THE RUDOLF REPORT

7. ZYKLON B FOR THE KILLING OF HUMAN BEINGSin the literature would be too voluminous to include here. 430 The followingsurvey is therefore not complete.For a clarification of the evidence problems, an extract from thejudgment of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial may be quoted here: 83“The court lacked almost all possibilities of discovery available in anormal murder trial to create a true picture of the actual event at thetime of the murder. It lacked the bodies of the victims, autopsy records,expert reports on the cause of death and the time of death; it lacked anytrace of the murderers, murder weapons, etc. An examination of the eyewitnesstestimony was only possible in rare cases. Where the slightestdoubt existed or the possibility of a confusion could not be excluded withcertainty, the court did not evaluate the testimony of witnesses […]The general findings […] are based on […] the credible testimonyof witnesses […] Böck, in addition to the written notes of the first campcommandant Höß.”In the opinion of the court, many of the witness testimonies possessedinsufficient credibility. But it nevertheless succeeded in obtainingtestimonies from a few allegedly credible witnesses that soundedsufficiently credible to the court.Before we analyze some of these testimonies more closely, a fewremarks are necessary about the circumstances and the atmosphere inwhich these testimonies and confessions of alleged victims and perpetratorscame about in the first couple of years after the end of WorldWar II. It was in those years that the story of the conveyor-belt likeextermination of human beings in Auschwitz and elsewhere was elevatedto ‘common knowledge.’ Challenging this story led to a severeincrease in legal penalty for any defendant, as it still does to this day inmany countries in Europe.According to reports by Bernard Clarke, who arrested Höß at thattime, Höß was tortured after his arrest. 431 In his autobiography, Hößalso reports this and mentioned similar procedures during his Polish430 See, in this regard, the excellent analysis of J. Graf, Auschwitz. Tätergeständnisse und Augenzeugen,op. cit. (note 43).431 R. Butler, Legions of Death, Arrows Books Ltd., London 1986, pp. 236f.; see: R. Faurisson,“Comment les Britanniques ont obtenu les aveux de Rudolf Hoess”, Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste1 (1987) pp. 137-152 (online: aaargh.vho.org/fran/archFaur/1986-1990/RF8703xx1.html); Engl.: “How the British obtained the confessions of Rudolf Hoess”,JHR, 7(4) (1986), pp. 389 ff. (online: www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/7/4/Faurisson389-403.html); D. Irving, Nuremberg. The Last Battle, Focal Point, London 1996, pp. 241-246.197