[WW2] - "De rena förintelselägren" (Treblinka II, Belzec, Sobibor och Chelmno)

"---The "eyewitness testimonies" about Belzec are even more instructive.

The first myth about the "extermination of the Jews" was born 8 April 1942, only three weeks after the opening of the camp: "The victims were assembled in a shack that had a metallic plate as its floor through which was passed an electric current that killed the Jews instantly." [27]

A similar story appeared in the Kronika oswiecimska nieznanego autora (Auschwitz Chronicle by an Unknown Author) that was supposed to have been dug up on the grounds of the old Auschwitz camp: "At Belzec the Jews were electrocuted." [28]

A report dated 10 July 1942 arrived in London in November of that year. [29] Published December 1st in the Polish Fortnightly Review, it describes the "extermination of the Jews" at Belzec in this way:

After unloading, the men go to a barracks on the right, the women to a barracks situated on the left, where they strip, ostensibly in readiness for a bath. After they have undressed both groups go to a third barracks where there is an electrified plate, where the executions are carried out. [30]

A variant of the myth substitutes water for the metallic plate: "The Jews were killed by passing an electric current through the water in which they were immersed." [31]

The version of execution on a metallic plate reappeared in a report of November 1942:

The victims are ordered to strip naked - to have a bath, ostensibly - and are then led to a barrack with a metal plate for flooring. The door is then locked, electric current passes through the victims and their death is almost instantaneous. [32]

In the report of the Polish government in exile in London, dated 10 December 1942, one reads, among other things:

At first, the executions were carried out by means of shooting; subsequently, however, it is reported that the Germans applied new methods, such as poison gas, by means of which the Jewish population was exterminated in Chelm, or electrocution, for which a camp was organized in Belzec, where, in the course of March and April 1942, the Jews from the provinces of Lublin, Lwow and Kielce to the number of tens of thousands were exterminated. [33]

The story was repeated 19 December 1942 in a declaration by the "Inter-Allied Information Committee":

Actual data concerning the fate of the deportees is not at hand, but the news is available - irrefutable news - that places of execution have been organized at Chelm and Belzec, where those who survive shootings are murdered en masse by means of electrocution and lethal gas. [34]

A report 1 November 1943 thus described the "Hell of Belzec":

The Jews who were sent to Belzec were ordered to undress as though to take a bath. They were in fact led into a bathing facility that could hold several hundred people. But there they were killed en masse by electric current.[35]

In 1944 the myth was enriched: a new version bringing together the metallic plate and the water themes was elaborated. On 12 February 1944 the New York Times published the following recital of "a young Polish Jew" on the "extermination factory" at Beljec (the New York Times' spelling):

The Jews were forced naked on to a metallic platform operated like a hydraulic elevator, which lowered them into a huge vat filled with water to the victims' necks, he declared. They were electrocuted by current through the water. The elevator then lifted the bodies to a crematorium above, the youth said. The source of this narrative is "individuals who escaped after actually being taken inside the factory." [36]

It came, therefore, from "eyewitnesses."

This new form of the myth was taken up in 1945 by Stefan Szende. The transports of Jews "entered by a tunnel into the underground spaces of the execution place." The "extermination technique" described by Szende is lifted, at the least, from science fiction.

When trainloads of naked Jews arrived they were herded into a great hall capable of holding several thousand people. This hall has no windows and its flooring was of metal. Once the Jews were all inside, the floor of this hall sank like a lift into a great tank of water which lay below it until the Jews were up to their waists in water. Then a powerful electric current was sent into the metal flooring and within a few seconds all the Jews, thousands at a time, were dead.

The metal flooring then rose again and the water drained away. The corpses of the slaughtered Jews were now heaped all over the floor. A different current was then switched on and the metal flooring rapidly became red hot, so that the corpses were incinerated as in a crematorium and only ash was left.

The floor was then tipped up and the ashes slid out into prepared receptacles. The smoke of the process was carried away by great factory chimneys. That was the whole procedure. [37]

Another version of the myth mentions an "electric oven" (!) as the instrument of execution:

Then they went into a third barrack that held an electric oven. It is in that barrack that the executions took place. [38]

In 1945 the first version of the myth was raised to the rank of official truth as far as the Belzec "extermination camp" was concerned. It was accepted in the report of the Polish government and read by the Soviet representative of the prosecution, L.N. Smirnov, at the 19 December 1945 hearing of the Nuremberg trial:

In the same report, in the last chapter, on page 136 of the book of documents we find a declaration on the fact that the camp at Beldjitze [39] was constructed in 1940; however, the special electrical equipment for mass extermination of people was installed in 1942. Under the pretext of having them take a bath the people were constrained to undress completely, and pushed into a building the floor of which was electrified; there they were killed. [40]

The myth of the "extermination" of Jews at Belzec by electricity was not the only one [regarding Belzec] to circulate in the course of the Second World War.

The "eyewitness" Jan Karski, who claims to have visited this camp in the uniform of the Estonian Guard, describes a somewhat singular "extermination" procedure:

The Jews were loaded in boxcars the floors of which were covered with quicklime. When the loading was complete, the train departed for an uninhabited area 80 miles from Belzec, where it remained unopened until all the Jews were dead through the corrosive action of the lime and suffocation. [41]

Despite the detailed "eyewitness testimonies" to which we are referred, the myth of the carbon monoxide "gas chamber" has also been imposed definitively as official truth about Belzec. This myth, which has received the official sanction of the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland [42] appeared suddenly in 1946, in the collection Dokumenty i Materialy. [43]

The new version is based on the "eyewitness testimony" of Rudolf Reder, [44] testimony that is in large part a plagiarism of the famous Gerstein Report. [45]

The "eyewitness testimony" of Kurt Gerstein, SS-Obersturmführer, on the "extermination camp" of Belzec is a typical instance of the absence of a critical spirit, and of the bad faith of official historians when they choose their "evidence."

In our study The Gerstein Report: Anatomy of a Fraud, we pointed out 103 absurdities, internal and external contradictions, historical falsifications, contradictions of the official historiography, hyperbolic exaggerations, and improbabilities, so that one cannot accord the least credibility to this "eyewitness testimony."

But that does not trouble in any way the official historians, who declared almost unanimously:

The veracity of the Gerstein Report is in no doubt today. [46]

The objective plausibility of all the essential details of the report is not in question.[47]---

Indeed we encounter again, mutatis mutandis, Robert Faurisson's question as to why the "eyewitness testimonies" to the "steam rooms" of Treblinka, to the "chlorine gas," and to the "cellars" of Sobibor, and to the "extermination" of the Jews by electricity or by death-trains at Belzec, suddenly are held to be false, while the "eyewitness testimonies" to the "gas chambers" are considered true?

It is important to emphasize that we are dealing here with "eyewitness testimonies" strictly equivalent in their credibility (or, more exactly, in their "incredibility") and completely contradictory as to their content, so that it is only when the existence of the "gas chambers" is postulated a priori - the conclusion precedes the proof - that one can speak of "fantasies" and "myths" that are "like a shadow cast by reality."---"

The following article about the Polish Historical Society appeared in the Polish-American Journal, Dec. 1993, p. 8:

"Holocaust Revisionists Are Polonia's Worst Enemies," by John Radzilowski

Recently, a group calling itself "The Polish Historical Society" sent a mailing to a number of Polish Americans that includes a form letter to sign addressed to the New York Post.
That package also included a letter written by Zbigniew Zielinski, the president of this society, addressed to the New York Daily News. Both letters are protests against recent articles and letters in these papers (related to the John Demjanjuk fiasco), which clearly defamed Poles and people of Polish descent.

However, both of the letters also imply that [i]the Holocaust never happened[i]. I contacted this organization at its headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, and talked to a member who blithely informed me that his group had looked into the work of Holocaust revisionists (those who claim the Nazi murder of millions of Jews and Poles did not occur), and had found a lot of "truth" in what these people said. He then told me that his group had "investigated" both Auschwitz and Treblinka and found that only a few people had really died there. This group was also making the extravagant claim that their work helped force Russia to admit its guilt in the Katyn massacre.

This group, of course, represents only a tiny minority of people, a lunatic fringe. Furthermore--though they claim to be Poles--their letter urges people to send contributions to the "Ukrainian Friends of Fairfield Association," which is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Not even our worst enemies could devise something so harmful to Polonia. Just as we have begun to get people to listen to our side of the story, just as we have begun to breech the walls of hatred and ignorance that others have built up around us, along comes this obscenity.

Not only does this group claim that the Holocaust never happened, not only do they explain how one quarter of all Polish citizens living in 1939--Christians and Jews alike--died under Nazi and Soviet terror, but they even claim that Poland is today controlled by "Jews." Among these "Jews," they include Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuron, two men who spent much of their lives fighting the communist system. Do Michnik and Kuron have Jewish ancestors? Who cares?!
...
The work of the "Polish Historical Society," spits in the face of everything these men and women fought and died for. It is a direct affront to the many Polish Americans whose families in Poland suffered so much during World War II. It seeks to exonerate the culprits of the worst crimes in history, crimes that Poles, as much as anyone, were the victims of. Holocaust revisionism is anti-Polish.

We have often been hurt by the lies and distortions about Polish-Jewish relations that still appear too frequently in the media in this country. We must continue to fight back against this slander, but we must do so with truth because truth is our strongest weapon. We cannot fight lies with lies.

The haters and the bigots on both sides want you to believe one big, important lie on which all of their other lies are based: that the history of Polish-Jewish relations has been one of conflict and hatred. It has not. Certainly, there have been many sad instances of intolerance and conflict between Poles and Jews, and there is enough blame to go around for everyone. Yet, overall, looking back across the span of history, the story of Polish-Jewish relations has primarily been one of the cooperation and mutual respect. Jews found a safe haven in Poland where they could live in peace after they had been persecuted and expelled from western countries like England and Germany. By the same token, Jews brought Poland vital skills that helped Poland's rulers maintain its independence and built a strong nation in the late medieval and early modern periods. Exchanges and even intermarriage between our two peoples enriched both cultures and both heritages.

"I have attempted to determine the number of victims of the camps designated as extermination camps on the basis of material facts: the surface area of the gas chambers and number of the persons which they could hold; time for a gassing; number of gassings daily; number of transports arriving daily with consideration of the actual capacity of the chambers, etc. In comparison with the numbers of Hilberg, which are based upon Polish sources, I arrive at the following figures:

Chełmno: 80,000 to 85,000 instead of 150,000;

Belzec: 100,000 to 150,000 instead of 550,000;

Sobibor: 30,000 to 35,000 instead of 200,000;

Treblinka: 200,000 to 250,000 instead of 750,000;

Majdanek: fewer than 100,000 instead of 360,000"

"In an interview granted by Jean-Claude Pressac in 1995, which was published for the first time in 2000 with changes made according his wishes, Jean-Claude Pressac proposed his own original statistics for the alleged victims of the eastern camps, in which he started fundamentally with their attested capacity for extermination:[270]
I have attempted to determine the number of victims of the camps designated as extermination camps on the basis of material facts: the surface area of the gas chambers and number of the persons which they could hold; time for a gassing; number of gassings daily; number of transports arriving daily with consideration of the actual capacity of the chambers, etc. In comparison with the numbers of Hilberg, which are based upon Polish sources, I arrive at the following figures:

Chełmno: 80,000 to 85,000 instead of 150,000;

Belzec: 100,000 to 150,000 instead of 550,000;

Sobibor: 30,000 to 35,000 instead of 200,000;

Treblinka: 200,000 to 250,000 instead of 750,000;

Majdanek: fewer than 100,000 instead of 360,000;"[271]

If we take the lowest of his estimates, Pressac therefore reduces the total number of victims of these five 'extermination camps' (Auschwitz is not considered in the statistics) from 2,010,000 to 510,000. But the number given by him for Majdanek - the only one of these camps from which documentary data were obtained - is still more than double the actual number, for the documents reveal that in Majdanek about 42,300 (Jewish and non-Jewish) prisoners died.[272] One page later Pressac adds:

"Concerning the massacre of the Jews, several fundamental notions must be questioned. The given numbers [by official historiography] are to be thoroughly revised. The expression 'genocide' is no longer suitable."

Since Pressac does not rely upon documents, but merely upon the theoretical maximum capacity of extermination facilities, whose existence remains unproven, his numbers are of course extremely contestable, but one thing is certain: whoever speaks of a mass extermination in Treblinka - to confine ourselves here to this camp - cannot blindly accept the monstrosities claimed by the witnesses and is not released from the duty of soberly taking into consideration that, which Pressac calls "material facts." We shall return to this point in the following chapter.---"

Jan Karski died in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, July 13 [2000].

That he is not a household name to most Americans can only be due to some colossal failure of our education system or media as well as to the cruel tricks fate played to Karski's native country in the twentieth century.

You see, Jan Karski tried to stop the Holocaust.

He failed, of course, but that is hardly the point. He tried when so many others in the world with so much more power and vast political, military, and financial resources chose to do nothing.

For this, if nothing else, Karski ranks as one of the great heroes in the otherwise sad history of the century that just ended.

Born in 1914, Karski joined the diplomatic service of his native Poland in 1938 and served in the Polish Army during its desperate defensive campaign against the Hitler's armies in 1939. Captured by the Nazis' Soviet allies, Karski escaped almost certain death at the hands of Stalin's NKVD, a fate which befell so many Poles, and joined the Polish underground in German-occupied Poland.

With his diplomatic experience and his phenomenal memory for details, Karski was chosen a special mission of the utmost importance: to tell the world of the fate Nazi Germany had in mind for Europe's Jews. The Polish underground smuggled Karski into the Warsaw Ghetto and into a German death camp. The cruelties he witnessed there were so scarring that in the decades to come he would often find it hard to speak of them. Having seen the unspeakable crimes the Germans were committing against Poland's Jews and what they had in mind for Jews all over Nazi-occupied Europe, Karski's next task was to escape to the West.

On a previous attempt he had been captured by the Gestapo and nearly tortured to death. The torturers beat him so severely that lost all his teeth and had most of his ribs broken. The Polish underground launched a rescue mission to save their courier from an SS hospital. In hiding after his rescue, Karski recuperated, and later made his way to Britain.

There, Karski told Allied leaders what he seen happening to the Jews, sparing no detail. His account was met with shock. And disbelief. He went to Washington. He met with congressmen, supreme court justices, leaders of the Jewish community and the Catholic Church. He met personally with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Years later he would recall his meeting with the most powerful man in the free world, doing an imitation of Roosevelt's patrician demeanor, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. Roosevelt mouthed platitudes about how after the war the guilty ones would be punished. It was hard for Karski to hide his bitterness when he did this imitation. Roosevelt did nothing.

Other couriers from Poland followed Karski and met the same reception. Poles were high-strung, untrustworthy, and given to wild fantasies. Surely things were not so bad. The Germans were the enemy, but they were civilized. Kill all the Jews? Who could imagine such a thing? Even after the Polish Government in Exile publicly issued a booklet detailing the crimes against the Jews, the reaction in the West was muted. We now know that Western leaders were well informed about what was happening to Europe's Jews and that their own sources confirmed what their Polish allies were telling them. In 1944, Karski wrote a book, "Story of a Secret State," about life in Nazi-occupied Poland which again described in painful detail what he saw happening to the Jews, as well as the cruel murders and tortures the Germans were increasingly inflicting on Catholic Poles as well.

As more Jews died and Karski grew more desperate, free Polish voices were further marginalized when the Western Allies delivered their Polish comrades into the hands of one of the men who had helped start the war, Joseph Stalin. As the war ended, Karski and the Polish soldiers, sailors, airmen who had fought alongside the Americans and British for over five years in virtually every campaign against Nazi forces, lost their homeland.

In a final bitter irony, as Soviet terror engulfed Poland, Karski became an exile and for years was virtually forgotten.

"---So Jan Karski (a pseudonym) witnessed "mass murder" at Belzec. Bauer does not elaborate on Karski's witnessing of "mass murder," allowing naive readers to incorrectly assume that Karski witnessed the operation of the infamous "gas chambers" of Belzec described by Gerstein. But, assuming Karski accurately recounted real experiences at Belzec, the only mass murder he saw was the killing of perhaps "a few score" Jews in the process of brutally herding more than 5,000 Jews into the cars of a train which then left the Belzec camp. (See Karski's 1944 book, The Story of a Secret State, Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 30.) Karski, who supposedly was at Belzee not quite two months after Kurt Gerstein supposedly witnessed a gassing at Belzec, did not even see any gas chambers, let alone witness a gassing.

It is true that Karski claimed that Jews were herded into railroad cars at Belzec as part of a process of mass extermination. According to Karski,

The floors of the car had been covered with a thick, white powder. It was quicklime. Quicklime is simply unslaked lime or calcium oxide that has been dehydrated. Anyone who has seen cement being mixed knows what occurs when water is poured on lime. The mixture bubbles and steams as the powder combines with the water, generating a large amount of heat.

... The moist flesh coming in contact with the lime is rapidly dehydrated and burned. The occupants of the cars would be literally burned to death before long, the flesh eaten from their bones. (pp349-350)

Karski, however, did not claim to have seen the occupants of the cars being "literally burned to death.... the flesh eaten from their bones." And Karski's assumptions about this are implicity challenged by Bergen Evans in his book, The Natural History of Nonsense (Vintage). According to Evans,

That quicklime will "eat" a dead body is an old delusion that has brought several murderers to the noose, for, actually, it is a preservative that instead of removing the evidence keeps it fresh for the coroner's eye.... Oscar Wilde, who poetically asserted that quicklime ate the flesh by day and the bones by night, served to refute his own assertion, for he was himself buried in quicklime, and on his exhumation two years later was found to be well preserved. (pp132-133)

If, as Evans said, quicklime does not "eat" the flesh of a dead body, then would it have "eaten" the flesh from the bones of the living Jews shipped out of Belzec as Karski said it would?---"

"---Karski went on to write of the Poles' attitudes towards the Jews in the Russian zone of occupation:

The attitude of the Jews towards the Bolsheviks is regarded among the Polish populace as quite positive. It is generally believed that the Jews betrayed Poland and the Poles, that they are basically communists, that they crossed over to the Bolsheviks with flags unfurled.

In fact, in most cities the Jews greeted the Bolsheviks with baskets of red roses, with submissive declarations and speeches, etc., etc.

However, one needs to insert here certain distinctions.

Certainly it is so that Jewish communists adopted an enthusiastic stance toward the Bolsheviks, regardless of the social class from which they came. The Jewish proletariat, small merchants, artisans, and all those whose position has at present been improved structurally and who had formerly been exposed to oppression, indignities, excesses, etc., from the Polish element -- all of these responded positively, if not enthusiastically, to the new regime.

Their attitude seems to me quite understandable.

However, there are worse cases, where they [the Jews] denounce the Poles, Polish nationalist students, and Polish political figures when they direct the work of the Bolshevik police force from behind their desks or are members of the police force, when they falsely defame the relations [between Poles and Jews] in former Poland. Unfortunately it is necessary to state that such incidents are quite common, more common than incidents which reveal loyalty toward Poles or sentiment toward Poland.

After expressing his own sympathy for the wealthier and better educated Jews, Karski concluded that as to the Poles' feelings toward the Jews in the Soviet zone:

In principle, however, and in their mass, the Jews have created here a situation in which the Poles regard them as devoted to the Bolsheviks and -- one can safely say -- wait for the moment when they will be able simply to take revenge upon the Jews. Virtually all Poles are bitter and disappointed in relation to the Jews; the overwhelming majority [first among them of course the youth] literally look forward to an opportunity for "repayment in blood ".---"