On 17 August 2010 the Zionist news site YNet published the following item:

“Israel will continue to support efforts to set up a memorial center at Sobibor, according to an agreement reached by the director general of the Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs Ronen Plot and the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, with Dr. Andzrej Konrat, who is in charge of Holocaust remembrance in Poland.

The agreement is in keeping with the statement of intentions agreed upon in 2008 by Israel, Poland, Slovakia and the Netherlands.

Almost nothing remained of the Sobibor Nazi death camp in Poland at the end of the war. The creation of a memorial center is the result of cooperative research by Poland’s council for the memory of war victims, headed by Minister Konrat, and Israel’s Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs and Foreign Ministry, directed by Yad Vashem researchers and assisted by Slovakia and the Netherlands.

For this purpose, and international committee of experts was established, and digs were carried out at the site to determine the precise location of the gas chambers.

The memorial center project, estimated to cost some 6 million euros ($8 million), is currently in its first planning stages. Decisions about an international competition for planning the building and decisions on budget allocation will be made in a joint meeting next month in Warsaw, in which all participating countries will be present. The center is due to be completed by October 2013, the 70th anniversary of the prisoner’s uprising at the camp.

‘We see this as a sacred joint obligation to remember the past and the victims,’ said Konrat during the meeting.

‘I welcome Polish cooperation and the importance the minister gives to remembering the Holocaust,” the director-general of the Ministry of Information said. “The establishment of a center at the death camp in which some 250,000 Jews were killed is an important part in education… and a part of the struggle against all those who would deny it happened.’”^[1]

The above news notice is a sure sign that the guardians of the “Holocaust” feel a growing desperation confronted with the mass of revisionist criticism of the gas chamber mythos, and that they therefore are resorting to certain strategies in order to prevent further research at the former sites of the “pure extermination camps” of Belzec, Sobibór och Treblinka (together known as the Reinhardt camps), research which could only cause further damage to the orthodox historiography. In the case of Treblinka most of the former camp site was covered with slabs of concrete and large stones already in the 1960s.^[2] In Belzec, where an archeological survey was carried out in the late 1990s (with devastating results for the official historical picture of this “death camp” ^[3]) the whole of the former camp site was covered in the early 2000s with an enormous concrete “monument”.^[4] It would not exactly surprise if Sobibór is now headed for a similar fate.

The YNet item contain two passages of particular note. First, the Israeli minister Ronen Plot is quoted as speaking of 250,000 Sobibór victims. This figure may well be used still in new encyclopedias and the like, but it has in fact been untenable all since the discovery of the so-called Höfle document in 2000. This document shows that 101,370 Jews were deported to Sobibór up until the end of 1942.^[5] The camp was in use until October 1943, but all sources agree that the number of Jews deported to Sobibór during 1943 was much smaller than that of 1942. Thus the leading exterminationist expert on Sobibór, Jules Schelvis, states the victim figure as 170,000.^[6]

Secondly we read in the article that an “international committee of experts” has carried out a survey at the former camp site in order to “determine the precise location of the gas chambers”. In fact there have been carried not one but two ^[7] archeological surveys with this purpose: the first one in 2000-2001 headed by the Polish archeology professor Andrzej Kola (who also led the abovementioned survey at Belzec) and a second one in 2007-2008 conducted by the Israeli-Polish trio Isaac Gilead, Yoram Haimi and Wojciech Mazurek.

Andrzej Kola surveyed the whole of “Lager III” – the fenced-off section of the camp wherein the alleged gas chamber building supposedly was located and which covers less than 4 hectares – with probe drillings and ssubsequently carried out archeological diggings at five identified building remains. Of these “Object E” was identified in the south-western corner of Lager III, exactly where the gas chamber building was located according to maps drawn by the eyewitnesses. The problem with this discovery is that “Object E” in no way corresponds with the descriptions of said building. The six gas chambers in the camp were allegedly arranged three and three alongside a central corridor inside a brick or concrete building measuring approximately 10 x 13-18 meter. “Object E” on the other hand consist of two barracks built completely out of wood, the smaller one measuring 14 x 4 m, the larger one no less than 60-80 x 6 m! Remarkably enough not a single eyewitness has spoken of this enormous wooden barrack, which dimensions as well as construction material makes it impossible to identify with the alleged gas chamber building (the same naturally goes for the smaller barrack). Also in “Object E” was discovered numerous remains of clothing and toilet articles, such as hairclips, perfume bottles, belts etc. The supposed gas chamber victims on the other hand are alleged to have entered the chambers of death already naked. These finds made Kola dismiss in his excavation report the hypothesis that “Object E” could have served as the gas chamber building. Instead he proposed the hypothesis – which has no support in eyewitness testimony – that the larger barrack served as a magazine for the confiscated clothing and belongings of the gas chamber victims.^[8]

None of the four other building remains identified by Kola in the former Lager III were even close to fit the description of the searched-for gas chamber building. Another remarkable find, however, was “Object A”, a small building with a cellar in which were found remains from an oven and a coal storage. Kola somewhat halfheartedly interpret this as the remains of a blacksmith’s workshop, despite the fact that there already existed a blacksmith in another part of the camp, and a small camp such as Sobibór hardly would need two blacksmiths. Besides, what would the use be of a blacksmith’s workshop in a camp section supposedly devoted only to the gassing, burial and cremation of the alleged victims?^[9] In our study of Sobibór I, Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno have interpreted “Object A” as an installation in which clothing and other items were deloused using heated air or steam (produced by the oven), and “Object E” as a delousing barrack in which the Jews deported to the camp were showered and deloused before being sent further east to the German-occupied part of the Soviet Union.^[10]

The archeological survey carried out at Sobibór 2007-2008 by the trio Gilead-Haimi-Mazurek has only been published in extreme brevity in an article published in the American journal Present Pasts in early 2009.^[11] In this article we read that the three archeologists “acting on the assumption” that they “knew roughly where the gas chamber was located (…) decided to dig first in the area bordering the west of Kola’s Building E”. In this area, however, one found no building remains whatsoever.^[12] Later, in summer 2008 the team was reinforced by American geophysicists equipped with among other things ground-penetrating radar. Despite the aid of advanced technology and the fact that Lager III had already been mapped out by Kola, one failed with miserably with detecting any remains of the fabled gas chambers, and in the 2009 article one had to grudgingly admit that “It is obvious that the location of the gas chambers is a complex issue that has to be solved, an important objective for future archaeological research at Sobibór.”^[13]

In other word: the “international committee of experts” spoken about in the YNet news notice has not found any trace of the alleged homicidal gas chambers of Sobibór, despite two surveys and a very limited area to search through. The explanation for this is of course simple: the alleged gas chambers never existed in the first place, and could therefore not leave any remains.

In our study, Mattogno, Graf and myself have presented a wide assortment of evidence which unequivocally shows that Sobibór in fact was a transit camp – which it was also designated as in classified internal communication between the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and the SS camp administrator Oswald Pohl from the summer of 1943 ^[14] – in which deported Jews were deloused and then sent on eastwards, for example to Lithuania.^[15] In the total absence of evidence supporting the Sobibór mass gassing allegations, the guardians of the extermination camp legend such as Avner Shalev and Andrzej Konrat have no other option than to resort to obfuscation of facts and prevention of further research, all disguised as “commemoration”.

^[1] “Sobibor death camp memorial center planned”, online: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3933561,00.html
^[2] http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/gallery/TREBLINK.htm
^[3] Cf. Carlo Mattogno, Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004, pp. 71-96; C. Mattogno, “Belzec or the Holocaust Controversy of Roberto Muehlenkamp”, online: http://www.codoh.com/gcgv/gcgvhcrm.html
^[4] http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/buildingsite.html
^[5] Jürgen Graf, Thomas Kues, Carlo Mattogno, Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality, TBR Books, Washington DC 2010, p. 22, 46-47.
^[6] Ibid., pp. 49-50.
^[7] A travel journal written by “Holocaust” historian Martin Gilbert reveals that another excavation was carried out in the former Lager III already in 1996, but apparently the results of this excavation have never been published; cf. ibid., p. 109, note 298.
^[8] Ibid., pp. 157-162.
^[9] Ibid., pp. 153-155.
^[10] Ibid., pp. 286-287.
^[11] I. Gilead, Y. Haimi, W. Mazurek, “Excavating Nazi Extermination Centres,” Present Pasts, vol. 1, 2009.
^[12] Ibid., p. 27
^[13] Ibid., p. 33f.
^[14] Nuremberg document NO-482.
^[15] J. Graf, T. Kues, C. Mattogno, Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality, op.cit., cf. especially chapter 9 and 10.

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.

[1] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, 2nd edition, Bermann-Fischer Verlag, Stockholm 1945.
[2] Ibid., p. 38.
[3] Ibid., p. 41.
[4] Ibid., p. 44.
[5] Ibid., p. 48.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., p. 62.
[8] R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd edition, Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2003, vol. II, p. 613f).
[9] H. Marsalek, Die Geschichte der Konzentrationslager Mauthausen, Vienna 1974, p. 227; Giftgas in Mauthausen, Vienna 1988, p. 15
[10] K. Harpprecht, Thomas Mann. Eine Biographie, Rowohlt 1995.
[11] E. Dorian, The Quality of Witness. A Romanian Diary 1937-1944, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1982, p. 197.
[12] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 69.
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
[14] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 72.
[15] Ibid., p. 73.
[16] K. Harpprecht, Thomas Mann. Eine Biographie, op.cit., p. 1313
[17] E. Dorian, The Quality of Witness, op.cit., p. 221
[18] Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Treblinka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004, pp. 257-258.
[19] The first part of this article is available online at: http://www.inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2010/volume_2/number_2/evidence_for_the_presence_of_gassed_jews.php. The second part is scheduled to be published in the 2010 winter issue of the web journal Inconvenient History.
[20] Cf. C. Mattogno, Il Campo di Chelmno tra Storia e Propaganda, Effepi, Genoa 2009, chapter 12.2.
[21] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 93.
[22] Ibid., p. 118.
[23] Cf. Jürgen Graf, “Zur Revision der Opferzahl von Majdanek” online: http://juergen-graf.vho.org/articles/zur-revision-der-opferzahl-von-majdanek.html
[24] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 118.
[25] Cf.. J. Graf, T. Kues, C. Mattogno, Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality, TBR Books, Washington DC 2010, pp. 71-72
[26] “Man hat die Registratur des Todes gefunden”; Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 118.
[27] Ibid.
[28] K. Harpprecht, Thomas Mann. Eine Biographie, op.cit., p. 1458.
[29] Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hörer! 55 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland, op.cit., p. 48.
[30] Ibid.

I Con the World

Is Elie Wiesel an icon or an “I con?”

Venerated and billed as “the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor” and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in speaking fees (at $25,000 a pop it might be closer to say a million), and holding a prestigious, but undemanding six-figure professorship in Humanities at Boston University, Elie Wiesel has never been asked to show any proof that he is what he says he is.

Everything written about Elie Wiesel that this writer can find skims over the details and dwells on the emotionality of holocaust, humanity and hate. Among the many unnerving quotations from Elie concerning the last h-word is this one, found preceding an essay in the Jewish Daily Forward of June 9th by Anita Epstein, titled “Why I Cannot Forgive Germany:” [1]

“I cannot and I do not want to forgive the killers of children; I ask God not to forgive.”

     - Elie Wiesel

Ms. Epstein is influenced (or inspired?) by Wiesel to hold onto hate by holding on to the holocaust legends, such as the one about “Germans” throwing babies off of balconies. Another famous statement made by Elie is:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate – healthy virile hate – for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead. ”

Elie Wiesel actually plays God. The world has been conned into seeing him as the next best thing to God, as someone who has risen above it all, as someone who is capable or has earned the right to pass judgment on the rest of humanity. What has earned him this right is clearly his suffering during the one year he was held in concentration camps and his “powerful prose” in describing it.

However, Elie’s actual presence in the Auschwitz “death camp” and the Buchenwald concentration camp during 1944-45 rests solely on the claims of the New York Times and his well-promoted books, the most famous being his first one, Night, published in 1955 in Buenos Aires. That’s an interesting story in itself, but here I will limit myself to a chronology of NYT features on Elie that coincide with his advancing fortunes.

On 6 May 1945, the New York Times published the now famous photograph of the “Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald” without identifying anyone in the picture. Further use of the picture follows.

* October 1983, it was published again in the high circulation Sunday NYT Magazine with this caption: “On April 11, 1945, American troops liberated the concentration camp’s survivors, including Elie, who later identified himself as the man circled in the photo.”[2] (Wiesel says he is the last one on top row in this cropped version of the picture).

Wiesel had never claimed to be in this picture before, and this face is not the face of a 16-year-old boy, nor does it resemble an existing portrait of Elie before he was deported. But, the article included the statement: “His name has been frequently mentioned as a possible recipient of a Nobel Prize, for either peace or literature.” So we suspect it was part of the campaign being waged to win him a Nobel Prize.

As David O’Connell has written in “Elie Wiesel and the Catholics,”[3] the NYT had manufactured history by declaring erroneously that Wiesel is seen in the picture, even though Wiesel had stated over the years that he was in the sick bay at Buchenwald on April 16, the day the photograph was taken.

* 14 October 1986. The Nobel award was announced.

* 2 November 1986. The NYT again republished a severely cropped version of the Buchenwald photo with the caption: “Elie Wiesel, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (at far right in the top bunk) in the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, when the camp was liberated by American troops.” [4]

* 4 January 1987. The NYT erroneously claimed that Wiesel had been “freed from Auschwitz” during the war. [5]

* 18 January 1988. The NYT wrote on the occasion of his trip to Auschwitz: “Mr. Wiesel was a prisoner at Auschwitz and witnessed the killing there of his father and one of his sisters.” [6] But, according to Wiesel’s account (no records), his father died in Buchenwald [from illness - editor's remark]. However, the NYT knew that Auschwitz was a familiar Holocaust “keyword” to its readers, while Buchenwald was not.

More confusion:

* 3 June 1987, the Chicago Tribune published a photo of Wiesel, accompanied by two other men, standing in front of a blown-up version of the picture and pointing to himself in it. The caption read: “Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel points to a picture of himself, taken by a German at the Auschwitz death camp in 1945. The photograph is part of the Holocaust Memorial in Lyon, France.”[7]

* 21 April 1995, Wiesel told the German weekly Die Zeit that the picture had actually been taken the day after the liberation, that is, on April 12, 1945, not on April 11, as he had always implied. (It was actually taken on April 16). He also said: “On the day after the liberation the picture was taken in the Children’s Block at Buchenwald by an American soldier. It shows old men. But these old faces are the faces of men who, in truth, were 15 or 16 years of age like I was.” [8]

There is much more to the story of this photograph, but that must be sufficient for now.

Counter Claims

In March 2009, fellow Hungarian Jew Myklos (Nikolaus) Grüner’s accusation that Elie Wiesel is an imposter broke onto the Internet, mainly via an article [9] on Henry Makow’s website that he picked up from a Hungarian website.[10] Naturally, it didn’t get much coverage in the media, even though Grüner had documents from both Auschwitz and Buchenwald to back him up, including undisputed records that show him registered as a prisoner in both camps. Back in January 2003, Grüner had issued an “international press release to the world” from his home in Sweden:

“Elie Wiesel A-7713 has never existed, and the man claiming himself to be “Elie Wiesel” with the concentration camp number A-7713, knowing full well that this number belonged to someone else, is an imposter of the worst kind. For this statement, I, Nikolaus Grüner A-11104, have certified and written knowledge of.” [11]

In a press release of 2006, Grüner states: “I […] take full responsibility in revealing that the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner ‘ELIE WIESEL’ has been impersonating Lazar Wiesel A-7713 who was born 1913 in Marmaros, Hungary. Further more I also state that the archives in Auschwitz and Buchenwald are missing evidence to prove that ‘ELIE,’ known as A-7713, was ever registered as a prisoner in any German concentration camp at all.” [12]

The evidence Grüner presents is compelling, and can be found in an organized fashion in two articles written by Carlo Mattogno and posted at Inconvenient History Revisionist Blog [13] on 24 Feb and 26 March of this year. One small piece of this evidence is that Elie Wiesel was born on 30 September 1928, and another is that the ID number A-7713 was given out on 24 May, but Elie Wiesel says in his book Night that he wasn’t deported from Sighet (Marmaros) until after 28 May and possibly not until 3 June 1944.

But the most persuasive evidence to me is registration cards and other official documents from the Auschwitz Museum archives that show Lazar Wiesel, born 4 September 1913 received number (and tattoo) A-7713 and his brother, Abraham, born 10 October 1900 was given A-7712.

A-7712 is the number Elie claims belonged to his father Shlomo, who was with him. There are no such records for Elie and his father. Nor for his two sisters who supposedly survived Auschwitz too.

The situation at Buchenwald is similar and the evidence against Elie Wiesel being a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald at all continues to build to a veritable mountain, all of which will be graphically presented and archived at a website that is now under construction and soon to open.

Where’s the tattoo?

Our new website will carry the theme “Where’s the tattoo?” – an idea originally suggested by a poster on the CODOH forum. We present this to viewers as a world-wide challenge and to encourage investigation and demand for answers. We will ask for independent efforts by diverse groups to work with film, Youtube videos, petitions and letter-writing campaigns to Universities, especially Elie’s employer, Boston University.

We will challenge those in the “mighty mainstream media” to force attention on this issue. Everyone—you—can act as an individual entrepreneur, make use of the information we will provide, contribute information to I Con The World, coordinate with us. Our spotlight on Elie Wiesel and the issue of who he really is will be intense and unrelenting. We are not talking about speaking in riddles here, but of evidence that is in- your-face… or in-his-face. We urge your participation, we urge you to recruit others by bringing I Con The World to their attention, by encouraging others to contribute in whatever way they can.

Watch for us. Get ready to help.

[The Elie Wiesel Cons The World website is now up online at http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com - Editor's note]

[1] Jewish Daily Forward, 9 June 2010. http://forward.com/articles/128652/
[2] Samuel G. Freedman, “Bearing Witness: The Life and Work of Elie Wiesel,” NYT, 23 October 1983.
[3] “Elie Wiesel and the Catholics,” Culture Wars, November 2004.
[4] Martin Suskind, “A Voice from Bonn: History Cannot be Shrugged Off,” NYT, 2 November 1986.
[5] “A Survivor’s Prize,” NYT, 4 January 1987.
[6] “Wiesel and Walesa Visit Auschwitz,” NYT, 18 January 1988.
[7] “Elie Wiesel and the Catholics,” ibid.
[8] “1945 und Heute: Holocaust,” Die Zeit, 21 April 1995.
[9] http://www.henrymakow.com/translated_from_the_hungarian.html
[10] http://kuruc.info/r/6/36390/
[11] Nikolaus Grüner, Stolen Identity, Stockholm, 2005-2006.
[12] Grüner, ibid.
[13] Carlo Mattogno, ”Elie Wiesel: ‘The Most Authoritative Living Witness’ of The Shoah?” http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/02/elie-wiesel-the-most-authoritative-living-witness-of-the-shoah/; ”Elie Wiesel: New Documents” http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/03/elie-wiesel-new-documents/

In the recently published study Sobibór. Holocaust and Propaganda co-authored by Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno and myself a subchapter (pp. 361-363) of our discussion on the fate of the allegedly gassed Jews is devoted to a number of quotes from war-year issues of the Swedish-Jewish periodical Judisk Krönika (Jewish Chronicle) which contradicts the established historiography on this most important issue. Jewish-American historian Steven Koblik, who has specialized on Sweden’s war-time relationship with Germany and the ”Holocaust” has the following to say about the journal in question:

“One center of activity was within the pro-Zionist groups. They had a journal, Judisk Krönika, founded in 1932, that publicly tried to change the official congregation policy and influence the larger Swedish community. The journal developed close contacts in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, and provided some of the best information on the extent of the Final Solution found in any Western publication. The journal also became a source of information for other non-Jewish publications.”

In my survey of the war-year issues of this journal – which is still the most important Jewish periodical in Sweden – I came across also a number of news notices relating to the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories, as well as Soviet evacuations of Jews to the Russian interior and Central Asia. I present them here in chronological order accompanied by a few brief comments.

• Vol. 10 Nr 9 (November 1941), p. 141: “50,000 Lithuanian Jews, who initially had been brought to the interior of Russia, have now been allocated to Mongolian farms. About 100,000 Jews from Ukraine have found a haven of escape in Birobidzhan.” The number of evacuated Lithuanian Jews given here is vastly higher than those presented by mainstream sources, who generally state that approximately 10,000 of these Jews escaped or were evacuated to the Soviet Union before the German invasion (cf. Jim G. Tobias, ”Die Massenexekutionsstätte Ponary bei Vilna 1941-1944” in: R. Margolis, J. G. Tobias (eds.) Die geheime Notizen des K. Sakowicz, Antogo, Nuremberg 2003, p. 14, note 12).
• Vol. 10 Nr 10 (December 1941) p. 156: “News of the most terrifying sort have reached us from the Ukraine. There are reports of thousands of killed Jews, among them 15,000 Galician Jews, who had been expulsed from Hungary. Also in Odessa thousands of Jews are said to have been executed as punishment for a time-bomb which exploded in the city hall and buried in its ruins 200 Romanian soldiers with their staff. Similar reports also come from Kiev and other Russian cities.” (The journal consequently used “Russian” to denote “Soviet”, thus the reason why Kiev in the Ukraine is called a “Russian city”).
• Vol. 11 Nr 1 (January-February 1942) p. 12: “In occupied Ukraine, the violent German anti-Jewish persecution has not been able to destroy the Ukrainian population’s good relationship with the Jews. As far as it is possible, the local government takes care that also the Jews are given normal rations of food. The destitution, however, is enormous, and a large part of the population does not have a roof over their heads, since the houses have been destroyed during the fighting. [...]. According to Deutsche Zeitung im Ostland [an official German newspaper published in Riga] the Russians evacuated 30,000 Jews from Lithuania, 24,000 Jews from Latvia and 1,000 Jews from Estonia at the beginning of the German-Russian war.” The figure of 30,000 evacuated Lithuanian Jews is three times that held by mainstream historiography (see above). It should be noted in passing that the number of Jews evacuated from Latvia by the Soviets is consistent with that found in the general report of the Einsatzgruppe A from 16 October 1941 to 31 January 1942 (23,479).
• Vol. 11 Nr 2 (March 1942) p. 27: “In Minsk, Berditschev, Schitomir and Mohilev there are no longer any Jews. Their houses have been confiscated to be used as winter quarters for German soldiers. All the Jews of Kharkov [Kharkiv] were brought to a concentration camp soon after the German conquered the city. The Jews in the occupied territories are being strongly decimated by epidemics and hunger.” In the Minsk ghetto there lived in fact tens of thousands of Jews at the time. It seems unlikely that the well-informed journal would be so grossly mistaken on this point. It is possible that what was meant was that there were no longer any Jews outside of the ghettos – the second sentence hints in this direction. As for the Jews of Kharkov, mainstream historiography claims that 15,000 of them were shot in the nearby ravine Drobitsky Yar on 15 December 1941.
• Vol. 11, Nr. 6 (July-August 1942), p. 91: “From Uzbekistan it is reported, that the Soviet government has prepared for the creation of permanent housing for the one million Jews which have been evacuated there. (…) After several months on the march, the evacuated Jewish colonists from Crimea have reached their destination, the Siberian territory of Krasnojarsk. [...]. Part of the Jewish farmers from the Ukraine have travelled to Saratov in the Volga district, where they have been given new soil. [...] In Taschkent, where thousands of Jews from Poland find themselves, there have been opened three offices for the registration of the refugees.”
• Vol. 11 Nr. 7 (September 1942), pp. 101-102: “The latest reports to the Polish government in London are concerned with this ['the horrible blood bath'] and according to them, 400,000 Poles, half of them Jews, have been massacred. A report which reached London even states the number of Jews exterminated in Poland alone to 700,000. This figure is so enormously high, that one find it hard to believe in. [...]. Berlin radio has explained, that the message about the killings of 700,000 Jews is not true. Only executions due to actions of sabotage have taken place.” While this quote does not concern the USSR, it is nevertheless worth mentioning here, as it shows that German authorities addressed and explicitly denied the mass killing allegations, while acknowledging executions of (Jewish) partisans (and possibly also reprisal shootings). On page 102 we find a list of a “horrible series of mass executions”: 9,000 Slonim Jews are claimed to have been killed at the beginning of November 1941; 50,000 Vilna Jews from November 1941 onward; another 60,000 Vilna Jews in May 1942; undated mass killings are listed for Lodz (35 000 victims), Lwow (30,000), Stanislawow (15,000), Pinsk (8,000) and Brzesc (6,000). Massacres are also claimed for Czyzew, Szlachecki, Hancewicze and Tarnopol, but neither dates nor victim figures are given. It is further stated that 25,000 Latvian Jews fell victims of pogroms (supposedly carried out by the local population, in contrast to mass shootings carried out by the Germans). As for the alleged Vilna massacre of May 1942, it was reported on by the New York Times on 16 June 1942 (p. 6):
  

  “Stockholm, Sweden, June 15 – Sixty thousand Jews of Vilna were put to death between May 7 and May 20 by the German-controlled Lithuanian police, according to reports brought here by a Pole, who said he was in Vilna until May 24. He arrived in Stockholm a few days ago with an account of escaping from the Nazis by way of Warsaw and Gdynia, where he hid himself aboard a ship bound for Sweden. The Polish refugee’s story of the Vilna massacre, of which he said he was an eye-witness, is impossible to confirm now.
  He said members of the special Lithuanian police, recruited from Germans in Lithuania and Lithuanian Quislingists, started persecuting Jews and Poles immediately after Berlin’s announcement of the so-called autonomous status of the Baltic States at the end of April.
  Until then 80,000 Vilna Jews were concentrated in two ghettoes, the old ghetto near the German quarter and a new one in the Bakshta quarter of the city. After the announcement of the new status all the Jews were sent to the Bakshta ghetto, the Pole stated.
  On May 7 the executions started, he said. The Jews, men, women and children, were taken from sundown to dawn in trucks to the suburb of Ponary, where they were mowed down by machine-gun fire. The executions continued every night until May 20, the Pole related, and during the day members of the Lithuanian police collected and sold the clothing of their victims.
  The Polish refugee said that about 20,000 Jews of ‘useful professions’ such as physicians and scientists and specialized workers, escaped execution and that the number of the victims was estimated in Vilna to be up to 60,000. No German military or Gestapo men were seen taking part in the executions, but neither did they interfere, he said.”

  This alleged massacre of 60,000 Vilna Jews is clearly invented. No other known source claim a mass killing of even remotely this size during 1942, and moreover the figure of 60,000 victims is numerically impossible: In January 1942 there lived some 15,000 Jews in the Vilna ghetto, while according to a census carried out at the end of May the same year, the inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto numbered 14,545 (cf. J. Graf, C. Mattogno, Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004, p. 209, 212). The census moreover shows that among these 14,545 ghetto inhabitants, no fewer than 3,693 were children of 15 years of age or less, whereas there were 59 registered Jews aged 65 or older (ibid., p. 212). This clearly contradicts the claim that only ”Jews of ‘useful professions’” were spared. Moreover, one of the major testimonial sources for the alleged mass extermination of Jews at Ponary, the diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz, states that not a single Jew was shot at Ponary during May 1942, or for that matter in April or June (R. Margolis, J. G. Tobias (eds.) Die geheime Notizen des K. Sakowicz, op.cit., p. 69).
  The most bewildering aspect of the anonymous Polish witness testimony is the implication that there had been no (large-scale) massacres of Vilna Jews until May 1942, and that until April the same year there had existed two ghettos in the city, housing a total of 80,000 Jews. According to mainstream historiography, there existed two ghettos in Vilna, together housing some 60,000 Jews, until the end of October 1941, when the smaller of the two ghettos (“Ghetto No. 2″) was liquidated. By this time there reportedly remained only some 27,000 – 28,000 Jews in Vilna, which the Germans sought to reduce to 12,000. The Jews now had to get new work certificates and were moved to the now empty Ghetto No. 2. Those Jews who did not managed to receive new work certificates were sent to Ponary and allegedly killed there in three ‘actions’ in late October, early November and December 1941 (ibid., pp. 30-32). The anonymous Polish witness thus places the liquidation of the smaller ghetto in April 1942, when in fact it happened in October the year before! But how could anyone confuse something which happened more than half a year ago with something transpiring a mere few weeks ago?
  By listing the alleged mass murder of 50,000 Vilna Jews together with the alleged mass murder of 60,000 Jews from the same city in May 1942 – despite the two allegations being mutually contradictory – Judisk Krönika somehow wanted its readers to believe that there had lived at least 110,000 – possibly as many as 130,000 – Jews in the Vilna ghetto! Nonetheless, in its issue from May/June 1944 (vol. 13, No. 5, p. 68) the same journal reported that there still lived 20,000 Jews in the Vilna ghetto, but these were said to have been ”foreign Jews” – something which flies straight in the face of mainstream historiography, according to which not a single foreign Jew was ever deported to Vilna (cf. J. Graf, T. Kues, C. Mattogno, Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality, TBR Books, Washington D.C. 2010, pp. 362-363).
  Here should also be noted that mainstream historiography holds it that there remained only some 40,000 Jews in Lithuania by the end of 1941 (ibid., p. 45). Several thousands of Lithuanian Jews were allegedly shot in early 1943, including 4,000 Jews from smaller ghettos in the vicinity of Vilna. In the autumn of 1943 most of the remaining Jews in the country were either sent to Poland to be killed in the “extermination camps” there or deported to labor camps in Latvia and Estonia (ibid., pp. 33-34). However, according to the memoirs of the Hungarian Jewess Reska Weiss, who was deported from Auschwitz to Riga in June 1944 and from there on to Lithuania via Daugavpils (Dünaburg), some 30,000 inmates, mainly Baltic Jews, were detained in a camp in the northern Lithuanian town of Panevezys (Ponevezh). After spending some time there, Weiss was transferred to the ghetto of Siauliai (Schaulen, in western Lithuania), where she was informed by a nurse working in the ghetto hospital that the ghetto’s population amounted to some 30,000 Jews (R. Weiss, Journey through hell, Valentine Mitchell, London 1961, p. 81, 95).

• Vol. 11 Nr 8 (October 1942). On p. 122 we are informed that 76,000 Jews were evacuated from Vitebsk at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, while 24,000 stayed in the city. We are also told that 200 Jews were shot in Kujbysjev as a result of partisan activity, 600 Jews were machine-gunned in the same town the following week. The remaining 15,000 Jews of Kujbysjev were then supposedly massacred during the next following weeks. The Jews in Jelsk were supposedly put on a barge in the Pripjet river which was then made to capsize (!). 5,000 Jews are stated to have been shot in Kersh. A witness, a fisherman named Josef Weingarten, crawled out of the mass grave and escaped. On pp. 122-123 we learn that “The result of the Nazis inhuman actions against the Jews is that they – men and women alike – have joined the guerillas, since they prefer to die in combat rather than be butchered like animals.” That this would in turn result in more Jewish men – and women – being shot as partisans, as well as more Jews being targeted in reprisal shootings ordered due to the activity of the same – increasingly Jewish – partisan groups – goes without saying.
• Vol 11 Nr 9 (November 1942). On pp. 142-143 we find reported massacres on Jews in Belarus (Delchitzi: 1,000 victims; Velizh in the Vitebsk district: 1,400 victims; Vaulino near Pskov: 1,000 victims) and in Lithuania (Ponevezh district: 11,000 victims; Kovno (Kaunas) in 1941: 800 victims). It should be noted here that if we are to believe the so-called Jäger Report, a total of 23,175 Jews had been shot in Kovno up until 1 December 1941. None of the individual Kovno shootings allegedly listed by Jäger are in the vicinity of the figure 800. The nearest ones are 463 and 534. There is mentioned, however, for 18 August, among a total of 1,811 Jewish victims, a shooting of ”711 Intelligentia Jews from the ghetto as reprisal for an act of sabotage”. But if the journal was in fact referring to this particular group of killed Jews, how come that it was unaware of all the other shootings in Kovno?
• Vol. 12 Nr 1 (January-February 1943), p. 6: “It is estimated that at the beginning of 1942 approximately 250,000 Jews were serving [as Red army soldiers] in the Russian battle zone. With the later instituted mobilization of reserve forces the number is likely to reach up to 400,000 in the end.” That the latter estimate was reached, or even surmounted, is indicated by the fact approximately 200,000 Jews are stated to have fallen as soldiers in the Red Army (cf. W.N. Sanning, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, IHR, Costa Mesa 1990, p. 108). War-time Soviet reports state that 600,000 Jews served in the Red Army (ibid., p. 111f).
• Vol. 12 Nr 4 (May 1943), p. 63: “Since October 1942 more than 10,000 Jews have been killed by German special troup units only in the Brest-Litovsk district. Thousands have been poisoned with gas in hermetically sealed barns and others have been shot in groups of 60 in the forests in the vicinity.” The claim that barns were turned into improvised gas chambers is, to my knowledge, not found elsewhere.
• Vol. 13 Nr 4 (April 1944), p. 53: “It is yet impossible to say, how many of the Jews living in western Russia and the Ukraine managed to escape when the Germans occupied those territories in 1941 and 1942, and how many of these refugees really managed to find a safe haven after surviving the horrors of war, the starvation and the epidemics. It has been calculated, that between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 Jews were able to reach the Russian interior during this period of time. It is thus likely that, despite the German invasion troups’ massacres on the Jewish population there are about 4,000,000 Jews in Russia. [...]. In fact, more than half of Russian Jewry are at the present living in Ural and beyond this area.” It should be noted here that it is unclear whether evacuated Belarus and Baltic Jews are included in this figure. The 4 million figure is consistent with statements made later that year by a Soviet source, according to which the number of Jews in the world after the end of the war would amount to ”little over 12,000,000”, whereof one third would be ”citizens of the USSR” (see my article ”Soviet Mouthpiece Journal in Late 1944: Only Some 3 Million Jews Exterminated”, Smith’s Report, No. 173, pp. 10-11).
• Vol. 16 Nr 5 (May 1947), p. 94: “In the Ukraine there live once more one million Jews. They have returned from the eastern parts of Russia to their old homes. Kiev and Odessa once more have 125,000 Jews [each?]. In Moscow there live 250,000.” According to the Soviet census of 1959, there lived 154,000 Jews in Kiev, 102,200 in Odessa, and 239,246 in Moscow. The 1970 edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica estimated the Jewish populations of the same three cities to, respectively, 200,000, 180,000 and 500,000 (W.N. Sanning, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, op.cit., p. 119).

In my study Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Origin and Meaning of a Term[1] I have written as follows:

«“Special Units” of the Crematoria
Danuta Czech explains the origin and meaning of the term “Sonderkommando” (special unit) as follows:
“The extermination camp created also one other group of people, those who were forced to work in the crematoria and gas chambers – the unfortunate people were assigned to the work of the special unit. The SS used code words if they spoke about the mass extermination of those ‘unworthy of life.’ It called the mass extermination as well as the transports leading
to selection ‘special treatment’ (often abbreviated as SB). Thus, also, the expression ‘special unit.’”
In other words, since criminal activity described by the code word ‘special treatment’ was allegedly being conducted in the crematoria, the staff employed there had of necessity to be a ‘special unit.’ Naturally it was the only work unit at Auschwitz that merited the prefix ‘special’ [sonder] – otherwise the word would have lost the criminal significance that it possessed according to official historiography.
Based on the documents, the reality is entirely different. First of all, the expression ‘special unit’ does not appear in a single document referring to the crematoria. In its ‘magnum opus’ the Auschwitz museum attempted to prove, on the basis of two documents, that this term was used for the crematoria personnel. The first document is a duty roster for July 18, 1944 [”Dienstplan für Dienstag”, dated 17 July], the second order no. 8/43 of April 20, 1943 from the Commandant’s Headquarters. But the first document merely mentions the term ‘special unit’ in connection with a gate control [Torkontrolle]»

Here a correction is necessary. The mention of the ”Sonderkommando” is not related to the ”Torkontrolle” written on the left (the document is written in two columns) but to four names listed on the right: ”Buch, Kelm, Schultz, Bickel”. Franciszek Piper considers them all to be “members of the SS directly employed in the gas chambers and crematoria”, but this assertion is based solely on the document in question.[2] He also states that Buch, Kelm and Schulz are mentioned as the members of the SS-Sonderkommando of the crematoria by the witnesses Alter Feinsilber (alias Jankowski) and Henryk Tauber,[3] but the first one speaks only of a ”Scharführer Buch” and a ”Kell”,[4] while the other mentions a ”Schultz” and a ”Köln”.[5] One Scharführer Buch, an Unterscharführer Kelm and an Unterscharführer appears (with their proper names) in an undated list of SS-men containing a column of written signatures under the heading ”receipt”, likely related to the payment of salaries. Their tasks are not specified.[6] The Heinz Schulz who according to Piper (whose source refers to a “Schultz”) was a Kommandoführer (commando leader) of the crematoria was identified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial as SS-Unterscharführer Arthur Heinz Schulz, who was the “ Kommandoführer im Arbeitskommando Zerlegbetriebe” (commando leader of the disassembly work commando).[7] Hermann Buch, who according to Piper also served as a Kommandoführer in the crematoria, served, according to the same book in which the Auschwitz historian makes this claim, as Lagerführer of BIIe (head of camp BIIe, the “Gypsy family camp), at the beginning of April 1944. In the eight lines of his biographical note there is no hint that he occupied the – in the context of the ”Holocaust” claims most important – position of a crematoria Kommandoführer.[8]

There exists a similar docuent, the ”Dienstplan für Donnerstag, den 10.05.1944” (Service schedule for Tuesday, 5 October 1944), dated 4 October, in which the term Sonderkommando appears but with only one name written next to it: ”Buch”. In the second column on the same line is written “Sola, Hütte” (Sola [river], works) and close to this ”Kelm”.[9]

Because, as explained below, the staff of the crematoria at the time was divided into 8 Kommandos, 2 for each crematorium (one day and one night shift), a total of 8 Kommandoführer were required daily. The first document mentions only 4 SS non-commissioned officers, while the second mentions only a single name, which means that the ”Sonderkommando” mentioned in them had nothing to do with the crematoria staff.

«The second [document] speaks simply of the pursuit of two Jews “who were on the run from the special unit.” [von 2 Juden, die vom Sonderkommando flüchtig waren] Therefore, the assumption, based on the above two occurrences of the term, is that there was in Auschwitz a single ‘special unit,’ which consisted of the crematoria staff!
However, in the documents, which explicitly mention the crematorium staff, its designation is simply “staff of crematorium” [Krematoriumspersonal][10] or it is identified by numbers – “206-B boiler, Crematorium I and II, 207-B boiler, Crematorium II and IV”[”206-B Heizer Krematorium I. u.II. 207-B Heizer Krematorium III. U. IV”].[11]
In the second place, there were numerous ‘special units’ in Auschwitz, of which not a single one had anything whatsoever to do with the crematoria. I list those below, for which I have found documentary evidence:

• Installation by special unit Birkenau BW 20 POW camp [“Installation des Sonderkommando-Birkenau BW 20 KGL”]: unit of electricians serving in the power plant of Birkenau (BW 20).
• pest control special unit [“Sonderkommando-Schädlingsbekämpfung”] (made up of women).
• special unit Reinhardt [“Sonderkommando-Reinhardt”]: women’s unit assigned to the sorting of clothing.
• special unit Zeppelin [“Sonderkommando Zeppelin”]: outside unit based in Breslau.
• special unit I [“Sonderkommando 1”]: unit for the warehousing of the personal effects of the Jews deported to Auschwitz.
• special unit II [“Sonderkommando II”]: no information with regard to its function.
• construction depot special unit (S.K.) [“Bauhof-Sonderkommando (S.K.) ”]: unit employed in the store of the construction depot.
• Dwory special unit (S.K.) [“Dwory-Sonderkommando (S.K.)”]: unit working in Dwory – a village about 10 km east of the town of Auschwitz.
• Buna special unit (S.K.) [“Buna-Sonderkommando (S.K.)”]: unit working in Monowitz.
• clothing workshops special unit [“Bekleidungs-Werkstätte-Sonderkommando (Bekl.Werkst.S.K.)”]: unit in the workshops producing clothing.
• DAW special unit [“D.A.W.Sonderkommando (S.K.)”]: unit employed in the German Equipment Works [Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke].
• Sonderkommando, occupied at the “Sola-Hütte.”

One may comb the orthodox historical publications, beginning with those of the Auschwitz Museum, for even a scant reference to the above ‘special units’ – but, alas, in vain!»

Recently the Auschwitz Museum website (www.auschwitz.org.pl) published two documents which mentions the term ”Sonderkommando”, one of them with explicit reference to a ”Krematorium” (crematorium). Below I present the documents with transcriptions and translations.

DOCUMENT:

TRANSCRIPTION:

«[Column 1]
a) Geheime Staatspolizei Auschwitz
b) Stadtrevier Auschwitz
Pezola, Wachtm[eister] d[er] S[chutzpolizei] d.A. [?]
c) 7.9.44. 1915 Uhr Wilczek
[Column 2]
Fluchtmeldung.
Gegen 1400 Uhr ist heute aus dem K.L. Auschwitz II vom Sonderkommando (Krematorium) eine größere Anzahl Häftlinge ausgebrochen meist Juden. Die Flüchtigen wurden bereits zum Teil bei der sofort aufgenommenen Verfolgung erschossen. Die Suchaktion wird fortgesetzt.
Kennzeichen: geschoren, auf dem l[inken]. Unterarm eintätowierte No. Kleidung teils Civil mit roten Streifen. Weitere Fahndungsmaßnahmen u[nd]. Verständigung der untergeordneten Stellen bitte ich sofort durchzuführen.
Es sind nur noch 4 Häftlinge flüchtig.
[Column 3]
Verstärkte Streife zum [vom?] Bahnhofsgelände entsandt».

TRANSLATION:

«[Column 1]
a) Secret State Police [i.e. Gestapo] Auschwitz
b) Auschwitz city hospital
Pezola, marshal of the security police d.A.[?]
c) 7.9.44. 19.15 hours Wilczek
[Column 2]
Escape report.
Towards 14.00 hours today a larger number of detainees belonging to the Sonderkommando (crematory), mostly Jews, escaped from K.L. Auschwitz. Part of the escapees were shot during the pursuit, which was commenced immediately. The search operation continues.
Dinstinguishing marks: cropped hair, number tattooed on the l[eft]. lower arm. Clothes partly civilian with red stripes. I request that you urgently notify subordinate agencies and carry out further search measures.
4 prisoners are still on free foot.
[Column 3]
Send a reinforced patrol to the station area».

It is rather curious that such an important document was discovered (?) only after 65 years and then published without any supplementary information. I will return to this issue at the end of the article.

The second document is an officer’s service report (Führer v. Dienst) from 9-10 December 1942.[14]

I will translate here only its most important parts:

«At 12.25 hours it was reported that 6 detainees had escaped from Sonderkommando I. [...]. At 20.30 hours there was a call from Harmensee that 2 detainees had been captured there. [...]. It was the two Jewish detainees no. 36816 and 38313 who had escaped from Sonderkommando II early on 7.12.42.»
[«12.25 wurde gemeldet das [sic] beim Sonderkommande [sic] I 6 Häftlinge geflüchtet sind. [...]. 20.30 wurde v. Harmenze [sic] angerufen, das [sic] dort 2 Häfltinge aufgegriffen worden sind. [...]. Es waren die beiden Juden häflinge [sic] N 36816 + 38313 welche am 7.12.42 früh v. Sonderkom. II geflüchtet sind»].

Danuta Czech, in her Auschwitz ”Kalendarium” summarizes the document in question as follows under the entry for 9 December 1942:

«At 12.25 the officer on duty received a notification that six detainees had escaped from the Sonderkommando».[15]

She then informs us that «the two prisoners, with the numbers 36816 and 38313», had escaped «from Sonderkommando II». In the entry for 10 December she adds:

«The two Jewish prisoners Ladislaus Knopp (No. 36816) and Samuel Culea (No. 38313) who had escaped from Sonderkommando II on 7 December are confined in the Bunker of Block 11 and released the same day into the camp.
Two Jewish inmates, who fled the day before from the Sonderkommando, are captured and imprisoned in the Bunker of Block 11. These are Bar Borenstein (No 74858), born 10 February 1920, and Nojech Borenstein (No 74859), born 25 March 1925 in Szreńsk. [...]. Both are probably executed in the presence of the Sonderkommando in order to terrorize the other prisoners».

In a footnote Czech explains with regards to Bar Borenstein and Nojech Borenstein:

«Next to the names of the both detainees, near the annotation “released” is written the letter “Ü”».[16]

It is not clear from what the author of the ”Kalendarium” draws her conclusion that these two prisoners were executed, as “Ü” is doubtlessly an abbreviation of “überstellt”, transferred. In fact, the numbers of these two inmates are not listed as dead among the entries of the Leichenhallenbuch (the registry of deaths from the morgue in Block 28 of the main camp) from 9 December 1942 or the following days.[17] But the most important aspect of the above summaries by Czech is the fact that she has omitted the number of the Sonderkommando from which the six prisoners had escaped: ”I”. The reason for this is easy to understand. Under the date of 3 December 1942 Czech writes:

«The approximately 300 prisoners of the Sonderkommando used for the exhumation and cremation of 107,000 corpses buried in mass graves are driven by the SS from Birkenau to the Auschwitz main camp. There they are taken to the crematorium and killed with gas. Thus the witnesses to the cremation of the corpses are eliminated».[18]

In the entry for 6 December 1942 she notes:

«A new Sonderkommando is formed, which includes several dozen detainees selected from camp BIb. It probably bears the name Sonderkommando II. Among its members are Meilech (Milton) Buki (Nr. 80312) and Szlama Dragon (Nr. 80359) [...]. At the trial of Rudolf Hoess he [Szlama Dragon] deposed as a witness for the prosecution, stating that the group of Jewish prisoners were assigned to the Sonderkommando on 9 December and the following day were employed in the cremation of corpses. From the camp documents it appears that the Sonderkommando [II] aready existed, because on 7 and 9 December prisoners employed in it attempted escape».[19]

The mention of «camp documents» clearly refer to the officer’s service report from 9 December 1942.

To recapitulate, the Sonderkommando allegedly massacred on 3 December 1942 was replaced by a “Sonderkommando II” on 6 December, which means that the former unit was the ”Sonderkommando I”. D. Czech claims that the detainees who escaped on 7 and 9 December were all from ” Sonderkommando II”, but the officer’s service report explicitly states that the six detainees in question were employed in Sonderkommando I”. By omitting the number “I” from her entry for 9 December and falsely asserting in the entry for 6 December that all the prisoners who had escaped belonged to “Sonderkommando II , Czech sought to to hide the fact that on December 9, 1942 there existed a “Sonderkommando I” as well as a “Sonderkommando II”, something which upsets her flawed reconstruction of events. It is all too obvious that, if the two Sonderkommandos existed at the same time, the first one could not have been exterminated on 3 December, and the second one could not have taken its place days later.

Elsewhere I have explained that the Sonderkommando I and II had nothing to do with the crematoria, but were working at sorting the booty of ”Aktion Reinhard” in Auschwitz.[20]

The imposture of Czech sought to confirm the thesis that at Auschwitz there existed one single, unique Sonderkommando employed in the crematoria. It had to be the only one because, as explained above, its name was to recall its supposed involvement in the alleged Sonderbehandlung. It is evident that the author of the ”Kalendarium” had to resort to this imposture because at that time there existed no documents which could establish a relationship between the Sonderkommando and the crematoria.

Now, the “escape report” mentioned above tells us of a Sonderkommando belonging to the “crematory”, but this was just one of many Sonderkommandos that existed in Auschwitz. This is confirmed by the document itself, since it specifies within brackets that the Sonderkommando was that of the “crematory”, thus implying precisely that there were other Sonderkommandos. Furthermore, the fact that the escapees from this Sonderkommando were “mostly Jews” contradicts the exterminationist axiom that all, or virtually all, of the members of the crematoria Sonderkommando were Jews.

This document is important also in another aspect, which perhaps explains the fact that it was “forgotten” for so many years. The only mass escape of Auschwitz crematoria staff mentioned by Holocaust historiography is supposed to have taken place in connection with the alleged “revolt of the Sonderkommando” of 7 October 1944. The only date to appear in the document in question is, however, 7 September 1944. The document, moreover, speaks of an escape, not of a revolt, which, among other things, is claimed to have led to deaths among the SS personnel – but in our ”escape report” there is no mention of any such deaths.

The one single document that is cited in confirmation of the alleged revolt, Standortbefehl (garrison order) No. 26/44 of 12 October 1944, states:

True to their oath to the Führer, there fell before the enemy in their line of duty, on Saturday 7.10.44 [«In Ausübung ihres Dienstes fielen vor dem Feind getreu ihrem Eid auf den Führer am Sonnabend, dem [sic] 7.10.44»]

This is followed by the names of three SS-Unterscharführer: Rudolf Erler, Willi Freese and Josef Purke.[21] It does not mention, however, under which circumstances these three non-commissioned officers died.

To this document is added the fact that, according to the series of reports on the Arbeitseinsatz (work deployment) of the men’s camp in Birkenau, the crematoria staff – called ”Heizer Krematorium I-IV” (firemen crematoria I-IV) and divided into one Kommando per crematorium, with each of those in turn broken down into two shifts, day an night: 57B, 58B, 59B, 60B – consisted of 663 prisoners on 8 October 1944, while on the following day it counted only 212.[22] But the decrease of 451 inmates does not necessarily indicate that they were killed during a revolt. On the other hand, if this alleged revolt had actually occurred on October 7, the decrease in the strength of the Sonderkommando would have been recorded on the following day, not on the 9th. Moreover, according to the sources referred to in footnote 22, from 10 October on, the staff of crematorium IV vanishes from the Arbeitseinsatz reports. The staff of crematorium I, II and V continues to be divided into two shifts, day and night, 33 prisoners each, practically until October 31.[23] The decrease could thus also have been caused by a reduction of the crematoria staff for administrative reasons. With regard to crematorium IV, no known document clarifies its fate.

On 7 September 1944 the crematoria staff consisted of 870 detainees,[24] while on 2 October it was down to 661.[25] If this decrease of 209 prisoners was not the result of the escape of September 7 (with which it is compatible, considering that the Arbeitseinsatz report for this day relates to changes in the work force which had taken place the day before, while the subsequent reports have not been preserved) it could also have been due to administrative reasons.

In conclusion: The fact that such an enormously important event as the alleged ”revolt of the Sonderkommando” is not explicitly mentioned in any German document, starting with those of the Litzmannstadt Gestapo, which in connection with any escape from Auschwitz as a rule always sent out a telegram to all affected offices,[26] is the most disturbing aspect of this story for Holocaust historiography.

Carlo Mattogno
8 March 2010

[1] Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004, p. 101.
[2] F. Piper, «Vernichtung», in: W. Długoborski, F. Piper (eds.), Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studien zur Geschichte des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz, Verlag des Staatliches Museums Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oświęcim 1999, vol. III, p. 261.
[3] Idem, pp. 261-263.
[4] Inmitten des grauenvollen Verbrechens. Handschriften von Mitgliedern des Sonderkommandos, Verlag des Staatlichen Auschwitz-Birkenau Museums, 1996, p. 45.
[5] The Höss Trial, vol. 11, p. 142.
[6] GARF, 7021-108-54, pp. 97 and 98.
[7] Der Auschwitz Prozeß, edited by the Fritz Bauer Institut (Frankfurt am Main) and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Digitale Bibliothek, Verlag der Directmedia Publishing GmbH, Berlin 2005, p. 33519, 46036 and 46043.
[8] Aleksander Lasik, «Die Organisationsstruktur des KL Auschwitz», in: W. Długoborski, F. Piper (eds.), Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studien zur Geschichte des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz, op. cit., vol. I, p. 239.
[9] GARF, 7021-108-59, p. 3.
[10] APMO, Übersicht über Anzahl und Einsatz der Häftlinge des Konzentrationslager, 31 January 1944. APMO, D-f/402, n. inv. 167217, p. 34.
[11] E.g. in Arbeitseinsatz für den 15. Mai 1943, APMO, D-AuII-3a/1a, p. 333a.
[12] In the list compiled by Otto Wolken. AGK, NTN, 149, pp. 139-140.
[13] Idem, p. 149.
[14] This document is dated ”9/10.42”. This should not be read as 9 October, but instead as 9-10 December (the month omitted here is indicated later in the report), the two days being when the officer in question performed his service (in all likelihood, judging from the times mentioned, which range from the 9th of December to the 10th).
[15] D. Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, p. 355.
[16] Idem.
[17] AGK, Leichenhallenbuch, Collection “OB”, 385, pp. 42-43 and following pages.
[18] D. Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, op. cit., p. 349.
[19] Idem, pp. 352-353.
[20] “Azione Reinhard” e “Azione 1005”, Effepi, Genoa 2008, pp. 24-31.
[21] Standort- und Kommandanturbefehle des Konzentrationslager Auschwitz 1940-1945, K.G. Saur, Munich 2000, p. 499.
[22] GARF, 7021-108-99, p. 164 and 168.
[23] Idem, pp. 166-167.
[24] APMO, D AuII/3a/49, p. 88.
[25] Idem, p. 93. The intermediate reports have not been preserved.
[26] E.g. the telegram concerning the escape on 7 April 1944 of Walter Rosenberg (alias Rudolf Vrba) and Alfred Wetzler, who later became known as the authors of the ”Auschwitz Protocols”, APMO, JZ-8 / 6 Łódź / 4, p. 65.

Abbreviations:

AGK: Archiwum Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu – Instytutu Pamieci Narodowej (Archive of the Chief Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish People – National Memorial Institute), Warsaw
APMO: Archiwum Państwowego Muzeum w Oświęcimiu (Archive of the State Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum)
GARF: Gosudarstvenni Archiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow
RGVA: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennii Vojennii Archiv (State Russian War Archive), Moscow.

It is an acknowledged fact that Holocaust historiography reached its peak in 2002 and has since begun a gradual and inexorable decline. Revisionist historiography, by contrast, has flourished in the last decade. As for myself, I have in this time published a dozen studies, the most recent being Auschwitz: assistenza sanitaria, “selezione” e “Sonderbehandlung” dei detenuti immatricolati (“Auschwitz: sanitary service, ‘selections’ and ‘special treatment’ of registered inmates, Effepi, Genoa 2010), in which I have dealt with all the basic aspects of the Auschwitz camp. The other two alleged “labor and extermination camps“ were carefully studied by Jürgen Graf and myself in the books Concentration Camp Majdanek. A Historical and Technical Study (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003) and Concentration Camp Stutthof and its Function in National Socialist Jewish Policy (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003). The alleged extermination camp Chełmno is the subject of my study Il campo di Chełmno tra storia e propaganda (“Camp Chełmno in History and Propaganda”, Effepi, Genoa 2009), while the alleged eastern extermination camps of Bełżec and Treblinka were treated by me in the book Bełżec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004) and by J. Graf and myself in our work Treblinka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp? (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004). There remained the last camp, that of Sobibór, which was the most difficult to treat due to the near lack of preserved documentation. Now finally this gap has been filled with the recent publication of the book Holocaust Propaganda and Reality (The Barnes Review, Washington D.C. 2010), written by J. Graf, Thomas Kues and myself. This work amounts to 434 pages, with 6 documents, 15 photographs and a comprehensive bibliography (pp. 414-429).

Regarding the contents I refer to the table of contents, which I reproduce below. I will here mention briefly some of the new key arguments presented.

Chapter V (Critical Analysis of Material Evidence) critically examines the fundamental “material evidence” presented by the Polish archeologist A. Kola in his almost impossible-to-find ”Report on the archeological investigation at the site of the former Jewish extermination camp of Sobibór”. The critique focuses on the mass graves and remains of barracks identified by Kola (who found no traces of the alleged gas chambers) and the problem of the outdoor cremation of the alleged gas chamber victims, demonstrating that the official historiographical narrative is untenable.

Chapter VIII (The Führerbefehl and the Origins of the “Extermination Camps” in the East) outlines the history of “Aktion Reinhardt” and explains its real significance within the framework of the “Generalplan Ost“, as well as shows the inconsistency of the exterminationist historiography on the construction of these alleged death camps.

Chapter X provides the most comprehensive study yet on the fate of the Jewish prisoners deported to the East. The thesis of the book is that Sobibór was in fact a transit camp (Durchgangslager), just as stated by Himmler in a letter from 5 July 1943 addressed to the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and seven other SS instances. Related arguments are also set out in Chapter IX.

With this work the revisionist bibliography on the alleged extermination camps of Bełżec, Treblinka, Sobibór and Chełmno has reached 1,218 pages.

Holocaust historiography, gravely embarrassed as always, keeps silent. To compensate it flings accusations of “antisemitism” to the right and left. Being completely unable to counter anything it can react only with hysteric invectives or, possibly, a real debate.

Carlo Mattogno, 22 June 2010

Table of Contents

1. Introduction …………………………… 9
Measurement Conversions …………………………….. 14

2. The Sobibór Camp and its Historiographic Representation ……….. 15
2.1. Sobibór as Described in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust …….. 15
2.2. Sobibór as Described in Contemporary Documents ……………….. 20
2.2.1. Himmler’s Directive of 5 July 1943 and Pohl’s Reply ….. 21
2.2.2. Documents about the Sobibór Uprising ………………………. 21
2.2.3. The Höfle Radio Message ………………………………. 22
2.2.4. Provisional Summary ……………………………… 22
2.3. Sobibór in Official Historiography and “Holocaust” Literature …….. 23
2.3.1. N. Blumental’s Documents and Materials (1946) ………… 23
2.3.2. Report by the “Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland” (1947) ……… 24
2.3.3. Yuri Suhl (1967) ………… 25
2.3.4. Adam Rutkowski (1968) …………. 26
2.3.5. Stanisław Szmajzner (1968) …………… 28
2.3.6. Adalbert Rückerl (1977) ………… 31
2.3.7. E.A. Cohen (1979) ………… 31
2.3.8. Miriam Novitch (1980)……………. 31
2.3.9. Richard Rashke (1982) …………… 34
2.3.10. E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl et al. (1983) …………. 35
2.3.11. Yitzhak Arad (1987) …………………. 37
2.3.12. Witold Zbigniew Sulimierski (1993) …………39
2.3.13. Jules Schelvis (1993) ……………….. 40
2.3.14. Thomas (Toivi) Blatt (1996) ………………….. 41
2.3.15. Shaindy Perl (2004) ………………… 45
2.3.16. Michael Lev (2007) …………………… 46
2.3.17. Dov Freiberg (2007) ……………………. 46
2.3.18. Barbara Distel (2008) …………………….. 46
2.3.19. Jules Schelvis (2008) …………………….. 47
2.3.20. Conclusions ……………………….. 55
2.4. A Revisionist Article about Sobibór …………… 56
2.5. Heinrich Himmler’s Visit to Sobibór …………… 58
2.6. Sobibór’s Claimed Number of Vicitms …………… 60

3. Origins and Evolution of Claims about Sobibór ……………. 63

4. Critical Analysis of Eye Witness Testimonies ……………..77
4.1. Alleged Contacts with Inmates in camp III ……………….. 77
4.2. Alexander Pechersky, the Main Witness ………………… 84
4.3. “The Most Conclusive Evidence” …………………… 93
4.4. Miscellaneous Anomalies and Absurdities ………………… 98
4.5. Testimonies by Former Camp Personnel ………………. 102
4.6. The Value of Eye Witness Testimonies ……………… 105

5. Critical Analysis of Material Evidence ……………… 107
5.1. The State of Evidence ……………………. 107
5.1.1. Forensic Post War Survey by Polish Authorities ……….. 107
5.1.2. Photographic Evidence …………….. 108
5.1.3. Kola’s Archeological Research at Sobibór 2000-2001 ……. 109
5.2. Mass Graves…………….. 112
5.2.1. Mass Graves in Testimony, Verdicts, and Historiography…………….. 112
5.2.2. The Switch from Burial to Cremation ……………… 115
5.2.3. Mass Graves Identified by Kola ………………. 118
5.2.4. The Significance of Unincinerated Corpses ………………. 120
5.2.5. Area and Volume of the Graves …………………. 122
5.2.6. A Note on the Ground Water Level at Sobibór ………………. 125
5.3. Fuel Requirements ……………………. 130
5.3.1. The Percentage of Children among the Deportees ………….. 130
5.3.2. The Average Weight of the Children ……………….. 132
5.3.3. Fuel Requirements for the Cremation of One Body …………….. 133
5.3.4. Decomposed Bodies ……………….. 136
5.3.5. Emaciated Corpses ……………….. 138
5.3.6. Factors Influencing the Cremation ………………. 139
5.3.7. Wood Requirements for Corpse Cremation at Sobibór …………. 140
5.3.8. The Duration of the Cremation …………….. 145
5.3.9. The Ashes ……………. 148
5.4. Excavated Building Remains ……………. 149
5.4.1. The Alleged Second Phase Gas Chambers in Testimony, Verdicts and Historiography ………………. 149
5.4.2. Building Remains Excavated by Kola ……………… 152
5.5. Continued Archeological Research 2007-2008 …………………. 162
5.6. The Official “Memorial Map” of the Sobibór “Death Camp” …………….. 167
5.7. Estimate of the Sobibór Death Toll …………….. 168

6. The Sobibór Trials……………………. 171
6.1. Legal Proceedings as the Basis for Historiography ……………….. 171
6.2. The Trial of Erich Bauer in Berlin in 1950 ………………. 172
6.3. The Frankfurt Trial of Hubert Gomerski and Johann Klier (1950) …………… 178
6.4. The Sobibór Trial at Hagen (1965/1966) ……………….. 182
6.5. The Sobibór Trial that Never Took Place ………………… 189
6.6. The Three Sobibór Trials in the Soviet Union ………………… 190
6.7. The Brazilian Extradition Proceedings against F. Stangl and G. Wagner………….. 191

7. National-Socialist Policy of Jewish Emigration ……………. 193
7.1. Emigration …………………… 193
7.2. The Madagascar Plan ………………. 198
7.3. From Madagascar Plan to Deportation to the East ……………… 201
7.4. First Deportations to the East …………………. 213

8. The Führerbefehl and the Origins of the “Extermination Camps” in the East ……………. 219
8.1. The Führerbefehl and Holocaust Historiography ……………….. 219
8.2. Origins and Significance of “Aktion Reinhardt” ………………. 236
8.2.1. The “Generalplan Ost” ……………………. 236
8.2.2. “Aktion Reinhardt” …………………….. 243
8.3. Alleged Genesis and Organization of the Extermination Camps of Aktion Reinhardt ……………….. 251
8.3.1. Administration and Financing …………….. 251
8.3.2. Construction of the Camps ……………… 252
8.3.3. Construction of the Alleged Gas Chambers: General Problems……………….. 254
8.4. The Alleged First Gas Chamber Building at Sobibór ……………. 262
8.5. Euthanasia and Aktion Reinhardt ……………….. 269
8.6. Himmler’s Cremation Order …………………. 281

9. Sobibór: Propaganda and Reality ………………… 283
9.1. Fake “Baths” or Real Baths? Sobibór as a Transit Camp …………… 283
9.2. The Ostwanderung ……………………. 290
9.3. Jewish Transports into the Lublin District in 1942 ……………….. 296
9.4. Evacuations to the East: Höfle Telegram and Korherr Report ……………… 311
9.5. Registration of Deportees in the Aktion Reinhardt Camps ……………. 331
9.6. Prof. Kulischer on the Expulsion of Jews …………….. 333

10. The Fate of the Deportees…………………. 347
10.1. The Fate of Jews Deported Directly to the East ……………………. 347
10.2. Number of Jews Moved to the East ………………………. 349
10.2.1. Via the Aktion Reinhardt Camps ………………………. 349
10.2.2. Via Chełmno……………………. 351
10.2.3. Via Auschwitz …………………….. 352
10.2.4. Balance ………………….. 353
10.3. The Dissolution of Polish Jewry in the USSR………………… 354
10.4. Western Jews in the Eastern Territories ………………. 357
10.4.1. Steffen Werner’s White Ruthenia Hypothesis ………………. 357
10.4.2. American Jewish Yearbook …………………… 360
10.4.3. Judisk Krönika ………………… 361
10.4.4. Further Evidence for Western Jews in the East …………….. 363
10.4.5. The Diary of Herman Kruk ………………….. 366
10.5. The Fate of Western Jews – a Hypothesis ………………. 369

11. The Demjanjuk Case……………………. 375
11.1. Hunting Down Old Men …………………… 375
11.2. The OSI…………………….. 379
11.3. Demjanjuk’s Extradition to Israel and His Trial ……………… 380
11.4. Demjanjuk’s Extradition to Germany ………………….. 387
11.5. The Run-Up to the Munich Trial ………………… 389

12. Conclusions …………………. 391
12.1. The Moral Responsibility of the Camp Personnel ………………… 391
12.2. “I am a Portion of that Force…” …………………….. 393
12.3. The Emperor’s New Clothes ……………………. 394
12.4. The Moloch …………………….. 395

13. Appendix …………………… 401
13.1. Documents and Photographs ………………………. 401
13.2. SS Ranks and U.S. Army Equivalents ……………………….. 413
13.3. Bibliography …………………….. 414
Media Items ……………….. 414
Monographs, Anthologies, Published Document Collections ………………. 415
Documents …………………. 425
Internet Sources ……………….. 426
Judicial Documents ……………………. 429
13.4. Abbreviations ………………………… 429
13.5. Index of Names…………………………. 430

Click here to purchase Sobibór. Holocaust Propaganda and Reality from The Barnes Review Book Store

In a discussion of my study Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Origin and Meaning of a Term (Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004), Holocaust blogger Sergey Romanov puts forth the following critique:

«Mattogno discusses lots of Auschwitz documents which contain the code words, and an unsuspecting reader might be duped into believing that Mattogno really did discuss (and rip to shreds) all the Auschwitz-related documentary evidence containing the code words. However, Mattogno deceptively omits the most crucial source on the use of the code word»

He concludes:

«Therefore, by omitting any mention of these prominent documents Carlo Mattogno has engaged in a gross and unforgivable deception. We hope to treat Mattogno’s other arguments from this and other books in the future, but it has already been established that one cannot rely on him to present the evidence fairly».[1]

If there is anyone who is “deceptive” here it is Sergey Romanov. In the abovementioned book I not only have never claimed to have considered «all the Auschwitz-related documentary evidence containing the code words», but I explicitly stated otherwise. In footnote 18 on pp. 11-12 I alert the reader:

«Likewise, a systematic treatment of all registered prisoners who were subjected to a “special treatment” would amount to an extensive analysis of the current claims of gassing as well as of the fates of various groups of prisoners, which would exceed the bounds of this investigation. [...]. In addition, a comprehensive study on this subject in preparation».

Therefore, by omitting any mention of this notification, Sergey Romanov has engaged in a gross and unforgivable deception, thus confirming once again his true nature, which has already been abundantly demonstrated in my book Olocausto: dilettanti nel web (Effepi, Genoa 2005).

The announced study, one of the most difficult I have undertaken, has now finally been published. Its title is Auschwitz: assistenza sanitaria, “selezione” e “Sonderbehandlung” dei detenuti immatricolati (Auschwitz: sanitary service, “selections” and “special treatment” of registered inmates) and it consists of 333 pages (sized 17 x 24) with 60 documents, many virtually unknown to specialists.

The table of contents below clearly shows the structure of study, so I will limit myself to presenting the conclusion. Here should only be noted that Chapter 4 contains detailed statistics on the number of prisoners unfit for work and unemployable, the stationary ill and invalids (!) who were constantly present in the hospitals of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which were established in accordance with the directive of the SS-WVHA of June 24, 1942. In Chapter 7 I have further devoted 28 pages to analyzing the documents which, according to Sergey Romanov, I ”omitted” from my previous book.

Here follows the conclusion:

«The thesis that at the hospitals of the Auschwitz camp complex registered inmates who due to illness had become unfit for work were selected to be sent to the alleged gas chambers has no documentary basis. On the contrary, documents show that at Auschwitz the SS always tried to improve, wherever possible, the living conditions and health of the inmates by establishing hospitals for the sick in which, inter alia, thousands of surgeries were performed. Some sick detainees were even transferred to other camps in order to receive a more appropriate care.

The plans – fully documented but implemented only in part due to undetermined reasons – for a huge camp hospital in Birkenau Bauabschnitt III, originally revealed by Pressac, blatantly contradicts the claims of mass extermination and demonstrates that the SS policy toward inmates unfit for work was not one of killing, but of medical treatment.

An analysis of the alleged selections of registered inmates for the gas chambers as listed by Danuta Czech shows that none of them has any historical documentary basis; rather they are often flatly contradicted by the documents. In fact, they are all based on not only the mere speculation of witnesses, but above all on unheard-of manipulations which reveal the true nature of the Auschwitz “Kalendarium” as not an historical and historiographical instrument enabling us to understand the events, but a propaganda tool for their systematic distortion».

Table of Contents:

PART ONE – THE INMATES

CHAPTER 1 – THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE INMATES
1.1 Provisions related to the improvement of the inmate living conditions
1.2. The selection of prisoners upon arrival
1.3. Treatment of inmates according to concentration camp regulations
1.4. Punishments
1.5. Premiums for productivity
1.6. The postal service
1.7. Food
1.8. Releases and the “Arbeitserziehungslager Birkenau”

CHAPTER 2 – THE INMATE HOSPITAL (HÄFTLINGSKRANKENBAU)
2.1. Measures taken by the SS-Standortarzt and the SS-Lagerärzte for safeguarding the health of the inmates
2.2. Reports on the medical treatment of inmates
2.3. The medical registry of the Häftlingskrankenbau
2.4. The inmate hospital in the camp Auschwitz III-Monowitz
2.5. The projected circulating air delousing facilities (Umluft-Entwesungsanlagen) for the sick inmates of Birkenau Bauabschnitt II

CHAPTER 3 – THE HÄFTLINGSLAZARETT IN BIRKENAU BAUABSCHNITT III
3.1. The discovery of Jean-Claude Pressac
3.2. Origin and implementation of the project for a camp hospital in Birkenau Bauabschnitt III

CHAPTER 4 – THE FATE OF THE REGISTERED INMATES UNFIT FOR WORK
4.1. The treatment of registered inmates unfit for work
4.2. Statistics on the sick in the Quarantänelager
4.3. Registration and transfer of sick inmates

PART TWO – THE “SELECTIONS” OF SICK INMATES FOR THE “GAS CHAMBERS”: A HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS

CHAPTER 5 – THE “SELECTION” OF SICK INMATES FOR THE “GAS CHAMBERS” ACCORDING TO THE AUSCHWITZ “KALENDARIUM”: THE MINOR “SELECTIONS”
5.1. “Sonderbehandlung 14 f 13” and the origin of the “selections” at Auschwitz
5.2. The death certificates of the “selected”
5.3. “Sonderbehandlung 14 f 13” and the “phenol injections” at Auschwitz
5.4. THE “SELECTIONS” IN THE “KALENDARIUM” OF DANUTA CZECH
5.5. THE “SELECTIONS” IN 1941: THE “FIRST GASSING”
5.6. THE “SELECTIONS” IN 1942
5.6.1. The “selection” of 11 June 1942
5.6.2. The “selection” of 3 August 1942
5.6.3. The “selection” of 29 August 1942 in Auschwitz Block 20, Room 3
5.6.4. The “selection” of 5 September 1942
5.6.5. The “selection” of October 1942
5.6.6. The “selection” of 14 November 1942
5.6.7. The “selection” of 3 December 1942
5.6.8. The “selection” of 5 December 1942
5.6.9. The “selection” of 8 December 1942
5.7. THE “SELECTIONS” IN 1943
5.7.1. The “selection” of 17 January 1943
5.7.2. The “selection” of 28 February 1943
5.7.3. The “selection” of 21 August 1943
5.7.4. The “selection” of 29 August 1943
5.7.5. The “selection” of 8 October 1943
5.7.6. The “selection” of 22 October 1943
5.7.7. The “selection” of 19 November 1943
5.7.8. The “selection” of 10 December 1943
5.7.9. The “selection” of 12 December 1943
5.7.10. The “selection” of 19 December 1943
5.8. THE “SELECTIONS” IN 1944
5.8.1. General considerations
5.8.2. The “selection” of 23 January 1944
5.8.3. The “selection” of 3 February 1944
5.8.4. The “selection” of 3 April 1944
5.8.5. The “selections” of inmates in the women’s camp BIIc in October 1944: the deceptions of L. Langfus and D. Czech
5.9. THE “SELECTIONS” LISTED BY THE FORMER INMATE OTTO WOLKEN
5.9.1. The documentation of Otto Wolken
5.9.2. The “selection” of 29 August 1943
5.9.3. The “selection” of 2 October 1943
5.9.4. The “selection” of 10 October 1943
5.9.5. The “selection” of 14 November 1943
5.9.6. The “selection” of 1 January 1944
5.9.7. The “selection” of 14 January 1944
5.9.8. The “selection” of 22 January 1944
5.9.9. The “selection” of 14 April 1944
5.9.10. The “selection” of 18 April 1944

CHAPTER 6 – THE MAJOR “SELECTIONS” ACCORDING TO THE AUSCHWITZ “KALENDARIUM”: THE THERESIENSTADT FAMILY CAMP AND THE GIPSY FAMILY CAMP
6.1.1. The establishment of the “Family camp” BIIb and the alleged homicidal gassings
6.1.2. The sources
6.1.3. The inmate strength of camp BIIb
6.1.4. The transports in September and December 1943
6.1.5. The “gassing” of the Jews of the “Family camp”: a historically sound thesis?
6.1.6. The cremation of the corpses from the “gassing” on 8 March 1944
6.1.7. The transport to Heydebreck
6.1.8. The “liquidation” of the “Family camp” (July 1944)
6.1.9. Deaths and survivors
6.1.10. The transport of 7 October 1943
6.2.THE SELECTION AND GASSING OF THE GYPSIES AT AUSCHWITZ ON 2 AUGUST 1944
6.2.1. The historical reconstruction of Danuta Czech
6.2.2. The documents
6.2.3. Interpretation of the documents

CHAPTER 7 – DOCUMENTS ON “SONDERBEHANDLUNG”
7.1. Documents concerning the “Frauenlager”
7.2. The “Sonderkommando Zeppelin”
7.3. “S.B.” in the main registry of the Gypsy camp (Hauptbuch des Zigeunerlagers)
7.4. “S.B.” in the reports on inmate strength and employment in the Frauenlager (women’s camp)
7.5. “S.B.” in the Stärkemeldung of the Frauenlager
7.5.1. The Jewish inmates of the “Durchgangslager”
7.5.2. Changes in the inmate strength of the Frauenlager in October 1944
7.5.3. “S.B.” and the “Durchgangs-Juden”
7.5.4. The “S.B.” of 3 October 1944
7.5.5. The “S.B.” of 7 October 1944
7.5.6. Conclusions
7.6. The “selections” at the HKB of the camp Auschwitz III-Monowitz
7.7. The report of SS-Untersturmführer Kinna from 16 December 1942
7.8. The “selections” of Polish boys from Zamość and other locations in Poland
7.9. The letter from the head of SS-WVHA Amt DII dated 26 April 1944

CONCLUSION

[1] Mattogno’s special treatment of evidence, http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/03/mattognos-special-treatment-of.html. Bolds in original.

In November 1944, the ”Holocaust” was practically over. Himmer had supposed ordered the gassings stopped, the alleged ”gas chambers” of Auschwitz-Birkenau had ceased operating, Majdanek had been liberated and figured prominently in Soviet atrocity propaganda, the area containing the few remains of the Treblinka ”extermination camp” been occupied by the Red Army. By this point in time at least 95% of the mythical 6 million Shoah victims had (supposedly) already perished.

In this context it is interesting to take a look at what a Soviet mouthpiece published in the West, the American Communist monthly Soviet Russia Today (previously published under the title New World Review) had to say about the number of Jewish losses in its issue from November 1944. This publication regularly featured writings of Ilya Ehrenburg and Vassili Grossman as well as commentaries on the progress of the war from Soviet generals. Under the heading ”Rehabilitation of the Jews in the USSR” Theodore Bayer writes (p. 28):

”Almost four-fifths of the Jewish population of the USSR lived in the war area. Almost three million of the Soviet Jews lived in the Ukraine and Byelo-Russia which were occupied by the Germans and another million in the Baltic countries, Bessarabia and the Crimea and other parts of the RSFSR reached by the Germans.[...]
Realizing the special danger facing the Jews under the German yoke, Soviet authorities put the task of evacuating them second only to the evacuation of women and children. Thus, with super-human effort, the Red Army men and officers and civil authorities managed to evacuate about fifty per cent of Russian Jews as well as Jews who fled from Poland into Russian territory. Counting the Jews remaining in the liberated Soviet regions including Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Baltic countries, the present Soviet Jewish population may be estimated at between three and one-half to four million people.

Before the war the total Jewish population of the world was estimated to be about 15,500,000 people. About two-thirds were in Europe and the Asiatic part of Russia. The other one-third was mainly in the United States, with the rest scattered in Canada and Latin America and about 400,000 in Palestine. Subtracting the tragic figure of over 3,000,000 Jews exterminated by the Nazis, this would leave about 3,000,000 Jews in Europe outside of those in the USSR, England and the two or three neutral countries. The Soviet Union in liberating Romania and Hungary from the Nazi invaders is setting free areas with large Jewish populations.
Some estimates place the number of Jews surviving at a much lesser figure. However, according to the above calculations, the Jewish population of the world will amount to a little over 12,000,000 people – a loss of about 3,500,000 including deaths in the armed services, partisan armies and the underground of the United Nations.[?] According to these figures, a third of world Jewry will be citizens of the USSR.” (emphasis added)

Only a month after the above quoted article was published, the Soviet-Jewish chief atrocity propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg stated in the Soviet foreign-language press that the Jewish victim figure amounted to 6 million,[1] and the previous calculations referred to by Soviet Russia Today – which must have been recent ones, since Bessarabia was taken by the Red Army in late August 1944 and the Baltic offensive began on Steptember 14 – were thrown down the memory hole.

The figure of nearly 5 million Jews living in the USSR at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, whereof approximately in 4 million in the territories later occupied by the Germans, is partially backed up by the American Jewish Year Book. In volume 43 (1941-1942) we read on p. 663:

”On the date of the invasion, June 22, 1941, half the Jewish population on the continent of Europe, estimated at well over 9,000,000, resided in Russia and Russian occupied areas, while the other half lived in Germany and in countries and territories occupied or dominated by her. Figures for Russia published in October, 1940 showed a total Jewish population of 4,600,000 divided as follows:

Old Russia… 3,000,000
Polish Areas… 1,000,000
Lithuania (excluding Vilna)… 200,000
Latvia… 100,000
Bessarabia… 200,000
Northern Bukowina… 100,000

These figures are given in round numbers and we must, therefore, assume them to be rough approximations. A more likely figure would be 4,700,000, which would account for the Jews in Vilna and Estonia as well as for the additional 20,000 Jews in Old Russia as enumerated in the census of January, 1939.”

It should be noted here that it is not made explicitly clear by Bayer whether the 4 million mention included the Jews in the eastern part of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, but given that we are dealing with a Soviet mouthpiece, it seems likely that this part of Poland was regarded as part of the USSR. As for the number of Jews originally present in the parts of the USSR not reached by the Germans (no doubt included in the figure for ”Old Russia” presented by the AJYB, it is well known that they were far outnumbered by the Jews in the western parts. According to the 1926 census, the Jews in the Asian part of the RSFSR, the Transcaucasian Republic, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan totaled merely some 152,000, while there lived some 171,000 Jews in the eastern part of European Russia.[2] The 4 million figure therefore appears to be sound.

Bayer writes that the Soviet authorities managed to evacuate ”about fifty per cent” of the Jews in the western part of the Soviet Union. This would mean a total of some 2 million evacuees. As German historian A. Hillgruber writes,

”The estimates of the number of Jews in the Soviet Union in 1941 varies with a difference of over one million. This is foremost due to the unanswered (and now hardly answerable) question of how many Jews were able to escape before the Germans into the unoccupied territories of the Soviet Union. The estimates range between 2.655 million to 1.6 million.”[3]

Wilfried Heink has brought together a number of estimates made by Holocaust historians and Jewish authorities:

”Raul Hilberg 1.5 million, Yitzak Arad 1 to 1.1 million, Solomon Michoels (of the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC)) 2 million, Yisrael Gutmann and Michael Berenbaum estimate 1.5 million.”[4]

Military historian Joachim Hoffmann estimates that 600 000 of the Jews in the Soviet-occupied eastern part of Poland were evacuated, and that 450 000 of these disappeared in the Soviet Union (which may be taken to mean that most of these Jews either perished en route to Siberia or Central Asia or in Soviet camps).[5]

While the number of evacuees stated by Soviet Russia Today is very high and might have been exaggerated in order to put the Soviet regime in the best light possible, it is more or less within the same magnitude as the figures espoused by the prominent Holocaust historians Hilberg, Gutmann and Berenbaum. All this of course indicates that the calculations referred to were not conjured out of nothing by Soviet propagandists, but based on actual statistics. The origin of the estimates presented by Theodore Bayer, however, remains an enigma. Undoubtedly they were relayed to the journal from some official Soviet source, like the bulk of its contents, but from where exactly? Were the same calculations presented in more detail elsewhere? Clearly more research is needed on this issue.

[1] J. Hoffmann, Stalin’s Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945, Verlag für Wehrwissenschaften, Munich 1995, pp. 160-161, 303.

[2] American Jewish Year Book, vol. 40 (1938-1939), p. 546, 548.
[3] A. Hillgruber, “Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung”, in: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Wolfram Wette, Unternehmen Barbarossa, Schöningh, Paderborn 1984, p. 228, note 6.
[4] W. Heink, ”Well, where are they then?”, http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/05/well-where-are-they-then/
[5] J. Hoffmann, Stalin’s Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945, op.cit., p. 139.

Revisionists are continually asked the above question, the implication being that if the Jews were not murdered, where are they then? In this essay I will try to demonstrate that it is near impossible to give a satisfactory answer to the above question. The numbers of Jews killed, as presented by the historians who believe in “The Holocaust”, are based on transport lists, telegrams, counting of rail cars, etc., etc. This is not an exact science. In fact, the data provided of Jews being deported is no evidence that they were murdered. The numbers game is tricky for another reason: we have no precise figures of how many Jews were under the control of the Germans, how many survived, how many were able to flee or survive somehow, and to migrate from Europe before or after the war. This then is the topic of the present essay. I will merely present the numbers as they are available, without much of commentary. Admittedly, this is also not exact science, but because of the many unknowns, mentioned above, it is near impossible to come up with accurate figures.

The Numbers of Jews Evacuated by the Soviets

Professor Werner Maser writes:[1]

“How the Jews able to flee into the USSR fared was known to the Allies in 1948 at the latest, but this has escaped most researchers on the Holocaust. That Stalin blamed the Germans for the loss of the almost 2 million Jews who could not return to their place of origin, because they had lost their lives, was of no concern to them.”

Maser provides no direct source for the claimed 2 million figure. We may compare it with another claimed figure, reported on September 25, 1954 by the Hamburg daily Die Welt:

“In a meeting of the investigation committee of the House of Representatives, the head of the Jewish League, Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, stated that 3,390,000 Jews disappeared without a trace on Soviet territory during World War II.”

There is no doubt that anti-Semitism was present in the USSR, especially during the war. I will return later to this issue.

Maser continues:[2]

“Jewish refugees who were able to escape into the unoccupied territories of the USSR, were arrested by the Soviets or forced into slave labor.[3] 40% of those able to flee from Poland, the Baltic States and Romania were Jews. Most of them fled to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. Of these Jews 20-30% died.[4] A Joint Bulletin report noted that 200 000 to 300 000 Jews from Poland alone had died.[5] The American Jewish Yearbook of 1948/1949 has it at 500 000.[6]”

The number of Jews able to flee – or evacuated by the Soviets – are recorded in relative conformity [7] (as opposed to the numbers of Jews murdered): Raul Hilberg 1.5 million [8], Yitzak Arad 1 to 1.1 million [9], Solomon Michoels (of the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC)) 2 million [10], Yisrael Gutmann and Michael Berenbaum estimate 1.5 million.[11]

I will now turn to the well-known Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In his book Die Juden in der Sowjetunion [12] (The Jews in the Soviet Union; unfortunately I have only available to me the German edition of this work) we read the following on page 359-360:

“However, many Jews were saved through the evacuation of 1941-42. A number of Jewish sources from the war and postwar years leave no doubt that these evacuations were carried out with the necessary decisiveness. For example one reads in the anthology The Jewish World[13] from 1944 that: ‘The Soviet government knew perfectly well that the Jews were the most threatened part of the population, and thousands of trains were made ready for their evacuation, despite the Red Army’s pressing need for transports. [...]. In many cities (…) the Jews were the first to be evacuated.’ The quoted author, however, holds ‘the claim of the Jewish writer David Bergelson, according to whom [in total] 80% of the Jews were successfully evacuated, to be exaggerated.’[14] 70 000 Jews lived in Chernigov before the war, 10 000 were left when the Germans arrived. [...]. In Dnipropetrovsk only 30 000 of the 100 000 Jews were left at the time Germans marched into the city. In Shitomir, 44 000 of the 50 000 Jews were able to flee.[15] E. M. Kulischer writes in summer of 1946 in the report of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) that: ‘Without a doubt the Soviet government took special measures to evacuate the Jewish population or aid them in their escape. Together with government employees and industrial workers and employees the Jews were prioritized [in connection with the evacuation]. [...]. The Soviet government provided thousands of trains especially for the evacuation of the Jews.’[16] To shelter the Jews from bombings, the Kolkhozes had to make available thousands of horse-drawn wagons to transport the Jews to secure train stations. In an article entitled ‘How the Jews of Soviet Russia were evacuated during the war’, B.Z. Goldberg, brother-in-law of Scholem Alejchem and correspondent of the Jewish New York paper Der Tog, writes on February 21, 1947, following a visit to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1946-47, that when he inquired about this issue in the Ukraine, Jews and Christians, soldiers and evacuees, all answered, that the policy of the government consisted in giving priority to the Jews during the evacuation, in order to send away as many of them as possible, so that the Nazis would not be able to exterminate them.’[17] Further, the former Soviet partisan Moshe Kaganovich confirms in his memoirs, published abroad in 1948, that the Soviet government put all available transport vehicles at the disposal of the evacuation, besides trains also horse-drawn carriages, and ordered that ‘first and foremost the citizens of Jewish nationality’ should be evacuated ‘from the territories threatened by the enemy.’[18]”

Solzhenitsyn writes that Solomon Schwarz, as well as other researchers later, disputed “not only the Soviet evacuation of Jews as such but also the existence of an order to that effect.”[19] Solzhenitsyn, however, states that his data are taken from material published following the war and also later, including the writings of demographer M. Kupowezkij. Solzhenitsyn provides more details, but this will suffice to show that numbers of Jews were indeed evacuated by the Soviets.

Another source of interest is the (Jewish) demographer Prof. Eugene M. Kulischer, who wrote in 1943 that:

“After the outbreak of the war the expulsion of Jews began at first in a somewhat unorganized fashion, its object being to place the Jews outside the limits of German rule. In September 1939 Polish Jews fled in masses from the invading armies, pushing further and further east in an attempt to escape to Soviet-occupied territory. In this they succeeded, owing to the attitude of the Soviet authorities during the first two months of the Soviet occupation of Poland. The Germans often tried to encourage this flight; many cases were reported of Jews literally driven at the point of guns and bayonets to the demarcation line and into the frontier rivers. Many were openly admitted by the Soviet authorities; many others managed to cross the border secretly. The number of Jews who fled into the eastern Polish provinces (both before they were occupied by the Soviet Union and after) is estimated by the Institute of Jewish Affairs at 200,000 at least (…)”[20]

Later in the same study Kulischer writes:

“In the winter of 1939-40, and again in June 1940, a number of refugees were deported by the Soviet authorities to the eastern part of the Soviet Union[…]The main movement from Soviet-occupied Poland to the east began in June 1941, immediately before the German invasion, and increased in volume after the invasion had begun. Hundreds of thousands of people were either forcibly removed or evacuated to inner and Asiatic Russia. Others fled as best they could from the invading German army. According to a Statement issued by the Polish Foreign Minister on 7 May 1942, one and a half million persons were transferred. The Joint Distribution Committee estimates the total number of evacuees from Soviet-occupied Polish territory at two million, of whom 600,000 were Jews (…)”[21]

In an article by David Bergelson of December 5, 1942 in Eynikayt (Unity) a Yiddish-language Moscow news paper, we read that through evacuation 84% (about 1.1 million) of the Jews from Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania and Latvia were saved from the Germans.[22] Rabbi Mordechai Murok, the Latvian envoy to the Jewish World Congress, declared in a New York press conference of February 29, 1946, that hundreds of thousands of Polish- and other Jews were able to find a save haven in the USSR.[23]

While we are at Poland, we have the following information from the Historian Hermann Graml:

“The wave of emigrations of German Jews formed only part – and not the biggest – of a general Jewish emigration from middle-, east-, and southeastern Europe. From Poland, starting in 1933, 100 000 Jews a year emigrated (from Germany 25,000 to 28,000), partly due to the increasing anti-Semitic attitude of the Polish government, and also due to the steadily worsening economic conditions for the Polish Jews. Similar tendencies were seen in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and, to a lesser degree, in Hungary.”[24]

If, from Poland alone, 100,000 Jews emigrated per year during the six-year period of 1933-1939, this would equal 600 000 Jews leaving before the war broke out. Add to this the 600 000 mentioned by Kulischer who were removed by the Soviets and we have 1.2 million Polish Jews that were never available to the Germans. And those are the official figures – we have no way of telling how many escaped on their own. The historian Martin Broszat also tells us that 300 000 Romanian Jews were spared the worst.[25]

As for numbers of Jewish émigrés from countries other than Poland, we basically have nothing. We do however have some information about the number of European Jews migrating to countries that never came under German dominion. The Aufbau published an article on August 13, 1948 by Bruno Blau, in which the author states that from 1933 to 1945 a total of about 1 million Jews emigrated to England, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, USA, South America, Australia, China (Shanghai), India, Africa and Palestine.[26]

The Study of Solomon M. Schwarz

We will now turn to Solomon M. Schwarz and his study The Jews in the Soviet Union, published in 1951. In the “Author’s Note” Schwarz writes (p.ix):

“My endeavor has been to base the two studies making up the present work as much as possible on Soviet sources — newspapers, periodicals, books, and other publications in Russian and Yiddish. But since Soviet publications are subject at every point to official control, and since independent evidence is scarce, getting at the truth requires an intricate process of reconstruction from fragmentary data and indirect clues [...]”

Since the author himself admits that caution is advised when considering official Soviet sources and that he has “pieced together a picture”, one needs to also exercise caution when reading Schwarz, for who is to say that he assembled his information without prejudice, that he did not have an agenda. He does, however, also rely on material provided by other sources, and not just Soviet publications.

Let’s look at Chapter XIV of Schwarz’s book, titled “The War and After”. It starts out with the following passage (p.195):

“The outbreak of the Second World War found the dislocation of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union progressing at full speed. The migratory movement depleted the Jewish communities in the areas of the former Pale of Residence [27] and carried increasing numbers of Jews to regions where only a few had lived in pre-revolutionary times [...] Almost two-fifth of the total Jewish population had moved out of the Pale.”

No numbers are provided, but we are nevertheless told that large number of Jews either had moved out of harm’s way, or were evacuated by the authorities. Now to some numbers (p.229):

“Postwar efforts to make the public believe that large parts of the Jewish population had been rescued go back to 1945. Seeking to refute the pessimistic view expressed in the New York ‘Forward’, Itsik Fefer, in a message [28] to the American Committee of Jewish Writers, Artists and Scientists in October 1945, stated that Odessa again had a Jewish population of 45,000; Kiev 50,000; Berdichev 10,000, etc.”

Schwarz then tries hard to file a disclaimer, quoting from Eynikayt of March 5, 1946:

“But a few month earlier Eynikayt had recorded only ‘about 10 000’ Jews in Kiev, and half a year later it found only 6 000 Jews in Berdichev.”[29]

This only to goes to show that “The Holocaust” was still in the making in 1945, and that even Jews like Fefer were not in tune yet.

Schwarz goes to great length to deny that any organized evacuation ever took place, based on the argument that no order was ever found. He writes on pp. 220-222:

“During the war exaggerated rumors about the evacuation of civilians from Nazi-held areas were circulated inside and outside the Soviet Union. The view prevailed in the American press that the Soviet government, in addition to evacuating the personnel of government services, industrial establishments, etc., had taken effective steps to save the Jewish population in particular from the danger that threatened. Similar notions found their way into serious studies by authors free of pro-Soviet illusions. As late as 1948, Eugene M. Kulischer stated:

‘In fact, the government took care to prevent a general population displacement, which would have obstructed the highways, and, furthermore, resulted in a mass influx to an area unable to house and feed them. Only a small part of the rural population was evacuated. In urban centers factories were removed, together with skilled and many other workers. Besides, officials and a large proportion of the Jews were evacuated to save them from German atrocities.’[30]

Yet the Soviet sources available outside of the Soviet Union did not mention any governmental decrees or directives relative to evacuation, nor were there any statements by Soviet leaders on the nature and scope of the evacuation program. The only exception was a radio broadcast by Stalin on July 3, 1941, in which he proclaimed the strategy of ‘scorched earth’ (without, however, using that term):

‘When detachments of the Red Army are forced to retreat, it is essential that all railroad rolling stock be driven off, that not a single locomotive or railroad car be left to the enemy, and that the adversary find not a kilogram of bread or a liter of fuel. The kolkhoz farmers must drive away all their cattle and deliver their grain for safekeeping to government authorities, who will transport it to districts behind the lines. All valuable property, including non-ferrous metals, grain, and fuel, that cannot be removed, must be destroyed without exception’.[31]

Actually, the term ‘scorched earth’ does not properly describe the meaning of this policy. To judge from descriptions of evacuation in the newspapers and works of fiction, what the Soviet authorities aimed at was not so much wholesale destruction as the removal of anything that the enemy could have used—first of all factories producing goods essential to the war effort, and their indispensable personnel. Men capable of bearing arms were also to be evacuated. In this plan there was no place for the evacuation of Jews as such. In all the Jewish literature on the war there is only the one reference by Moshe Kaganovich to a decree by the Soviet government ordering the evacuation of the Jewish civilian population.[32] But there is no trace of such a decree either in Izvestiya or in any other Soviet publication, and it can be assumed that the author was merely repeating one of the many rumors current in the years of the war. None of the Communist writers who so eagerly seized on the émigré Kaganovich’s laconic statement could quote from the decree or indicate where and when it was issued; his book remains their only authority.

The true picture of evacuation has to be pieced together from the various accounts of eyewitnesses. Everywhere there seems to have been a great deal of confusion in the evacuation. No uniform procedures had been worked out. In provinces nearest the western border, which were invaded in the early days or weeks of the German-Soviet war, operations were chaotic and on a very limited scale. The farther the province from the border, the more organized the procedure of evacuation and the more people were saved.”

Schwarz thus dismisses the written accounts (and we note here in passing that Kulischer seems to have wavered some in 1948) and instead tells us to rely on eyewitnesses, even though “everywhere there seems to have been a great deal of confusion in the evacuation”. Nevertheless Schwarz has to admit that evacuations did indeed take place, thus confirming what Solzhenitsyn writes and what Kulischer had written in 1943. On p. 232 Schwarz writes:

“The Jewish evacuees and refugees began their trek back home even before the end of the war; once the war had ended, the tide swelled.”

On the following page (p. 233) we read:

“Before the termination of hostilities and for several months thereafter, return to the liberated regions was, as a rule, permitted only upon a special call from the local authorities.[33][…]

Generally return without special permission was not authorized until August 1945; from then on, organized re-evacuation was carried through by special trains. Its start was reported late in August from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. A correspondent from Tashkent wrote:

‘These last days the mass re-evacuation of Uzbekistan’s Jewish population has begun. In addition to those hundreds and thousands who move westward with the regular railroad traffic, special trains for the re-evacuated are now being dispatched from time to time.’[34]

This Tashkent correspondent witnessed the departure of a special train that took 2,500 Jews from Tashkent to the Ukraine and White Russia; several more special trains were scheduled for the following weeks. Similar reports abounded. Public interest was focused on re-evacuation, and for a while the fact went unnoticed that a large part of the evacuees and refugees remained behind. Attention was drawn to this in July 1945 by the Kazakhstan correspondent of Eynikayt, who pointed out that while the majority had left or were about to leave, ‘part of the Jews undoubtedly will remain as permanent residents in Kazakhstan,’ where they had ‘found their second home’.[35] In November a report from the Urals said that ‘quite a number of Jews are going to stay here forever’.[36] Similar news came in December from the Turkmen Republic:

‘Evacuation brought a substantial Jewish population here that has settled in all parts of the Republic… Jews from the Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the Crimea have been working here. A large part of them have already gone home, but many have remained for good. Jews are now a considerable percentage in Turkmen industry, on collective farms, in the government Services of the Republic and of the individual provinces. You will find them in the Workshops of the industrial combines, at the oil wells, in the People’s Commissariats of the Republic, in government and party offices.’[37]

In 1946 such reports became more frequent. So far as one can judge, the Moscow correspondent of Morgn Frayhayt was fully justified in writing:

‘The great and overwhelming majority of Jews evacuated to Central Asia, Siberia, and the Urals have returned to the cities and towns of the Ukraine, White Russia, Moldavia, Lithuania, and Latvia. But many thousands of Jews have grown such deep roots in their new homes that they never even think of leaving. Here they have become true residents, passionately attached to their new homes.’[38]

The correspondent listed a number of the new centers of Jewish population, such as Alma-Ata, Dzhambul, Chkalov (formerly Orenburg), Sverdlovsk (formerly Yekaterinburg), Chelyabinsk, Molotov (formerly Perm), Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, etc. The total number of Jews who settled in these remote regions cannot be determined. There are perhaps a hundred thousand of them, or even more.[39]”

Up to 300 000 Jews remained behind, although Schwarz disputes this figure (see footnote 37). If we take an average of 1.5 million evacuated (the average taken from the numbers provides by Maser, see footnotes), this would mean that approximately 25% remained behind, which is not out of the question. As those who returned faced hardships – something detailed by both Schwarz and Solzhenitsyn – a lot of them decided to move on “to Palestine or America”.[40] As Maser suggests, all of those “missing” were/are no doubt counted as murdered by the Germans.

Schwarz also writes about the antisemitism in the Soviet Union during the war and after, where “Kill the Kikes, save Russia”, or “Kill the Kikes, save White Russia” were used as slogans.[41] How many Jews were actually killed we don’t know. But not just Russians were antisemites, so were Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, etc. About the latter two ethnicities Leon Kahn, née Leibke Kaganowicz, writes:

“From what we could see, there was one group of partisans who sometimes fought on the side of the Germans. They were Polish farmers by day and partisans by night, and they carried out the orders of the exiled Polish government living in London. We understood that these orders specifically stated that, in addition to ridding themselves of their German conquerors, all Poles were to see to it that no Jews remained in Poland after the war. Their slogan was Polska Bez Zydow or “Poland without Jews.” These were the men of the Armia Krajowa or “Home Army,” known to us as the AK. It seemed to us that the AK had a special status with the Germans because they carried on the work of exterminating the Jews and Communists. From 1942 to 1944 they concentrated on seeking out the hiding places of the Jews and the Communists and butchering those who had successfully hidden from the Germans.”[42]

And about the Lithuanians:

“We couldn’t simply take the law into our own hands anymore because the Russians had sent a patrol of a hundred ‘Green Hat’ border guards to Varena to help quell the Lithuanian partisans. These partisans had never operated during the German occupation but sprang into being when the Germans’ retreat left the Lithuanians to atone for their crimes as Nazi collaborators.”[43]

About 500 000 Jews served in the Red Army, 25 000 to 30 000 were active as partisans.[44] From Schwarz we learn that:

“The total number of Jewish partisans in White Russia and Western Ukraine has been estimated at 10,000 to 11,000; of these, some 3,000 were killed in battle.”[45]

Schwarz further describes what happened to the Jewish partisans when the Red Army advanced:

“Immediately after liberation Jewish partisans were drafted into the Red Army advancing on Germany. There were instances when after the demobilization of partisan detachments virtually all Jews were sent to the front (the Ordzhonikidze, Red Guard, Victory, etc. detachments) [...] In non-Jewish detachments, as a rule, only those were sent to the front who originally had served in the German Wehrmacht and who had not come to the woods before the second half of 1943 — those, in short, who had to atone for their betrayal of the homeland. Partisans in civilian dress, with guerrilla weapons, untrained for such combat conditions, unfamiliar with the tactics of open fighting, were thrown into advanced positions. […] A few who were lucky enough to incur disabling wounds, have survived. Most of the others perished in the battles near Volkovisk, Bialystok, and Lake Narev.”[46]

The Jews in Territories under German Control

Next a little about the Jews that survived in the territories under German control. Both Schwarz and Kahn write about the Jewish family camps in the forests. To give just one example from Kahn:

“When darkness fell, Buczko came to guide us deeper into the forest, crossing lakes and swamps, forcing our way through impenetrable thickets and miles of heavy forest. We arrived at the camp just after dawn. It was an incredible sight. Almost three hundred people were living openly and apparently without fear in the middle of the forest. They laughed and called to one another, the children played noisily, and women prepared breakfast over open fires and cows grazed nearby.”[47]

300 might be considered a small number, but we must remember that Kahn only writes about a relatively small area of southern Lithuania and this is just one of the camps mentioned by him. Schwarz tells us concerning this subject:

“Jews, however, faced an inescapable alternative; death or flight to the woods. Flight was no outing, and many fugitives perished; but to stay on was certain destruction. You did not consider your military qualifications, but sought only to reach the woods. Jews fled with their families, with the aged and infirm, and with small children escaping from ghettos — sometimes in sizable groups — and from death trains. In the eyes of the non-Jewish partisans those unable to bear arms were only a burden. There were thousands such. Thus Jewish ‘family camps’ came into being in the depths of the forest; and along with these, special Jewish detachments to protect the family camps. The organization of exclusively Jewish partisan units was encouraged by the difficulties Jewish combatants encountered when they sought to join non-Jewish detachments.”[48]

According to this description, Jews escaped from “death trains” and special armed groups were set up to protect them in the forest camps, as is confirmed by Kahn. There were also Jewish partisan units close to some of the Aktion Reinhardt (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka) camps, yet nobody thought of interrupting the alleged mass killings going on there! Here yet another quote from Schwarz:

“In some cases partisans were said to have invaded smaller towns to set Jews free from ghettos or camps. Kaganovich mentions four such exploits: in Sverzh, where the Zhukov detachment saved 170 Jews; in Kossovo, where some 300 Jews were liberated by the 51st squad of the Shchors detachment; an assault by one of Kovpak’s detachments on Skalat, Galicia where several hundred Jews were said to have been freed by partisans; and the capture of Molodechno by the Uncle Vanya detachment.”[49]

And finally, also from Schwarz:

“At about the same time a Jewish army officer made a tour of liberated White Russia and failed to find a single Jew either in Gomel or the neighboring towns. Later, when the Red Army advanced farther west, the picture changed somewhat. The Ukrainian provinces west of the Dnieper and the western part of White Russia are densely forested; the woods gave shelter to fugitives and guerrilla fighters. More Jews survived in those parts than had been thought, in some districts as many as several hundred, and all in all several thousand; but most of these were saved by their own enterprise and endurance, only a few having been aided by the local population.”[50]

The last sentence is no doubt a response to certain claims made by Soviet-Jewish propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg:

“The reader will also be deeply moved to note the facts proving Soviet solidarity and the strength of the fraternal bond of nations, expressed in the efforts of many Russians, White Russians, Poles and Ukrainians to rescue Jews from slaughter.”[51]

Rothfels tells us about the efforts made by German organisations to save Jews.[52] Aschenauer also informs us about Jews escaping en masse into the forest from the ghettos of Lublin, Radom, Bialystok and the eastern part of Warsaw district.[53]

We must also consider the change of names from Yiddish to whatever language. Leibke Kaganowicz changed his to Leon Kahn when he entered Canada. Schwarz also writes about name changes, which were made mainly because of the antisemitism during the war years and the post-war climate in the Soviet Union (part two of his book is titled Antisemitism in the USSR).

Leon Kahn remembers that when he reached Lodz, following the war, it was “overflowing with nearly thirty thousand Jewish survivors”.[55] A little further on we read:

“Although it was still illegal, many Jews were finding a refuge in Israel because an escape route, or ‘Bricha’, had already been organized by the Zionists and financed by Canadian and American Jewish organizations. Branches of this route extended into every country in Europe to bring the survivors together in displaced persons’ camps, and then transport them to Israel.”[56]

Bricha, or “Beriha, Brichah etc.”[57] translates into “Flucht” (flight, escape) according to the German Wikipedia entry on the subject. In this article we read that between 1944 and 1948, about 250 000 people were able to escape Eastern Europe, and that Bricha helped at least 80%, i.e., 200 000 Jews to leave. Another Jewish organisation, “Nativ”, operating in Russia, helped Jews from that country to immigrate. In an Ha’aretz article dating from November 4, 2006 we read:

“That is why Nativ was focused and aimed at immigration. And from this point of view, Nativ proved itself. It generated the immigration waves of the 1940s, the 1950s and the 1980s and brought about the immigration of millions of people.”[58]

For “people” we must read “Jews”, since Nativ was a Jewish organization. Further we have the reports of Jews fleeing from Europe and of refugee camps established in Italy and elsewhere.[59] Franz J. Scheidl also writes about Jewish escapees using various routes.[60]

The numbers of how many Jews were ever under German control vary widely, to list them all would draw this article out unnecessarily. This is also not the topic at hand. However, to give but a few examples, Schwarz, who almost exclusively concentrates on the Soviet Union, writes:

“After having risen from 3,100,000 in January 1939 […] to about 5,000,000 […] after the annexation of 1939 and 1940, it was reduced to something in the excess of 1,800,000 […] after the war.”[61]

He seems to have forgotten to subtract the numbers of Jews who were evacuated by the Soviet authorities, and further his total of 1.8 million is wrong. Solzhenitsyn refers to a census taken in the Soviet Union in 1959 which showed that 2 268 000 Jews lived in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn warns, however:

“It is generally known [...] that there are more Jews in the USSR than is shown by the census, since a Jews is allowed to state his nationality of choice, instead of what is shown in his passport.”[62]

Eugene E. Kulischer provides pages of data, showing the movement of peoples, including that of Jews, while relying on an impressive list of sources (in parenthesis, there is not one word about systematic mass killings). It would take too long to cite them all, and thus I will give just the summary:

“Accordingly, the number of Jews compulsorily removed from their homes would be about 2,100,000, or in any case over 2 million, and the total of all uprooted Jews 4,150,000, or in any case over 4 million.”[63]

The total of uprooted includes the Jewish refugees from Poland et al, as well as those that had been evacuated by the Soviets. It does not include the Jews from Hungary, however, or of any Jews uprooted following the publishing of the book, i.e., after mid-1943.

As of 1980, 4 million compensation claims by Jews had been filed and paid.[64] The Aufbau, a Jewish New York publication, informed its readers on June 30, 1965, that the number of claimants had doubled in the last ten years, and by now has reached the number of 3,375,000.[65] Yet we are now told that only about one million individuals are involved.[66] That figure is hardly believable, for in Ha’aretz of December 29, 2005 we read that “As of 2005, 40% of the 400,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel live below the poverty line”.[67] Also, we have a 2003 report, showing that 1,092,000 survivors were still alive at that time.[68] With that many “survivors” still around, it is reasonable to assume that there were many more in 1945, thus, the number of 4 million claimants might not be that far off after all.

Conclusion

Jews served in the Red Army – a number of them were killed – how many we don’t know. Jews fought as partisans – a number of them were killed – how many we don’t know. Jews were deported by the Germans, forced to serve as slave labour – a number of them died – how many we don’t know. Jews fled ahead of the advancing Germans or were evacuated by the Soviet authorities – how many we don’t know. Jews fled via other countries – how many we don’t know. Jews hid in the forest – how many we don’t know. Jews converted to Catholicism – how many we don’t know. Jews were helped to escape/emigrate by the locals – how many we don’t know. Jews changed their names – how many we don’t know. Jews were helped following the war by various organizations to relocate – how many we don’t know. Etc., etc.

It is therefore impossible to construct a “Holocaust by demographics”, because of the many unknowns. Thus, the question: “Well, where are they then?” is a moot question. If we are to believe that “The Holocaust” happened, a solid case for mass murder has to be made. So far this has not been done, and those who claim that “it” did happen, have to realize that it cannot be proven simply by repeating ad nauseam the question: “Well, where are they then?”

In reality, the question is a declaration of bankruptcy, because by asking it is admitted that no solid case for mass murder can be made, for if it were, there would exist no need to ask the question.

[1] W. Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, Olzog, Munich 2004, p. 339.
[2] Ibid., pp. 339-340.
[3] Joint Archive New York, Folder 712. Nota bene: The author of the present article (WH) has gone through the microfilm roll referred to by Maser without finding the corresponding information. This leaves four possibilities: 1) Maser has misrepresented the contents of the folder, for which we see no reason; 2) Maser did not himself access the folder but relied on flawed second-hand information; 3) Maser (or his editor) has stated the wrong folder number; 4) contents have been removed from the folder/microfilm at some time after Maser accessed it. At the moment there is no telling which of these alternatives is correct.
[4] Joint Archive New York, Folder 713.
[5] Louis Rapoport, Hammer, Sichel, Davidstern, Berlin 1992, p. 93.
[6] American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 50, 1948/49, p. 397.
[7] W. Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, op.cit., p. 340. Cf. also A. Hillgruber, “Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung”, in: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Wolfram Wette, Unternehmen Barbarossa, Schöningh, Paderborn 1984, p. 228, n 69: “The estimates of the number of Jews in the Soviet Union in 1941 varies with a difference of over one million. This is foremost due to the unanswered (and now hardly answerable) question of how many Jews were able to escape before the Germans into the unoccupied territories of the Soviet Union. The estimates range between 2.655 million to 1.6 million.”
[8] R. Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Berlin 1982, p. 209, 212, 243.
[9] W. Grossman, I. Ehrenburg, A. Lustinger, Das Schwarzbuch, Reinbeck 1994, p. 1022.
[10] Joint Archive, New York, Folder 424.
[11] Gunnar Heinsohn, Jüdische Sklavenarbeiter Hitlerdeutschlands, Bremen 2001, p.62, footnote 102, referenced in: W. Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, op.cit., p. 340.
[12] A. Solzhenitsyn, Die Juden in der Sowjetunion, Herbig, München, 2003.
[13] JW-2 = Evrejskij mir. Ezegodnik na 1939 g. (The Jewish World Yearbook 1939), Vol. 2: New York: Sojuz russkich evreev v N’ju-Jorke (League of Russian Jews in New York), 1944.
[14] I. Sechtman, Sovetskoe evrejstvo v germano-sovetskoj, in JW-2, p. 225f.
[15] A. A. Goldstejn, Sud’ba evreev v okkupirovannoj nemcami Sovetskoj Rossii, in BRJ-2 (BRJ = Kniga o russkom evrejstve, vol. 2: 1917-1967), p. 89, 92.
[16] Rescue: Information Bulletin of the Hebrew Sheltering and Aid Society, HIAS, July-August 1946, vol. III, Nr. 7-8, p. 2.
[17] S. Svarc, Evrei v Sovetskom Sojuze s nacala Vtoroj mirovoj vojny 1939-1956, New York: Verlag des Amerikanischen Jüdischen Arbeiterkomitees, 1966, p.55.
[18] Mose Kaganovic, Der idiser ontajl in partizanerbavegung fun Sovet-Russland, Central Historical Commission of the Partisan Federation PAKHAKH in Italy, Rome 1948, p. 45f.
[19] A. Solzhenitsyn, Die Juden in der Sowjetunion, op.cit., p. 360.
[20] Eugene M. Kulischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe, published by the International Labour Office, Montreal 1943, p. 99.
[21] Ibid., pp. 58-59.
[22] Franz J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, Dr. Scheidl-Verlag, 1020 Wien, Postfach 61, Österreich, vol. 5, part IV, p. 7.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Hermann Graml in Gutachten des Institutes für Zeitgeschichte, Munich 1958, pp. 79-80.
[25] Martin Broszat in Gutachten des Institutes für Zeitgeschichte, Munich 1958, p. 176.
[26] F.J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, op.cit., p. 8.
[27] The Jewish Pale = Poland, Lithuania, Bessarabia and considerable portions of White Russia, Volhynia and Podolia; cf. S. M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, Syracuse University Press 1951, p. 14.
[28] Itsik Fefer, “Sovetn Rateven Ondetalbn Milyon Idn-‘Forverts’ Kon Es Nit Fartrogn”, in Morgn Frayhayt, October 21, 1945. This was in reply to the Jewish Daily Forward, July 1, 1945. See also Morgn Frayhayt, October 14, 1945. (Schwarz, p. 229, footnote 46).
[29] Eynikayt, May 29, 1945. Fefer, incidentally, had told the Presidium of the Jewish Antifascist Committee as early as August 1944 that the number of Jews Jews in Kiev was nearly 30,000; this was reported in the same Eynikayt, August 24, 1944 (Schwarz, p.229, footnote 47).
[30] Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes 1917-47, New York 1948, p. 260.
[31] J. V. Stalin, O velikoi otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soyuza (Remarks on the Soviet Union’s Great War for the Fatherland), Moscow 1946, p. 14.
[32] Schwarz, p.325, footnote 50: “Kaganovich fails to mention even as much as the date of issuance of the order. Elsewhere (p. 188) he “quotes” an edict of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of he USSR purportedly issued “near the end of 1941″ bearing the signatures of Kalinin and Gorkin and calling upon Soviet authorities to provide for the evacuation of Jews from imperiled areas. No such order was ever issued; the writer apparently was misled by an apocryphal document, which may also have been the case with the order concerning non- combatants.”
[33] B. Slutskii, “Aheym!” (letter from Kazakhstan), Eynikayt, August 23, 1945.
[34] V. Ortenberg, “Zay Gezunt, Uzbekistan”, in Eynikayt, August 23, 1945.
[35] B. Slutskii, “Idn in Kazakhstan” (Jews in Kazakhstan), in Eynikayt, July 3, 1945. See also his “Alma-Ata”, in the issue of January 19, 1946. Similarly, the deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Republic, dealing with the “Rebirth of the Kazakh People” (Eynikayt, February 15, 1947), said of the new Jewish residents: “In the years of the war tens of thousands of people — Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians, Jews — were evacuated from the western provinces to Kazakhstan. [. . . ]. After the war thousands of Jews stayed for good in the prosperous republic, and they work here in the factories and plants, in producers’ cooperatives and scientific institutes, displaying model work heroism.”
[36] B. London, “Idishe Kulturarbet in Magnitogorsk,” (Jewish Cultural Work in Magnitogorsk) in Eynikayt, November 3, 1945.
[37] Eynikayt, December 20, 1945.
[38] S. Rabinovich, “Naye Idishe Yishuvim Zaynen Oysgevaksn in Sovet-Farband” (New Jewish settlements established in outer USSR) in Morgn Frayhayt, December 22, 1946.
[39] In the fall of 1946 Jacob Lestschinsky estimated the number of Jewish refugees and evacuees who “still remained” in Siberia and Central Asia at approximately 250,000 to 300,000, and assumed that up to 250,000 might possibly settle as permanent residents (“Idn in Sovet-Farband: 1946,” in Idisher Kemfer, September 27, 1946, p. 98). The present writer [Schwarz] would make a somewhat lower estimate.
[40] Schwarz, p.347, footnote 47: See A. R. L. Gurland, Glimpses of Soviet Jewry: 1,000 Letters from the USSR and DP Camps. Report on Material Collected by the Union of Russian Jews, Inc., New York City, mimeog., on file with the Library of Jewish Information, American Jewish Committee (June 1948). Solzhenitsyn, Chapter 10, pp. 404ff.
[41] S. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, op.cit., pp. 252-253.
[42] Leon Kahn, No time to Mourn, Ronsdale Press & Vancouver Holocaust Education Society, 2004, p. 115.
[43] Ibid., p. 176.
[44] A. Solzhenitsyn, Die Juden in der Sowjetunion, op.cit., pp. 375-376.
[45] S.M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, op.cit., p. 329.
[46] Ibid.
[47] L. Kahn, No time to Mourn, op.cit., pp. 81-82.
[48] S.M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, op.cit., p.322.
[49] Ibid., p. 325.
[50] Ibid, p. 317.
[51] Ibid, p.315 (quoting Merder fun Felker, Tsveytse Zamlung, Moscow 1945, p. 3).
[52] Hans Rothfels, Die Deutsche Opposition Gegen Hitler, Scherpe Verlag, Krefeld 1951, pp. 42ff.
[53] Rudolf Aschenauer, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Druffel-Verlag, 1982, p. 247.
[54] S.M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, op.cit., pp. 241-367.
[55] L. Kahn, No time to Mourn, op.cit., p. 190.
[56] Ibid., p. 192.
[57] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricha
[58] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/783170.html
[59] Pierre Blet, S.J., Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press New York, 1997, p. 143, 154ff.
[60] Franz J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, Dr. Scheidl Verlag, Wien, 1967, Bd. 5, I. Teil (also footnotes).
[61] S.M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, op.cit., pp. 354-55. In the passages placed within ellipsis, Schwarz provides the number ranking among the various Soviet nationalities.
[62] A. Solzhenitsyn, Die Juden in der Sowjetunion, op.cit., p. 433. Solzhenitsyn refers to I. Domalski, “Technologija nenavisti” (technology of hatred) in: ZuW (Vremja i my. Mezdunarodnyj zurnal literatury i obscestvennych problem, Tel Aviv/New York) 1978, Nr. 26, pp. 113f.
[63] E. Kulischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe, op.cit., p. 113.
[64] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiedergutmachung
[65] Heinrich Härtle, Deutsche und Juden. Studien zu einem Weltproblem, Druffel Verlag Leoni am Starnberger See, 1977, p. 302.
[66] http://www.global- alliance.net/SFPT/GermanGovernmentIndemnificationSummaryJan2001.htm
[67] The Ha’aretz link has since disappeared, all I have is the reference to it on Wikipedia, look under “Survivors’ welfare in Israel”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_Holocaust
[68] Prof. Sergio DellaPergola: http://www.icheic.org/pdf/ICHEIC_demography1.pdf

Two important document sources to which I have had access recently prompt me to write a sequel, with some revisions, to the two articles I have published earlier on the present subject [1], in order to bring the matter up to date.

1) The accusations of Miklos Grüner

In his book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 [2], Miklos Grüner, a Hungarian Jew and former deportee to Auschwitz (ID number A-11104) and to Buchenwald (120762), accuses Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1986, to have appropriated the identity of another Hungarian Jewish inmate of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Lazar Wiesel, as well as the Yiddish publication Un di velt hot geschwign (And the world remained silent) which Lazar Wiesel published in Buenos Aires in 1956. Grüner’s account contains a sizable documentation, parts of which are new, although it must be said that the author’s interpretation of some of these documents appears somewhat questionable.

Grüner’s credentials as a former deportee are beyond reproach. A letter from the Auschwitz Museum dated 7 July 2003 and addressed to him (cf. below) states that the detainee Grüner Miklos, a Hungarian Jew born on 6 April 1928 at Nyiregyhaza, was attributed the Auschwitz ID number A-11104. As far as Buchenwald is concerened, Grüner is mentioned in a “Concentration Camp Inmates Questionnaire” of the Military Government of Germany which I have published in my first article, and in the register of Block 66 to which he had been assigned: ID number (120762), last name and and first name (Grüner Miklos) and the note “U. Jun. A2” which probably means “Ungarischer Junge” (Hungarian boy).[3]

According to his book Night,[4] Elie Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz on 3 June 1944.[5] He spent one night at Birkenau and was moved to Auschwitz the following day here he was tattooed with the ID number A-7713.[6] Yet, according to Wiesel, “it was a beautiful day in April”.[7]

In my first article, I stated that the time sequence is pure invention. If Wiesel did leave his hometown of Sighet on 3 June 1944, he could not have arrived at Auschwitz in April. Moreover, the ID number A-7713 was issued on 24 May when 2,000 Hungarian Jews were assigned the numbers A-5729 through A-7728.[8] In his book, Elie Wiesel writes that he was tattooed as A-7713,[9] a statement he repeated under oath at the trial of the State of California vs. Eric Hunt on 8 July 2008,[10] adding that his father’s number was A-7712.

Grüner disputes, above all, that Elie Wiesel was assigned the Auschwitz ID number A-7713 and his father A-7712. Actually, these numbers were assigned to two Hungarian Jewish inmates who Grüner claims to have befriended – the brothers Lazar and Abraham Wiesel.

The existing documents do not allow any doubt in this matter:

  -  A letter from the Auschwitz Museum to Miklos Grüner, dated 7 July 2003, stating that the detainee with this ID number appears in a list established by the SS Hygiene Institute, dated 7 December 1944 – Monowitz, which provides the following data:

A-11104 Grüner Miklos, Hungarian Jew, born 6.04.28 at Nyiregyhaza
A-7712 Viesel Abram, born 10.10.1900 at Marmarossiget†
A-7713 Wiesel Lazar, born 4.9.1913 at Marmarossiget, locksmith [11]

This list, published by Grüner,[12] is not very helpful, however, as the title is illegible and the significance unclear. It is not even clear what the stamped date of 7 December 1944 refers to, possibly a transfer of these detainees to Monowitz or something else.

  -  A letter dated 15 May 2002 addressed to Grüner by the Buchenwald Memorial (Gedenkstätte) gives the following details:

Lazar Wiesel, born on 4 September 1913 at Maromarossziget, arrived at Buchenwald with a transport from Auschwitz (Buchenwald archives, microfilm Auschwitz, p. 41). On this page, 41, under entry number 2438, you will find the data on Lazar Wiesel: Buchenwald number 123565, born on 4 September 1913, Auschwitz number A-7713. These data are confirmed by the numerical file card at the camp office [Schreibstube].[13] Lazar Wiesel appears on the American questionnaire (NARA Washington, RG 242, microfilm 60) with the number 123165 and a different date of birth (4 October 1928); he went to Paris on 16 July 1945 with a convoy of surviving children (Buchenwald archives, 56-6-12, p. 9). Here, however, there is a disgreement with respect to the numerical file card. The Schreibstube file card numbered 123165 was made out for a Slovenian Jewish detainee, Pavel Kun, who died at Buchenwald on 8 March 1945.”[14]

The list of new arrivals drawn up at Buchenwald on 26 January 1945 (Zugänge vom 26. Januar 1945) for the date in question has, in fact:

2438 123565 Wiesel Lazar 4.9.13
Marmarossziget Schlol.[15] A 7713 [16]”:

Also:

“2372 123488 Viezel Abram 10.10.00
Marmaros Schl. A 7712″[17]:

  -  The personal file card for Lazar Wiesel, which I have published in my first article.

In this document,[18] we have, in the upper left hand corner, the handwritten note “Ung. Jude” (Hungarian Jew), at center: Ausch. A 7713 (Auschwitz A-7713) the former Auschwitz ID number, on the right “Gef.-Nr. 123565” (prisoner number 123565) the new ID number for Buchenwald. The date of birth is given as 4 September 1913.

A registration card for detainees, probably stemming from the Buchenwald archives, has the following data:

“123565
Wiesel Lazar
Political.

Born 4.9.13 at Maromarossiget
Hungarian Jew
26 Januar 1945
apprentice locksmith“:

  -  “Variations account” of Buchenwald from the set of documents entitled “Veränderungsmeldungen Buchenwald”:

“
Datensatz: 9315
Häftlingnr.: 123488 [A 7712]
Name: Viezel, Abraham
geboren: 10.10.00
Nationalität:
Kategorie: polit. Jude
Einlieferung:
gestorben: 02.02.45 in:
Block 57
Meldung vom: 03.02.45“[20]

This means that Abraham Viezel, born 10 October 1900, a political detainee registered as A-7712 at Auschwitz and as 123488 at Buchenwald, died on 2 February 1945 in Block 57 , as reported on 3 February.

For this detainee, there exists a further document concerning his death, giving his ID number, which I have published in my second article.

It is thus an established fact that Lazar Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz and registered there as A-7713, then to Buchenwald where he became 123565, and that his brother Abraham had the Auschwitz number A-7712, the Buchenwald number 123488 and died there on 2 February 1945.

Therefore, these numbers were not assigned to Elie Wiesel and/or his father Shlomo.

Problems arise when we want to trace Lazar Wiesel’s fate at Buchenwald and after this departure from the camp. Actually, this Lazar Wiesel, born at Máramarossziget on 4 September 1913, registered at Buchenwald as 123565, disappears and instead we have a Lázár Wiesel who takes his place, but with a different date of birth and a different ID number.[21]

The “Concentration Camp Inmates Questionnaire” of the Military Government of Germany for the Buchenwald camp does, in fact, mention a Lázár Wiesel, ID number 123165, born on 4 October 1928 at Mármarossziget, in Romania who was interned at Auschwitz for four weeks, at Monowitz for eight months and at Buchenwald where he stayed for a further three months [22] (cf. my second article). On the subject of this Lázár Wiesel, Grüner supplies us with two significant documents. The registry for Block 66 mentioned above, provides the following information:

“[123]565 Wiesel Lazar U. Jun. A 4”[23]:

Furthermore, an excerpt of the list of children moved from Buchenwald to Paris on 16 July 1945 has, under number 405, the entry:

“Wiesel, Lazar, 4/10/28 Marmorossziget, Romanian”[24]:

Grüner explains several times what he believes happened. Lazar Wiesel was assigned to Block 66:

“About a week later, I couldn’t believe my own eyes to see Lazar in our Block 66. He told me that Abraham had passed away four days after our arrival at Buchenwald. He made it clear that he had received special permission to join us children in Block 66, since he was so much older than us.”[25]

A few pages on, he affirms Lazar Wiesel’s presence in Block 66.[26] Nothing strange about that, so far. But then he states in a somewhat confused and enigmatic way:

“From the Archive’s of Buchenwald: Sabine Stein; 08.12.00 and 15.05.02. Stating that: Lazar Wiesel’s identity Number; 123565 according to the Military Government of Germany’s Inmates Questionnaire (NARA Washington, RG 242, film 60) were changed to Number 123165 and the date of birth to 04.10.1928. With this new identity he (Lazar Wiesel) left Buchenwald with a HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] convoy of 675 survived children (S-414) on the 16th of July 1945 to Paris. However there is a noticeable difference of contents between Lazar Wiesel’s original registration card 123563 (???) and the new Number 123165; this latter number originally belonged to a Jewish inmate from Slovakia; Pavel Kun, who died on the 8th of March 1945 in Buchenwald.”[27]

Further along, commenting on the questionnaire mentioned above, Grüner adds:

“Concerning Number: 123165 the inmate “Wiesel Lazar” Male; Born, October 4.-1928 Dated Buchenwald: April 22- 1945 to follow.

This Affidavit [28] was drawn up in good faith to benefit Wiesel Lazar who was originally Born 04.09.1913 in Maramorossziget, and his registered Number in Buchenwald is 123565 was changed to 123165 for reason to suit Wiesel Lazar’s future and the purpose to benefit his coming future.”[29]

Elsewhere, he speaks of a “falsified Buchenwald number 123165”.[30]

Hence, according to Grüner, someone (he does not say who) gave “in good faith (?)” false indications in the questionnaire mentioned. But the reasons he proposes are absolutely ludicrous: In what way would the true date of birth (4 September 1913) and the true Buchenwald ID number (123565) not have suited “Wiesel Lazar’s future” and not benefitted “his coming future”? And how could anyone seriously hope to slip a man of 32 into a convoy of youths bound for Paris by making him 17?

Grüner supplies us with two documents (one page from the list of new arrivals at Buchenwald on 26 January 1945, and a personal file card) from which we can see that the Buchenwald number 123165 was assigned to the detainee Pavel Kun, born on 6.7.1926 at Velka Bytca, registered at Auschwitz as B-14131 who died on 8 March 1945.[31] But why would the number of this detainee have been assigned to Lazar Wiesel by “falsifying” the latter’s real number 123565?

One could also think that this ID number, precisely because it had already been assigned to Pavel Kun, was caused by a mistake – 123165 instead of 123565, but then how are we to explain the date of birth of 4 October 1928?

The questionnaire was surely established by one of the three British officers who are listed at the end of the document and it is not unlikely that they made such a mistake: but then, the detainee in question signed the document personally, using the surname “Wiesel”, thereby accepting the alleged mistake and/or the alleged falsification; hence, in any case, he would be responsible for the deception.

Furthermore, we must take into account the fact that Lázár Wiesel named as a reference a certain Sámuel Jakobovits (or Jakubowits). This young man was born on 2 October 1926, deported to Auschwitz where he was assigned the ID number A-5763 on 24 May 1944 (together with 2,000 other Hungarian Jews who where given the numbers A-5729 through 7728, among them both Abram Wiesel [A-7712] and Lazar Wiesel [A-7713], born on 4.9.1913, but – according to the questionnaire dated 22 April 1945 – also Lázár Wiesel born on 4 October 1928) and then moved to Buchenwald where he was registered as 121761 on 26 January 1945 and also assigned to Block 66.

That Lázár should have named Sámuel as one of three trustworthy persons, is perhaps in better agreement with the hypothesis of a 17-year-old boy giving as a reference a youth of 19 than with the idea that a man, 32 years of age, would name a boy 15 years his junior as a reference.

It is thus difficult to give credence to the falsification of Lazar Wiesel’s personal data, even though this might explain the Lazar Wiesel’s exit and the appearance of Lázár Wiesel. On the other hand, if we are dealing with two different persons, why is the Lázár born on 4 October 1928 not mentioned on the list of the detainees who arrived at Buchenwald from Auschwitz on 26 January 1945? And why is there no trace of his ever having been deported to Auschwitz in the first place?

It is here that we face the riddle of Elie Wiesel. Grüner does not explain in what way he may partly have taken over Lazar Wiesel’s personal data. Maybe on the basis of documents? As we have seen, Lazar Wiesel appears in in a number of documents, but the names of his parents are given only in his personal file for Buchenwald, where his date of birth is still 4 September 1913, however. If he had wanted to turn himself into Lazar Wiesel, Elie would also have had to know the documentation regarding Lázár Wiesel (especially with respect to his story about Block 66, where the youngsters were housed, but then why did he not assume the date of birth of 4 October 1928 as well, to be more convincing? And why did he never speak of either of the two Buchenwald ID numbers (123165 or 123565)?

The alternative to the use of documents is a personal contact. Elie Wiesel may have known Lazar Wiesel and built his own story on the latter’s account, embellished where needed. Here, however, we are moving into the region of conjecture, even though it is likely that the truth will have to be looked for in this direction.

The other possibility – that Elie Wiesel is himself Lazar Wiesel – must be excluded for obvious reasons of chronology: he would now be 97 years of age! On the other hand, why “change” the date of his birth once again, to 30 September 1928, after having “falsified” it to 4 October 1928?

The birth certificate issued by the Romanian authorities on 27 November 1996 for Lazar Vizel, born at Sighet to Solomon Vizel and Sura Feig, does give the date of birth as 30 September 1928 (and not 6 October 1928 as is handwritten at the top of the document, but also typed in the lower part, and as I gave it in my second article: this is the date the document was issued),[32] but does not prove anything because we don’t know to whom it refers, who requested it and why. In particular, even if it were to refer to Elie Wiesel, it could still be based on a self-declaration, as is the case for Elie Wiesel’s father whose name was added to the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names [33] at Yad Vashem on 8 October 2004 at Elie Wiesel’s request.

The relationships between these four persons, which I have set out in my second article, have not yet found a satisfactory explanation:

For Grüner, the whole matter hinges upon the book Un di velt hot geschwign. He asserts that Lazar Wiesel, with the new name of Lázár, wrote a manuscript of 862 pages in Yiddish which the publisher Mark Turkov cut down to 253 pages.[34] The book, according to him was “published in Paris in 1955”[35] and “is a Copyright by the then 43 year old Eliezer Wiesel, Paris. Published 1955, Buenos Aires. The copyright shall prove that he was tattooed in Birkenau with the number A-7713”.[36] Elsewhere, Grüner writes that the book is a “Copyright by Eliezer (in Yiddish the name means the same as Lazar) Wiesel, Paris 1954”.[37] Elie Wiesel, appropriating Lazar Wiesel’s copyright, is said to have published a summary of Un di velt hot geschwign entitled La Nuit in 1958.[38]

However, there is no proof that the author of the Yiddish book really is Lazar Wiesel. Grüner believes this, because on p. 87 of the book the author states that he was assigned the Auschwitz ID number A-7713 [39] and on p. 239 that he was housed at Buchenwald in Block 66,[40] but this is not sufficient to accept beyond doubt that Lazar Wiesel was the author of the book.

On the other hand, why would he have used the name “Eliezer” instead of “Lazar”? It is not correct, as Grüner will have it, that the two names, in Yiddish, “meant the same”: they certainly are not interchangeable. As I have stressed in my second article, while Lazar is indeed a diminuitive of Eliezer, its Yiddish pronunciation sounds more like Leizer or Lozer. Why would Lazar Wiesel, who appears as “Lazar” in all known documents, have chosen to call himself “Eliezer”? This is all the more mysterious, as Wiesel’s naturalization certificate, dated 21 January 1963, is made out for “Lazare” and not for Eliezer.[41]

The question of “copyright” to which Grüner seems to attach so much weight, says nothing about the author of the book. In this connection, it is not at all clear why the “copyright” was issued in Paris if the book actually appeared in Buenos Aires. If Lazar Wiesel was indeed the author, he would have cried out against the blatant plagiarism committed by Elie Wiesel less than two years later, and the publisher Mark Turkov would have sued him (unless, of course, both had somehow entitled Elie Wiesel to do so). But nothing like that happened.

Grüner apparently believes that Elie Wiesel’s alleged plagiarism altered Lazar Wiesel’s original text to a certain degree by inventing false stories and thereby exposing the true survivors to criticism by the revisionists. In this respect, he writes:

“The book “Night” is a masterpiece designed to defame us and our Jewish God, while spreading lies about the Holocaust without any kind of reasonable explanation. To mention the horribly twisted story making account for the huge flames coming from the ditches holding incinerated bodies of men, women and children, without mentioning of course, that they were dead, or that they were under the circumstances, already suffucated to death on arrival at the flaming ditches.”[42]

Elsewhere he notes:

“I had never seen or even come close to ditches burning with open fire, where people or children could be seen burning on my way to the washroom in Birkenau, as written in ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel.”[43]

Hence, Grüner accuses Elie Wiesel to have invented at least the story of the babies being burned “alive” in the cremation trenches, which I have analyzed in my first article.

Actually, though, the same description is given in the Yiddish text, as we can see from a comparison of the two corresponding excerpts (On the left, the excerpt taken from Night [44], on the right, the text as per Un di velt hot geschwign [45]).

The Yiddish text contains another passage, also found in Night (p.41), which raises further doubts on Lazar Wiesel’s authorship. An Auschwitz detainee asks the protagonist about his age:

“‘I’m not quite fifteen yet.’
‘No. Eighteen.’ [...]
Then he questioned my father, who replied:
‘Fifty.’
The other grew more furious than ever.
‘No, not fifty. Forty. Do you understand? Eighteen and forty.’

Why would Lazar Wiesel – who was 31 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz – have stated that he was not yet fifteen? This would mean that he was born in 1929, something that is in disagreement with both Lazar Wiesel (allegedly turned into Lázár Wiesel later) who was born on 4 October 1928 and with Elie Wiesel whose date of birth was 30 September 1928.

In this puzzle, the only thing which is certain is that Elie Wiesel lied about the ID numbers assigned to himself and to his father at Auschwitz – but why would he do that if he and his father actually were deported to Auschwitz? In that case, they would necessarily have been assigned ID numbers different from A-7713 and A-7712, but for what reason would Elie Wiesel have had to hide their real numbers?

As far as Stolen Identity is concerned, Grüner, as we have seen, accuses Elie Wiesel to have discredited the true witnesses by his fantasies, but he himself follows that very same line. We will not go into this aspect of the book and will only present one quotation to back this up:

“They had saved my skin from being turned into lampshades or from being made into a burning torch. Most of all, I was spared from being turned into a cake of soap bearing the initials R.J.F. (reine jüdische fett [46] [sic]) on it.”[47]

 
Carlo Mattogno

10 April 2010

[1] Elie Wiesel: “The Most Authoritative Living Witness” of The Shoah?: http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/02/elie-wiesel-the-most-authoritative-living-witness-of-the-shoah/; Elie Wiesel: New Documents: http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/03/elie-wiesel-new-documents/
[2] Printed in Stockholm, Sweden, 2007 (private printing by the author).
[3] Idem, section entitled The Evidence, figure 2 (no page number). It is not clear whether the letter “A” stands for “Auschwitz”, but one may exclude that “A2” indicated “Auschwitz 2(II)”, because on the same list we have the entry “U. Jun. A8”.
[4] Elie Wiesel, Night, Penguin Books, New York 1981.
[5] Elie Wiesel: “The Most Authoritative Living Witness” of The Shoah?, art.cit.
[6] E. Wiesel, Night, op. cit., pp. 53-54.
[7] Idem, p. 45.
[8] Liste der Judentransporte, Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, microfilm no. 727/27.
[9] E. Wiesel, Night, op. cit., pp. 53-54.
[10] Elie Wiesel: “The Most Authoritative Living Witness” of The Shoah?
[11] Text in Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., figure 18.1; http://kuruc.info/r/6/51815/, figure 17 (in English) and 19 (in Polish).
[12] Idem, figure 19.1-3.
[13] Document 2 published in the first article.
[14] Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., figure 11.1; http://kuruc.info/r/6/51815/, figure 5.
[15] Abbreviation of Schlosserlehrling, apprentice locksmith.
[16] Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., figure 11.3.
[17] Idem, figure 11.5.
[18] NARA, A 3355, RG 242.
[19] Idem, figure 7.1; http://kuruc.info/r/6/51815/, figure 6.
[20] Text in: http://kuruc.info/r/6/51815/, figure 7.
[21] I am writing “Lazar” for the person Wiesel born on 4 September 1913, and “Lázár” for the person Wiesel born on 4 October 1928.
[22] NARA, A 3355, RG 242.
[23] Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., figure 2.
[24] Idem, figure 12.4.
[25] Idem, p. 28.
[26] Idem, p. 49.
[27] Idem, p. 51.
[28] Obviously, the questionnaire cannot be considered to be an “affidavit”, i.e. a declaration under oath.
[29] Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., p. 59.
[30] Idem, p. 34.
[31] Idem, figure 7, 12.1 and 12.3.
[32] Text in: http://kuruc.info/r/6/51815/, figure 8.
[33] http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/IY_HON_Welcome
[34] Idem, p. 43. Actually, the story ends on p. 245, with an explicit “Sof” (The End, in Yiddish). The remaining pages contain publicity (a list of the works published in the series Der poilische jidntum, Polish Judaism).
[35] Idem, p. 44.
[36] Idem, p. 55.
[37] Idem, p. 46. Printing of the book ended on 10 November 1955 and it was published in 1956, it contains the printed indication “Copyright by: Eliezer Wiesel, Paris”, undated.
[38] Idem, p. 44, 46 and figure 17.
[39] Idem, pp. 55-56.
[40] Idem, p. 57.
[41] http://www.codoh.com/forum/download/file.php?id=203&sid=4fe256698b50783e96cf239458dea8d6&mode=view
[42] Idem, p. 45.
[43] Idem, pp. 34-35.
[44] E. Wiesel, Night, op.cit., pp. 43-45.
[45] Eliezer Wiesel, Un di velt hot geschwign, op. cit., pp. 67-70.
[46] R.I.F. (and not R.J.F.) actually stands for Reichsstelle für industrielle Fettversorgung, Reich agency for industrial fat supply.
[47] Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713, op. cit., unnumbered page entitled “In Gratitude”.