Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
pendix D. Kramer’s story was completely in accord with what we have presented
here, i.e., there were crematories in all of the concentration camps, some had
rather high death rates, especially Auschwitz, which required relatively extensive
cremation facilities, because it was also a huge camp. His statement is quite frank
regarding the more unhappy features of the camps, and is as accurate a description
of the camps as we are likely to get. In regard to atrocities, he firmly asserted:
“I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring
to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the cruelty of the
guards employed, and that all this took place either in my presence or with my
knowledge. All I can say to all this is that it is untrue from beginning to end.”
Kramer later retreated from this firm stand and made a second statement, also
reproduced in Appendix D, in which he testified to the existence of a gas chamber
at Auschwitz, adding that he had no responsibility in this connection, and that the
exterminations were under the direct control of the central camp administration at
Auschwitz I. At his trial, Kramer offered two reasons for the discrepancy between
his two statements: 312
“The first is that in the first statement I was told that the prisoners alleged
that these gas chambers were under my command, and the second and main
reason was that Pohl, who spoke to me, took my word of honor that I should
be silent and should not tell anybody at all about the existence of the gas
chambers. When I made my first statement I felt still bound by this word of
honor which I had given. When I made the second statement in prison, in
Celle, these persons to whom I felt bound in honor – Adolf Hitler and
Reichsführer Himmler – were no longer alive and I thought then that I was no
longer bound.”
The absurdity of this explanation, that in the early stages of his interrogations,
Kramer was attempting to maintain the secrecy of things that his interrogators
were repeating to him endlessly and which by then filled the Allied press, did not
deter Kramer and his lawyer from offering it in court. The logic of Kramer’s defense
was at base identical to that of Morgen’s testimony. Kramer was in the position
of attempting to present some story absolving himself from implication in
mass murder at Birkenau. The truth that Birkenau was not an extermination camp
had no chance of being accepted by the court. That was a political impossibility.
To have taken the truth as his position would have been heroic for Kramer but
also suicidal, because it would have amounted to making no defense at all in connection
with his role at the Birkenau camp. Even if he had felt personally heroic,
there were powerful arguments against such heroism. His family, like all German
families of the time, was desperate and needed him. If, despite all this, he persisted
in his heroism, his lawyer would not have cooperated. No lawyer will consciously
choose a suicidal strategy when one having some possibility of success is
evident. Kramer’s defense, therefore, was that he had no personal involvement in
the exterminations at Birkenau. Höss and the RSHA did it. Remember that these
proceedings were organized by lawyers seeking favorable verdicts, not by histori-
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Fyfe, 157.
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