THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST
BY RICHARD HARWOOD
Introduction
In the following chapters the author has, he believes, brought together irrefutable evidence that the allegation that 6 million Jews died during the Second World War, as a direct result of official German policy of extermination, is utterly unfounded. This conclusion, admittedly an unpopular one, resulted from an inquiry which was begun with no pre-conceived opinions, beyond a general notion that the statistical possibility of such huge casualties was perhaps open to doubt, as well as an awareness that political capital was being made from the implications of this alleged atrocity. A great deal of careful research into this question, however, has now convinced me beyond any doubt that the allegation is not merely an exaggeration but an invention of post-war propaganda. Of course, atrocity propaganda is nothing new. It has accompanied every conflict of the 20th century and doubtless will continue to do so. During the first World War, the Germans were actually accused of eating Belgian babies, as well as delighting to throw them into the air and transfix them on bayonets. The British also alleged that the German forces were operating a "Corpse Factory", in which they boiled down the bodies of their own dead in order to obtain glycerine and other commodities, a calculated insult to the honor of an Imperial army. After the war, however, came the retractions; indeed, a public statement was made by the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons apologizing for the insults to German honor, which were admitted to be war-time propaganda. No such statements have been made after the Second World War. In fact, rather than diminish with the passage of years, the atrocity propaganda concerning the German occupation, and in particular their treatment of the Jews, has done nothing but increase its virulence and elaborate its catalog of horrors. Gruesome paperback books with lurid covers continue to roll from the presses, adding continuously to a growing mythology of the concentration camps and especially to the story that no less than Six Million Jews were exterminated in them. The ensuing pages will reveal this claim to be the most colossal piece of fiction and the most successful of deceptions; but here an attempt may be made to answer an important question: What has rendered the atrocities stories of the Second World War so uniquely different from those of the First? Why were the latter retracted while the former are reiterated louder than ever? Is it possible that the story of the Six Million Jews is serving a political purpose, even that it is a form of political blackmail? So far as the Jewish people themselves are concerned, the deception has been an incalculable benefit. Every conceivable race and nationality had its share of suffering in the Second World War, but none has so successfully elaborated it and turned it to such great advantage. The alleged extent of their persecution quickly aroused sympathy for the Jewish homeland they had sought for so long; after the War the British Government did little to prevent Jewish emigration to Palestine which they had declared illegal, and it was not long afterwards that the Zionists wrested from the Government the land of Palestine and created their haven from persecution, the State of Israel. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the Jewish people emerged from the Second World War as nothing less than a triumphant minority. Dr. Max Nussbaum, the former chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin, stated on April 11, 1953: "The position the Jewish people occupy today in the world -- despite the enormous losses -- is ten times stronger than what it was twenty years ago." It should be added, if one is to be honest, that this strength has been much consolidated financially by the supposed massacre of the Six Million, undoubtedly the most profitable atrocity allegation of all time. To date, the staggering figure of six thousand million pounds has been paid out in compensation by the Federal Government of West Germany, mostly to the State of Israel (which did not even exist during the Second World War), as well as to individual Jewish claimants.
DISCOURAGEMENT OF NATIONALISM
In terms of political blackmail, however, the allegation that Six Million Jews died during the Second World War has much more far-reaching implications for the people of Britain and Europe than simply the advantages it has gained for the Jewish nation. And here one comes to the crux of the question: Why the Big Lie? What is its purpose? In the first place, it has been used quite unscrupulously to discourage any form of nationalism. Should the people of Britain or any other European country attempt to assert their patriotism and preserve their national integrity in an age when the very existence of nation-states is threatened, they are immediately branded as "neo-Nazis". Because, of course, Nazism was nationalism, and we know what happened then -- Six Million Jews were exterminated! So long as the myth is perpetuated, peoples everywhere will remain in bondage to it; the need for international tolerance and understanding will be hammered home by the United Nations until nationhood itself; the very guarantee of freedom, is abolished. A classic example of the use of the 'Six Million' as an anti-national weapon appears in Manvell and Frankl's book, The Incomparable Crime (London, 1967), which deals with 'Genocide in the Twentieth Century'. Anyone with a pride in being British will be somewhat supersede by the vicious attack made on the British Empire in this book. The authors quote Pandit Nehru, who wrote the following while in a British prison in India: "Since Hitler emerged from obscurity and became the Fuhrer of Germany, we have heard a great deal about racialism and the Nazi theory of the "Herrenvolk"...But we in India have known racialism in all its forms ever since the commitment of British rule. The whole idealogy of this rule was that of the "Herrenvolk" and the master race...India as a nation and Indians as individuals were subjected to insult, humiliation and contemptuous treatment. The English were an imperial race, we were told, with the God-given right to govern us and keep us in subjection; if we protested we were reminded of the 'tiger qualities of an imperial race'." The authors Manvell and Frankl then go on to make the point perfectly clear to us: "The white races of Europe and America." they write, "have become used during the centuries to regarding themselves as a "Herrenvolk". The twentieth century, the century of Auschwitz, has also achieved the first stage in the recognition of multi-racial partnership" (ibid, p. 14).
THE RACE PROBLEM SUPPRESSED
One could scarcely miss the object of this diatribe, with its insidious hint about "multi-racial partnership". Thus the accusation of the Six Million is not only used to undermine the principle of nationhood and national pride, but it threatens the survival of the Race itself. It is wielded over the heads of the populace, rather as the threat of hellfire and damnation was in the Middle Ages. Many countries of the Anglo-Saxon world, notably Britain and America, are today facing the gravest danger in their history, the danger posed by the alien races in their midst. Unless something is done in Britain to halt the immigration and assimilation of Africans and Asians into our country, we are faced in the near future, quite apart from the bloodshed of racial conflict, with the biological alteration and destruction of the British people as they have existed since the coming of the Saxons. In short, we are threatened with the irrecoverable loss of our European culture and racial heritage. But what happens if a man dares to speak of the race problem, of its biological and political implications? He is branded as that most heinous of creatures, a "racialist". And what is racialism. of course, but the very hallmark of a Nazi! They so everyone is told, anyway) murdered Six Million Jews because of racialism, so it must be a very evil thing indeed. When Enoch Powell drew attention to the dangers posed by coloring immigration into Britain in one of his early speeches, a certain prominent Socialist raised the specter of Dachau and Auschwitz to silence his presumption. Thus any rational discussion of the problems of Race and the effort to preserve racial integrity is effectively discouraged. No one could have sought to preserve their race through so many centuries, and continue to do so today. In this effort they have frankly been assisted by the story of the Six Million, which, almost like a religious myth, and stressed the need for greater Jewish racial solidarity. Unfortunately, it has worked in quite the opposite way for all other peoples, rendering them impotent in the struggle for self-preservation. The aim in the following is quite simply to tell the Truth. The distinguished American historian Harry Elmer Barnes once wrote that "An attempt to make a competent, objective and truthful investigation of the extermination question...is surely the most precarious venture that an historian or demographer could undertake today." In attempting this precarious task, it is hoped to make some contribution, not only to historical truth, but towards lifting the burden of a Lie from our own shoulders, so that we may freely confront the dangers that threaten us all. Richard E. Harwood
1) GERMAN POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWS PRIOR TO THE WAR
Rightly or wrongly, the Germany of Adolf Hitler considered the Jews to be a disloyal and avaricious element within the national community, as well as a force of decadence in Germany's cultural life. This was held to be particularly unhealthy since, during the Weimar period, the Jews had risen to a position of remarkable strength and influence in the nation, particularly in law, finance and the mass media, even though they constituted only 5 per cent of the population. The fact that Karl Marx was a Jew and that Jews such as Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht were disproportionately prominent in the leadership of revolutionary movements in Germany, also tended to convince the Nazis of the powerful internationalist and Communist tendencies of the Jewish people themselves. It is no part of the discussion here to argue whether the German attitude to the Jews was right or not, or to judge whether its legislative measures against them were just or unjust. Our concern is simply the fact that, believing of the Jews as the did, the Nazis' solution to the problem was to deprive them of their influence within the nation by various legislative acts, and most important of all, to encourage their emigration from the country altogether. By 1939, the great majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizable proportion of their assets. Never at any time had the Nazi leadership even contemplated a policy of genocide towards them.
JEWS CALLED EMIGRATION 'EXTERMINATION'
It is very significant, however, that certain Jews were quick to interpret these policies of internal discrimination as equivalent to extermination itself. A 1936 anti-German propaganda book by Leon Feuchtwanger and others entitles Der Gelbe Fleck: Die Ausrotung von 500000 duetschen Juden (The Yellow Spot: The Extermination of 500000 German Jews, Paris, 1936), presents a typical example. Despite its baselessness in fact, the annihilation of the Jews is discussed from the first pages -- straightforward emigration being regarded as physical "extermination" of German Jewry. The Nazi concentration camps for political prisoners are also seen as potential instruments of genocide, and special reference is made to the 100 Jews still detained in Dachau in 1936, of whom 60 had been there since 1933. A further example was the sensational book by the German-Jewish Communist, Hans Beimler, called Four Weeks in the Hands of Hitler's Hell-Hounds: The Nazi Murder Camp at Dachau, which was published in New York as early as 1933. Detained for his Marxist affiliations, he claimed that Dachau was a death camp, though by his own admission he was released after only a month there. The present regime in East Germany now issues a Hans Beimler Award for services to Communism. The fact that anti-Nazi genocide propaganda was being disseminated as this early date, therefore, by people biased on racial or political grounds, should suggest extreme caution to the independent-minded observer when approaching similar stories of the war period. The encouragement of Jewish emigration should not be confused with the purpose of concentration camps in pre-war Germany. These were used for the detention of political opponents and subversives -- principally liberals, Social Democrats and Communists of all kinds, of whom a proportion were Jews such as Hans Beimler. Unlike the millions enslaved in the Soviet Union, the German concentration camp population was always small; Reitlinger admits that between 1934 and 1938 it seldom exceeded 20000 throughout the whole of Germany, and the number of Jews was never more than 3000. (The S.S.: Alibi of a Nation, London, 1956, p. 253)
ZIONIST POLICY STUDIED
The Nazi view of Jewish emigration was not limited to a negative policy of simple expulsion, but was founded along the lines of modern Zionism. Theodore Herzl, in his work The Jewish State had originally conceived of Madagascar as a national homeland for the Jews, and this possibility was seriously studied by the party in pamphlet form. This stated that the revival of Israel as a Jewish state was much less acceptable since it would result in perpetual war and disruption in the Arab world, which has indeed been the case. The Germans were not original in proposing Jewish emigration to Madagascar; the Polish Government had already considered the scheme in respect of their own Jewish population, and in 1937 they sent the Michael Lepecki expedition to Madagascar, accompanied by Jewish representatives to investigate the problems involved. The first Nazi proposals for a Madagascar solution were made in association with the Schacht Plan of 1938. On the advice of Goering, Hitler agreed to send the President of the Reichbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, to London for discussions with Jewish representatives Lord Bearsted and Mr. Rublee of New York (cf. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, London, 1953, p. 20). The plan was that German Jewish assets would be frozen as security for an international loan to finance Jewish emigration to Palestine, and Schacht reported on these negotiations to Hitler at Berchtesgaden on January 2, 1939. The plan,. which failed due to British refusal to accept the financial terms, was first put forward on November 12, 1938 at a conference convened by Goering, who revealed that Hitler was already considering the emigration of Jews to a settlement in Madagascar (ibid., p. 21). Later, in December, Ribbentrop was told by M. George Bonnet, the French Foreign Secretary, that the French Government itself was planning the evacuation of 10000 Jews to Madagascar. Prior to the Schacht Palestine proposals of 1938, which were essentially a protraction of discussions that had begun as early as 1935, numerous attempts had been made to secure Jewish emigration in the Evian Conference of July, 1938. However, by 1939 the scheme of Jewish emigration to Madagascar had gained the most favor in German circles. It is true that in London Helmuth Wohltat of the German Foreign Office discussed limited Jewish emigration to Rhodesia and British Guiana as late as April 1939; but by January 24th, when Goering wrote to Interior Minister Frick ordering the creation of a Central Emigration Office for Jews, and commissioned Heydrich of the Reich Security Head Office to solve the Jewish problem "by means of emigration and evacuation", the Madagascar Plan was being studied in earnest. By 1939, the consistent efforts of the German Government to secure the departure of Jews from the Reich had resulted in the emigration of 400000 German Jews from a total population of about 600000, and an additional 480000 emigrants from Austria and Czechoslovakia, which constituted almost their entire Jewish populations. This was accomplished through the Offices of Jewish Emigration in Berlin, Vienna and Prague established by Adolf Eichmann, the head of the Jewish Investigative Office of the Gestapo. So eager were the Germans to secure this emigration that Eichmann even established a training center in Austria, where young Jews could learn farming in anticipation of being smuggled illegally into Palestine (Manvell & Frankl, S.S. and Gestapo, p. 60). Had Hitler cherished any intention of exterminating the Jews, it in inconceivable that he would have allowed more than 800000 to leave Reich territory with the bulk of their wealth, much less considered plans for mass emigration to Palestine or Madagascar. What is more, we shall see that the policy of emigration from Europe was still under consideration well into the war period, notably the Madagascar Plan, which Eichmann discussed in 1940 with French Colonial Office experts after the defeat of France had made the surrender of the colony a practical proposition.
2) GERMAN POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
With the coming of the war, the situation regarding the Jews altered drastically. It is not widely known that world Jewry declared itself to be a belligerent party in the Second World War, and therefore there was ample basis under international law for the Germans to intern the Jewish population as a hostile force. On September 5, 1939 Chaim Weizmann, the principle Zionist leader, had declared war against Germany on behalf of the world's Jews, stating that "Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies...The Jewish Agency is ready to enter into immediate arrangements for utilizing Jewish manpower, technical ability, resources ect..." (Jewish Chronicle September 8, 1939)
DETENTION OF ENEMY ALIENS
All Jews had thus been declared agents willing to prosecute a war against the German Reich, and as a consequence, Himmler and Heydrich were eventually to begin the policy of internment. It is worth noting that the United states and Britain had already interned all Japanese aliens and citizens of Japanese descent in detention camps before the Germans applied the same security measures against the Jews of Europe. Moreover, there had been no such evidence or declaration of disloyalty by these Japanese Americans as had been given by Weizmann. The British, too, during the Boer War, interned all the women and children of the population and thousands died as a result, yet in no sense could the British be charged with wanting to exterminate the Boers. The detention of the Jews in the occupied territories of Europe served two essential purposes from the German viewpoint. The first was to prevent unrest and subversion; Himmler had informed Mussolini on October 11th, 1042, that German policy towards the Jews had altered during wartime entirely for reasons of military security. He complained that thousands of Jews in the occupied regions were conducting partisan warfare, sabotage and espionage, a view confirmed by official Soviet information given to Raymond Arthur Davis that no less than 35000 European Jews were waging partisan war under Tito in Yugoslavia. As a result, Jews were to be transported to restricted areas and detention camps, both in Germany, and especially after March 1942, in the Government-General of Poland. As the war proceeded, the policy developed of using Jewish detainees for labor in the war-effort. The question of labor is fundamental when considering the alleged plan of genocide against the Jews, for on the grounds of logic alone the latter would entail the most senseless waste of manpower, time and energy while prosecuting a war for survival on two fronts. Certainly after the attack on Russia, the idea of compulsory labor had taken precedence over German plans for Jewish emigration. The protocol of a conversation between Hitler and the Hungarian regent Horthy on April 17th, 1943, reveals that the German leader personally requested Horthy to release 100000 Hungarian Jews for work in the "pursuit-plane program" of the Luftwaffe at a time when the aerial bombardment of Germany was increasing (Reitlinger, Die Endlosung, Berlin, 1956, p. 478). This took place at a time when, supposedly, the Germans were already seeking to exterminate the Jews, but Hitler's request clearly demonstrates the priority aim of expanding his labor force. In harmony with this program, concentration camps became, in fact, industrial complexes. At every camp where Jews and other nationalities were detained, there were large industrial plants and factories supplying material for the German war-effort -- the Buna rubber factory at Bergen-Belsen, for example, Buna and I. G. Farben Industry at Auschwitz, and the electrical firm of Siemens at Ravensbruck. In many cases, special concentration camp money notes were issued as payment for labor, enabling prisoners to buy extra rations from camp shops. The Germans were determined to obtain the maximum economic return from the concentration camp system, an object wholly at variance with any plan to exterminate millions of people in them. It was the function of the S.S. Economy and Administration Office, headed by Oswald Pohl, to see that the concentration camps became major industrial producers.
EMIGRATION STILL FAVORED
It is a remarkable fact, however, that well into the war period, the Germans continued to implement the policy of Jewish emigration. The fall of France in 1940 enabled the German Government to open serious negotiations with the French for the transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum of August, 1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in the German Foreign Office, reveals that he had conducted these negotiations between July and December 1940, when they were terminated by the French. A circular from Luther's department dated August 15th, 1940 shows that the details of the German play had been worked out by Eichmann, for it is signed by his assistant, Dannecker. Eichmann had in fact been commissioned in August to draw up a detailed Madagascar Plan, and Dannecker was employed in research on Madagascar at the French Colonial Office (Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 77). The proposals of August 15th were that an inter-European bank was to finance the emigration of four million Jews throughout a phased program. Luther's 1942 memorandum shows that Heydrich had obtained Himmler's approval of this plan before the end of August and has also submitted it to Goering. It certainly met with Hitler's approval, for as early as June 17th his interpreter, Schmidt, recalls Hitler observing to Mussolini that "One could found a State of Israel in Madagascar" (Schmidt, Hitler's Interpreter, London, 1951, p. 178). Although the French terminated the Madagascar negotiations in December, 1940, Poliakov, the director of the Centre of Jewish Documentation in Paris, admits that the Germans nevertheless pursued the scheme, and the Eichmann was still busy with it throughout 1941. Eventually, however, it was rendered impractical by the progress of the war, in particular by the situation after the invasion of Russia, and on February 10th, 1942, the Foreign Office was informed that the plan had been temporarily shelved. This ruling, sent to the Foreign Office by Luther's assistant, Rademacher, is of great importance, because it demonstrates conclusively that the term "Final Solution" meant only the emigration of Jews, and also that transportation to the eastern ghettos and concentration camps such as Auschwitz constituted nothing but an alternative plan of evacuation. The directive reads: "The was with the Soviet Union has in the meantime created the possibility of disposing of other territories for the Final Solution. In consequence the Fuhrer has decided that the Jews should be evacuated not to Madagascar but to the East. Madagascar need no longer therefore be considered in connection with the Final Solution" (Reitlinger, ibid. p. 79). The details of this evacuation has been discussed a month earlier at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, which we shall examine below. Reitlinger and Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded supposition that because the Madagascar Plan had been shelved, the Germans must necessarily have been thinking of "extermination". Only a month later, however, on March 7th, 1942, Goebbels wrote a memorandum in favor of the Madagascar Plan as a "final solution" of the Jewish question (Manvell & Frankl, Dr. Goebbels, London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he approved of the Jews being "concentrated in the East". Later Goebbels memoranda also stress deportation to the East (i.e. the Government-General of Poland) and lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labour there; once the policy of evacuation to the East had been inaugurated, the us of Jewish labour became a fundamental part of the operations. It is perfectly clear from the foregoing that the term "Final Solution" was applied both to Madagascar and to the Eastern territories, and that therefore it meant only the deportation of the Jews. Even as late as may 1944, the Germans were prepared to allow the emigration of one million European Jews from Europe. An account of this proposal is given by Alexander Weissberg, a purges, in his book Die Geschichte von Joel Brand (Cologne, 1956). Weissberg, who spent the war in Cracow though he expected the Germans to intern him in a concentration camp, explains that on the personal authorization of Himmler, Eichmann had sent the Budapest Jewish leader Joel Brand to Istanbul with an offer to the Allies to permit the transfer of one million European Jews in the midst of the war. (If the 'extermination' writers are to be believed, there were scarcely one million Jews left by May, 1944). The Gestapo admitted that the transportation involved would greatly inconvenience the German war-effort, but were prepared to allow it in exchange for 10000 trucks to be used exclusively on the Russian front. Unfortunately, the plan came to nothing; the British concluded that Brand must be a dangerous Nazi agent and immediately imprisoned him in Cairo, while the Press denounced the offer as a Nazi trick. Winston Churchill, though orating to the effect that the treatment of the Hungarian Jews was probably "the biggest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world", nevertheless told Chaim Weizmann that acceptance of the Brand offer was impossible, since it would be a betrayal of this Russian Allies. Although the plan was fruitless, it well illustrates that no one allegedly carrying out "thorough" extermination would permit the emigration of a million Jews, and it demonstrates, too, the prime importance placed by the Germans on the war-effort.
3) POPULATION AND EMIGRATION
Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere known in precise detail, approximation for various countries differing widely, and it is also unknown exactly how many Jews were deported and interned at any one time between the years 1939-1945. In general, however, what reliable statistics there are, especially those relating to emigration, are sufficient to show that not a fraction of six million Jews could have been exterminated. In the first place, this claim cannot remotely be upheld on examination of the European Jewish population figures. According to Chambers Encyclopedia the total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe was 6500000. Quite clearly, this would mean that almost the entire number was exterminated. But the Baseler Nachrichten, a neutral Swiss publication employing available Jewish statistical data, establishes that between 1933 and 1945, 1500000 Jews emigrated to Britain, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Australia, China, India, Palestine and the United States. This is confirmed by the Jewish journalist Bruno Blau, who cites the same figure in the New York Jewish paper Aufbau, August 13th, 1948. Of these emigrants, approximately 400000 came from Germany before September 1939. This is acknowledged by the World Jewish Congress in its publication Unity in Dispersion (P. 3778) which states that: "The majority of the German Jews succeeded in leaving Germany before the war broke out." In addition to the German Jews, 220000 of the total 280000 Austrian Jews had emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the Institute for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the emigration of 260000 Jews from former Czechoslovakia. In all, only 360000 Jews remained in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia after September 1939. From Poland, an estimated 500000 had emigrated prior to the outbreak of war. These figures mean that the number of Jewish emigrants from other European countries (France, the Netherlands, Italy, the countries of Eastern Europe etc.) was approximately 120000. This exodus of Jews before and during hostilities, therefore, reduces the number of Jews in Europe to approximately 5000000. In addition to these emigrants, we must include the number of Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were later evacuated beyond reach of the German invaders. It will be shown below that the majority of these, about 1250000, were migrants from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger admits that 300000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory between 1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants to the Soviet Union to about 1500000. In Colliers magazine, June 9th, 1945, Freiling Foster, writing of the Jews in Russia, explained that "22222000 have migrated to the Soviet Union since 1939 to escape the Nazis," but our lower estimate is probably more accurate. Jewish migration to the Soviet Union, therefore, reduces the number of Jews within the sphere of German occupation to around 31/2 million, approximately 3450000. From these should be deducted those Jews living in neutral European countries who escaped the consequences of the war. According to the 1942 World Almanac (p. 594) the number of Jews living in Gibraltar, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Sweden. Switzerland, Ireland and Turkey was 413128.
3 MILLION JEWS IN EUROPE
A figure consequently, of around 3 million Jews in German-occupied Europe is as accurate as the available emigration statistics will allow. Approximately the same number, however, can be deduced in another way if we examine statistics for the Jewish populations remaining in countries occupied by the Reich. More than half of those Jews who migrated to the Soviet Union after 1939 came from Poland. It is frequently claimed that the war with Poland added some 3 million Jews to the German sphere of influence and that almost the whole of this Polish Jewish population was "exterminated." This is a major factual error. The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of Jews at 2732600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlosung, p. 36). Reitlinger states that at least 1170000 of these were in the Russian zone occupied in the autumn of 1939, about a million of whom were evacuated to the Urals and south Siberia after the German invasion of June 1941 (ibid, p. 50). As described above, an estimated 500000 Jews had emigrated from Poland prior to the war. Moreover, the journalist Raymond Arthur Davis, who spent the war in the Soviet Union, observed that approximately 250000 had already fled from German-occupied Poland to Russia between 1939 and 1941 and were to be encountered in every Soviet province (Odyssey through Hell, N.Y., 1946). Subtracting these figures from the population of 2732600, therefore, and allowing for the normal population increase, no more than 1100000 Polish Jews could have been under German rule at the end of 1939. (Gutachen des Instituts fur Zeitgeschichte, Munich, 1956, p. 80) To this number we may add the 360000 Jews remaining in Germany, Austria and former Czechoslovakia (Bohemia-Moravia and Slavakia) after the extensive emigration from those countries prior to the war described above. Of the 320000 French Jews, the Public Prosecutor representing that part of the indictment relating to France at the Nuremberg Trials, stated that 120000 Jews were deported, though Reitlinger estimates only about 50000. Thus the total number of Jews under Nazi rule remains below two million. Deportations from the Scandinavian countries were few, and from Bulgaria, none at all. When the Jewish populations of Holland (140000), Belgium (40000), Italy (50000), Yugoslavia (55000), Hungary (380000) and Romania (725000) are included, the figure does not much exceed 3 million. This excess is due to the fact that the latter figures are pre-war estimates unaffected by emigration, which from these countries accounted for about 120000 (see above). This cross-checking, therefore, confirms the estimate of approximately 3 million Jews under German occupation.
RUSSIAN JEWS EVACUATED
The precise figures concerning Russian Jews are unknown, and have therefore been the subject of extreme exaggeration. The Jewish statistician Jacob Leszczynski states that in 1939 there were 2100000 Jews living in future German-occupied Russia, i.e. western Russia. In addition, some 260000 lived in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Luthuania. According to Louis Levine, President of the American Jewish Council for Russian relief, who made a post-war tour of the Soviet Union and submitted a report on the status of Jews there, the majority of these numbers were evacuated east after the German armies launched their invasion. In Chicago, on October 30th, 1946, he declared that: "At the onset of the war, Jews were amongst the first evacuated from the western regions threatened by the Hitlerite invaders, and shipped to safety east of the Urals. Two million Jews were thus saved." This high number is confirmed by the Jewish journalist David Bergelson, who wrote in the Moscow Yiddish paper Ainikeit, December 5th, 1942, that "Thanks to the evacuation, the majority (80%) of the Jews in the Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania and Latvia before the arrival of the Germans were rescued." Reitlinger agrees with the Jewish authority Joseph Schechtmann, who admits that huge numbers were evacuated, though he estimates a slightly higher number of Baltic and Russian Jews remaining in German territory, it will be proved later that in the war in Russia no more than one hundred thousand persons were killed by the German Action Groups as partisans and Bolshevik commissars, not all of whom were Jews. By contrast, the partisans themselves claimed to have murdered five times that number of German troops.
"SIX MILLION" UNTRUE ACCORDING TO NEUTRAL SWISS
It is clear, therefore, that the Germans could not have possibly have gained control over or exterminated anything like six million Jews. Excluding the Soviet Union, the number of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe after emigration was scarcely more than 3 million, by no means all of whom were interned. To approach the extermination of even half of six million would have meant the liquidation of every Jew living in Europe. And yet it is known that large numbers of Jews were alive in Europe after 1945. Philip Freidmann in Their Brother's Keepers (N.Y., 1957, p. 13), states that "at least a million Jews survived in the very crucible of the Nazi hell," while the official figure of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is 1559600. Thus, even if one accepts the latter estimate, the number of possible wartime Jewish deaths could not have exceeded a limit of one and a half million. Precisely this conclusion was reached by the reputable journal Baseler Nachrichten of neutral Switzerland. In an article entitled "Wie hoch ist die Zahl der judischen Opfer?" ("How high is the number of Jewish victims?", June 13th, 1946), it explained that purely on the basis of the population and emigration figures described above, a maximum of only one and a half million Jews could have been numbered as casualties. Later on, however, it will be demonstrated conclusively that the number was actually far less, for the Baseler Nachrichten accepted the Joint Distribution Committee's figure of 1559600 survivors after the war, but we shall show that the numbers of claims for compensation by Jewish survivors is more than double that figure. This information was not available to the Swiss in 1946.
IMPOSSIBLE BIRTH RATE
Indisputable evidence is also provided by the post-war world Jewish population statistics. The World Almanac of 1938 gives the number of Jews in the world as 16588259. But after the war, the New York Times, February 22nd, 1948 placed the number of Jews in the world at a minimum of 15600000 and a maximum of 18700000. Quite obviously, these figures make it impossible for the number of Jewish war-time casualties to be measured in anything but thousands. 15 1/2 million in 1939 minus the alleged six million leaves nine million; the New York Times figures would mean, therefore, that the world's Jews produced seven million births, almost doubling their numbers, in the space of ten years. This is patently ridiculous! It would appear, therefore, that the great majority of the missing "Six million" were in fact emigrants -- emigrants to European countries, to the Soviet Union and the United States before, during and after the war. And emigrants also, in vast numbers to Palestine during and especially at the end of the war. After 1945, boat-loads of these Jewish survivors entered Palestine illegally from Europe, causing considerable embarrassment to the British Government at the time; indeed, so great were the numbers that the H.M. Stationary Office publication No. 190 (November 5th, 1946) described them as "almost amounting to a second Exodus." It was these emigrants to all parts of the world who had swollen the world Jewish population to between 15 and 18 millions by 1948, and probably the greatest part of them were emigrants to the United States who entered in violation of the quota laws. On August 16th, 1963 David Ben Gurion, President of Israel, stated that although the official Jewish population of America was said to be 5600000, "the total number would not be estimated too high at 9000000" (Dueutsche Wochenzeitung November 23rd, 1963). The reason for his high figure is underlined by Albert Maisal in his article "Our Newest Americans" (Reader's Digest, January 1957), for he reveals that "Soon after World War II, by Presidential decree, 90% of all quota visas for central and eastern Europe were issued to the uprooted." Reprinted on this page [in the booklet] is just one extract from hundreds that regularly appear in the obituary columns of Aufbau, the Jewish American weekly published in New York (June 16th, 1972). It shows how Jewish emigrants to the United States subsequently changer their names: their former names when in Europe appear in bracket. For example, as below, Arthur Kingsley (formerly Dr. Konigsberger of Frankfort). Could it be that some or all of these people whose names are "deceased" were included in the missing six million of Europe? ----------------------- Am 30 Janur 1972 verschied mein herzensguter Mann, unser geliebter Vater und Grossvater
ARTHUR KINGSLEY (Fruher Dr. Konigsberger. Frankfort/Main) drei Woohen vor seinem 90. Geburtstag. In tiefer Trauer: Alice Kingsley 700 Fort Washington Ave. New York, N.Y. Leo and Eve Lenin geb. Kingsley Apt 1110 South, 4800 Chicago Beach Drive, Chicago, Ill 60615 Anne and Martin Kingsley 232 Sunset Drive Wilmette Ill. 60691 Nina and Ronnie
[ad as it is reproduced in the article] 4) THE SIX MILLION: DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
From the foregoing it would seem certain that the figure of six million murdered Jews amounts to nothing more than a vague compromise between several quite baseless estimates; there is not a shred of documentary evidence for it that is trustworthy. Occasionally, writers narrow it down to give a disarming appearance of authenticity. Lord Russell of Liverpool, for example, in his The Scourge of the Swastika (London, 1964) claimed that "not less than five million" Jews died in German concentration camps, having satisfied himself that he was somewhere between those who estimated 6 million and those who preferred 4 million. But, he admitted, "the real number will never be known." If so, it is difficult to know how he could have asserted "not less than 5 million." The Joint Distribution Committee favors 5012000, but the Jewish "expert" Reitlinger suggests a novel figure of 4192000 "missing Jews" of whom an estimated one third died of natural causes. This would reduce the number deliberately "exterminated" to 2796000. However, Dr. M. Perlzweig, the New York delegate to a World Jewish press conference held at Geneva in 1948 stated: "The price of the downfall of National Socialism and Fascism is the fact that seven million Jews lost their lives thanks to cruel Anti-Semitism." In the Press and elsewhere, the figure is often casually lifted to eight million or sometimes even nine million. As we have proved in the previous chapter, none of these figures are in the remotest degree plausible, indeed, they are ridiculous.
FANTASTIC EXAGGERATIONS
So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of mass murder of Jews in war-time Europe was made by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in New York in 1943. Somewhat coincidentally, Lemkin was later to draw up the U.N. Genocide Convention, which seeks to outlaw "racialism". His book claimed that the Nazis had destroyed millions of Jews, perhaps as many as six millions. This, by 1943, would have been remarkable indeed, since the action was allegedly started only in the summer of 1942. At such a rate, the entire world Jewish population would have been exterminated by 1945. After the war, propaganda estimates spiraled to heights even more fantastic. Kurt Gerstein, an anti-Nazi who claimed to have infiltrated the S.S., told the French interrogator Raymond Cartier that he knew that no less than forty million concentration camp internes had been gassed. In his first signed memorandum of April 26th, 1945, he reduced the figure to 25 million, but even this was too bizarre for French Intelligence and in his second memorandum, signed at Rottweil on May 4th, 1945, he brought the figure closer to the six million preferred at the Nuremberg Trials. Gerstein's sister was congenitally insane and died by euthanasia, which may well suggest a streak of mental instability in Gerstein himself. He had, in fact, been convicted in 1936 of sending eccentric mail through the post. After his two "confessions" he hanged himself at Cherche Midi prison in Paris. Gerstein alleged that during the war he passed on information concerning the murder of Jews to the Swedish Government through a German baron, but for some inexplicable reason his report was "filed away and forgotten". He also claimed that in August 1942 he informed the Papal nuncio in Berlin about the whole "extermination program", but the reverend person merely told him to "Get out." The Gerstein statements abound with claims to have witnessed the most gigantic mass executions (twelve thousand in a single day at Belzec), while the second memorandum describes a visit by Hitler to a concentration camp in Poland on June 6th, 1942 which is known never to have taken place. Gerstein's fantastic exaggerations have done little but discredit the whole notion of mass extermination. Indeed, Evangelical Bishop Wilhelm Dibelius of Berlin denounced his memoranda as "Untrustworthy" (H. Rothfels, "Augenzeugenbricht zu den Massenvergasungen" in Viertelijahtshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, April 1953). It is an incredible fact, however, that in spite of this denunciation, the German Government in 1955 issued an edition of the second Gerstein memorandum for distribution in German schools (Dokumentation zur Massenvergasung, Bonn, 1955). In it they stated that Dibelius placed his special confidence in Gerstein and that the memoranda were "valid beyond any doubt." This is a striking example of the way in which the baseless charge of genocide by the Nazis is perpetuated in Germany, and directed especially to the youth. The story of the six million Jews exterminated during the war was given final authority at the Nuremberg Trials by the statement of Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl. He had been an assistant of Eichmann's but was in fact a rather strange person in the service of American Intelligence who had written several books under the pseudonym of Walter Hagen. Hoettl also worked for Soviet espionage, collaborating with two Jewish emigrants from Vienna, Perger and Verber, who acted as U.S. officers during the preliminary inquiries of the Nuremberg Trials. It is remarkable that the testimony of this highly dubious person Hoettl is said to constitute the only "Proof" regarding the murder of six million Jews. In his affidavit of November 26th, 1945 he states, not that he knew but that Eichmann had "told him" in August 1944 in Budapest that a total of 6 million Jews had been exterminated. Needless to say, Eichmann never corroborated this claim at his trial. Hoettl was working as an American spy during the whole of the latter period of the war, and it is therefore very odd indeed that he never gave the slightest hint to the Americans of a policy to murder Jews, even though he worked directly under Heydrich and Eichmann.
ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE
It should be emphasized straight away that there is not a single document in existence which proves that the Germans intended to, or carried out, the deliberate murder of Jews. In Poliakov and Wulf's Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: Dokumente und Aufsatze (Berlin 1955), the most that they can assemble are statements extracted after the war from people like Hoettl, Ohlendorf and Wisliceny, the latter under torture in a Soviet prison. In the absence of any evidence, therefore, Poliakov is forced to write: "The three or four people chiefly involved in drawing up the plan for total extermination are dead, and no documents survive." This seems very convenient. Quite obviously, both the plan and the "three or four" people are nothing but nebulous assumptions on the part of the writer, and are entirely unprovable. The documents which do survive, of course, make no mention at all of extermination, so that writers like Poliakov and Reitlinger again make the convenient assumption that such orders were generally "verbal". Though lacking any documentary proof, they assume that a plan to murder Jews must have originated in 1941. coinciding with the attack on Russia. Phase one of the plan is alleged to have involved the massacre of Soviet Jews, a claim we shall disprove later. The rest of the program is supposed to have begun in March 1942, with the deportation and concentration of European Jews in the eastern camps of the Polish Government-General, such as the giant industrial complex at Auschwitz near Cracow. The fantastic and quite groundless assumption throughout is that transportation to the East, supervised by Eichmann's department, actually meant immediate extermination in ovens upon arrival. According to Manvell and Frankl (Heinrich Himmler, London, 1965), the policy of genocide "seems to have been arrived at" after "secret discussions" between Hitler and Himmler (p. 118), though they fail to prove it. Reitlinger and Poliakov guess along similar "verbal" lines, adding that no one else was allowed to be present at these discussions, and no records were ever kept of them. This is the purest invention, for there is not a shred of evidence that even suggests such outlandish meetings took place. William Shirer, in his generally wild and irresponsible book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is similarly muted on the subject of documentary proof. He states weakly that Hitler's supposed order for the murder of Jews "apparently was never committed to paper - at least no copy of it has ever been unearthed. It was probably given verbally to Goering, Himmler and Heydrich, who passed it down..." (p. 1148). A typical example of the kind of "proof" quoted in support of the extermination legend is given by Manvell and Frankl. They cite a memorandum of 31st July, 1941, sent by Goering to Heydrich, who headed the Reich Security Head Office and was Himmler's deputy. Significantly, the memorandum begins: "Supplementing the task that was assigned to you on 24th January 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions..." The supplementary task assigned in the memorandum is a "total solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question within the area of German influence in Europe," which authors admit means concentration in the East, and it requests preparations for the "organizational, financial and material matters" involved. The memorandum then requests a future plan for the "desired final solution (Endlosung), which clearly refers to the ideal and ultimate scheme of emigration mentioned at the beginning of the directive. No mention whatever is made of murdering people, but Manvell and Frankl assure us that this is what the memorandum is really about. Again, of course, the "true nature" of the final as distinct from the total solution "was made known to Heydrich by Goering verbally" (ibid p. 118). The convenience of these "verbal" directives issuing back and forth is obvious.
THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
The final details of the plan to exterminate Jews were supposedly to have been made at a conference at Gross Wannsee in Berlin on 20th January 1942, presided over by Heydrich (Poliakov, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, p. 1220 ff. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 95 ff). Officials of all German Ministries were present, and Muller and Eichmann represented Gestapo Head Office. Reitlinger and Manvell and Frankl consider the minutes of this conference to be their trump card in proving the existence of a genocide plan, but the truth is no such plan was even mentioned, and what is more, they freely admit this. Manvell and Frankl explain it away rather lamely by saying that "The minutes are shrouded in the form of officialdom that cloaks the real significance of the words and terminology used" (The Incomparable Crime, London, 1967, p. 46), which really means that they intend to interpret them in their own way. What Heydrich actually said was that, as in the memorandum quoted above, he had been commissioned by Goering to arrange a solution to the Jewish problem. He reviewed the history of Jewish emigration, stated that the war had rendered the Madagascar project impractical, and continued: "The emigration program has been replaced now by the evacuation of Jews to the east as a further solution in accordance with the previous authorization of the Fuhrer." Here, he explained, their labor was to be utilized. All this is supposed to be deeply sinister, and pregnant with the hidden meaning that the Jews were to be exterminated, though Prof. Paul Rassinier, a Frenchman interned at Buchenwald who has done sterling work in refuting the myth of the Six Million, explains that it means precisely what it says, i.e. the concentration of the Jews for labor in the immense eastern ghetto of the Polish Government-General. "There they were to wait until the end of the war, for the re-opening of internal discussions which would decide their future. This decision was finally reached at the inter ministerial Berlin-Wannsee conference...." (Rassinier, Le Vertitable Proces Eichmann, p. 20). Manvell and Frankl, however, remain undaunted by the complete lack of reference to extermination. At the Wannsee conference, they write, "Direct references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favoring the term "Arbeitseinsatz in Osten" (labor assignment in the East)" (Heinrich Himmler, p. 209). Why we should not accept labor assignment in the East to mean labor assignment in the East is not explained. According to Reitlinger, and others, innumerable directives actually specifying extermination then passed between Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann and Commandant Hoess in the subsequent months of 1942, but of course, "none have survived".
TWISTED WORDS AND GROUNDLESS ASSUMPTIONS
The complete lack of documentary evidence to support the existence of an extermination plan has led to the habit of re-interpreting the documents that do survive. For example, it is held that a document concerning deportation is not about deportation at all, but a cunning way of talking about extermination. Manvell and Frankl state that "various terms were used to camouflage genocide. These included "Aussiedlung" (desettlement) and "Abbeforderung" (removal)" (ibid, p. 265). Thus, as we have seen already, words are no longer assumed to mean what they say if they prove too inconvenient. This kind of thing is taken to the most incredible extremes, such as their interpretation of Heydrich's directive for labor assignment in the east. Another example is a reference to Himmler's order for sending deportees to the East, "that is, having them killed" (ibid, p. 251). Reitlinger, equally at a loss for evidence, does exactly the same, declaring that from the "circumlocutionary" words of the Wannsee conference it is obvious that "the slow murder of an entire race was intended" (ibid, p. 98). A review of the documentary situation is important, because it reveals the edifice of guesswork and baseless assumptions upon which the extermination legend is built. The Germans had an extraordinary propensity for recording everything on paper in the most careful detail, yet among the thousands of captured documents of the S.D. and Gestapo, the records of the Reich Security Head Office, the files of Himmler's headquarters and Hitler's own war directives there is not a single order for the extermination of Jews or anyone else. It will be seen later that this has, in fact, been admitted by the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Tel-Aviv. Attempts to find "veiled allusions" to genocide in speeches like that of Himmler's to his S.S. Obergruppenfuhrers at Posen in 1943 are likewise hopeless. Nuremberg statements extracted after the war, invariably under duress, are examined in the following chapter.