Red Cross Keeps
Auschwitz Records Secret
QUOTE
by Mark Weber
Over the years, Holocaust historians and standard Holocaust studies
have consistently maintained that Jewish prisoners who arrived at
Auschwitz between the spring of 1942 and the fall of 1944, and who
were not able to work, were immediately put to death. Consistent with
the alleged German program to exterminate Europe's Jews, only
able-bodied Jews who could be "worked to death" were temporarily
spared from the gas chambers. Holocaust historians also agree that no
records were kept of the deaths of the Jews who were summarily killed
in the camp's gas chambers because they were too old, too young or
otherwise unable to work.
However, Auschwitz camp death records -- which were hidden away for
more than 40 years in the Soviet Union -- cast grave doubt on these
widely accepted claims.
Inmate deaths at Auschwitz were carefully recorded by the camp
authorities on certificates that were bound in dozens of death
registry volumes. Each "death book" (Sterbebuch) contains hundreds of
death certificates. Each certificate meticulously records numerous
revealing details, including the deceased person's full name,
profession and religion, date and place of birth, pre-Auschwitz
residence, parents' names, time of death, and cause of death as
determined by a camp physician.
These death registry volumes are designated as "secondary books"
(Zweitbücher), suggesting the existence of a still-inaccessible set of
"primary books."
The death registry volumes fell into Soviet hands in January 1945 when
Red Army forces captured Auschwitz. They remained inaccessible in
Soviet archives until 1989, when officials in Moscow announced that
they held 46 of the volumes, recording the deaths of 69,000 Auschwitz
inmates.
These 46 volumes partially cover the years 1941, 1942 and 1943. There
are just two or three volumes for the year 1941, and none at all for
the years 1944 or 1945. It is not clear why so many volumes are still
missing. According to informed International Red Cross officials, the
most likely explanation is that they were misplaced by the Soviets,
and might therefore turn up later. (There is no indication that
Auschwitz camp authorities made any effort to destroy any of the
volumes.)
"No one seems to know yet what become of the numerous missing
volumes," the journal Red Cross, Red Crescent has reported. "Are they
still gathering dust in one of the numerous archives throughout the
[former] USSR? Anything is possible, but this last hypothesis seems
most likely. The mere thought that there are more than 3,250 archival
centers in the USSR is enough make anyone's head spin."
Russian officials have permitted an agency of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) -- the International Tracing Service
in Arolsen, Germany -- to make copies of the 69,000 death
certificates. Microfilm copies of the documents have reportedly also
been given to the American Red Cross, and the original volumes have
been turned over to the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland.
Although archive officials have not permitted independent researchers
to freely examine and evaluate the death registry volumes, the IHR
recently obtained copies of 127 of the death certificates from German
journalist and researcher Wolfgang Kempkens, who obtained copies of
more than 800 of them from sources in Poland and Russia.
Published here -- to our knowledge for the first time anywhere -- are
facsimile reproductions of 30 of these certificates. (Because of the
Journal's page size, the documents reproduced here are reduced to 55
percent of original size.)
In selecting which certificates to reproduce here, preference has been
given to those recording the deaths of Jewish prisoners who were
indisputably too old to have been able to work.
Consistent with the Sterbebuch records, other German wartime documents
show that a very high percentage of the Jewish inmates at Auschwitz
were not able to work, and were nevertheless not killed.
For example, an internal German telex message dated September 4, 1943,
from the chief of the Labor Allocation department of the SS Economic
and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), reported that of 25,000 Jewish
inmates in Auschwitz, only 3,581 were able to work. All of the
remaining Jewish inmates -- some 21,500, or about 86 percent -- were
unable to work.
This is also confirmed in a secret report dated April 5, 1944, on
"security measures in Auschwitz" by Oswald Pohl, head of the WVHA
agency responsible for the concentration camp system, to SS chief
Heinrich Himmler. Pohl reported that there was a total of 67,000
inmates in the Auschwitz camp complex, of whom 18,000 were
hospitalized or disabled. In the Auschwitz II camp (Birkenau),
supposedly the main extermination center, there were 36,000 inmates,
mostly female, of whom "approximately 15,000 are unable to work."
The evidence shows that Auschwitz-Birkenau was, in fact, established
primarily as a camp for Jews who were not able to work, including the
sick and elderly, as well as for others temporarily awaiting
assignment to other camps.
Along with the two documents above, the long-hidden certificates
reproduced on the following pages discredit a central pillar of the
Holocaust extermination story. As revealing as these documents are,
though, there is little doubt that a careful examination of all of the
many thousands of documents in the Auschwitz death books -- as well as
other, still-inaccessible wartime records -- would bring us much
closer to finding definitive answers to the central questions of
Germany's wartime Jewish policy. It is high time for archival
officials in Poland, Germany, Russia and Israel to open all their
records to independent scholars.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p265_Weber.html
UNQUOTE
D
Dr. Auric D. Hellman adhellman@volcanomail.com