By Carolyn Yeager
RECENTLY 'FAKE NEWS' HAS GOTTEN A LOT of attention, meaning news reports that are presented as well-intentioned and factual by the popular media but are not. The motherlode of all fake news was the constant stream of reports that appeared between 1941 and 1945 in the New York Times that claimed Jews by the thousands and then hundreds of thousands were being slaughtered, being gassed, being shot, just because they were Jews – mainly in Eastern Europe. These reports invariably came from unnamed sources and “anti-fascist committees”; they were relayed by a local Jewish rabbi or spokesman. Despite the lack of provable details of any kind, these fake news reports continued to be published in the Times and were picked up by smaller newspapers and broadcasters around the country.
We can’t say how many people actually believed those reports at the time, but we can say with confidence that the reports were fictitious, mere war propaganda – and worse than that because they were partially instigated and fully supported by the World Jewish Congress which had only been born in 1936 in opposition to Adolf Hitler. What we know as The Holocaust was invented between 1944 and 1946 by the World Jewish Congress and its network of influential, well-placed Jews throughout Europe, Britain and the United States.
From 1944 on, Auschwitz was made the center of the "Holocaust" and described as a giant death camp where four million men, women and children perished, most being exterminated in gas chambers, their bodies then burned to ash so no trace of them could be found. Yet, the only contemporary evidence for what took place there rests on an after-the-fact ‘confession’ of a captive Auschwitz camp commander who it is known was tortured and his family threatened, and the anonymous reports of five supposed escapees to Slovakia. From the former, we have what’s known as the Höss Confession, and from the latter the World Refugee Board report.
To explain how the Auschwitz narrative was fashioned from these two highly questionable accounts, I will quote from chapters 3 and 4 of Arthur Butz’s classic revisionist work The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Sept. 2003).
First came the War Refugee Board report.
The Making of the War Refugee Board
From Butz: Chapter 3, pg 82-90 (my emphasis and brackets throughout)
The first extermination claim appears to have been made by the London section of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in 1942. It was claimed that one million Jews had been killed in some undesignated and unlocated “vast slaughterhouse for Jews” which had been established in Eastern Europe. The allegation was carried in the New York Times.
[…]
On August 8, 1942, two WJC representatives in Switzerland, Gerhard Riegner and Paul Guggenheim, approached the U.S. Consulate in Geneva, which had been cooperating with the WJC to the extent of allowing it to use diplomatic channels for messages, with a story that some anonymous industrialist had informed them that he had learned of a decision made [in Führer headquarters] to kill all non-Soviet Jews under German control. (See The Mysterious Industrialist) […] This story was forwarded to Washington by the Consulate through diplomatic channels [and similarly to London].
The U.S. State Department evaluated it and decided that:
“… it does not appear advisable in view of the […] fantastic nature of the allegation, and the impossibility of our being of any assistance if such action were taken, to transmit the information to Dr. Wise , as suggested.”
Wise [Rabbi Steven Wise, head of both the World Jewish Congress and American Jewish Congress at the time] learned of the message anyway and protested the State Department’s handling of the matter. Throughout the summer and fall of 1942, the State Department continued to receive messages of this kind from the WJC with information from anonymous individuals, including of factories producing fertilizer and soap from Jewish corpses. [The similarity to debunked false stories from WWI was noted by State.]
On Dec. 8, 1942, Rabbi Wise led a delegation to the White House and presented to President Roosevelt a twenty page document entitled Blue Print for Extermination which was based on the sort of ‘information’ we have reviewed. Related Jewish pressures finally brought capitulation […] – on December 17, the Allies, led by Washington, issued a statement condemning the “exterminations.”
Despite this public declaration, the [State Dept] group headed by [Asst. Sec of State] J. Breckenridge Long continued to resist the propaganda. On January 19, 1943, Riegner gave [Ambassador to Switzerland Leland] Harrison the ‘information’ that “in one place in Poland 6000 Jews are killed daily.”
Harrison duly passed it on to the State Dept. but it was merely filed. Then on Feb. 10, 1943 Long’s group made a further effort to suppress such reports by instructing Harrison:
“in the future, reports submitted to you for private persons in the United States should not be accepted unless extraordinary circumstances make such action advisable. It is felt that by sending such private messages which circumvents neutral countries’ censorship, we risk the possibility that neutral countries’ might find it necessary to take steps to curtail or abolish our official secret means of communication.”
On February 14, the New York Times published the story.
The U.S. Treasury Dept, headed by [Jew] Henry Morgenthau Jr., came into conflict with State over this suppression, but also over a plan to ship 7000 Romanian Jews to Palestine at a cost of 250 pounds ($1200) per person. Apart from who paid the money and how, there were British objections to admitting Jews to Palestine.
The people from the Treasury and the World Jewish Congress kept pressing for the proposed projects, and continually asserted, with apparent complete seriousness, that the only alternative was the death of the people in question at the hands of Hitler.
In the State vs.Treasury collision, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau was victorious.
Roosevelt, drawn into the issue, sided with him by establishing in January 1944 the so-called War Refugee Board (WRB) consisting of Morgenthau, [Sec of State Cordell] Hull, and Sec of War Stimson. However, the executive director was Morgenthau’s fair-haired boy John Pehle, with Josiah DuBois as general counsel. It was thus Morgenthau’s board.
In addition,
the person to whom Morgenthau had delegated all of Treasury’s powers in the areas relevant to the WRB was Harry Dexter White, later exposed as a Soviet agent.
[…]
As an instrument of Wise and other Zionists, the WRB did considerable propagandizing. It’s most consequential propaganda achievement was a booklet, German Extermination Camps: Auschwitz and Birkenau, Executive Office of the President, Washington, Nov. 1944, hereinafter referred to as the WRB report.
The WRB report constituted the birth of the ‘official’ thesis of exterminations via gas chambers at Auschwitz. In it, all of the essentials and many of the details are found. The Nuremberg charges grew out of the WRB report.
The Fake WRB Report
Butz, pgs 116-123
The issuing of the report was carried [on page 1] by The New York Times on November 26, 1944, and some excerpts were given. [It] is described as two reports, one written by “two young Slovakian Jews” and the other by “a Polish major” whom had been inmates at Auschwitz from the Spring of 1942 to the Spring of 1944 when they escaped (the two Jews on April 7).
There is an additional short supplement said to be written by two other young Jews who escaped on May 27, 1944 and made their way to Slovakia (which was under German domination until 1945).
Examination shows that the information given in the report, which is most likely true to semi-true, is the sort of thing that could have been built up from intelligence data. This is exactly as one should expect: Germany’s enemies had certain means of gathering information about German camps and about events in Europe and simply used information gathered by such conventional methods, plus a considerable amount of invention, to compose the WRB report.
The contents of the WRB report [in condensed form]:
1- Number and nationality of prisoners in April 1942. 2- Accurate map of area. 3- Dimensions of Auschwitz 1 and Birkenau camps. 4- Death certificate procedures. 5- Crematories 1, 2,3, 4 – rooms and burning capacities. 6- “Cyklon” use and lethality. 7- First cremation. 8- Detailed breakdown of numbers and classifications of Birkenau inmates. 9- Responsibilities (crimes) of “block eldests” and “block recorders.” 10- Punishment for escape attempts. 11- Number of Jews gassed from April 1942 to April 1944. 12- Reaction in the camp to escape of the two Slovakian Jews. 13- Arrival of Hungarian Jews starting May 15, 1944 – 15 thousand per day. 14- New inmate registration number system in May 1944 and visit by Himmler to Cracow. 15- Wild story about visit of 4 distinguished Dutch Jews for inspection purposes. 16- Area around Auschwitz evacuated. 17- Auschwitz 1 hospital procedures. 18- Statement that a Jew could not last more than two weeks because of overwork. 19- In summer 1942, Jews were gassed in birch forest in sealed buildings and buried in mass graves, causing putrefaction. In the fall, the crematories were finished so some of the bodies were exhumed and burned. 20- How it was decided when to execute somebody already condemned to death.
In order to grasp the nature of the information and propaganda channels that existed, one should take special note that the WRB had its agents in Hungary even after March 1944. For example, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat, and Jewish leaders in Budapest were in contact with those in Slovakia, and also in Poland.
The OSS connection–
Possibly more important than the WRB, although its role in the hoax is not nearly as obvious, was the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, the predecessor of the CIA. Set up early in WWII under the leadership of General William Donovan, its mission was intelligence of a political nature (eg sabotage, propaganda, guerilla warfare). High-placed Washington observers complained that the OSS seemed to enjoy unlimited funds and knew no bounds on its authority.
With only a few exceptions, the OSS was not staffed by military people but by persons recruited from private life […] ranging from communists to emigre monarchists.
A particularly relevant facet of the OSS operations was that they had enlisted the cooperation of the Jewish Agency in Palestine (which was really the unofficial Israeli government at the time). So on account of extensive and elaborate contacts with other Jews, they were able to undertake many important missions for the OSS.
Finally, it is of interest that the OSS was very significant on the prosecution staff at the IMT (International Military Tribunal) trial, especially in the early stages.
Thus,
two “internationals,” the Communist and the Zionist, played important roles in the intelligence, propaganda, and refugee assistance programs of the U.S. The WRB, effectively taking orders from Jews Harry Dexter White, Henry Morganthau Jr, the World Jewish Congress, and other Zionists, and the OSS, with its staff of communists and its Jewish Agency allies, show that the situation was perfectly suitable for the manufacture of a Jewish extermination propaganda lie, built about Auschwitz, which, as a precaution, contained enough real facts to suggest to the unreflective that the allegations were true.
The Communist Party, being “the world’s most efficient intelligence organization,” could transmit any information desired to any destination without needing “escaped inmates” to supply the facts. Note that the entire contents of the WRB report are due to only three independent escapes by remarkably informed inmates. This is silly in the extreme. (See “Further Developments” below)
The WRB report was put into evidence at the IMT as document 023-L by Major Walsh on December 14, 1945. There was no defense objection at the IMT to the acceptance of the report into evidence. At the later Farben trial, the prosecution submitted the report (Document Book 89) as evidence, but the defense objected, and this objecting “as to the competence and materiality of each and every document in the book” was sustained by that court.
The Fake Höss Confession
From Butz: Chapter 4, pgs 130-133.
Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss is universally considered to be the supplier of the framework of the Auschwitz story. All pleaders of the Auschwitz extermination legend present what is, in effect, the Höss affidavit.
During the IMT (International Military Tribunal) trial, former SS Colonel Rudolf Höss had signed [under extreme duress] some affidavits for the prosecution, the most noted being signed on April 5, 1946. He was then called by the Kaltenbrunner defense on April 15, 1946. During cross-examination, he assented to his affidavit of April 5. The affidavit contains these most important statements:
“I […] estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of 3.000,000. This figure represents about 70% to 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remaining having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war […] who were delivered in Werhmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder […] included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens, mostly Jewish, from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece or other countries. We executed 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone in the summer of 1944.”
[Oswald Pohl, the Gestapo (German State Police), Heinrich Müller, RSHA (Reich Security Main Office), Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Ernst Kaltenbrunner are implicated.]
“Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and continued until Fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until December 1943 and know […] that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions took place under the direct order, supervision and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA.
“The ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities in Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the general government three other extermination camps, BELZEC, TREBLINKA and WOLZEK. These camps were under the Einsatzcommando of the Security Police and SD (Secret Service). I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The camp commandant told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I didn’t think his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination buildings at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was crystalized Prussic acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one half-hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.
[…]
“The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched past one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work.
[…]
“at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under their clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding areas knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.
[…]
“We received from time to time special prisoners from the local Gestapo office. The SS doctors killed such prisoners by injections of benzine. Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and could put down any reason at all for the cause of death.
“From time to time, we conducted medical experiments on women inmates, including sterilization and experiments relating to cancer. Most of the people who died under these experiments had already been condemned to death by the Gestapo.
[…]
“I understand English as it is written above. [False] The above statements are true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion [False]; after reading over this statement, I have signed and executed the same at Nürnberg, Germany on the fifth day of April 1946.
Signed, Rudolf Höss
We have underlined obvious inaccuracies, but there are more than that. Note that Höss was left to make all the decisions about the gassing procedures himself, even though he had no experience in such matters. This is not the way Himmler operated, let alone Hitler. Höss obviously had never used prussic acid because he did not know how dangerous it was. Höss said the Auschwitz gassing program started in summer 1941 after he visited Treblinka. Later the official Treblinka history had gassing beginning there on July 23, 1942. This error was “fixed” by saying Höss had made a mistake – he meant 1942.
I think that for the average reader it will be apparent that the basic story they’re familiar with about Auschwitz is all there in the Höss Confession of 1946. The “most documented” event in history comes down to what was tortured out of a German SS colonel by Jews in British uniform who had free rein to whip, beat with ax handles, attack verbally, and threaten his family as they thought necessary and deserving. They wrote the confession and he signed it. This is still the story of Auschwitz that schoolchildren learn today.
Further Developments
Butz, p 124: The fake story Im Schatten des Todes (In the shadow of death)
J. Oskar Neumann, the author of the book published in 1956 in Israel, was a leader of the Jewish Councils and resistance organizations in Slovakia. In his book, the two young Slovakian Jews appear on schedule in Slovakia, as does the Polish major. He gives the impression that he met them, but does not tell us their names or tattooed registration numbers. They “were sent to an outlying mountainous area to rest” since they were being hunted by the Gestapo.
In Neumann’s book, Rabbi Dov Ber Weissmandel, originally a Hungarian Jew who was the leader of the Jewish resistance in Slovakia, communicated their report to Budapest, to Switzerland, and to other destinations in order “to warn Jews.”
Butz, pgs. 124-128: Rudolf Vrba,
In 1961 at the Eichmann trial, it was revealed that Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg or Rosenthal) was the name of one of the two Slovakian Jews who allegedly wrote the first part of the WRB report; the other being Alfred Wetzler, or Weczler. The document presented at the trial was rejected on grounds of containing too many contradictions.
Late in the trial, an affidavit was produced by Vrba that explained how he arrived at the impressively detailed figures regarding the transports to Auschwitz, which are the main feature of the WRB report. He gives the impression that, as a 20-year-old, he was solely responsible for those, and gave no credit to his companion who supposedly escaped with him in April 1944. Vrba says nothing about the Polish major, either.
The WRB report, however, while it attributes the figures to both men, presents the figures in the first section of the report, whose author is supposed to be Wetzler. There are other discrepancies between Vrba’s 1964 book I Cannot Forgive and the WRB report. For example, in his book Vrba writes that the girls working in the “Canada” area were in very good health, but in the WRB report (Part 1, page 31) these women were “beaten and brutalized and their mortality was much higher than among the men.” His book presents utterly unbelievable material from beginning to end.
The records of the International Tracing Service in Arolson, Germany report that two Jews named Wetzler and Rosenberg did escape on April 7, 1944, and this agrees with the Kalendarium published by the Polish government in 1964 as No. 7 of Hefte von Auschwitz. There were many successful escapes from Auschwitz during this period.
But this does not authenticate the authorship of the WRB report. The details of its manufacture will probably never be fully uncovered. If it was written in Slovakia, it seems clear that Professor Weissmandel should be credited with at least co-authorship. In any case, it is obvious that the WRB Report is spurious. The data given in the report is not the sort of information that escapees would carry out. Instead of coming forth immediately after the war with ostensible authors of the report to lend support to the lie, an author was produced sixteen years after the event with a less than credible story.
Thus was born the Auschwitz legend.
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