AUSCHWITZ: PLAIN FACTS - Holocaust Handbooks

120 Germar Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Factssay the least, just a little bit strange for an extermination plant that was supposedto have functioned: 10“as a homicidal gas chamber and incineration installation from [the]15th of March 1943, before its officially coming into service on [the] 31stof March, to [the] 27th of November 1944, annihilating a total of approximately400,000 people, most of them Jewish women, children and oldmen.”Thus, for over twenty months of alleged extermination activity in this supposedlyhomicidal crematory, for an extermination of 400,000 people, the archivesof Moscow do not even contain one single “criminal trace”! And thesame goes for the other crematories at Auschwitz-Birkenau.This must have disturbed Pressac, who must have found himself in the difficultposition of making these documents say what they do not say. This needexplains Pressac’s cranky method, which is characterized by his indiscriminateuse of sources, and by arbitrary and unfounded deductions. These are insertedinto the body of the text within a dense web of notes, which are supposedto give the impression that Pressac’s deductions are supported by thedocuments quoted. The connection between the various documents appearsforced, and the interpretation of those documents is contorted to make it seemas if they support the existence of homicidal gas chambers.Pressed by revisionist research, which demonstrates the impossibility ofmass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau from the technical point of view,Pressac downplays not only the numbers of victims, but also the intentions ofthe SS. The number of presumed homicidally gassed victims, which in 1989was “about 900,000,” 11 of whom 750,000 were supposedly killed at CrematoriesII and III alone, 10 is here reduced to only 630,000 (p. 148) and in the Germanedition even further down to 470,000 to 550,000. 12 All these figures arecompletely arbitrary. Furthermore, even the gas chambers are shrinking: theyhave suddenly become “little,” which means that their extermination capacitymust have been small. In effect, Pressac has been forced to “balance” the capacityof the homicidal gas chambers to that of the cremation ovens. Accordingto his 1989 work, more victims had been gassed then there was capacity tocremate.All these changes have naturally required jarring contradictions with respectto his earlier Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers.But this is unimportant to an author, who seems to accept or reject figures andarguments depending on his whim.10 Ibid., p. 183.11 Ibid., p. 97.12 Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes, Piper, Munich 1994, p.202.