Re: If they lied about the German 'camp gassings'...for soooo long....


"Mel Rowing" <mel.rowing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1188587470.838770.290160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 31 Aug, 19:02, "onlyme" <onlyme_sitt...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Mel Rowing" <mel.row...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message


[something....but his head was so far in the sand, we could not make it
out....]

Meanwhile.....

http://www.historiography-project.org/misc/hoess.html

(perhaps if the site title doesn't contain the word 'islam' that the racist
Rowing found easy to mock...)


Rudolf Höss: Pillar of the Holocaust extermination thesis
In recent years, the focal point of claims of mass extermination of Jews and
others by poison gas by the Nazis during the Second World War has been two
camps in what is now Poland: the Auschwitz main camp and Auschwitz II, also
known as Birkenau.

One of the main reasons for this focus is the post-war testimony of one man:
Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. Höss served as Commandant at Auschwitz
from its inception until his transfer in December 1943, although he returned
briefly in 1944.

In the quasi-official Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, editor Yisrael
Gutman, Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and Chairman of Yad Vashem's Academic Committee, highlights the
role played by Höss in establishing the current view of the gas chamber:

The critical importance of the Höss testimony stems not just from Höss's
unique knowledge of the details and overall picture of the camp. His
testimony is crucial mainly because Höss answers the question not only of
who carried out the mass murders, but also when and how, who ordered the
conversion of Auschwitz into a death camp, and who backed this order with
the necessary authority.

In a later chapter that deals exclusively with Höss, contributing author Dr.
Aleksander Lasik of the College of Pedagogy in Bydgoszcz (Poland) writes:

More than any other Nazi concentration camp commandant, Rudolf Höss has
been sharply etched in history. The man who founded and commanded Auschwitz
appears in the index of virtually every book dealing with the fate of
European Jews during the Second World War. His personality has been studied
by psychologists and sociologists, and his autobiography has served as the
basis for a novel.

Telford Taylor recollected the profound impact of Höss' testimony at the
International Military Tribunal war crimes trial at Nuremberg (IMT), where
he served as prosecutor and later American chief counsel:

The awful scale of the Nazi terror [inferred from Höss' testimony] -
produced by a Führer to whom the defendants had pledged and given their
allegiance, and by Himmler, Heydrich, Pohl, Mueller, and other leaders of
the Nazi government - cast a pall of shame over the defendants and their
counsel. No wonder Dr. [Viktor] von der Lippe described the effect of the
Höss testimony as "crushing" (niederschmetternd).

Steven Paskuly, editor of a recent edition of Höss' memoirs, states:

Rudolf Höss's memoirs are perhaps the most important document attesting to
the Holocaust, because they are the only candid, detailed, and essentially
honest description of the plan of mass annihilation from a high-ranking SS
officer intimately involved in carrying out of Hitler's and Himmler's plan.

Paskuly later informs the reader that, "Höss was one of the few who could,
and also would give precise information about every aspect of the mass
killings. In fact, he answered everything asked of him."

Höss confesses
On March 11, 1946, the British took Höss into custody and immediately began
questioning him. Höss signed a statement under oath in German (later given
document number NO-1210 by the IMT) on March 14 (March 15?) at 2:30 in the
morning. Two days later on March 16, Höss signed a statement under oath in
English:

I personally arranged on orders received from Himmler in May 1941 the
gassing of two million persons between June/July 1941 and the end of 1943
during which time I was commandant of Auschwitz.

Höss later signed an affidavit that was quoted extensively at the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. It was this affidavit that
laid the foundation for and later validated the extermination story of
Auschwitz. The affidavit, in English, dated April 5, 1946, read in part:

I, RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HOESS, being first duly sworn, depose and say as
follows: 2. I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that
at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing
and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and
disease making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about
70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder
having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp
industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000
Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages
by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports
operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total
number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of
citizens, mostly Jewish from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000
Hungarian Jews alone in the summer of 1944.

Ten days later on April 15, 1946, when Höss testified at the Nuremberg
trial, portions of the affidavit were read to him, and he reaffirmed their
accuracy:

On April 18, 1946, revelations by Höss of all-but-unimaginable crimes
convinced defendant Hans Frank, who had served as Governor General of
occupied Poland, to accept a portion of the guilt for the mass murder
described by Höss.

DR. SEIDL: Did you ever participate in the annihilation of Jews?

FRANK: I say "yes;" and the reason why I say "yes" is because, having
lived through the 5 months of this trial, and particularly after having
heard the testimony of the witness Höss, my conscience does not allow me to
throw the responsibility solely on these minor people.

Höss' sworn testimony figured prominently in the decision of the Tribunal.
In their Opinion and Judgment, the judges declared:

With regard to Auschwitz, the Tribunal heard the evidence of Höss, the
commandant of the camp from May 1, 1940 to December 1, 1943. He estimated
that in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2.5 million persons were
exterminated, and that a further 500000 died from disease and starvation.
Höss described the screening for extermination by stating in evidence -

"We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming
transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the
doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit
for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the
extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated
since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another
improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost
always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored
to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing
process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we
sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women
would hide their children under their clothes, but of course when we found
them we would send the children in to be exterminated."

He described the actual killing by stating:

"It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death
chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were
dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one half-hour
before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were
removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from
the teeth of the corpses."

Höss also elaborated on his earlier statement concerning his victims, in a
hand-written note signed and dated May 14, 1946, that explicitly stated the
numbers of Jewish deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau:

I declare herewith under oath that in the years 1941 to 1943, during my
tenure in office as commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, 2 million
Jews were put to death by gassing and 1/2 million by other means.

This document has been on display at the taxpayer-funded U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (see below). The April 1993 US Holocaust
Memorial Museum Newsletter, page eight refers to this statement as "stark
evidence of the magnitude of the killing operation."

On May 8, 1945, the Soviet "Extraordinary State Commission" issued its
estimate that the number of victims at Auschwitz and Birkenau had been four
million. The subsequent Polish Commission investigation into the numbers of
victims, which ran from 1945 to 1946, agreed with the Soviet report. In
1947, the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland condemned Höss in part for the
deaths of between three and four million people. Later, Höss attempted to
reduce his estimate of the Auschwitz death toll to 1.13 million, but it did
him no good. On the basis of this verdict, Polish authorities executed Höss
at Auschwitz. In 1991, Kazimierz Smolen, long-time director of the State
Auschwitz Museum, declared, "In my view, no one can deny the number of 4
million."

Höss' memoirs, written between October 1946 and April 1947 while Höss was in
a Polish prison, have been translated into many languages.

Imperfect witness
Given the magnitude of the crime, and Höss' position as one of the leaders
of the alleged perpetrators, it is not surprising that historians have made
widespread use of Höss' testimonies. Raul Hilberg, who had relied on Höss
extensively in the first edition of his book, The Destruction of the
European Jews, testified under oath at the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel:

He [Höss] was credible in some respects. In fact, in most respects, under
most circumstances in which he made statements.

Gutman concurs:

Despite some inaccuracies due to tricks of memory, the general reliability
of his testimony remains beyond doubt.

It is noteworthy that many prominent historians find fault with Höss as a
witness, yet continue to use him, and allow him to continue to be used by
others.

Authors who paraphrase documents can more easily skip Höss' embarrassingly
inaccurate passages. Authors who quote Höss directly, however, have been
forced either to quote him out of context, or to attempt to reconcile the
differences between Höss' version and the facts. Others have been more
cautious in their support of Höss the witness. In 1992, author István Deák,
Professor of History at Columbia University, wrote: "Like many other Nazi
leaders, Höss had little sense of statistical reality "

Specific examples abound of attempts at reconciliation between Höss'
testimony and known facts. Editor Stephen Paskuly "corrects" Höss' memoirs a
number of times, for such things as the existence of extermination sites in
the USSR (p. 27). Höss' claim that Eichmann gave orders to kill the
Sonderkommando (work detail) after each large extermination action (p. 31),
the numbering of the crematory buildings at Auschwitz/Birkenau (p. 32),
various dates (pp 33, 34, and 36), crematory capacity (p. 45), and the
numbers of Jews who escaped gassing because of logistical problems arising
from the war (p. 47).

Paskuly's edition of Höss' memoirs contains a passage that is not included
in previous published editions:

Jews who were taken to the camp by order of Eichmann's office - RSHA IV
B4 - were designated as "Transport-Juden." The reports that announced the
arrival had the following notice: "This transport is to be included in the
given orders and is subject to special treatment [Sonderbehandlung]." The
Jews previous to this, i.e., before the orders for extermination were
issued, were labelled "Shutzhaft" [protective custody], or Jews who belonged
to one of the other categories of prisoners.

Although Höss attached no date to this shift in policy, it clearly
contradicts his characterization of a supposedly secret meeting in Berlin
with Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1941. At this meeting, Himmler
allegedly assigned Höss a key role in the forthcoming mass extermination of
the Jews, with more details soon to come from Adolf Eichmann, at that time
an SS Major of the Reich Security Police (RSHA), in charge of the office
dealing with Jewish affairs. Höss claimed that Eichmann visited him at
Auschwitz a short time later, and the two of them spoke of the approximate
numbers of Jews to be exterminated, how to carry out the extermination, and
where the first exterminations were to be performed (a building that is now
referred to as Bunker 1). Höss further claimed that the first transports of
Jews to be exterminated arrived sometime between September 1941 and January
1942, and were immediately gassed. This discrepancy may explain the omission
of the passage from other editions of the memoirs. Paskuly offered no
explanation for why this passage was excised in previous editions, or what
Höss must have meant by writing this.

Under cross-examination in 1985, Hilberg was forced to admit that he, too,
edited out portions of Höss' testimony that he considered ridiculous,
without informing the reader of the omissions.

Other parts of Höss' testimony have created similar problems for those
attempting to support Holocaust extermination claims. When questioned in
Minden, on March 14, 1946, three days after his capture, Höss stated, "It
was only in 1942 that the new crematoria were completed." Professor Eugen
Kogon, author of works on National Socialism and the Nazi concentration
camps, wrote, "In reality, as we have seen, it was only the following year
[1943]. While the later date is correct, Kogon offers no reason why Höss
would be so far off on a date of such major importance.

Frenchman Jean-Claude Pressac, a pharmacist-turned-investigator into
extermination claims at Auschwitz-Birkenau, compared Höss to other accounts
and contemporaneous documents, and found Höss wanting. Pressac takes issue
with Höss on the capacity of the gas chamber at Auschwitz I, on how long it
took to make the holes in the roof of the alleged gas chamber at Auschwitz
I, and the capacity of Bunker I. Without being specific, Pressac also
alludes to "the involuntary errors found throughout his [Höss']
autobiography."

Faced with the choice of either discarding Höss' testimony or "interpreting"
it in such a way as to make it appear that it supports any given version of
the Holocaust extermination thesis, when in fact it does not, most
traditional historians have chosen to "interpret" Höss, in order to avoid
losing an SS witness to the alleged mass gassings. Franciszek Piper, head of
the department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland, notes that:

Estimates based on Höss's testimony vary widely: [Raul] Hilberg and [E.]
Crankshaw -- one million; [Leon] Poliakoff, [Lucy] Dawidowicz, [Martin]
Gilbert, and [J.] Billig, - two million; [Yehuda] Bauer -- 2.5 million;
Encyclopaedia Judaica -- one to 2.5 million; and [A.] Weiss -- 1.2 to 2.5
million. One exception is [Eugen] Kogon, who put the number of victims of
Auschwitz at 3.5 to 4.5 million.

Although Piper's analysis is flawed by his failure to distinguish between
Jewish and non-Jewish victims, his point is well taken: not all of these
estimates can be correct.

Part of the discrepancy among death tolls can be ascribed to the fact that
there were two other commandants at Auschwitz between the time of Höss'
transfer in December 1943, and January 1945 when the camp fell into the
hands of Soviet troops. If there was a policy of mass extermination of Jews,
it wouldn't have ended with Höss' departure. Höss himself testified that
mass executions continued under subsequent camp commanders. This would mean
that to Höss' figures must be added the numbers of alleged victims in 1944
and early 1945. This problem has become even more acute as increasing
numbers of Holocaust scholars lower the estimates of murder victims at
Auschwitz to around one million, although some such as Gerald Reitlinger and
Pressac go even lower. Recently released death books from Auschwitz, though
incomplete, indicate a total death toll of around 150,000 people.

Other discrepancies are just as damaging. For example, on April 5 Höss swore
under oath:

The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete
extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish
extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were
already in the general government three other extermination camps; BELZEK,
TREBLINKA, and WOLZEK I used Cyclon B, which was crystallized Prussic Acid
which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening

This short quote shows several examples why historians have had to
"interpret" Höss before making use of him as one of the key witnesses to the
Holocaust.

First, it is utterly incorrect to define the Nazi "Final Solution" (of the
Jewish question) with a policy of mass murder. As Mark Weber has written:

At the end of the Second World War, the Allies confiscated a tremendous
quantity of German documents dealing with Germany's wartime Jewish policy,
which was sometimes officially referred to as the "final solution." But not
a single German document has ever been found which even refers to an
extermination program. To the contrary, the documents clearly show that the
German "final solution" policy was one of emigration and deportation, not
extermination.

While it might be argued that Höss was not aware of Nazi policy, or that for
him extermination was the "Final Solution", it is more to the point that
historians such as Reitlinger quote Höss on this matter apparently in an
attempt to discount the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Second, according to the traditional version of the Holocaust, Belzec did
not begin exterminations until March 1942, and Treblinka was not ready until
July 1942. It would have been impossible for Höss to know of the existence
of Treblinka as an already-functioning death camp in 1941.

Third, there never was a camp by the name of "Wolzek." It is a complete
fabrication. Under cross-examination at the 1988 trial of German-Canadian
Ernst Zündel, prominent Holocaust scholar Christopher Browning, appearing
for the prosecution, acknowledged, "There is no such camp that I know of. I
don't think that that testimony is accurate. I don't think it's compatible
with other testimony we have."

Last but not least, Zyklon B is not crystallized Prussic acid. It is Prussic
acid (hydrocyanic acid) that has been absorbed into an inert, porous
material such as wood pulp or diatomaceous earth. It is also worth noting
that none of the structures currently put forward as having been used as
Nazi gas chambers has only one opening for the introduction of the Zyklon B,
and Höss seems to be saying that there was only one "gas chamber."

Time problems
Arbitrarily "correcting" dates contained in Höss' testimony to support the
standard version of Holocaust extermination claims creates new problems. In
1940, Höss was made Commandant of the then-new Auschwitz facility. In March
1941, Himmler made his first inspection, and three months later Germany
invaded the Soviet Union. In 1942, construction started on the crematories
at Birkenau, and Höss was promoted to Lt. Colonel after a second two-day
inspection visit by Himmler.

Each of these events must have stood out in Höss' memory as landmarks, and
it would have been very difficult for him to err in recounting his alleged
visit to Treblinka as having taken place in 1941, as he did numerous times
in different testimonies.

Motivation
We now know that Höss was beaten almost to death by Jewish members of the
British Field Police upon capture. His captors threatened to deport Höss'
wife and children to Siberia, and Höss himself was badly mistreated until he
gave his "affidavit" and "testimony."

Clarke yelled: "What is your name?"

With each answer of "Franz Lang," Clarke's hand crashed into the face of
his prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Höss broke and admitted who he
was.

The admission suddenly unleashed the loathing of the Jewish sergeants in
the arresting party whose parents had died in Auschwitz following an order
signed by Höss.

The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body.
He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to
Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer
urged the Captain: "Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse."

The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was
swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Höss and he was made to walk
completely nude through the prison yard to his cell.

It took three days to get a coherent statement out of him. But once he
started talking, there was no holding him.

One of Höss' torturers told what happened during those three days:

We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our
job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his
resistance," said Mr. Jones. When Höss was taken out for exercise, he was
made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shire in the bitter cold. After
three days and nights without sleep, Höss finally broke down and made a full
confession to the authorities.

He also spoke of his mistreatment in his memoir:

I was treated terribly by the [British] Field Security Police. I was
dragged to Heide and, of all places, to the same military barracks from
which I had been released eight months before by the British. During the
first interrogation they beat me to obtain evidence. I do not know what was
in the transcript, or what I said, even though I signed it, because they
gave me liquor and beat me with a whip. It was too much even for me to bear.
The whip was my own. By chance it had found its way into my wife's luggage.
My horse had hardly ever been touched by it, much less the prisoners.
Somehow one of the interrogators probably thought that I had used it to
constantly whip the prisoners.

After a few days I was taken to Minden on the Weser River, which was the
main interrogation center in the British zone. There they treated me even
more roughly, especially the first British prosecutor, who was a major. The
conditions in the jail reflected the attitude of the first prosecutor.

Surprisingly, after three weeks I was shaved, my hair was cut, and I was
allowed to wash myself. My handcuffs had not been opened since my arrest.
The next day [March 31-April 1, 1946] I was taken by car to Nuremberg
together with a prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a
witness in Fritzche's defense.

That prisoner of war was Moritz von Schirmeister, the personal press attaché
of Joseph Goebbels. During their journey together to Nuremberg, Von
Schirmeister asked Höss about his confession, to which Höss replied:

Certainly, I signed [a statement] that I killed two and a half million
Jews. But I could just as well have signed that it was five million Jews.
After all, there are certain methods by which any confession can be
obtained, whether it is true or not.

Skepticism
Few historians have been willing to examine the implications of Höss'
torture. Raul Hilberg, who quotes Höss 42 times in the first edition of his
book, The Destruction of European Jews, testified when cross-examined by
Doug Christie in the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel that he failed to mention
the fact that Höss had been tortured in his 800-page book with 3,000
footnotes, because:

I did not consider relevant the question of torture in any matter, if it
was torture. All we have is his [Höss'] statement, his allegation. That's
all we have.

In the Zündel trial of 1988, Christopher Browning testified that he thought
he had read that Höss was tortured, but did not know if the allegation was
true. It is remarkable that two leading Holocaust historians would feign
ignorance of or disinterest in Höss' claims of torture, on the basis that
such claims were uncorraborated, and that they would do so under oath, after
the 1983 publication of Legions of Death and a1986 article in the Wrexham
Leader, which provide corroboration.

Some historians are finally admitting that Höss' liabilities as a witness
are so great that they can no longer be ignored. The figures of dead he gave
for Auschwitz were totally false, and today, death estimates range downward
from the current "official" figure of 1.5 million. With the growing impact
of Holocaust revisionism, more people have been willing to look critically
at Holocaust claims, many for the first time. Leftist British writer
Christopher Hitchens is one such person. After learning that there were
questions about Höss' testimony, Hitchens wrote:

The revisionists sent me an article by a Frenchman named Robert Faurisson,
which claimed that Rudolf Höss, one of the commandants of Auschwitz, had
been tortured by the British into confessing to a fantastic and unbelievable
number of murders This statement, specially mounted and reproduced, is an
important exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial. I then got in touch with
[Deborah] Lipstadt and [Christopher] Browning for their responses, which
were surprising: "Höss was always a very weak and confused witness," said
Browning, who has been an expert witness at trials involving Auschwitz. "The
revisionists use him all the time for this reason, in order to try and
discredit the memory of Auschwitz as a whole." And Professor Lipstadt
directed me to page 188 of her book [Denying the Holocaust], which is quite
a page. It says that the stories about the Nazis making Jews into soap are
entirely untrue, and it also says that while the memorial stone at Auschwitz
itself lists the number of victims - Jews and non-Jews - at four million,
the truer figure is somewhere between 1.5 and two million. Since Höss was
the commandant of the place for only part of its existence, this means
that - according to the counter-revisionists - an important piece of
evidence in the Holocaust Memorial is not reliable. A vertiginous sensation
if you like.

Browning's attempt to link Höss' prominence to revisionist scholarship is a
transparent misrepresentation of the facts, especially in light of
Browning's own use of Höss testimony, which he knew to be flawed. It is
through the efforts of revisionist scholars, questioning testimony such as
that of Rudolf Höss, that we have begun to understand the true value of
Höss' statements.

Changing story
The lack of care with which many historians approach Holocaust sources such
as the Höss affidavit shows the intensity of the ideological forces
promoting Holocaust extermination claims -- right or wrong.

For more than 30 years, Rudolf Höss has been the best witness to Auschwitz
gassing claims. In many ways, the entire weight of claims of mass gassing
rests on his testimony; with Höss removed from the chain of evidence, there
is no link among various scattered documents and testimonies that combine to
provide the "proof" of Nazi gassings.

Even so, there is little doubt that historians will continue to refer to
Rudolf Höss when speaking of Auschwitz, whether out of sloth and ignorance
of the truth, or out of a desperate attempt to prop up the Auschwitz
extermination legend in the absence of real evidence.




.

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