Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
1943 for attempting to leave the Netherlands without authority. In September
1943, he and his family were shipped to Auschwitz, and he was separated from
his family, which he never saw again. He later wrote a book, Human Behavior in
the Concentration Camp, based on his experiences as a member of the hospital
staff at Auschwitz I. Because Cohen’s contact with the people who were being exterminated
was of a doctor-patient nature, it was necessary to produce an extraordinarily
descriptive term for his book, and “objective” was as good a choice as
any.
Cohen interprets certain selections in the hospital as selections for the gas
chamber: 204
“After the ‘HKB (camp hospital) administrative room’ had given warning
that the camp physician was about to make a selection, the whole block became
a hive of activity, for everything had to be spic-and-span […] while everybody
stood at attention, he made his entry with his retinue: SDG (medical
service orderly), Blockälteste and block clerk. The sick Jews were already
lined up – as a matter of course, naked. Simultaneously with the presentation
of the card with the personal notes concerning each prisoner, to the camp physician,
the block physician, in whose ear the diagnosis was being whispered by
the room physician, introduced the patient in question to him […] in 90 per
cent of the cases the card was handed to the SDG, which meant death by gassing
for the patient, unless the political department gave orders to the contrary,
which frequently occurred in the case of ‘Schutzhäfltinge’ (people
charged with ordinary crime).
Not only emaciated prisoners, but also some who looked well fed were
sometimes consigned to the gas chamber; and occasionally even members of
the HKB staff, who were officially exempt, had to suffer a similar fate. Therefore,
especially when one considered the ‘medical style’ of the camp physician,
it was generally supposed that it was not only people incapable of work who
were scheduled for killing, but that the decisive factor must be that a certain
number of persons had to be gassed.
Officially no one knew what the final object actually was, not even the staff
of the administrative room, for after the names of the gassed the initials S.B.,
short for ‘Sonderbehandlung’ (special treatment) were placed.”
Cohen does not report having seen any gas chambers; the only evidence which
he draws on to support a “gassing” interpretation of such scenes (such interpretation
certainly not being evident from the raw facts) consists in the post-war claim
of extermination at Auschwitz and also in that there were rumors inside the camp
of extermination somewhere at Auschwitz. The existence of such rumors is practically
certain because a delegate of the International Red Cross reported their existence
among British POWs at Auschwitz III in September 1944. 205 However,
nothing much can be inferred from the existence of rumors, as rumor spreading is
an elementary aspect of psychological warfare, and we have seen that the OSS
and, of course, the Communists engaged in rumor spreading and “black propa-
204
205
142
Cohen, 38-39.
Red Cross (1947), 91-92.