Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
While the evidence indicated that the German authorities did not carry out
large scale liquidations of Jews while in retreat, common sense and a feel for the
conditions that existed should cause us to assume that there were numerous massacres
of Jews carried out by individuals and small groups acting on their own.
Some German, Hungarian, or Romanian troops, and some East European civilians,
their anti-Jewish feelings amplified by the disastrous course of the war, no
doubt made attacks on Jews at the time of the German retreats. It is known that
earlier in the war, when East Europeans had attempted to start pogroms, the German
authorities had restrained and suppressed them. 388 However, under conditions
of chaotic retreat, the Germans were probably much less concerned with anti-
Jewish pogroms.
2. The Russians liquidated many. We list this only because Russia is such an
enigma and its actions in the populations area often seem very arbitrary. However,
there is no evidence for liquidations at the hands of the Russians, and one should
doubt this possibility.
3. Many perished on account of conditions in the camps or ghettos. This is a
most serious possibility. We have seen that health conditions can be very unstable
in camps and that the situation can be very sensitive to any sort of chaos or shortage
of necessities. Moreover, we have observed that the ghetto conditions,
whether the Germans were at fault or (as the Germans claimed) the Jews were responsible,
were favorable to epidemics even early in the war when the Germans
had the general situation under control in other respects. Therefore, there is a good
possibility that many Jews in ghettos perished in the chaotic conditions that accompanied
the German retreats. Also, Korzen believes that many of the 1940 exiles
to Russia died in the Russian camps they were sent to, so it is possible that
many ghetto Jews perished on account of Soviet ways of administering the ghettos
after they fell into Russian hands.
4. Many were dispersed throughout the Soviet Union and integrated into Soviet
life somewhere. This is a most likely possibility, because it is well established
that the Soviet Union encouraged the absorption of Jews during and immediately
after the war. For example, we have noted that this was the policy exercised toward
the 1940 deportees. Another example is what happened with respect to the
Carpatho-Ukraine, before the war a province of Czechoslovakia and annexed by
the Soviet Union after the war. Ten thousand Jews, former residents of the Carpatho-Ukraine,
had the status of refugees in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1946.
Russia insisted that these Jews be repatriated to the Soviet Union. Although such
a step was contrary to the existing agreements on refugees, the Soviet pressure on
President Benes was great enough to force him to yield. 389
One should also note the existence, within the Soviet Union, of the specifically
Jewish “autonomous state” of Birobidzhan, which is in the Soviet Far East on the
Amur river on the border of Manchuria. Birobidzhan had been established by the
Soviets in 1928 as a Jewish state. Immediately after the war, there existed in New
388
389
272
The best source to consult to see the nature of and motivation for the anti-Jewish pogroms, and
the German measures to suppress them, seems to be Raschhofer, 26-66. See also Burg (1962), 50.
New York Times (Apr. 31, 1946), 8. [correction needed for date, ed.]