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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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"At our own risk, we have been leading the combat
throughout the world and on the spot to challenge the impunity of
the Nazi criminals and the development of Neo Nazism. We have also
decided to make publicly known the unequivocal refutations of this
propaganda and to bridge certain obvious gaps regarding the
history of the Holocaust. In addition our publications are
distributed free of charge to research centers on the Holocaust
and to sources of information everywhere: major university and
public libraries, the mass media.
"We may cite as an
example our Memorial de la Déportation des Juifs de
France, in which we reproduced the official Nazi data
(last names, first names, places and dates of birth,
nationalities) concerning 80,000 Jews who were victims of the
"final solution" in France, as well as the description of each
convoy. This work has put an end to the propaganda which claimed
that the Jews of France had been spared.
"The
Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania is based on irrrefutable
German documents. Through an examination of often
unpublished papers of the Service for Jewish Affairs of the SD, a
careful study of the orders for the "final solution" and the
Fuhrer's announcements of this solution, Dr Joseph Billig for the
first time shows step by step how the decision to exterminate the
Jews was reached.
"Georges Wellers in a first study
demolishes the Neo-Nazi arguments which are in contradiction with
the accounts of those, SS or internees, who themselves saw the gas
chambers in operation.
"In the second study, devoted to
the number of victims, Georges Wellers brilliantly demonstrates
that more than 1,800,000 Jews were liquidated by the Nazis in the
Soviet Union. His conclusions are supported by indisputable
figures which have never before been presented. He explores in
addition the extraordinary report drawn up for Himmler by the
Inspector of Statistics of the SS, Richard Korherr; who
established with great precision the Jewish losses as of December
31. 1942, and as of March 31, 1943.
"Georges Wellers thus
succeeds in demonstrating that, in taking as a basis only the
indisputable figures, one reaches a total of more than 4,800,000
proven victims, all while leaving out of consideration other
Jewish victims in numerous countries." |
In a later study entitled Essai de détermination du nombre
des morts à Auschwitz (Le Monde Juif, issue
112, 1983), Georges Wellers reduced the figures for deaths at
Auschwitz to a level far below that, for example, generally cited in
the publications of the Auschwitz State Museum.¹ Precision should be
rule. For our part, we have established the number of Jews deported
from France at 75,721. This figure is virtually definitive and cannot
possibly be modified by more than 1%. It will be seen that it
differs considerably from the French figure of 100,000 to 120,000
racial deportees and the German figure of 50,000 to 60,000 Jewish
deportees from France. Neither in the case of the figures cited by
Georges Wellers, nor our own, is it a matter of revisionism. It is
quite simply the result of meticulous examination and critical
analysis of documents and sources and extensive research to discover
new documents.
It was to this examination and this research
that Jean-Claude Pressac devoted himself in the Auschwitz Museum,
where he benefited from the enlightened help of the deeply regretted
Archivist, Tadeus Iwaszko. Through our personal research in the
Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic, we were able to
obtain some documentation to add to the impressive amount he had
been able to collect in Poland and his exceptional field knowledge
of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
When we see what an isolated
and tenacious researcher like Jean Claude Pressac has been able to
reconstitute, starting his work 35 years after the liberation of
Auschwitz, we cannot but regret that it was not possible for Jewish
research missions to study the Auschwitz site and its archives in
1945. But at that time there was, alas, no Jewish State, and the
Jews as such were not authorized to undertake such research. They
were not even authorized to appear for the prosecution in the name
of the Jewish people at the Nuremberg trials. As for the archives of
the Soviet War Crimes Commission which worked for two months at
Auschwitz, only fragments of them have come to light and the Soviets
themselves, who lost interest in the subject after Nuremberg, do
not seem to even know where they are. Thanks to the new
possibilities opened up by Perestroika and the thawing of
Soviet-Israeli and Polish-Israeli relations, we may hope that the
historians and archivists of the Yad Vashem will succeed in
recovering a valuable documentation that has so far remained
unpublished.
The present work will certainly open the way
for other researchers to go more deeply into or modify some
investigations or conclusions, and go further than Jean-Claude
Pressac in the study of some particular problem or other. But we are
certain that his book will remain a reference work pointing the way.
In the last part of it, Jean-Claude Pressac relates with sincerity
the personal path that led him, a Frenchman, not a Jew, of
conservative political inclinations, to concentrate for so many
years on a problem that is of such great concern to the Jewish
people.
For our part, we shall continue through our actions
and through our publications to strive for justice, commemoration and
historical truth |
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| Beate and Serge KLARSFELD |
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¹Table summarizing the findings of Georges Welters’
research:
Number of deaths at
Auschwitz |
|
Category |
Total Number of
deportees |
Number of Dead |
Total dead |
Total survivors |
| In gas
chambers |
other
causes |
| Jews |
1,433,405 |
1,323,000 |
92.3% |
29,980 |
2.3% |
1,352,980 |
94.4% |
80,425 |
5.6% |
| "Poles" + EH* |
142,940 |
3,665 |
2.5% |
83,010 |
56.6% |
83,010 |
58.1% |
59,930 |
40.9% |
| Gypsies |
21,665 |
6,430 |
29.6% |
13,825 |
63.8% |
20,255 |
93.5% |
1,410 |
6.5% |
| Russians |
11,780 |
1,605 |
13.6% |
10,080 |
85.6% |
11,685 |
99.2% |
96 |
0.8% |
| TOTAL |
1,613,455 |
1,334,700 |
82.7% |
136,895 |
8.5% |
1471,595 |
92.1% |
141,860 |
8.8% |
* EH = Erziehungshäftlinge= (prisoners interned
for reeducation).
It should be pointed out that the great
historian Raul Hilberg estimates the number of Jews who entered
Auschwitz Birkenau at between 1,050,000 and 1,100,000
(Le Nouvel
Observateur 3rd July 1982).
|
AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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