Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 2: The Camps
There were two types of rooms which were claimed as gas chambers by the
U.S. propaganda after the camp was captured, and Gun reproduces the relevant
photographs. Here we present Figs. 16 and 22. The former shows an ordinary
shower which the U.S. propagandists had the audacity to claim was a gas chamber
disguised as a shower. Fig. 19 shows the entrance to this “Brausebad” (shower
bath).
The second type of room, which was claimed as a gas chamber, was indeed a
gas chamber, the door of which is shown as Fig. 22. This door certainly appears to
be genuine and not manufactured for the propaganda. To see what is involved, examine
Fig. 13 (top). On the left one can perceive the very same door and near the
door a heap of dirty prisoner clothing. That “gas chamber” was obviously a
chamber for disinfesting clothing; such equipment was necessary and existed at
all of the German concentration camps. The interior of the disinfestation room is
shown in Fig. 6.
The building shown in Fig. 13 housed disinfestation chambers, the shower
bath of Fig. 16, and the crematory of Fig. 17. This building has been maintained
and is regularly visited by tourists. It is removed from the main part of the camp,
located in a relatively isolated spot. It was perfectly logical to locate both the disinfestation
chamber and the crematory in such a way that inmates did not come
into frequent contact with such things (the former for reasons of health and the
latter for reasons of morale). The shower was necessary, obviously, to decontaminate
the people who worked in this building before they returned to the main part
of the camp. I do not know whether this shower bath also serviced incoming prisoners,
or if a separate shower existed for that purpose. As suggested by Fig. 16
and confirmed by the literature, it was almost always the shower bath, rather than
the disinfestation chamber, which served the propaganda as a “gas chamber.” 83
The latter was probably considered too small to represent as a gas chamber, which
had claimed countless victims.
Naturally, the “war crimes trials” produced witnesses who claimed gassings at
Dachau (e.g. IMT witness Franz Blaha, who also claimed tattooed skin scenes as
at Buchenwald 84 ). Naturally, the people whose bodies had been found at the camp
when it was captured, especially those on the train, were always represented as
having been murdered.
The number of bodies on the train at Dachau was approximately 500. Finding
dead people on trains in Germany toward the war’s end was not unusual even on
ordinary passenger trains; in January 1945, 800 Germans, frozen to death, had
been found on a train which had arrived in Berlin. 85 The German rail system was
in utter chaos, and conditions in April 1945 are difficult to imagine, but some attempt
should be made to see some of these corpse-laden trains in context. Some
thought might also be given to the possible conditions of people as they started
their journeys on these trains. It is entirely possible that the typical individual
concentration camp commander, presented with what he considered insane orders
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84
85
M. J. Smith, 94-95.
IMT, vol. 5, 167-173; Rassinier (1962), 78.
Burney, 107; Red Cross (1947), 151.
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