Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 4: Auschwitz
August 1. The major evidence of this is the WRB report, 255 but there is confirming
evidence. First, there certainly were typhus epidemics at Auschwitz. 256 Second,
the data presented by the Dutch Red Cross (Appendix C) shows that the average
death rate at the Birkenau men’s camp from July 16 to August 19, 1942, was
about 186 per day, with the rates toward the end of the period noticeably higher
than those toward the beginning. Third, there exists in Amsterdam a single volume
of the Birkenau death book (also discussed in the Netherlands Red Cross Report).
This volume contains death certificates for the five days September 28 to
October 2, 1942. The number of deaths is 1,500, and the causes of death that are
given are those typical of typhus epidemic conditions, although Reitlinger seems
to consider such recorded causes as “weakness of the heart muscles” and others as
“invented […] fanciful diagnoses of internee doctors, who were trying to save
their patients from the ‘transport list’ or the phenol syringe.” 257 In fact, such
causes of death are typical with typhus; under the “Typhus Fever” listing in the
Encyclopedia Britannica (eleventh edition) we read:
“Typhus fever may, however, prove fatal during any stage of its progress
and in the early convalescence, either from sudden failure of the heart’s action
– a condition which is especially apt to arise – from the supervention of some
nervous symptoms, such as meningitis or of deepening coma, or from some
other complication, such as bronchitis. Further, a fatal result sometimes takes
place before the crisis from sheer exhaustion, particularly in the case of those
whose physical or nervous energies have been lowered by hard work, inadequate
nourishment and sleep, or intemperance.”
On account of the policy of sending sick people to Birkenau it appears that the
victims of the typhus epidemic got recorded as Birkenau deaths, regardless of
where they had been working. The WRB report claims that there were fifteen to
twenty thousand deaths at Auschwitz during the two or three months of the epidemic.
258 Despite the unreliability of the source the claim seems consistent, at
least in order of magnitude, with such other information as we have concerning
this period at Auschwitz (although there is probably at least some exaggeration).
It is also the case, as we shall see below, that the summer of 1942 was by far the
worst at Auschwitz.
Incidentally, the “phenol syringe” which Reitlinger mentions comes up in so
many places in the literature that it appears to have been real; mortally ill concentration
camp inmates were sometimes killed by phenol injections into the heart. 259
The fact of a very high death rate at Auschwitz during the summer of 1942 is,
of course, at best only indirectly material to an “extermination” problem because
these were recorded deaths from normal reasons, not exterminations carried out in
attempted secrecy. They also have nothing to do with Jews as such, although
255
256
257
258
259
US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 30, 32; Reitlinger, 122.
DuBois, 209.
Reitlinger, 122-123. The death book is at the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, and is discussed
by the Netherlands Red Cross, vol. 1, 8-12.
US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 32.
E.g. Burney, 108-109.
159