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Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

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234 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR<br />

velopments,” some <strong>of</strong> them possibly gradual, possibly discontinuous, or<br />

into “public signals” and “green lights” for Hitler, or into a vague “telepathic”<br />

intuition. This latter parapsychological conjecture was expounded<br />

by Raul Hilberg in 1983 at the Avery Fisher Hall: 669<br />

“But what began in 1941 was a process <strong>of</strong> destruction not<br />

planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There<br />

was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures.<br />

They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came not so<br />

much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting <strong>of</strong> minds, a<br />

consensus-mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.”<br />

Höß’ declaration on the subject <strong>of</strong> the Führerbefehl, which mainstream<br />

<strong>Holocaust</strong> historiography had tenaciously clung to for decades,<br />

had been thrown quietly overboard by the functionalists with the result<br />

we have just discussed. But one had to wait until 1999 for a drastic revision<br />

<strong>of</strong> “the older research literature” by Karin Orth’s article on Rudolf<br />

Höß. 670 In it Orth pushed back the alleged order by Himmler calling<br />

Höß to Berlin by one year into June <strong>of</strong> 1942.<br />

Another fundamental testimony which has disappeared from the<br />

mainstream debate about the <strong>Holocaust</strong> is the one by SS-Hauptsturmführer<br />

Dieter Wisliceny, who had been Eichmann’s representative in<br />

Slovakia. His deposition in Nuremberg (3 January 1946) was widely<br />

used by the early <strong>Holocaust</strong> historiography, especially with respect to<br />

the alleged confidential remark ascribed to Eichmann that “he would<br />

leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had 5 million<br />

people on his conscience would be for him a source <strong>of</strong> extraordinary satisfaction.”<br />

671 Wisliceny is today remembered only for having supplied<br />

the fateful figure <strong>of</strong> 5-6 million Jewish victims, even though a little earlier<br />

he had declared that at least 4 million Jews had come within the<br />

scope <strong>of</strong> the “final solution,” but that he did not know how many had<br />

survived. Actually, the Jews able to work were not subjected to this “final<br />

solution,” e.g. the 25-30% <strong>of</strong> some 450,000 Hungarian Jews deported<br />

to Auschwitz, 671 hence the number <strong>of</strong> victims is less than 4 million.<br />

This brings us back to the Führerbefehl. During the same hearing<br />

669<br />

670<br />

671<br />

Newsday, Long Island, New York, 23 February 1983, p. II/3. Quoted by R. Faurisson,<br />

Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998), Édition privée hors commerce, Vichy 1999, vol. III,<br />

pp. 958f.<br />

Her own words, K. Orth, “Rudolf Höß und die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage.’ Drei Argumente<br />

gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941,” in: Werkstatt Geschichte, 18. November<br />

1999, pp. 45–57.<br />

IMT, vol. IV, p. 371.

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