Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 3: Washington and New York
Vrba mentions a second Himmler visit (pages 15-19; the visit seems to correspond
to the March 1943 visit of dignitaries from Berlin) in January 1943 to witness
the gassing of 3,000 Polish Jews. The event was scheduled for 9 AM, but
Himmler took until 11 AM to finish breakfast, so the 3,000 Jews had to wait two
hours in the gas chamber. Himmler finally witnessed the gassing in a cheerful and
relaxed mood, chatting with the commandant and others, occasionally throwing a
glance through the peep-hole to observe the Jews being gassed.
The book manages to maintain this utterly incredible tone throughout, as you
can verify by reading it, if you can stand it.
Reitlinger does not cite Vrba’s book in any connection in the second edition of
his book. He still writes of Vrba as the author of the “most important” part of the
WRB report, the first section, although the data offered shows that this role should
be attributed to Wetzler. It does not appear important or relevant to Reitlinger that
Vrba was only 18-years-old when, as he claims, he started collecting the numerical
and other data concerning the transports to Auschwitz with the intention of
making this information available to the outside world.
There has been no claimed break, so far as I know, in the anonymity of the
Polish major. In an article in Suhl’s book, Erich Kulka of the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem offers names for the two authors of the supplementary section
(Czezlaw Mordowicz who changed his name to Petr Podulka and Arnost Rosin
who changed his name to Jan Rohác), but I know nothing of these people other
than that they remained quiet about their heroic exploits for an even greater number
of years than Vrba and Wetzler did. Moreover, neither Elias, nor Soos, nor
Vrba (as Vrba or as Rosenberg), nor Weissmandel appeared as witnesses in any of
the Nuremberg trials, despite the sometimes contested role played by Document
011-L at those trials.
The records of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen, West Germany,
report that two Jews named Wetzler and Rosenberg did escape on April 7, 1944,
and this agrees with the Kalendarium published by the Polish government in 1964
as number 7 of Hefte von Auschwitz, which also declares that two Jews named
Mordowicz and Rosin escaped on May 27, 1944. Because there were many successful
escapes from Auschwitz during this period (many, many more than Vrba
seems to think there were – compare page 217 of Vrba with Garlinski’s remarks
about escapes), this data may well be correct, but it still does not authenticate the
authorship of the WRB report, especially because we are told today that after escaping
the four Jews adopted aliases for concealment purposes and that three of
the four retained these different names after the war rather than reassume their
real names.
The details behind the manufacture of the WRB report will probably never be
completely uncovered, but it is entirely possible that its creators went to great
lengths in simulating a report miraculously smuggled to Slovakia and then to
Switzerland. If it was written in Slovakia, then it seems clear that Rabbi Weissmandel
should be credited with at least co-authorship. It is also possible that, as
claimed, the report was given to the Papal Charge d’affaires in Slovakia, Giuseppe
Burzio, and that it was forwarded by him to Rome. It is clear that Burzio was
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