Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 3: Washington and New York
The Shirer story cites a March 7 report from the Polish government in London
as the source for the statements about Auschwitz. This is the earliest reference
that I know of to Auschwitz in the propaganda. The only candidate for an earlier
claim that I know of appears in The Black Book of Polish Jewry, J. Apenszlak,
ed., 1943. Pages 56 and 59 tell of reports in the “East London Observer” in early
1942 that the ashes of Jews who had been sent to Auschwitz were being returned
to their relatives (contradicting post-war propaganda). However, as far as I have
been able to determine, the East London Observer did not exist. The Black Book
does not claim exterminations at Auschwitz but speaks of exterminations via
gasmobile at Chelmno (pages 115-117, in agreement with later claims); via electrocution
in baths at Belzec followed by burial (page 131, not in agreement);
through being left in freight cars for days near Belzec followed by burning
(pages 137-138, not in agreement); via steam baths at Treblinka followed by
burial (page 143, not in agreement; the Diesel engine whose exhaust gases were
used for killing in later versions of the story is used for digging the graves in
The Black Book).
There remains one source which conveys the impression that Auschwitz appeared
in the extermination propaganda early in 1943 or even earlier. This is the
book The Devil’s Chemists by Josiah DuBois, whom we have encountered as a
wartime Treasury official. At the NMT after the war, DuBois was the chief prosecutor
in the Farben trial, and his book is his account of the trial and such other
matters that he considered relevant. According to him, a message dealing with
Auschwitz crossed his desk in November 1942. The message transmitted the contents
of a note, a “crumpled testament of despair,” which had allegedly been written
by a worker-inmate at Auschwitz and then passed along underground in handto-hand
relay to Bern:
“We worked in the huge ‘Buna’ plant. […] There was a chain of sentry
posts overlooking every 10 square meters of workers, and whoever stepped
outside was shot without warning as ‘having attempted to escape.’ But attempts
were made every day, even by some who tried to crawl past the sentries
because they could no longer walk.”
The note also applied to Farben’s Ter Meer “stereotyped images of swastika
and riding crop and fixed sneer.” (which had not characterized Ter Meer at any
time during his life). The claimed origin and history of the note make the whole
thing appear rather silly, but one should note the strong element of fact in the
note: at approximately this time, many workers at Auschwitz were indeed not in a
condition to work or even walk. Thus, this message was not really extermination
propaganda, and we cannot be certain that it really existed, but if it did, all it suggests
is that the propagandists were well aware, in late 1942, of what was happening
at Auschwitz.
DuBois then proceeds to misinform his reader that the two messages of January
and April 1943 from Harrison to the State Department, discussed above, dealt
with Auschwitz, i.e. it was at Auschwitz that 6,000 were allegedly being killed
every day. In reporting this, DuBois is simply passing along misinformation. His
motive seems to be that, as the prosecutor in the Farben case, he was attempting to
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