Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
The testimony of Münch, a doctor at Auschwitz, is of some interest. He appeared
as a defense witness at the Farben trial, having previously been acquitted
by a Polish court. This is the witness whom prosecution lawyer Minskoff asked
about the leaflets dropped at Auschwitz by Allied planes (p. 143). While Münch
testified that he had known about the exterminations while he was at Auschwitz
and had even witnessed a gassing, he also testified that people outside the Auschwitz
area, that is those in Germany, did not know. Also, the whole thing was arranged
“masterfully” so that “someone who visited a plant in Auschwitz twice or
three times a year for a period of one or two days” would not learn of the exterminations.
Almost all of the defendants, of course, were in the category of those who
could not have known, according to Münch, but he did not stop there. He also asserted
that, while all of the SS men and prisoners knew of the exterminations, they
did not talk to civilians about them for fear of punishment. For example, Farben
engineer Faust, whom Münch knew very well at Auschwitz, did not know about
the exterminations. Münch also remarked several times that all one could perceive
of the exterminations was the odor, “perceptible everywhere,” of the cremations.
Nobody at this trial of chemical engineering experts bothered to point out that the
chemical industry of the area also created a bit of an odor. An odd feature of
Münch’s testimony is his placing of the crematories and the gas chambers “one or
one and half kilometers southwest of the Birkenau camp camouflaged in a small
woods.” 324
The Münch testimony is merely another illustration of the manner in which defense
cases were formulated. The strategy was to avoid contesting things that the
courts were already decided on but to present stories exonerating defendants of
personal responsibility. Thus, it was invariably claimed that the extermination
program had features that happened to excuse the relevant defendants, but by
claiming that such features of the program existed, it was obviously necessary to
claim also that the program itself existed.
Adolf Eichmann
The next trial that is worth examination is the Eichmann trial. It will be recalled
that Adolf Eichmann was illegally abducted from Buenos Aires in May
1960 by Israeli agents, who sent him to Israel to become the victim of a “trial”
that was to break all records for illegality, because the state conducting the trial
had not even existed at the time of the alleged crimes. The illegal courtroom proceedings
opened in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961, the Jewish court pronounced the
death sentence on December 15, 1961, and the murder was carried out on May 31,
1962.
In order to understand Eichmann’s defense strategy, consider his situation
prior to the trial as a lawyer would have seen it. It was basically a political situation
involving an Israeli determination to stage a show trial. In capturing Eich-
324
226
DuBois, 230-231; NMT, vol. 8, 313-321; Case 6 transcript, 14321-14345.