Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
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give him 21 days’ detention without referring to higher authority, but could
give corporal punishment only with authority from Berlin. Every member of
the guard was armed with a rifle and there were machine-guns on the turrets.
Whips and sticks were forbidden. The guards just carried rifles.
When the prisoners came in in a bunch they were all put in the same block.
Eventually, they were sorted out into three groups, politicals, anti-socials and
criminals, but never according to their nationalities. There were no strict rules
as to that point, but it developed like this as we went along. The three abovementioned
categories were kept apart only in their living quarters. They
worked together, fed together and could talk to each other. In the beginning
the prisoners worked only in the camp itself. Later we opened a quarry nearby.
Other work that was done was that airplane engines were taken to pieces and
those parts were salvaged which could be used again. Fifteen to twenty prisoners
were released while I was there. The order for releases came from Berlin.
I do not know why the order came. They were all political prisoners and of
German nationality.
The camp was surrounded by barbed wire – 3 meters high. There were
towers at the corners of the camp with machine-guns. There was one row of
barbed wire where the guards patrolled and then another row of barbed wire.
The wire was not electrified in the beginning because there was no current,
but later, when current was available, this was done, in the spring of 1943. I
was Kommandant then. Two months before I left the camp eight or nine dogs
arrived, who were used to assist the guard. They were controlled by the
guards. I remember two incidents where prisoners tried to escape from the
quarry, but I cannot remember that they were shot. During the whole of my
three years I had only two shootings in the quarry. The other eight prisoners
who tried to escape, whom I have already mentioned, tired to escape from the
camp itself and not from the quarry.
The only hanging that took place was in the summer of 1943 and it was
done on orders from Berlin. Two Gestapo agents brought a prisoner to the
camp and showed me an order, signed by somebody in Berlin, saying that this
man had to be delivered to my camp and had to be hanged. I cannot remember
by whom this order was signed. I therefore detailed two prisoners to carry out
the execution. A scaffold was built in the camp and the execution was carried
out in my presence. The people present were: the camp doctor (Obersturmführer
Eiserle), who certified that the cause of death was hanging, the two Gestapo
agents who had brought the prisoner, the two prisoners who carried out
the execution, and myself. I cannot remember the name of the prisoner; I think
his nationality was Russian. I cannot remember his name because he never
appeared in my books. He was only delivered to be hanged. It is quite impossible
that any other executions took place whilst I was camp Kommandant. The
other prisoners of the camp were not paraded for this execution. No authorized
shootings or any other executions took place at the camp on orders from
Berlin. I have never heard of any special, narrow cells where men were
hanged by their arms. There were no special buildings for prisoners who were