoglobinal level) and in some cases obscured because of “associated cyanosis”. Provan takes the above as evidence that what Gerstein and Pfannenstiel said in regards to the color of the corpses is “possible”, and that Berg in his previous articles had reached the wrong conclusions.

2.3. The rebuttal of F.P. Berg

Berg opens his rebuttal to Provan[11] stating that the assertion of blue corpses “is totally at odds with the claims (…) that the toxic ingredient [in the exhaust gas used as the killing agent] was carbon monoxide.” The texts on cyanosis referenced by Provan, Berg notes, “fail to use the words “blue” or even “bluish” at all”. “The simple fact”, Berg further contends, “is that the blue appearance of “cyanosis” does not correspond at all to the general “blue” appearance of the “blue corpses” that Gerstein or Pfannenstiel allegedly saw (…)”. Corpses may be multi-colored, and thus “blue” cyanosis may appear on one part of the body, while the rest of it displays a cherry-red color. Cyanosis occurring in connection with carbon monoxide poisoning is “associated” with the poisoning and not in itself a product of any reaction between carbon monoxide and the victim’s blood. Reactions of carbon monoxide with blood are more or less bright red, never blue. Provan is wrong in defining cyanosis as a “medical term for blue coloring occurring in a patient or corpse” since “cyanotis” is not simply the medical term for blue coloring, but only applies to some varieties of blue discoloration. One would not be able to conclude a case of CO poisoning from the mere presence of cyanosis; the color of the victim’s blood would also be examined.

While cyanosis may appear in some fatal cases, “the appearance of a generally “blue” corpse is extremely rare if it ever occurs at all” (Berg). Below a carboxyhemoglobin level of 30% a living body or corpse may indeed display cyanosis without accompanying bright red discoloration, but as the lethal level for most individuals lies around 60%, an overwhelming majority of corpses would definitely show some nuance of red. Variations and exceptions to this occur in only around 6% of all cases. Also, the reddish color when occurring “tends to be extremely intense and dramatic whereas cyanosis is an extremely subtle coloring in which most of the skin is merely pale” (Berg). A lay observer would thus have a hard time noticing any cyanotic cases, whereas the red discolored corpses would be immediately noticeable. “There is good reason to believe”, Berg writes, “that a cyanotic description in our context does not really mean blue at all — but merely blue by contrast or in comparison to other parts of the same or other bodies.” In regards to the Pfannenstiel testimony, Berg remarks that Pfannenstiel “noticed nothing special about the corpses” except for a bluish tinge to the face of some of them, and that no mention of any red discoloration is made, two things which combined speaks against the reliability of this witness. Berg also strongly criticizes Provan’s way of mixing fatal and non-fatal cases of poisoning, as well as “immediate” fatal cases with “delayed” ones. Living victims of CO poisoning may be partially cyanotic and partially red (with a “flushed” or pink appearance) or cyanotic with only negligible or unnoticeable red discolorations. Dead CO victims on the other hand are usually red or cherry-red. In the rare cases (around 9% of all cases) when cyanosis appears associated with fatal CO poisoning, it tends to be appear restricted to parts of the body where the skin is more translucent, such as the lips or nasal openings. The alleged observations of Gerstein and Pfannenstiel are thus not reconcilable with known medical facts.

3. The difference between fatal and non-fatal cases of CO poisoning

In discussing the issue of discolorations in the skin of CO gassing victims, it is important to note the difference between fatal and non-fatal (i.e. clinical) cases of CO poisoning. In the writings of anti-revisionists, we often find quotes from medical literature such as:

“The classic findings of cherry-red lips, cyanosis, and retinal hemorrhages occur rarely.”[12]

Or:

“The classic ‘cherry-red’ skin coloration is actually rare, and patients are more likely to appear pale or cyanotic.”[13]

As F.P. Berg points out, statements such those above appears to refer mainly to clinical cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, i.e. cases where the poisoned person was found alive and received treatment before he or she either survived, or died (therefore the word “patients” in the second quote). A statement similar to the ones quoted above can be found in the standard work A guide to general toxicology (1983):

“Carbon monoxide poisoning may result in blisters or bullae over pressure areas but the classic cherry red color of the skin is rare.”[14]

When, however, the text within which this quote appears is read more closely, it becomes evident that the author(s), without stating this explicitly, is referring mainly or even exclusively to clinical cases.[15] In fact, specialist literature on toxicology and emergency medicine by its very nature normally focus on clinical cases, while cases involving untreated fatal cases are normally treated in writings related to forensic medicine.[16] An article from 2007 authored by Nicholas Bateman, a professor in clinical toxicology, indirectly confirms that deep red or “cherry pink” discoloration is rare among surviving victims, but more common in fatal cases (emphasis added):

“Skin blistering may occur if the patient lies unconscious for some hours before being discovered, and the skin is more likely to be cyanosed than to have the cherry-pink colour that is described to be a classical feature of CO poisoning, but rarely seen in living patients.”[17]

The letter by Bruno Simini to The Lancet, often cited by anti-revisionists, in which it is stated that “cherry-red discoloration in CO poisoning is quite rare” and that “most doctors overestimate the frequency of cherry-red discoloration in CO poisoning” is also clearly referring to clinical cases of poisoning, since it only refers to “surveys of patients” i.e. treated victims of CO poisoning.[18]

The case reports and medical papers which I quote and refer to in the next section clearly proves that deep red or cherry red discoloration of the skin is virtually always present among fatal cases of CO poisoning. In the section after that I will contrast the contents of the medical case reports and findings with statements made by professed eyewitnesses to the alleged homicidal gas chambers and “gas vans”.

Illustration 1: Reddish flush in a non-fatal case of CO poisoning.[19]

Illustration 2: Typical red discoloration in victim of fatal CO poisoning.[20]

Illustration 3: A fatal case of CO poisoning displaying distinctive reddish-pink discoloration.[21]

Illustration 4: Bright red lividity in a victim of CO poisoning.[22]

4. Verified cases of discoloration resulting from carbon monoxide poisoning

Below I will provide brief summaries of a number of case reports and medical papers concerned with skin discoloration as an effect of CO poisoning.

Item 1: The man with the red face

The following case from mid-60’s America involved the suicide attempt of a 21-year old white male of Italian descent:[23]

“When seen on the morning following his admission the author was struck by the appearance of the patient’s cherry-red face. Additionally, he was thick-tongued in speech, lethargic and showed impairment of orientation as regards time and place. Confusion as to what had brought about his admission was noted.

The writer’s initial impression was acute brain syndrome but one whose etiology might involve carbon monoxide poisoning. Thus, the patient was questioned closely as regards the circumstances and details of his suicide attempt. Elicited from the patient were additional facts that he had fallen asleep in his car with the engine running and the windows closed. Twelve hours later, he awoke and returned home to tell his parents what he had done. At that time his clothes were covered by vomitus. It became apparent that a most important clinical sign and area of history had been over-looked previously.”

Thus it is apparent that cherry-red skin discoloration can be highly visible even among survivors of carbon monoxide poisoning. Red discoloration of the skin is thus not limited to the lividity of fresh corpses, but appears in the still living victim’s body as the mechanical result of carbon monoxide being absorbed by the bloodstream. This is because, as F.P. Berg writes in his rebuttal to Provan, “when carbon monoxide reacts with human blood, it forms carboxyhemoglobin which above concentrations of 30% is a bright red, becoming brighter and more intense as the concentration increases”, that is, the discoloration begins immediately with the reaction of the blood with the CO, and is then increased by the inflow of CO. Following death the discoloration is then concentrated by the pooling of blood that is livor mortis (post-mortem lividity).

Item 2: A dead girl in Italy

This case involved a 21 year old white female found dead in a country house owned by her family. It was later determined that her death had been unintentionally caused by a gas water heater. We are told by the authors of the case report that “[t]he pale cherry pink colour of the victim immediately suggested a carbon monoxide poisoning.” A spectrophotometric measurement of the blood showed a carboxyhemoglobin level of 60%. The report also mentions that among survivors of CO poisoning, the mean carboxyhemoglobin level is 28.1%, while among fatalities the mean level is 62.3%. At a level of 50%, the probability of survival is more or less 50%.[24]

Item 3: A German report on six “unusual” cases of fatal CO poisoning

This article[25] states that, despite the presence of indicative death scenes and/or characteristic findings of the external (coroners’) examination, about 40% of all unintentional fatal cases of carbon monoxide poisoning remain unrecognized until the autopsy. To illustrate possible reasons for this, the authors describe six individual cases. In case 1 and 2, involving a middle-aged couple, the bodies were found in a state of extreme putrefaction, so that the cause of death could only be recognized through spectrophotometrically analyzing the carboxyhemoglobin level of the oedema fluid that had gathered in the scalps of the victims. Case 3 involved a young truck driver, found dead in the closed cab of his vehicle and not displaying any clear external signs of CO poisoning, despite a carboxyhemoglobin level of 83%. Case 4 involved a 19 year old male found dead in a flat. Despite a carboxyhemoglobin level of 65% his body lacked “the bright pink coloration of livor mortis”. Case 5 involved a 27 year old male discovered dead in his flat with a carboxyhemoglobin level of 80%. His body was found in a state of advanced decomposition. Case 6 involved a 42 year old female found dead in the garage beside her car. The body did not show any clear external signs of CO poisoning despite a carboxyhemoglobin level of 46%. As stated already by the title of this article (“Unusual carbon monoxide poisoning”) these six cases (in particular cases 3, 4 and 6) are to be viewed as anomalous.

Item 4: An American case of CO poisoning without cherry-red discoloration

According to the authors of this article, carbon monoxide poisoning “typically causes so-called cherry-red livor of the skin and viscera.” They then report of a case of CO poisoning in which this cherry-red livor did not develop. It involved a 75 year old white male found dead in his car during a cold winter. His carboxyhemoglobin level was measured as 86%. The authors inform us that “the curious absence of cherry-red livor” was studied and the decedent’s tissue and blood specimens tested at various temperatures. The tests showed that neither the blood nor the tissue of the victim had a tendency to develop cherry-red color, regardless of temperature.[26]

Item 5: An optical study of discolorations

In this South African study of 10 fatal cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, the skin color of the victims’ bodies was analyzed by the help of reflectance spectrophotometry, with the values converted to visual equivalents. It was found that several circumstances contribute to the difficulty of identifying the cherry-red color in the skin, among them low CO concentration in the blood, skin pigmentation, washing-out of previously high CO concentrations, and deep venous dilatation combined with superficial vasoconstriction (narrowing of the blood vessels), producing the impression of cyanosis. It was further found that the color of the altered blood “depends on the way the red cells are massed together, their depths below the surface, and the brightness of the background against which they are viewed.”[27]

Item 6: A study of 15 CO victims at an Indian hospital

This study, published in 2001, was carried out at a hospital in a provincial Indian city which is located on an altitude of 5000 ft above mean sea level. It involved findings in 40 cases of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, 25 of the clinical, 15 of them post mortem. The autopsy findings revealed “deep red discoloration of skin and serous membranes” in 12 of the 15 corpses.[28] This study is important for the topic of the present article, since it shows that deep red discoloration is displayed by a majority of victims of lethal carbon monoxide poisoning even when the skin of the victims are of a darker pigmentation than the average Caucasian’s.

Item 7: An Austrian study on 182 cases of fatal CO poisoning

This study[29] consists of an analysis of autopsy reports of postmortems performed at the Viennese Institute of Forensic Medicine between 1984 and 1993. The aim of this survey was to determine whether the cherry-pink coloring of livor mortis[30] is a reliable finding for the coroner to suspect a carbon monoxide-related death immediately at the death scene. It involved 182 cases of unintentional carbon monoxide-related deaths: 92 females and 90 males. The authors found a strong association between the carboxyhemoglobin level (i.e. the level of CO concentration in the blood’s hemoglobin) and the cherry-pink coloring of livor mortis: “in 98.4% of unintentional carbon monoxide-related deaths livor mortis was clearly cherry-pink.”[31] It was determined that fresh corpses with carboxyhemoglobin levels greater than 31% show “a clear cherry-pink coloring of livor mortis.”[32] The survey further indicated that the Viennese coroners’ inability to recognize cases of unintentional carbon monoxide fatalities immediately at the death scene was correlated to the age of the victim: the older the victim, the worse the coroner’s recognition.

In conclusion, the authors of the article suggest that coroners should be recommended to examine naked corpses thoroughly, and especially the color of livor mortis. In this way, they write, a carbon monoxide-related death can be recognized immediately and the source of the gas release identified, thus protecting other people from the risk of poisoning.

Item 8: A survey of 388 car exhaust gas suicides in Denmark 1995-1999

This study[33] from 2005 consists of a survey of 388 cases of suicide by means of engine exhaust gas carried out in Denmark between 1995 and 1998. Of the suicides 343 were males and 45 females. It was found that in 11 cases (2.8%) putrefaction or burns were so extensive that livor mortis could not be found, while “the characteristic pink livor mortis” was found in 353 cases (91% of the total cases, 93.6% of those with livor mortis). Only in 9 cases (2.4% of those with livor mortis) did the victims show a normal-colored livor mortis. In 3 of those 9 cases the victim had survived more than a day after the poisoning, implying a positive correlation between the cherry-red discoloration of livor mortis and the carboxyhemoglobin level. In 15 cases the author of the autopsy report had neglected to write down the color of livor mortis.

Summary of the medical evidence

From the above summarized cases we may conclude that:

• Cherry-red discoloration sometimes appears in non-fatal cases of CO poisoning, i.e. it is visible also in ante-mortem states (Item 1). According to available medical literature, such cases are not the rule, but on the other hand not highly exceptional. Such discoloration would appear more or less directly after the blood cells had started absorbed the carbon monoxide. The visibility of the deep red discoloration is related to the concentrations of CO in the blood (i.e. the carboxyhemoglobin level), as well as other factors such as pigmentation (Item 5). In the case of the alleged gas chamber victims it is reasonable to assume that their carboxyhemoglobin level would be much higher than that of the average CO poisoning survivor (that is 28.1%, whereas in fatal cases the concentration averages 62.3%; cf. Item 2), thus greatly increasing the number of individual cases with cherry-red discoloration appearing already ante-mortem or prior to the onset of livor mortis.

• According to Item 7 fresh corpses with carboxyhemoglobin levels greater than 31% shows clear discoloration. This level is only 2.9% above that of the average survivor of CO poisoning (cf. Item 2).

• In cases of fatal CO poisoning, deep red discoloration of the livor mortis is visible in many cases even when the victim’s pigmentation is much darker than that of the average Caucasian (Item 6).

• In fatal cases of CO poisoning, absence of cherry-red lividity is regarded as “curious” or “unusual”. Individuals whose blood and tissue lacks the tendency to develop the cherry-red color are very much an exception (Item 4). In many of the fatal cases where discoloration could not be detected, this was due to the corpse having entered the stage of advanced decomposition, or from having suffered severe burns (Items 3, 8).

• Deep red/cherry-red discoloration of livor mortis is present in at least 95% of all fatal cases of carbon monoxide poisoning (Items 7 and 8).

5. Eyewitness descriptions of alleged carbon monoxide victims at Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Chełmno

Witness 1: Kurt Gerstein

As a captive of Allied forces in France, former SS hygiene technician Kurt Gerstein wrote a number of reports in which he claimed to have witnessed a mass gassing at Bełżec in August 1942. In the two reports indisputably written by Gerstein in French on April 26, 1945, the bodies of the gassing victims are described in the following way:

“The blue bodies are thrown, damp with sweat and with urine, the legs full of excrement and menstrual blood.”[34]

In the German-language Gerstein reports which Henri Roques designate T III and T VI the word “blue” is not present. It is likewise not present in the French text T Va, dated to May 6, 1945. The German text T IV contains no corresponding passage.

Regarding the blueness of the Bełżec corpses and the issue of cyanosis, see Section 2 above.

Witness 2: Wilhelm Pfannenstiel

The professor of hygiene at the University of Marburg-Lahn Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel allegedly accompanied the aforementioned Kurt Gerstein on his trip to Bełżec in August 1942. After the war Pfannenstiel was arrested but never sentenced to prison. Instead he was on a number of occasions summoned as a witness for the prosecution in trials dealing with the alleged homicidal gas chambers at the Reinhardt camps. In 1950 he testified before a court in the German city of Darmstadt:

“I noticed nothing special about the corpses, except that some of them showed a bluish puffiness about the face. But this is not surprising since they had died of asphyxiation.”[35]

Since Pfannenstiel was without question familiar with the texts of the Gerstein reports, it is fully possible that he also derived his description of the corpses from one of the two French texts. As an alternative, it cannot be excluded that Pfannenstiel, with his thorough background in medicine and hygiene studies, was familiar with asphyxiation symptoms and thus also able to fabricate a vague description with the ring of authority. As for the Pfannenstiel testimony I once again refer to Berg’s article summarized above.

Witness 3: Karl Alfred Schluch

SS-Unterscharführer Karl Alfred Schluch was posted at Bełżec from June 1942 until early summer 1943. His work at the camp up until December 1942 supposedly involved accompanying the naked Jewish victims through the camouflaged “sluice” which led to the gas chambers. Schluch was acquitted at the trial of former Bełżec camp staff held in Munich in 1963. In connection with this trial the witness made the following statement regarding the bodies of the gas chamber victims:

“The corpses were at least partially besmirched with excrement and urine, others in part with saliva. The lips and nose tips of some of the corpses had turned blue. With some the eyes were closed, with others the eyes had rolled.”[36]

Now it is possible that the lips, and possibly also the nose tips, of carbon monoxide victims would look purple-bluish as a result of cyanosis. The problem is that this is the only kind of discoloration that the witness claims to have been aware of. Are we to believe that Schluch noticed a few purple-bluish lips, but completely missed the large red discolorations?

Witness 4: Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann testified during his trial in Jerusalem that he had visited three camps were carbon monoxide was allegedly used to exterminate Jews: Chełmno (Kulmhof), Treblinka, and an unidentified camp in the Lublin area commonly assumed to have been Bełżec. Only in regard to the first camp does Eichmann claim to have witnessed the bodies of the alleged victims. This is how Eichmann described the murder of Jews in “gas vans” at Chełmno:

“I went myself to a small wood and just as I got there the omnibus also arrived, it pulled up beside a pit which had been dug up, the doors were opened and out of them poured corpses, down into the pit. One upon the other. It was a ghastly inferno. No, a super-inferno. To me they looked as if they were still alive. But now each and all of them were dead.”[37]

Thus according to Eichmann the corpses of the victims looked the same way as when they had been alive. The vagueness of the description makes the testimony weak evidence in any case, but it might be safely assumed that Eichmann would have noticed and remembered large red discolorations on the corpses from the gas vans, if he had in fact seen any.

Witness 5: “Szlamek”

This key witness to the alleged gas van mass murders in Chełmno, who has been identified as either a certain Jakov Grojanowski or Szlojme Fajner, claims the following in his testimony, reportedly dating from February 1942:

”How did the corpses appear? They were not burned, not black. The complexion of their faces was unchanged. Almost all the dead were lying in their excrement.

[...].

It seemed that they had only been put to sleep; their cheeks were pale and they kept their natural skin color.”[38]

Thus the corpses displayed no skin discoloration whatsoever.

Witness 6: Rudolf Reder

The witness Rudolf Reder, born in 1881, is supposed to have spent a significant portion of his nearly four month long stay at Bełżec dragging corpses from the camp’s alleged gas chambers to massive burial pits. On December 29, 1945, Reder was interrogated by the Polish Judge Jan Sehn. Regarding the physical appearance of the gas chamber victims, the witness stated:

“I was often on the ramp at the moment the doors were opened, but I never smelled any odor, and on entering a chamber right after the doors were opened I never felt any ill effects on my health. The bodies in the chamber did not show any unnatural discoloration. They looked like live persons, most had their eyes open.”[39]

The Bełżec key witness Reder is thus clearly of the opinion that the gassing victims displayed no cherry-red discoloration.

Witness 7: Eliahu Rosenberg

The Jewish witness Eliahu (Elias) Rosenberg supposedly spent several months working in close proximity of the alleged Treblinka gas chambers,[40] dragging thousands of corpses from the “death chambers” to mass graves. In a 12-page typewritten deposition in German which Rosenberg left in Vienna on December 24, 1947, the appearance of the gas chamber victims is described thus:

“The corpses were very bloated, their skin looked gray-white and easily peeled off, so that it hung from them like shreds. Their eyes protruded and the tongues hung out of their mouths.”[41]

Rosenberg’s description of the hue of the corpses is clearly not consistent with the red discoloration resulting from carbon monoxide poisoning.

In addition to Rosenberg, the Jewish writer Rachel Auerbach states in her essay “In the Fields of Treblinka” from 1946 that “the bodies were naked; some of them were white, others were blue and bloated.”[42] Auerbach had not herself been interned at Treblinka, but visited the remains of the camp in 1945 as part of an official inspection tour. Her essay is reportedly based on written testimony and talks she had with former Treblinka inmates. Another secondary account derives from the writings of a certain Jacob Mittelberg, who spent only a few hours in Treblinka before being transferred to Majdanek. Mittelberg visited the site of the “death camp” after the war in the company of Rachel Auerbach and a number of former Treblinka inmates, who told him that “when the doors of the gas chambers were opened, the people were blue and so pressed together as to be unrecognizable.”[43] Soviet-Jewish propagandist Vasily Grossman wrote in 1945 after his visit to the former camp site that “People who were unloading the chambers told me that the faces of dead were very yellow”.[44]

Witness 8: Theodor Friedrich Leidig

As far as I have been able to determine the only eyewitness to an alleged mass murder with exhaust gas to have spoken of corpses with red or reddish coloring was a certain Dr. Theodor Friedrich Leidig of the Kriminaltechnisches Institut (KTI) of the RSHA. Dr. Leidig claimed to have witnessed the murder of Russian POW’s detained at Sachsenhausen using a “gas van”:[45]

“We then went to another place, where we once again encountered the van. It turned out that we were now at the crematorium. I still remember that one could look through a peephole or a small window [Scheibe] into the interior of the van, which was illuminated.

One could see that the people were dead. Then the van was opened. Some corpses fell out, the rest were unloaded by prisoners. The corpses had, as was determined by us chemists, the pinkish-red [rosa-rote] appearance which is typical for people who have died from carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Regardless whether this testimony is reliable or not – and we have in fact not a single shred of documentary or technical evidence that supports it – the following observation is inevitable: Leidig clearly knew from his studies that humans who have died of CO poisoning ought to look “pinkish-red”, so in case he was forced or felt impelled to make up a false story, he would have little problem making it a plausible-sounding one. A testimony from a layman mentioning the presence of reddish-pink discoloration would clearly be of a higher evidentiary value, as the possibility that the witness had drawn from a priori knowledge to embellish his story would be much smaller.

6. Rebuttals to possible counter-arguments

Below I will discuss four possible counter-arguments which may be raised against the revisionist critique of the eye-witness testimony.

Argument 1: The studies cited by revisionists are irrelevant because they refer to livor mortis

As has been explained above, the cherry-red discoloration appears as a mechanical effect soon as the carbon monoxide has been absorbed by the blood cells and is thus visible on post-mortem bodies (especially pronounced in the livor mortis, as during this phase the blood is concentrated due to gravity-induced pooling) as well as in ante-mortem states (to a variable degree) and even in some cases where decomposition has already set in. The medical studies and case reports quoted in this article and others are therefore relevant, whether referring to livor mortis or ante-mortem appearances of red discoloration.

Argument 2: Most or all of the victims were deeply anemic, something which would have prevented visible discoloration from ocurring

Anemia is medically defined as a qualitative or quantitative deficiency of hemoglobin, the molecule found inside red blood cells which causes the blood to look red. Anemia results either from excessive blood loss (due to hemorrhage or chronic loss of smaller volumes of blood), excessive destruction of blood cells, or a deficient production of new red blood cell. The idea of the counter-argument is that severe anemia would prevent the red discoloration from appearing in the gassing victims.

In the case of the Jewish deportees, anemia might have been caused either by inadequate intake of vitamin B12 and/or folic acid (leading to macrocytic anemia), or by iron deficiency (causing microcytic anemia). While mild anemia caused by iron deficiency among women of childbearing age is not uncommon even in the western world of today, it is very rare among men and children.

How common then was anemia among the populations of the wartime Jewish ghettos of Poland, where malnutrition, starvation and epidemics indeed took a heavy toll on the inhabitants? This question is very difficult to give a definitive answer to, but a number of indications may be gleaned from the book Hunger Disease. Studies by the Jewish Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto, edited the former Director of the Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition, Dr. Myron Winnick.[46] In this volume, Winick presents a report on nutrition-related diseases prepared by a group of Jewish physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1942. The group, led by Dr. Israel Milejkowski, worked out the details of the study in secret meetings, had medical equipment smuggled into the ghetto, and later smuggled the finished manuscript out of it. The small team of 28 Jewish medical experts included Dr. Mieczyslaw Kocen, a specialist in blood diseases who himself was later allegedly exterminated at Treblinka. The manuscript of the report, which escaped the war tumult relatively unscathed, was published in limited Polish and French editions by the American Joint Distribution Committee. It remained most obscure however, until it surfaced in the United States in the late 1970s and was published in edited form by the abovementioned Winnick.[47]

Regarding the changes of blood characteristics in hunger disease victims the ghetto physicians noted the following:

“Red blood cells examined in 80 cases decreased from 3 million per cubic millimeter to between 1.5 and 1 million and in some cases even below. Hemoglobin decreased to 60 to 70% and in some cases ranged as low as 10%. Color index was usually 1 or less, and rarely reached 1.15. Examining a drop of fresh blood we noticed that the red blood cells do not aggregate normally into rolls but remain single or group into small clusters. Anisocytosis and even more often microcytosis are present, macrocytosis is rare, and there are no nucleated red blood cells. Often the red blood cells are colorless and irregularly shaped. These are symptoms of hypochromic anemia in the recovery phase as indicated by a high percentage of reticulocytes.”[48]

The Warsaw doctors pointed out that “hunger disease” does not result in a decrease of the blood volume of the victim:

“In cachexia and hunger edema there is no anemia in the strict sense because blood volume is not decreased in proportion to body weight. Since there is a low percentage of red blood cells in a drop of blood, this would be classified as normovolemic oligocytemia.”[49]

Rather than a decrease of the total number of red blood cells, “hunger disease” tends to cause a dilution of the blood through the increase of the water content:

“In normal specimens plasma contains 89 to 90% water and red blood cells contain 63 to 67% water. In our patients’ specimens plasma contained 93 to 94% water and red blood cells only 58%.

The changes described in the water content of the blood can produce a pseudoanemia in patients with cachexia or hunger edema. The dryness of the red blood cells explains the presence of microcytosis.”[50]

In a study of child victims of hunger disease it was observed:

“Anemia was usually mild (3 to 3.5 million red blood cells, but sometimes under 2 million, or color index about 1). Even in advanced anemia no young red blood cells were found. In evaluating the degree of anemia, we had to consider “blood dilution,” which was present in every case of severe malnutrition, even the dry form without edema. (…) Dr. Apfelbaum’s research on the volume of blood in adults suffering from hunger disease has demonstrated an increase in blood volume per kilogram of body weight. This factor must also be considered in evaluating the degree of anemia.”[51]

On the subject of child victims of malnutrition, Winnick comments:

“One might assume that since these children, especially the older ones, were reasonably well nourished before the war (unlike most children in developing countries) they had built up significant reserves of vitamin A prior to contracting hunger disease. (…). Finally, vitamin A requirements, like those for other vitamins, might decrease during semistarvation.”[52]

Winnick further notes:

“This results not only in hemodilution which, as we shall see, contributed to the anemia and leukopenia reported in the next chapter, but also in a reduction in the efficiency of the blood as a carrier of nutrients. Thus the vascular system is forced to supply more of the ‘poorly nourished’ blood to the ‘hungry’ tissues and organs. The absolute anemia (…) reduces the amount of oxygen carried by the blood and again increases the total blood requirements of the tissues even though they are consuming less oxygen.”[53]

Another study of the Warsaw physicians showed that some degree of anemia was common among patients of hunger disease but that

“of 32 cases only six had 4 to 5 million red blood cells. Thus anemia was prevalent. The largest group of people had 3 to 4 million blood cells. Therefore we consider this number as average for slightly advanced hunger disease.”[54]

However, according to the table following this paragraph 10 of the cases displayed a level of 3-4 million red blood cells per cubic millimeter, while 9 cases displayed a level of 2 million or less. Thus only a minority of the studied cases suffered from what could be defined as severe anemia. Further among the conclusions we read that

“Anemia is normochromic or hyperchromic and only very rarely hypochromic. There is anisocytosis with a predominance of macrocytes.”[55]

Winnick summarizes the post-mortem case studies performed as follows:

“They [the physicians] report on 492 autopsies performed in the 2 ½ years that preceded the deportations. These were cases of ‘pure’ hunger disease with no other complications. This represented about 15% of the total number of autopsies performed in their departments during the same period. They divided their material into four periods beginning in January 1940 and ending on July 22, 1942, and point out that the number of cases of hunger disease increased with time.”[56]

In a series of tables the Warsaw physicians list the following gross changes in the “hunger disease” victims:[57]

1. Pale cadaver-like skin in 82.5% of the cases. Dark brown-colored skin in 17.5%.

2. Edema in one third of the cases. Effusions were most frequent in the abdominal cavity when they occurred.

3. Edema was rare in cases of “brown skin,” whereas the pale skin group had either the edematous or the dry form of the disease.

4. Severe atrophy occurred in heart, liver, spleen, and kidney.

5. Brain weight remained unchanged (these were adult patients).

6. Marked skeletal muscle atrophy.

7. Edema of the small intestinal wall with swollen reddish discolored mucosa and mucus appeared in 27.2% of the cases.

8. Thin watery bile in 77.7% of the cases.

9. Reduced number of fat bodies in the adrenals in 50% of cases.

10. Jellylike consistency in bone marrow of certain cases.

11. Emphysema in 13.8% of cases.

12. Anemia in only 5.5% of cases.

13. Almost 50% of the cases had intestinal changes that could be classified as pseudodysentery. An equal number of these cases fell into the edematous and nonedematous groups.

The above can be taken as a strong indication that even among fatal cases of malnutrition, anemia was far from always present. Even if no definitive answers may found in regards to this question, it seems far-flung to assert that a majority of the Jewish deportees who arrived at Treblinka were afflicted with anemia severe enough to prevent the appearance of a visible livor mortis or other variants of skin discoloration.

Argument 3: The lighting may not have been adequate for the eye-witnesses to see the colors of the corpses properly

This argument is easily dismissed. Rosenberg and Reder claims to have worked not only with removing the corpses from the gas chambers, but also with transporting them to the mass graves. It is generally asserted by holocaust historians that this activity was mainly carried out during the day,[58] so that in most if not all cases the Arbeitsjuden engaged in the corpse-dragging must have been able to observe their macabre burden in full daylight.

Argument 4: The inmates working with transporting the corpses might not have noticed the color of the livor mortis since it would have appeared on the half of the bodied turned towards the ground

There are two obstacles to this argument. On its way from the gas chamber to its final place in one of the mass graves the corpse would have made at least two stops, first close to the gas chambers, where the “dentists” would check its teeth and pull out any gold present, the second at the edge of the burial pit, where it had to be arranged with the other bodies in some fashion. In order to efficiently arrange the huge number of bodies in the mass graves, a portion of them would most likely have had to be turned around. In any case it seems logical to assume that a great many of the hypothetical gassing victims would have been turned over at least once on their way to the burial pits. That the inmates who worked day after day with these routines would have managed to completely miss the large, brightly discoloured portions of skin is simply out of the question – unless we assume that the clever Nazis selected only colorblind Jews for these work commandos!

7. Conclusion

In a medical article from 2004 we find the following stated regarding the appearance of cherry red skin discoloration in cases of carbon monoxide poisoning:

“The classical cherry red appearance is not seen in all cases of acute poisoning, and may not be apparent even in cases of severe toxicity.”[59]

However, in the case of the alleged mass gassings at the Aktion Reinhardt camps and Chełmno, all of the (alleged) victims can safely be regarded as victims of acute poisoning, and since the witnesses to the alleged gassings supposedly observed – often at very closely distance – not only one or two corpses, but hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of corpses, it natural follows that witnesses such as Reder, “Szlamek” and Rosenberg would have observed a very large number of bodies showing cherry red discoloration. That not a single one of the alleged eye-witnesses to mass gassings at the above listed camps mention the highly eye-catching type of discoloration that most often accompany lethal carbon monoxide poisoning is in itself enough to throw doubt upon the alleged truthfulness of their statements.[60] The apparently isolated case of Theodor Friedrich Leidig , not only because of his background but also due to the fact that he describes something not part of the holocaust per se, namely the (alleged) murder of a group of Russian prisoners of war at an “ordinary” concentration camp. When key witnesses from the “extermination camps”, however, reports the corpses to have been blue, white, grayish, or even without any discoloration whatsoever, then we can be certain that something is not right with their gas chamber testimonies.

Counting the years properly we are now facing a new decade. What will it bring for holocaust revisionism?
In one of my first articles for Smith’s Report, “What Remains to be Researched?” (issue 150) I outlined a number of areas still in need of research as well as mentioned a number of studies in need of translation of the English. In the two and a half years that have passed since then much of this research has in fact been carried out.

In 2010, coinciding with the new trial against John Demjanjuk in Munich, was published the first revisionist study on the Aktion Reinhardt “extermination camp” of Sobibór, co-authored by myself, Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno and titled Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality (TBR Books). The most important part of this book is undoubtedly the analysis of the results from an archeological survey carried out at the former Sobibór camp site by the Polish professor Andrzej Kola in the years 2000-2001. Kola had published an article on his research result in a rather obscure Polish journal already in 2001, but this was never translated into any Western language, or for that matter referenced by any of the orthodox experts on the Aktion Reinhardt camps (including the foremost mainstream expert on Sobibór, Jules Schelvis, who has published two revised editions of his study Sobibór. A History of a Nazi Death Camp after 2001). The reason for this is easy to see: While Kola pays the necessary lip service to the mass extermination dogma, the published results from his probings and diggings clearly show that the official claim that Sobibór served as a “pure extermination center” – a claim based exclusively on “eyewitness” testimony – do not hold water. Instead of the concrete gas chamber building described by the “eyewitnesses”, Kola discovered, at the site where this murder factory should have been located, the remains of a huge wooden barrack, with dimensions completely incompatible with those of the alleged gas chamber building, containing numerous fragments from toilet articles and clothing. Not far from this barrack he also discovered the remains of a smaller building containing an oven. These finds suggest a large delousing barrack and a smaller hot air delousing chamber, something which greatly strenghtens the revisionist hypothesis. Neither Kola nor a later Israeli-Polish team of archeologists active in 2007-8008 managed to find the slightest trace of the alleged gas chambers, despite finecombing the 3 hectare area of the “death camp proper” with probes and advanced equipment. In other words: the homicidal gas chambers at Sobibór never existed. Thanks to the research of Kola we may now conclude, based on solid proof, that Sobibór was in fact what Himmler had called it in a directive from 5 July 1943, namely a transit camp. In Chapter 10 of our study we discuss the deportation of Jews to the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union via the “extermination camps” – which were in fact all transit camps. A key piece of evidence presented here is the wartime diary of Herman Kruk, who served as head librarian in the Vilna ghetto. Kruk’s diary entries from April 1943 confirm that a large number of Dutch Jews, that according to mainstream historiography were “gassed” in Auschwitz and Sobibór, were in fact deported to Lithuania. The discovery of these diary entries in turn prompted me to write a survey of the available evidence for the eastward transit of supposedly murdered Jews, which is currently being published in installments in the Inconvenient History web journal under the title “Evidence for the presence of ‘gassed’ Jews in the Occupied eastern territories“.

In 2009 Carlo Mattogno published in Italian Il Campo di Chelmno tra Storia e Propaganda, the first full-length revisionist study on the first constructed of the “extermination camps”, Chelmno (also known as Kulmhof) in the Warthegau district of occupied Poland. This volume, which presents an abundance of evidence against the official Chelmno historiography, which has it that some 150 000 Jews were murdered at this camp in “gas vans”, is scheduled to be published in English by TBR Books in mid-2011 with the title Chelmno: Myth and Reality. Among other things, Mattogno demonstrates, based on the published results of four archeological surveys, that the only means of cremation which existed in the camp, a single open field oven of a known type, could only have incinerated at most 45 corpses within 24 hours, so that the cremation of the alleged 150 000 victims would have lasted until 1951, and that the amount of human remains present in the mass graves at the former camp site is absolutely incompatible with the supposed victim figure. Furthermore a diary entry of Herman Kruk’s from 4 July 1942 as well two diary entries penned on 14 and 30 July 1942 by Avraham Tory, the secretary of the Jewish Council in the Kovno ghetto, confirm independently of each other that many of the Jews deported to Chelmno ended up in Lithuania, where they were employed in road construction. With the publication of this volume, all six “extermination camps” (as well as the “auxiliary extermination camp” of Stutthof) have been devoted book-length revisionist studies. It thus marks an milestone in the history of holocaust revisionism.

Naturally Mattogno spends many pages of this book discussing the evidence for the alleged murder weapon employed at Chelmno, the so-called “gas vans”, concluding that the scanty “proofs” dished up by the holocaust historians for the existence and use of these vehicles is devoid of any real evidentiary value. The issue of the “gas vans”, which were allegedly used not only at Chelmno, but also in Serbia and the occupied Soviet territories, is also dealt with in detail in French revisionist Pierre Marais’ study Les camions de gaz en question from 1994, which will be published in a fully revamped English edition as The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation in late 2011.

The indefatigable Carlo Mattogno is most of all known as an expert on the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, and in December 2010 his most exhaustive study on this subject, Auschwitz: The Case For Sanity, was published in English. This 756-page volume critically examines Jean-Claude Pressac’s and Robert Jan van Pelt’s desperate, deeply flawed and sometimes plain absurd attempts at proving the existence of the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Birkenau, as well as traces how the Auschwitz gas chamber legend came into being. It is the most definite revisionist statement on the Auschwitz gas chambers to date. In late 2011 it will be followed by what might justly be called Mattogno’s long-awaited magnum opus, The Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz, a likewise monumental study on the five crematories at Auschwitz-Birkenau, whose incineration capacities play a crucial role in determining the veracity of the mass extermination claims. The publication of these two volumes however does not mark the end of Mattogno’s research efforts. In Healthcare in Auschwitz, scheduled for publication in late 2011, the vast measures undertaken by the Auschwitz camp administration for the sake of the inmates’ health are for the first time revealed in their full scope, including detailed regulations for the proper nourishment of the inmates and the construction of a large hospital complex wherein surgeries were carried out on thousands of Jewish inmates allegedly marked for death. Auschwitz: assistenza sanitaria, “selezione” e “Sonderbehandlung” dei detenuti immatricolati (Auschwitz: sanitary service, “selections” and “special treatment” of registered inmates, Effepi 2010) serves as a sort of companion volume to Healthcare in Auschwitz, as well as a follow-up to Mattogno’s previous study Special Treatment in Auschwitz (2004), and discusses the “special treatment” of registered Auschwitz inmates and the allegation of mainstream historians that this term meant the selection of sick detainees for killing in homicidal gas chambers. This volume will hopefully be published in English during 2012.

As was mentioned some months agp during a broadcast of Carolyn Yeager’s radio show Heretic’s Hour, Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno and myself are embarking on one of the largest revisionist research undertakings to date. The subject of this research project will be the last major aspect of the holocaust that has yet to be dealt with in detail by revisionists, namely the alleged mass extermination of 1 to 2 million Jews carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union. This part of the holocaust is especially complex, as we are not dealing here with isolated phantasms within very limited areas (I am talking here of the “gas chambers” in the “extermination camps”), but with mass shootings of the most varying scopes carried out at hundreds of locations during a three-year period. The orthodox allegations are based on a number of activity and situation reports supposedly based on messages dispatched by the Einsatzgruppen themselves. While there is no questions that mass shootings were carried out in the East, there are several questions in need of critical inquiry, chief of them a) Were the Einsatzgruppen ordered to exterminate Jews based solely on their ethnicity? b) Are the reports presented as evidence for the mass extermination genuine and reliable? and c) How many Jews were actually killed by the Einsatzgruppen? In order to answer these questions we must survey the entire available contemporary documentation on the Einsatzgruppen, which means going through tens of thousands of document pages. In fact, one of the initial obstacles we are now facing even before the start of our research is the pressing need to transfer this vast documentation from microfilm to digital media, something which unfortunately costs a rather large sum of money. We would be most grateful for any helping donations, however small (we can be reached via CODOH).

Where is Holocaust revisionism heading in this new decade? As seen above, we will soon have covered virtually all aspects of the holocaust complex in our research. What remains now, first and foremost, is to reconstruct, piece by piece, what actually happened to the Jews in German-controlled Europe during World War II, to map the real history of the camps, the ghettos, the deportations and the victim figures. Carlo Mattogno has dubbed this new constructive side of revisionism “affirmationism”. The best examples of this affirmationist trend in revisionist research can be found in Mattogno’s own latest studies on Auschwitz. While running the risk of sounding self-promoting, I see my own research concerning the actual fate of the “gassed” Jews as another example of affirmationism, as this seeks to provide an answer to the anti-revisionists’ favorite rhetorical question: If they were not gassed, then what happened to them?

During the coming decade revisionism will have many challenges to meet, but also many opportunities to take advantage of. I will begin with listing the challenges.
First and foremost there is a lack of revisionist researchers. The number of revisionists carrying out original research can easily be counted on both hands’ fingers. This does not mean that we necessarily need x number of full-time researchers. It would be just as well to have a sizable number of spare-time researchers, preferably from varied disciplinary backgrounds, who contribute high-quality articles from time to time, or only once or twice. As a saying in my native Sweden goes, “many small streams will form a large river”. Our opponents consists of an armada of certified court historians and skilled propagandists with virtually unlimited funds and resources as well as mass media and the legal and political systems on their side – yet despite this the field of “Holocaust studies” appears increasingly moribund, not to say braindead. We on the other hand, while lacking manpower as well as fundings, have dedication and the endurance that comes from knowing that historical truth is on our side and that this truth ultimately will prevail.

It would be most welcome if new revisionist researchers would appear in eastern Europe – I am thinking specifically of Romania, Moldavia, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia – as natives of this region would have many advantages in dealing with the two great remaining problems of revisionist research, the Einsatzgruppen killings and the fate of the “gassed” Jews deported to the occupied Soviet territories. Especially welcome would be research from scholars with access to historical archives. Such researchers should realize that it is possible for them to publish findings of revisionist nature without running any risk of being charged with “Holocaust denial”, provided that they proceed cautiously. For example, if a historian, based on testimonal or documentary evidence, demonstrated the presence of French, Dutch or Belgian Jews in a camp or ghetto in Belarus during the period 1942-1944 – a fact not allowed for by mainstream historiography – but refrained from discussing how exactly these Jews had reached occupied Soviet territory and paid the necessary lip service to the orthodox version of the holocaust, he could go scot free, provided that he knew how to play his cards well. Even discoveries of documents concerning transports of supposedly “gassed” Jews to the East could possibly go unpunished with enough reference to the find constituting an “exception” (though publication outside peer-reviewed channels might prove necessary). This would amount to a sort of “salami tactics” undercover revisionism which might to some seem cowardly, but in some cases, and particularly under an increasingly totalitarian system, this might be the most effective way to proceed. This would serve to undermine the orthodox dogmas from within, by piling anomaly upon anomaly until critical mass is reached and the stability of the building of lies can no longer be maintained. I recommend such prospective researchers to read through my above-mentioned article series on the presence of “gassed” Jews in the East, which should be regarded as a stepping stone for further research into this issue.

The second challenge is the legal persecution of Holocaust revisionists taking place in many European nations. There is no sign that this persecution will decrease, rather we must be prepared that it will increase as revisionism gains new victories. The more the facts presented by us threatens the system, the more we in turn will be threatened by the system. Alarmingly a trend has recently been seen among the governments of the Western world, in connection with the Wikileaks “Cablegate”, to seek to control and censor the Internet. We should expect open or covert attacks on revisionist websites under the guise of campaigns against “online terrorism” and similar, and we should therefore do our best to counter the encroachment of Internet freedom and civil liberties. As long as the Internet remains free, revisionism cannot be stopped.

The third (thankfully minor) challenge is posed by what I prefer to call “pseudorevisionists”. Carlo Mattogno warned about this phenomenon already back in his book My Banned Holocaust Interview, originally published in 1995: “Unfortunately, for some years now, several groups of “Naziskins” have appropriated some revisionist positions for their own particular ideological-propagandistic purposes. These are revisionism’s most dangerous enemies: first, because they spread a version of revisionism which has been simplified to the point of banality, giving the impression that revisionist arguments are all nonsense; and secondly, because they provide a justification for those who claim that revisionism is a Nazi phenomenon (…)”. Today this challenge is not necessarily posed by only people mishandling revisionist arguments for political ends; there are also individuals spreading fallacious arguments in the name of holocaust revisionism. Their usual operating procedure is to claim that virtually every document relating to the fate of the Jews has been forged, without backing up their vast accusations with any form of evidence. Two concrete examples of this are so-called “Krema denial”, the assertion that all or most of the crematorium building at Auschwitz-Birkenau never existed, or that those structures were in fact bakeries or some such, and what might be called “Aktion Reinhardt denial”: the claim that the camps Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka not merely did not function as extermination centers, but actually did not exist at all, with no Jewish deportees ever reaching them. Both of these positions lack any kind of evidential support and are contradicted by archeological evidence as well as hundreds, even thousands of pages of doubtlessly authentic documents – evidence which is fully congruent with the revisionist position and which do not in any way provide proof of homicidal gas chambers. Whether this pseudorevisionism stems from ignorance, politically motivated subjectivism (“everything that furthers my agenda is permissible”) or covert activism by anti-revisionists and Zionist trolls (or “Hasbara activists” as they prefer to call themselves), it lends ammunition to our opponents, who can use these individuals as strawmen and say things like: “See, the revisionists are denying that the camps existed. They are either crackpots or liars”. I should remind my readers that the need to counter this challenge has nothing do with defending any revisionist “dogmas”. Authentic revisionism is, by the very definition of the term, alien to the concept of dogmatic thinking. It is not the abovementioned notions in themselves that are problematic, but the fact that they completely lack any evidential basis. To stubbornly maintain an assertion without present a serious argument for it is to cling to a dogma, hence why I call these positions “pseudorevisionist”. What must be defended is sound scientific methodology. I see no real need for revisionist researchers to spend their valuable time discussing these vapid claims in detail (a rebuttal to Krema denial has already been offered by Mattogno in his article “Zu den ‘nicht existierenden’ Krematorien von Birkenau”, Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, vol. 3, no. 3), but I recommend online revisionist debaters to not let such claims go unanswered – and to educate themselves.
Then we have the upcoming opportunities and good news.

To begin with it looks like the efforts of the powers that be to introduce anti-revisionist legislation into all member states of the European Union will be thwarted – at least temporarily – by constitutional friction in those states yet lacking such heresy laws. A recent statement from Sweden’s constitution committee implies that such legislation most likely cannot be passed before 2014. The “Anti-Racist” legal framework constructed for the implementation of an EU-wide anti-revisionist law has also been watered down by those member states still paying a modicum of respect to the freedom of speech.

The second piece of good news may not be very new, but will have implications for the coming decade. Some four years ago it was revealed that while postwar historians estimated that the Germans had operated between 5,000 and 7,000 detention sites, recent research shows that there in fact existed “somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 000 camps and ghettos of various categories”, the majority of them on located on occupied Soviet territory (“Largest archive of Holocaust records to open”, USA Today (online edition), 19 November 2006). Presently a 7-volume encyclopedia of these camps and ghettos is being compiled by Geoffrey Megargee of the USHMM. This piece of news is of great interest to revisionists, as it ties in with the question of the destination of the deported “gassed” Jews.
Other opportunities for further research will no doubt arise from the “European Holocaust Research Infrastructure” (EHRI), a 7 million euro project in which “seventeen research centres from Europe and Israel” will “transform the dispersed data available for Holocaust research in Europe, Israel and the United States into a cohesive corpus of resources” which will then be made available online for “maximum open access of these data” (cf. http://www.cegesoma.be/cms/index_en.php?article=1575). Experience has shown that openings of archives and releases of unpublished material strengthens the revisionist position while correspondingly weakening the orthodox.
Finally there is a very interesting development on the archeological frontier. As reported by me on the Inconvenient History blog, a young British forensic archeologist, Caroline Sturdy Colls of the University of Birmingham, is currently working on a project which involves identifying the mass graves at the site of the former Treblinka “extermination camp” using “the most up-to-date scientific techniques”. This project will form the basis of her doctoral dissertation, which will be presented at the earliest by the end of this year. Considering the fatal damage which Kola et. al.’s research activities at Belzec and Sobibór have caused orthodox holocaust historiography, the news of this high-tech survey is most welcome. One should never underestimate the Shoah defenders’ propensity for shooting themselves in their collective foot of clay.
All in all, I believe that this will prove one of the most important decades in the history of holocaust revisionism. Let us face every challenge with renewed energy, and may our opponents live in interesting times, as the old Chinese saying goes…

Below I present a number of additions to the survey material presented in the recently published “Evidence for the Presence of ‘Gassed’ Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, Part 2”¹ which did not make it to the deadline. The additions are presented in order of the sections to which they belong.

Section 3.3.18. “Tsetsilia Mikhaylovna Shapiro”

The relevant passage from Shapiro’s testimony reads as follows:

“In addition to the local Jewish population, Jews from other countries – France, Germany, and elsewhere – were transported to the Minsk ghetto. The Jews of each country were settled in the ghetto separately. Barbed wire separated these different ‘associations of compatriots’ one from the other. They were forbidden to have contact with each other or with the local Jews.”²

Section 3.3.19. “Avraham Tory (Golub)”

The Unknown Black Book provides us with the names of four additional camps in Lithuania with Jewish inmates:

Gerulyay – Jewish camp with women and children (p. 303, 306).

Kocheniski (Kotsynishki) – agricultural labor camp with Jewish prisoners located not far from Kovno (pp. 313-315).

Renyay – Jewish camp (p. 303).

Vishvyany – Jewish camp (p. 303).

This brings the total number of camps to 47.

Additional witnesses

3.3.20. Nikolayev Prilezhaev

Nikolayev Prilezhaev was a 75-year-old professor and member of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences who escaped (at an unclear date) from occupied Minsk with the help of partisans. Soon after his escape his account of the suffering of the Jews of Minsk was recorded by M. Grubian, a correspondent of the Yiddish-language newspaper Eynikait. In this we read:

“Professor Prilezhaev says that not a trace remained of Minsk’s native Jews, and that a certain number of Jews from Lodz and Hamburg are still languishing in the ghetto, dying from hunger and disease.”³

Any convoys of Łódź Jews to reach Minsk must have done so via the “pure extermination camp” of Chełmno.

3.3.21. Golda Vasserman

In an account of the Tulchin Ghetto in Transnistria, written in 1944 by the Romanian Jewess Golda Vasserman, we find the following passage:

“In the autumn of 1942, there were more than three thousand Jewish families from Ukraine, Bukovina and Bessarabia in the Tulchin ghetto. [...]. Every day, new shipments of Jews would arrive in the ghetto. They were in part people who had been hiding in the forests for a long time, had made their way to the partisans and had then fallen into the hands of the fascist cutthroats, and in part Jews from various countries in Europe that had been occupied by Hitler’s forces.”⁴

According to mainstream historiography only Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Romania proper were deported to Transnistria.

3.3.22. Regina Leshchinskaya

Regina Leshchinskaya (b. 1930) was interned in the Pechora camp in northern Transnistria. She states that “in 1942, many Jews from Romania, Poland and Bessarabia” were brought to this camp.⁵ Mainstream historiography is unaware of any transports of Polish Jews to Transnistria.

3.3.23. Nisim Anolik

Nisim Anolik and his brother Benjamin were deported to Estonia from Lithuania on 3 September 1943.⁶ After first arriving in the Vaivara camp they were transferred to one labor camp after another, until in early February 1944 they found thenselves in the Ereda camp:

“Most of the people in the camp came from Kaunas and Vilno. There were also people from Prague, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Riga, Brussels, and Paris. They lived separately from us, but we found out about them, since we would receive clothes with their names on them after they had been exterminated. All the prisoners wore numbers on the left side of their chests and on their right leg near the knee.”⁷

At a noth further stated date in May 1944 the Anolik brothers were transferred again, this time to the Klooga camp.⁸ The first and only convoy of French Jews to reach Estonia – according to orthodox historiography – departed Paris on 15 May 1944 with Kovno and Tallinn as its destinations (cf. 2.3.3.). According to Estonian historian Meelis Maripuu the French Jews who did not disembark in Kovno on 20 May arrived in Tallinn on the following day, i.e. 21 May 1944, and that on the same day “about 60 of the weaker prisoners were sent to ‘work’ from which they never returned”; 60 more French Jews were sent “to work in the forest” on 14 July, while another group of “about 100 sick prisoners” were sent away on 14 August. All the remaining French Jews were kept in the Tallinn Central Prison; later three Jews who were suspected of attempting to escape were shot.⁹ Although Maripuu assumes that the Jews sent away from the prison on 21 May were shot, it is not out of the question that they were in fact transferred to a labor camp, and that the Paris Jews observed by Anolik in Ereda came from this transport. As for the Jews from Prague, Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna they may have arrived with the documented transports from Theresienstadt and Berlin to Raasiku in the summer of 1942 or indirectly via the Riga Ghetto. The presence in Estonia of Jews from Brussels, i.e. from Belgium, however, is anomalous from an orthodox viewpoint.

After the publication of “Evidence for the Presence of ‘Gassed’ Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, Part 1”¹ in the summer issue of Inconvenient History I have came across numerous pieces of information prompting additions to the same text, which were incorporated in a recently published online Swedish version of the article.² Since many of these additions need to be considered in the upcoming parts of this study, I have decided to publish all of them separately online in the form of an addendum. The additions are presented in order of the sections to which they belong.

Section 2.3.3. “The Jews of France”

Of the 878 Jews deported from Drancy to Kovno and Reval (Tallinn) on 15 May 1944 (convoy “73m”), at least 26 were later transferred from Estonia to the concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig. A transport list from the autumn of 1944 contains the following names identifiable as persons from this convoy:³

Aserman, Gean b. 25.10.98. (spelt “Jean Aserman” in the 73m transport list)
Biter, Child b. 05.06.99. (“Szydeour Bitter”)
Blaufuchs, Alfred b. 03.06.08
David, Ozias b. 23.12.99. (“Oryas David”)
Frydmann, Abraam b. 25.02.99. (“Abram Frydmann”)
Futeral, Simon b. 02.02.22. (“Sandel Futeral” b. 02.04.22 – likely a mistake; there is one other Futeral in the transport list, but the year of birth does not match)
Gusevicz, Paul b. 07.04.04. (“Paul Guzewicz”)
Grosswald, Moise b. 10.05.93
Gustin, David b. 10.10.02. (David Gustein)
Herclich, Zysia b. 22.06.09. (“Zygia Herclich”)
Jolles, Ferdinand b. 27.02.07.
Kuperman, Jacob b. 27.06.93.
Leviach, Paul b. 12.09.04.
Levy, René b. 07.05.97.
Levy, Roger b. 30.12.97.
Mager, Armand b. 13.10.95.
Mlynarsky, Achille b. 15.03.02.
Mizrahi, Albert b. 19.02.00.
Perachia, Albert b. 15.05.21. (“Albert Perahia”)
Schnek, Leon b. 06.12.02. (“Leon Schneck”)
Skosovsky, Jean b. 03.01.12. (“Jean Skosowsky”)
Tattelbaum, Maurice b. 22.08.97.
Toledano, Henry b. 18.02.26. ( no doubt identical with “Leon Toledano”, who has the same birthday; there is no other Toledano in the transport list)
Valigora, Narchman b. 01.01.97. (“Nachmann Walligora”)
Mayer, Guy b. 07.02.96.

2.4.1. Italy

In the bimonthly Contemporary Jewish Record, vol. 7, no. 2 (April 1944), we find the following news item (p. 185):

“A report from Polish underground sources reaching official Polish circles in London on Feb. 13 revealed that 3,000 Italian Jews arrived at the Trawniki labor camp last Nov. 15. Their present whereabouts is unknown, stated the report, since the Trawniki camp has been liquidated.“

This implies that the deported Italian Jews did not reach the Occupied eastern territories, but were transited via Auschwitz to the Lublin District.

Section 2.4.9. “Luxembourg”

Some of the 334 Luxembourg Jews deported to the Łódź Ghetto in October 1941 were reportedly later sent to Chełmno. Also, many of the Luxembourg Jews who had fled to France in autumn 1941 were later deported from there.⁴

Section 3.1.2. “Israelitisches Wochenblatt für die Schweiz”

In the quote from the issue of 27 November 1942 we read:

“The London-based newspaper ‘France’ carries a notice that 20,000 Jews deported from France have arrived in Bessarabia in a pitiful state. The trains went straight to Kischinev [Chisinau] and Calarisi to deliver the prisoners to the local ghettos there.”

There is a Calarasi in southern Romania, but since the text is speaking of Bessarabia (where Chisinau is located) it is clear that the town meant is Calarasi in Bessarabia, also known as Kalarash.⁵

The report summarized by Shechtman according to which “Jews from Germany and Bulgaria, as well as 700 Polish Jews, were reported among the deportees in Mogilev” derives, according the historian’s notes, from a report published in the 23 July 1943 issue of the JTA Bulletin. Since Schechtman’s article is dealing with Transnistria it is almost certain that the Mogilev mentioned is the city of Mogilev-Podolski (Mohyliv-Podilsky) in the Vinnitsa District of Ukraine, rather than the city of Mogilev in eastern Belarus. Mogilev-Podolski was occupied by German forces on 19 July 1941 but was later annexed by Romania as part of Transnistria. In December 1941 there lived 3700 local Jews in the city’s ghetto together with 15 000 Jews who had been deported there from Bessarabia and Bukovina. In June 1942 there was an outbreak of typhoid in the ghetto which prompted the transferral of Jews to ghettos in other cities.⁶

As explained in Section 2.4.3. no Jewish transports departed from Bulgaria proper. However, from the Bulgarian-annexed regions of Macedonia and Thrace a total of 11 343 Jews were deported during the period March-April 1943. It is likely that the reported “Bulgarian” Jews reached Mogilev-Podolski via either Sobibór or Treblinka at the end of March 1943. It is not impossible that the German (as well as the Polish) Jews reached the city during the same period and the same route. According to an exterminationist website two transports with German Jews were sent to Sobibór during the first half of 1943: one containing “hundreds” departing on 31 March and another with 938 deportees departing from Berlin on 21 April.⁷ However, the leading exterminationist expert on Sobibór, Jules Schelvis, knows nothing of these transports.⁸ Witnesses state that one or two transports with German Jews reached Treblinka during Franz Stangl’s time as commandant of that camp, most likely in late autumn 1942 or the first half of 1943.⁹

To this section could be added a diary entry penned by the Warsaw Jew Abraham Lewin on 10 May 1942:

“Today this same refugee [unnamed Jew from Aleksandrów Kujawski] told me that the Nieszawa Jews and all other Jews left there were believed to have been deported to Romania. This rumour is most probably close to the truth, as another Jew happened to remark to me that reports had arrived from Bessarabia from Lublin Jews who had been transported there by the Germans.”¹⁰

The Jews of Nieszawa had been deported to the Lublin District in 1939-1940.¹¹ It is likely that they were among the Jews evacuated from Lublin and surrounding towns to Bełżec between 17 March and 14 April 1942.¹²

Section 3.1.4. “New York Times”

Thomas Dalton has kindly provided the author of this article with five further relevant quotes from the New York Times:

Already on 28 October 1941 the daily noted that Jews were “sent to the General Government, chiefly to Litzmannstadt, although some also are being banished to Riga, occupied capital of Latvia, and Minsk, in occupied Russia”. This is of course in perfect accordance with mainstream historiography. During the following months and years, however, the reports came to diverge from it.

In the issue from 26 July 1942 (under the headline “Vichy and Berlin at odds on aliens”) we read: “the Netherlands Indies news agency reported that 60,000 Jews had been moved from Amsterdam since last Thursday in a mass deportation of Netherland ‘non-Aryans’ to Poland and German-occupied Russia.” The 60,000 figure most likely derives from the number of Jews sent to the collection camps within the Netherlands, since only some thousand Dutch Jews had actually been deported east by this point in time.

On 29 August 1942 (“$25,000 sent abroad to care for children”) Joseph Hyman, the executive vice chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, was quoted as stating that “The recent deportation to Eastern Poland and occupied Russia of 12,000 Jews from Paris and other parts of occupied France has aroused terror in the hearts of the entire Jewish population.”

5 September 1942 (“Deportation of Jews near goal in Reich”): “Until recently only Jews under 60 years of age were deported. But now even older people are being sent to Poland or Eastern [sic] Russia. (…) It is practically impossible to get in touch with German Jews sent to different ghettos in Poland or occupied Russia.”

Finally, on 8 November 1943 (“Germans wipe out Jews of Austria”), it was reported that the remaining Austrian Jews were “taken in cattle cars or ancient unheated passenger coaches to the ghettos of eastern Poland, Latvia, or occupied Russia. Reports suggest that many die on the way or after arrival.” By this point in time, there had been no direct transports of German, Austrian and Czech Jews to Latvia for over a year.

Section 3.1.5. “Notre Voix”

The Radio Moscow report from April 1944 concerning the liberation of 8,000 Paris Jews in the Ukraine by the Red Army finds support in two other sources:

On 15 August 1942 the Romanian-Jewish Bucarest physician Emil Dorian entered into his diary:

”There are persistent rumors about trains passing through the northern part of Moldavia, carrying Jews from occupied France sent by the Germans to the east. It is known that 20,000 Jews in occupied France have been recently deported from there, but no one could guess where they were sent. There are details: Sealed cars, dreadful thirst, no food.”¹³

The 20,000 Jews from France which Dorian is speaking about are alleged by the exterminationists to have been murdered in Auschwitz. Trains from the west passing through “the northern part of Moldavia” would most likely have had some city in the Ukraine as their destination.

One and a half months prior to Dorian’s diary entry, on 29 June 1942, the papal ambassador in France, Valerio Valeri,wrote from Vichy to Cardinal Luigi Malone:

“Towards the 20th of this month the occupational administrations, using the French police, have arrested some 12,000 Jews. [...] The majority of them are non-Aryans of foreign origin, primarily Poles, Czechs etc., who are destined to be deported to the Ukraine.”¹⁴

To summarize:

1) On 29 June 1942 a top member of the Catholic church informed a fellow church leader that the Jews recently arrested in Paris were “destined to be deported to the Ukraine.”

2) On 15 August 1942 Emil Dorian wrote of “persistent rumors” according to which 20,000 Jews from occupied France were passing through northern Moldavia.

3) On 29 August 1942 a leader of the Joint Distribution Committee stated that 12,000 French Jews had been deported to “Eastern Poland and occupied Russia” (see addenda to Section 3.1.4. above).

4) In April 1944 Radio Moscow reported that 8,000 Paris Jews (Paris was located in the occupied part of France) had been liberated by advancing Soviet troups in the Ukraine.

Could this really be just coincidence?

By the end April 1944 the Red Army had already crossed the Dnepr River,¹⁵ which means that the liberated Paris Jews had likely been held prisoners somewhere in the western part of the Ukraine. A possible train route from Auschwitz to the Ukraine via “the nothern part of Moldavia” could have been Auschwitz-Cracow-Przemysl-Lvóv-Czernowitz-Shmerinka-Vinnitsa-Kasatin-Fastow-Kiev.¹⁶ Czernowitz, in Romanian Cernăuti, is the capital of the Bukovina region which was part of the historical principality of Moldavia.¹⁷

Edit [25 September 2010]:  While it’s correct that close to 20,000 Jews had been deported from France up to 15 August 1942, as Dorian wrote in his diary, most of the deportees during this period were registered in Auschwitz. Up until the same date, a total of 4,940 Jews deported from France had been “gassed” i.e. transited.

During 1942-1943 a total of 32,631 Jews deported from France were “gassed” at Auschwitz and Sobibór.

(Cf. Serge Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported From France 1942-1944, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1987, p. xxvi; smaller corrections after J. Schelvis, Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp, Berg, Oxford/New York 2007, pp. 217-218).

Section 3.3.3. “Hersh Smolar”

In another book on his involvement in the Minsk ghetto underground, originally published in 1946, Hersh Smolar writes with regards to the first half of 1943:

“News leaked out that large parties of Jews from Warsaw, Paris and Prague were brought to the vicinity of Minsk and Trostenitz where they were annihilated.”¹⁸

Between 18 and 22 January 1943 some 6,000 Warsaw Jews were sent to be “gassed” at Treblinka.¹⁹ Also, between 4 and 25 March 1943, some 3,500 French Jews were sent from the collection camp Drancy outside Paris to the “gas chambers” of Sobibór.²⁰ A further thirteen transports with 13,569 French Jews were sent to Auschwitz during 1943.²¹

Section 3.3.4. “Heinz Rosenberg”

Where did the 23 000 arrivals in February-March 1942 come from, and how did they reach Minsk? Where they German Jews, or of another nationality? As we have seen Rosenberg knew from the labels on the trunks where the deportees came from, but apparently forgets to tell his readers about it.

The preserved documents does not seem to allow for “unknown” transports of German Jews to Belarus during the period in question; at least not of the magnitude spoken of here. Could the unknown deportees mentioned by Rosenberg have reached Minsk via a transit camp? During February-March 1942 three of the “extermination camps” were in operation: Chełmno, Bełżec and Auschwitz. Bełżec was opened on 17 March, so it seems unlikely that more than a smaller portion of the 23 000 Jews could have been transited via this camp to Minsk. In Auschwitz the first regular (as opposed to experimental) mass gassing is supposed to have taken place in January or February, but this is portrayed as a chronologically rather isolated event, and judging by the diary entry of Herman Kruk from 30 January 1942, the Jews from this first “gassing” were transported via Vilna to the Eastern Front (cf. Section 3.3.1.). There remains thus Chełmno as the likely alternative. As we have seen in Section 3.3.1., many of the Jews evacuated from the Łódź Ghetto to the “extermination camp” Chełmno during the first months of 1942 continued on to Lithuania. Considering that a total of (7025 + 24 687 =) 31,712 Jews were sent from Łódź to Chełmno during February and March, it is not at all impossible, however, that 23,000 of these were instead transported to Belarus via the railway line Poznań-Warsaw-Minsk. That Jews from Łódź were deportered to Minsk is also confirmed by an “Address of the citizens of Minsk to Stalin” published in Pravda in August 1944, which is found quoted in a 1951 study by the Jewish scholar Solomon M. Schwarz:

“The German fascist invaders had driven 50,000 people from Minsk and the surrounding districts into the so-called ghetto, in addition, over 40,000 Jews had been brought to the Minsk ghetto from Hamburg, Warsaw and Lodz.”²²

The mention here of Warsaw indicates that Minsk later also served as the destination for transports of Polish Jews via Treblinka, something which in turn is confirmed by the statements of H. Smolar (cf. Section 3.3.3.).

Thomas Mann (b. 1875) is one of the most well known German writers of the 20th century, famous for among others the novels Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kröger, Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain. In 1905 he married the Jewess Katia Pringsheim. In 1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Already before the rise of the National Socialists to power Mann had been a vocal opponent to their politics, and in 1933 he went into exile. From 1938 until 1952 he lived in the United States, from where he moved to Switzerland after having been accused of being a Stalin apologist and summoned to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Mann died in Zürich in 1955.

From 1940 to the end of the war Mann recorded a number of speeches in German which were sent to the BBC and broadcasted from London in order to reach German radio listeners. The first 30 speeches were published in book form in 1943, and after the end of the war a second edition of the book was published containing the texts of all 55 radio speeches.[1] For most of of the printed speeches only the month of broadcasting is indicated, only in some cases are exact dates given. Below I will present Mann’s statements on alleged mass gassings of Jews in chronological order and comment on their significance.

In his speech from September 1941 Mann stated that ”the idea of exterminating peoples [Völkervernichtung] is a Nazi idea, it has no place in the thinking of the democracies.”[2] Thus Mann is implying that genocide was on the National Socialist agenda from the beginning, and this no more than three months after the beginning of the Soviet-German war. This plan apparently did not encompass only the Jews, because in his next broadcast, from October 1941, Mann spoke of ”the systematic race murder which Hitler is committing against the French”! [3]

In the speech for November 1941 Mann named not only Jews but Poles and Serbs as well as victims of genocide:

”Three hundred thousand Serbs have been killed, not during the war with this country [Germany], but after, killed by you Germans on the orders of those wicked blackguards who rule over you. The unspeakable [Unaussprechliche] which has happened and is happening in Russia, with the Poles and Jews is known to you, but you would rather not know for the understandable terror you feel for the likewise unspeakable, ever growing hatred which will fall upon you the day your forces and machines loses their momentum.”[4]

By this point in time, the supposed genocide against the Jews was still ”unspeakable”, i.e. the propagandists had yet to invent the modus operandi to ascribe to the Germans. This was to change soon enough, however.

Two months later, in the speech from January 1942, Mann had an astounding tale to tell his listeners:

”The news sounds implausible, but my source is good. In numerous Dutch-Jewish families in Amsterdam and other cities, so I have been informed, one mourns deeply for sons, who have suffered a horrible death. Four hundred young Dutch Jews were brought to Germany to be used as guinea pigs for poison gas. The virulence of this chivalrous and through and through German weapon of war, a true weapon of Siegfried, has proven itself against the young subhumans. They are dead, dead for the sake of the New Order and the military ingeniosity of the Master Race. At least for that they were good enough. After all, they were Jews.”[5]

A bit later in the text Mann refers to the above alleged event as ”the trial gassing [Probevergasung] of four hundred young Jews”.[6]

In his speech from June 1942 Mann returned to the subject of the gassed Dutch Jews:

”In one of my earlier broadcasts I made myself guilty of a regrettable mitigation of the truth. I spoke of Nazi atrocities and mentioned that 400 young Dutchmen of Jewish blood had been brought to German to be killed with poison gas. Now I hear via indirect channels from Holland, that the number of victims mentioned by me was nearly half that of the actual figure. It was almost 800 people who were arrested at that time, brought to Mauthausen and gassed there. The exact figure has meanwhile been published by the Dutch government [in exile?], but since I do not believe that this report has yet reached you, I do well to pass on to you this privately received information.”[7]

The reality behind this allegation is described by Raul Hilberg as follows: In early February 1941 German Security Police men were attacked by Jewish members of the resistance. On 25 February the Higher SS and Police Leader Rauter proclaimed that 400 Jews in the age group 20-35 had been sent to a German concentration camp. A total of 389 youths were in fact sent to Buchenwald, where a tenth of them perished in the next months. The survivors were sent on to Mauthausen. In June another 291 Amsterdam Jews were sent there directly. The Dutch Jews in Mauthausen were set to carry out heavy work in a stone quarry, and many who did not perish from exhaustion or illness reportedly committed suicide. Following concentration camp routine, the Mauthausen command sent death notices to the families of the deceased.[8] No Holocaust historian has ever asserted that the Dutch Jews deported to Mauthausen in 1941, or even part of them, were killed with poison gas. According to the foremost defender of the Mauthausen gas chamber legend, Hans Marsalek, the alleged homicidal gas chamber of that camp was not put in operation before May 1942, and of the either 526 or 726 victims supposedly gassed (on a total of five occasions) up until 9 September 1944, all were either Soviet, Czech or Polish citizens.[9] Thus none of the approximately 640 Dutch Jews sent to Mauthausen in 1941 could have been gassed there, even from an exterminationist viewpoint.

In the most exhaustive (2253 pages) Mann biography to date, that of Klaus Harpprecht [10] – which otherwise makes many references to the radio speeches – the remarkable fact that the famous novelist was one of the first known persons – perhaps even the first – to speak of mass gassings of Jews is passed over in silence, and we find no hints as to what Mann’s source could have been.

On 16 February 1942 the Romanian-Jewish Bucarest physician Emil Dorian entered into his diary:

”We have learned that a German industrial plant has developed a particularly powerful poison gas. Its efficiency was tested on four hundred Jewish youths picked up from a concentration camp. All of them died, of course. Soon afterward, Thomas Mann spoke on the American radio, denouncing this shameful crime and placing responsibility on the entire German nation (…).”[11]

The unnamed ”particularly powerful poison gas” and the concentration camp are not mentioned in Mann’s January speech, at least not as printed, suggesting that other sources as well were spreading the gassing allegation by this time. From this we may conclude that Allied intelligence or Jewish organizations had begun to disseminate mass gassing allegations by January 1942 at the very latest. To determine when and where the allegation originated would no doubt require research into the clandestine publications of the Dutch resistance.

Thomas Mann in 1937 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In his speech from August 1942 Mann returned to the French, stating that the Germans aimed to reduce the population of France to twenty million.[12] Since the population of France in 1939 was approximately 41,7 million, this implies that the Germans were planning to kill or cause the death of more than 20 million French! In reality, the French casualities during the war amounted to 567,600, whereof 217,600 military deaths – this figure also includes 83,000 real or alleged ”Holocaust” victims.[13] Considering that the number of other deaths amounted to 267,000 – most undoubtedly due to bombings, killings of resistance fighters etc. – the notion that Hitler was waging a campaign of extermination against the French is patently ridiculous.

On 27 September 1942 Mann claimed that Goebbels had made the following statement in a recent radio speech:

“It is our goal [...] to exterminate [auszurotten] the Jews. Regardless if we win or loose the war, we must, and will, reach this goal. Should the German army be forced to retreat, it would on its way back eliminate [vertilgen] the last Jews from the face of the earth.”[14]

The author of this article has not been able to find a preserved speech of Goebbel’s from the period in question which corresponds to the “quote” presented by Mann. Moreover two things immediately strikes one as odd about the contents of the alleged speech: Would Goebbels, in a public radio speech in 1942, have mentioned the possibility of defeat, even in the most hypothetical terms? And how would the retreating German army have been able to “eliminate the last Jews from the face of the earth”, when the majority of the world’s Jewish population lived outside the German-controlled sphere?

In the same speech Mann repeated the well-known propaganda figure of 700,000 murdered Jews, “whereof 70,000 alone in the region of Minsk”. He then provided his listeners with two mass gassing stories:

“In Paris 16,000 Jews were herded together within a few days, loaded onto cattle cars and sent away. Whereto? One who knows is the German train engineer who has been reported about in Switzerland. He fled there after several times having to drive trains filled with Jews, which were halted on an open stretch of track, hermetically sealed and then gassed through [durchgast]. The man could not stand it anymore. Yet his experience is far from exceptional. A precise and authentic report is available on the killing of not less than 11,000 Polish Jews with poison gas. They were brought to a special execution site [Exekutionsfeld] near Konim [sic] in the Warsaw District, put inside vans [Wagen] which had been sealed air-tight, and transformed into corpses within fifteen minutes. We have a detailed description of the whole process, of the screams and pleas of the victims and the merry laughter of the SS hottentots, who took fun in performing their task.”[15]

This description of gassings of Polish and French Jews is actually remarked on by Mann biographer Harpprecht,[16] though he refrains from mentioning how exactly the gassing of the French Jews was allegedly carried out.

It is a documented fact that the transports of Paris Jews which Mann refers to were sent to Auschwitz, which means that the story of the anonymous train engineer must be completely fictitious. As for the fate of these deportees, Holocaust historians maintain that most of them were gassed after their arrival in Auschwitz, but there is good reason to believe that these “gassed” Jews were in fact sent on from Auschwitz to the Ukraine. On 15 August 1942 the aforementioned Emil Dorian entered into his diary:

“There are persistent rumors about trains passing through the northern part of Moldavia, carrying Jews from occupied France sent by the Germans to the east. It is known that 20,000 Jews in occupied France have been recently deported from there, but no one could guess where they were sent. There are details: Sealed cars, dreadful thirst, no food.”[17]

Trains from the west passing through northern Moldavia would likely end up in the Ukraine. This fits well with the report published in the underground newspaper Notre Voix in April 1944 that 8,000 Jews from Paris (which was in the occupied part of France) had been liberated at an unnamed location in the Ukraine by the advancing Red Army.[18] Other allegedly gassed French Jews were sent to Minsk and to Latvia, as is shown in the upcoming second part of my article “Evidence for the Presence of ‘Gassed’ Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories“.[19]

While it is correct that the Chelmno “extermination camp” was located not very far from Konin – which however was not in the Warsaw District, but in the Warthegau – it seems odd that one was aware of these alleged 11,000 victims, while apparently remaining unaware of the more than 120,000 other Jews who had supposedly been killed in the Chelmno camp by that point in time.[20] The description of the killing process as related by Mann further bear all the hallmarks of black propaganda.

On 27 June 1943 Mann told his listeners that “almost a million have been executed or murdered”.[21] It is not made clear whether this refer to only Jews or to Non-Jews also. Considering the 700,000 figure previously reported by Mann this would mean that “only” 300,000 people (Jews?) had fallen victim of the Germans during the preceding nine months.

Finally, on 14 January 1945, Mann devoted a large part of his speech to Majdanek and Auschwitz. The former camp he describes as containing “the largest crematorium in the world”.[22] Curiously, he gives the number of Majdanek victims as “more than half a million”, despite the victim figure propagated by the Soviets at the time (and later at the Nuremberg Trial) being 1,5 million (the current official estimate is 78,000).[23] Perhaps this was simply an error on Mann’s part. Even more curious is Mann’s claim that the Majdanek victims were poisoned in gas chambers with chlorine.[24] This alleged murder weapon is found nowhere else in Majdanek-related propaganda. On the other hand it was claimed by several early Sobibór witnesses that gassings had been carried out at this “extermination camp” using chlorine.[25]

Mann’s description of Auschwitz is clearly based on the Vrba-Wetzler report, but either the famous author had not read the report itself, or he was consciously “improving” on it, for here the alleged victim figure is presented not as the “informed” estimate of the report’s author, but as an exact figure revealed by the unexplained discovery of the “Registry of Death”.[26] Further one had discovered “hundreds of thousands of passports and personal documents belonging to members of no less than twenty-two European nationalities”, and not only that: “These lunatics had also kept books on the bone meal, the fertilizer produced by this operation.”[27] How any such discoveries were possible remains a complete mystery, considering that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 21 January 1945, i.e. one week after Mann’s speech! What may point to Mann relying on second-hand information on the Vrba-Wetzler report is the fact that the (Jewish) Auschwitz victim figure is given in the text of the speech as 1,715,000 instead of 1,765,000 as per the report.

Not surprisingly, Harpprecht has no comment to offer on the bizarre description of the ”death factories” other than a pious reflection on the undoubtable fact that the alleged genocide on the Jews is the lowest point in the history of mankind, and that Auschwitz was ”the Hell on Earth” to which the mass murders of Stalin or Mao can not possibly be compared.[28]

In his speech from January 1942 Mann warned his listeners that ”the tendency to view such stories as atrocity propaganda [Greuelmärchen] remains widespread, to the benefit of the enemy”.[29] As Mann proceeded to declare, the reports on mass killings of Jews were not simply “stories”, but history in the making.[30] This is highly ironic, considering that most of the supposedly authentic and reliable reports on mass killings relayed by Mann to his listeners have been quietly thrown down the memory hole. The speeches made by Mann during the war years are actually mythology in the making, and reading them gives us more insight into how and when the mass gassing allegations arose and provides us with leads to follow up in future research into this issue.