Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
ficers at Katyn, although it had been established, later in 1943, that there were
only 4,253 bodies to be found. This fact was published by the German government,
but naturally, because it contradicted their earlier claims, the Germans did
not give the correct figure great publicity.
What happened at the IMT with respect to this charge illustrates the foolishness
of that tribunal’s claim to anything approximating legal jurisdiction. The testimony
of members of the forensic commission was naturally of interest, so the
Russians produced Professor Marko Markov, a citizen and resident of Bulgaria,
who had been one of the signers of the commission report. Bulgaria being, by
then, under Soviet control, Markov had changed his mind and testified in support
of the Russian position, i.e., that the Germans had intimidated him into approving
the commission report. 297
Göring’s counsel, on the other hand, applied to have Professor F. Naville, the
chairman of the commission, called to testify. On this point one can see the emptiness
of the tribunal’s effectiveness in getting at the truth, even if it had wished
to. Naville was a Swiss citizen, resident in Geneva, and could not be forced to testify
and, in fact, he declined to testify. The motivation is obvious. The counsel for
Field Marshall Keitel also requested that Naville (who had also been an International
Red Cross representative) answer some questions (relative to a different
subject) to be put to him in writing, but it appears that this interrogation did not
materialize. Thus, the IMT tribunal, by its very nature, was prejudiced against the
appearance of the most reliable type of witness: the citizen of a country which had
been neutral during the war and independent after the war (I am only saying that
the IMT could not compel testimony from such people; we have seen that Burckhardt,
the President of the Red Cross, voluntarily answered written questions put
to him in Switzerland for Kaltenbrunner’s defense). The defense ended up by calling
three German soldiers to testify (three witnesses were allowed to each side on
this matter). 298
The tribunal’s final disposition of the Katyn issue was a disgrace even independent
of the true facts concerning the atrocity: it was quietly dropped and does
not appear in the judgment. The Germans were not “found” either guilty or not
guilty of this Russian atrocity. The IMT ducked the whole matter.
In 1952, the U.S. House of Representatives investigated the Katyn massacre
and naturally made an inquiry into what had happened at the IMT in this respect.
The Select Committee set up for this purpose accordingly held some hearings in
Frankfurt, Germany, in April of that year. The Committee heard, among others,
representatives of both the defense and prosecution legal staffs of the IMT. To
speak for the German side, the Committee logically called Dr. Otto Stahmer, who
had been counsel for the principal defendant Göring, who had also been the defendant
who had pressed this particular matter at the IMT. To speak for the
American prosecution, the Committee, surprisingly, chose Robert M. W. Kempner.
Examination of the trial record reveals no reason why Kempner should have
been selected for this role. That Kempner appears to have been living in Germany
297
298
Belgion, 64-78.
IMT, vol. 10, 648.
207