Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
various television documentaries. 631
Vrba is obviously lying about experiences at Auschwitz. This can be seen by
examining his book and by considering his 1985 testimony in Toronto that his
book is only “an artistic picture […] not a document for a court.” 632 I have previously
noted the major factual errors of his book: 633 his belief that there were virtually
no escapes from Auschwitz before April 1944 634 and his claim that there was
an air raid on Auschwitz when he escaped in April. Actually, the first air raid was
on August 20, 1944. 635
I also remarked that “the general tone of [Vrba’s] book and his description of
how various people behaved” further demolish his credibility, if that were possible.
I did not give the best examples in my book out of fear that I might not be believed,
but here I will mention some of these fantasies. Vrba claims, for example,
that at the Novaky camp the Slovakian guards would hold a rifle muzzle on the
tummy of a poor persecuted Jew when he was sitting on the potty, while at
Auschwitz he had “seen twenty dollar bills used as toilet paper.” 636 He means U.S.
twenty dollar notes, not German mark notes. Poetic license permits a dramatist of
the john at Auschwitz to depict a pistol being held against the head by a Gestapo
colonel, who would politely hand the Jew a twenty when done – which is no more
incredible than what Vrba actually wrote. (Incidentally, scatological fantasies are
also a striking feature of the Talmud.) 637
On the other hand, Vrba’s description of the rackets run by the SS and inmates
in charge of the “Kanada“ section, “the commercial heart of Auschwitz” 638 where
inmates’ possessions were stored, seems unusually candid to me, however embellished
with inanity.
I note with gratitude that the Wetzler/Lánik book about Auschwitz is frankly
acknowledged to be a novel. 639
Because I focused on Vrba in Chapters 3 and 5, John S. Conway, a historian
and colleague of Vrba at the University of British Columbia, published an article
on the WRB report in 1979. 640 In 1981, Conway also published a German text of
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In the documentary based on M. Gilbert’s book, Vrba says that in May-June 1944 Hungarian
Jewesses were arriving at Auschwitz in mink coats. At that time, he is supposed to have been hiding
in Slovakia.
Toronto Sun, Jan. 24, 1985, p. 52.
See Chapter 3, pp. 124-128.
R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), pp. 217, 220.; E. Kulka in Jewish Social Studies (Fall 1985), cited
above, p. 295, specifies 55 successful escapes until the end of 1942, 154 in 1943, and 167 in
1944. E. Kulka in Suhl, p. 201, gave lower figures, but the 1985 paper used the figures given by
the Auschwitz State Museum (PMO) in 1964 (T. Iwaszko in Hefte von Auschwitz, 1964, cited
above, p. 49).
See p. 189; see also R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), p. 233.
R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), pp. 35, 209.
To learn what the Talmud says happened to Jesus, read Gittin 57a in the Soncino Press edition
(London, 1936, p. 261 with note referring to the Munich codex) or the Jüdischer Verlag edition
(Berlin, 1932, p. 368).
R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), p. 127.
J. Länik, Was Dante nicht sah (Vienna: Die Buchgemeinde, 1964). Translation of the Slovakian
language original Co Dante nevidel (Bratislava, 1964).
J. S. Conway in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (April 1979), cited above.
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