Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 2: The Camps
quently (excluding Auschwitz): Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau (inmate populations
in August 1943: 3,000, 17,600, and 17,300 respectively 66 ). Then we will
pass on to preliminary discussion of the alleged “extermination camp” Auschwitz
in Poland.
Belsen
Belsen had only a very brief history. It had originally been a Wehrmacht camp
for wounded POWs. In mid-1943, the SS took over half the camp for the purpose,
among others, of turning it into an “exchange camp,” a transit camp for foreign
nationals and Jews whom the Germans contemplated exchanging for Germans
held abroad. Some new grounds and buildings were also added to the camp. Jews
from Salonika, Greece, who possessed Spanish passports were the first Jewish arrivals
(it was hoped to send them to Spain), but eventually the Dutch Jews predominated
(about 5,000). A fraction of the Dutch Jews were there on a semipermanent
basis, because they numbered many of the skilled craftsmen of the essential
Amsterdam diamond cutting industry, and thus, their diamond cutting operations
had merely been moved to Belsen. The quarters for Jews at Belsen
formed what was called the “Star Camp,” which was strictly separated from the
rest of the camp and was essentially untouched by the typhus epidemic of the last
months. 67
The Dutch Jews were particularly heavily hit by deportations; reasons for this
will be given later. It was at Belsen in March 1945 that Anne Frank is said to have
perished from typhus, although the Jewish families were mostly isolated from the
typhus epidemic. 68 The question of the authenticity of the diary is not considered
important enough to examine here; I will only remark that I have looked it over
and don’t believe it. For example, as early as page 2 one is reading an essay on
why a 13-year-old girl would start a diary, and then page 3 gives a short history of
the Frank family and then quickly reviews the specific anti-Jewish measures that
followed the German occupation in 1940. The rest of the book is in the same historical
spirit.
The remainder of the Belsen concentration camp contained the usual assortment
of inmates, and the fate of the camp has been seen. Bergen-Belsen never had
a significant economic-industrial aspect, except for the diamond cutting.
Buchenwald
The major significance of Buchenwald was industrial; its satellite camps at
Beuchow, Dora, Ellrich, Elsing, Gandersheim, and Halberstadt existed primarily
for the sake of an underground aircraft factory, which employed the usual concentration
camp and foreign labor in addition to regular German labor. 69 There were,
however, two other aspects, the medical experiments conducted at the main camp
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67
68
69
1469-PS in NMT, vol. 5, 382.
Reitlinger, 364-365, 406; Hilberg, 377-379, 632-633.
A. Frank, 285.
Aronéanu, 207, 213, 214, 217, 220.
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