Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
camp,” but Birkenau, designed for the specific requirements of the Auschwitz operations,
was clearly intended as the “principal camp” in terms of inmate accommodating
functions.
While the Auschwitz-Kattowitz region was ideal from a technical point of
view, it was also wretched from a human point of view. The ground was extremely
flat with no means of draining away water in many places; it was dotted
with stagnant ponds which poisoned the air and caused the area to be constantly
muddy. Malaria and typhus were natural, not wartime-created, dangers in this region;
the war conditions greatly aggravated matters. It is said that “motor cars
were disinfected after each journey carrying prisoners or their clothing.” 111
After 1942, the hydrogenation plant at Auschwitz produced oil and gasoline
and other chemicals, but by the time the camp was evacuated in January 1945, it
had not produced any Buna; it was only at the point of producing acetaldehyde
from acetylene. 112 This relative slowness in plant construction was no doubt due
to the initially virgin character of the area, the use of prisoner labor, and the bad
health of many prisoners; the latter had further implications, which will be seen
later in proper context.
I do not know whether the Auschwitz Buna plant was to have been essentially
the same as the Ludwigshafen plant, an improved version of the latter, or a new
generation in Buna plant construction. In any case, if it had been finished, there
would have been no more advanced Buna rubber plant in the world at the time.
111
112
72
Central Commission, 27-29; DuBois, 130; Friedman, 33.
DuBois, 341; Naunton, 107; Bebb & Wakefield, 945.