Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYly does not discuss Höss’ account about the coercion of his confessionby torture, which is accessible to anyone in Broszat’s edition (WolfgangBenz merely knows to report about the “revisionist objection” that Hösshas made his confession after having been tortured). 21 But already duringthe Auschwitz trial the defendant Breitwieser was acquitted after ithad turned out during an inspection of the locations in Auschwitz thatthe testimony of the main witness of the prosecution is wrong. 22Johannes Peter Ney’s study about the Wannsee protocol is in a differentway a counterpoint to the most conspicuous weak point of establishedliterature, namely the basic, although by no means complete absenceof document criticism. Counterpoints of this kind are desirable inscience, even if the content is entirely wrong. Only experts can have thefinal say, and only the unanimous opinion {p. 23} of several and independentexperts could be considered as proof.Ingrid Weckert’s contribution on the “gas vans” basically consists ofdocument criticism as well. It furthermore contains an extraordinarilyfar-reaching allegation about the statements of a clerk at the YadVashem Institute which should be easily verifiable.It can probably be understood that an irresistible temptation exists tographically demonstrate, by way of image forgeries, such events whichhave been kept secret and have hardly ever been photographed. A nonexpertcannot decide whether Udo Walendy’s observations are corrector misleading, but it cannot be denied that investigations of this kind arelegitimate. It is a different question, though, what kind of conclusionsmay be drawn from individual proofs.John Clive Ball’s study about “air photo evidence” has a much biggerimport. Once again only experts can decide about the interpretationof Allied air photos which were only released in the late 1970s, andBall’s thesis that the shadows of introduction shafts recognizable on theroof of crematory II originate from a forgerer is withdrawn from thejudgment of a non-expert at any rate.The most detailed and most scholarly contribution is the one by CarloMattogno and Franco Deana on the “The Crematoria Ovens ofAuschwitz and Birkenau.” It is at once the one which one is inclined tocertify most emphatically as being “heartless,” {p. 24} because it performscapacity calculations which must appear most irreverent towardthe victims. But if one claims, like the witness Filip Müller did alreadyduring the Auschwitz trial, that on no rare occasion 25,000 humanswere gassed in Birkenau during one day and that the corpses were sub-275