Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 2: The Camps
Attorney, and can state that there was no gas chamber at Dachau. What was
shown to visitors and sightseers there and erroneously described as a gas
chamber, was a crematory. Nor was there a gas chamber in any of the other
concentration camps in Germany. We were told that there was a gas chamber
at Auschwitz, but since that was in the Russian zone of occupation, we were
not permitted to investigate, since the Russians would not permit it.
[…] uses the old propaganda myth that millions of Jews were killed by the
national socialists. From what I was able to determine during six postwar
years in Germany and Austria, there were a number of Jews killed, but the figure
of a million was certainly never reached. I interviewed thousands of Jews,
former inmates of concentration camps in Germany and Austria, and consider
myself as well qualified as any man on this subject.”
In 1960, the Institut für Zeitgeschichte of Munich, “the paragon of hostility
and resistance to Nazism,” declared: 89
“The gas chamber in Dachau was never completed and put into operation
[…] The mass extermination of Jews by gassing started in 1941/1942, and
took place […] with the aid of installations technically designed for this purpose,
above all in occupied Polish territory [but nowhere in the Old Reich
…].”
This is essentially the Dachau myth as it stood in the summer of 1973: the information
given the visiting tourist at Dachau correctly identified the disinfestation
room as such, without any attempt to represent it as a gas chamber for exterminating
people. In regard to the shower bath the leaflet explained that
“This gas chamber, camouflaged as a shower room, was not used. The
prisoners selected for ‘gassing’ were transported from Dachau to the Hartheim
Castle, near Linz (Austria) or to other camps.”
So much for Dachau, a close examination of which was necessary in order to
evaluate the general credibility of the U.S. propaganda.
The Industrial Role of Auschwitz
The camps at Auschwitz were, of course, part of the same concentration camp
system as the camps we have just discussed. However, the operations referred to
with the term “Auschwitz” were really, in many ways, in a class by themselves.
This is so much the case that, in order to see the role of Auschwitz clearly, it is
necessary to go back considerably in time. It is also necessary, unfortunately, to
indulge in a certain amount of discussion that may seem excessively technical at
first.
The principal cause of the German defeat in World War I in 1918 had been
shortages brought about, chiefly, by the British blockade. Shortages of such things
as oil and rubber had been crippling the Army, and near starvation conditions in
89
Die Zeit (Engl. Edition, Aug. 26, 1960), 14 (letter by M. Broszat); Rassinier (1962), 79. Rassinier
refers to the German edition of Die Zeit (Aug. 19, 1960).
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