Auschwitz is by far the most known Holocaust camp. The politically correct view is that it was a combined extermination/forced labor camp that used the delousing agent Zyklon B for gas killings in gas chambers. Holocaust revisionists argue that it was a combined concentration/forced labor/transit camp.
It consisted not a single camp but several in the same area and connected to an extensive labour complex, where the detainees worked. Its remains are located in Poland approximately 50 kilometers west of Kraków and 286 kilometers south from Warsaw. The camp complex took its name from the nearby town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz in German).
- 1 Commandants
- 2 The now "standardized" politically correct view
- 3 General revisionist criticisms
- 4 Example of revisionist criticism of eyewitness claims
- 5 Number of deaths?
- 6 General description of the Auschwitz punishment system
- 7 Not politically correct witness statements on Auschwitz
- 8 Fleeing with the National Socialists from Auschwitz
- 9 The Auschwitz Museum
- 10 More revisionists views on Auschwitz
- 11 External links
- 12 See also
- 13 Gallery
- 14 References
The camp's first commandant was Rudolf Höß (commandant 1940 - 1943 and again in 1944-45). He was likely the most important prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials. He was later put on trial himself in Communist Poland and hanged in 1947. See the article on Höß regarding revisionist views, such as various sources stating that Höß was tortured.
Arthur Liebehenschel was commandant during a 1943–1944 period. He too was put on trial in Poland and hanged in 1948.
There were also commandants of the individual camps, such as Josef Kramer. He told two very different versions of what had occurred at Auschwitz. See the article on Kramer for more details.
Another was Richard Baer. He was not arrested until 1960 and died in custody in 1963, under argued mysterious circumstance, after having refused to support the politically correct Holocaust version during the upcoming trial. See the article on Baer for more details.
The now "standardized" politically correct view
The now "standardized" politically correct view on Auschwitz will be briefly described below, ignoring the numerous contradictory views on how the alleged genocidal killings occurred.
- Auschwitz I / Main camp / "Stammlager". The first camp, originally built as Austrian cavalry barracks in the late 19th century. Allegedly, on 3 September 1941, the first experimental gassing occurred in the cellar of one of the buildings (Block 11). In the following weeks, the morgue of the crematory (Crematory I) was converted into a homicidal gas chamber. The conversion consisted of knocking holes in the concrete roof, so that Zyklon B could be dumped into the room below. This gas chamber began operation around the end of 1941 and was in use until early 1943.
- Auschwitz II / Birkenau. Allegedly, in the first half of 1942, two old farmhouses outside Auschwitz II were converted to gas chambers. These are referred to as 'Bunker 1' and 'Bunker 2'. The victims of these bunkers were cremated over wood fires in trenches. Between March and June 1943, four crematories (Crematories II-V) and associated gas chambers went into operation. In the underground gas chambers of Crematories II and III, Zyklon B was dumped through openings that were chiseled through the reinforced concrete roof after construction was completed, while the gas chambers of Crematories IV and V, which were above ground, had small hatches in the walls through which Zyklon B was introduced. Some of these homicidal facilities remained in use until the end of 1944.
- Auschwitz III / Monowitz, built at a cost of five million Reichsmarks by I.G.Farben, and a large number of 'sub-camps' did not contain alleged homicidal gas chambers. The prisoners from here worked as forced laborers in the nearby I. G. Farben chemical and 'Buna' rubber plants.
The only gas chambers provided with ventilation were those in Crematories I, II, and III. Thus, the alleged poison gas could not be forced out of the gas chambers in Crematories IV, V, or the two farm houses, but instead had to be evacuated solely by relying on natural ventilation through opened doors and hatches.
Allegedly, the sorting of new prisoners arriving by train to Auschwitz (for purposes such as forced labor or immediate gassing) was performed in front of Auschwitz I until May 1944 and after that on a new ramp built at Auschwitz II. Those selected for gassing were told that for hygienic reasons they had to shower and to have their clothes deloused. They were directed into the gas chambers, some of which were equipped with phony shower heads. In some of the gas chambers, 1,000 or more naked strangers were tightly packed into the same room. After the doors were sealed, Zyklon B was thrown in. After about a quarter-hour, the doors were opened and the so-called Sonderkommandos (prisoner special unit) began the task of removing the corpses from the gas chamber. Sometimes they wore gas masks, sometimes they didn't. They dragged the corpses to the crematory ovens or incineration trenches. At least 10,000 Jews were murdered every day between May and September 1944 and many of the resulting corpses were burned in open trenches.
An example of an alternative account is from the first report of an on-site investigation, as reported by the Soviet-Jewish war correspondent Boris Polevoy, in the leading Soviet newspaper Pravda (meaning "Truth") in 1945. It reported the existence of an "electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields."
Other examples include prominent the Holocaust "witnesses" Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, who in early versions of their accounts did not state gas chamber killings, and prominent Holocaust confessor Rudolf Höss confession(s), which differed in many ways from the above mentioned "standardized" version.
Revisionists have written numerous and very detailed criticisms of these allegations. See the "External links" section.
General revisionist criticisms
See Holocaust material evidence regarding general revisionist views on the alleged extermination camps including Auschwitz.
Example of revisionist criticism of eyewitness claims
|Eyewitness claim||Evaluation in the Rudolf Report (Table 16).|
|Death of all victims after 0 (instantaneously) to 15 minutes.||If high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide are used, as in American execution chambers, death occurs in a period of 10 minutes or even later. During the process, the victim is therefore exposed to a high overdose concentration of hydrogen cyanide. Technically this is not possible with Zyklon B, since the Zyklon B carrier base releases the gas slowly (50% in 30 to 90 minutes, according to the temperature and relative humidity). The distribution of the gas throughout the chamber from a few sources of hydrogen cyanide only, and the absorption of the gas by the moist walls and the nearby victims would further delay the process. Killing all the victims in a few (less than five) minutes would be impossible, even when using very large quantities of Zyklon B (much more than 10g per m 3 ).|
|Opening of the doors to the “gas chamber” after the execution (and sometimes a short ventilation time) and immediate commencement of transport of the bodies without gas masks and protective clothing.||The ventilation system, if it existed, did not have the performance to clear the chambers in the time frame attested to. Assuming that the victims died quickly from the high concentrations of toxic gas, then the workers in the Sonderkommando would also have been killed by the gas. Working without gas masks equipped with a filter is totally inconceivable; at high concentrations of poison gas, even these are very unsafe. Heavy respiratory devices must be worn at concentrations of over 0.5 vol.%, which would render the removal of the bodies much more difficult. Contamination through the skin must be expected during heavy work, involving perspiration, and due to the high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide on the skin of the victims. At the same time, such concentrations are sufficient to put a stop to the workers’ ability to work (dizziness, nausea, etc.). Protective clothing is therefore required.|
|Blue vapor over the victims.||Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless liquid and/or an invisible gas. The name “Blausäure” (blue acid) is due to the reaction of hydrogen cyanide with iron, forming the iron-blue pigment. There cannot, therefore, have been any blue vapor.|
|Bluish/greenish coloration of the skin of the victims.||Hydrogen cyanide blocks the oxygen supply to the cells. The blood can no longer give off oxygen to the cells. Saturation of the blood with oxygen therefore occurs; the skin of the victim therefore has a reddish, not bluish, appearance, especially on the mucous membranes and during post-mortem lividity. On the other hand, if the victims had slowly suffocated, this could explain bluish coloration of skin.|
|Attempted destruction of the bodies by means of explosives.||Totally unsuited and dangerous.|
|Cremation of bodies in crematorium ovens without fuel.||This testimony is quite absurd. Cadavers never burn due to their own fat content alone. Additional fuel is always required.|
|Commencement of body transport from the chamber of Crematoria II and III 20 minutes after commencement of ventilation, without gas masks.||The unheated morgues 1 of Crematoria II and III, filled with bodies, would have been incompletely ventilated in 20 minutes using the allegedly built-in ventilation installation. Hydrogen cyanide released for hours from the Zyklon B distributed among the bodies, release of hydrogen cyanide absorbed by the skin and walls and the absence of air exchanges between the bodies would have led to ventilation times amounting to several hours, before the cellar could have been entered without gas masks equipped with filters.|
|Cremation of the corpses in pits 1.5 to 3 meters deep.||Due to the high water table in Birkenau in 1942-1994, deep pits would have quickly filled with water. The maintenance of fires in such pits was not possible.|
|Cremation of the corpses with methanol and/or old oil||The complete cremation of corpses requires a high temperature. Liquid fuels always burn only near and on the corpse, so that the heat is lost upwards; in addition, they trickle down into the subsoil in open air. Methanol evaporates very easily and therefore has a very low flame temperature. Experiments with cremations in the open air show that corpses can be carbonized on the outside, but not, however, entirely cremated with these fuels.|
|Pouring escaping human fat over the bodies.||This is an entirely absurd testimony. If anything burns in the flesh at all, it is the fat. Since the bodies would have been lying in the fire, the fat cannot possibly have been collected outside the fire by means of channels.|
|Flames shooting out of heavily smoking crematorium chimneys.||Coke fires are very short-flamed and develop only little smoke, and this smoke usually burns within the muffle. Even carbonized, burning corpses do not generate any flame and smoke only slightly if the muffle is working inefficiently. That flames could penetrate through a 10 meter long flue and a 15 ft high chimney to the outside, is technically impossible. Even the fire’s reflections disappear in the flue.|
Number of deaths?
The number of claimed deaths according to non-revisionists have varied extremely widely:
- 9,000,000 French documentary film Nuit et Brouillard (1955)
- 8,000,000 French investigative authority (Aroneanu 1945, pp. 7, 196)
- 6,000,000 Tibère Kremer (1951)
- 5–5,500,000 Krakow Auschwitz trial (1947), Le Monde (1978)
- 4,000,000 Soviet document at the International Military Tribunal
- 3,000,000 David Susskind (1986); Heritage (1993)
- 2,500,000 Rudolf Vrba, aka Walter Rosenberg, Eichmann trial (1961)
- 1,5–3,500,000 Historian Yehuda Bauer (1982, p. 215)
- 2,000,000 Historians Poliakov (1951), Wellers (1973), Dawidowicz (1975)
- 1,600,000 Historian Yehuda Bauer (1989)
- 1,500,000 New memorial plaques in Auschwitz
- 1,471,595 Historian Georges Wellers (1983)
- 1,250,000 Historian Raul Hilberg (1961 + 1985)
- 1,1–1,500,000 Historians I. Gutman, Franciszek Piper (1994)
- 1,000,000 J.-C. Pressac (1989), Dictionnaire des noms propres (1992)
- 800–900,000 Historian Gerald Reitlinger (1953 and later)
- 775–800,000 Jean-Claude Pressac (1993)
- 630–710,000 Jean-Claude Pressac (1994)
- 510,000 Fritjof Meyer (2002)
The documented number of deaths (from all causes and including non-Jews) according to the Auschwitz Death Books is about 69,000 (but these records do not cover some time periods). A revisionist estimate is that German documents support about 135,500 deaths (many of these from epidemics). The number of officially certified deaths by the Red Cross was 60,056 in 1993 (last publicly available information).
General description of the Auschwitz punishment system
The Holocaust revisionist Jürgen Graf has written on the Auschwitz punishment system that "The widespread idea that limitless arbitrary cruelty prevailed in the National Socialist concentration camps and that sadistic mistreatment was a common occurrence is simply not confirmed by surviving German wartime documentation. We are aware that regulations may exist only on paper, and we do not doubt that acts of cruelty often occurred in the camps. But that such acts in no way reflected official policy is clearly obvious from the regulations for the camp administration. In Auschwitz, every SS man had to sign a declaration reading word for word as follows:
- “I am aware that only the Führer possesses life and death decision-making powers over enemies of the State. I am not permitted to injure or kill any enemy of the State (inmate). Any killing of an inmate in a concentration camp requires the personal approval of the Reichsführer SS. I am aware that I will be severely called to account for any violation of this regulation.”
Kazimierz Smole, former Director of the Auschwitz-Museum, wrote an article on the punishment system at Auschwitz based on German documents, in which the various punishments provided for by the regulation are listed in order of severity:
- – Warning with threat of punishment
- – Additional work
- – Temporary transfer to a punishment company
- – Arrest
- – Severe arrest with withdrawal of food
- – Arrest in solitary confinement
- – Beating (25 blows).
Not politically correct witness statements on Auschwitz
Revisionists have argued that witnesses have mentioned various aspects of Auschwitz that are in extreme contrast to the notion of Auschwitz as an extermination camp. It is not argued that such descriptions, which are often mentioned only in passing, dominate the narratives, but such descriptions are argued to indicate that the image of Auschwitz is paradoxical.
- Theater: cinema, cabaret, orchestra of all nationalities, members most Jews; Alma Rose, niece of composer Gustav Mahler, was conductor of the women’s orchestras; Ignaz Speiser as famous violinist, Szymon Laks, composer, violinist, conductor of the camp orchestra; choirs; Russian ballet, Italian orchestra.
- Sport and Fitness: sport field; soccer games between SS soldiers and inmate functionaries; children playground, table tennis; kindergarten, school for Jews from Theresienstadt; green areas for inmates to rest, flower beds; swimming pool, water polo; sauna; brothel.
- Contact from and to the Outside World: Sending and receiving letters; parcel reception for Jews; 50,000 parcels to Jews; one parcel per month and Jew; releases; inmates worked together with Polish civilians and British POW, smuggling mail and documents; inmates with special ID leave camp without guards; good escape chances, 90% successful; visit by commission of the International Red Cross in September 1944; listening to Allied radio stations.
- Bureaucracy: Welfare department replies to inquiries from outside, gives advice in legal affairs, inheritances, births, weddings, deaths, and release of property of deceased inmates to relatives; camp administration reports any unnatural death to public prosecutor; 30 signatures necessary for death certificate; urn depot, remainders of deceased inmates sent to relatives; death notification for relatives in Czechia.
- Work and Family: Harmony between Aryan and Jewish colleagues and colleagues in higher positions; women labor camp with sewing room and weaving mill; only a fraction of all inmates works, in May 1944 11,331 are not capable to work; family camp for gypsies; inmates wear civil clothes and long hair, many births within the camp; children block for orphans; family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt.
- Food and Health: Inmate canteen; inmate hospital with several hundred beds; sick books; recovery for future labor; double food rations, surgery rooms, X-ray equipment; dentist office; woman confined to bed due to nerve disease well taken care of, testifying after war; typhus epidemic in summer 1942: more than 200 casualties each day, also under civilians and SS men; SS physician Dr. Schwela succumbs; proper food for inmates; 1,800 calories per day; foreign workers for hard labor get up to 4,000, more than a German engineer; 4,800 sick and immobile inmates remain in Auschwitz under supervision of physicians; inmates oppose relocation to other camp.
Fleeing with the National Socialists from Auschwitz
Several very prominent "Holocaust survivors" have stated that when the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz, inmates were given the choice of leaving with the National Socialists or staying behind and wait for liberation at the hand of the Communists. Many chose to join the National Socialist evacuation. This has been argued to indicate that something is wrong with the politically correct view on Auschwitz.
The Auschwitz Museum
The Auschwitz Museum has put on display piles of hair, boots, and eyeglasses, and so on, but there is neither evidence for the origin of these items nor for the fate of their former owners. In a videotaped interview, the Auschwitz Museum authorities admitted that the gas chamber shown to tourists is a "reconstruction," again not based on facts, but only on unverified eyewitness claims. The Museum’s tourist guides, however, tell visitors that all they see is genuine.
The Auschwitz Museum is notorious for in 1990 suddenly changing the claimed 4 million killed to 1.5 million. See Holocaust demographics: 4 million killed at Auschwitz claim on revisionist criticisms associated with this.
More revisionists views on Auschwitz
Auschwitz is by far the most well-known of the alleged extermination camps. This likely in part because of the existence of many former Auschwitz inmates telling stories of the camp and partly because the camp was captured largely intact and turned into a Holocaust museum. In turn, revisionists have also written extensively on Auschwitz and presented numerous arguments for the politically correct version being impossible and false. See the "External links" section for some examples.
Revisionist researchers Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues, briefly surveying some of the revisionist arguments, have written that: "From the very beginning, however, the Auschwitz lie was living on borrowed time. The same factors which made it so useful to the beneficiaries of the legend later enabled revisionists to debunk it:
- a) Many witnesses, such as Rudolf Höss and former members of the so-called crematorium Sonderkommando had described the alleged gassings in great detail. Sooner or later a skeptical researcher was bound to emerge who would study the technical literature about Zyklon B and compare it with the “eyewitness reports.” This skeptical researcher was Robert Faurisson, who in the late 1970s was the first to point out the impossibilities of the alleged gassing procedure.
- b) Far from corroborating the notion of a German extermination policy, the Auschwitz documents, which have gradually become accessible to revisionist historians, prove that there was no such policy:
- – The Sterbebücher (Death Books) of Auschwitz, which the Russians made available to the Red Cross in 1990 and the data of which were published in printed form five years later, show that Jewish children and eldery Jews were not “gassed upon arrival without registration” as official historiography claims, but were regularly registered at the camp.
- – The wealth of documents about medical assistance at Auschwitz categorically excludes the possibility of it having been an “extermination camp.” Valuable information about this aspect of the camp’s history can be gleaned even from orthodox Holocaust literature. For example, as Polish historian Henry Swiebocki has shown, no fewer than 11,246 inmates underwent surgery at Auschwitz between 10 September 1942 and 23 February 1944 alone.
- – The deliveries of coke to the Auschwitz concentration camp are fully documented from a period ranging from February 1942 to October 1943: they amounted to 1,032.5 tons. On average some 20 kg of coke are required for the incineration of a human body, which means that 51,625 bodies could be cremated at Auschwitz during the aforementioned period. As the Sterbebücher show, this figure corresponds almost exactly to the number of prisoners who died from February 1942 to October 1943. The only possible conclusion is that the SS did not plan to cremate the bodies of any hypothetical gassing victims.
- – Two German wartime documents quoted by Mattogno in one of his articles prove that the corpses of prisoners who had died in the camp could be taken to the crematoria at any time. The inevitable conclusion is that the morgues of the crematoria were indeed in regular use as morgues and thus could not possibly have been used as homicidal gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.
- c) According to the Holocaust story, Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 of Krematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the epicenter of the genocide. Robert J. van Pelt, for example, has claimed that as many as half a million people were gassed in this room which had an area of exactly 210 square meters. (For the sake of comparison, during World War Two, 291,557 American soldiers were killed in action on all fronts.) But since Leichenkeller 1 has survived to the present in a relatively intact condition, it is possible to take samples from its walls and other surfaces for forensic testing. In pioneering research undertaken at great personal cost, revisionists Fred Leuchter and Germar Rudolf have shown that brick and mortar samples from the ruins, analyzed in independent laboratories, contain no relevant traces of the ferrocyanide compounds which would necessarily have formed if hydrogen cyanide gas had been regularly used in such an environment. Furthermore, as Germar Rudolf, Brian Renk and Carlo Mattogno have demonstrated, the holes in the ceiling of Leichenkeller 1 never existed through which the poison-bearing Zyklon B pellets were allegedly introduced into the gas chamber. The gassing of the Jews in Leichenkeller 1 literally is a “murder” without a murder weapon."
- Holocaust Handbooks - Many books and movies which can be downloaded and that often have Auschwitz as the main or a partial topic.
- Auschwitz: Myths and Facts
- The Illustrated Auschwitz Lie
- Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence
- David Cole in Auschwitz
- Curated Lies—The Auschwitz Museum’s Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions
- Auschwitz—The Surprising Hidden Truth
Alleged confessors and witnesses
- Elie Wiesel
- Filip Müller
- Johann Kremer
- Josef Kramer
- Josef Mengele
- Konrad Morgen
- Miklos Nyiszli
- Oskar Gröning
- Perry Broad
- Richard Baer
- Rudolf Höss
- Holocaust Handbooks, Volume 15: Germar Rudolf: Lectures on the Holocaust—Controversial Issues Cross Examined 2nd, revised and corrected edition. http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=15
- Borkin, Joseph, The Crime and Punishment of I.G.Farben, London, 1979, p.120. ISBN 0-233-97126-2
- Holocaust Handbooks, Volume 1: Germar Rudolf (ed.): Dissecting the Holocaust—The Growing Critique of ‘Truth’ and ‘Memory’ 2nd, revised edition. http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=1
- Germar Rudolf, Wolfgang Lambrecht. The Rudolf Report—Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the “Gas Chambers” of Auschwitz. Holocaust Handbooks. http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=1&page_id=2
- Holocaust Handbooks, Volume 1: Germar Rudolf (ed.): Dissecting the Holocaust—The Growing Critique of ‘Truth’ and ‘Memory’ 2nd, revised edition. http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=1
- Robert Faurisson. The Auschwitz Swimming Pool. Heretical.com. http://www.heretical.com/miscella/swimpool.html Archive.is: https://archive.is/ElwzE
- Chapter "Ditlieb Felderer" in 'Did Six Million Really Die?' Report of the Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel -- 1988. Edited by Barbara Kulaszka. Available online at Institute for Historical Review: http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/13felderer.html
- German Rudolf's Website. http://germarrudolf.com/
- Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Thomas Kues: The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”—An Analysis and Refutation of Factitious “Evidence,” Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the “Holocaust Controversies” Bloggers; 2nd edition. Holocaust Handbooks. http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=1&page_id=28