Did Six Million Really Die?
Truth at Last–Exposed:
( Part 8 of 9 )
Continued from Part 7
‘SIX MILLION’ FALSEHOOD REJECTED
As for the fearful propaganda figure of the Six Million, Professor
Rassinier rejects it on the basis of an extremely detailed statistical analysis.
He shows that the number has been falsely established, on the one hand through
inflation of the pre-war Jewish population by ignoring all emigration and
evacuation, and on the other by a corresponding deflation of the number of
survivors after 1945. This was the method used by the World Jewish Congress.
Rassinier also rejects any written or oral testimony to the Six Million
given by the kind of “witnesses” cited above, since they are full
of contradictions, exaggerations and falsehoods. He gives the example of
Dachau casualties, noting that in 1946, Pastor Niemöller reiterated
Auerbach’s fraudulent “238,000” deaths there, while in 1962 Bishop
Neuhäusseler of Munich stated in a speech at Dachau that only 30,000
people died “of the 200,000 persons from thirty-eight nations who were
interned there” (Le Drame des Juifs européen, p. 12). Today,
the estimate has been reduced by several more thousands, and so it goes on.
Rassinier concludes, too, that testimony in support of the Six Million given
by accused men such as Hoess, Hoettl, Wisliceny and Hoellriegel, who were
faced with the prospect of being condemned to death or with the hope of obtaining
a reprieve, and who were frequently tortured during their detention, is completely
untrustworthy. Rassinier finds it very significant that the figure of Six
Million was not mentioned in court during the Eichmann trial. “The prosecution
at the Jerusalem trial was considerably weakened by its central motif, the
six million European Jews alleged to have been exterminated in gas chambers.
It was an argument that easily won conviction the day after the war ended,
amidst the general state of spiritual and material chaos. Today, many documents
have been published which were not available at the time of the Nuremberg
trials, and which tend to prove that if the Jewish nationals were wronged
and persecuted by the Hitler regime, there could not possibly have been six
millions victims” (ibid., p. 125). With the help of one hundred pages
of cross-checked statistics, Professor Rassinier concludes in Le Drame des
Juifs européen that the number of Jewish casualties during the Second
World War could not have exceeded 1,200,000, and he notes that this has finally
been accepted as valid by the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation
at Paris. However, he regards such a figure as a maximum limit, and refers
to the lower estimate of 896,892 casualties in a study of the same problem
by the Jewish statistician Raul Hilberg. Rassinier points out that the State
of Israel nevertheless continues to claim compensation for six million dead, each
one representing an indemnity of 5,000 marks.
EMIGRATION: THE FINAL SOLUTION Prof. Rassinier is emphatic in
stating that the German Government never had any policy other than the emigration
of Jews overseas. He shows that after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Race
Laws in September, 1935, the Germans negotiated with the British for the transfer
of German Jews to Palestine on the basis of the Balfour Declaration. When
this failed, they asked other countries to take charge of them, but these
refused (ibid., p. 20). The Palestine project was revived in 1938, but broke
down because Germany could not negotiate their departure on the basis of
3,000,000 marks, as demanded by Britain, without some agreement for compensation.
Despite these difficulties, Germany did manage to secure the emigration of
the majority of their Jews, mostly to the United States. Rassinier also refers
to the French refusal of Germany’s Madagascar plan at the end of 1940. “In
a report of the 21st August, 1942, the Secretary of State for the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, Luther, decided that it would be possible
to negotiate with France in this direction and described conversations which
had taken place between July and December, 1940, and which were brought to
a halt following the interview with Montoire on 13th December 1940 by Pierre-Etienne
Flandin, Laval’s successor. During the whole of 1941 the Germans hoped that
they would be able to re-open these negotiations and bring them to a happy
conclusion” (ibid., p. 108). After the outbreak of war, the Jews, who,
as Rassinier reminds us, had declared economic and financial war on Germany
as early as 1933, were interned in concentration camps, “which is the
way countries all over the world treat enemy aliens in time of war...
It was decided to regroup them and put them to work in one immense ghetto
which, after the successful invasion of Russia, was situated towards the
end of 1941 in the so-called Eastern territories near the former frontier
between Russia and Poland: at Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Maidanek, Treblinka
etc. There they were to wait until the end of the war for the re-opening
of international discussions which would decide their future” (Le Véritable
Proces Eichmann, p. 20). The order for this concentration in the eastern
ghetto was given by Goering to Heydrich, as noted earlier, and it was regarded
as a prelude to “the desired final solution,” their emigration
overseas after the war had ended.
ENORMOUS FRAUD Of great concern to Professor Rassinieris
the way in which the extermination legend is deliberately exploited for political
and financial advantage, and in this he finds Israel and the Soviet Union
to be in concert. He notes how, after 1950, an avalanche of fabricated extermination
literature appeared under the stamp of two organisations, so remarkably synchronised
in their activities that one might well believe them to have been contrived
in partnership. One was the “Committee for the Investigation of War
Crimes and Criminals” established under Communist auspices at Warsaw,
and the other, the “World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation”
at Paris and Tel-Aviv. Their publications seem to appear at favourable moments
in the political climate, and for the Soviet Union their purpose is simply
to maintain the threat of Nazism as a manoeuvre to divert attention from
their own activities. As for Israel, Rassinier sees the myth of the Six Million
as inspired by a purely material problem. In Le Drame des Juifs européen
(p. 31, 39). he writes: “... It is simply a question of justifying
by a proportionate number of corpses the enormous subsidies which Germany
has been paying annually since the end of the war to the State of Israel
by way of reparation for injuries which moreover she cannot be held to have
caused her either morally or legally, since there was no State of Israel
at the time the alleged deeds took place; thus it is a purely and contemptibly
material problem. Perhaps I may be allowed to recall here that the
State of Israel was only founded in May 1948 and that the Jews were nationals
of all states with the exception of Israel, in order to underline the dimensions
of a fraud which defies description in any language; on the one hand Germany
pays to Israel sums which are calculated on six million dead, and on the
other, since at least four-fifths of these six million were decidedly alive
at the end of the war, she is paying substantial sums by way of reparation
to the victims of Hitler’s Germany to those who are still alive in countries
all over the world other than Israel and to the rightful claimants of those
who have since deceased, which means that for the former (i.e., the six million),
or in other words, for the vast majority, she is paying twice.”
CONCLUSION Here we may briefly summarise the data on Jewish
war-time casualties. Contrary to the figure of over 9 million Jews in German-occupied
territory put forward at the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, it has already
been established that after extensive emigration, approximately 3 million
were living in Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Even when the Jews of
German-occupied Russia are included (the majority of Russian Jews were evacuated
beyond German control), the overall number probably does not exceed four
million. Himmler’s statistician, Dr. Richard Korherr and the World Centre
of Contemporary Jewish Documentation put the number respectively at 5,550,000
and 5,294,000 when German-occupied territory was at its widest, but both
these figures include the two million Jews of the Baltic and western Russia
without paying any attention to the large number of these who were evacuated.
However, it is at least an admission from the latter organisation that there
were not even six million Jews in Europe and western Russia combined. Nothing
better illustrates the declining plausibility of the Six Million legend than
the fact that the prosecution at the Eichmann trial deliberately avoided
mentioning the figure. Moreover, official Jewish estimates of the casualties
are being quietly revised downwards. Our analysis of the population and emigration
statistics, as well as the studies by the Swiss Baseler Nachrichten and Professor
Rassinier, demonstrate that it would have been simply impossible for the
number of Jewish casualties to have exceeded a limit of one and a half million.
It is very significant, therefore, that the World Centre of Contemporary
Jewish Documentation in Paris now states that only 1,485,292 Jews died from
all causes during the Second World War, and although this figure is certainly
too high, at least it bears no resemblance at all to the legendary Six Million.
As has been noted earlier, the Jewish statistician Raul Hilberg estimates
an even lower figure of 896,892. This is beginning to approach a realistic
figure, and the process of revision is certain to continue. Doubtless, several
thousand Jewish persons did die in the course of the Second World War, but
this must be seen in the context of a war that cost many millions of innocent
victims on all sides. To put the matter in perspective, for example, we may
point out that 700,000 Russian civilians died during the siege of Leningrad,
and a total of 2,050,000 German civilians were killed in Allied air raids
and forced repatriation after the war. In 1955, another neutral Swiss source,
Die Tat of Zurich (January 19th, 1955), in a survey of all Second World War
casualties based on figures of the International Red Cross, put the “Loss
of victims of persecution because of politics, race or religion who died
in prisons and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945” at 300,000,
not all of whom were Jews, and this figure seems the most accurate assessment.
IMAGINARY SLAUGHTER The question most pertinent to the extermination
legend is, of course: how many of the 3 million European Jews under German
control survived after 1945? The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee estimated
the number of survivors in Europe to be only one and a half million, but
such a figure is now totally unacceptable. This is proved by the growing
number of Jews claiming compensation from the West German Government for
having allegedly suffered between 1939 and 1945. By 1965, the number of these
claimants registered with the West German Government had tripled in ten years
and reached 3,375,000 (Aufbau, June 30th, 1965). Nothing could be a more
devastating proof of the brazen fantasy of the Six Million. Most of these
claimants are Jews, so there can be no doubt that the majority of the 3 million
Jews who experienced the Nazi occupation of Europe are, in fact, very much
alive. It is a resounding confirmation of the fact that Jewish casualties
during the Second World War can only be estimated at a figure in thousands.
Surely this is enough grief for the Jewish people? Who has the right to compound
it with vast imaginary slaughter, marking with eternal shame a great European
nation, as well as wringing fraudulent monetary compensation from them?
Richard Harwood is a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of
the Second World War. At present he is with the University of London. Mr. Harwood
turned to the vexed subject of war crimes under the influence of
Professor Paul Rassineir, to whose monumental work this little volume is
greatly indebted. The author is now working on a sequel in this series on
the Main Nuremberg Trial, 1945–1946.
COMMENTS ABOUT DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE?
Dr. Kuang Fann – Professor of Philosophy at York University of
Canada, formerly China: “The whole pamphlet... obviously should be
classified as a political opinion...”
Ditlieb Felderer – Historical Researcher, Writer, Sweden:
“... the booklet has proven to be more true as the years have gone by, and
it is exterminationists who are coming now to start arguing like Harwood
did when the booklet was first published, so the exterminationists are moving...
toward the booklet more and more.”
Dr. Robert Faurisson – Expert of Ancient Texts and Documents, Lyon
University: “The thesis of the book is that it’s not true that six million
Jews died, and it is not true that there was an extermination plan, and it
is not true that there were gas chambers. What I find right is, first, the
title. The title is good. Did Six Million Really Die? That’s really
the problem... This man, Richard Harwood, brought plenty of information
for the layman in ’74. He said in ’74 that there were no order(s) from Hitler
to exterminate the Jews. Three years after, when David Irving said it, it
was an uproar, so it was really new and true. We know it now in 1988...
this... was so important that when it was published in France, the man
who distributed (it was) murdered... Francoise Duprat. We don’t know who
exactly did that, but the interesting point is, first, that it has been done
by people very clever in those kind of bomb handling, and what was published
in the journal Le Monde after was interesting. This murder was re-vindicated
by a so-called ‘Memory of Auschwitz’ organization. It was justified
by a man called Patrick Chairoff—saying that Francoise Duprat, in distributing
this kind of pamphlet, had taken a responsibility which kills.“
David Irving – British Historian, author of over 30 books on
WW II and its aftermath: “... I read it with great interest and I
must say that I was surprised by the quality of the arguments that it represented.
It has obvious flaws. It uses sources that I personally would not use. In
fact, the entire body of sources is different. This is based entirely on
secondary literature, books by other people, including some experts, whereas
I use no books. I use just the archives. But independently, the author of
this came to conclusions and asked questions of a logical nature which I
had arrived at by an entirely different route, so to speak ... And if I
was to ask what is the value of a brochure like this, I think it is that
it provokes people to ask questions, rather as my book on Hitler’s War provoked
the historians... This is the kind of value which I found this brochure
to have. It was asking proper questions on the basis of an entirely different
set of sources.”
Mark Weber – American Historian, Author: “I believe that
the thesis of the booklet is accurate ... that there was no German policy
or program to exterminate the Jews during the Second World War... The booklet
is a journalistic or a polemic account that is designed to convince people,
and it does not purport to be a work that can be held up to the same standards
of rigid scrutiny that a scholarly work and a detailed work by someone who
is a historian normally would be ... its main value lies in encouraging further
discussion and thought and debate on the subject it raises.”
Colin Wilson – Well-known British author: “... I received
in the post a pamphlet... entitled Did Six Million Really Die? I must admit
that it has left me thoroughly bewildered. What Harwood says, briefly, is
that Hitler had no reason to murder Jews when he needed them for forced labour...
It is worth asking the question: Did the Nazis really exterminate six
million Jews? Or is this another sign of the emotional historical distortion
that makes nearly all the books on Hitler so far almost worthless? ... Is
there, then, any reason why we should be afraid to dig down until we get
at the truth?”
WHAT’S WRONG WITH Did Six Million Really Die? After 10 years
of wrangling, what follows is the essence of what was found wrong with the
pamphlet by the prosecution witnesses. In italics are the primary parts of
the pamphlet disputed by the prosecution followed by evidence given
by expert witnesses on both sides.
1. By 1939, the great majority of German
Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizeable proportion of their assets.
Never at any time had the Nazi leadership even contemplated a policy of genocide
towards them... Had Hitler cherished any intention of exterminating the
Jews, it is inconceivable that he would have allowed more than 800,000 to
leave Reich territory with the bulk of their wealth. (p. 5, 6)
Prosecution historian Christopher Browning’s opinion was that
slightly over half of German Jews emigrated by 1939. Browning testified
that the figure 800,000 was an exaggeration; by 1941, the total of Jews
who had left Germany, Austria and the Protectorates was 530,000. Because
of measures taken against them, it was false to say they left with a “sizeable
proportion” of their assets. Browning admitted under cross-examination,
however, that he was not a demographer nor a statisticion and that any
population statistics concerning Jews could only be estimates. He also
admitted that he could not give a precise percentage or even proportion
of their assets Jews left with. He only knew that considerable efforts
were made to prevent property getting out.
2. The founder of political Zionism in the 19th century, Theodore Herzl, in
his work The Jewish State, had originally conceived of Madagascar as a national
homeland for the Jews, and this possibility was seriously studied by the
Nazis. It had been a main plank of the National Socialist party platform before
1933 and was published by the party in pamphlet form. (p. 5)
Browning testified it was not a plank of the Nazi Party platform
before 1933 that the Jews go to Madagascar as a national homeland. The
first time a Nazi leader mentioned Madagascar was 1938. The first time
there was a plan for Madagascar was 1940.
3. The fall of France in 1940 enabled the German Government to open serious negotiations
with the French for the transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum
of August, 1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in the German Foreign Office,
reveals that he had conducted these negotiations between July and December,
1940, when they were terminated by the French. (p. 7)
Browning testified that there were no such negotiations with
the French. The Madagascar Plan failed because of continuing British control
of the high seas.
4. Reitlinger and Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded supposition that
because the Madagascar Plan had been shelved, the Germans must necessarily have
been thinking of “extermination”. Only a month later, however, on
March 7th, 1942, Goebbels wrote a memorandum in favour of the Madagascar Plan
as a “final solution” of the Jewish question (Manvell & Frankl,
Dr. Goebbels, London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he approved of the Jews
being “concentrated in the East”. Later Goebbels memoranda also
stress deportation to the East (i.e. the Government-General of Poland) and
lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labour there; once the policy of
evacuation to the East had been inaugurated, the use of Jewish labour became
a fundamental part of the operation. (p. 7)
Browning said that Goebbels did not write a “memorandum”,
he wrote a “diary entry.” Goebbels did not lay emphasis on the
need for compulsory labour but said exactly the opposite; for example,
on March 27, 1942, he wrote that 60% of the Jews will have to be liquidated
and 40% used for forced labour. Browning admitted he had never checked
the authenticity of the original Goebbels diaries but had accepted the
commercial printed version. Historian Weber testified there was great doubt
about the authenticity of the entire Goebbels diaries because they were
typewritten. There was therefore no way to verify their authenticity. The
U.S. Government itself indicated that it would take no responsibility for
the accuracy of the diaries: the original clothbound edition contained
a U.S. Government statement that it “neither warrants nor disclaims
the authenticity of the manuscript”. Browning relied on other documents
such as the Seraphim report to show that the Germans did not put priority
on using Jews for labour. Historian Weber disagreed with this opinion.
In his view, the Jews were a valuable source of labour for the Germans;
Himmler himself ordered that concentration camp inmates be used as extensively
as possible in war production.
5. Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere known in
precise detail, approximations for various countries differing widely, and
it is also unknown exactly how many Jews were deported and interned at any
one time between the years 1939–1945. In general, however, what reliable statistics
there are, especially those relating to emigration, are sufficient to show
that not a fraction of six million Jews could have been exterminated. (p. 7)
Browning testified that contemporary German statistical studies
showed that there were enough Jews in Europe to exterminate 6 million of
them. These studies were: (a) the Burgdörfer Study (estimated that
there were about 10.72 million Jews in Europe); (b) Madagascar Plan
(4 million Jews under German control in 1940); (c) Wannsee conference protocol
(11 million Jews). In Browning’s opinion, even the German studies done
at the time showed in the area of 10 million Jews under German control
in Europe. Therefore, 6 million could have been exterminated. He admitted,
again, that he was not a demographer or a statistician and that the problem
of changing borders and the various definitions of “Jew” made
any conclusions in this area difficult to the point that they could only
be estimates.
6. According to Chambers Encyclopaedia, the total number of Jews living in
pre-war Europe was 6,500,000. (p. 7)
Chambers Encyclopedia dealt only with the total number of Jews
living on the continent of Europe apart from Russia, not the total number
living in pre-war Europe as stated by the pamphlet.
7. In addition to the German Jews, 220,000 of the total 280,000 Austrian Jews
had emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the Institute
for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the emigration of 260,000 Jews
from former Czechoslovakia. In all, only 360,000 Jews remained in Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia after September, 1939. (p. 7, 8)
These numbers did not accord with the German studies done at
the time, Browning testified. A comparison with the Wannsee Conference
protocol statistics showed that 360,000 Jews had emigrated from Germany;
147,000 had emigrated from Austria; 30,000 had emigrated from the Protectorate.
These figures were all much lower than Harwood’s figures.
8. In addition to these emigrants, we must also include the number of Jews
who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were later evacuated beyond
reach of the German invaders. It will be shown below that the majority of
these, about 1,250,000, were migrants from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger
admits that 300,000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory between
1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants to the Soviet Union
to about 1,550,000. (p. 8)
Browning testified that the reference to Reitlinger was a mis-cite;
Reitlinger said that 300,000 Polish Jews in total fled to the Soviet Union,
not “other European Jews” as stated by Harwood. The figure of
1,250,000 given by Harwood was therefore 5 times too high.
9. The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of Jews at
2,732,600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, p. 36). (p. 8)
Hilberg testified that this was wrong; in fact, the figure of
2,732,600 came from a census taken in the 1920s.
10. When the Jewish populations of Holland (140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy
(50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000), Hungary (380,000) and Roumania (725,000) are
included, the figure does not much exceed 3 million. (p. 8)
These statistics were not in accord with the Nazis’ own statistics,
said Browning. For example, the German statistics for 1942 listed the Jewish
population of Hungary at 743,800. German records of the deportations from
Hungary showed more Jews were deported than the number given by Harwood
as the Jewish population of Hungary.
11. So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of the mass
murder of Jews in war-time Europe was made by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin
in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in New York in 1943.
(p. 9)
Continue to Part 9