Paul Rassinier:
Credible, or Merely in Denial?

by M. S.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 1998)

As with any historical event, the Nazi Holocaust of World War II has been subject to as many interpretations as there are historians to review it. However, it must be understood that what did happen was an atrocity against mankind. The absolute disregard for human life displayed in the rampant imprisonment and killings performed by the Nazis is an outrage. No matter how the Holocaust is interpreted, by however many historians, with whatever motivations, there is no escaping the overwhelming evidence that something horrible occurred, and that there is, in fact, an objective truth.

The phenomenon of Holocaust denial is a sad testimony to the continuing existence of ignorance in our world. Demonstrative of this ignorance is Holocaust denial poster-boy Paul Rassinier. Rassinier was actually interred at Nazi camps during World War II. It is this fact from which he attempts to draw his credibility. His focus in his book, The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, is primarily to discount the writings of noted Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg.

Both Hilberg and Rassinier have been acknowledged as leaders amongst those in their respective intellectual movements, if Rassinier’s can be called that. It is natural that Rassinier would endeavor to refute Hilberg, in order to establish some credibility. This paper will outline the method which Rassinier uses in his attempt to accomplish this goal and demonstrate how he is utterly unsuccessful. It will clarify the evidence provided by Hilberg, which Rassinier attempts to refute and, in the process, reveal the uncorroborable, unfounded logic by which he endeavors to accomplish this goal.

Let us first review the historical facts which are agreed upon by both Paul Rassinier and Raul Hilberg. It is generally agreed upon that the Nazis did round up their political prisoners and "undesirable" ethnic groups such as Jews and Gypsies to be placed into concentration camps. Rassinier, himself, was a French Socialist who was imprisoned. At times, he acknowledges the inhumane treatment which he and his fellow prisoners suffered at the hands of the Nazis, who performed these atrocities in a rather businesslike manner. Rassinier says:

...we encountered a long string of halls, each filled with strange and menacing people, who had their no less strange and humiliating specialties. Here, your wallet, wedding ring, watch, fountain pen; their your jacket trousers, shorts, socks, shirt; in the last place your name. They had stolen everything from us.

Clearly, Rassinier is aware of the dehumanizing treatment of concentration camp prisoners by their Nazi captors. He does not attempt to deny this.

Likewise, Hilberg describes the businesslike manner in which the Nazis conducted their camps. He speaks of the efficiency of the killing operations in Poland. "The killing centers worked quickly and efficiently. A man would step off a train in the morning, and in the evening his clothes were packed away for shipment to Germany." Hilberg goes on to describe the careful planning and elaborate bureaucracy utilized by the Nazis to accomplish their goals. His description of this bureaucracy elaborates, in detail, on the "long string of halls" and "menacing people" which Rassinier speaks about.

Another issue which both of these men agree upon is that there was an inherent racism aimed at Jews in the philosophy of the National Socialist movement in Germany. Rassinier speaks of an inherent dislike for the Jews amongst the National Socialists due to the Jewish claim of being the "chosen people."

National Socialism itself was anti-Semitic, but only because it was racist. It maintained, for example, the best relations with the Arabs. It would have maintained good relations with the Jews if they had not claimed to be a distinct people - chosen besides! - in Germany itself.

While this description admits the inherently anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis, Rassinier trivializes this racism as merely one motivated by the Nazi’s pride based on their belief that they were the master race.

Hilberg’s book, as its title implies, is intended to expose the Nazi objective of completely destroying the Jewish population throughout Europe. Hilberg states: "A number of Nazis, including the chief of German SS and Police Himmeler, inclined to the view that Jews were a lower species of life,... which upon contact infected the German people with deadly diseases." Hilberg goes on to describe a statement by Himmeler to his SS generals that the property of dead Jews should not be stolen because it contained the "bacterium" of Judaism. This statement of Himmeler seems to paint a more accurate picture of the racism which was so intrinsic in the beliefs of the National Socialists.

The last major point which Rassinier and Hilberg agree on is that gas chambers did exist and that people were killed in the concentration camps. Rassinier states: "My view on the gas chambers? Some probably did exist; but not as many as is believed. Moreover, there probably were exterminations by gas, but not as many as has been claimed." He goes on to say that there is no evidence that there was a Nazi order to exterminate anyone in these camps, especially the Jews.

Hilberg uses overwhelmingly corroborative evidence from death camp survivors and guards to support his belief that the gas chambers did, in fact, exist.

The most secret operations of the destruction process were carried out in six camps located in Poland... These camps were the collecting points for thousands of transports converging from all directions. In three years the incoming traffic reached a total of close to three million Jews. As the transports turned back empty, their passengers disappeared inside.

Clearly, Hilberg believes in the existence of Nazi death camps. He describes the efficient methods the Nazis used in order to accomplish their objective of systematically destroying the European Jews.

The points which Raul Hilberg and Paul Rassinier agree on, namely the racism of the Nazis, their inhumane treatment of concentration camp prisoners, and the existence of the gas chambers, lay the groundwork for their debate. The disagreement lies in the perceived motivations of the Nazis and the magnitude of their operations. Rassinier makes the claims that Hilberg’s data is flawed and manipulated. He devotes Part III of his book, the Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, to attempting to destroy the credibility of Raul Hilberg.

Rassinier attacks Hilberg on three fronts. The first of these attacks is aimed at the method which Hilberg uses to argue that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen and that it was carefully planned and carried out by the Nazis. The attack on Hilberg’s method is the basis for all other arguments which Rassinier presents against him.

Rassinier begins by not only attacking the journalistic integrity of Raul Hilberg, but also the competency of the judges in the Nuremberg trials. He says:

I am struck by the fact that the judges at Nuremberg did not pay much attention to the credibility of the prosecution witnesses-especially since they had already decided on a verdict prior to the trials and only required the testimony to support it-I am much less impressed when a journalist believes all these people from the start. It is well known that journalists are generally supposed to be more skeptical and questioning than most people.

Rassinier seems confident that this point will shed doubt on the both the journalism of Hilberg and the evidence of the Nuremberg trials, from which Hilberg uses a small amount of evidence to back up his arguments.

Paul Rassinier goes on to attack the research methods which Raul Hilberg employs. In particular, he attacks a quote from Hitler which Hilberg uses, in which Hitler threatens that, should a world war break out, it would result in "the annihilation of the Jewry race in Europe." Rassinier dismisses this quote as harmless. He states:

...threatening observations of this kind abound in the writings of statesmen the whole world over. Historians usually consider them as representing a kind of defiance that was hurled by the ancient heroes and, as a consequence, attribute little significance to them.

Rassinier apparently feels that his comparison of Hitler’s comments to those of other, unnamed, statesmen and to the heroes of ancient fiction deems them worthy of dismissal.

Having already dealt with the journalistic integrity and the research methods of Hilberg, Rassinier now turns his attention to the motivations behind Hilberg’s "flawed" methods. He continues to assert that Hilberg has no standards as to who is a credible witness. He endeavors to explain the reasoning behind this lack of standards. Rassinier states:

If, therefore, Mr. Raul Hilberg acts as if he has no idea as to whether a witness and his testimony can be regarded as creditable... he has only one excuse, and that excuse is dishonesty. I say "excuse" because, as I continue to read his biographical note, I find that he is a collaborator in the Jewish Encyclopedia Handbooks and, in my judgment, that fact explains everything.

With this statement, Rassinier feels that he has destroyed the credibility of Hilberg’s methods once and for all.

The second front on which Rassinier attacks Hilberg is on the testimony of individuals which Hilberg uses to support his argument of a large scale Nazi plan to destroy the European Jews. Rassinier spends nearly twenty pages attacking the testimony of Rudolph Hoess, a former SS officer, at Nuremberg and the writings of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a doctor at Auschwitz.

Rassinier points out some minor discrepancies in the testimony of these two men which he uses to "destroy" the credibility of these two witnesses, or in Nyiszli’s case, shed doubt on his very existence. Whether or not Rassinier is successful in his attempt to smear the testimony of these men, the fact that they, at no point, appear in Hilberg’s book makes this point seem to be quite inconsequential. Since this section is supposedly dedicated to destroying Hilberg’s argument, it is a mystery why they are included at all.

At the conclusion of his dealings with Hoess and Nyiszli, Rassinier turns his attention to the testimony of Kurt Gerstein. Unlike the two previous witnesses which Rassinier attacks, Gerstein’s testimony is actually used by Hilberg. Gerstein was a lieutenant in the "Health Services" branch of the SS at Auschwitz. The significant part of his testimony deals with the amount of Zyklon B which was delivered to this Nazi death camp. Zyklon B, delivered in pellet form, was the chemical used in the gas chambers to asphyxiate people.

In a statement at a French prison, Gerstein puts the figure at 160 tons of Zyklon B delivered to Auschwitz from 1942-1945. Rassinier, while accepting the fact that this level of Zyklon B was delivered to Auschwitz, endeavors to dispute whether or not it was used. He states:

Just because Zyklon B was delivered to a concentration camp does not permit one to conclude that it was used to asphyxiate prisoners.

However, Rassinier offers no explanation as to an alternate use at Auschwitz or a stockpile of this product which was found at the end of the war.

The third front on which Rassinier attacks Raul Hilberg is on the figure of how many Jews did die in the Holocaust. Hilberg, as do most historians, puts the figure at 6 million. Rassinier, however, disputes this mark. He believes that a number of events in the decade before World War II make the 6 million number completely fallacious. He has shown, previously, his disbelief in the credibility of some of the major witnesses of the Holocaust. Now, Rassinier puts forth his explanation for what happened to the European Jews and why nobody knows about it.

Rassinier believes that, from 1933-1945, there was a mass migration of Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia to the United States and Palestine. He believes that the number of Jews who emigrated from these three countries is 1,541,718. Rassinier comes to this conclusion after a series of complicated mathematical equations which take into account birth and death rates. However, this number is not for the time between 1933 and 1945. Rather, for some reason, he calculates the emigration which took place from 1931-1962. The figures for the seventeen years following W.W.II hardly seem relevant.

Rassinier endeavors to explain why this data, which he believes takes the wind out of the sails of Holocaust death figures, has remained unknown to the masses. He says:

All these facts which have set us on the path to historical truth, have been made positively known and have been irrefutably established, unfortunately, only by specialists, most of whom, out of indifference or political interest, have suppressed them or have tried... with regard to the international Zionist movement - to keep them out of sight.

Rassinier believes that this is the final proof of the complete falsity of Raul Hilberg’s estimation that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Paul Rassinier, through his self-perceived airtight logic, has proven to himself that the writings of Raul Hilberg, the testimony of Holocaust witnesses, and the 6 million figure are part of a large-scale Zionist conspiracy. He believes that this conspiracy aims to extort Germany for indemnities which it owes nobody. Rassinier says:

In the case of Mr. Raul Hilberg, it is a question of justifying by a proportional number of cadavers the enormous subsidies which Germany has paid annually since the end of the war.

With this statement, Rassinier believes that he has exposed Raul Hilberg as a complete fraud.

Paul Rassinier attempts to establish his credibility by pointing out the fact that he was interred at both the Dora and Buchenwald Labor camps during World War II. However, he never set foot in any camp which had gas chambers. Further, Rassinier was a political prisoner, and while his time in the camps was surely not easy, he does not know what the Jewish prisoners went through.

Rassinier reveals that he was employed in the kitchen of the Buchenwald camp, where he received a somehow lenient treatment from the SS officers. It is clear that Rassinier was no typical Nazi war prisoner. He even confesses a mutual affection between himself and several of the SS guards. Clearly, Paul Rassinier has little credibility on the subject of Nazi death camps.

After studying the argument presented by Paul Rassinier, it has become readily apparent that the statements in his book are entirely based on ignorance and seriously perverted logic. In order to understand the magnitude to which he is mistaken, it is necessary to review his case against Raul Hilberg, point by point.

Rassinier, first, attacks Hilberg’s methods for his presentation of his argument that there was a plan by the Nazi’s to destroy the population of European Jews. Rassinier’s assault on Hilberg’s journalistic integrity, like that against the competency of the Nuremberg judges, is rambling and baseless. He accuses both Hilberg and the judges of having a preconceived decision and trying to make the evidence fit this decision.

The most ridiculous aspect of this argument is that Rassinier, himself, seems to be guilty of what he accuses Hilberg and the Nuremberg judges. He offers no support for his contention that the judges were incompetent. And, the only argument he offers to explain what he deems to be the dishonesty of Hilberg, is a fleeting reference to his contribution to a Jewish Encyclopedia. What Rassinier fails to realize is that Hilberg, being a noted scholar on the Holocaust, has contributed to innumerable works regarding it.

Rassinier offers no evidence as to the lack of journalistic integrity of Raul Hilberg, other than his contention that Hilberg too readily accepts the testimony of the Nuremberg witnesses. His contention that "it is widely known that journalists are supposed to be more skeptical" is a sweeping generalization. Rassinier offers no concrete proof that Hilberg did not do anything but a completely professional job in his research. In all honesty, the Nuremberg trials are completely insignificant in Hilberg’s argument on the Holocaust. This is evidenced by the fact that the word Nuremberg appears on only 7 of the 331 pages in The Destruction of the European Jews.

Rassinier’s dismissal of Hilberg’s quote from Hitler, in which the Nazi leader threatens the destruction of European Jews, is completely ludicrous. His explanation that many statesmen and ancient heroes make statements such as these, that should be disregarded, is completely ridiculous. Even if Scooby-Doo made remarks such as this, by Hitler, it would not change the inherent evil which it promoted.

The next way which Rassinier attempts to attack Hilberg is on the credibility of his witnesses. Once again, Rassinier spends the majority of his time attacking two Holocaust witnesses whose names do not even appear once in Hilberg’s book. While Rassinier may have felt he had the strongest case against Rudolph Hoess’ and Miklos Nyiszli’s testimony, the fact that they do not have anything to do with Hilberg’s argument makes them completely irrelevant. Rassinier rambles on, page after page, as to why the testimony of these men cannot be accepted and the damage he does to Hilberg is zero.

When Rassinier finally attacks the testimony of Kurt Gerstein, he does so in a superficial and insignificant way. Rassinier does not even dispute the amount of Zyklon B which Gerstein states was brought in to Auschwitz over the course of the war. Nor does Rassinier even use the feasible argument that some of the Zyklon B could have used as a disinfectant in the concentration camp.

Rassinier’s attacks on the credibility of the testimony of the Holocaust witnesses does little to further his already weak allegations against the work of Raul Hilberg. He attacks two men who are not even mentioned in Hilberg’s book and a third who is largely insignificant. This leads to Rassinier’s final assault on Raul Hilberg’s figure of 6 million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust.

Rassinier’s method for attacking the figure of 6 million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust, depends completely on his theory that there was a mass emigration from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia to Israel and the United States. His complicated mathematical formulas which "prove" this argument are completely baseless. What he does not take into account, in his calculations, is the effects of the Immigration Act of 1921 in the United States. This piece of legislation put into effect a quota system allowing only certain percentages of people based on the already existing ethnic populations in the U.S. to immigrate.

In 1938 U.S. census figures reveal that approximately 33,000 people, in total, immigrated from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Immigration figures of British controlled Palestine reveal that only 70,000 Jews entered in the five years prior to World War II. According to the census figures of Britain and the U.S., the total Jewish emigrants to the U.S. and Palestine, from the above-listed countries, in this five year period, adds up to only 225,000 people. The quota-system put into place by the U.S. and British government officials would have made it impossible for there to have been 1,541,718 Jewish immigrants that Rassinier claims came to these territories. It certainly does little to cast doubt on the 6 million figure.

In short, we see yet another rambling, confusing, and baseless contention Paul Rassinier makes in his attempt to refute the arguments of Raul Hilberg. Rassinier is plagued by a complete ignorance and an inability to effectively address any one point made by Hilberg. His twisted, out-of-context evidence, compounded by his unbased accusations make a mockery of the whole subject. His ridiculous claims have no logical support and are obviously a desperate, but ineffective, way to back up his own confused point-of-view.

In order to find logical, well-supported, conclusive proof as to the existence of a large-scale Nazi plan to destroy the European Jews, one need look no further than The Destruction of European Jews, by Raul Hilberg. Hilberg makes it clear that the Holocaust was fully premeditated by the Nazis. One of the major clues, which Hilberg uses, is offered in the previously-quoted speech which Adolph Hitler gave in 1939. Hitler’s discussion of the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" is a blatant reference to the Nazi plan which resulted in the Holocaust.

The Nazi plan to destroy the European Jews had three major phases. Hilberg outlines these phases in his book. The first phase involved the concentration of Jewish communities. By centralizing the Jews the Nazis would be able to focus their efforts on systematically destroying them. In order to centralize the Jews, it was first necessary to distinguish them from the rest of the population. With the introduction of the armbands bearing the Star of David, as a means of setting the Jews apart, this goal was accomplished.

Having successfully distinguished the Jews, the Nazis were then able to enact legislation aimed directly at them. This legislation restricted Jewish movement in German controlled territory. Hilberg states:

In conjunction with the marking decrees, the Jews were forbidden to move freely. Under the Generalgouverenement decree of December 11, 1939, signed by the higher SS and police leader Kruger, Jews were forbidden to change residence, except within the locality, and they were forbidden to enter the streets between 9P.M. and 5A.M. Under the decree of January 26, 1940, the Jews were prohibited also from using the railways, except for authorized trips.

These new laws levied against the Jews essentially created ghettos for them. Further, they were unable to leave except on "authorized trips." The Jews were caught in a death-trap.

The next phase which the Nazis undertook was the introduction of the Mobile Killing Operations. Having created the ghettos, the Nazis could then act on solving their "Jewish problem." The creation of the Einsatgruppen, mobile military-police units specifically designed for the purpose of killing Jews, marked the next step. These mobile killing units went into the Jewish ghettos and killed those "guilty or suspected of Jewish partisan activity."

The Nazis endeavored to get public support behind the Einsatgruppen to encourage regular citizens to take action against the Jews. Hilberg quotes Einsatkommando 6 of Einsatgruppe C in his report to his superiors:

In order to meet the fear psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of the wielder of political power, Einsatkommando 6 on several occasions marched Jews before their execution through the city. Also care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.

In this case, the Einsatkommando clearly knows that the Jews are helpless against these attacks. His efforts to demonstrate this to the community show a deep-seeded hatred and an aim of totally destroying the Jewish population.

When the mobile killing units, bearing machine guns, were deemed not efficient enough, the Nazis began to explore other alternatives. The invention of the mobile gas vans, which re-routed the exhaust into a chamber in the back of the van, designed to put Jews in, allowed the Einsatgruppen to kill even more Jews, more quickly. An Einsatgruppe draft report for the winter of 1941-1942 puts the Einsatgruppen killings of Jews at 375,616.

The Nazi leadership soon decided that the creation of stationary killing centers would enable them to kill Jews much more efficiently than their mobile counterparts. Thus, they entered phase three of their plan to destroy the Jews. In 1941-1942 six Nazi death camps were created. These camps were the ultimate destination of a highly-organized, high-security Jewish pipeline. This pipeline began with the round-up of Jews who were loaded onto flat-bed trucks by heavily armed guards. They were then loaded into box cars at the train station and sent off to one of six death camps where they were gassed on arrival.

The next problem which the Nazis encountered was how to dispose of the bodies of the Jews who were killed, in mass quantities, in the gas chambers of their new death camps. This dilemma was solved with the creation of the crematoriums at these camps. The capacity to dispose of the bodies in such an efficient manner allowed the Nazis to kill even more. Hilberg states:

During May and June the Hungarian Jews alone were being gassed at a rate of almost 10,000 a day, and higher numbers may have been reached when the Lodz transports arrived in the second half of August, 1944.

This tremendous capacity to kill is even more appalling when one takes into account the fact that Nazi leadership, at this point, knew the war was essentially lost.

At the peak of the killing in the Nazi death camps, even the capacity of the crematoriums to destroy corpses was exceeded. The Nazis, continuing to show their disgusting ingenuity, developed alternate methods of body disposal. One such method was to dig a pit forty yards by eight yards by six feet deep, where the bodies of the dead Jews were to be thrown. The corpses were then cremated by men using flame throwers. Methods such as these, used in the face of losing the war, demonstrate an unwavering dedication to the obviously premeditated plan to destroy the European Jews, completely.

The tabulated figures reveal the amazing amount of carnage left by the Nazi Holocaust. These figures show that the combined systematic killings of the Jews, by the Nazis own records, reached 5,100,000. In addition to this figure, the Nazis left tens of thousands of Jews who had been in their captivity on the verge of death from starvation and illness. The exact number of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis may never be known. Clearly it is, at least, 6 million. The lasting effect of this travesty on the Jews and on the world is still felt, and its magnitude may never be known.

Sadly, today, Holocaust denial is gaining underground success. It is difficult to understand what the motives of the Holocaust deniers is. Paul Rassinier, who is considered a leader in this movement, has demonstrated himself to be a rambling lunatic whose arguments have no basis in reality. His futile attempts to shed any doubt on the happenings of the Holocaust are made to look even more ridiculous by his baseless claims. His contention of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy to propagate the "myth" of the Holocaust is an example of such a claim.

No matter how many ways the Holocaust deniers try to manipulate the data, if people read their ridiculous arguments, they will never gain the support of any significant amount of people. Holocaust deniers, such as Rassinier, life in a cloud of ignorance and warped logic. As historians, and intelligent people, it is our job to see through their poorly disguised and desperate lies. We must take pains to make sure nothing like the Holocaust can ever occur again. It is clear that there is an objective truth, and anyone who says anything different is in denial.

Works Cited

Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1985.

Rassinier, Paul. The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses. Costa Mesa: The Institute for Historical Review, 1978.