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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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2. Declarations of Members of the SS
On the subject of the camp at Auschwitz we are in possession of two
fundamental testimonies of two particularly qualified members of the SS.
A certain ex SS-Unterscharführer Pery Broad was captured on May 6,
1945, in the British zone of occupation. A citizen of Brazil and who spoke
English very well, he became an interpreter for the British authorities. In
1945 he drew up a lengthy memoir concerning the camp of Auschwitz which he
entered in 1942 and where he was attached to the "Political Section"
("Politische Abteilung") until the liberation of the camp in January 1945 (6). On July 13, 1945, he gave this memoir to
the authorities of the British Intelligence Service. On December 14, 1945, at
Minden, he made a declaration under oath which is a sort of abridged version of
his memoir (18). These documents were not
rendered public and remained unknown to the International Court which judged
Goering and his consorts in 1945-46. During the last trimester of 1947, when
the American Military Tribunal opened proceedings against the German
industrialists implicated in the deliveries of large quantities of "Zyklon B"
to the camp of Auschwitz, these documents were produced. It is thus that the
declaration of Broad of December 14, 1945, was translated into English only on
September 29, 1947, nearly two years later. On October 20, 1947, at Nuremberg,
Broad deposed new testimony which was translated into English on November 20 of
that year (20). In all of these
testimonies and declarations, Broad relates the procedures of mass murders in
the gas chambers of Auschwitz with some details when compared to his memoir of
July 13.
In 1947, Broad was released by the English and worked in
diverse private companies without being bothered until April 30, 1959, the date
at which he was accused in the trial of the former SS of Auschwitz which was
held in Frankfurt from December 20, 1963, to August 20 1965 (29, p. 537; 30 p. 372).
In the course of this trial, the memoir of 1945 was presented to Broad, who
acknowledged being its author. He was clearly surprised and embarrassed, for in
his memoir he very cleverly represented himself as innocent if not a victim of
fate; whereas he accused his former colleagues, presently his co-defendants, of
atrocities. Discussing certain details concerning the latter, he retracted
nothing of his account of the events and evoked neither torture nor pressure
from the British in 1945. It is from this time on that his memoir finally
became really known to the public and to historians.
In his memoir
Broad described the first temporary arrangement of a place for experimenting
with murder by means of the gas "Zyklon B" in the cellars of Block 11 of
Auschwitz (6, pp. 61 8), the first
permanent an "home made" gas chambers installed in the two abandoned farms at
Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and designated in the jargon of the camp as "Bunkers I
and II," (6, pp. 69 78) and finally, the
construction at Birkenau of four enormous complexes with undressing room, gas
chamber and crematorium, designated by the numbers I, II, III and IV. He
precisely described their characteristics and their functioning (6, pp. 80-
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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