Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
were sent to ghettos,” and that the Jewish leaders in Rome were unaware of any
extermination program and feared deportations only in connection with such
things as “the rigors of winter and the fragile health of many deportees,” as is confirmed
by “many letters received then at the Vatican, and which today form a
thick dossier in the archives. […] no mention is made of their brutal extermination.”
We also read that Father Marie-Benoît (a priest who was deeply involved in
wartime aid to Jews) made a report in July 1943 on deportations of Jews from
France and remarked that the Auschwitz and nearby camps were work camps
where “the morale among the deportees is generally good and they are confident
of the future.” 473
Because Auschwitz extermination propaganda started in 1944, we will probably
encounter Auschwitz extermination claims in the Vatican’s wartime documents
when the Vatican publishes documents for 1944-1945, because bearing on
exterminations, that is all there is in the documents of this critically situated
source: propaganda.
Addendum on Robert A. Graham
The obituary/tribute below first appeared, very slightly modified, in the Journal
of Historical Review, March/April 1998, based on my manuscript of 31 July
1997. The Graham letter of 24 January 1983 was reproduced there from the original.
When I was writing The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, I encountered an extraordinary
source, viz. the multi-volume collection of documents and commentary
Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale
(Acts and documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War). The series,
whose principal editor was Robert A. Graham, was still being published by
the Vatican and more volumes were in the future.
Graham was a former editor of the Jesuit magazine America. The “extermination”
claim was not challenged in the series, and it was generally understood that
Graham’s main interest was in defending the wartime Pope Pius XII against
charges of tacit consent to, and even collaboration with, Nazi policies of physical
extermination of the Jews. Such charges crested with Rolf Hochhuth’s play The
Deputy.
I believed that the Vatican documents constitute an important source. I devoted
an entire appendix of my book to discussing them.
In studying the series of volumes, I was struck by some of the editorial remarks
and believed that the editor, although not a revisionist in our sense, was
implicitly raising fundamental questions of a revisionist bent. A good example
was the quotation of some selected passages from some reports, from apparently
473
Actes et documents, vol. 9, 38, 42f.
361