Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
and that (2), as I noted on p. 60 (Chapter 2), the camp inmates who routinely operated
the crematories were normally “working with a lethargy taught them by the
Russians.”
Although the term “extraordinary” is applicable when referring to numbers, I
shall henceforth term as “ordinary” those camp deaths from non-homicidal
causes, mainly disease but including execution for specific offenses, virtually all
of which were at some point recorded in German documents and which are admitted
by all sides. (Some of the “ordinary” deaths that occurred in 1945, during the
chaos of the final months of the war, were not recorded).
An “extermination camp” is then a hypothetical camp where unrecorded
deaths – in homicidal “gas chambers” – vastly exceeded recorded deaths. Revisionists
hold that, while some German wartime documents may be lost, the ordinary
deaths were essentially all the deaths, and that there were no “extermination
camps.” Consistent with the extermination legend, Pressac would agree that all
the deaths in such camps as Buchenwald and Dachau in Germany were essentially
ordinary deaths. However, he would assert that at Auschwitz in Poland large-scale
unrecorded “extermination” deaths of anonymous people were carried out and
that, consequently, only a fraction – perhaps one-tenth – of the total deaths there
were “ordinary” recorded deaths.
What we need to do is consider the recorded death rates in relation to the cremation
capacities. The most effective method, I think, is to compare the (“nonextermination”)
camps of Buchenwald and Dachau with the (“extermination”)
camp of Auschwitz in this respect. This is more convincing than citing estimates
of the amount of time required to cremate a corpse. To return to the analogy of
driving the 20 miles between my residence in Evanston and the University of Chicago,
I must essentially disregard technical data about the speed capacity of my
car and the distance between the two locations and instead refer to experience –
either my own or another’s – to accurately estimate the time required.
If it can be shown that the cremation capacity in each camp was proportionate
to the numbers of “ordinary” and recorded deaths in each camp, then there must
be an assumption that the crematories at Auschwitz played, and were intended to
play, the same ordinary role as the crematories at Buchenwald and Dachau (which
by universal agreement were not extermination camps).
There are a few difficulties in such a comparison, but they are surmountable.
For one thing, there is a lack of complete and formal documentation of “ordinary”
deaths at Auschwitz, despite the widely publicized release of the Auschwitz
“death books” three years ago by Soviet authorities. Coincidentally, in a review
published in 1989, I gave figures that had been given to me by the International
Tracing Service in Arolsen during my visit there in 1977: 45,575 recorded deaths
in 1942 and 36,960 in 1943, with death books missing for 1940, 1941, 1944, and
January 1945 (when the camp was evacuated). 580
580
414
Editor’s note: 46 volumes of the Auschwitz death registers were found so far with a total of
67,283 deaths (2,988 in 1941; 36,796 in 1942; 27,499 in 1943); Archiwum Pastwowego
Muzeum w Owicimiu, 502-4; cf. Sonderstandesamt Arolsen (ed.), Die Sterbebücher von
Auschwitz.