Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
cluster together in corners, awakens a profound sense of horror and pity.
Inhuman treatment in the occupied territories and in the countries politically
subject to Germany:
An Italian journalist, returned from Romania, gave me, some time ago, a
long account concerning the brutal methods adopted in that country, mainly
by German instigation, against the Jews.
He related to me that a train was completely filled with Jews; every opening
was then closed, so that no air could enter. When the train arrived at its
destination, there were only a few survivors, those, that is, who, finding themselves
near some incompletely sealed opening, had been able to breathe a bit
of air. […]”
Di Meglio closed this part of his message by noting the anti-Christian character
of Alfred Rosenberg’s Institut für Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses auf
das deutsche kirchliche Leben (Institute for Investigation of Jewish Influence in
German Religious Life) and also by noting the unconcern of the German clergy
with the tribulations of the Jews.
In several respects, Di Meglio’s information was obviously erroneous. For example,
we can gain a fair idea of the actual conditions of the deportations of Romanian
Jews from the Report of the Red Cross, both from the excerpt reproduced
in Chapter 5 here and from other sections 456 and also from the writings of Ginsburg.
It is certain that the events in the story related by the anonymous Italian
journalist were invention. Di Meglio seems willing to accept the worst.
Di Meglio’s treatment of the role of the concentration camps admits some misinterpretations
of the actual conditions. For one thing, he suggested that many
Jews were sent to concentration camps because there was insufficient space for
them in the ghettos; this is not correct. Jews, among others, were sent to the
camps in Poland as labor needs required. Di Meglio also gave the impression that
the camps were primarily for quartering Jews, which is also incorrect. He also
probably exaggerated the poverty of the diet in the camps, but, as we saw in
Chapter 4, he was at least correct on the matter of the high death rate in the camps
at the time he wrote his account, although overwork was not the cause of the
deaths.
In other words, Di Meglio’s description of the situation was the general or approximate
truth, with some inaccuracies, and colored by his willingness to believe
the worst. It is clear that he had no information on the existence of an extermination
program even remotely resembling the one that was then taking shape in Allied
propaganda and was being related to the Vatican by various Allied diplomats
and Jewish organizations.
The Pope’s Christmas address made a passing remark, without specific reference
to the Jews, on “the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their
own and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or
progressive extinction.” Berlin had mixed reactions to the address; the RSHA
considered it a direct assault on the Nazi regime, while the Foreign Office appears
456
352
Red Cross (1948), vol. 3, 520ff.