Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
versions I examined in the various books do not have the border material which
tends to support the claim that it was taken on the ground. Our Fig. 7 is reproduced
from a print obtained in 1973 from the museum operated by the Polish
government at Auschwitz, and there remain a number of mysteries concerning it.
The version reproduced here is the only one, so far as I know, that is not obviously
falsified to some extent. 125 However, such an observation does not settle the
matter because of the strange fact that the falsified (or, at least, retouched) versions
display more apparently genuine background detail (e.g. the fence and
trees).
In any case, Birkenau was, in a very real sense, a “death camp;” dead, dying
and sick people were sent there and, after the crematories were built, the dead
were disposed of in them. If one is to claim an “extermination camp” when there
is none, what better choice is there but a “death camp”
While the preceding adequately suggests how the Auschwitz lie originated, it
is not relevant to the circumstances, under which the more general extermination
legend originated. The claims of exterminations of Jews have their origin not in
Allied intelligence information but in the operations of the World Jewish Congress,
whose leaders were at first either unconcerned with, or uninformed about,
the facts pertaining to Auschwitz.
In this connection one must reject two possible fallacious expectations. The
first is that Allied propaganda would strive to maximize Auschwitz propaganda
after it was realized that the propaganda possibilities were excellent. The second
is that the claims made in the Allied propaganda relative to Auschwitz would be
almost completely devoid of real fact.
The second fallacious expectation is that American propaganda relative to
Auschwitz would be almost free of fact. We have indicated already that this
should not be expected. Washington had excellent and accurate information about
Auschwitz, as it had about all important phases of German industrial activity, and
it has been remarked above that the real facts about Birkenau seemed to invite distortion
of interpretation.
If, as is claimed here, there was no German extermination program, but certain
propagandists in the U.S. wished the acceptance of the thesis that there was, it
would have been a most serious blunder for the propagandists to give maximum
emphasis to Auschwitz or any other place as an alleged extermination camp, for
this would amount to making a charge that the Germans could answer. If high
U.S. officials, such as Roosevelt or his cabinet members, had made specific remarks
about exterminations, naming sites where exterminations were taking place
under circumstances where their remarks received the wide publicity normally
given to public statements by officials of their rank, then both the Germans and
the Allies would have been put on the spot on the question, and the truth would
not have been long in coming out. On the contrary, as we shall see in Chapter 5,
the first period, in which there was a persistence of references to Auschwitz as an
125
80
Editor’s note: There are some reservations about the authenticity of this picture, see Udo Walendy,
“Do Photographs Prove the NS Extermination of the Jews,” in G. Rudolf, Dissecting the
Holocaust, pp. 253f.