The Fate of Jews in German Hands

An Historical Enquiry into the Development and Significance of Holocaust Revisionism

by Joel S. A. Hayward

Conclusion

As Operation Desert Shield was gaining momentum in the last months of 1990 and the first months of 1991 it was widely reported that the Iraqis had carried out appalling atrocities in Kuwait. The worst of the individual atrocities, which made headlines around the world, involved over three hundred premature babies who died after Iraqi soldiers took them from their incubators in order to cart the equipment off to Iraq. The Red Crescent Society, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, was the first organization to report the terrible incident. Several eyewitnesses, including a young, obviously distressed Kuwait woman who remained anonymous for reasons of security, appeared in dozens of television news items and confirmed the verity of the story. Kuwait's embassy in Washington publicly condemned Iraq for this act of barbarity, and numerous world leaders, including President Bush on several occasions, cited it as evidence of Iraq's brutal maltreatment of innocent Kuwaiti civilians. That the incident occurred was said to have been proven beyond doubt.

Nonetheless, within weeks of the US-led coalition's stunning victory over Iraq, it was discovered by ABC journalist that the incubator atrocity never occurred. Many premature babies had indeed died, but not as a result of Iraqi brutality. Basically, they died because the nursing staff deserted them and because the maternity hospital itself locked the incubators away in storage rooms. Dr. Mohammed Matar, who ran the hospital, admitted that the widely-circulated atrocity claims were just for propaganda.[1] It later turned out that the much-publicized eyewitness was the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, that she had not even been in Kuwait at the time the atrocity was said to have been committed, and that her story was entirely concocted.

This case has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet other now discredited Gulf War atrocity claims are similar in nature and substance, although not in scope, to certain Holocaust claims. For example, at the height of the Gulf War The Jewish Press, which promotes itself as the [world's] largest independent Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, reported that on Saddam Hussein's orders Iraq had constructed gas chambers for exterminating all Jews in the Middle East. The February 15, 1991 issue carried the headline, in huge letters: IRAQIS HAVE GAS CHAMBERS FOR ALL JEWS.[2] Similarly, a number of newspapers reported that the Iraqis had constructed a death camp in occupied Kuwait where civilians, including children, were being executed en masse.[3] These claims, although supported by seemingly-genuine eyewitness accounts and cita-

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tions to official sources, were later proven to be entirely groundless.

It would, of course, be extremely irresponsible to conclude from these examples of blatant propaganda falsehood that Nazi atrocities against Jews must also have been the invention of propaganda. These examples are intended only as a useful reminder that during wartime truth is often abandoned in favor of propaganda, and that atrocity propaganda is still used as a weapon against enemies.

Atrocity propaganda is one of the hallmarks of modern warfare, due mostly to the development of the mass media. During the First World War the German public was told that staff members of French and Belgian hospitals were gouging out the eyes of captured German soldiers. The British public was told by their own newspapers, and the propaganda ministry set up by Charles Masterman in September 1914, that babies in Belgium were thrown up and caught on the end of German bayonets, that Belgian children had their arms or hands cut off, and that the Germans were making soap from human cadavers. After the introduction of gas onto the battlefield in 1915, homicidal gassings of civilians began to feature in atrocity propaganda. For example, in March 1916 the Daily Telegraph reported that the Austrians and the Bulgarians had murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbians using poison gas. In one case, stated this newspaper, three thousand women, children and elderly men were gassed in a church in Belgrade. Government sources, documents and seemingly credible eyewitness accounts were provided to support these sorts of claims.

During the Second World War Josef Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Information and Propaganda were not the only propagandists disseminating untrue stories of atrocities committed by their enemies. The British Government, like those of its allies, was active in spreading anti-German and anti-Japanese atrocity propaganda. The Political Warfare Executive and the Ministry of Information were two of the government agencies involved in disseminating this type of misinformation. In his book on Allied diplomacy [4], for instance, Edward Rozek notes that the following memorandum was sent in June 1944 from the Ministry of Information to high-level civil servants, leading media figures and to the higher British Clergy:

Sir,

I am directed by the Ministry to send you the following circular letter: It is often the duty of the good citizens and of the pious Christians to turn a blind eye on the peculiarities of those associated with us. But the time comes when such peculiarities, while still denied in public, must be taken into account when action by us is called for.

We know the methods of rule employed by the Bolshevik dictator in Russia itself from, for example, the writing and speeches of the Prime Minister himself during the last twenty years. We know how the Red Army behaved in Poland in 1920 and in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Galicia and Bessarabia only recently.

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We must, therefore, take into account how the Red Army will certainly behave when it overruns Central Europe. Unless precautions are taken, the obviously inevitable horrors which will result will throw an undue strain on public opinion in this country.

We cannot reform the Bolsheviks but we can do our best to save them — and ourselves — from the consequences of their acts. The disclosures of the past quarter of a century will render mere denials unconvincing. The only alternative to denial is to distract public attention from the whole subject.

Experience has shown that the best distraction is atrocity propaganda directed against the enemy. Unfortunately the public is no longer so susceptible as in the days of the Corpse Factory and the Mutilated Belgian Babies and the Crucified Canadians.]

Your cooperation is therefore earnestly sought to distract public attention from the doings of the Red Army by your wholehearted support of various charges against the Germans and Japanese which have and which will be put into circulation by the Ministry.]

Your expression of relief in such may convince others. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

(signed) H. HEWETT, ASSISTANT SECRETARY

The Ministry can enter into no correspondence of any kind with regard to this communication which should only be disclosed to responsible persons.

These few words about atrocity propaganda are not intended to cast a shadow of doubt upon the nature of the Holocaust. They are intended only to illustrate the need for historians to approach all reported wartime atrocities — including those by Nazis against Jews — with a heightened sense of circumspection. However, throughout this study it was noted that many people, including historians, have incautiously accepted a number of allegations of brutality or crimes against Jews which, in fact, cannot survive the standard tests of historical evidence. For example, for almost fifty years it was claimed (and is still claimed by many non-specialists) that the skin of murdered Jews was tanned by certain Nazis and used to make book covers and lamp shades. Physical samples of these human-skin products were even produced at the International military tribunal, and eyewitnesses came forward to testify that they had seen these atrocities occurring. It is now known, however, that the samples produced as evidence were made of goat skin and the testimonies of the eyewitnesses were fraudulent. It is the same with the allegation that Nazis turned Jewish cadavers into soap. Plentiful evidence for the soap story was presented at the International Military Tribunal. Eyewitnesses testified or signed affidavits, providing the prosecutors with specific details such as the names of those involved in the soap production, the names and locations of factories where the soap was made, chemical 'recipes' and so forth. A cake of human soap was also produced as evidence. Even Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor, stated in his closing address that the bodies of the Nazis' victims were used to make good the wartime shortage of soap. Although one or two historians rejected the human soap story in the 1980s, it was not until 1990 that historians, following the lead of Yehuda Bauer, really began to abandon it. They apparently did so because Revisionists were easily disproving such claims.

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A careful and impartial investigation of the available evidence pertaining to Nazi gas chambers reveals that even these apparently fall into the category of atrocity propaganda. Because of the seriousness of this statement it is necessary to make the following defence. First, the RSHA monitoring service for foreign broadcasts discovered that the BBC and other Allied radio stations were broadcasting right across Europe a number of atrocity claims. These included allegations that Jews were being exterminated in gas chambers. These broadcasts, sent regularly throughout the second half of the war, were in a number of languages, including German, Polish and Spanish. On July 2, 1944, for example, the BBC broadcast in Spanish the claim that 400,000 Jews had been deported from Hungary to Germany and killed in gas chambers.[5] These radio broadcasts would have been received by a number of resistance organisations in the concentration and labour camps, which, as numerous memoirs by former internees attest, had secret radio sets. Although it is difficult to gauge the influence these broadcasts had on those who received them in the camps, they doubtless contributed to the widespread belief that such atrocities were occurring.

Second, Allied aeroplanes dropped large numbers of leaflets, written in German and Polish, over the Auschwitz camps stating that gassings were occurring. One source worth quoting, because it describes both these pamphlet drops and the Allied radio broadcasts, is the affidavit of Charles J. Coward which was submitted to the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947. Coward, a Battery Sergeant in the 8th Reserve Regimental Royal Artillery, was captured by the Germans in May 1940 and placed in a succession of different Stalag camps. In December 1943 he was transferred to Auschwitz to work at the I.G. Farben industrial complex, and was housed in camp E715. The relevant section of Coward's affidavit states:

Even while still at Auschwitz we got radio broadcasts from the outside speaking about the gassings and burnings at Auschwitz. I recall one of those broadcasts was by Anthony Eden himself. Also, there were pamphlets dropped in Auschwitz and the surrounding territory, one of which I personally read, which related what was going on in the camp at Auschwitz … These leaflets were scattered all over the countryside…[6]

Third, the rumor that people were being gassed by the Nazis was widespread in certain regions of Europe during the war, and led to some people believing in gassings without seeing any evidence for them. Others, of course, heard the rumors and believed them for a time, only to reject them later. For example, in December 1942 Maria van Herwaaden was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for having sexual intercourse with a Polish forced laborer who worked with her on an Austrian farm. During the train journey from Vienna to Auschwitz Herwaaden was told by a

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Gypsy woman that they would all be gassed on arrival. Shortly after she arrived in Auschwitz Her-waaden was taken with other women into a building where their hair, both head and pubic, was shaved and their clothes were taken from them. They were then moved into a large, cold concrete room without windows. They were told they were to have a shower. The women were absolutely terrified because they were sure they were about to be gassed, as the Gypsy had said. However, to their great relief, only water flowed from the shower heads. Herwaaden remained in Auschwitz until January 1945, and although she witnessed numerous deaths by suicide on the electric fences and thousands of deaths by disease she saw no evidence of gassings, shootings or any other types of extermination.[7] There are numerous examples of internees even hearing and believing rumors of gassings in camps where gassings are now claimed by orthodox scholars not to have taken place.

Fourth, gas chambers were only one of a number of apparatus originally claimed in Allied reports to have been used by Nazis to exterminate Jews. As already noted, both during the war and at the main Nuremberg trial it was seriously claimed that Jews were also killed in steam chambers or by electrocution in mechanically-operated vats of water. Even the OSS, the United States' main intelligence agency, reported that Jews were steamed to death in Treblinka. It was also claimed by the Polish government that Jews were killed in chambers by suffocation when the air was extracted by huge pumps. The evidence produced at that time in support of these now-discredited claims is not qualitatively different from the evidence produced in support of the gassing claims. Eyewitnesses even came forward to testify or sign affidavits about the steamings, electrocutions and suffocations. Their accounts of the killing processes were detailed and contained descriptions of the machinery and buildings involved. However, despite the simile [aaargh: ?] evidence for these killings, allegations of steamings, electrocutions and suffocations have been quietly dropped whilst the gassing claims remain. Historians have never explained why they considered the evidence for gassings more credible than the evidence for these other methods of extermination.

Fifth, at the International Military Tribunal (and for the next two decades or so) it was claimed that the Nazis systematically gassed Jews not only in camps in occupied territories but also in camps on German soil. At Buchenwald, Dachau and several other German camps murder was conducted, said Sir Hartley Shawcross, like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and crematories. 230,000 persons were said to have died in Dachau alone, many of them in the gas chamber. Eyewitnesses testified and signed affidavits about these gassings, which they sometimes described in gruesome detail. The gas chambers were mentioned in official government reports, were inspected and photographed, and Dachau's was even opened up to the public. In

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fact, the evidence provided for the existence of these gas chambers is not qualitatively different from the evidence for the gas chambers in the camps in Poland now referred to as 'death camps'. However, despite the fact that the evidence for gassings in Germany is no less credible than the evidence cited for gassings in Poland, specialists in the field now state that no systematic exterminations in gas chambers occurred on German soil. The claims about gassings in Germany were quietly abandoned decades ago. Systematic mass gassings, according to accepted opinion, only occurred in six camps in Poland: Auschwitz (I and II), Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka. Historians have never explained why they consider the evidence for gassings in the east more credible than for gassings in the west.

Sixth, it is apparent that the descriptions of gassings in the eastern death camps given by former internees and SS personnel contain many lapses, errors, fabrications and distortions. A number of these flaws are major, and seriously diminish the sources' overall reliability and credibility. We noted, for example, that the so-called 'confession of Kurt Gerstein', is amongst the most widely cited sources for gassings at Belzec. Yet Gerstein insisted that at least twenty million persons had been gassed in the Nazi concentration camps, that in Belzec 700-800 persons were gassed at a time in rooms the size of an average bedroom, that he saw in Belzec a pile of shoes the height of a ten story building, and that he saw in Treblinka a pile of clothes the same height. He also insisted that in Auschwitz alone millions of children were murdered by having a pad [translated by many scholars as tampon] of hydrocyanic acid held under their noses. It is the same with Miklos Nyiszli's widely cited account of gassings in Birkenau. Aside from the number of other errors and fabrications in his account, the fantastic gas chambers he described are almost the same length as two New Zealand rugby fields end on end. These sources are unfortunately typical of the evidence supporting claims of gassings in the eastern camps. They will not survive the standard methodological tests of historical evidence.

Seventh, the scores of original German blueprints and architectural plans for the crematory buildings in Auschwitz allegedly housing gas chambers contain no evidence that these buildings were ever used for homicidal purposes. On the contrary, the specifications revealed in the blueprints and plans show that the rooms now designated as gas chambers could not possibly have held anywhere near the numbers of persons purportedly gassed in them at a time. It would have been physically impossible. The blueprints and plans, which also record all structural changes made to the buildings, clearly indicate that the only ventilation devices in the morgues (the alleged gas chambers) were ordinary morgue air ventilators. The rooms had no air exhaust devices suitable for gas extraction. They also had no air heating or circulation systems, both of which would be

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necessary for gassings with Zyklon-B.

Eighth, inspections of the physical remains of the crematory buildings in Auschwitz and Majdanek (nothing is left at the other camps) confirm that the buildings were constructed in accordance with the blueprints and architectural plans, and that no additional structural changes were made to transform them into gas chambers. Moreover, whilst blue staining (indicating the presence of iron-cyanide compounds) is clearly visible on the surfaces of the delousing chambers, no staining can be detected on the surfaces of the alleged gas chambers. Physical samples taken from these rooms by specialists (including scientists from the Krakow institute) and submitted for chemical analysis also show that the rooms were never exposed to significant amounts of cyanide.

Ninth, whilst the specifications and layouts of the buildings' physical remains match identically those shown in the original blueprints, descriptions of the gas chambers given in the already contradictory and implausible eyewitness accounts resemble neither the physical remains nor the buildings shown in the plans. Nyiszli, for example, described multiple corpse elevators and automatically-opening cremation ovens. Building plans and contemporary photographs clearly reveal that these never existed. Similarly, in the WRB report of November 1944 the layout of the rooms, the layout and number of ovens, and the method of removing corpses bear no resemblance either to other eyewitness accounts, to the original blueprints, or to the physical remains of the buildings. Of course, we now know that the authors of that section of the WRB report never actually entered the buildings they described, but relied instead on hearsay evidence.

Tenth, it is not possible even today with our sophisticated and technologically-advanced equipment to cremate human cadavers at anywhere near the rate claimed in most books on the Holocaust. Whereas today an average-sized adult body can be cremated in around eighty minutes, in the early 1940s it took two hours or more. Claims that corpses were incinerated in ten or twenty minutes (or even less, if we are to believe some 'eyewitnesses') are extremely far-fetched, to say the least. In order to be sure of his facts on such a grisly matter the present writer consulted cremation experts and even took the opportunity to observe the cremation of a[n] average-sized male body in a modern oven which reached almost 1900°F. He can confirm that even after thirty minutes the corpse was well burned but still very much intact. Therefore, the claims of historians of the Holocaust and former internees that 6,000 or more bodies of gassed Jews were cremated each day in the forty-six retorts in Birkenau are very irresponsible. The highest claim the present writer is aware of is 17,280 per day, which is preposterous [8]. Including 'down time' no more than 250 bodies could have been

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cremated each day.

Eleventh, detailed aerial photographs of the entire Auschwitz complex taken on random occasions throughout the period in 1944 when the gassing process was supposed to be at its height (ten thousand or so per day) show no signs that any murderous activities were occurring. Despite the claims of many former internees that smoke and flame emanated continually from the crematory chimneys, and was visible for miles around, not even one of the detailed photographs show any flames or smoke. In any event, having studied the blueprints of the ovens and chimneys and having submitted them to an American cremation expert for his opinion the present writer can confirm that the Auschwitz crematories, like the crematories in Christchurch and all other major cities, could not emit any flames or dense smoke. Additionally, and clearly more importantly, none of the photographs show any signs of the piles of corpses, large pyres, burial pits, and so forth that are claimed to have been in Auschwitz at this time.

Finally, the gassing claim is irreconcilable with the overwhelming weight of evidence on the nature of official Nazi policy on the Jewish question. That policy, our careful and unbiased reading of the evidence suggested, was not one of total extermination, but was a brutal policy of deportation and forced labour.

This departure from accepted opinion on the gas chambers does not represent an ideological defence of one school of historical thought on this issue against the other. Nor is it an attempt to rehabilitate the Third Reich. The present writer considers the Nazis' brutal and destructive treatment of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the physically and mentally ill and other such groups to be abhorrent. As a libertarian he also finds repugnant the Nazis' assault on freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, and considers their persecution of political dissenters and academic and artistic free-thinkers worthy of the international condemnation it was and continues to be met with.

Moreover, although the weight of evidence supports the view that the Nazis did not systematically exterminate Jews in gas chambers or have an extermination policy as such, it cannot be denied that Jews in German hands suffered terribly during the Second World War. Even Hitler threatened that brutal methods could be used, if necessary to force the Jews to the east and to put them to work. Really, the Jews should be grateful to me for wanting nothing more than a bit of hard work from them, exclaimed the exasperated Führer after learning of an Allied radio broadcast that the Jews were being exterminated.[9] To understand what exactly Hitler meant by this understatement wanting nothing more it is appropriate to return to his comments to Horthy in April 1943: The Jews are just parasites … If the Jews there [in Poland] refused to work, they were shot. Those who could not work just wasted away. Gas chambers or no gas chambers, Hitler was responsible for the terrible maltreatment of the Jewish people.

The total number of Jewish deaths is probably impossible to determine, as even scholars upholding orthodox opinion agree. Figures range from four million to six or more million. No estimate has been offered in this thesis, although the total would undoubtedly be more than one million and far less than the symbolic figure of six million. Random atrocities, pogroms by local inhabitants in occupied territories (particularly Latvia and Lithuania), and the actions of the murderous Einsatzgruppen claimed the lives of many hundreds of thousands. As Himmler himself revealed in his above-[cit]ed speech to the naval officers in Weimar on December 16, 1943, thousands of innocent Jewish women and children were killed along with the men in the occupied Soviet territories as the Einsatzgruppen carried out various reprisals and hunted out commissars, partisans, political agitators, criminals and other security threats and undesirables. Sometimes hundreds of Jews or more at a time were robbed of their possessions, lined up in front of ditches, and mowed down by rifle or machine-gun fire. Because of the squalid conditions they were forced to live and work in, hundreds of thousands more Jews died of typhus, diarrhea and a variety of other diseases. Tens of thousands more died during the deportations and of malnutrition and overwork, and routine brutality claimed the lives of countless more. These deaths cannot by justified.

But what of the Revisionists? It is worth repeating one point made above: some Revisionist books and articles (such as those by Weber, Irving and Faurisson) are balanced and authoritative, containing both solid research and highly-developed analysis. They contribute substantially to the accumulated body of knowledge about the Holocaust, and should not be ignored or discounted out-of-hand by historians upholding received opinion. The truth-seeking historian has nothing to fear from these scholars.

The present writer recently read in an American newspaper an excellent letter from Laird Wilcox, the political commentator described in the introduction to this study.[10] Because they seem to sum up nicely, albeit slightly more harshly, the points made in this thesis it is worth using Wilcox's words to round off this conclusion.

I think revisionists have an exaggerated faith in their own beliefs and arguments, as though if you can disprove Jewish holocaust claims, then all the Jews will say, Son-of-a-gun! You guys sure caught us on that one. I guess all we can do now is march into the sea and disappear!

This, however, is not to be. Even absent gas chambers and six million dead, Adolf Hitler's onslaught against human rights, civil liberties, and basic human rationality are only exceeded by the Marxist-Leninists. There is still one helluva lot to explain about the

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mistreatment of Jews and others. The Nazi regime was horrible even by the most generous standards, and no amount of debunking one claim or another can erase the totality of their brutality. Even if Jews are removed from the issue entirely, Nazism was brutal beyond any justification…

Extremists and fanatics on both sides have tended to make this subject a no man's land where most scholars fear to tread. I think it's especially important to keep a clear head, to give full recognition to the human factors involved, and to be as honest and objective as possible. If there are errors in contemporary accounts of the holocaust, they should be investigated and brought to light. But this is not the same as ameliorating the responsibility of Adolf Hitler and his evil regime, and it is not an indictment against the Jews should they prove to be wrong about the holocaust in some respect or other.

Now having said all of this, I also believe that Jewish organizations have been incredibly heavy-handed and repressive in confronting the holocaust revisionist issue. Typically, they revert to name-calling and harassment and advocating silencing revisionists. What this has done is give revisionists a decided underdog image and lend credibility to their charges that Jews are afraid to debate the issues because they fear the results. This argument has some merits, and one has to really wonder what they have to fear.

What they have to fear is not that the holocaust will be debunked. I think the Jewish community has the resources and personnel to give the revisionist movement a serious challenge in a debate situation. In terms of the bulk of expert testimony alone the Jewish community could snow their opposition. What the Jewish community fears is that to allow the holocaust to even be debatable is an admission of uncertainty, and that cannot happen. There is probably no issue so central to Jewish identity as the holocaust. One can argue whether this should or shouldn't be, but it nevertheless is.

In my view, this inflexibility, and stridency is a mistake. Its like putting all your eggs in one basket. Had I been in charge of this issue I would have anticipated that someday I might have to say, OK, so maybe our figures aren't etched in stone, and maybe gas chambers weren't as prevalent as we thought. So what? It really doesn't change anything much, does it? However extensive it was, or wasn't, it was still terrible and deserves the universal condemnation of mankind.

Had they done this, they wouldn't have boxed themselves into a corner as they have. What could happen (and I think it will happen) is that no amount of repression and name-calling will keep scholars from investigating this issue (some might even be attracted by it on those grounds alone), and it's probably just a matter of time until some mainstream scholar, possibly nearing retirement, will publish the revisionist book that will break the dam and then all this effort has been for naught.

Notes:

[1] Cf. Seattle Times, March 16, 1991

[2] The Jewish Press, Vol. XLI, No. 7, Week commencing February 15, 1991, pp. 1, 4. The Iraqi gas chamber claim appeared in a number of other newspapers, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Cf. Citizen (Auburn, New York), February 11, 1991

[3] Iraqis reportedly run camps of death, Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), February 12, 1991

[4] E. J. Rozek, Allied Wartime Diplomacy: A Pattern in Poland (New York: John Wiley, 1958)

[5] Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, p. 657. Of course, no historians now believe that mass gassings of Jews occurred in Germany. Cf. also the BBC's German-language broadcast of June 15, 1944 regarding gassings in Birkenau (ibid., p. 647); et al.

[6] Affidavit of July 24, 1947, in NMT, Volume VIII, p. 606; cf. Coward's testimony before the Tribunal, in ibid., pp. 608ff.

[7] SZTR, 25-6623-6651

[8] Lengyel, Five Chimneys: the Story of Auschwitz, p. 69

[9] Recorded by Heinrich Heim, in Irving, Hitler's War, p. 332

[10] Christian News, Volume 27, No. 39, October 23, 1989