Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Lines of Authority
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
Paragraph 7
According to affidavits given by Höss and Friedrich Entress in 1947, 194 the
first gas chambers put into operation in the summer of 1942 (now contradicting
the affidavit of 1946), were makeshift affairs consisting of two old peasant houses
made air tight, with windows sealed up. At the “Auschwitz trial” in 1963-1965 it
was held that the “bunker” in Fig. 29 was one of these early gas chambers. 195 The
nature of later “gas chambers” is examined below.
This is a good point at which to raise objections regarding lines of responsibility
and authority in these operations. Höss says he received his order directly from
Himmler during – we have agreed to pretend – the summer of 1942. This means
that Himmler not only bypassed Glücks, but also Pohl in giving this order directly
to the camp commandant, specifying that Glücks was not to learn what was going
on. Himmler reached three levels or more down to give the order and specified
that Höss was to maintain an impossible secrecy. Most irregular.
That is not all. The story we are offered by the Höss affidavit and testimony
and all other sources is that (except for certain later developments to be discussed)
the German government left the means of killing, and the materials required, a
matter for the judgment and ingenuity of the local camp commandant. Höss decides
to convert two old peasant houses. Höss found the Zyklon kicking around
the camp and decided that it offered a more efficient method of solving the Jewish
problem than that employed at Treblinka, where they had scrounged up some captured
Russian tanks and trucks to use for exterminations.
All of this is idiotic, and Reitlinger is obviously uncomfortable with the “problem”
of the responsibility of the Zyklon decision but gets nowhere with the difficulty
except to make it graver by suggesting that Hitler (!) finally decided on Zyklon
“with misgiving.” 196
Transports to Auschwitz
We are told that those Jews not fit for work were gassed immediately upon arrival
(and hence do not appear in any written records, for the most part), but an
account directly in conflict with this claim appears even in the WRB report.
According to that report, a transport of four to five thousand Jews from Theresienstadt,
traveling as families, arrive at Birkenau in September 1943. They kept
their baggage and were lodged as families in the camp sector designated in Fig.
29. They were allowed to correspond freely, a school was set up for the children,
and the men were not obliged to work. They were considered to be in six months
quarantine. It is said that they were gassed on March 7, 1944, and that “the young
194
195
196
Hilberg, 565; Reitlinger, 158n.
Langbein, vol. 2, 930-931; Naumann, 19 opp.
Reitlinger, 155-158.
139