Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
camp).
3. On some unknown date in May or June 1942, it was decided that an “industrial”
extermination of the Jews would be undertaken. The new crematories
were accordingly modified for this purpose, this being indicated by the first
“criminal element” to appear on an engineering drawing: the separation of
the drainage of the alleged gas chamber from the drainage of the rest of
Crematory II. (Pressac has a very low threshold in detecting a “criminal
element.”)
4. In the summer 1942, it was decided that four new crematories, rather than
one, would be built at Birkenau for extermination purposes: Crematory III,
a mirror image of Crematory II with 15 muffles, and the mirror image Crematories
IV and V, each with eight muffles, for a total of 46 muffles (not
counting Crematory I). Construction of these Birkenau crematoria was
completed in spring 1943, and Crematory I in the Stammlager, with its six
muffles, was shut down permanently in July 1943.
Pressac expects the reader to assume, as he does, that such great cremation
capacity could only be to support an extermination program. Accordingly, he goes
on to invite us “to imagine a village of 4,000 inhabitants with […] a crematorium
equipped with three 3-muffle furnaces. […] We need not dwell on this picture.”
This point is repeated and emphasized elsewhere in the book. Regarding the
crematories, Pressac writes: “THEIR CAPACITY WAS EXCESSIVE IN RELA-
TION TO THE REAL NEEDS OF THE CAMP” (Pressac’s emphasis). 573 He argues
that the cremation capacity was excessive for a normal community of this
many residents. However, nobody maintains Birkenau was a normal community.
Indeed, on page 165 I conceded that it could properly be called a “death camp.”
In making his argument, Pressac tries to ignore the catastrophic typhus epidemics
at Auschwitz – an impossible task because the documents emphasize the
importance of this matter. The first catastrophic epidemic – during the summer of
1942 – is not mentioned at all by Pressac on page 184 of his book, which is devoted
to arguing (or at least asserting) that a decision was made in spring-summer
of 1942 to launch an industrial extermination of the Jews and to expand accordingly
the capacity of the cremation facilities then under construction.
Consider how horrible and devastating the summer 1942 typhus epidemic at
Auschwitz was. The number of recorded male deaths in the period July 1 through
August 19, 1942, was 8,236. The records for female deaths in the period are not
available, but judging from the registration numbers, the female camp population
was about 25 percent of the male. Therefore, the combined male/female recorded
deaths for the period July 1 through August 19, 1942, was about 10,000. 574 The
Höss order of July 23 quarantining the camp 575 was a necessary response to an extraordinary
situation. These are the events that Pressac ignores, as he considers, on
573
574
575
Pressac, pp. 200, 206.
D. Czech, “Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Hefte von
Auschwitz, No. 3, 1960, pp. 68-76. Also D. Czech, “Die Rolle des Häftlingskrankenbaulagers im
KL Auschwitz II,” Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 15, 1975, pp. 27ff.
D. Czech in Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 3, 1960 (cited above), p. 73.
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