Rassinier's Lies of Ulysses

by C. Y.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 1999)

The fact that millions of Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust is acknowledged as a fact by everyone except a small segment of society. Aristotelian Logic asserts that a universal truth consists of particular cases. Therefore, from the accumulation of witness accounts, the truth of the Holocaust can be deduced and that those who deny it defy logic. Paul Rassinier is one such denier. At the end of the war, following his internment in the concentration camp at Buchenwald and later at Dora, he emerged as a denier because he disagreed with the descriptions that other camp inmates gave. Based on his experiences, he saw these reports as invalid and from this premise went on to assert that the Holocaust of the Jews did not take place. If his testimony is accurate, it could offer valuable for the insight that it offers into life at Buchenwald, but the conclusions that he draws from it are illogical and ultimately, invalid.

Born in France, Rassinier joined the Communist Party in 1922 as an enthusiastic sixteen-year-old youth but during the 1930’s turned to the Socialist Party. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he joined the French resistance and eventually captured by the Nazis and incarcerated for his participation in the resistance. He was interred in the concentration camp at Buchenwald and later at Dora but managed to escape in the chaotic last days of the Third Reich. After the war in 1945, he served for a year as a Socialist member of the French National Assembly but in face of the emerging accounts of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps which he deemed inaccurate, he resigned himself to a career of writing to set the record straight. The publication of Le Passage de la Ligne (Crossing The Line) in 1948, marked the beginning of a productive publishing career devoted to the exoneration of the Nazis from the unfair accusations brought against them. In The Holocaust Story and Lies of Ulysses, Rassinier describes his experiences at Buchenwald and Dora to refute the false testimonies of other inmates.

Life at Buchenwald was not the horrible environment that it was portrayed as by other prisoners. On 30 January 1944, he recalls, he arrived at Buchenwald amid a group of twenty individuals struggling to adjust to the environment into which they had been thrust. As they descended into Block 48 for quarantine from the railway car by which they had come they were inducted as prisoners by the camp officials. Their clothing, hair, possessions and identity were stripped from them and replaced with a uniform and number.

As the days passed, Rassinier with the rest of the newcomers adjusted to each other and to life in the camp. Buchenwald, he found, was a labor concentration camp for non-Jewish Europeans where they would to work the benefit of Germany. "[Buchenwald] was not conceived in the minds of the [Nazi] authorities to be just a camp," according to Rassinier, "but a community working under supervision for the building of the Third Reich, just like the other individuals of the German community who remained in relative liberty" (Rassinier 45). "Life was bearable there for those assigned to the camp; it was a little harder for those who were destined to stay only for the quarantine period" (Rassinier 50).

"This isolated city had its own laws and its own particular social phenomena," he recalls, and was complete with modern conveniences and economic devices. "There [was] the Kuche or kitchen; the Effecktenkammer, or clothing store, which was attached to the Verwaltung; the Haftlingskantine, or canteen, which supplied the prisoners with extra food and drinks in exchange for the coin of the realm; the Bank, where the special money good only in the camp was issued" (Raspier 49).

"All the prisoners whatever social element they came from, lived together under the same regulations" (Rassinier 51). For everyone, their day began each morning at four thirty when they were forcibly roused from their slumber with blows from rubber truncheons. Following a hurried bathing, they were given "250 grams of bread; 20 grams of margarine; 50 grams of sausage or white cheese or jam, and a pint of ersatz coffee without sugar" and then rushed off to roll-call (Rassinier 27).

Roll calls were an trying process. Rassinier recalls "Ah! those roll-calls! ...whether it rained or the wind blew, we had to stand for hours and hours being counted and recounted" (Rassinier 39). Morning roll call commenced at five-thirty and lasted until six-thirty or seven. At eleven o’clock, prisoners received a quart of rutabaga soup and were given coffee around four o’clock and left to themselves. "At six o’clock there was usually another roll-call which could last until nine o’clock, rarely longer, but usually ended at eight[,]" following which the inmates were put to bed (Rassinier 27).

Life at Buchenwald dissolved former social positions to the point that "[t]he only thing that distinguished them was their reason for being there" (Rassinier 51). In face of this, recalls that "...everyone wanted to have a social position more enviable that that of his neighbor’s; above all, one that included having been entrusted by London with a mission of the greatest importance. You could not count the number of brilliant feats" (Rassinier 25). Yet, "in two days, we were sure that, at least half of our companions in misery were not there for the reasons that they gave, and, in any case, they had had practically no connection with the resistance" (Rassinier 27).

"All the services of the camp had their parallel in the S.S. [or Schutestaffel] camp where everything was centralized, and from which daily or weekly reports were sent directly to Himmler’s offices in Berlin. The S.S. camp was, therefore, the administrator of the other" (Rassinier 53). Apart from this difference, however, the prisoners’ camp and S.S. quarters were similar, self-governed entities.

Block 48 was a microscopic version of this model. "The Block was divided into two antagonistic groups: one side were the newly arrived prisoners, and on the other side were the eleven individuals-- Block Chief, Secretary, Barber, and Studbendienst, German or Slav-- who constituted the administrative backbone. The latter, prisoners like ourselves [referred to as Chaouchs], but for a much longer time, knew all the dodges of prison life, acted as though they were our actual masters, and controlled us with abuse, threats, and beatings" (Rassinier 34).

Rassinier describes the Chaouchs as "...coarse, fat, well-fed individuals, but prisoners just like ourselves[,]" who thrived off of the prisoners’ misfortune. "From morning to night, they ate what they stole, to our certain knowledge, from our rations... and throwing out their chests, plumed themselves on the power that they said they had to send us to the Krematorium for the single least indiscretion and with a single word" (Rassinier 34).

The Chaouchs, Rassinier emphasizes, were more brutal than the German officials. "The S.S. guarded the perimeter of the camp, and it can be said that we hardly saw them inside the camp, except when they simply went through to take the salute of the prisoners..." (Rassinier 54). The S.S. presence could only be detected from "[a] special guard, which complemented the surveillance of the Kapos, [who] just kept watch from afar, and did not intervene in supervision of the prisoners unless a show of force was called for" (Rassinier 54). Rassinier asserts that the S.S. only occasionally intervened in the governance of the prisoner camp. "From time to time an S.S. man stood out from the others for his brutality, but it was rare; and in no case was he ever more inhumane than the prisoner trustees..." (Rassinier 54).

Amid this group, Rassinier befriended a Chaough by the name of Jircszah, for "...his attitude immediately set him apart from the others and made us consider him to be one of us; among other things, he was more generous with the rations that he distributed and he got hold and left us books" (Rassinier 35). He soon found that Jircszah articulated all that he had already thought to be true. "I was a pessimist," Rassinier triumphantly yields, "In fact, I listened to everything with unshakable skepticism" (Rassinier 33).

"‘There is a lot that is true in all that is said about the horrors for which they are setting,’ according to Jircszah, ‘but there is a lot of exaggeration, too" (Rassinier 35). People exaggerate because "[e]veryone hopes and wants to come out of this business with a halo of a saint, a hero, or a martyr, and each one embroiders his own

odyssey without realizing that the reality is quite enough in itself[,]" he said (Rassinier 35). Jirczah felt that the Germans created the camps to rehabilitate opponents of the Third Reich and according to Rassinier, "I believed that Jircszah was more or less right; The National Socialists had resorted to this classical method of coercion, and it was the prisoners themselves who had made it still worse" ( Rassinier 37).

Hence, "That was the Buchenwald which we knew[,]" Rassinier concludes. Rassinier finished his quarantine quarrying rock until being transferred to Dora in March 1944. There he worked in mines until he escaped, by leaping from a moving locomotive, in the final days of the war.

In describing his experiences, Rassinier asserts that he did not experience any of the atrocities that other prisoners described and so argues that their claims are false. Rather, the prisoners, according to Rassinier, contrived stories to incriminate the Germans out of bitterness and spite for the ordeal they put them through.

The prisoners’ contrived their accounts with animosity in their hearts to avenge their loss of freedom. "The deportees came back with hatred and resentment on their tongues and in their pens..." [and] "...instead of merely telling their stories, the way seemed open for these veterans to vent their feelings in a spirit of hatred and vengeance" (Rassinier 112, 108). By the accumulation of these claims, the public is confronted with a false conception of the camps but by comparing these accounts to

his experience, Rassinier asserts that it should become apparent that a

false picture of the German camps has been painted. "I would like to make the observation, in my turn, that a whole is composed of details, and that an error of detail, whether made in good or bad faith, regardless of whether it is of a kind that is intended to mislead the observer, must logically make the observer doubt the reliability of the whole" (Rassinier 118). Rassinier’s conclusion however, is in itself fallacious.

Rassinier ignores the requirements for a valid proof in composing The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, which asserts that one must "proceed from positions granted, and not from the point to be proved" (Spangler 134). Rassinier wrote his account to disprove other prisoners’ testimonies and resolve the distorted image of the German concentration camps that their accounts created. He acknowledges this with his statement that "I suddenly felt that by remaining silent I was an accomplice to a dangerous influence" (Rassinier 109). Hence, by composing his book to disprove the testimonies of other prisoners, he proceeded from the point to be proved rather than the position granted and by doing this he fell into the fallacy of ignorance of proof.

Rassinier’s experiences may be true for him, but by using them to counter other testimonies, he commits the fallacy of absolute and qualified statement. "Absolute and qualified statement is defined as a fallacy resulting from treating what is true in a certain respect as though is were true without qualification" (Spangler 132). In The Holocaust Story and Lies of Ulysses, it is clear that Rassinier holds his experience to be the universal camp experience when in fact it is not.

Overall, Rassinier describes Buchenwald as a positive environment where people were working for the betterment of the German state. He agrees with what a Jiczsah said:

The Germans, when they speak of the institution, use the word Schutzhaftlager, which means ‘camp for protected prisoners.’ When the Nationalist Socialists came to power, they decided, in a gesture of compassion, to put all of their adversaries in a place where they could not hurt the new regime and where they could be protected from public anger. (Rassinier 36)

He asserts that concentration camps were contrived out of humanitarian purposes to protect opponents of the Nazi regime from the public’s anger. Heinrich Himmler, the director of the S.S. who controlled the camps, who stated that "persons under protective arrest... would be delivered by the Ministry of Justice to the SS to be worked to death[,]" apparently had a different impression of the reason for the camps (Friedman 7).

In their plans for the future of the German state, the Nazis contrived a Master Plan detailing their idea of a perfect world order. "[The Nazi Master Plan] detailed with great precision how other nations would serve the German so-called Master Race" (Friedman 1). Jews, Gypsies and Blacks and others who had no place in the German’s society were to be killed. Others lower races, were to serve to Germans and those who would not serve would be killed as well. As such, the concentration camps were created to bring about the death of these individuals while using them to benefit the German state and so "were not places to live.... [but] deliberately established to be places to die" (Rogasky 89).

In contrast, Rassinier recalls having plenty of free time. Prisoners, as he stated, were woken at four thirty each morning and summoned to a roll call at five-thirty in the morning and again at six o’clock in the evening, but were left to themselves for the remainder of the day. This schedule contradicts the principle of the labor camps which were designed to work prisoners to death. At Buchenwald:

Work lasted from the first glimmer of morning until twilight, at times longer. There was a one-hour break at midday, from twelve to one, that was mostly filled by two roll calls. Everyday four roll calls took place. The first was in the morning before moving out to work, the second at midday on return, the third at moving out, the fourth in the evening after work. (Hackett 33)

Perhaps he meant that he experienced this only during his quarantined period, but that would contradict his statement that "[l]ife was bearable there for those assigned to the camp; it was a little harder for those who were destined to stay only for the quarantine period" or else he simply had an easier experience at Buchenwald than others (Rassinier 50).

Rassinier ponders momentarily on the horror of the roll-calls by stating "Ah! those roll-calls! ...whether it rained or the wind blew, we had to stand for hours and hours being counted and recounted[,]" but his words do not do it justice (Rassinier 39). Roll call wore down the strength of the strongest prisoners, killing them or leaving them prey to the diseases that ravaged the camp. In this way, it assisted the Nazis in the elimination of the undesirables in the German New World Order. Former Buchenwald inmate, Max Mayr recalls: Roll call square saw many horrible tragedies. How often, when a prisoner had escaped, did the entire camp have to remain standing? Twice... the entire camp had to stand for eighteen or nineteen hours straight, costing many people their lives.... (Hackett 137).

Moreover, he continues, "the whipping block in particular was put to use at almost every roll call[,]" which Rassinier fails to mention (Hackett 137).

Rassinier mockingly describes his fellow inmates as those aspiring to hold prestigious positions and often times lying about their identities. "[I]n two days, we were certain that, at least half of our companions in misery were not there for the reasons that they gave" (Rassinier 25). However, unbeknown or ignored by Rassinier, Buchenwald did house several prominent personages such as "the former Austrian Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Freiherr von Winterstein; [and] other high government officials; military officers; professors; and authors" (Hackett 34). Hence, Rassinier has no basis to doubt their statements or no way of knowing why they were imprisoned because he has no personal knowledge of their situation.

Rassinier asserts that the S.S. guards were not involved much in the daily running of the camp. Other inmates at Buchenwald had a different experience, however. Former Buchenwald inmate Robert Siewert asserts that "[S.S. Technical Sergeant Greul] simply could not survive unless he began his day by beating a number of prisoners. One day I myself witnessed how Greul used a truncheon to beat about fifty prisoners... until they collapsed" (Hackett 53).

Moreover, the S.S. frequently exploited their labor to serve their own purposes. "The camp had to create a series of enterprises for the S.S. administration’s demands for luxuries; existing enterprises constantly had to perform special tasks for the same purpose" (Hackett 40). Some of the special facilities created at Buchenwald for such reasons included a sculpture studio, photography department, book bindery, a genealogical research laboratory, as well as agricultural enterprises. Indeed, "[w]hole sections of the general enterprises and work areas of the camp [Buchenwald] were temporarily diverted for the private interests of the S.S. administration, especially in the weeks before Christmas" (Hackett 42).

According to Rassinier, the prisoners elected by the S.S. to oversee the blocks (referred to as Chaoughs by Rassinier) were more brutal than the S.S. Rassinier asserts that "[i]f by chance the S.S. forgot to mistreat us, these prisoners took care to make up for the slip" (Rassiner 50). However, this is not universally true because his friendship with Jircszah disproves Rassinier’s theory about the Chaouchs.

Jircszah’s behavior contradicts Rassinier’s assertion that all of the Chaouchs were horrible and more brutal than the S.S. According to Rassinier, "...his attitude immediately set him apart from the others and made us consider him to be one of us; among other things, he was more generous with the rations that he distributed and he got hold and left us books" (Rassinier 35). If this was true of Jircszah, then it was more than likely true of other Chaoughs. Hence, some were brutal, but "other comrades did all they could to help new arrivals improve their situation and lighten their burden... For example, they often hurriedly whispered valuable words of advice" (Hackett 47). The other prisoner trustees abused inmates because it was in their nature to do so.

Contrary to Rassinier’s account, the Nazis purposefully selected professional criminals to assist them in their plans. Chaouchs, Rassinier asserts, were randomly selected from the multitude of political prisoners (Reds) and common criminals (Greens):

...[P]ut yourself in the place of the fifty S.S. soldiers at Buchenwald, on the day when deluged by a thousand prisoners and a huge mass of material, they had to select the first trustees from among their prisoners, and appoint the first Lagerultester. Between a Thaelmann or a Breitscheid, whose recalcitrance was especially brought to their attention, and the first criminal they came across who had murdered his mother-in-law or raped his sister, but who was just as dull and docile as you please, they did not hesitate; they chose the second. (Rassinier 55)

Rather, according to Buchenwald inmate Walter Bartel, "[the] S.S. Administration... sought to protect itself by appointing as senior camp inmates those prisoners who could be expected to support their criminal activities" (Hackett 139). Fritz Mannchen, another former inmate at Buchenwald agrees, stating that "[t]he professional criminals and their friends were closely entangled with the S.S. in a web of corruption" (Hackett 143).

Furthermore, it is apparent that Rassinier did not grasp the hazards involved in the Chaough’s position. He describes them pompously parading around the camp but in actuality, they were living in a very dangerous environment. "This task was extremely difficult and dangerous. To take it on required a great deal of courage as well as a sense of responsibility" (Hackett 38). Rassinier fails to recognize that the Chaoughs wre subject to the same regulations and punishments for disobeying them as everyone was. Furthermore, their duty as a prisoner representative brought them into constant contact with the S.S. who could easily lash out at one of them in a fit of rage. In addition, the Chaoughs’ were responsible for the inmates and any misbehavior by them reflected poorly on them. In face of this, they had to be stern with the prisoners to a certain degree because their own lives depended on it. However, Rassinier is concerned only by the way it appeared to him.

If his descriptions are accurate Rassinier would have been more fortunate in his experiences than most at Buchenwald. Rassinier’s testimony does illustrate that no single testimony is universally true, but it is only through looking at all cases that the truth is deduced. Hence, Rassinier is incorrect in his primary assertion that a false image of the camps has been made and the deductions that he made from that premise are unfounded.

Based on his experiences in the camps, Rassinier deduces that the Holocaust of the European Jews did not take place. Rather, the Jews fabricated the stories of the Nazi atrocities and the existence of Death Camps to attract attention to themselves as a minority group. "...They suffered from an inferiority complex-- 40 million inhabitants-- they wantonly created a story of horror for a public that always clamored for something more sensational in order the more surely to inspire pity and recognition" (Rassinier 112). Hence, according to Rassinier, six million Jews were not killed in the Holocaust. They emigrated to other countries and this can be detected by comparing the number of Jews allegedly killed to the number of immigrants that entered other nations at this time.

Rassinier lacks the means to support this conclusion because he proceeds from a false basis. His experience in Buchenwald does not constitute a universal concentration camp experience. Moreover, Buchenwald was a concentration camp meant for Non-Jew European prisoners. There existed a stark difference between camps for the Jews and Non-Jews.

Labor conditions were much better for Non-Jews. The Master Plan placed prisoners into to a racial hierarchy according to their productivity. Germans treated prisoners according to their rank and assigned jobs, and distributed food by this manner. The Nazi national order saw the Slavs, including Italians, Yugoslavians. and Croats, as only subhuman from the Master Race and placed them accordingly at the bottom of the hierarchy. Russians and Poles were treated better. Germans recognized Russians and Poles hardworking nature and attributed it be an indication of their humanity. The French ranked the highest in the hierarchy and accordingly, were treated the best.

The Germans saw Jews as non-human creatures and did not even include them in the hierarchy. "The underlying German cultural model of ‘the Jew’ was composed of three notions: that the Jew was different from the German, that he was a binary opposite of the German, and that he was a not benignly different but malevolent and corrosive" (Goldhagen 55). Jews were evil, Germans believed, and needed to be destroyed before they brought down the German nation. Plans to make German judenrein, or free of Jews, were systematically carried out until 1942 at which time pressures from the war interfered with the process. As such the Jews were put to work in concentration camps to work there to their death for the welfare of the German populace until their systematic executions could be resumed. In face of this, Jews were created in atrocious manners reserved uniquely for them.

Perhaps Rassinier’s nationality explains why his experience was so markedly different from that of others. The French were treated the best of all of the German’s prisoners. Yet, it is apparent by the testimonies of other Buchenwald inmates that the Germans abused them even at Buchenwald. The fact that Rassinier did not observe this calls the quality of his testimony into question.

Non-Jewish foreign inmates had a better relationship with Germans than the Jews and this was reflected in the treatment they received. "They often heeded the workers’ complaints, and German industrialists lobbied for better provisions for them with a vigor and a frame of reference that they did not display for Jews" (Goldhagen 314). Furthermore, in contrast to Jewish prisoners, foreign inmates were allowed to write letters to their families and visit them on vacations.

Indeed, "[m]ost people are notoriously bad observers; some are deliberate or unconscious liars; there is no such thing as a perfect witness" (Barzun 170). Moreover, "[t]o put it differently, every observer’s knowledge of the event doubtless contains some exact and some erroneous knowledge, and these parts, multiplied by as many observers as may be, are all the knowledge there can be" (Barzun 171). This is why it is invalid to try to extract the universal truth from a particular case.

Indeed, the blatant denial of the Holocaust had its first stirrings in France and it remains a receptive ground for deniers. Rassinier is looked upon as the Father of Revisionism. He produced some of the first Holocaust denial literature and in doing so, set the precedent for others to follow. "Rassinier’s and [other deniers’] contributions to the evolution of Holocaust denial in France would eventually be magnified by the work of their protégé Robert Faurisson, a former professor at the University of Lyons, who is today one of the leading Holocaust deniers" (Lipstadt 64). Rassinier’s work also was influential in the conversion of Americans skeptical of the story of the Holocaust into outright deniers.

The atrocities that took place during the Holocaust seem too gruesome to be true, but in fact they are. It is a truth that must be preserved as a living memorial to those who died as well as a means of salvation for the future. Indeed, "if it is forgotten, then the memory of the six million Jews who died disappears like dust and the world has learned nothing" (Rogasky 180). The truth of the Holocaust must be preserved to prevent it from reoccurring again in the future. "It is tempting to think that nothing like the Holocaust can happen again[,]" but in fact, we are not safe unless we remember it always (Rogasky 178).

Rassinier’s account of his experience at Buchenwald is a valuable resource because by viewing different experiences in face of others, one is able to better understand that situations that prisoners endured. However, by taking it as a universal account of life in the concentration camps, he contradicts logic. He also contradicts his purpose for writing The Holocaust Story and Lies of Ulysses because creates distorted image of the concentration camps which he claims to be writing against.