The Value of Testimony and Confessions Concerning
the Holocaust
Manfred Köhler
"To deny that Jews had been maliciously
killed en masse by Germany in a tribunal whose very
existence was based upon the intent to establish without
doubt that Jews had been killed was as fatal to the
defendant in 1946 as it would have been to an accused
medieval heretic who before his inquisitors guaranteed
his condemnation on whatever charge by throwing in for
the hell of it a denial of the existence of the Trinity
and the Divinity of Jesus."[1]
1. Introduction
In the debate about the Holocaust one of the main
arguments of popular opinion is that there are a great many statements
of eyewitnesses to document the National Socialist mass extermination,
and that especially the many confessions of perpetrators among the SS
are irrefutable proof of the existence of a program of deliberate extermination
of the Jews in the Third Reich.[2]
For this reason, it is claimed, the lack of documentary and material
evidence is irrelevant.[3]
First of all, it is incorrect to say that there is
no material evidence. The present work is a compendium of such material
evidence, which, however, all goes to refute certain aspects of the
Holocaust as these are related by witnesses and maintained accordingly
by the courts and by academia. The justice system as well as academics
of the Establishment ignore this material evidence; nevertheless, the
question arises as to how eyewitness testimony is to be evaluated.
It is important to note that neither objective historians
nor jurists may uncritically accept everything that someone recounts
as being the plain truth, but must establish the value of such reports.
The first step in this process is to fit eyewitness testimony properly
into the hierarchy of the various types of evidence. Then one must consider
how the individual testimony came to be - for example, whether there
were manipulative factors that may have impinged on the witness and
influenced his testimony.
Since most of the eyewitness statements concerning
the Holocaust were made in the course of preliminary legal proceedings
and of trials, we shall first clarify the value accorded to eyewitness
testimony in court.
In academia as well as in the justice system of a
state under the rule of law, there is a hierarchy of evidence reflecting
the evidential value. In this hierarchy, material and documentary evidence
is always superior to eyewitness testimony.[4]
Thus, academia as well as the justice system regard eyewitness testimony
as the least reliable form of evidence, since human memory is imperfect
and easily manipulated.[5]
According to Rolf Bender, a German expert on the evaluation of evidence,
its unreliable nature renders eyewitness testimony merely circumstantial
evidence, in other words, not direct evidence.[6]
What standards must be met for eyewitness testimony
to be usable in court?[7]
1. The witness must be credible.
While making no claims to completeness, the following
lists a few criteria for determining credibility:
- Emotional involvement. If witnesses are emotionally too involved in the cases under investigation, this may distort the testimony in one direction or the other, without this necessarily being a conscious process.
- Veracity. If it turns out that a witness is not overly concerned about truthfulness, this casts doubts upon his further credibility.
- Testimony under coercion. The frankness of testimony may be limited if a witness is subjected to direct or indirect pressure that makes him deem it advisable to configure his testimony accordingly.
- Third-party influence. A person’s memory is easy to manipulate. Events reported by acquaintances or in the media can easily become assimilated as ‘personal experience’. Thus, if a witness has been exposed intensively to one-sided accounts of the trial substance prior to testifying, this can very well affect his testimony to reflect these impressions.
- Temporal distance from the events to be attested to. It is generally known that the reliability of eyewitness testimony diminishes greatly after only a few days, and after several months has been so severely influenced and altered by the replacement of forgotten details with subsequent impressions that it retains hardly any value as evidence.[8]
2. Testimony must be plausible.
- Internal consistency. Testimony must be free of contradictions and in accordance with the rules of logic.
- Correctness of historical context. Testimony must fit into the historical context established conclusively by higher forms of evidence (documents, material evidence).
- Technical and scientific reality. Testimony must report such matters as can be reconciled with the laws of nature and with what was technically possible at the time in question.
While the issues listed under 2. are easily verified,
the circumstances listed under 1. are often difficult or impossible
to determine and thus involve the greatest effort for the least return.
One must keep in mind that every witness experienced a certain event
differently, from a purely subjective and personal point of view. He
or she internalized it differently, depending on his/her physical and
psychological state. He/she will ultimately recount the experience in
a strictly subjective manner depending on his/her abilities and on the
occasion at hand. So even if two witnesses are completely impartial
and credible and their statements are plausible, they nevertheless may
not report the same thing.[9]
The testimony of parties in dispute before the Court
- i.e., the statements of the prosecution and the defense - must naturally
be considered in an especially critical light since each party has a
vested interest in incriminating its opponent and exonerating itself.[10]
But even impartial witnesses are often very far removed from the objective
truth, and the fact that (although this has been well known for centuries)
eyewitness testimony is still accorded disproportionately great significance
in court even today, has repeatedly drawn sharp criticism from qualified
sources[11] and has
frequently resulted in gross miscarriages of justice.
From a judicial point of view, confessions - both
in and out of court - are considered to be circumstantial evidence,
since past experience has shown that a large part of all confessions
are false. False confessions may be made in order to
- cover for a third party;
- bask in the limelight of a crime;
- put a stop to gruelling interrogation;
- gain a mitigated sentence by exhibiting remorse and repentance;
- as a result of psychological disorders; etc…
In the Federal Republic of Germany as well, miscarriages
of justice unfortunately occur time and again as a result of false confessions.[12]
The same goes accordingly for self-incriminating testimony which need
not always be true. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that the
otherwise knowledgeable R. Bender would categorize a self-incriminating
witness as being generally truthful.[13]
In orthodox Holocaust studies material evidence is
practically nonexistent:
- To date, not a single mass grave has been searched for, found, exhumed or examined relative to this subject complex.[14]
- Not one of the allegedly numerous and giant burning sites has been looked for, located, dug up or examined.
- In no case were the alleged murder weapons sought and found, i.e., examined forensically by international committees or by courts under the rule of law.
It is thus not surprising that Rückerl dispenses
with any mention of material evidence and instead declares documentary
evidence as the best and most important form of evidence even without
any material evidence with respect to the authenticity and correctness
of the documents themselves.[15]
Otherwise, only Revisionists have presented material
evidence, as other authors will do in the following.
It is always surprising to see how aggressively the
historians of the Establishment respond to any objection that a document,
which allegedly proves the Holocaust, might be forged or falsified,
irrelevant, or might have been misinterpreted. On this point our contemporary
historians exhibit the same aversion to detailed document criticism[16]
as they also cherish where material evidence is concerned. After all,
document criticism is nothing more nor less than the expert assessment
of a document. In other words, it is the furnishing of material evidence
regarding the authenticity and factual correctness of a document.
3.2. Eyewitness Evidence in the Orthodox View of the
Holocaust
Part of the testimony or statements regarding the
Holocaust came in the form of written declarations or, more recently,
as radio and television programs. In both cases it is easy to assess
these statements in terms of the points listed under 2, but there is
usually no opportunity to speak with the witness personally in order
to learn more details and to establish his credibility and the plausibility
of his testimony, for example by means of cross-examination. Critiques
of the statements published in the various media are both numerous and
extensive,[17] and
a more comprehensive work was presented recently.[18]
However, these witnesses usually evade the requests of critical contemporaries
to make themselves available to cross-examination.[19]
And while radio and television regularly present new witnesses, they
never ask them any critical questions, and deny interested researchers
and lawyers access to these witnesses by keeping their address or even
their entire identity secret. But these paper- and celluloid-witnesses
can only be accorded evidential value once their statements have stood
up to critical examination. In the following chapter, Robert Faurisson
reports about the first two of such a critical examination of this kind
of witness to date. In this section, therefore, we will focus primarily
on statements made in court, particularly since the supposed justness
of the German justice system prompts the public to accord these a greater
significance.
The very critical view, at least theoretically, taken
by courts of witness and party testimony is based on the understanding
of human nature gained in the course of centuries by many jurists. It
should be accepted as a valid guideline by historians as well, even
if the methods used to determine truth in scientific pursuits are necessarily
different than those employed in court. For example, while a Court must
reach an absolute decision regarding what is true and what is false,
and must do so within a limited period of time, science cannot, indeed
may not reach a conclusive and final verdict if it wants to remain true
to its maxim of openness in every respect. Whereas in a court case the
close relation of the proceedings to a human fate causes emotion to
exert a strong and distorting influence on the process by which the
verdict is reached, this influence usually is, or should be, minor in
scientific pursuits.
When we discuss in the following the witness testimony
and confessions that represent almost the entirety of the foundation
on which the structure of the Holocaust rests, we must bear in mind
that for the most part these statements were made in the course of trials
or at least for the purpose of incriminating or exonerating someone
before a court or the public. Practically no eyewitness accounts exist
that were made outside a courtroom situation and free of emotion. The
subject matter itself and the emotions with which it is charged have
seen to that. The truth of testimony and confessions must therefore
be carefully examined before the court by qualified experts - something
that regularly does not happen in the so-called "NSG trials".[20]
And all the more we must ask to what extent such testimony can serve
the cause of a science dependent for its closest possible approach to
the truth on reports not tainted by emotion. It is already a very questionable
procedure to try to ‘write history’ through eyewitness testimony in
court and through the verdicts based thereon, even if both were the
result of trials conducted strictly under the rule of law. The procedure
becomes all the more suspect when those who ‘write the history’ draw
on eyewitness testimony as evidence even when this testimony was rejected
by the ruling court as lacking credibility.[21]
The science of historiography is thus faced with
the dilemma that it has only these at least partially questionable statements
to rely on, and must therefore make do with them. But then it is all
the more important for this science to consider the circumstances under
which these statements came about, for their value depends not least
of all on how fairly the prosecution, the defense and the Court, but
also the media and the general public were disposed towards the witnesses
and the accused.
There is currently no topic of human history that
is treated more emotionally and one-sidedly in public than the Holocaust.
It represents the central taboo of western civilization, and to question
it is the epitome of heresy, and punishable by imprisonment in many
western democracies.
Given this state of affairs, the expert on the evaluation
of eyewitness testimony, Professor Elisabeth Loftus, pointed out in
1991 that, for many different reasons, testimony pertaining to actual
(or merely alleged) National Socialist atrocities, witnessed in a particularly
high stage of emotion, is less reliable than almost any other testimony.
Elaborating, she observes:
- The time elapsed since the end of World War II has contributed to an inevitable fading of recollections.
- In trials of alleged National Socialist criminals pre-trial publicity has meant that witnesses had generally known the identity of the defendants and the crimes they were charged with already before the trial.
- Prosecutors have asked witnesses leading questions, such as whether they could recognize the accused as the perpetrator. Witnesses have rarely been called on to identify the accused from a number of unknown people.
- It is fairly certain that witnesses have discussed identifications among themselves, which facilitated subsequent ‘identifications’ by other witnesses.
- Photos of defendants have been exhibited repeatedly, each additional showing of the pictures making witnesses more familiar with the face of the accused, and thus increasingly certain.
- The extremely emotional nature of these cases further increases the risk of a distortion of memory, since the accused to be identified by the witnesses were more than alleged tool of the National Socialists - they were devils incarnates: said to have tortured, maimed and mass-murdered prisoners. They were allegedly responsible for the murder of the witnesses’ mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children.[22]
- Professor Loftus, herself Jewish, uses her own experience to describe how a false sense of loyalty to her heritage and her people and "race", as she puts it, prevented her from taking a stand against the obviously false testimony of her fellow Jews. It is safe to assume that this is a widespread, common reflex among Jews.[23]
However, she omits three further factors that can
contribute additionally to the massive distortion of memory where the
Holocaust is concerned:
- Accounts of witnesses’ personal experiences have always - and not only during criminal trials - been widely disseminated by word of mouth, print and broadcast media, and particularly among the witnesses themselves through personal correspondence and all sorts of relief organizations.
- Since at least the late 1970s the topic of the Holocaust has been ever-present in the mass media, and in an extremely one-sided manner, so that memories inevitably become standardized.
- Where the Holocaust is concerned, it is not only unforgivable but at times even a criminal offense not to know, not to admit, or perhaps only to doubt, certain things. There is thus a very strong social (or even legal) pressure on witnesses in particular to recall certain ‘facts’ and to repress others.
If one considers all these factors and combines them
with studies on the manipulability of human memory, such as the one
recently published by Prof. Loftus in a leading scientific journal,[24]
then one cannot help but conclude that there is in fact no eye
witness testimony less reliable than those on the Holocaust. If in normal
scientific and legal proceedings one accepts as a rule that eyewitness
testimony is the least reliable kind of evidence, then insofar as the
Holocaust is concerned it is necessary to observe that here the eyewitness
testimony may only serve to flesh out the framework of historical events
as established by documentary evidence, and perhaps to give clues to
events whose occurrence has yet to be proven by documents or material
evidence. But anyone who relies chiefly on eyewitness testimony and
assigns it a greater value as evidence than documentary or even material
evidence cannot seriously claim to adhere to the scientific method in
his work. Thus, the present volume pays particular attention to the
critical analysis of many claims made by witnesses.
3.3. Methods of Obtaining Testimony
In order to assess the value of eyewitness testimony
and confessions relating to the Holocaust, one must first examine the
conditions prevailing in the Allied post-war trials in Nuremberg and
elsewhere. For it is the verdicts handed down in these trials which
recorded, in sketchy outlines, the accounts of the Holocaust given by
eyewitness testimony and putative confessions. These Allied trials may
be roughly divided into two types, namely those carried out by the respective
occupying powers as these saw fit, and those carried out with at least
initial co-operation between the victorious powers within the framework
of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg.[25]
Immediately after the end of the war the Americans
placed all Germans who held leading positions in the Party, the state
or the economy under "automatic arrest" without trial.[26]
In this way hundreds of thousands ended up in prison camps consisting
in the main only of fenced-in meadows. Shortly after the end of the
war all German prisoners were stripped of their status as prisoners-of-war.[27]
The Allies considered civilian internees to have no rights whatsoever;
particularly in the American and French spheres of influence, these
prisoners lived mostly in burrows in the ground, received insufficient
food, were denied all medical assistance, and neither the International
Red Cross nor other organizations nor even private individuals were
allowed to help. In this way the prisoners in the American run camps
died like flies by the hundreds of thousands.[28]
Military Government Ordinance No. 1 required every
German, on pain of lifetime imprisonment, to give the Allies any and
all information they required.[29]
Thus German witnesses could be forced to give evidence by imprisoning
them for years, subjecting them to hours of interrogation, or threatening
to hand them over to the Russians.[30]
A separate department, "Special Project", was responsible for
obtaining incriminating evidence against reluctant witnesses. The material
obtained in this way was used to bend the witnesses to the Allies’ will,
since this information was used to threaten them with prosecution if
they refused to give incriminating evidence against others.[31]
This fact alone shows that after the war every German
was practically outlawed and became fair game for persecution, and found
himself unexpectedly in a situation where he would give the Allies any
information they sought - even if such information was false - rather
than suffer the blows of arbitrary despotism looming over him at every
turn.
In the American Occupation Zone, trials against various
defendants were conducted under the United States’ or U.S. Army’s sovereignty
in Dachau, Ludwigsburg, Darmstadt and Salzburg.[32]
These trials fell roughly into three categories:
- crimes in concentration camps (including the cases of euthanasia);
- murders of bailed-out Allied plane crews;
- the alleged war crime of Malmedy at the Ardennes Offensive.
Preparation for these trials included the interrogation
of suspects and witnesses in various camps and prisons known as torture
chambers today, such as Ebensee, Freising, Oberursel, Zuffenhausen and
Schwäbisch Hall.[33]
Rückerl comments succinctly:
"Even the Americans themselves soon objected
to the way in which some American military tribunals conducted their
trials, particularly to the fact that what was repeatedly used as
evidence in these trials were confessions of the accused which had
been obtained in preliminary hearings, sometimes under the worst
possible physical and psychological pressure."[34]
In fact, until 1949 there were several American investigating
committees which looked into a part of those accusations that had been
brought by German and also by American defense attorneys, particularly
by R. Aschenauer, G. Froeschmann and W. M. Everett.[32],[35f.],[36]
However, these committees - whose reports were published only in part,
and not until public pressure had been brought to bear[37]
- were accused by the American side of being merely symbolic fig-leaves
for the Army and for politics alike, since they had served merely to
cover up the true extent of the scandal.[38]
For example, the National Council for Prevention of War commented on
the conclusions of the Baldwin Commission, which exonerated the Army
from grave misdemeanors, as follows:
"The Commission concluded its report with
recommendations for reform of future proceedings of this sort -
but these recommendations give the lie to all the excuses and exonerations
making up the greatest part of the report. In effect, the bottom
line stated, ‘Even if you didn’t do it, we don’t want you to do
it again’ […]."[39]
Senator J. McCarthy, who had been sent by the American
Senate to act as an observer, turned out to be especially committed.
Protesting against the collaboration between the members of the investigating
committee and the American Army in their efforts to cover up the scandal,
he resigned his function as observer after only two weeks and gave a
moving address to the U.S. Senate.[40]
The manner in which the Americans extorted confessions from accused
persons, or statements from reluctant witnesses subjected to automatic
arrest both in the prisons for those awaiting trial as well as during
the main hearing in Dachau, left clearly visible marks: the methods
used were:
- skin burns
- destruction of the bed of the (finger-, i.e., toe-)nails with burning matches
- torn-out fingernails
- knocked-in teeth
- broken jaws
- crushed testicles
- wounds of all kinds due to beatings with clubs
- brass knuckles and kicks
- being locked up naked in cold, damp and dark rooms for several days
- imprisonment in hot rooms with nothing to drink
- mock trials
- mock convictions
- mock executions
- bogus clergymen, and many more.[41],[42]
According to Joachim Peiper, principal defendant
in the Malmedy Trial, what was even worse than these so-called third-degree
interrogation methods was the feeling of being completely at the mercy
of others while being totally cut off from the outside world and one’s
fellow prisoners. Another method the Americans used, which was often
successful, was to play the prisoners off against each other with threats
and promises in order to obtain false incriminating statements. This
would help to break the prisoners’ resistance, which had its roots in
the solidarity among them (second-degree interrogations).[43]
The protocols of these interrogations, which lasted
for hours and even days, were cut-and-pasted into so-called affidavits
by the prosecution; those parts which exonerated the accused were deleted,
and contents were frequently distorted by re-wording.[44]
Aside from these dubious affidavits, anything and everything was admissible
as evidence, including, for example, un-notarized copies of documents
as well as third-hand statements (hearsay).[45]
In one case even the unfinished, unsigned affidavit of one accused whom
all the abuse had driven to suicide was used as evidence![46]
And Order SOP No. 4 promised that any accused who offered to give State’s
evidence to incriminate others would be set free.[47]
The effects of this regulation was demonstrated by Lautern, who described
two cases in which the accused bought their freedom with false statements
incriminating third parties.[48]
Up to the start of the trials the accused had no
legal representation whatsoever, and even during the trials the defense
attorneys rarely provided effective support, since these defense counsels
(appointed by the Court) in many cases were themselves citizens of the
victorious powers, usually with a poor command of the German language.
They showed little interest in defending their clients and sometimes
even acted blatantly as prosecutors, going so far as to threaten the
defendants and to persuade them to make false confessions of guilt.[49]
But even if, like American attorney W. M. Everett for example, they
were willing to carry out their duties as defense counsels, the prosecution
and the Court made this almost impossible for them: the defense was
reluctantly given only partial access to pertinent documents, and conversations
with the accused were not possible until just before and sometimes not
even until after the trials had begun, and only ever under Allied supervision.
Frequently it was not until just before the trial that the defense was
informed of the charges, which tended to be sweeping and general in
nature.[50] Motions
to hear witnesses for the defense, or to contest evidence such as extorted
statements, were usually refused.[51]
And this was fully in accordance with the regulations of the American
Occupation Power; Article 7 of Ordinance Number 7 of the Military Government
for the American Zone states, with respect to the charter of certain
military tribunals:
"The Tribunals shall not be bound by technical
rules of evidence […] The tribunal shall afford the opposing
party such opportunity to question the […] probative value
of such evidence as in the opinion of the tribunal the ends of justice
require."[52]
It was left to the Court to decide what was necessary.
In other words, the protocol was purely arbitrary.
It is an interesting matter to determine how the
incriminating statements, especially those made by former inmates of
the concentration camps, are to be evaluated. The prosecution used a
special technique to obtain these statements - so-called "stage shows"
or "revues".[53]
For this purpose the prosecution gathered up former concentration camp
inmates and put them into an auditorium. The accused were placed on
a well-lit stage while the former inmates sat in the darkened room and
could bring any and all conceivable accusations against the accused,
accompanied at times by furious yelling and the most vile curses. In
those cases where, contrary to expectation, no charges were made against
an accused, or when those accusations that were made seemed insufficient,
the prosecution helped matters along by persuading and sometimes even
threatening the witnesses.[54]
If this shameful tactic still did not suffice to obtain incriminating
statements, the prosecution nevertheless did not shy away from a trial;
exonerating statements were simply destroyed by the prosecution.[55]
These stage-shows continued until an American officer donned an SS uniform
and appeared on the stage before the howling witnesses, who promptly
incriminated him as a concentration camp thug.[56]
Defense witnesses from the concentration camps were
withheld, threatened, sometimes even arrested and abused by the prosecution.[57]
Many former concentration camp inmates threatened their one-time fellow
sufferers with reprisals against their families or even with incriminating
statements and indictments against them if they failed to give sufficiently
incriminating testimony or statements against third parties. Even threats
of murder are documented to have been made against fellow prisoners.[58]
The VVN (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes = Organization
of Persons Persecuted by the Nazi Regime),[59]
the organization that decided which former inmates living in the starving
Germany of those days would receive food rations, housing authorization
etc., used its power to pressure many former fellow prisoners into not
taking the stand as defense witnesses. It even expressly forbade the
former fellow prisoners to give exonerating testimony.[60]
Those witnesses who were willing to give incriminating
evidence were conspicuous by virtue of their frequent appearance, sometimes
in groups, at various trials where they could expect to receive considerable
compensation, both financial and in goods. In many cases these "professional
witnesses", who openly co-ordinated their testimony amongst themselves,
were criminal ex-convicts who had been promised exemption from punishment
in return for their cooperation.[61]
Judges G. Simpson and E. L. van Roden, whom the U. S. Army had appointed
as investigating commission, are said to have used the term "scum
of humanity" in this context.[62]
Even when such or other witnesses were found to have perjured themselves,
they were never prosecuted.[63]
On the contrary: only if a witness told the Court of the methods with
which his testimony had come about, and thus rescinded his statements
- only then did the prosecution take steps against him.[64]
In principle, the trials in Dachau were all the same,
regardless of whether they dealt with crimes in the concentration camps,
with murders of airmen, or with the Malmedy Case. F. Oscar correctly
points out[65] that
torture was worse in the Malmedy Case due to the dearth of ‘witnesses’,
while the superfluity of ‘witnesses’ in the concentration camp cases
resulted in "stage shows" instead. In the euthanasia and physicians
cases the method of choice was the confiscation of exonerating documents
and the suppression of exculpatory statements.[66]
Freda Utley stated[67]
that the concentration camp cases were even worse than the Malmedy Case,
which was already unparalleled.[68]
What must one think of historians who, like Thomas
A. Schwartz, claimed as late as 1990 and in Germany’s foremost periodical
on contemporary history, that the American trials had been conducted
in accordance with the stipulations of the Geneva Convention; that the
main problem with these trials had merely been the lack of opportunity
for appeal and the uncertain future treatment of the convicted; that
the cases of Ilse Koch[63] and Malmedy
were the only ones of particular significance; and that the committee
appointed by the U.S. Senate had exonerated the American occupation
authorities from the more serious charges?[69]
One must think that Schwartz was either extremely ignorant or extremely
perverse!
In the first post-war years the British, on the whole,
acted no differently than the Americans. According to Aschenauer, the
main features of the American post-war trials also characterized those
British trials taking place in Werl,[70]
where leading officers of the Wehrmacht as well as concentration camp
guards from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Natzweiler were tried.[71]
One fundamental difference, however, was that no investigating commissions
were introduced during or after these trials, so that the internal proceedings
of, for example, the British interrogation camps and prisons - most
notably Minden,[72]
Bad Nenndorf[73] and
Hameln - remained sub-surface.
From two examples, however, it becomes clear that
interrogation methods of second and third degree were the rule there
as well. The first example is the torture of the former Commandant of
Auschwitz, Rudolf Höß, in the prison of Minden. This torture was not
only mentioned by Höß himself in his autobiography,[74]
but has also been confirmed by one of his torturers[75]
who, rather as an aside, also mentioned the torture of Hans Frank in
Minden.[76] And further,
in his testimony before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), Oswald
Pohl reported that similar methods were used in Bad Nenndorf and that
this was how his own affidavit had been obtained.[77]
The example of Höß is especially important since his statement was used
at the IMT as the confession of a perpetrator, to prove the mass murder
of the Jews (see 3.3.1.5).
We know comparatively little about the French trials
of the camp staff of the concentration camps Neue Bremme and Natzweiler.[78]
However, judging from the French conduct towards German civilians under
"automatic arrest"[79]
as well as towards the population of the occupied territories[80]
- which was just as bad as, if not worse than, the conduct of the Americans
- one may conclude that the French were equal to the Americans in every
way.
The trials in the Soviet Occupation Zone can be considered
as part of the continuation of the war crimes tribunals that had been
held in the Soviet Union ever since the outbreak of hostilities in 1941.
In 1950, an official report confirmed that these war crimes trials were
a violation of international law.[81]
Maurach reports that the preliminary hearings were characterized by
continuous, i.e., non-stop interrogations, physical abuse of all kinds,
distorted protocols, playing prisoners off against each other, forced
denunciation of others, etc; and the main hearings by summary mass trials
before special courts governed by arbitrary rules of procedure.[82]
There is a general consensus of opinion regarding these procedures,
and even the Federal German Ministry of Justice has commented to this
effect.[83] In a recent
publication by a renowned Russion historian and based on original Russian
archives, these early German expert reports were confirmed.[84]
The same goes for comparable trials held by the Soviet satellite states
in the first few years following the war. Buszko, for example, reports
that in Poland, just as with the IMT, a special court was set up whose
verdicts were incontestable.[85]
Further, the Federal Ministry of Justice has described the early trials
in the German Democratic Republic as arbitrary trials[86]
whose darkest chapter, the so-called Waldheim Trials, was recently set
out in detail by Eisert.[87]
The actual International Military Tribunal consisted
of prosecutors and judges from the four Allies Powers - hardly an objective
tribunal. It brought 22 of the most important figures from the Third
Reich to trial. This Tribunal was followed by twelve further trials
of various offices and functions - for example the Reich Government,
the Wehrmacht Supreme Command, and the SS Economic-Administrative Main
Office - and of professional groups, such as lawyers, and chemical and
steel workers. These trials, however, were conducted exclusively by
the Americans, since by then the other victorious powers had lost interest.[88]
The London Agreement, which defined the legal framework
of the International Military Tribunal (IMT),[89]
decreed in its Article 3 that the Tribunal cannot be challenged, and
in Article 26 it categorically ruled out any contestability of its verdicts.
In accordance with Article 13, the Court also determined its own rules
of procedure. These points alone already suffice to strip this tribunal
of any legality. Three articles pertaining to the rights of the Court
are particularly significant. Article 18, for example, determined that
the Court should
"confine the Trial strictly to an expeditious
hearing of the issues raised by the charges [sic]"
and that it could refuse any and all questions and
explanations it deemed unnecessary or irrelevant. Article 19 states
verbatim:
"The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical
rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible
extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any
evidence which it deems to have probative value."
And Article 21 - the effect of this article still
today gives the cloak of respectability to anti-scientific legal conclusions:
"The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts
of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof […]"
According to the London Agreement, these "facts
of common knowledge" included anything which any office or commission
from any Allied nation claimed in documents, files, reports and protocols.
Thus, all ‘evidence’ produced in the trials discussed in 3.3.1.1 to
3.3.1.4 was deemed to be a matter of fact needing no further substantiation.
The IMT categorized the SS and the Waffen-SS, for example, as criminal
organizations primarily on the basis of the ‘evidence’ produced in the
Dachau Trials.[90]
In the time leading up to the trial, the Soviets
bluntly stated that they wished to execute the accused without a trial
or at most after a summary show-trial, since their guilt was self-evident
anyhow.[91] While
some voices were raised in agreement on the side of the western Allies,[92]
the understanding that only a ‘real’ trial could be effective did predominate.[93]
The fact that chief prosecutor R. Jackson stated in one of his addresses
that this military tribunal was only a continuation of the war against
Germany by other means, and that said tribunal was not bound by any
limiting conditions imposed by legal systems coming down to modern times
through tradition, should instill in any researcher a healthy dose of
scepticism regarding the conditions providing the framework of this
trial.[94]
Irving described the early investigations of the
IMT prosecution as a private event put on by the American Secret Service
OSS [Office of Strategic Services], until R. Jackson reduced this influence.[95]
Von Knieriem gives a very detailed account of the consequences ensuing
from the fact that the prosecution had unlimited access to the entire
executive apparatus of all occupation authorities - permitting, for
example, their arrest of any witness they chose, the confiscation of
all documents and files of the Third Reich, as well as access to the
files of the victors - while the defense was completely without means
and influence.[96]
Since the IMT was conducted in the style of Anglo-Saxon trials, in which
- unlike in German trials - the prosecution is not obliged to ascertain
and submit any evidence that would serve to exonerate the accused but
rather strives to prove the guilt of the accused in a one-sided manner,
this unequal ‘arsenal’ of prosecution and defense could not but result
in grave miscarriages of justice.[97]
Even the Presiding Judges - provided they had been willing to equalize
the situation - could not have helped the defense to improve its situation
very much, for these judges were merely de facto guests of the
prosecution, which latter decided all material and personnel matters
in Court.[98] The
judges had no authority to issue directives, neither to the Occupation
Powers nor to the prosecution - not even with regard to the obtainment
or hearing of evidence.[99]
In many and sweeping respects the conduct of the
IMT was shockingly similar to that of the trials described previously
in Section 3.3.1.1. Von Knieriem and many others recount threats of
all kinds, of psychological torture,[100]
of non-stop interrogation[101]
and of confiscation of the property[102]
of defendants as well as of coerced witnesses. Intimidation, imprisonment,
legal prosecution and other means of coercion was applied to witnesses
for the defense;[103]
distorted affidavits,[104]
documents[105] and
synchronized translations;[106]
arbitrary refusal to hear evidence,[107]
confiscation of documents[108]
and the refusal to grant the defense access to documents;[109]
as well as to the systematic obstruction of the defense by the prosecution[110]
such as, for example, making it impossible for the defense to travel
abroad in order to locate defense witnesses,[111]
or censoring their mail.[112]
We know of professional witnesses who had been interned in concentration
camps for severe crimes.[113]
Last but not least, we know of verdicts flying crassly in the face of
what the evidence demanded,[114]
and justified with "arguments unrivalled in their crudity."[115]
When the American attorney E. J. Caroll was prevented
from acting as defense counsel in the Krupp case, he sent a letter of
protest to General Clay criticizing the IMT trials for, among other
things, lengthy and inhumane detention awaiting trial; the withholding
of documents by the prosecution and the Court, hearsay evidence, the
random nature of documentary evidence, the suppression of witnesses
for the defense, and the mandatory presence of members of the prosecution
at any discussions held with witnesses; the disappearance of exonerating
evidence; the confiscation of property; testimony under duress; and
the intimidation of witnesses.[116]
Irving calls the manner in which the IMT prosecution
conducted interrogations "Gestapo methods".[117]
The prisoners, cut off as they were from the rest of the world and suffering
from hunger and cold, were not granted any medical care for injuries
they had sustained through abuse by their captors,[118]
and even their defense counsels ran the risk of being arrested if they
insisted on the rights they might have expected in legal trials - as
it happened, for example, to the defense counsel of von Neurath,[119]
or to all the defense attorneys in the Krupp Trial.[120]
As far as the incriminating testimony provided by former inmates is
concerned, Aschenauer detects significant parallels between the concentration
camp trials conducted by the USA in Dachau on the one hand, and the
trial of the SS Economic-Administrative Main Office in Nuremberg on
the other, since in both cases the testimony was provided by the same
criminal "professional witnesses".[121]
And of course the VVN’s threats and intimidation of former fellow inmates
to prevent exonerating testimony were also not lacking in the IMT trials.[122]
Opinions regarding abuse and torture during the IMT
trials are divided. Whereas Irving acknowledges them in the form of
constant harassment and minor maltreatment,[123]
von Knieriem assumes that "apparently" there were none.[124]
We do know, however, of the severe abuse of J. Streicher, which he described
during his interrogation before the IMT.[125]
His account about having been tortured was stricken from the protocol
at the request of the prosecution.[126]
Lautern reports the torture of SS-Gruppenführer Petri,[127]
and in his last records O. Pohl told of the maltreatment of Standartenführer
Maurer.[128] Mark
Weber details a number of additional cases of abuse.[129]
This suggests that the main defendants who received much public attention
suffered only a lesser degree of physical abuse, while those who received
less publicity also risked abuse in Nuremberg if they were not quick
enough to cooperate.
The investigating committees mentioned in Section
3.3.1.1. resulted in the revision of some of the verdicts handed down
by the IMT and its successor tribunals. In these cases the German Federal
government insisted on greater leniency - the result of rearmament following
the Korea crisis.[130]
The American trials in Dachau and the similar trials
conducted by the other Allies allegedly proved the atrocities committed
in the concentration camps and in eastern Europe. The SS and Waffen-SS
have been deemed criminal organizations ever since, even if for example
the German courts do not treat their members as criminals, but this
may be only due to the necessity to avoid illegal retroactive application
of new laws. The IMT itself reinforced this assessment through the repeated
presentation of ‘evidence’ largely obtained in the aforementioned trials.
The best summary of the consequences of the evidence
presented to the IMT may be found in the memoirs of H. Fritzsche. All
the main defendants of Nuremberg insisted that prior to the IMT proceedings
they had not known of any mass murder of the Jews.[131]
After the screening of a dubious film about the concentration camp Dachau
and other camps had achieved the desired psychological effect, but had
failed to convince completely, the testimonies of R. Höß and O. Ohlendorf
finally persuaded most of the accused to accept the mass murder as fact.[132]
The murder of the Jews, which was ultimately accepted as proven by most
of the accused, affected the defense and the accused and even the fate
of the entire nation like a paralyzing curse, since now no one dared
still object.[133]
Nevertheless the accused were left with the impression that the investigative
requirements had not been met:
"The incomprehensible was proven in a makeshift
sort of way, but it was by no means investigated."[134]
The fact that the publication Vierteljahrshefte
für Zeitgeschichte regards the IMT as a fair trial sincerely striving
for justice, whose only fault was to be found in its legal foundation,
will not surprise anyone familiar with the leftist, partial Institut
für Zeitgeschichte, the body publishing that periodical.[135]
The basic treaty establishing the partial sovereignty
of the Federal Republic of Germany decreed that the verdicts of the
IMT were final and binding for all official and judicial authorities
of the Federal Republic.[136]
The Establishment considers this a handicap, since due to the demands
of the Korea Crisis the United States released most of those they had
convicted in their post-war trials in fairly short order, with the German
justice system missing out on the pleasure of re-charging them even
in light of new evidence.[137]
But one might also consider the decree to be a handicap in the sense
that, through Article 7 of the Treaty, the Allies effectively placed
the view of history resulting from their post-war judicial conclusions
and verdicts beyond revision even for German courts.
Regarding the significance of witness testimony to
the verdicts in trials particularly in the Federal Republic of Germany
and Israel, it must first be pointed out that the view of history as
the IMT established it with regard to the Holocaust is generally considered
to be self-evident and true today. The question of how great a role
the transition treaty played in this remains open.[138]
Thus, motions to take evidence - particularly material evidence regarding
the refutation or even the examination of this ‘truth’, or to question
its self-evidence - are refused sight-unseen by the Courts, especially
in Germany. These motions to hear evidence are dismissed as mere tactics
intended to delay the trial.[139]
Anyone who nevertheless insists publicly on his dissenting claims, i.e.,
beliefs in, or points out technical and scientific counter-arguments,
soon finds himself the object of prosecution for slander of the Jews,
disparagement of the memory of persons deceased, hate-mongering, or
incitement to hatred.[140]
Since 1985 this is even considered an offense so grave that proceedings
are brought directly by the Public Prosecutors’ Departments even without
a prior report or complaint by someone considering himself slandered.[141]
The only thing anyone will achieve by speaking out in court against
the self-evident ‘truth’ will be to receive an all the more severe sentence
for stubborn lying and lack of repentance, and his arguments will be
ignored. This insurmountable and blindly dogmatic persecution of dissenting
viewpoints hobbles any and all research deviating in content from the
officially sanctioned view.
[142]But let
us take a look at some examples afforded by Israel and the Federal Republic
of Germany, to see in what sort of setting the trials of supposed violent
National Socialist criminals took and continues to take place in countries
calling themselves modern western-styled democracies under the rule
of law.
The dubious starting point of many investigations
- whether shortly after the war, or sometimes even today - are conclusions
that were drawn in the course of Allied post-war trials, in judicial
opinions, in witness statements, confessions of perpetrators, or other
documents at the disposal of the investigating bodies.[143],[144],[145]
It is also cause for concern to consider how the rules of procedure
were circumvented in order to facilitate the prosecution of Germans
who were merely suspected of having committed crimes. Until 1951,
the German justice system was permitted by the laws of the Allied Control
Council to deal only with crimes committed by Germans against other
Germans or stateless persons.[146]
But even after partial sovereignty had been attained in 1955, certain
circles were not satisfied with the scope of the German justice system’s
investigative activities and results. Rückerl explains this dissatisfying
condition with the fact that under existing laws, Public Prosecutors’
Offices can take action only when a supposed criminal is resident in
their region or when the crime was committed in their sphere of responsibility.
Since the putative National Socialist crimes are predominantly said
to have been committed abroad and frequently by person or persons unknown,
there was no investigation at all in many cases.[147]
In 1958, in order to get around this obstacle, the
Ministers of Justice of the Federal German states established the
Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer
Verbrechen [State Administration of Justice, Central Office for
Investigation of National Socialist Crimes] in Ludwigsburg, to circumvent
the above regulations and conduct worldwide researches in the form of
preliminary investigations to determine where which crimes might have
been committed in the name of Germany, and by whom - an act that is
unique in the history of law and justice.[148]
To this day this Central Office continues to draw on all possible sources
(archives, witness statements, court documents, books, accounts of personal
experience, movies, press releases) to obtain information on crimes
supposedly committed abroad by Germans under the National Socialist
regime. When the Central Office believes that sufficient evidence has
been found against certain suspects, it passes its findings on to the
appropriate Public Prosecutors’ Offices which then proceed to initiate
the standard investigations.
After refusing for years to examine and make use
of the archives of the Eastern Bloc,[149]
the Federal German government finally overcame its reluctance in the
wake of the 1964 Auschwitz Trial, and appealed to all nations of the
world to make as much documentation about National Socialist crimes
available to Germany as possible. Some parties even demanded that a
European Legal Commission should be set up expressly and exclusively
to prosecute supposed National Socialist criminals.[150]
This appeal by West Germany caused East Germany, for example, to declare
that it had sufficient incriminating material in its archives to prosecute
hundreds of thousands.[151]
Aside from these eastern European sources, the western archives (including
especially those in Israel) as well as the standard Holocaust literature
and inmates’ organizations are the chief sources of the material collected
by the Head Office.[152]
S. Wiesenthal[153]
and H. Langbein, a former inmate, have been particularly assiduous in
providing material. The Schwurgericht [jury court] of Frankfurt
even certified to the latter that he had played an especially important
part in the preparations for the Auschwitz Trial and its execution,[154]
and on the occasion of Langbein’s presence at the examination of a witness
the Public Prosecutor went so far as to thank him openly for his assistance.[155]
But what is of key importance is the fact that, as
has been proven now in five separate cases, the Central Office or the
Public Prosecutors’ Offices compiled so-called Criminals’ Dossiers which
they made available to all potential witnesses, as well as to domestic
and foreign investigative bodies, for the purpose of further dissemination
to witnesses. In these Dossiers all supposed perpetrators are listed
along with their photographs both of today and from National Socialist
times, and a description of the crimes imputed to them - as well as
such crimes which may have taken place but for which witnesses
and clues to the identity of the perpetrators are still lacking. The
witnesses are then asked to treat the issue as a matter of confidence
but to assign the criminals to the crimes and to add other crimes which
may be missing from the Dossier.[156]
It is clear that under such circumstances the memory of these witnesses
was ‘refreshed’, i.e., destorted. Thus, subsequent testimonies and especially
the identifications of the alleged perpetrators in court are a farce.[157]
And finally, Rückerl[158]
and Henkys[159]
report that due to new findings that had come to the attention of the
investigating authorities, or due to discrepancies between witness testimony
and the beliefs of the investigating authorities, the witnesses were
questioned over and over again. It would not be surprising if this fact
by itself already resulted in a sort of ‘streamlining’ of testimony.
In this context Rückerl points to cases of manipulation of witnesses
by investigating authorities as well as by private records centres -
while of course considering these cases to be exceptions to the rule.[160]
The frequently very difficult investigations resulted in the accused
persons being detained, awaiting trial, for three to five years and
sometimes even longer, which can contribute to the emotional attrition
of the accused and which the European Court is not alone in condemning
as a violation of human rights.[161]
It must be noted that both Rückerl[162]
and Henkys[163]
considered it a necessity that politically particularly reliable personnel
were employed for the first few decades of these special investigations,
since many employees and officials might have been biased due to their
own activities during National Socialist times. It is safe to assume
that only such persons were employed as had never even dreamed of doubting
the reality of the alleged crimes to be investigated. Given such eager,
ideologically persuaded and trained personnel, it is quite within the
realm of the possible that witnesses who were reluctant to testify were
threatened in the course of preliminary investigations in order to obtain
the desired testimony. Lichtenstein describes the results of a second-degree
interrogation, which he expressly states is necessary in order to force
reluctant witnesses to talk:
"The witness [Barth[164]]
hesitates, […] suffers or fakes a nervous breakdown.
[…] Before leaving the witness stand he takes back his claim
that the police officer who had interrogated him had ‘blackmailed’
him into telling what had happened at that time. He now states rather
lamely that the officer had ‘been rather tough with him’, which
is certainly necessary with witnesses of this sort. [sic!]"[165]
All in all, the Central Office seems to regard itself
more as an institute for historical research operating with unconventional
methods than as an office for criminal prosecution: Rückerl, in any
case, considers its findings historical facts.[166]
Steinbach even suggests that in the future, after the end of the NSG
trials, the Central Office ought to be turned into an institute for
historical research,[167]
which apparently is the plan of German politicians, too.[168]
An interview with a former SS-man, however, revealed
that probably not even this task of historical research is performed
properly. According to this interview it seems that the members of the
Central Office never try to find out what really happened, but
are only interested in information about crimes and alleged criminals.[169]
This procedure must inflate the crimes and can only hide the truth.
For the alleged major crime categories of the Third
Reich (Einsatzgruppen, concentration camps and other camps),
the trials of individual persons were supplemented by a mammoth trial
conducted at a central location, to which dozens of accused and sometimes
hundreds of witnesses were summoned.[170]
Although this was a financial and technical necessity, it was nevertheless
inevitable that the question of the individual guilt of each defendant
would perforce be drowned out. In the face of such a deluge of evidence
and information, neither the defense nor the prosecution, neither judge
nor jury can keep track of everything for years on end.[171]
Even though there has been much emphasis on the point
that it cannot be the task of the Court to dabble in historiography,
Rückerl stresses that particularly the trials concerned with the alleged
National Socialist extermination camps are of historical relevance and
that the elucidation of historical events frequently took center-stage
in those trials.[172]
No secret is made of the fact that the ‘historical’ findings of these
investigations make up the chief pillars on which contemporary historiography
has based its research.[173]
Steinbach even states that it is unique in the history of historiography
for this area of inquiry to have been left up to non-historians, i.e.,
prosecuting attorneys and judges, and that this chapter is therefore
the best-researched in German history.[174]
And indeed the courts are superior to historians
in one respect, namely in the obtainment of witness testimony. Rückerl
notes correctly that unlike historians, investigators and judges in
criminal trials are able, thanks to the apparatus of state, to obtain
a great many statements from witnesses and to probe them for the truth
by means of questioning, i.e., interrogation.[175]
But whether these statements, on which such fateful decisions hinge,
are true - this is something that is far more difficult to determine.
Bader and Henkys suggest that this would be possible only if the Court
were allowed to exert physical force, which is prohibited in a state
under the rule of law.[176]
It is rather amazing to find that in our century there actually are
German adults who believe that force can ascertain the truth. Tuchel
limits the historical usability of legal findings to those that are
based on good and complete legal research.[177]
But who assesses quality and completeness, and by which criteria?
The most prominent example of the NSG trials is the
Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt. Contrary to the claims of the then Presiding
Judge, this trial is generally regarded as the epitome of historical
trials.[178] Thus
it is not surprising that the only expert reports which the Court commissioned
to elucidate the issue were historical reports about the National Socialist
regime in general and about the persecution of the Jews in particular,[179]
but no criminological reports about the evidence for the supposed and
alleged deeds of the defendants.[180]
How two-faced, therefore, of the Federal Supreme Court to have quashed
the acquittal resulting from one particular NSG trial - giving for its
decision the reason that the Court allegedly had done nothing to determine
whether the crime had even taken place![181]
But this is precisely what the courts entrusted with the NSG trials
never do in the only reliable way available, namely non-historical,
i.e., technical, scientific, and forensic expert reports. Yet the Federal
Supreme Court clearly is not bothered by this when the result is a conviction
rather than an acquittal.
Another element for concern is the fact that in these
large-scale, well-publicized NSG trials, both the prosecution and the
witnesses produced a show-trial-style, graphic overall impression of
the alleged horrors of the Holocaust.[182]
This contributed nothing to the establishment of truth regarding the
charges brought against the accused, instead it added to the Court bias
against them. Rückerl explains that graphic presentation of the gruesome
context within which the alleged crime was committed serves to increase
the severity of the sentence.[183]
Bader comments:
"Trials which are conducted in order to furnish
evidence for historians are evil trials and represent a sinister
approach to show-trials."[184]
The Court’s value judgement of the evidence is also
significant. Rückerl reports that it is practically impossible to find
a suspect guilty on the sole basis of documentary evidence, so that
especially with the increasing time span separating fact from trial
it is almost always necessary to fall back on witness testimony even
though its unreliable nature is clear, and particularly so in these
NSG trials.[185]
He states further that the conviction of an accused on the strength
of the testimony of only one witness is questionable due to the possibility
of error on the part of the witness, but that several witnesses, all
giving incriminating testimony, would convince the Court.[186]
This is reminiscent of the trial technique sometimes used in ancient
times, where it was the number of witnesses rather than the quality
of the evidence they gave that decided someone’s guilt or innocence.[187]
It is a particular point for concern that the courts, due to their lack
of proper evidence, are increasingly accepting hearsay testimony,[188]
even though it is generally acknowledged that this type of evidence
is worthless and that it is extremely dangerous to rely on it, since
doing so practically ensures a miscarriage of justice.[189]
The external conditions surrounding such trials also
violated the judicial standards of a state under the rule of law. For
example, Laternser criticizes filming and photographing in the courtroom,
which was (unlawfully) permitted during the Auschwitz Trial and resulted
in the defendants being besieged much like lions in a zoo.[190]
During their statements the defense or the defendants were subjected
to insults and even threats from courtroom spectators without any intervention
from the Court;[191]
that the accused were subjected to insults from the prosecutors and
witnesses and even to disparagement by the judges;[192]
that the prosecution participated in an exhibit held in the Paulskirche
[Church of St. Paul, an important national memorial of Germany] during
the trial and at which the accused were ‘convicted’, complete with their
photos, life history and details of their alleged crimes.[193]
Prosecutor Helge Grabitz reports that in the face
of the horrible events described by the witnesses it was next to impossible
for judges and prosecutors alike to remain objective and that they sometimes
even declared themselves to be biased since they felt rage, shame or
despair.[194] This
bias - or "interest", as it is called - became particularly evident
when the Jury Court of Frankfurt in charge with the Auschwitz case visited
the site of the alleged crime. Grabitz comments:
"When the trial moves out of the courtroom
and to the site of the crime, a profound sense of consternation
predominates."[195]
This is vividly reminiscent of those Auschwitz pilgrims
who shuffle through the camp with heads bowed, who pray before a
hot-air delousing chamber, in which the prisoners’ clothes were
fumigated, in memory of the victims they, albeit mistakenly, believe
to have been murdered therein. To truly honor the dead, a cursory attempt
to find out to which use these buildings and facilities were really
put should be done. Instead of explaining the true purpose for all
buildings and camp centers by the experts, the courts used these
opportunities only in order to increase their dismay.
If Laternser is correct, then it is also a point
for concern that the prosecution in the Auschwitz Trial failed to comply
with its duty (§160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) to also search
for evidence that would exonerate the accused.[196]
Chief prosecutor Grabitz’s comment regarding the responsibility of the
prosecution in cases where a defendant plays down or denies the crimes
he is charged with is rather revealing in this instance:
"It is the task of the prosecution to refute
these claims of the accused by bringing convincing evidence, especially
eyewitness testimony."[197]
Despite claims to the contrary, most of the prosecutors
were indeed concerned solely with incriminating the accused. Thus, these
trials came to be more and more like Anglo-Saxon trials, in which the
prosecution concerns itself only with proving guilt, and not with attempting
to establish innocence.
The means available to investigative authorities
(described in Section 3.3.2.1.) to conduct investigative proceedings
against future accused for many years and with the support of several
hundreds of experts, all the governments in question, and any and all
archives they may need,[198]
result in an inequality of resources between prosecution and defense
that is similar in scope to that characterizing the Allied post-war
trials. Arendt ascertained this inequality of resources, analogous to
the IMT, for the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem.[199]
Once someone accused of NSG crimes has been convicted,
he has next to no chance to prove his innocence through an appeal or
a retrial. Whereas retrials were not uncommon shortly after the war,
they are almost always refused today.[200]
Oppitz suggests that the reason for this is that courts today regard
eyewitness testimony in a much more critical light than they did right
after the war, which means that miscarriages of justice have become
far less likely.[201]
We shall see to which extent this is in fact so.
Trial reports written by defense counsels in NSG
trials are few and far between, since those few counsels who are willing
to assume the defense in such trials tend to be more than fed up with
the trouble they incur through their involvement with the trial per
se. As a rule they therefore avoid the further trouble that would
be theirs in the event of a publication. Also, for a self-employed lawyer
it is very difficult to come up with the time and money necessary to
write a book, not to mention that it is next to impossible to find a
publisher for such a book. H. Laternser, who was himself convinced that
the Holocaust story is fundamentally correct,[202]
is the only attorney to date to publish a detailed account of this kind.
Since the trial in question drew a great deal of public interest, it
was even possible to find an Establishment publisher for the book. Laternser’s
expositions also hold true more or less for all other NSG trials, whose
general conditions have been discussed in less mainstream publications.[203]
Laternser, who already served as defense counsel during the IMT trials,
describes the atmosphere pervading the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt
as follows:
"In the major international criminal trials
in which I participated, there was never as much tension as in the
Auschwitz Trial - not even at the International Military Tribunal
in Nuremberg."[204]
One point of criticism of this trial which he cites
from the perspective of the defense is that hardly any prosecutors and
members of the press were present during the summation of the defense.
In other words, there was no interest in a balanced view of the matter.[205]
He further criticizes that the defense was severely restricted in its
questioning of witnesses and that their motions to hear evidence were
suppressed, not granted, or refused without reason.[206]
The defense was also not granted access to the audio-taped records of
witness testimony.[207]
Reviewing and summarizing the many eyewitness statements was thus quite
impossible for the defense. The fact that even this judicial straitjacket
was not tight enough for some is revealed by Rückerl, who complains
that the trials took too long, allegedly because of the ever-increasing
deluge of evidence introduced by the defense,[208]
and Lichtenstein claims, in the same vein, that the defense did not
have sufficient restrictions put on it.[209]
A telling factor was the reaction of the Court and
the public in the case where an attorney dared approach the witnesses
whom the prosecution authorities had located, and questioned these witnesses
prior to the trial without identifying himself as defense counsel. In
Court it later turned out that the statements of these witnesses, which
had been inconsistent and contradictory before the trial, were now brought
into mutual accord and had been purged of their most unbelievable elements.[210]
The public condemned the attorney in question for his investigations,
and the chief witness nations, Poland and Israel, banned him from entering
their respective countries in the future.[211]
It is further food for thought that defense attorneys
in NSG trials are exposed to public attacks which at times go as far
as physical assault and professional disciplinary hearings or even criminal
prosecution, should they ask for or try to present evidence that
challenges the self-evidentness of the Holocaust.[212]
Thus it is not surprising that many defense counsels,
appointed to the case by the Court, take themselves to their task with
great reluctance originating with ideological reservations or with fear
of harm to their reputation, and prefer to cooperate with the judge
or even with the prosecution rather than represent their clients effectively,
and even consider resigning their appointment under the pressure of
media campaigns.[213]
This resulted in the failure of any joint strategy on the part of the
various defense attorneys, who instead even turned on each other at
times.[214] In one
case it has been proven that this went so far as to prompt one such
appointed defense attorney to advise his client to try to obtain leniency
from the Court by making false confessions of guilt, which the defendant
did in fact proceed to do.[215]
Similar strategies are recommended to the defense by third parties,
as the defendants’ insistence on their innocence, which no one is willing
to believe, seems pathetic and cowardly to the public.[216]
In reading Laternser’s trial documentation one notices
that he never comments critically on the fact that no material evidence
was ever brought with regard to victims, murder weapons or the site
of the crime, and that eyewitness testimony was also not subjected to
any expert critical analysis. In this respect Laternser follows in the
traditional footsteps of other defense counsels of the IMT and the Federal
German trials, none of whom harbored any doubts as to the factuality
of the various Holocaust stories until just recently. It thus never
so much as occurred to them to demand proof of the crime prior to negotiations
about the guilt of the accused, as is the standard course of procedure
in any court case relating to normal murders and even to trivialities
such as traffic accidents. Laternser also fails to critically address
the practice of keeping the accused in custody for many years, sometimes
for more than five years in detention awaiting trial, thus subjecting
them to psychological attrition that persuades almost any accused person
to cooperate with the Court and the prosecution to some extent if only
doing so will serve to make his own fate more bearable.
And finally, as an aside it should be noted that
Eichmann’s defense counsel was not permitted to speak with his client
privately, and that he was not granted access to the transcripts of
Eichmann’s interrogations[217]
- once again, methods reminiscent of the International Military Tribunal.
Rückerl, Henkys and Langbein[218]
are well aware that eyewitness testimony is unreliable not only due
to the natural forgetting process and to bias, but also because things
heard or seen in the reports of third parties or in the media frequently
become internalized and regarded as personal experiences. It is almost
impossible for courts to differentiate between personal and second-hand
experiences in eyewitness testimony.
On the one hand, Rückerl and Henkys[218]
write that the misery of camp life dulled the inmates’ ability to absorb
the events around them, which explains faulty testimony and makes it
not only excusable, but in fact even more credible than it would otherwise
have been.[219]
On the other hand they suggest that particularly horrible and thus indelibly
impressive events may be retained unchanged in an inmate’s memory like
a photograph for 30 years and more, thus making highly detailed eyewitness
testimony credible.[220]
Even if this theory should be correct, the question remains: how is
a court to differentiate between photographically precise memories and
testimony that has been unconsciously warped by time and external influences?
Elisabeth Loftus takes
the opposite position, particularly in the context of Holocaust
witnesses: of all the categories of witnesses, she says, these are the
most unbelievable, due to the world-wide media exploitation and the
emotionally highly charged mood characterizing the topic of the Holocaust.[221]
Admittedly, she has held this view only since attending the Demjanjuk
Trial in Jerusalem, where the scales fell from her eyes. In the end,
this trial produced a verdict of not guilty, since the unreliable nature
of all the witnesses for the prosecution had become too apparent[222]
- and this included witnesses who had given similar testimony two decades
earlier in two Treblinka trials in Germany, where they had been deemed
credible and had helped to decide the outcomes of these trials.[223]
In many German trials experts on the credibility
of witnesses had concluded that, on the whole, said credibility was
intact even after 30 years, at least where the heart of the testimony
was concerned. Oppitz believes that in the future, motions to examine
credibility should be refused on grounds of self-evidence.[224]
Since Rückerl feels that only vagueness and inconsistency are the hallmarks
of quality in eyewitness testimony,[225]
it is not surprising that there is a general tendency to demand that
the scrutiny of incriminating eyewitness testimony pertaining to the
Holocaust be condemned as reprehensible practice.[226]
It has also been noted that in the face of the paralyzing horror which
witnesses for the prosecution bring to vivid life in the courtroom,
the Courts themselves appear to lose all their critical faculties where
this testimony is concerned, and are prepared to regard the witnesses
strictly as innocent, guileless and defenseless victims, even in the
courtroom,[227]
and there are even those who deem such stunned horror on the part of
the Court and the public to be a necessity without which the suffering
of the victims cannot be properly appreciated.[228]
Grabitz explains that where "victim witnesses" are concerned,
one must be especially empathic, understanding, and restrained in one’s
questions,[229]
a sentiment which culminates in her comment:
"As a human being one simply wants to take
this witness into one’s arms and to weep with him."[230]
But it did not take the Demjanjuk show trial to show
that some of these witnesses are up to no good. Oppitz[231]
demonstrated with a number of examples that even in the German courts
there are both professional and vengeful witnesses which, however, are
only rarely condemned for perjury, or which - as one may well suppose,
in light of the German Courts’ uncritical and credulous attitude towards
Holocaust witnesses for the prosecution - were not even recognized as
perjurers. Particularly dramatic cases include those where the defendants
are accused by witnesses of having murdered certain persons who later
turn out to be still alive, to never have existed in first place, or
to have died long before the time of the NS regime.[232]
With reference to the Auschwitz Trial, Laternser
reports something that goes for all NSG trials on the whole: foreign
witnesses departed again immediately after testifying, making it impossible
to call them to account later when it turned out that they had committed
perjury. Neither the judges nor the prosecutors took any steps to examine
or test the statements of witnesses for the prosecution. Any and all
attempts by the defense to do so were "nipped in the bud",[233]
since it would be wrong to persecute the victims of yesterday all over
again today.[234]
Lichtenstein gives an outraged account of one exceptional case where
the prosecution as well as the Court condemned the eyewitness statements
as fairy-tales.[235]
Grabitz distinguishes between three categories of
Jewish witnesses:[236]
- Objective, matter-of-fact witnesses. According to Grabitz these stand out for their detailed testimony regarding the character and conduct of those participating in the crime/s. Further, they often cite the memory of the sacrifices of their family or their people as their reason for feeling obliged to testify. What Grabitz fails to see here is that even an apparently unemotional, discriminating statement need not be true, and that the remembrance of the sacrifices of family and coreligionists is by no means a motivation inherently proof against a desire for vengeance.
- Jewish witnesses striving for objectivity and matter-of-factness. Grabitz includes in this category those witnesses whose dreadful experiences make it difficult for them to maintain their composure; characteristics include crying fits and nervous breakdowns, but also bursts of invective expressed during or after testimony. In other words, Grabitz excuses the at times unobjective accounts of those witnesses on the grounds of the awful nature of their experiences. But what if the awful experiences attested to are not true? How is one to examine such testimony if the sympathy that the testimony inspires for these witnesses prohibits any questioning of their statements?
- Witnesses characterized by hatred. According to Grabitz these project injustices they suffered onto innocent persons because they can no longer incriminate the actual guilty party, or magnify the guilt of someone present at the crime or injustice. By now it has been shown time and again that these "hate witnesses" are capable of the total fabrication of the crimes they allege, but this fact does not occur to Grabitz.
Public prosecutor Grabitz is probably in accord with
most prosecutors, and with judges as well, when she states that her
witness categories are a) credible, and thus not to be cross-examined,
b) unreliable in parts, but also not to be cross-examined due to the
witnesses’ horrible experiences (which of course cannot but be true),
and c) factually correct, but distorted with respect to the perpetrators.
In other words, she sees no reason whatsoever to doubt the credibility
of Jewish witnesses -
"[…of] these witnesses, who want to testify
in order to bring the truth to light - why else would they have
voluntarily come from abroad […]."[237]
The height of naïveté, surely, by this prosecutor
allegedly seeking truth!
The free rein that as a rule was granted the witnesses
for the prosecution, and frequently not even restricted by the defense
counsels,[238] no
doubt did not contribute to the veracity of these witnesses. What makes
matters worse is that in German criminal proceedings the taking of verbatim
transcripts is not required, meaning that the Court does not record
eyewitness testimony exactly as it is given, neither in written form
nor taped.[239]
Until the end of the seventies the German Courts rather took a protocol
of results, in which only the essential results of the trial were summarized.
Accounts of witnesses as well as statements of defendants, lawyers and
judges therefore cannot be reconstructed precisely if later evidence
produces contradictions. At the end of the seventies even the duty to
prepare a protocol of results was lifted for all higher Courts (District
and Provincial High Courts). They only prepare pro forma protocols since.
Regarding the statements of defendants and witnesses one can read therein
only something like: "The witness made statements about the matter",
or: "The defendant filed a declaration". Nothing occurs in those
protocols about the content of the statements and declarations. Since
trials against alleged NSG criminals are being held in higher instances
right from their start because of the gravity of the alleged crime (which
denies the defendants a second instance with a hearing of evidences),
this leads to a situation where the Courts have absolutely free hand
regarding the ‘interpretation’ of the statements of witnesses and defendants.
This situation throws the gates wide open for untruths on the part of
witnesses, but also for interpretations of statements against their
actual wording by the Courts.[240]
The media as well only publicize select portions of testimony, whose
value as evidence is suspect from the start.[241]
In several instances Oppitz and Rückerl have noted
the influencing or prejudicing of witnesses by inmate organizations
such as the covertly Communist VVN, the "Organization of Persons
Persecuted by the Nazi Regime".[242]
But what is considerably more serious than the aforementioned manipulation
by the investigative authorities is the way in which the witnesses coming
to the Federal Republic of Germany from the Eastern Bloc nations were
checked out for their reliability and even put under massive pressure,
both by eastern secret service organizations as well as by Ministries
of Justice and of the Interior, and even during the trials by Embassies
and Consulates. They were even escorted into the courtroom by public
servants. Reliable Communists and such witnesses as were willing to
incriminate the accused were usually the only ones to be granted permission
to leave the eastern states.[243]
B. Naumann called this modus operandi of the Eastern Bloc nations
"inquisition",[244]
and Langbein rejoiced that in spite of this discovery the German courts
still did not question the credibility of these witnesses.[245]
Further, Laternser reports that the witnesses for the Auschwitz Trial
were able, even before the trial began, to tell their stories in the
media or even in Witness Information Pamphlets published especially
for this occasion, so that impartial and objective testimony became
quite an impossibility. As well, the witnesses were monitored by many
different organizations and persons, which also renders their prejudicing
very likely.[246]
As an aside, it should be pointed out that many witnesses travelled
from one trial to the next, pocketing outrageously high witness fees
as they went.[247]
The influence of the constant barrage of Holocaust
stories on European, American and Israeli witnesses is demonstrated
by Rückerl on the basis of Australian witnesses. Whereas western witnesses
can almost always make definite statements on certain complexes of the
matter at issue, investigators in Australia usually come away empty-handed.
Nobody can quite remember any more there.[248]
If one does not wish to accuse all Jewish witnesses
of lying, but would rather give them the benefit of the doubt, then
one must perforce seek other explanations. Many approaches to explanations
have already been made, some of whom are discussed here briefly.
Gringauz was the first who described the Jewish perception
and description of their persecution as biased:
"The hyper-historical complex may be described
as judeocentric, lococentric and egocentric. It concentrates historical
relevance on Jewish problems of local events under the aspect of
personal experience. This is the reason why most of the memoirs
and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggerations,
dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilletante philosophizing,
would-be lyricism, unchecked rumorism, bias, partisan attacks and
apologies."[249]
The question whether it is possible that events which
someone has not personally experienced, or not experienced in the degree
claimed, may be ‘remembered’ ex post facto so intensively that
this affects a person’s psyche - in other words, that people experience
the horror retroactively after actually having heard about it only through
the media or through third parties, was answered recently. This question
became especially relevant after the Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem when
it turned out that not only the witnesses themselves were not credible,
but that the deluge of forged documents and false testimony were also
shaking the very core and foundation of their testimony as a whole.[8],[222]
As already mentioned, Elisabeth Loftus, the Jewish-American specialist
on eyewitness testimony, recently published a book in which she describes
the mechanisms by which most human brains produce ‘memories’ of events
they actually never experienced, especially in situations of heavy emotional
stress.[250]
Otto Humm described in an recent article how typhoid
fever, an epidemic which raged in many German concentration camps and
claimed ten thoundands of lives, leads to a psychotic behavior of the
patient who has extremely terrible hallucinations. If not treated appropriately,
these hallucinations may be believed by the recovered patient as real
events. [251]
Hans Pedersen offeres a more psychological explanation
based on a case in Denmark at the beginning of last century, where a
young Jewish girl exhibited bizarre personal phenomena by injuring herself
and simulating handicaps in order to attract public attention and a
higher social status. She tricked all of her guardians and curiosity
seekers, including most renowned physicians who were brought in to explain
her baffling physical conditions. Most stunning in this case was
not the behavior of the the young lady, a quite common kind of behavior
in disturbed adolescents, but the incapability of the ‘experts’ to recognize
the obvious signs of deceit as such because of their will to believe
in the innocence of the girl and in the reality of the physiological
miracles she apparently performed.[252]
Howard F. Stein appointed out another possible explanation
when he recognized that the Holocaust has become a central focus of
modern Jewish identity, and that the majority of the Jewish people lose
themselves in identity-creating group fantasies of martyrdom.[253]
And what is more: the Jewish side even demands the constant and ever-increasing
"traumatization" of particularly the young Jewish generation
by means of the deeply affective re-experiencing of all real and supposed
Holocaust atrocities, intended to achieve their "almost physical
identification" and solidarity with their people.[254]
Thus, the Holocaust is considererd today to be the core of the "civil
religion" of at least the Israelis, if not of all Jews.[255]
Of course these almost pathological fixations of
many Jews to the Holocaust led to massive criticism even from the Jewish
side.[256] Even
one of the most popular Holocaust authors, the Nobel Peace prize-winner
Elie Wiesel, recently admonished not to let the Holocaust be a central
point of reference for the Jewish identity. Under the title "Do not
get obsessed with the Holocaust" he is quoted as follows:
"The Holocaust has become too much of a central
point in Jewish history. We need to move on. There is a Jewish tendency
to dwell on tragedy. But Jewish history does not finish there."[257]
A conference of Ukrainian and Polish physicians in
American exile, held in January 1993 towards the end of the Demjanjuk
Trial, concluded that many Jews have forgotten their true and sometimes
just as horrible experiences in the concentration camps, and are increasingly
replacing them with group fantasies of martyrdom and with horror fairy-tales
as spread by the media, which latter accounts are circulated with particular
vigor in the Jewish communities due to their identity-building effect.
Such phenomena have already been described in relevant medical literature
and are known as Holocaust Survivor Syndrome.[258]
3.3.2.4.2. Witnesses for the Defense
How different, in comparison, is the Courts’ treatment
of witnesses for the defense! The most devastating example is that of
G. Weise, for whose trial a great number of witnesses for the defense
appeared, i.e., were suggested to the Court. However, they were either
not summoned by the Court, or their testimony was construed as incriminatory
(contrary to its actual content) or simply declared irrelevant on the
grounds that only incriminating testimony could clear up the facts of
the crime. Anyone who knew nothing of the alleged crime had simply been
in the wrong place at the wrong time.[259]
In the end Weise was convicted on the basis of one witness for
the prosecution, while the more than ten defense witnesses were utterly
disregarded. Rieger reports that another Court scornfully dismissed
two defense witnesses with the comment that it was a mystery why these
witnesses would lie.[260]
Burg reports that as defense witness he was regularly threatened and
even physically assaulted.[261]
German defense witnesses who were not confined to
concentration camps and ghettos at the time in question are on principle
treated with distrust by the courts. If they cannot remember the atrocities
alleged by witnesses for the prosecution, or if they should even dispute
them (which is generally the case),[262]
they are declared unreliable and are therefore not sworn in.[263]
Prosecutor Grabitz expresses revulsion and loathing for such witnesses,
as for the accused who testify in a similar vein and whom she would
like nothing better than to slap resoundingly in the face.[264]
Rückerl even insinuates perjury,[265]
and in fact some witnesses have been prosecuted to this effect.[266]
Lichtenstein reports a case where such "ignorant" witnesses were
charged en masse with lying and perjury and where threats of
arrest, and actual arrests, were repeatedly made.[267]
He quotes the judge’s response to one witness who avowed that he was
telling the plain and simple truth:
"You will be punished for this truth, I promise
you."[268]
In the Auschwitz Trial, witness Bernhard Walter,
whose testimony was not to the prosecution’s liking, was placed under
arrest until he had revised his statements.[269]
It is clear that such actions by the Court cannot but have intimidated
witnesses. But Lichtenstein merely fumes that despite all this some
witnesses were still so insolent as to continue to deny everything.[270]
German defense witnesses for the ‘criminal side’ who were willing to
testify for Adolf Eichmann in the Jerusalem trial were always threatened
with arrest by the prosecution, so that they stayed away from the proceedings.[271]
The dilemma of the German witnesses who had been
‘outside the camps or ghetto fences’ is demonstrated by H. Galinski,
who demands that all members of the concentration camp guard staffs
should be summarily punished for having been members of a terrorist
organization.[272]
Rückerl explains that the only reason why this demand cannot be met
is that at the time of the Third Reich the legal concept of a terrorist
organization did not yet exist, and today’s laws cannot be applied retroactively.[273]
Nevertheless he and many others conclude that anyone from the
Third Reich who had any contact whatsoever with the alleged events always
has one foot in prison,[274]
since the witnesses who are frequently motivated by hatred often regard
any such person as a criminal merely because of the position he held
at the time.[275]
Langbein devotes an entire chapter to the opinion, expressed by many
inmates, that all SS-men were devils incarnate,[276]
and he even admits that each and every Holocaust survivor is a perpetual
accuser of all Germans.[277]
It is thus easy to understand that only a very few defense witnesses
from the ranks of the SS, SD, Wehrmacht and Police have the stomach
for giving unreserved, candid testimony, since any witness for the prosecution
can fashion a noose out of it for them with their considerable talent
for coming up with all sorts of incriminations. The show trial character
of these anti-German and anti-Germany trials is pregnantly obvious to
thoughtful onlookers.
And if defense witnesses should get carried away
and presume to claim that they know nothing of gas chambers, and perhaps
even dare to dispute their existence, then the least that will happen
to them is that they are declared unreliable. Even the judge himself
may become abusive.[278]
But how the judges change their tune in those exceptional cases where
a former SS-man ‘confesses’:
"A valuable witness, one of the few who confirm
at least some of what everyone knows anyhow."[279]
Indeed, the author has hit the nail on the head!
Since everything is "judicially noticed" and considered self-evident
anyhow, it would be much easier to dispense with all the laborious proceedings
and simply hand down the verdict as soon as the witnesses for the prosecution
have had their say as in typical show trials.
The courts frequently conclude from these circumstances
that witnesses for the defense cannot contribute anything of value to
an investigation anyhow, and thus disregard their testimony or even
dispense with summoning them in the first place.[280]
While the situation of witnesses from the SS and
similar backgrounds is critical, that of the accused can only be described
as hopeless. They are the target of the unbridled hatred and malice
of the witnesses for the prosecution as well as of the media.[281]
It borders on the miraculous that in light of the conditions pointed
out here, by far the majority of the accused do in fact dispute
any participation in the alleged crimes. On the other hand, they do
not as a rule dispute the crimes per se; in view of the "self-evidence"
of these matters, any such attempt would only serve to diminish their
credibility in the eyes of the Court anyway. The accused frequently
express dismay and disgust at the crimes alleged. Jäger[282]
comments that these exclamations might be prompted by tactical considerations,
and by a change of heart brought about by later influences from outside,
and can thus hardly be regarded as evidence for an awareness of guilt
at the time in question - and we would like to add here that for the
same reasons they can also not be taken as evidence for the crime itself,
particularly since the often ambiguous statements of the alleged perpetrators,
as recorded in contemporaneous diaries, letters, speeches etc.,[283]
almost never suggest any awareness of guilt.
Frequently, however, the accused do not speak out
against the allegations made against them, or cannot remember. They
merely attempt to dispute any participation in the crime, and to shift
the blame onto third parties - mostly unknown, dead or missing comrades.[284]
Statements made by the accused in their own defense are interpreted
by the Court and the prosecution as lies intended to serve as cover,[285]
which is often the case since many defendants will try any and all possible
and impossible tricks in order to distance themselves from the place
and time of the alleged crime, which of course they do not always succeed
in doing. But these tactics, often doomed to failure, are easy to understand,
since the accused are given next to no chance to disprove the crime
itself. Thrust into the helpless defensive in this way, the accused
fall silent at many of the charges brought against them. A statement
of the Presiding Judge at the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt is significant:
"We would have come a good bit closer to the
truth if you had not persisted in hiding behind such a wall of silence."[286]
But which truth did the judge want to hear? Some
of the accused did not admit even a certain measure of guilt until after
they had suffered dramatic heart attacks, nervous breakdowns and hysterics.[287]
Outrage at the boundless lies of the witnesses is a constant with all
the defendants.[288]
Even after they have been convicted, and sentenced
to many years or even a lifetime in prison, most of them continue to
"obstinately" deny their guilt, which is absolutely unusual otherwise
for criminals of this kind. Remorse, repentance and an awareness of
guilt seem to be alien to them.[289]
Even in those few cases where guilt is admitted, a strange dichotomy
of perception occurs, where the alleged criminals are not truly penitent
and ready to atone from the heart, but continue to seek to place part
of the blame elsewhere, to invent justifications for the acts in question,
and to complain of injustices done to them. Sereny[290]
and Draber[291]
speak of the existence of two different levels of conscience and consciousness
and even of self-alienation and disturbances of consciousness.
A particularly devastating example is that of Oswald
Kaduk, one of the accused in the Auschwitz Trial, a very simple soul.
He was badgered so dreadfully that he suffered a nervous breakdown,[292]
attempted during his trial to refute even testimony in his favor,[293]
and ultimately said with resignation,
"Well, I’m a murderer, no one will believe
me anyway."[294]
Anyone who would like to recreate for himself Kaduk’s
complete mental confusion is referred to Demant’s interviews with him
and two other convicts of the Auschwitz Trial.[288]
Anyone who reads them attentively will all but trip over this scandalous
travesty of justice.
Considering these circumstances it is utter mockery
for Langbein to claim:
"There is nothing to keep them [the accused]
from dismissing or disproving exaggerated allegations."[295]
The last straw is provided by Oppitz, who criticizes
that after their release from prison some of those who had been convicted
of NS crimes are monitored with an eye to their political activity -
an unlawful and no doubt unparalleled act of police-state surveillance.[296]
Clearly our state desires to ensure that these people do not become
active as Revisionists. The same is true for prisoners who were released
on parole: They do not dare to get in contact with independent researchers
and do not want to talk about the events half a century ago since they
are threatened to be imprisoned immediately if they show some kind of
revisionist behavior. Thus for example Kurt Franz, former camp commander
of Treblinka concentration camp, who was released on parole in 1994,
refuses to speak about the past since he fears to get imprisoned again.[297]
He should not have any reason to do so if everything German Courts have
stated in their verdicts about Treblinka is correct.[298]
In view of the glaring discrepancy between the gruesomeness
of the alleged crimes and the good and decent harmlessness of the accused,
Helge Grabitz[299]
seconds Hannah Arendt[182]
in her observations on the commonplace face of evil. It even occurs
to her that the reason for the stubborn denials of the accused, and
for the contrast between the crimes and the alleged criminals, just
might be that the crimes in fact never actually took place - but she
immediately rejects this "seductive" idea as cynically flying
in the face of the evidence.[300]
The circumstances and conditions of the NSG trials
regarding the drawing-up of historical summaries of the alleged National
Socialist atrocities, pointed out in Section 3.3.2.2., already suggest
that these proceedings exhibit strongly their show-trial nature. Admissions
to the effect that the NSG trials are of importance first and foremost
to the cause of public education, i.e., opinion-leading are numerous.
For example, the public prosecutor at the Auschwitz Trial, Fritz Bauer,
admitted this truth,[301]
as did B. Naumann, the FAZ correspondent at this trial. The latter
wrote that the Auschwitz Trial was of "ethical, socially educational
significance."[302]
And H. Langbein, the éminence grise behind the trial scene, commented:
"The special element in these criminal trials
is their political impact."[303]
A. Rückerl wrote that the ‘clearing-up’ of National
Socialist crimes was
"of an overall public and historical relevance
that went far beyond the criminal prosecution per se",
and:
"The combined results of historical research
and criminal investigation lend themselves to impressing upon the
man on the street such matters as he ought to bear well in mind,
in his own interest - regardless of how unpleasant this may be for
him."[304]
With thematic consistency, Scheffler suggests that
the NSG trials ought to be a permanent focus of public life since they
deal with an issue of our society’s very existence,[305]
and according to Steinbach the NSG trials provide an important contribution
to the shaping of German identity.[306]
The logical consequence of all this is that, for
educational reasons, entire school classes and armed forces units are
regularly taken to observe such trials,[307]
which are at times also attended by high dignitaries from Jewish organizations
and Israel.[308]
The unabashed Jewish admission that the trials against Eichmann and
Demjanjuk in Israel, where both cases were the only really interesting
matter for all of Israel’s media for many weeks, had been of the nature
of show-trials, seems more honest than these German proceedings.[309]
Kröger points out the discrepancy
between the will of the majority of the German people in the mid-1960s,
which was to have an end to the NSG trials,[310]
and the major print media’s almost unanimous support of their perpetuation,[311]
which ensured that the reading public was steered in this "pedagogically
desired" direction.[312]
He also points out that the criticism directed at the courts by these
print media is proportionally more severe, the more lenient the verdicts
turn out - in other words, greater severity is demanded.[313]
Bonhoeffer thus notes correctly that the German press reports in great
detail particularly about the spectacular mass trials, even though there
was next to no public demand for such information until the 1970s.[314]
Lichtenstein[315]
and Steinbach[316]
note that a growing trend towards the rejection of the NSG trials in
the late 1970s and early 1980s was suddenly followed by a drastic change
in public opinion, induced - according to Steinbach - not only by the
pedagogically trained younger generation but primarily by the television
miniseries Holocaust.[317]
The mission entrusted to the media - public education and opinion-steering
- has been stressed by various sources.[318]
The newspaper Neues Österreich shed new light on the quality
of this type of media reporting when it commented on witness testimony
in an NSG trial in the following way, which unfortunately is typical
for our media:
"Whatever the accused cannot disprove did
obviously take place, as incredible as it may sound."[319]
In other words, the public consents to the practice
that in NSG trials it is not the guilt of the accused that must be proven,
but rather that the accused must prove his innocence of any and all
conceivable accusations, in the tradition of the Inquisition of medieval
times.
Abroad, the most remarkable reaction to the NSG trials
was no doubt the international appeal of 1978, not to allow the National
Socialist crimes to lapse under the statute of limitations;[320]
this appeal, which came after the Federal German statute of limitations
for murder had already been extended twice,[321]
was made for the sole purpose that the prosecution of alleged National
Socialist crimes might continue ‘til the end of time. In this context,
Lichtenstein notes that during the 1979 debate about this statute, Simon
Wiesenthal had had postcards of protest printed in many different languages
and distributed with the request to mail these to the Federal German
government.[322]
Steinbach is quite right when he describes the German Bundestag
debates on this statute[323]
as some of the most remarkable moments of German parliamentarianism.[324]
Thus, even in 1997, more than 50 years after the
end of the war and more than half a century since commission of the
supposed crimes, NSG trials continue to be decided solely on the basis
of witness testimony. Especially in the new post-reunification German
states, people are being prosecuted who have practically already been
convicted but who to date were not within reach of the authorities.
Langbein predicted this development as early as 1965:
"It is therefore to be expected that, once
extensive researches are conducted, many SS-men will yet be found
in the German Democratic Republic who, while already proven guilty
[sic!!!], could not be arrested in the Federal Republic of
Germany or in Austria."[325]
This perpetual witch hunt is made possible by revisions
of laws which act retroactively to exacerbate the trial situation of
any accused - in other words, according to Henkys, the process is based
on an ex post facto (retroactive) law that violates human rights.[326]
It is also significant that the supposed National
Socialist criminals are not allowed to rest in peace even after their
deaths. Ever since the war the press has routinely spread rumors claiming
that Hitler is still alive, or that his body has finally been found
and autopsied; these rumors supplement the many reports and accounts
surrounding the fates and final resting places of supposed National
Socialist murderers.[327]
Even though experts agree that witness testimony
loses almost all of its evidential value in the course of only a few
years, persons are continuing to be convicted even decades after the
supposed fact, on the basis of witness testimony that is clearly unreliable
in every respect. Exonerating evidence may be suppressed,[328]
and the media, whose role properly ought to be that of monitor, not
only join in this game, but even demand that it be stepped up.
In other words, in trials dealing with certain types
of crimes the crime itself is regarded as unshakeable fact, and this
usually goes for the perpetrators as well, since every German employed
in a concentration camp may be considered a criminal or an accomplice.
Some witnesses even said this quite frankly, and demanded that punishment
should be meted out for the very fact that someone had worked in a concentration
camp. Anyone involved in a trial under these conditions - regardless
whether he was a witness or a defendant - could not possibly dispute
the crime as such, since doing so would have meant a more severe sentence
for a defendant or, for a witness, criminal charges for incitement,
slander or the like, or at the very least enormous social reprisals
ensuring professional ruin or worse.
Under such anti-law circumstances, the most that
any defendant could do was to try to minimize his role in the ‘crime’
and to deflect at least some of the attack by incriminating others.
The incrimination of third parties is a sure way to make friends of
the prosecution and the Court, which latter is always willing to make
concessions in return for confessions and cooperation in the discovery
of further putative criminals - a court technique that will induce false
confessions if the crime per se is not open to debate.
In many countries in Europe even neutral researchers
are not in a position today to approach Holocaust studies with the hypothesis
that certain events did not take place. They too are condemned without
any examination of their arguments, on the grounds of self-evidence
of the opposite of their theses, and with that they are deprived of
their social existence. In 1992 the Provincial High Court and Court
of Appeal in Düsseldorf, seconding a decision of the Federal Constitutional
Court, did decide that self-evidence may be reversed if completely new
evidence, or such that is superior to past evidence, is presented, requiring
a retrial of the matter at hand.[329]
But even new and extensive scientific material evidence,
advanced in order to reverse the decree of self-evidence, has been refused
by the courts. In this context the Federal German Supreme Court decided
in 1993 that even the refusal of motions to examine self-evidence, as
one defense counsel proposed to do in an appeal document,[330]
is proper legal procedure due to the self-evidence of the Holocaust.[139]
The Holocaust, therefore, is a judicially safeguarded view of history
which this decision renders completely untouchable. This represents
an inquisition in its purest and highest degree, and a gross violation
of the human rights to academic freedom and the freedom of expression
and opinion.
Unfortunately, until recently there were no attorneys
who recognized this vicious circle that is so catastrophic for a state
supposedly governed by justice, and no attorneys who demanded that the
crime, the murder weapon and the victims, i.e., the evidence for these,
as well as eyewitness testimony and documents, be examined with modern
forensic methods before the question can be raised of who the murderer/s
might have been. Such attorneys have stepped onto the scene only recently,
but aside from slander and abuse, threats of prosecution and the aforementioned
decision of the Federal Supreme Court - i.e., an exacerbation of the
judicial situation - they too have been unable to achieve any changes.
In 1966 R. M. W. Kempner, then the deputy chief prosecutor
at the IMT, claimed that with respect to legal procedure the Nuremberg
Trial did not differ from the trials held before a German jury court
or another kind of court.[331]
In many respects we agree with him.
There used to be a crime that was considered to be
worse than any other; it was known as crimen atrox (atrocious
crime). According to witness testimony this included the most
horrific abuses and ways of murdering people and animals that the human
mind can conceive of, and even included harm to and destruction of the
environment. Not only was such a crime prosecuted directly by the public
prosecutor as soon as it became known - the courts were even instructed
not to observe the normal rules of procedure, since these were satanic
crimes that could not be dealt with in the ordinary way. Even death
could not keep the victims from being persecuted: their bodies were
simply exhumed without much ado.
Whereas in the early days of the prosecution of such
crimes the accused and sometimes even reluctant witnesses were subjected
to brutish torture, such methods fell quite out of favor later on. Psychologically
cunning methods of interrogation and protracted, trying imprisonment
while awaiting trial replaced physical torture. And finally, the stories
about these crimes, spread by all available media and already recorded
in detail in official books and registers, ensured that everyone knew
what the proceedings were all about. As a result witness statements
regarding individual crimes often resembled each other so closely that
outside observers could not but believe that the testimony of so many
different persons who had nothing else in common simply had to
be true somehow.
Many witnesses testified anonymously. Witnesses for
the prosecution, who had to swear a holy oath to the Court regarding
the veracity of their testimony, were usually highly rewarded for their
services. As a rule their statements were never scrutinized, and the
witnesses themselves were never cross-examined by the defense. Even
if they were shown to have committed perjury, generally nothing happened
to them. Even patently absurd and inconsistent, physically impossible
claims were deemed credible.
Witnesses or defendants who denied the crime itself
or their involvement in it were persecuted and punished all more severely
for their stubborn lies, since obviously they were not willing to admit
their satanic deeds, to repent and to renounce their satanic practises.
In time, every accused realized that admitting guilt was his only hope
for leniency from the Court, so that false confessions were made even
in cases where torture was no longer practised. The incrimination of
third parties was a device commonly used in attempts to cooperate with
the Court in order to obtain a more lenient sentence or even freedom.
Very rarely did the courts accept material evidence
relating to the alleged crimes, and even in cases where it could be
proven that the persons said to have been murdered were still alive,
or had died of natural causes many years earlier, the courts were frequently
unmoved. Later, even a clause providing for the self-evidence of the
crime was introduced, which served to stonewall any counter-evidence
from the start.
The defense attorney was not permitted to question
the crimes themselves and had to accept the views of his time as his
own if he did not wish to fall out of favor with the Court and the public.
This could even result in his being accused of sympathizing with his
client’s deeds and belonging to the latter’s criminal clique, which
earned him a trial of his own. As well, the defendants were rarely granted
access to the case files and could not speak with their clients in private.
This is an account of the conditions prevailing in
the witch trials of medieval times, as researched and set out by Soldan
in his classic Geschichte der Hexenprozesse (History of the Witch
Trials).[332]
The similarities to the modern cases described herein
are surely coincidental?
Under the conditions of the NSG trials set out in
the preceding, the eyewitness testimony and confessions made in these
trials can be accorded next to no evidential value. From a scientific
point of view, and in this case in particular, eyewitness testimony
can never suffice to document historical events, much less to prove
them in a court of law.
Confessions and statements have been extorted from
supposed perpetrators and participants by means of torture, threats
of criminal charges, more severe punishment and prison terms, detriments
to personal welfare and professional advancement, as well as by the
complete hopelessness and helplessness imposed by the show trials as
described. Similar means were also employed to manipulate witnesses
for the prosecution, who in turn engaged in manipulation of their own.
In these cases it was a matter of threats of violence as well as deliberate
manipulation by the media, governmental, judicial and private institutions.
What is more, the absolute free rein that was granted these witnesses,
and the tendency to portray them belatedly as heroes of anti-Fascist
resistance and to reinforce their thirst for vengeance, have resulted
in this testimony being taken ad absurdum in its inconsistency
and exaggeration. Some of the most glaring examples of such statements
are listed at the end of this article.
The decisive prerequisite for these conditions is
the worldwide climate of persecution and defamation to which anyone
and everyone is subjected who may possibly have been in any way connected
with alleged National Socialist crimes or who is suspected of doubting
the truth of these. The allegedly unprecedented nature of these crimes
induces an unparalleled moral blindness in ‘Nazi-hunters’ and in the
guardians of the fundamental anti-Fascist consensus that prevails in
politics, in the media and even among the broad masses, which suspends
the rules of common sense and justice guided by the rule of law, so
that the corresponding court cases call the medieval witch trials vividly
to mind.
One proof of this attitude held by the majority of
our fellow men and women is the fact that to date books such as the
present volume have not been favored with rational arguments, but rather
are countered with hysterical cries for the public prosecutor, even
if those shrieking the loudest have never read the book in anything
approaching its entirety or have not bothered to confirm the correctness
of its contents by checking the source material. There simply are things
nowadays that cannot be true because they are not allowed
to be true.
In view of all the facts one is probably correct
in the assumption that where the Holocaust is concerned our society
is in a state of permanent mass suggestion fostered by the Holocaust
Survivor Syndrome,[258]
by the downright hysterical prosecution mania of all sorts of social
groups right up to the upper echelons of especially, but not exclusively,
the German Federal justice system,[333]
directed at anyone holding a dissenting opinion, and of course by the
never-ending traumatizing of coping and mourning rituals conducted in
schools, politics and the media. Bender comments:
"Mass suggestion, frequently bordering on
the hysterical, has an even stronger formative influence than the
good example of so-called opinion leaders. Enhancing factors include:
solemn rituals,[334]
the incessant repetition of the same catch phrases,[335]
emotionally stimulating signals (music, flags etc.).[336]
[…] What is more, mass suggestion lends itself more than
almost any other phenomenon to the induction of downright extreme
distortions of perception."[337]
Taking into consideration all the circumstances involved
in how testimony regarding the Holocaust comes about, suspicions may
arise that the accusations made are not only not provable, but that
in fact the opposite of the claims advanced by the established Holocaust
story may be true. This is the only thing that could explain why the
Establishment saw and continues to see itself forced to resort to such
unjust, even unlawful measures.
Meanwhile even contemporary historiography has concluded,
painfully enough, that the eyewitness testimony is not reliable.[338]
But contemporary historians have fashioned themselves a crutch: Nolte,
for example, explains that while statements on the Holocaust might be
exaggerated, it would be impossible to invent the like outright.[339]
He is thus in agreement with many expert psychiatrists and psychologists
who, according to Oppitz,[224]
have affirmed repeatedly that there can really be no doubt about the
factuality of the core of all the Holocaust testimony, which after all
does always make the same or at least similar claims.
But who decides, and on the basis of what rules,
where the rotten shell of eyewitness testimony ends and where its sound
core begins?
How do these experts explain away the fact that all
the horror stories circulated by the Allies in the First World War were
pure invention: nuns’ breasts cut off, civilians nailed to barn doors,
children’s hands chopped off, fallen soldiers processed into soap,[340]
mass gassing of Serbs in gas chambers, etc.?[341]
How do they explain away that the following horror
scenarios of the Second World War were nothing more than atrocity lies
invented by the Allies and their confederates: conveyor-belt executions,
conveyor-belt electrocutions, cremations in blast furnaces, murders
by means of exposure to vacuum and steam,[342]
puddles of pooling fat at open-air cremations, the smoke-filled black
air resulting therefrom, mass graves squirting geysers of blood, soap
from human fat, lampshades from human skin, shrunken heads from the
bodies of inmates, etc.?[343]
Furthermore, it is a known fact today that the horror
scenarios of mass gassings - allegedly carried out with Zyklon B or
Diesel exhaust gas - in the concentration camps of the German Reich
proper (e.g., Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen) were
nothing other than utter lies, invented or at least supported by Germany’s
democratic western friends. What reasons can our historians come up
with that would justify declaring as ‘uninventable’ sterling truth the
identical or similar tales of mass gassings with Zyklon B or Diesel
exhaust in the former Communist, dictatorial Eastern Bloc, which was
certainly not very kindly disposed towards Germany?
And how, finally, do these experts explain away the
inconsistencies which the present volume points out between the material
evidence and eyewitness testimony in fundamental core aspects of the
Holocaust?
It may be true that most witness statements contain
a core of truth, but this core cannot be defined by assigning it in
true democratic fashion to the weighted mean of overall testimony. The
impossible remains impossible even if the vast majority of witnesses
alleges the contrary.
- child surviving six gassings in a gas chamber that never existed;[345]
- woman survived three gassings because Nazis kept running out of gas;[346]
- fairy tale of a bear and an eagle in a cage, eating one Jew per day;[347]
- mass graves expelling geysers of blood;[348]
- erupting and exploding mass graves;[349]
- soap production from human fat with imprint "RIF " - ‘Reine Juden Seife’ (pure Jewish soap), solemn burial of soap;[350]
- the SS made sausage in the crematoria out of human flesh (‘RIW’- ‘Reine Juden Wurst’?);[351]
- lampshades, book covers, driving gloves for SS officers, saddles, riding breeches, house slippers, and ladies handbags of human skin;[352]
- pornographic pictures on canvasses made of human skin;[353]
- mummified human thumbs were used as light switches in the house of Ilse Koch, wife of KL commander Koch (Buchenwald);[354]
- production of shrunken heads from bodies of inmates;[355]
- acid or boiling-water baths to produce human skeletons;[356]
- muscles cut from the legs of executed inmates contracted so strongly that they made the buckets jump about;[357]
- an SS-father potshooting babies thrown into the air while 9-year old SS-daughter applauds and shrieks: "Papa, do it again! do it again, Papa!"[358]
- jewish children used by Hitler-Youth for target practice;[359]
- wagons disappearing on an incline into the underground crematoria in Auschwitz (such facilities never existed);[360]
- forcing prisoners to lick stairs clean, and collect garbage with their lips;[361]
- injections into the eyes of inmates to change their eye color;[362]
- artificial fertilization of women at Auschwitz;[363]
- torturing people in specially mass-produced "torture boxes" made by Krupp;[364]
- torturing people by shooting at them with wooden bullets to make them talk;[365]
- smacking people with special spanking machines;[366]
- killing by drinking a glass of liquid hydrocyanic acid (which, scientifically considered, evaporates quickly and would endanger those who pouring it into said glass);[367]
- killing people with poisoned soft drinks;[368]
- underground mass extermination in enormous rooms, by means of high voltage electricity;[369]
- blast 20,000 Jews into the twilight zone with atomic bombs;[370]
- killing in vacuum chamber, hot steam or chlorine gas;[371]
- mass murder in hot steam chamber;[372]
- mass murder by tree cutting: forcing people to climb trees, then cutting the trees down;[373]
- killing a boy by forcing him to eat sand;[374]
- gassing Soviet POWs in a quarry;[375]
- gas chambers on wheels in Treblinka, which dumped their victims directly into burning pits; delayed-action poison gas that allowed the victims to leave the gas chambers and walk to the mass graves by themselves;[376]
- rapid-construction portable gas chamber sheds;[377]
- beating people to death, then carrying out autopsies to see why they died;[378]
- introduction of Zyklon gas into the gas chambers of Auschwitz through shower heads or from steel bottles;[379]
- electrical conveyor-belt executions;[380]
- bashing people’s brains in with a pedal-driven brain-bashing machine while listening to the radio;[381]
- cremation of bodies in blast furnaces;[382]
- cremation of human bodies using no fuel at all;[383]
- skimming off boiling human fat from open-air cremation fires;[384]
- mass graves containing hundreds of thousands of bodies, removed without a trace within a few weeks; a true miracle of improvisation on the part of the Germans;[385]
- killing 840,000 Russian POWs at Sachsenhausen, and burning the bodies in 4 portable ovens;[386]
- removal of corpses by means of blasting, i.e., blowing them up;[387]
- SS bicycle races in the gas chamber of Birkenau;[388]
- out of pity for complete strangers - a Jewish mother and her child - an SS-man leaps into the gas chamber voluntarily at the last second in order to die with them;[389]
- blue haze after gassing with hydrocyanic acid (which is colorless);[390]
- singing of national anthems and the Communist International by the victims in the gas chamber; evidence of atrocity propaganda of Communist origin;[391]
- a twelve-year old boy giving an impressive and heroic speech in front of the other camp children before being ‘gassed’;[392]
- filling the mouths of victims with cement to prevent them from singing patriotic or communist songs.[393]
| [1] | W. B. Lindsey, The Journal of Historical Review (JHR) 4(3) (1983) pp. 261-303, here p. 265 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/4/3/Lindsey261-303.html). |
| [2] | The most prominent advocate of this thesis is Professor Nolte, in his book Streitpunkte, Propyläen, Berlin 1993, pp. 290, 293, 297. |
| [3] | For example, the verdict of the Schwurgericht [jury court] of Frankfurt am Main stated that there is no evidence as to the crime, its victims, the murder weapon, nor even the perpetrators themselves; Ref. 50/4 Ks 2/63; cf. I. Sagel-Grande, H. H. Fuchs, C. F. Rüter (eds.), Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, v. XXI, University Press, Amsterdam 1979, p. 434. |
| [4] | Cf. E. Schneider, Beweis und Beweiswürdigung, 4th ed., F. Vahlen, Munich 1987, pp. 188 and 304; additional forms of evidence are "Augenscheinnahme" [visual assessment of evidence by the Court], and "Parteieinvernahme" [the questioning of disputing parties, i.e., prosecution and defense], a particularly unreliable form of testimony. |
| [5] | E.g., cf. §373, German Code of Civil Procedure. |
| [6] | R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, Tatsachenfeststellung vor Gericht, 2 vols., Beck, Munich 1981, vol 1, p. 173. |
| [7] | The author thanks E. Gauss for reference to his expositions in Vorlesungen über Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1993, pp. 241ff. (online: vho.org/D/vuez/v4.html). Cf. also the detailed accounts of E. Schneider, op. cit. (note 4), p. 200-229, and R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), v. 1 part 1. |
| [8] | Cf. esp. R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, ibid., pp. 45ff. |
| [9] | In this case in particular, cf. J. Baumann, in R. Henkys, Die NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Kreuz, Stuttgart 1964, pp. 280f.; also R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), passim. |
| [10] | E. Schneider, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 310ff. |
| [11] | For ex., cf. S. Klippel, Monatsschrift für deutsches Recht, 34 (1980) pp. 112ff.; E. Schneider, op. cit. (note 4), p. 188. |
| [12] | E.g., the case of two defendants falsely convicted of murder; reported on Spiegel-TV, RTL-Plus, July 15, 1990, 9:45 pm. |
| [13] | R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), p. 76. |
| [14] | Exceptions: cf. A. Neumaier, this vol., about the Treblinka camp site by the State Court at Siedlice; J. C. Ball, this vol., about Auschwitz-Birkenau. Both studies have been kept from the public to date; recently, excavations were made in Belzec, with results confirming revisionist theses, cf. S. Crowell, "Comments on the Recent Excavations at Belzec" (online: codoh.com/newrevoices/ncrowell/nrvscbelzecdig.html); Germ.: "Ausgrabungen in Belzec", Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung (VffG) 2(3)(1998), S. 222 (online: vho.org/VffG/1998/3/Forschung3.html#Crowell). For some strange reasons, the results of this excavation have not yet been published (Spring 2000). |
| [15] | R. Rückerl, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), Vergangenheitsbewältigung durch Strafverfahren?, Olzog, Munich 1984, p. 77. |
| [16] | Cf. the chapter by J. P. Ney in the original German issue of this book: "Das Wannsee-Protokoll - Anatomie einer Fälschung", in E. Gauss (ed.), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994, pp. 169-191. Ney refused to see his contribution included in this volume. |
| [17] | Aside from the studies of other authors in the present volume, cf. also, e.g., P. Rassinier, Deutsche Hochschullehrer Zeitung 2 (1962) pp. 18-23; P. Rassinier, Das Drama der Juden Europas, Pfeiffer, Hannover 1965; W. D. Rothe, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, Bierbaum, Frankfurt/Main 1974, v. 1; W. Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, Grabert, Tübingen 1979 (online: vho.org/D/dam); W. Stäglich, Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart (DGG) 29(1) (1981) pp. 9-13 (online: vho.org/D/DGG/Staeglich29_1.html); W. Stäglich, U. Walendy, Historische Tatsache Nr. 5 (HT 5), Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1979; U. Walendy, HT 9 (1981), HT 12 (1982), HT 31 (1987), HT 36 (1988), HT 44 (1990), HT 50 (1991); I. Weckert, HT 24 (1985); D. Felderer, JHR 1(1) (1980) pp. 69-80 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/1/1/Felderer69-80.html); D. Felderer, JHR 1(2) (1980) pp. 169-172 (online: …/2/Felderer169-172.html); B.R. Smith, JHR 7(2), pp. 244-253; C. Mattogno, Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste 5 (1988) pp. 119-165; C. Mattogno, JHR 10(1) (1990) pp. 5-47 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/10/1/Mattogno5-24.html and …/Mattogno25-47.html); C. Mattogno, "Medico ad Auchwitz": Anatomia di un falso, Edizioni La Sfinge, Parma 1988; C. Mattogno, Il rapporto Gerstein. Anatomia di un falso, Sentinella d’Italia, Monfalcone 1985; R. Faurisson, DGG 35(2) (1987) pp. 11-14; R. Faurisson, Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste 4 (1988) pp. 135-149, 163-167; E. Aynat, Los ‘Protocoles de Auschwitz’: Une fuente historica?, García Hispán, Alicante 1990; R. Faurisson, Nouvelle Vision (NV) 28 (1993) pp. 7-12; P. Marais, En lisant de près les écrivains chantres de la Shoah - Primo Levi, Georges Wellers, Jean-Claude Pressac, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1991; R. Kammerer, A. Solms, Das Rudolf Gutachten, Cromwell Press, London 1993 (online: vho.org/D/rga); E. Gauss, op. cit. (note 7); O. Humm, VffG 1(2), pp. 75-78 (online: vho.org/VffG/1997/2/Humm2.html); H. Pedersen, ibid., pp. 79-83 (online: …/2/Pedersen2.html); G. Rudolf, ibid., 1(3) (1997), pp.139-190 (online: …/3/RudMue3.html); G. Baum, ibid., pp. 195-199 (online: …/3/Baum3.html), J.-M. Boisdefeu, E. Aynat, "Victor Martin y el ‘rapport’ Martin. Estudio de su valor como fuente histórica", in Boisdefeu, Aynat, Estudios sobre Auschwitz, publ. by E. Aynat, Valencia 1997; from the opposite side, cf. the responses (few and far between) by, for ex., J. S. Conway, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ) 27 (1979) pp. 260-284, as well as the devastating critique by J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989, pp. 124ff., 161f., 174, 177, 181, 229, 239, 379ff., 459-502. |
| [18] | J. Graf, Auschwitz. Tätergeständnisse und Augenzeugen des Holocaust, Verlag Neue Visionen, Würenlos (CH) 1994 (online: vho.org/D/atuadh). |
| [19] | For two interesting exception cf. G. Rudolf, and G. Baum, both op. cit. (note 17). |
| [20] | NSG = Nationalsozialistische Gewaltverbrechen, i.e., violent National Socialist crimes; NSG trials = the trials prosecuting violent crimes allegedly committed by the National Socialist regime. |
| [21] | E.g., E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl et. al. (eds.), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas (Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1983), base their studies on documents and testimony from the archives of various Public Prosecutors’ Offices; it cannot be verified, however, whether these were ever accepted as evidence by the Courts in question. |
| [22] | E. Loftus, K. Ketcham, Witness for the Defense, St. Martin’s Press, New York 1991, p. 224; cf. review in J. Cobden, Journal of Historical Review (JHR), 11(2) (1991) pp. 238-249 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/11/2/Cobden238-249.html). The author thanks R. Faurisson for the latter reference. |
| [23] | Ibid., pp. 228f. |
| [24] | E. Loftus, "Creating False Memories", Scientific American, September 1997, pp. 50-55, with more references to more recent expert literature; German: "Falsche Erinnerungen", Spektrum der Wissenschaft Januar 1998, pp. 62-67. |
| [25] | A remarkable study about the Nuremberg Trials was presented by M. Weber, JHR 12(2) (1992) pp. 167-213 (online: ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html). |
| [26] | R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Quadrangle Books, Chicago 1961, p. 691; M. Lautern, Das letzte Wort über Nürnberg, Dürer, Buenos Aires 1950, p. 18; cf. the accounts of personal experience by J. Gheorge, Automatic Arrest, Druffel, Leoni 1956; J. Hiess, Glasenbach, Welsermühl, Wels 1956; L. Rendulic, Glasenbach - Nürnberg - Landsberg, Stocker, Graz 1953; M. Brech, W. Laska, H. von der Heide, JHR 10(2) (1990) pp. 161-185 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/10/2/Brech161-166.html and following). |
| [27] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, 2nd ed., Heyne, Munich 1979, p. 26; R. Tiemann, Der Malmedy-Prozeß, Munin, Osnabrück 1990, pp. 70, 93f. Since D. Irving published a more sophisticated book about Nuremberg, (D. Irving, Nuremberg. The Last Battle, Focal Point, London 1996) the reader should refer to this, even though it could not be included in detail in this study which was written prior to its publication. |
| [28] | J. Bacque, Other Losses, Stoddart, Toronto 1989. |
| [29] | Enacted on Aug. 16, 1945; A. von Knieriem, Nürnberg. Rechtliche und menschliche Probleme, Klett, Stuttgart 1953, p. 158. |
| [30] | F. Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance, Regnery, Chicago 1949, p. 172. |
| [31] | Op. cit., p. 171; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 24. |
| [32] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Recht und Wirtschaft, Munich 1952, p. 5; cf. also ibid., Zur Frage einer Revision der Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, pub. by author, Nuremberg 1949, see esp. pp. 14ff. |
| [33] | R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 71, 73; F. Oscar, Über Galgen wächst kein Gras, Erasmus-Verlag, Braunschweig 1950, pp. 77ff. |
| [34] | A. Rückerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht, C. F. Müller, Heidelberg 1984, p. 98. |
| [35] | Regarding G. Froeschmann cf. O. W. Koch, Dachau - Landsberg, Justizmord - oder Mord-Justiz?, Refo-Verlag, Witten 1974. |
| [36] | Regarding W. M. Everett cf. R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), esp. pp. 82, 103ff. This also contains the best account of the activities of the various investigative committees. |
| [37] | R. Tiemann, ibid., p. 144. |
| [38] | Ibid., esp. pp. 160ff., 175ff., 282ff.; R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), p. 65f. |
| [39] | R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), p. 181. |
| [40] | Congressional Record-Senate No. 134, July 26, 1949, pp. 10397ff., reprinted in its entirety in R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 269ff. |
| [41] | Aside from McCarthy, op. cit. (note 40), also cf. R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), esp. pp. 190ff.; F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 38ff. |
| [42] | J. Halow, JHR 9(4) (1989) pp. 453-483 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/9/4/Halow453-483.html); J. Halow, Siegerjustiz in Dachau, Druffel, Leoni 1993; for a typical example, cf. the case of Ilse Koch in A. L. Smith, Die "Hexe von Buchenwald", Böhlau, Cologne 1983; for Malmedy cf. also R. Merriam, JHR 2(2) (1981) pp. 165-176 (online: …/2/2/Merriam165-176.html). |
| [43] | R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 86, 220f. |
| [44] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 159, 169; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 41ff.; see also the chapter by I. Weckert, this volume. |
| [45] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 32f.; cf. Article 7, Ordinance No. 7 of the Military Government of the American Zone, in A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 558. |
| [46] | R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), p. 102. |
| [47] | Address by J. McCarthy, op. cit. (note 40); R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), p. 275. |
| [48] | M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 32, regarding E. von dem Bach-Zelewski and F. Gaus. The cases of W. Höttl and D. Wisliceny are similar - and the list could go on. |
| [49] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 29f., 43f. |
| [50] | R. Aschenauer, ibid., pp. 26ff.; F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), p. 197. |
| [51] | R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 91, 96f., 103. |
| [52] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 558. |
| [53] | Cf. R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 18ff.; O. W. Koch, op. cit. (note 35), p. 127. |
| [54] | R. Aschenauer, ibid., p. 24ff., 33f. |
| [55] | R. Aschenauer, ibid., p. 21. |
| [56] | Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, Das Siegertribunal, Nation Europa, Coburg 1976, pp. 69f. |
| [57] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 42f.; R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 27), p. 98ff., 103. |
| [58] | F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 195. |
| [59] | Later on the VVN was declared an unconstitutional Communist association. |
| [60] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 42f.; F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), p. 198; O. W. Koch, op. cit. (note 35), p. 53; Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, op. cit. (note 56), p. 67. |
| [61] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 21, 24ff.; F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 195, 198; O. W. Koch, op. cit. (note 35), pp. 48, 55; cf. note 48 (‘Crown witness’). |
| [62] | Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, op. cit. (note 56), p. 69. |
| [63] | M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 33, 51. |
| [64] | M. Lautern, ibid., pp. 42f., describes such a case; cf. also the fate of E. Puhl, Vice President of the Reichsbank, during the IMT: H. Springer, Das Schwert auf der Waage, Vowinckel, Heidelberg 1953, pp. 178f. |
| [65] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), p. 13; F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 67f. |
| [66] | For the best-documented example of a miscarriage of justice concerning a physician, cf. Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt (ed.), Der Fall Rose. Ein Nürnberger Urteil wird widerlegt, Mut-Verlag, Asendorf 1988. |
| [67] | F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), p. 194. |
| [68] | To date, the only example of a Dachau trial that has been reviewed in detail: cf. A. L. Smith, op. cit. (note 42), esp. pp. 110ff. |
| [69] | T. A. Schwartz, "Die Begnadigung deutscher Kriegsverbrecher", VfZ 38 (1990) pp. 375-414. |
| [70] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), pp. 72ff. |
| [71] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34); for a comprehensive discussion of the British trial of the suppliers of Zyklon B to Auschwitz, cf. W. B. Lindsey, op. cit. (note 1). |
| [72] | According to R. Faurisson, Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste 1 (1987) p. 149 (online: abbc.com/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1986-1990/RF8703xx1.html); Minden/Weser was the interrogation headquarters of the British military police. |
| [73] | R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, (note 32), p. 72, tells of the infamous Special Camp Bad Nenndorf, where preliminary hearings culminated in severe physical abuse. |
| [74] | R. Höß, in M. Broszat (ed.), Kommandant in Auschwitz, dtv, Munich 1983, pp. 149f.; cf. R. Faurisson, op. cit. (note 72), p. 137-152; in English: JHR 7(4) (1986) pp. 389-403; in German: DGG 35(1) (1987) pp. 12-17 (online: vho.org/D/DGG/Faurisson35_1.html); cf. also R. Faurisson, NV 33 (1994) pp. 111-117. |
| [75] | B. Clarke, as quoted in R. Butler, Legions of Death, Arrow Books Ltd., London 1986, pp. 236f. |
| [76] | R. Butler, ibid., pp. 238f. |
| [77] | O. Pohl, "Letzte Aufzeichnungen", in U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen Nr. 47, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1991, pp. 35ff.; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 43ff.; D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 80f.; Pohl considered himself legally innocent, since he had neither caused nor tolerated any atrocities: cf. O. Pohl, Credo. Mein Weg zu Gott, A. Girnth, Landshut 1950, p. 43; cf. also A. Moorehead’s account of the rough interrogation methods used by the British in Bergen-Belsen, published in the British monthly The European, March 1945; quoted from: F. J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, pub. by author, Vienna 1968, v. 3, pp. 83ff.; cf. Alan Moorehead,s essay "Belsen", in Cyril Connolly (ed.), The Golden Horizon, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1953, pp. 105f. |
| [78] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 99. |
| [79] | Aside from J. Bacque, op. cit. (note 28), see also the accounts of brutal torture of internees in Landesverband der ehemaligen Besatzungsinternierten Baden-Württemberg (ed.), Die Internierung im Deutschen Südwesten, pub. by ed., Karlsruhe 1960, esp. pp. 73ff.; cf. also A. L. Smith, VfZ 32 (1984) pp. 103-121, who bases his study exclusively on official accounts of Allied sources. Would it be equally appropriate to report about the conditions in German concentration camps exclusively on the basis of official contemporaneous accounts of German governmental and administrative sources? |
| [80] | F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 287ff. |
| [81] | C. Roediger, Völkerrechtliches Gutachten über die strafrechtliche Aburteilung deutscher Kriegsgefangener in der Sowjetunion, Heidelberg 1950. |
| [82] | R. Maurach, Die Kriegsverbrecherprozesse gegen deutsche Gefangene in der Sowjetunion, Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom Roten Kreuz in Deutschland (British Zone), Hamburg 1950, pp. 79ff. |
| [83] | Reproduced in part in A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 100. See also the chapter by I. Weckert, this volume. |
| [84] | A.E. Epifanow, H. Mayer, Die Tragödie der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Stalingrad von 1942 bis 1956 nach russischen Archivunterlagen, Biblio, Osnabrück 1996; cf. E. Peter, A. Epifanow, Stalins Kriegsgefangene, Stocker, Graz 1997. |
| [85] | J. Buszko, Auschwitz. Geschichte und Wirklichkeit des Vernichtungslagers, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1980, pp. 193ff.; R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), p. 191, believes that in 1947 the Polish took care to ensure that trials were conducted in accordance with the principles of rule-of-law. But since hardly any of these trials at that time in the sphere of influence of Stalin were conducted as such, one wonders on which information Henkys relies. |
| [86] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 211. |
| [87] | W. Eisert, Die Waldheimer Prozesse, Bechtle, Munich 1993; for an account of a more recent trial regarding Oradour and Lidice, cf. H. Lichtenstein, Im Namen des Volkes?, Bund, Cologne 1984, pp. 132ff. According to Lichtenstein, the defense acted as secondary prosecution in this trial. |
| [88] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 95ff. |
| [89] | Reprinted in its entirety in T. Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, Little, Boston 1992, pp. 645ff. For accounts of the IMT, cf. also H. Härtle, Freispruch für Deutschland, Schütz, Göttingen 1965; H. H. Saunders, Forum der Rache, Druffel, Leoni 1986; F. J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA 1983; W. Maser, Das Exempel, Blaue Aktuelle Reihe 9, Mut-Verlag, Asendorf 1986; W. E. Benton, G. Grimm (eds.), Nuremberg. German Views of the War Trials, Southern Methodist UP, Dallas 1955; C. Haensel, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, Moewig, Munich 1983; M. Bardèche, Nürnberg oder die Falschmünzer, Priester, Wiesbaden 1957; Reprint: Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Viöl 1992; A. R. Wesserle, JHR 2(2) (1981) pp. 155-164 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/2/2/Wesserle155-164.html); C. Porter, Not Guilty at Nuremberg: The German Defense Case, Historical Review Press, Brighton 1990 (online: codoh.com/trials/trintglt.html); Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust, ibid. 1988 (online: codoh.com/trials/trimirth.html). |
| [90] | E.g., L. Greil on the Malmedy Trial in Oberst der Waffen-SS Jochen Peiper und der Malmedy-Prozeß, Schild, Munich 1977, p. 90; for the view taken of the SS and Waffen-SS in the IMT, cf. G. Rauschenbach, Der Nürnberger Prozeß gegen die Organisationen, L. Röhrscheid, Bonn 1954; cf. also R. Hilberg, op. cit. (note 26), p. 692. |
| [91] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 127f. |
| [92] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 24ff.; R. Hilberg, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 684, 691; cf. C. Haidn, DGG 34(3) (1986) pp. 11-14. |
| [93] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 128f.; for a detailed description of the creation of the IMT ‘Lynch Law’ cf. D. Irving, Nuremberg. The Last Battle, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 1-119. |
| [94] | R. H. Jackson, third address of the Prosecution to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, July 26, 1946, in R. H. Jackson, Staat und Moral, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1946, p. 107. |
| [95] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), p. 39. |
| [96] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 130-200, esp. p. 195: "De facto the Prosecution acted as one of the top occupation authorities." |
| [97] | Also A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 91; J. Weber, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 18(48) (1968) pp. 3-31, here p. 11. |
| [98] | M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 20. |
| [99] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 149. |
| [100] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., pp. 158, 189ff.; D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 41f., 59, 61; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 47ff., describes the effect of a threat of extradition on Friedrich Wilhelm Gaus, formerly the Chief of the Legal Department of the Foreign Ministry, Ribbentrop’s right-hand man. In the face of this threat the frightened Gaus invented the most dreadful cock-and-bull stories in his attempts to incriminate Ribbentrop and thus to pull his own head out of the noose, which he in fact succeeded in doing. Cf. also F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), p. 172; H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), p. 96; cf. also the interesting statements of R. von Weizsäcker, former president of Germany, in his biography Vier Zeiten. Erinnerungen, Siedler, Berlin 1997, p. 125f., who co-defended his father Ernst von Weizsäcker at the IMT. |
| [101] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 189; H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), p. 35. |
| [102] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. XXIV; F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 171, 183. |
| [103] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., pp. 191, 198; R. Aschenauer, Landsberg. Ein dokumentarischer Bericht von deutscher Sicht, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Recht und Wissenschaft, Munich 1951, p. 34; D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 63, 78, 80; F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 85f., 88f; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 42f., 46. |
| [104] | Aside from note 44 (‘Affidavit’), cf. also the account of a distorted, not to say a downright forged affidavit regarding B. von Richthofen, in Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, op. cit. (note 56), p. 89-92; also L. Rendulic, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 59ff. |
| [105] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 193f. |
| [106] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. 179ff. |
| [107] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., pp. 168f., 176f.; D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), p. 82. |
| [108] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., pp. 142, 148; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 18. |
| [109] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., pp. 149, 175f.; R. Aschenauer, op. cit. (note 103), pp. 34f.; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 9ff.; H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 35, 243. |
| [110] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), pp. 149f., 189, 199f.; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 23, 27f.; Lautern is fair and also describes the advantages that the defense counsels enjoyed: free travel within the American Zone, army mail service privileges, the support of Occupation authorities in proceedings instituted against them by the Law Societies, some of which had an active dislike of attorneys who defended ‘Nazis’; cf. pp. 22f. |
| [111] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 196. |
| [112] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. XXIV. |
| [113] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. 191; R. Aschenauer, op. cit. (note 103), pp. 32f.; F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 89ff. |
| [114] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. 178. |
| [115] | A. von Knieriem, ibid., p. 185. |
| [116] | F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 32ff. |
| [117] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), p. 37. In this context M. Lautern mentions second-degree interrogations, op. cit. (note 26), p. 41; W. Maser terms the interrogations aggressive and harsh: Nürnberg - Tribunal der Sieger, Econ, Düsseldorf 1977, p. 127. |
| [118] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), p. 59; H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 38ff. |
| [119] | For 6 weeks! D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), p. 80. |
| [120] | F. Utley, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 172f.; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 51ff.; one case in the IG-Farben-Trial is described on pp. 60ff. |
| [121] | R. Aschenauer, op. cit. (note 103), p. 32. |
| [122] | F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 33), p. 85. |
| [123] | D. Irving, Der Nürnberger Prozeß, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 59ff. |
| [124] | A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 29), p. 158. |
| [125] | Times, London, April 27, 1946. Thanks is due to Prof. R. Faurisson for this reference. Cf. H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), p. 166. |
| [126] | International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, (IMT), Nuremberg 1947, v. XII, p. 398. |
| [127] | M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 26), p. 45. |
| [128] | U. Walendy, op. cit. (note 77), p. 37. |
| [129] | M. Weber, JHR 12(2) (1992) pp. 167-213, regarding J. Aschenbrenner, F. Sauckel, H. Frank, A. Eigruber, J. Kramer etc (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/2/Weber167-213.html). |
| [130] | R. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 97, 130ff.; R. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, C. F. Müller, Karlsruhe 1972, p. 165; R. Hilberg, op. cit. (note 26), p. 697; T. A. Schwartz, op. cit. (note 69). |
| [131] | R. Hilberg, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 688-689; H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 113ff. Incidentally, Göring insisted until his death that this allegation was untrue, p. 118; cf. also IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. IX, p. 618. |
| [132] | H. Springer, op. cit. (note 64), p. 87. It is unknown whether Ohlendorf was treated like Höß or Pohl, but in his case even an almost undetectable, ‘gentler’ psychological treatment may have sufficed. |
| [133] | H. Springer, ibid., pp. 101, 112f. |
| [134] | Ibid., p. 119. |
| [135] | L. Gruchmann, VfZ 16 (1968) pp. 385-389, here p. 386. |
| [136] | "Vertrag zur Regelung aus Krieg und Besatzung entstandener Fragen, 26. 5. 1952", Bundesgesetzblatt (BGBl) II (1955) pp. 405f. |
| [137] | E.g., A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 130ff., 138f. |
| [138] | E. Gauss believes that the role was a considerable one; op. cit. (note 7), p. 314f. |
| [139] | The Bundesgerichtshof [German Federal Supreme Court] has confirmed the legality of such measures: Ref. 1 StR 193/93. |
| [140] | §§130, 131, 185, 189 German Criminal Code. |
| [141] | For the amendment of §194 Sect. 2 German Criminal Code, cf. BGBl I (1985) p. 965. |
| [142] | Thus the opinion of some German historians as A. Plack, Hitlers langer Schatten, Langen Müller, Munich 1993, pp. 308ff.; H. Diwald, Deutschland einig Vaterland, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1990, p. 70; E. Nolte, Streitpunkte, Propyläen, Berlin 1993, p. 308; J. Hoffmann, Stalins Vernichtungskrieg, Verlag für Wehrwissenschaften, Munich 1995, p. 16. |
| [143] | Cf. A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), pp. 83f., 88. |
| [144] | A. Rückerl, Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, dtv, Munich 1978, pp. 39f., 43ff., regarding Treblinka Trial cf. pp. 43ff., regarding Chelmno cf. p. 243. |
| [145] | Regarding the Auschwitz Trial: B. Naumann, Auschwitz, Athenäum, Frankfurt/Main 1968, pp. 67f., 132. |
| [146] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 107f., 124. For the scope of these trials and the problems involved, cf. M. Broszat, VfZ 29 (1981) pp. 477-544. |
| [147] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 128. |
| [148] | E. Schüle, VfZ 9 (1962) pp. 440-443; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 142ff. |
| [149] | As late as 1962, when the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) made its general offer to provide incriminating evidence regarding National Socialist criminals, the Federal Republic (West Germany) decried this as a propaganda campaign intended to discredit the Federal Republic. A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 159. |
| [150] | W. Maihofer, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 15(12) (1965) pp. 3-14, here p. 14. |
| [151] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 169f. |
| [152] | A. Rückerl, ibid., p. 158; A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), pp. 25, 43f., 57; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), p. 44. |
| [153] | Cf. his confessions regarding ‘Nazi’-hunting in Recht, nicht Rache, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1991. |
| [154] | H. Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozeß, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt/Main 1965, v. 2, p. 858. |
| [155] | H. Langbein, ibid., v. 1, pp. 31f.; Langbein even searched for witnesses per newspaper ad: R. Hirsch, Um die Endlösung, Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt 1982, p. 122; cf. H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1987, p. 554. |
| [156] | Case 1 is the Sachsenhausen Trial. The entire witness dossier is available in copy form: letter of the Chief of the North Rhine-Westphalian Central Office for Investigation of National Socialist Mass Crimes in Concentration Camps, held by the Chief Public Prosecutor in Cologne, Dr. H. Gierlich, Ref. 24 AR 1/62 (Z); Case 2 is described without mention of the trial, by J. Rieger: Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis (ed.), Zur Problematik der Prozesse um "Nationalsozialistische Gewaltverbrechen", Schriftenreihe zur Geschichte und Entwicklung des Rechts im politischen Bereich 3, Bochum 1982, p. 16; Case 3, regarding the Sobibor Trial, is described by F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 213f., based on National Zeitung, Sept. 30, 1960, pp. 3ff.; Case 4, regarding the Majdanek Trial, is set out in Unabhängige Nachrichten, 7 (1977) pp. 9f.; cf. W. Stäglich, Die westdeutsche Justiz und die sogenannten NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Deutscher Arbeitskreis Witten, Witten 1978, p. 14; W. Stäglich, JHR 3(2) (1981) pp. 249-281 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/2/3/Staeglich247-281.html); for Case 5, in the trial of G. Weise, see R. Gerhard (ed.), Der Fall Gottfried Weise, Türmer, Berg 1991, p. 63. |
| [157] | Cf. the ‘identification’ farces enacted by witnesses, in B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 151, 168, 176, 471; F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 164, 213; H. Lichtenstein, Majdanek. Reportage eines Prozesses, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt/Main 1979, pp. 68, 82. |
| [158] | A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), p. 88. |
| [159] | R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 210ff.; cf. also B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 69. |
| [160] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 256. |
| [161] | For ex., cf. the time spent awaiting trial in the Auschwitz Trial, Frankfurt, in B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 15f.; regarding the decision of the European Court: J. G. Burg, NS-Prozesse des schlechten Gewissens, G. Fischer, Munich 1968, p. 187; cf. also R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), p. 265. |
| [162] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 163f. |
| [163] | R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), p. 210. |
| [164] | H. Barth was convicted in an East German show trial in 1983 for his participation in the events in Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane; cf. H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87). |
| [165] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 52, cf. also p. 55. |
| [166] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), p. 33. |
| [167] | J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), pp. 35f., 207. |
| [168] | "In Ludwigsburg werden weiter Nazi-Verbrechen aufgeklärt", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), June 14, 1997, p.5. |
| [169] | G. Rudolf, "Auschwitz-Kronzeuge Dr. Hans Münch im Gespräch", op. cit. (note 17). |
| [170] | Cf. A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 263ff. In the Auschwitz Trial, for ex., there were 23 defendants and more than 350 witnesses: cf. H. Laternser, Die andere Seite im Auschwitzprozeß 1963/65, Seewald, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 13, 23. |
| [171] | H. Laternser, ibid., pp. 12f., 143ff. |
| [172] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), pp. 7, 17ff., 22ff., 90ff., 254ff.; also R. M. W. Kempner in R. Vogel (ed.), Ein Weg aus der Vergangenheit, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1969, p. 216; also in H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 7. |
| [173] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 260f., 324; cf. also M. Broszat’s preface in A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144); also H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 12; cf. W. Scheffler, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), pp. 123ff. |
| [174] | P. Steinbach in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), ibid., pp. 25, 35. |
| [175] | A. Rückerl, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), ibid., p. 72. |
| [176] | K. S. Bader, in K. Forster (ed.), Möglichkeiten und Grenzen für die Bewältigung historischer und politischer Schuld in Strafprozessen, Studien und Berichte der katholischen Akademie in Bayern, no. 19, Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 1962, p. 126; quoted in R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), p. 220. |
| [177] | J. Tuchel, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 143. |
| [178] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), p. 18; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 7. |
| [179] | Regarding the Auschwitz Trial, cf. H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 82f. For these historical expert reports, see H. Buchheim, M. Broszat, H.-A. Jacobsen, H. Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, 2 vols., Walter Verlag, Freiburg 1964; regarding Sobibor: A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), pp. 87, 90ff.; regarding Treblinka: ibid., p. 82; regarding Majdanek: H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 30. |
| [180] | The Frankfurt Schwurgericht [jury court] admits this frankly in its Reasons for Sentence, cf. Rüter, op. cit. (note 3); A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 214f., claims that aside from visits to the sites of the crimes only documentary and material evidence is used. |
| [181] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 117f., on a verdict of the District Court of Bielefeld, Ref. Ks 45 Js 32/64, regarding the evacuation of the Wladimir-Wolynsk ghetto. The Federal Supreme Court commented that even where several suspects as well as unrefuted exonerating defense evidence exist, the Court can still find the defendant guilty! |
| [182] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 34f.; Rückerl considers this absolutely necessary: NS-Prozesse, Op. cit. (note 130), p. 32; P. Steinbach, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 26; in the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem the corresponding witnesses were officially known as "witnesses-of-Jewish-suffering": H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Reclam, Leipzig 1990, p. 335, cf. pp. 355ff.; cf. also F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 235ff. |
| [183] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), p. 328. |
| [184] | K. S. Bader, op. cit. (note 176), p. 219. |
| [185] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 249; op. cit. (note 144), p. 34; NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), pp. 27, 29, 31. |
| [186] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 257; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 49. |
| [187] | Cf. Salzburg District Court judge Dr. F. Schmidbauer’s letter-to-the-editor in Profil, 17/91; the author thanks W. Lüftl for this reference. |
| [188] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 29, 151f., 171. |
| [189] | E. Schneider, op. cit. (note 4), p. 189; R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), v. 2, pp. 178ff. Unfortunately, unlike under Anglo-Saxon law, hearsay evidence is admissible in German courts! |
| [190] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 39; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 141; cf. H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 29. |
| [191] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 15, 30f., 80. |
| [192] | H. Laternser, ibid., pp. 29, 35f., 52f., 56f., 59, 154f.; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 62, 135, 266, 270, 281, 383. |
| [193] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 94ff., 417ff.; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 383. |
| [194] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse - Psychogramme der Beteiligten, C. F. Müller, Heidelberg 1986, p. 11; cf. also H. Grabitz, Zeitgeschichte (Vienna), 14 (1986/87) pp. 244-258. |
| [195] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse …, op. cit. (note 194), p. 18, cf. pp. 149ff. |
| [196] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 32; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 249, disagrees. |
| [197] | H. Grabitz, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 86. |
| [198] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 242f., 262f. |
| [199] | H. Arendt, op. cit. (note 182), pp. 352f. |
| [200] | U.-D. Oppitz, Strafverfahren und Strafvollstreckung bei NS-Gewaltverbrechen, pub. by auth., Ulm 1979, pp. 63ff., 327ff. |
| [201] | U.-D. Oppitz, ibid., pp. 230ff. |
| [202] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 12f. |
| [203] | Cf. H. Laternser, ibid., also, e.g., E. Kern, Meineid gegen Deutschland, Schütz, Preussisch Oldendorf 1971; F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), esp. v. 4, pp. 198ff. |
| [204] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 28, cf. also p. 32. |
| [205] | Ibid., p. 57. |
| [206] | Ibid., pp. 37, 40f., 46ff., 61, 112, 117 etc. |
| [207] | Ibid., pp. 46ff., 146f. |
| [208] | A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), p. 270. |
| [209] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 113, quoting the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 31, 1979. |
| [210] | Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis, op. cit. (note 156), pp. 15f., re attorney Ludwig Bock |
| [211] | Ibid., pp. 15f.; also H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 89; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), p. 15. |
| [212] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 70f., 89, 97f. regarding attorney L. Bock; criminal investigations were initiated by a Düsseldorf state attorney against defense attorney Hajo Herrmann, whose motions to hear evidence (which the prosecution appears to have illegally passed on to the press, where they have been published in part) allegedly constitute incitement of the people. However, the judges in Düsseldorf refused to accept the charges. In 1999, Ludwig Bock was sentenced to pay DM 10,000 ($5,000), because in a trial against the Revisionist Günter Deckert (see G. Anntohn, H. Roques, Der Fall Günter Deckert, DAGD/Germania Verlag, Weinheim 1995; online: vho.org/D/Deckert), he dared to ask for the ‘wrong’ evidence, cf. Rudi Zornig, VffG 3(2) (1999), p. 208 (online: vho.org\VffG\1999\2\Zornig208.html). |
| [213] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 383. |
| [214] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 76ff.; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 86, 99. |
| [215] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 81. |
| [216] | E.g., E. Bonhoeffer, Zeugen im Auschwitz-Prozeß, Kiefel, Wuppertal 1965, pp. 52f. |
| [217] | F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 239f. |
| [218] | A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), pp. 26f.; op. cit. (note 144), pp. 88f.; op. cit. (note 34), pp. 251ff.; R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 209f.; H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), pp. 334ff., 544f. |
| [219] | R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), v. 1, pp. 146ff., comment rightly that an overly detailed account is perforce unbelievable, since no witness can remember everything in precise detail, least of all after such a long time. |
| [220] | On the one hand, H. Lichtenstein is practically in raves about the marvellous memory of the witnesses for the prosecution: op. cit. (note 157), p. 64f., 78, but on the other hand he considers contradictions in eyewitness testimony to be quite understandable, p. 75. |
| [221] | E. Loftus, op. cit. (note 22); H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 64, 67, also recognizes the problem that results from the Jewish witnesses’ role as victims. |
| [222] | Cf. A. Neumaier’s chapter, this volume. |
| [223] | Cf. H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), pp. 196ff. |
| [224] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 352. |
| [225] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 253; also the Court in the trial of G. Weise: R. Gerhard (ed.), op. cit. (note 156), pp. 56, 59, 65, 75. |
| [226] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 253f., 257f., is very understanding of this bias; H. Arendt, op. cit. (note 182), pp. 338f., considers it an inhumane practice to question the veracity of the Holocaust witnesses, but deems it necessary and just to consider the accused guilty from the start - a thoroughly ‘normal’ attitude among our contemporaries; cf. H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 75, 99, 104; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 120; I. Müller-Münch, Die Frauen von Majdanek, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1982, p. 156; E. Bonhoeffer, op. cit. (note 216), pp. 22f. |
| [227] | The Majdanek Trial is a typical example of this; cf. I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), p. 142; also B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 281. |
| [228] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 127. |
| [229] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 12ff., 78, 87. |
| [230] | H. Grabitz, ibid., p. 12. |
| [231] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), pp. 113, 239ff., 258, 350f. |
| [232] | Cf. F. J. Scheidl’s accounts of this: op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 198ff.; also Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis, op. cit. (note 156). |
| [233] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 37f., 57f., 85, 157. |
| [234] | Claimed in another trial, cf. Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis (ed.), op. cit. (note 156), p. 19. |
| [235] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 113ff., 120. |
| [236] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 64-90. |
| [237] | Ibid., p. 13. |
| [238] | In the Eichmann Trial, for ex., defense counsel R. Servatius declined to cross-examine the "witnesses-of-Jewish-suffering", see R. Servatius, Verteidigung Adolf Eichmann, Harrach, Bad Kreuznach 1961, pp. 62f. (cf. note 182). |
| [239] | The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was an exception, as these procedings were taped, but exclusively for the judges. The defense did never get eacces to these tapes, nor did the prosecution. |
| [240] | Cf. the report on the trial against G. Weise: R. Gerhard (ed. ), op. cit. (note 156), which shows how the Court judges the wording of a witness account against its actual content; in trials against revisionists, German Courts proceed rather similar, cf. G. Rudolf, "Webfehler im Rechtsstaat", Staatsbriefe 1/1996, pp. 4-8; reprint in H. Verbeke (ed.), Kardinalfragen zur Zeitgeschichte, VHO, P.O. Box 60, B-2600 Berchem 2, Belgium, 1996 (online: vho.org/D/Kardinal/WebfehlerR.html; English: vho.org/GB/Books/cq/flaws.html). |
| [241] | Unfortunately, H. Langbein’s book Der Auschwitz-Prozeß, op. cit. (note 154), based on his own notes, also contains only those witness statements that he deems credible, v. 1, p. 15 - but even they seem unbelievable in places. |
| [242] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 256; U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 113f., 239; cf. H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170). VVN = Verein der Verfolgten des Naziregimes. |
| [243] | H. Laternser, ibid., pp. 37, 99ff., 158ff., 171ff.; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 29, describes how the KGB manipulated Soviet witnesses. |
| [244] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 438f. |
| [245] | H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 2, p. 864; the fact that witnesses were pressured was confirmed by the German Federal Supreme Court, but was rejected as grounds for revision; Criminal Division of the Federal Supreme Court, Ref. StR 280/67. |
| [246] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 86ff., 170; U.-D. Oppitz documents a case of pressuring by monitors: op. cit. (note 200), p. 113. |
| [247] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 113ff., 161ff.; this too was confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court (note 245), and rejected as grounds for revision; cf. F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, pp. 153-159. |
| [248] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 258f. |
| [249] | S. Gringauz, "Some Methodological Problems in the Study of the Ghetto", in Salo W. Baron, Koppel S. Pinson (ed.), Jewish Social Studies, vol. XII, New York 1950, pp. 65-72. |
| [250] | E. Loftus, K. Ketcham, op. cit. (note 22), and E. Loftus, op. cit. (note 24). |
| [251] | O. Humm, "Die Gespensterkrankheit", op. cit. (note 17). |
| [252] | H. Pedersen, "Das Loch in der Tür", op. cit. (note 17). |
| [253] | H. F. Stein, The Journal of Psychohistory 6(2) (1978) pp. 151-210; H. F. Stein, ibid., 7(2) (1979) pp. 215-227 (online cf. ihr.org/jhr/v01/v1n4p309_Stein.html). |
| [254] | C. Schatzker, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40(15) (1990) pp. 19-23, esp. pp. 22f. |
| [255] | M. Zimmermann, "Israels Umgang mit dem Holocaust", in R. Steininger (ed.), Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust, v. 1, Böhlau, Vienna 1994, p. 387-406, here p. 389; cf. T. Segev, The Seventh Million, Hill and Wang, New York 1993. |
| [256] | Besides note 255 cf. A. Elon, "Die vergessene Hoffnung", FAZ, June 28, 1993, p. 28; M. Wolffsohn, "Eine Amputation des Judentums?", FAZ, April 15, 1993, p. 32; Yair Auron, Jewish-Israeli Identity, Tel Aviv 1993, p. 105, 109; cf. also G. Gillessen, "Bedenkliche Art der Erinnerung" FAZ, August 4,1992, p. 8; in more detail cf. M. Zimmermann, "Israels Umgang mit dem Holocaust", in R. Steininger (ed.), Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust, v. 1, Böhlau, Vienna 1994, p. 387-429; T. Segev, The Seventh Million, Hill and Wang, New York 1993. |
| [257] | Jewish Chronicle (London), 31.5.1996, p. 10 |
| [258] | Polish Historical Society, Press release of Jan. 25, 1993, PO Box 8024, Stamford, CT 06905, about a conference of Polish and Ukrainian physicians in the Polish Consulate, New York, on Jan. 24, 1993; cf. P. Chodoff, "Post-traumatic disorder and the Holocaust", American Journal of Psychology - Academy Forum, Spring 1990, p. 3. |
| [259] | R. Gerhard (ed.), op. cit. (note 156), pp. 33, 40, 43-47, 52f., 60, 73. |
| [260] | Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis (ed.), op. cit. (note 156), p. 17; similar comments about defense witnesses in the Majdanek Trial: H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 50, 63, 74. |
| [261] | J. G. Burg, Zionnazi Zensur in der BRD, Ederer, Munich 1980 (Majdanek Trial). |
| [262] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), pp. 115, 260; R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 210ff.; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 250f.; H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 15; H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 155), p. 334. |
| [263] | Cf. B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 272, 281, 294f., 299, 318, 321, 404. |
| [264] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 40f., 46, 48. |
| [265] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 251. |
| [266] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 353. |
| [267] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), pp. 63ff. |
| [268] | H. Lichtenstein, ibid., p. 80. |
| [269] | H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), pp. 34ff., 57f., 414ff.; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 272, 281, 299f. |
| [270] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 77. |
| [271] | R. Servatius, op. cit. (note 238), p. 64. |
| [272] | I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), p. 57. |
| [273] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 235f.; cf. pp. 222ff. |
| [274] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 260; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 52, 58ff., 60; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), pp. 13, 89, 181, 311; cf. also the desperate arguments of E. Bauer, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and could think of nothing better to say in his own defense than that all the other participants were at least as guilty as he: P. Longerich (ed.), Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden, Piper, Munich 1990, pp. 360ff.; in Israel, defense witnesses from the former SS and similar organizations can expect to be arrested on the spot, since in that country the law has fewer scruples regarding the retrospective application of laws; e.g., for the Eichmann Trial cf. F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, p. 239. |
| [275] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 236; U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 114; I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), pp. 109, 174; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 18, 108, 114, 120; R. Gerhard (ed.), op. cit. (note 156), pp. 61, 63. |
| [276] | H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), pp. 333ff.; cf. pp. 17f. |
| [277] | Ibid., p. 547. |
| [278] | Cf. B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 265; I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), p. 107: "What all do you think you can make this Court believe? I will dispense with any further testimony of yours.", also pp. 116, 172. |
| [279] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 56; op. cit. (note 87), pp. 72f.: "[…] the Chief of the District Court said, well, we get this sort of witness too sometimes. ‘Thank God!’, one might add." |
| [280] | Cf. H. Lichtenstein, ibid., p. 106. |
| [281] | Regarding the prior conviction by the media, cf. H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 12f., "Devil incarnate", pp. 33, 86, 147f. |
| [282] | H. Jäger, in P. Schneider, H. J. Meyer (eds.), Rechtliche und politische Aspekte der NS-Verbrecherprozesse, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz 1966, pp. 56f.; cf. H. Jäger, Verbrechen unter totalitärer Herrschaft, Walter-Verlag, Olten 1966. |
| [283] | H. Langbein, …wir haben es getan, Europa Verlag, Vienna 1964, esp. pp. 125ff.; cf. also G. Schoenberner, Wir haben es gesehen, Fourier, Wiesbaden 1981. |
| [284] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 237ff.; NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), pp. 30, 34; op. cit. (note 144), pp. 25, 30f., 40, 70, 78, 81f., 85f., 88ff., 253, 319f.; U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), p. 261; R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 210ff.; H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), pp. 566ff.; cf. also the closing comments of the defendant in the Auschwitz Trial, Frankfurt: H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154); also B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145); H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), pp. 30f., 34, 47, 86f., 110, 128, 202, 206, 210; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 38, 41, 64, 120, 145. |
| [285] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 266; H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 15; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 110ff. |
| [286] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 507, cf. pp. 62, 265, 294. |
| [287] | For ex., cf. I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), p. 98; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 130, 132, 137. |
| [288] | B. Naumann, ibid., pp. 144f., 189, 378; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 74; E. Demant (ed.), Auschwitz - "Direkt von der Rampe weg…", Rowohlt, Reinbek 1979, pp. 90f., 111, 128. |
| [289] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), pp. 165f. |
| [290] | G. Sereny, Am Abgrund, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1979, p. 123, cf. also pp. 130, 141, 400. |
| [291] | A. Draber, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 110. |
| [292] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 130. |
| [293] | H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), pp. 552f. |
| [294] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 150. |
| [295] | H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 10. |
| [296] | U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 200), pp. 315f. |
| [297] | Personal note from K. Franz, handed over by M. Dragan. |
| [298] | District Court Frankfurt, Ref. 14/53 Ks 1/50; District Court Düsseldorf, Ref. 8 I Ks 2/64; ibid., Ref. 8 Ks 1/69. |
| [299] | H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), p. 115. |
| [300] | H. Grabitz, ibid., p. 147, refers to E. Aretz, Hexen-Einmal-Eins einer Lüge, Hohe Warte, Pähl 1973, a book that is certainly not representative of revisionism, and outdated as well. It would have been more appropriate to quote A. R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA 1976, or W. Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, Grabert, Tübingen 1979 (online: vho.org/D/dam). |
| [301] | C. von Schrenck-Notzing, Charakterwäsche, Seewald, Stuttgart 1965, p. 274. |
| [302] | B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 7. |
| [303] | H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 9. |
| [304] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), pp. 7 and 23; cf. A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 323; cf. also H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), pp. 213f. |
| [305] | W. Scheffler, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 114. |
| [306] | P. Steinbach, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), ibid., p. 39. |
| [307] | I. Müller-Münch, op. cit. (note 226), pp. 181ff.; H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), p. 553; H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, pp. 10, 49; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 367; H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 170), p. 20; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 106, 123, 129f.; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), pp. 159, 166, 205; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 55, 69. |
| [308] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 37; G. Stübiger, Der Schwammbergerprozeß in Stuttgart, Schriftenreihe zur Geschichte und Entwicklung des Rechts im politischen Bereich, no. 4, Verein Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis e.V., Bochum May 1992. |
| [309] | Regarding the Eichmann Trial and the trial of J. Demjanjuk in Jerusalem: A. Melzer, "Iwan der Schreckliche oder John Demjanjuk, Justizirrtum? Justizskandal!", SemitTimes, special issue March 1992. |
| [310] | U. Kröger, Die Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen vor westdeutschen Gerichten und ihre Rezeption in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit 1958 bis 1965, diss., Univ. Hamburg, Hamburg 1973, pp. 267ff., 276. |
| [311] | Ibid., pp. 323f. |
| [312] | Ibid., p. 331. |
| [313] | Ibid., p. 322; B. Hey points out similar criticism by other groups such as churches and jurists, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), pp. 65ff.; cf. ibid., pp. 202ff. |
| [314] | E. Bonhoeffer, op. cit. (note 216), p. 15. |
| [315] | H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 212. |
| [316] | P. Steinbach, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 29; also W. Scheffler, ibid., pp. 114ff.; P. Reichel, ibid., p. 158. |
| [317] | Regarding the general shift in mood following the screening of Holocaust, cf. esp. T. Ernst, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 31(34) (1981) pp. 3-22. |
| [318] | E. Bonhoeffer, op. cit. (note 216); H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 157), p. 117; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), pp. 58f. |
| [319] | Neues Österreich, June 1, 1963, p. 12. |
| [320] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 34), p. 205; cf. also the chapter by C. Jordan, this volume. |
| [321] | First extension BGBl I (1965) p. 315, second BGBl I (1969) pp. 1065f., final rescission BGBl I (1979) p. 1046; cf. M. Hirsch, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), pp. 40ff.; W. Maihofer, op. cit. (note 150), pp. 3-14; P. Schneider, ibid., p. 15-23. |
| [322] | H. Lichtenstein, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), op. cit. (note 15), p. 197. |
| [323] | Deutscher Bundestag, Press- und Informationszentrum (ed.), Zur Verjährung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, Zur Sache vol. 3-5/80, Bonn 1980. |
| [324] | P. Steinbach, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), ibid., p. 27. |
| [325] | H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 2, p. 1003. |
| [326] | R. Henkys, op. cit. (note 9), p. 276; cf. the chapter by C. Jordan, this volume. |
| [327] | E.g., the frequent reports about the alleged destiny of Hitler’s corpse, most recently in the German tabloid Bild, Jan. 26, 2000, p. 1, 2, 6; the downright repulsive exploitation of the death of Mengele; cf. G. L. Posner, J. Ware, Mengele. Die Jagd auf den Todesengel, Aufbau, Berlin 1993; cf. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 13, 1993, p. 3: "Nichts als Gerüchte um Bormanns Grab"; Die Zeit, Nov. 8, 1991, p. 87: "In ewiger Ruhe das Ungeheuerliche", regarding Ch. Wirth. |
| [328] | For a classic example of this, cf. the chapter by C. Jordan, this volume. |
| [329] | Düsseldorf Provincial High Court and Court of Appeal, Ref. 2 Ss 155/91 - 52/91 III; Federal Constitutional Court Ref. 2 BrR 367/92; cf. H. Kater, DGG 40(4) (1992) pp. 7-11 (online: vho.org/D/DGG/Kater40_4.html). The Bundestag seconded this, cf. the decision of the petitioning committee, Ref. Pet4-12-07-45-14934, letter to H. W. Woltersdorf, dated July 30, 1992. |
| [330] | Appeal document, Hajo Herrmann, regarding the verdict of the Schweinfurt District Court, Ref. 1 KLs 8 Js 10453/92, submitted on Dec. 29, 1993, Ref. H-nw-02/93. |
| [331] | R. M. W. Kempner in P. Schneider, H. J. Meyer, op. cit. (note 282), p. 8. |
| [332] | M. Bauer (ed.), Soldan-Heppe, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, esp. v. 1, Müller, Munich 1912, pp. 311ff.; cf. also W. Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland, dtv, Munich 1988, p. 182. |
| [333] | In the last years efforts especially in the USA, Canada and Australia grow to expell or prosecute former members of former German military units, cf. World Jewish Congress, press release December 12, 1996; AP, January 1, 1997; Dateline ABC, January 31, 1997; New York Times, February 3, 1997; Calgary Herald, March 24, 1997; Globe & Mail, February 21, 1997; Toronto Sun, 13.5.1997; New York Times, June 21, 1997; AP, August 20, 1997; AP, September 2, 1997; AFP, August 30, 1997; Reuter, July 1, 1997; ibid., July 15, 1997; ibid., July 22 1997; ibid., August 12, 1997; ibid., August 31, 1997. Updates about this can be found in VffG, (online: vho.org/VffG.html); cf. Efraim Zuroff, Beruf: Nazijäger. Die Suche mit dem langen Atem, Ahriman, Freiburg 1996; review: I. Schirmer-Vowinckel, VffG, 2(1) (1998), pp. 63-68 (online: vho.org/VffG/1998/1/Buecher1.html#ISV1). |
| [334] | In this case: the screening of Holocaust movies, commemorative speeches on special days (‘Reichskristallnacht’, Wannsee Conference, liberation of concentration camps) and at special places (memorial site Plötzensee, concentration camp Auschwitz, Babi Yar), pilgrimages of school and youth groups to concentration camps. |
| [335] | In this case: the never-ending litany, in thousands of variations, of the unparalleled and unforgettable nature of German crimes, as well as their graphically detailed description. |
| [336] | In this case: horror photos and movies, regardless whether they be genuine, falsified or "creatively re-enacted", as well as the incessant, uncritical presentation of atrocity reports and testimony, combine to eliminate the public’s critical faculties and result in undiscriminating, deeply emotional consternation and in hatred of everything and everyone who would differ. For example, H. Lichtenstein, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 31(9-10) (1981) pp. 3-13, reports that prior to the Majdanek Trial young people wanted to have an end to the NS-trials of now-elderly men, but changed their minds after hearing the incredible atrocities alleged by witnesses for the prosecution and supported instead the perpetuation of criminal prosecution to eternity: p. 12; cf. also C. Schatzker’s demand for traumatization, op. cit. (note 254). |
| [337] | R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, op. cit. (note 6), v. 1, pp. 44f. |
| [338] | E.g., J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz - la Machinerie du meurtre de masse, CNRS, Paris 1993, p. 2; cf. also A. J. Mayer, Why did the Heavens not darken?, Pantheon Books, New York 1988, pp. 362ff.; J. Baynac, Le Nouveau Quotidien (Geneva), September 2/3, 1996, pp. 16/14; cf. R. Faurisson "Keine Beweise für Nazi-Gaskammern!", VffG 1(2) (1997) pp. 19ff. (online: vho.org/VffG/1997/1/FauBay1.html). |
| [339] | E. Nolte, op. cit. (note 2), p. 310; similarly, J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 126ff. |
| [340] | Cf. A. Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime: Propaganda Lies of the First World War, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA 1991. |
| [341] | "Atrocities in Serbia. 700,000 Victims", The Daily Telegraph, March 22, 1916, p. 7; cf. nearly the same article, now about Jews in Poland: "Germans Murder 700,000 Jews in Poland", The Daily Telegraph, June 25, 1942, p. 5 (online: vho.org/D/vuez/v6.html#v6_9). |
| [342] | Cf. the examples listed in the following, as well as a summary by C. Mattogno, Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste 1 (1987) pp. 15-107, esp. pp. 91ff. (online: abbc.com/aaargh/fran/archVT/AHR/AHR1/Mattogno/CMexterm1.html) |
| [343] | Aside from the list at the end of this chapter, cf. U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen, Nos. 22 and 43, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1984 and 1990, also containing further references; A. L. Smith, op. cit. (note 42). |
| [344] | Thanks to Jeff Roberts, Greg Raven, Orest Slepokura, Ted O’Keefe, Art Butz, Carlos Porter, Tom Moran, Jonnie A. Hargis and Joseph Bellinger for assisting me in completing this list; more can be found at www.corax.org/revisionism/nonsense/nonsense.html and www.cwporter.co.uk/partone.htm. |
| [345] | Moshe Peer, regarding Bergen-Belsen, in K. Seidman, "Surviving the horror", The Gazette (Montreal, Canada), August 5, 1993. Facsimile reprint in JHR, 13(6) (1993), p. 24. |
| [346] | Montreal Gazette, February 10, 2000. |
| [347] | Morris Hubert about Buchenwald, acc. to Ari L. Goldman, "Time ‘Too Painful’ to Remember", New York Times, November 10, 1988: "‘In the camp there was a cage with a bear and an eagle,’ he said. ‘Every day, they would throw a Jew in there. The bear would tear him apart and the eagle would pick at his bones.’" |
| [348] | A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 144), p. 273f.; E. Wiesel, Paroles d’Etranger, Edition du Seuil, Paris 1982, p. 86; Wiesel, The Jews of Silence, New American Library, New York 1972, p. 48; A. Eichmann, in H. Arendt, op. cit. (note 182), p. 184; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), p. 214. |
| [349] | Michael A. Musmanno, The Eichmann Kommandos, Peter Davies, London 1962, pp. 152f. |
| [350] | This imprint really meant "Reichstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung" (Imperial Office for Industrial Fat Supplies), see S. Wiesenthal, Der neue Weg (Vienna), 15/16 & 17/18, 1946; Career affadavit of SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Konrad Morgen, National Archives, Record Group 28, No 5741, Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes, December 19, 1947; Filip Friedman, This Was Oswiecim. The Story of a Murder Camp, United Jewish Relief Appeal, London 1946; the Soviets wanted to make this one of the charges at the IMT (exhibit USSR-393), but this plan failed due to the other Allies; IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. VII, pp. 597-600; cf. H. Härtle, Freispruch für Deutschland, Schütz, Göttingen 1965, pp. 126ff.; the Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta (Georgia, USA) is not the only site to boast a Holocaust-memorial gravestone for 4 bars of "Jewish soap". Cf. also the following corrections: R. Harwood, D. Felderer, JHR 1(2) (1980) pp. 131-139 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/1/2/HarwoodFelderer131-139.html) ; M. Weber, JHR 11(2) (1991) pp. 217-227 (online: …/11/2/Weber217-227.html); R. Faurisson, "Le savon Juif", Annales d’histoire révisionniste, 1 (1987), pp. 153-159 (online: abbc.com/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1986-1990/RF8703xx3.html). |
| [351] | David Olère, in J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 17), p. 554, fourth column, lines 17-22. |
| [352] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. XXXII, pp. 258, 259, 261, 263, 265, v. III, p. 515; v. XXX, pp. 352, 355; v. VI, p. 311; v. V, p. 171. |
| [353] | Ibid., v. XXX, p. 469. |
| [354] | Kurt Glass, New York Times, April 10. 1995. |
| [355] | H. Langbein, ibid., p. 381; IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. III, p. 516 , v. XXXII, p. 267-271. |
| [356] | F. Müller, in H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 154), v. 1, p. 87; witness Wells in the Eichmann Trial, in F. J. Scheidl, op. cit. (note 77), v. 4, p. 236; Lawrence L. Lange, "Pre-empting the Holocaust", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1998, p. 107 |
| [357] | F. Müller, op. cit. (note 384), p. 74. |
| [358] | Ibid., v. VII, p. 451. |
| [359] | Ibid., p. 447f. |
| [360] | SS-judge Konrad Morgen, acc. to Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945, Henry Holt, New York, 1990, p. 818. |
| [361] | Ibid., v. VII, p. 491. |
| [362] | H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), pp. 383f. |
| [363] | Ibid., v. V, p. 403. |
| [364] | Ibid., v. XVI, pp. 556f.; v. XVI, pp. 561, 546. |
| [365] | World Jewish Congress et al. (eds.), The Black Book: The Nazi Crime Against the Jewish People, New York 1946, p 269. |
| [366] | Ibdi., v. VI, p. 213. |
| [367] | Verdict of the Hannover District Court, Ref. 2 Ks 1/60; cf. H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 87), p. 83. |
| [368] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. VII, p. 570. |
| [369] | Aside from C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 342), cf. esp. S. Szende, Der letzte Jude aus Polen, Europa-Verlag, Zürich 1945; S. Wiesenthal, Der neue Weg (Vienna), 19/20, 1946; IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. VII, 576-577, 369, for Bergen-Belsen!; The Black Book of Polish Jewry, Roy Publishers, New York 1943, p. 313. |
| [370] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. XVI, 529 |
| [371] | Aside from C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 342), cf. esp. W. Grossmann, Die Hölle von Treblinka, Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, Moscow 1947; The Black Book of Polish Jewry, op. cit. (note 369). |
| [372] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. XXXII, pp. 153-158; M. Weber, A. Allen, JHR 12(2) (1992) pp. 133-158, here 134-136 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/2/WeberAllen133-158.html). |
| [373] | IMT., v. VII, pp. 582; Eugen Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell, Berkley Medallion (NY) 1960, p.99 |
| [374] | Rudolf Reder, Belzec, Kraków 1946, p. 16; found in Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1985, p. 419. |
| [375] | Ibid., 388. |
| [376] | Reports of the Polish underground movement, Archiv der Polnischen Vereinigten Arbeiterpartei, 202/III, v. 7, pp. 120f., quoted in P. Longerich, op. cit. (note 274), p. 438. |
| [377] | R. Aschenauer (ed.), Ich, Adolf Eichmann, Druffel, Leoni 1980, pp. 179f. |
| [378] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. V, p. 199. |
| [379] | M. Scheckter and a report of June 4, 1945, written by an officer of the 2nd Armored Division, about Auschwitz; Französisches Büro des Informationsdienstes über Kriegsverbrechen (ed.), op. cit. (note 384), p. 184, Wolfgang Benz, (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords, Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, p. 462. |
| [380] | Pravda, Feb. 2, 1945, cf. U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen No. 31: "Die Befreiung von Auschwitz 1945", Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1987, p. 4. |
| [381] | IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. VII, pp. 376f. |
| [382] | H. von Moltke, Briefe an Freya 1939-1945, Beck, Munich 1988, p. 420; cf. P. Longerich (ed.), op. cit. (note 274), p. 435; Pravda, Feb. 2, 1945. |
| [383] | See Arnulf Neumaier’s article in this handbook; IMT, op. cit. (note. 126), v. XX, p. 494. |
| [384] | R. Höß, in M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 74), p. 130; H. Tauber, in J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 489f.; F. Müller, Sonderbehandlung, Steinhausen, Munich 1979, pp. 207f., 217ff.; H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 155), p. 148; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 145), pp. 10, 334f., 443; S. Steinberg, according to Französisches Büro des Informationsdienstes über Kriegsverbrechen (ed.), Konzentrationslager Dokument 321, Reprint 2001, Frankfurt/Main 1993, p. 206; and many more. |
| [385] | Aside from note 371, cf. also W. Benz, Dimension des Völkermords, Oldenbourg, Munich 1991; pp. 320, 469, 479, 489, 537ff. |
| [386] | Ibid., p. 586 |
| [387] | R. Höß, in M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 74), pp. 161f.; A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, op. cit. (note 130), p. 78; H. Grabitz, NS-Prozesse…, op. cit. (note 194), p. 28. |
| [388] | Nürnberger Nachrichten, Sept. 11, 1978, report about eyewitness testimony in the jury court trial in Aschaffenburg. |
| [389] | E. Bonhoeffer, op. cit. (note 216), pp. 48f. |
| [390] | R. Böck, Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office, Ref. 4 Js 444/59, pp. 6881f. |
| [391] | H. G. Adler, H. Langbein, E. Lingens-Reiner (eds.), Auschwitz - Zeugnisse und Berichte, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Cologne 1984, p. 76. |
| [392] | Filip Friedman, This Was Oswiecim. The Story of a Murder Camp, United Jewish Relief Appeal, London 1946, p. 72 |
| [393] | Ibid., p. 475 |
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