Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
currences at the moment of the murder is put together. There is available for
the court’s deliberations above all the corpse, the record of the post-mortem
examination, the expert opinions of specialists on the causes of death and the
day on which the deed must have occurred, and the manner in which the death
occurred. There is available the murder weapon and fingerprints to identify
the perpetrator; there are footprints he left behind as he entered the house of
the slain, and many more details at hand which provide absolute proof to the
court that this person was done to death by a definite perpetrator of the deed.
All this was missing in this trial. We have no absolute evidence for the individual
killings; we have only the witness testimonies. However, sometimes
these testimonies were not as exact and precise as is necessary in a murder
trial. If therefore the witnesses were asked, in which year or month an event
happened, it was entirely necessary for the determination of the truth. And
these dates sometimes presented to the court the only evidence for the purpose
of determining whether the event related by the witness did in fact happen as
the witness related it, or whether the witness had committed an error or confused
victims. The court was naturally aware that it was an extraordinary burden
for the witnesses, in view of the camp conditions, where no calendars,
clocks or even primitive means of keeping records were available, to be asked to
relate in all details what they experienced at the time. Nevertheless, the court
had to be able to determine whether an individual defendant did in fact commit a
real murder, and when and where. That is required by the penal code.
This was an ordinary criminal trial, whatever its background. The court
could only judge according to the laws it is sworn to uphold, and these laws
require the precise determination of the concrete guilt of an accused on both
the objective and subjective side. The overburdening of the witnesses shows
how endlessly difficult it is to ascertain and portray concrete events after
twenty years. We have heard witnesses who at first appeared so reliable to the
court that we even issued arrest warrants on their declarations. However, in
exhaustive examination of the witness declarations in hours long deliberations
it was found that these declarations were not absolutely sound and did not absolutely
correspond to objective truth. For this purpose certain times had to be
ascertained and documents reexamined – whether the accused, who was
charged by a witness, was at the camp Auschwitz at all at the time in question,
whether he could have committed the deed there, or whether the witness perhaps
projected the deed onto the wrong person.
In view of this weakness of witness testimony – and I speak now only of the
sworn witnesses whose desire for the truth, the subjective and objective truth,
the court was thoroughly confident of – the court especially had to examine the
witness testimonies. Only a few weeks ago we read in the newspapers that a
member of the Buchenwald concentration camp staff had been convicted of
murdering an inmate who, it is clear today, is alive and was certainly not
murdered. Such examples should make us think. These cases of miscarriages
of justice do not serve to strengthen the respect for the law. On these grounds
also the court has avoided whatever could even in the most remote sense sug-
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