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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 546 |
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| This particular Frenchman had left an impression. A most
unpleasant individual. This awful man had like me come to the
Archives and also discovered the plans of the
Krematorien, |
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[Drawings 932 and 934 (Krematorium II), 2136 (Kr III),
one or two of Kr 1 and an overall plan of the Birkenau camp,
drawing 2503 of 18/6/43. Early in 1977 he received copies of the
drawings of Krematorien II and III he had consulted and at the end
of 1977 the Museum sent him reproductions of the Kr I drawing of
25/9/ 41 and Krematorien IV and V drawing 2036 of
11/1/43.] |
But after two days he packed up and went home because he had
caught a cold. Once back home, this hypocrite to whom everything had
been generously shown wrote articles [“Le Matin” of
16/11/78. “Le Monde” of 29/12/78 and 16/1/79] claiming
that hydrocyanic acid homicidal gas chambers would never have been
able to function physically and hence that the extermination of the
Jews was a legend. Trying to maintain that the homicidal gas
chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau never existed amounted to historical
trickery and downright lying. It appeared that a certain Professor
“Laurisson” was the author of these absurdities. [Iwaszko had teamed
about the “Faurisson affair” thanks to a visit to the PMO Archives
by Maître Bernard Jouanneau, as lawyer for the LICRA, on 12th June
1979, five months before my own visit].
Though I was
sure I would eventually be able to get at the truth, I was hampered
by the terrible weather conditions and completed only half of my
program of producing slides of the camp, the gaps being filled by 50
photographs sent to me by the Museum. I would say in passing that
while Ivaszko was always helpful and friendly, even managing to save
a film that had broken in my camera, the attitude of two Polish
policemen was quite different and I underwent a most unpleasant
grilling and had twelve negatives of a newly begun film confiscated,
simply because I had the misfortune to photograph the bridge over
the Auschwitz railway (the famous bridge where, on 1st March 1941,
Himmler, accompanied by his retinue. had indicated with a wave of
the hand, that the Birkenau area should be the site for the
construction of a new camp for 100,000 prisoners of war
(Kriegsgefangenenlager or KGL)], the siding going towards Birkenau
and the nearest factory (of the period!) surrounded by barbed wire,
which was apparently producing equipment for the police. For a whole
hour I was able to savor the uncomfortable position of a “western
spy”, for this is what I was considered to be.
Nonetheless, I
had come to find answers to my questions, and I had them, even if I
still had no absolute certainty. Just as I was setting off, I came
upon a group of French former prisoners, come specially for All
Saints Day. They congratulated me, complementing my fine historical
curiosity, calling me a “relay” or “transmitter” of the good word. A
radiant woman former prisoner, a blond lady doctor, tried to find
out if I could bear witness in some way or other in the media [It
was only later on that understood the motives of this woman. There
are so few real specialists of the problem in the west that she
considered it highly desirable to “co-opt” me]. But I politely
declined and did not reveal my identity, declaring myself to be an
insignificant nobody. At that time I could not understand this
former prisoner’s request, not knowing that some people did not
believe or no longer believed in this horror. People like Andrzej
Brycht, a Polish writer born in 1935 who left his country in 1970 to
settle in Canada, who writes in his “Excursion Auschwitz
Birkenau” (1966 and January 1980, NRF, Editors Gallimard,
for the French version): “I observed these ruins [those of
Krematorium II] incapable of believing that so many people could
have been burned in such a miserable building”, and says,
”Who could know what really happened here [in Birkenau]
and even whether all that existed”.
During the
conversation with the former prisoners, the name of Laurisson had
come up again. This thoroughly aroused my curiosity and I decided to
contact him and find out what his views were. Five months passed.
After two preliminary telephone conversations I met the gentleman
concerned, Professor Faurisson (to give his correct spelling). He
appeared to look normal. About fifty, very much the academic. Apart
from a somewhat acid voice on the phone he seemed quite
correct.
The first meeting lasted four or five hours. I
emerged with my head bursting. A splitting headache. We had both
approached the problem in the same way. Through drawings. Something
tangible, concrete. Not on the basis of vague testimonies, always
true in the eyes of their authors, but without great historical
value because frequently deformed by different factors. The
floodgates of out mutual stores of information very quickly opened.
I knew a fair bit, but he seemed to know a hundred times more, and
in depth, supported by serious and unimpeachable references. |
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| [End of the text extracted from the
notes] |
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I worked with Robert Faurisson from the end of March 1980 to
December 1980. Then, as all serious historical research began
impossible, his dogma being paramount, our meetings became less
frequent, though we remained in touch, then the final break came in
April 1981. Before being able to realize that the force of his
argument rested purely and simply on the lead he held in the
knowledge of the facts, I had to catch up with him, Only then was I
able to judge impartially the value of his arguments. What first
made me think deeply, helped me and, I admit, disturbed me, was
Pierre Vidal Naquet’s article of September 1980, "La mémoire
d’Auschwitz". The second factor was my own research at the
PMO Archives and the documents I found there in three stays (25th -
30th August, 4th - 17th October and 11th 21st November 1980). Third
was the pleading of Maitre Bernard Jouanneau at the hearing of 1st
June 1981 at the High Court of Paris during the "Faurisson trial” .
But as early as the end of August 1980, Faurisson, who was not at
that time aware of it, could no longer count me among his
unconditional supporters. His theory stood up for only TWO DAYS to a
direct historical confrontation with the Museum documents and the
Birkenau ruins, the just result of over hasty research that, irony
of fate, had also lasted two days.
I met a twosome.
Robert Faurisson and Pierre Guillaume. The first called himself a
historian and an “anarchist of the right”. The second supported the
first, published him, and considered himself to be an “anarchist of
the left”. They formed a most disparate couple, The meetings took
place at the home of Pierre Guillaume. who put Faurisson up during
his visits to Paris. I never understood why Guillaume supported
Faurisson. Guillaume already publishing Paul Rassiniers’s works, it
seemed logical that he should be interested in the works of another
revisionist, Faurisson. textual and documentary critic, Professor in
the Classical and Modem Letters and Civilization Faculty at the
University of Lyon 2.
Why did I work with them? Because they
brought precise answers in response to my doubts. People born after
the Second World War no longer believe in anything very much. The
hypocrisy of human behavior, the systematic falsification of
information and deliberate deformation of the facts have made them
more than suspicious of any official sources, “authorized beliefs”
and “expert opinions”. This attitude implies that before accepting
anything, one has to cheek for oneself its truth and significance.
The necessary openness to all that stems from this causes
“permeability”, which in turns leads to a certain “fragility”. In
the case of Auschwitz, this means listening to both parties (there
are only two), judging the validity of their arguments and where
necessary going further into their theses, while maintaining one’s
own liberty. Thus one gentleman, a university professor, told me:
“You have doubts about the functioning of the Birkenau crematoriums?
Of course you have, because they never served to exterminate people
and they did not contain gas chambers”. On the other side, shortly
afterwards, a member of a Jewish organization inopportunely advised
me “to stop tormenting myself with the study of this problem”,
clearly indicating that I should abandon any work on this subject,
which should remain “private property”.
When I first made
contact with Faurisson, the position of his studies was summed up in
his interview in “Storia Illustrata” number 261 of
August 1979, by Antonio Pitamitz, [published after having been
revised, corrected and commented by Faurisson in “Vérité
Historique ou Vérité Politique” by Serge Thion, La Vieille
Taupe. April 1980]. The gas chambers al Auschwitz, Maidenek and
Struthof were his current targets. Those of Maidenek looked so
ridiculous to him that he had not developed his refutation very far.
According to him, the confession by the former commandant of
Struthof, Josef Kramer, established the irreality of the homicidal
gassings, because of sheer chemical impossibility. As for Auschwitz,
the comparison of two plans of Krematorium I (Topf & Sons
drawing D.59042 of 25/9/41 and Bauleitung drawing 4287 of 21/9/44)
supplied by the Museum enabled him to conjure away the gas chamber
by demonstrating a “rearrangement” of the premises that corresponded
to no original drawing. Fired by this success, he extended his
argument to Birkenau Krematorien II, III, IV and V, mainly using
“internal criticism” of the autobiography of the first commandant of
the camp, Rudolf Höss [who was actually relating an episode that
took place at Bunkers 1 and 2!]. He went on to attack even more
fiercely the gas chambers at Buchenwald [where there really were
none], Dachau, Mauthausen [the work by Pierre Serge Choumoff proves
their existence], Orienburg [one seems to have worked, using liquid
hydrocyanic acid, but its mode of employment seems to me imprecise
and to require more explanation] and Ravensbruck [where small scale
gassings using Zyklon B in a roughly converted barracks were carried
out at the end of the war]. Using a method dear to him, Faurisson
sheltered behind the writings of traditional authors to confirm his
negations. Doctor Martin Broszat's famous letter (published in
“Die Zeit” of 19th August 1960) entitled “No
gassing at Dachau”, which established the non-existence of
gas chambers at Dachau, Bergen Belsen and Buchenwald, generalizing
this to the whole territory of the former Reich facilitated his
“liquidation” of Dachau and Buchenwald. Olga Wormser Migot with
“Le Systême concentrationaire nazi, 1933 45” (PUF
1968) helped him to declare the gas chambers of Mauthausen and
Hartheim to be mythical. He adopted the principle of taking the
enemy’s arms and turning them against him. What is more, the
publication of “Vérité historique …” by Serge Thion
provided him with a “moral guarantee” against the “persecution” to
which he was subject and, above all, a spectacular tactical victory
in revealing that the “DIARY OF ANNE FRANK is nothing but a literary
hoax”. Those who read his demonstration considered it to be valid
[even Pierre Vidal Naquet, who was to become the first man to stop
Faurisson in his tracks]. It was not until 1986 that doubts arose.
Harry Paape (Director of the Netherlands Institute for War
Documentation [RIOD] and Secretary General of the International
Committee for the History of the Second World War) and his team
published in Amsterdam “De dagboeken van Anne Frank”,
a book demonstrating the authenticity of the different versions of
the “Diary” by means of a strictly material study. It
will be possible for us here in France to make our final decision
once this is available in French. However, it proves already that
the scouring of texts as recommended by Faurisson has its limits and
becomes worthless in the face of a materialistic approach using
original documents. |
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| For those not thoroughly versed in the finer technical points of
gas chambers, and this means 99.999% of the population, Faurisson’s
claims were a revelation. A fine masterpiece, finely polished and
unassailable. Nobody sitting down opposite Faurisson and listening
to him for one or two hours could fail to emerge from the
conversation shaken or completely converted to his cause. He was
steeped in his subject, backed up by 200 kg of documents, 200
photographs, 10 years of reading and 4 years of intensive work What
could one say when he started off: |
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“What I say is that the famous gas chambers were just
another fabrication of the war. This propaganda invention is to be
compared with the legends spread during the First World War about
“Teutonic barbarity”. At that time already the Germans were being
accused of perfectly imaginary crimes: Belgian children with their
hands cut off. Canadians crucified, corpses transformed into soap,
etc.” |
| One could but nod one’s head and listen in wonder. This extract
shows one of the tricks used to get the message across: putting
forward a lie (the gas chambers are only war propaganda) then
covering it immediately with a well known truth (the German crimes
invented by the British in 1914-18 [Photo 16]), brought out
to protect the false initial postulate. This process was pushed to
the absolute limits of is possibilities in an 80 page pamphlet
published by Guillaume in 1982, “L’incroyable Affaire
Faurisson” [The incredible Faurisson Affair], containing the
conclusions lodged by the LICRA and Faurisson’s responses to them in
the Court of Appeal. This mixture of truths, lies and unjustifiable
interpretations reached such a level of subterfuge that it is
virtually impossible to unravel. Even a “specialist” such as I had
myself become quite by accident, had difficulty in separating the
grain from the chaff. This is one of the finest examples of the
Faurisson style. The Appeal Court judges allowed themselves to be
influenced by this insidious rhetoric and their judgment of 26th
April 1983 “confirmed” that: “at present nobody can convict him
[Faurisson] of lying ...” a ridiculous conclusion when one knows the
man. But alas, how can one suppress an ironic smile when he speaks
of the “gassings” in Dachau:
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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