Home Up One Level What's New? Q & A Short Essays Holocaust Denial Guest Book Donations Multimedia Links

The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
Previous Page Back  Contents  Contents Page 143 Home Page Home Page  Forward Next Page 
     
According to the 1935 census, there were 93,479 Jews in Latvia; so that the 70,000 persons that the German troops found upon their arrival in Latvia in June 1941 represent 75% of the total population who were surely not "saved," instead of the 80% "of certain survivors" discovered by Rassinier. Moreover, the comparison between the 123,930 people killed as of October 1941 in the Baltic countries and the "49,000 missing in 1945" according to Rassinier, provides a new occasion to judge his self conceit and his frivolity. That is how he wrote history.

3. The Hungarian Chapter

The last example exposing Rassinier's methods concerns the deportation of the Hungarian Jews in 1944. Rassinier came back to the problem innumerable times for two reasons: the first is that he was desperately seeking to discredit a book by a Jew deported from Hungary, Myklos Nyiszli, who described the operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and indicated the frequency of the arrival of the convoys; the second is that he had his own ideas on the subject. The least incoherent of these ideas takes up ten pages in his book, "The Drama of the European Jews" (41, pp. 150-190). It may be summed up in the following manner: different Jewish sources, including the Tribunal of Jerusalem which judged Eichmann in 1961, fix the number of Jews deported from Hungary in 1944 at more than 400,000 persons transferred in two months by 147 trains of 3,000 people each following each other at a rhythm of two to three per day. Rassinier revolted against such inventions and showed that it was materially "impossible" and therefore completely false. He advanced two reasons to explain why it was impossible. First of all, according to Kasztner (one of the leaders of the Jewish community of Budapest), the "Eichmann Kommando" disposed of but 1,000 railway cars of which "only two-thirds could be affected to the deportation, hardly more. Let's say 700," conceded Rassinier. The three hundred remaining cars, according to Rassinier, were used to bring the future deportees to the assembly point. Furthermore, personal experience of the deportation showed Rassinier that the gathering together, the setting them on their way from the assembly point to the train, the embarking of only 3,000 persons in the train required "a good half-day," whereas the single voyage from Hungary to Auschwitz, by his calculations, required four days plus an a additional four days for the return of the empty cars. The consequence was that in few days "the system was blocked." Finally, Rassinier's personal experience allowed him to affirm that to guard 147 trains at the rate of two to three per day during two months, Eichmann had to dispose of 22,050 policemen; whereas he (Rassinier) could affirm that it was impossible to transport 3,000 persons in a convoy. For all of these reasons and for many others of the same nature, Rassinier reached the conclusion that there were really 77 trains instead of 147, transporting
    
   

 
The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
Previous Page  Back Page 143 Forward  Next Page

   

Last modified: April 13, 2008
Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org