Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
I avoided frequent visits to the concentration camps because it was customary,
especially at Mauthausen-Gusen near Linz-Danube, to hang one or two
prisoners in honor of the visitors. At Mauthausen it was customary to make
Jewish workers work in a quarry at great altitude. After a while the SS on duty
would say: ‘Pay attention, in a couple of minutes there will be an accident’.
And, indeed, one or two minutes later, some Jews were thrown from the cliff
and fell dead at our feet. ‘Work accident’ was written in the files of the dead.
Dr. Fritz Krantz, an anti-Nazi SS Hauptsturmfuehrer, often told me of such
events. He condemned them severely and often published facts about them. The
crimes discovered at Belsen, Oranienburg, etc., are not considerable in comparison
with the others committed at Auschwitz and Mauthausen.
I plan to write a book about my adventures with the Nazis.
I am ready to swear to the absolute truth of all my statements.
[signed by hand:] Kurt Gerstein”
It is difficult to believe that anybody intended that this “statement” be taken
seriously. A few specific points are examined here, but on the whole, I leave the
reader to marvel at it. The part printed in the NMT volumes starts at “Hearing of
the massacres” and ends at “one understands the greatness of your good work!”
However, the remark about the BBC and the 25 million gas chamber victims is
deleted. The version used by Eichmann’s Jerusalem tribunal was far more drastically
edited. 438
The original version of this book presented a very faithful reproduction of the
English translation provided by the Nuremberg staff, a shortcut that I came to regret.
For example, where it says above “Naked also in winter!”, the French was
“aussi en hiver nus!” However, in my original version it read “Naked in winter!”,
because that is how the Nuremberg staff rendered it. This caused a misunderstanding
on my part that I passed along to readers; the events were supposed to have
happened in August, but the incorrect translation implied it was winter. Thus, I
have attempted here to bring the English text into closer conformity with the
French language original. I have also been able to use the subsequent work of
Henri Roques, which was the basis for a 1985 Ph.D. dissertation at the University
of Nantes.
In this book, it has been the practice not to give SS ranks since these would not
be understood by most readers; an Oberscharführer sounds just as important as an
Obergruppenführer. Approximate contemporaneous U.S. Army equivalents have
been used instead (these correspondences are given in Appendix B). However, in
presenting the Gerstein statement, this practice has not been adhered to on account
of the document’s lack of both descriptive and orthographic consistency. For example,
Pfannenstiel is identified as both an “Obersturmbannfuehrer” (Lieutenant
Colonel) and as a “Sturmbannführer” (Major). In the translation of the Nuremberg
staff he became a “Sturmfuehrer”. We see both the correct “Reichssicherheitshauptamt”
and the incorrect “ReichsSicherheitsHauptamt” and, below, “Reichs-
Sicherheitshauptamt”. Below we also see both “Niemöller” and “Niemoeller”. It
438 Rassinier (1964), 93-106.
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