Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
had also given information to Guggenheim supporting the claims.
In order to confirm the claims, Squire arranged an interview with Burckhardt,
which took place in Geneva on November 7. On November 9, Squire communicated
to Harrison his memorandum on the interview, in which he had recorded
that Burckhardt’s information was that Hitler had signed an order that before the
end of 1942 Germany must be free of all Jews. Squire’s account of the interview
explains: 128
“I then asked him whether the word extermination, or its equivalent, was
employed, to which he replied that the words must be Juden-frei (free of Jews)
were utilized. He then made it clear that since there is no place to send these
Jews and since the territory must be cleared of this race, it is obvious what the
net result would be.”
This, the report of an ambiguous remark, made by an imperfectly informed
Swiss citizen, reported by an intermediary who was friendly to the World Jewish
Congress and eager to discover a sinister interpretation to such facts as were
available, is as solid as this “evidence” ever got. To my knowledge, Burckhardt
never spoke out publicly, during or after the war, in connection with these matters.
He answered some written questions, which were put to him by Kaltenbrunner’s
defense during the IMT trial, but these questions relating to Kaltenbrunner’s
efforts to permit the Red Cross to enter the German camps toward the end of the
war were not relevant to our subject. Nobody asked Burckhardt about exterminations.
129
Late in November 1942, the State Department received “information” from an
anonymous Vatican source consisting of a three page description, in French, of
events allegedly transpiring in Poland. The document is unsigned, and the only
sort of endorsement is a handwritten notation, “from Mr. F. at Vatican City,”
which appears in an unknown hand on the first page. The document reports, inter
alia: 130 “Farms for the breeding of human beings are being organized to which
women and girls are brought for the purpose of being made mothers of children
who are then taken from them to be raised in Nazi establishments. […]
Mass execution of Jews continues. […] They are killed by poison gas in chambers
especially prepared for that purpose (often in railway cars) and by machine
gun fire, following which the dead and the dying are both covered with
earth. […] Reports are being circulated to the effect that the Germans are
making use of their corpses in plants manufacturing chemical products (soap
making factories).”
128
129
130
84
Guggenheim’s affidavit is in dispatch no. 49 of October 29, 1942, of the retired files of the U.S.
Consulate, Geneva, which are in the archives of the Foreign Affairs Document and Reference
Center, Department of State, Washington. Squire’s memorandum of his interview with Burckhardt
is attached to Squire’s personal letter of November 9, 1942 to Harrison, which is in the
same file.
The question put to Burckhardt and his answers are IMT document Kaltenbrunner 3, IMT Vol.
40, p. 306.
The statement of the “Vatican source” is in the U.S. National Archives as Department of State file
740.00116 EW/726.