Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
and it was Karl Adolf Eichmann, “specialist for all Jewish questions,” who had
accompanied the head of the Security Police of Bohemia-Moravia, Colonel Erwin
Weinemann, in showing the Red Cross delegation around Theresienstadt during
the April 6, 1945, visit. During a gathering in the evening, Eichmann had explained
to the delegates “that Theresienstadt was a creation of Reichsführer-SS
Himmler” and had explained the philosophy involved, accurately passed on to us
in the Report excerpt. Eichmann added that he, “personally, did not entirely approve
of these methods but, as a good soldier, he naturally blindly obeyed the orders
of the Reichsführer.” 271
It is quite clear, therefore, that Theresienstadt was an operation of the SS, who
were the “certain leaders of the Reich” involved here. In addition, it is known that
it was RSHA chief Heydrich who made the Theresienstadt decision shortly after
he had acquired his secondary role of Deputy Protector of Bohemia-Moravia in
September 1941. 272
What the Red Cross saw at Theresienstadt was part of regular SS policy. It is
of some interest that the Report tells us, without comment, that the delegate had
asked about “departures for the East” and that the ICRC makes no speculations
regarding any sinister interpretations to be placed on the “transfers to Auschwitz,”
despite the notorious and universally known charges in this connection.
In critical evaluation of the Red Cross Report, one must obviously be wary in
two senses. First, one should reserve some judgments in relation to a self-serving
aspect of the Report. The typical respects in which a charitable organization’s
publications might be self-serving are in exaggerating the efficacy of measures
taken and, in cases where it is evident that no efficacious measures have been
taken, in hastily blaming the lack of efficacy on the tight fists of potential contributors
(and often there are very solid grounds for such claims). Thus, we should
not be crushed if it were found that the Hungarian Jewish children or the Jews
who walked to Vienna, both of whom were aided by the Red Cross, actually suffered
a little bit more than might seem suggested by the Report (I am not, of
course, making any claim that such was the case).
A second reservation concerns inevitable political bias as a result of external
political pressures; the “liberation” of Budapest by the Russians shows this at
work in the Report. The situation of 1948 clearly implied that when political bias
appeared in the Report it be anti-German bias. We observe that this exists in the
Report, but fortunately, this bias is effectively non-existent, if one reads the Report
with well defined questions in mind, such questions bearing only on matters
within the actual sphere of competence of the ICRC and its delegates.
Nevertheless, it should again be stressed that my argument in no way depends
upon interpreting the Report as meaning other than what it says, or as not really
meaning what it says, at those points selected by me. I offer no parallel of the extermination
claims, which insist that phrases such as Leichenkeller, Badeanstalt,
special treatment and “readiness for transport” be attributed meanings consistent
with wartime propaganda claims. There is no quarrel with the person who insists
271
272
182
Reitlinger, 512-513; Red Cross (1947), 99-100.
Reitlinger, 176-177; Shirer (1960), 991.