Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
that everything had been found in good order at Auschwitz, but after signing,
the four Jews “expressed a desire to see the camp of Birkenau and
particularly the crematoria about which they had heard some stories. […]
The commission was then taken to Birkenau […] and immediately to
Crematorium No. 1. Here they were shot from behind. A telegram was
supposedly sent to Holland reporting that after leaving Auschwitz the four
men had been victims of an unfortunate automobile accident.” (pt. I, 38).
16. The area around Auschwitz, within a radius of 100 kilometers, had been
evacuated, and the buildings not to be taken over by the camp were to be
demolished (pt. II, 6).
17. Description of the Auschwitz I hospital and its procedures. In the autumn
of 1942, the hospital mortality rate was so high that Berlin requested an
explanation. An investigation uncovered that the “camp doctor” had been
administering lethal injections to weak and sick people, certain prisoners
condemned to death, and some teenagers considered to be orphans. For
“punishment,” the camp doctor was simply sent to the same job at the
Buna plant (probably meaning Monowitz; the SS continued to provide
some services to the camp administered by Farben) (pt. II, 8-10).
18. As a result of bad treatment, a Jew could not last more than two weeks, irrespective
of his physical condition (pt. II, 12).
19. In the summer of 1942, Jews were being gassed in the birch forest (Birkenwald,
where Birkenau was located) in special sealed buildings giving
the impression of showers. Because the crematories were not completed,
the bodies were buried in mass graves, causing putrefaction. In the autumn
of 1942, the four crematories were completed, and many bodies
were exhumed and burned (this is the Polish major’s account, contradicting
that of the two young Slovakian Jews, who said that part of the new
crematories were put into operation in February 1943 and that prior to that
date bodies were burned in trenches) (pt. II, 16-17).
20. Details on how it was decided exactly when to execute somebody already
condemned to death (pt. II, 16-17).
The foregoing is effectively illustrative of the contents of the WRB report. It is
a mixture of truth, guess-work, and invention, the factual part of which could have
been, and obviously was, put together on the basis of inside information available
in 1944.
The contradiction in the two accounts of exterminations serves to enhance the
credibility of the claim that these are unsolicited reports of escaped inmates, but it
is not clear that such increased credibility was the motivation for composing the
report thus. The first version, that large crematories were in operation at Birkenau
in early 1943 and that mass cremations took place in trenches before that date, is
the one subsequently put forward (and the correct one in regard to the date of
availability of the crematories) but the second version of mass graves might have
some truth in it also, because there had been a typhus epidemic in the summer, at
a time when inadequate crematory facilities existed.
Reitlinger uses the WRB report as a source. This is not entirely justified, but it
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