Eichmann in Jerusalem

[michael mills]

Demonio wrote:

But Auschwitz came to be under the RSHA jurisdiction once the extermination program was drafted.

Demonio continues to display his abysmal ignorance, as if he were somehow proud of it.

And that is not a personal attack, simply a statement of fact about the quality of knowledge that he has displayed. He may well be a really sweet guy; but he just does not anything about the command structure of the German concentration camp system, and stubbornly refuses to learn.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau complex was subject to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps located in the WVHA throughout its existence. It was never under RSHA jurisdiction.

The only Jewish locality under RSHA administration was the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Every concentration camp had on its staff a security detachment, nicknamed the "camp Gestapo", that was responsible for security. This detachment did report to the RSHA. Its role was to keep a watch out for any signs of rebellion by the prisoners, any sign of subversion, escape attempts etc, ie normal security work. To that end those detachments carried out interrogations of suspected prisoners, often very brutally; its members were feared in the camp.

But the "camp Gestapo" was not responsible for the general treatment of the prisoners, for their assignment for labour, for their selection as fit or unfit for work, nor for the operation of Aktion 14f13 under which prisoners unable to work were killed by gassing or lethal injection.

All killings of camp inmates or new arrivals unable to work weres carried out by "Sanitaeter", members of the camp medical and hygiene staff, under the supervision of the camp doctors. The "Sanitaeter" performed both the lethal injections and the gassings; they had been trained in the use of Zyklon-B for hygienic purposes.

The camp medical staff was quite clearly subject to the Camp Commandant, and ultimately to the WVHA and the Reichsarzt-SS. There is no evidence that they were subject to RSHA authority in any way.

All the documentary evidence shows a chain of command from the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps, located at Oranienburg, to all the concentration camps including Auschwitz.

For example, when the Auschwitz camp administration needed some Zyklon-B, it applied to the Inspectorate at Oranienburg. The Inspectorate then sent back an authorisation for Auschwitz to send a truck to the manufacturing plant at Dessau to pick up a designated quantity, which would then be offset against the Waffen-SS share of the allocation to the Wehrmacht hygienic service. The Waffen-SS officer responsible for procuring Zyklon-B was the head of the SS sanitation service, Kurt Gerstein. Contrary to Demonio's betises, the RSHA had nothing to do with the procurement of Zyklon-B.

The only thing Demonio got right was his assertion that the RSHA was responsible for organising transports of Jews to Auschwitz. Yes, Eichmann's office in the RSHA was reponsible for organising deportations, of Jews to others, to Auschwitz and to other locations in the Occupied Eastern Territories. The decision on what happened to the deportees was made by the local authorities, not by the RSHA.

Demonio may well have been led astray by the successful defence gambit meployed by Pohl and other WVHA officials at their Nuremberg trial. They claimed that, although their office, the WVHA, administered all aspects of the camps, including the use of prisoners for slave labour, the extermination of prisoners was a separate activity run by the RSHA, outside their control.

The inexperienced American judges bought the false argument. Pohl was condemned to death, but for the death of slave labourers, not for extermination.

But the Pohl defence is demonstrably false. The extermination at Auschwitz of sick prisoners and others unable to work was simply the reverse side of the slave labour program; when prisoners became unable to work, or were assessed as unfit for work on their arrival, they were selected out by the camp doctors and killed by the camp medical staff. The extermination process was quite clearly carried out by camp staff subject to the WVHA, according to criteria related to the utilisation of prisoners for labour, which was quite clearly under Pohl's control.

Furthermore, it is documented that Pohl visited Auschwitz on 16 June 1944 and gave Hoess orders relating to the treatment of the Hungarian Jews who had started to arrive by then, including orders for the extension of the camp and for the repair of the cremation facilities. That demonstrates that Hoess was taking his orders from Pohl, not Eichmann.

I wonder what other idiocies Demonio will offer in response to this hard evidence.

[demonio]

Demonio may well have been led astray by the successful defence gambit meployed by Pohl and other WVHA officials at their Nuremberg trial. They claimed that, although their office, the WVHA, administered all aspects of the camps, including the use of prisoners for slave labour, the extermination of prisoners was a separate activity run by the RSHA, outside their control.

I like this one. Led astray by a successful defence. Look, Nuremberg was by no means perfect eg Killing Streicher, Sparing Speer. Does this mean there is no merit to it at all?

Also, what makes your statements "hard evidence". It's hard alright. Hard to comprehend. You conveniently choose to ignore any evidence that is out of step with your ideals of what happened.

[demonio]

Lets here it from the Horses mouth. The horse being Hoess


"Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until 12/1/1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, WVHA, that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision, and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA."

[michael mills]

Demonio wrote:

Also, what makes your statements "hard evidence". It's hard alright. Hard to comprehend. You conveniently choose to ignore any evidence that is out of step with your ideals of what happened.

The reason my statement about Pohl's visit to Auschwitz on 16 June 1944, on which occasion he gave orders to Hoess, is hard evidence is that it is based on a document, Nuremberg Document NO-2359, Aktenvermerk, Betr.: Besprechung anläßlich des Besuches des Hauptamtschefs, SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Pohl, über bauliche Belange in Auschwitz am 16.6. v. 17.6.1944 (Abschrift).

Does Demonio have any documentary evidence for his claim that Auschwitz was under the jurisdiction of the RSHA?

[michael mills]

Demonio wrote:

Lets here it from the Horses mouth. The horse being Hoess


"Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until 12/1/1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, WVHA, that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision, and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA."

Hoess's claim that the orders for gassing came from the RSHA was a falsehood. The claim that the gassing took place under the supervisoin of the RSHA is also false; homicidal gassings were carried out by the camp medical staff, under the supervision of the camp doctors.

It is comparable to his statement that mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941, which is also untrue. The first experiments with homicidal gassing did not take place until the late autumn of 1941, so there could not have been any mass gassings in the summer of 1941.

In fact the responsibility for carrying out selections to determine whether new arrivals were fit for labour rested with the camp staff in charge of labour allocation. They decided which arrivals would be used for labour, and they reported back to the WVHA how many had been selected from each incoming transport for labour, giving the reason why the remainder had not been selected, eg too old, too young, too weak etc. That suggests that the decision whether or not to gas a prisoner or preserve him for labour was made by the camp staff on their own responsibility, and not according to any order from the RSHA, and they were responsible to the WVHA for their decisions.

[demonio]

Demonio wrote:

Lets here it from the Horses mouth. The horse being Hoess


"Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until 12/1/1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, WVHA, that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision, and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA."

Hoess's claim that the orders for gassing came from the RSHA was a falsehood. The claim that the gassing took place under the supervisoin of the RSHA is also false; homicidal gassings were carried out by the camp medical staff, under the supervision of the camp doctors.

It is comparable to his statement that mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941, which is also untrue. The first experiments with homicidal gassing did not take place until the late autumn of 1941, so there could not have been any mass gassings in the summer of 1941.

In fact the responsibility for carrying out selections to determine whether new arrivals were fit for labour rested with the camp staff in charge of labour allocation. They decided which arrivals would be used for labour, and they reported back to the WVHA how many had been selected from each incoming transport for labour, giving the reason why the remainder had not been selected, eg too old, too young, too weak etc. That suggests that the decision whether or not to gas a prisoner or preserve him for labour was made by the camp staff on their own responsibility, and not according to any order from the RSHA, and they were responsible to the WVHA for their decisions.

Why would Hoess say this if its false ?

It serves no utilitarian value for him as he was involved with both departments.

[Lucius Felix Silla]

(...) Wolzek simply is an invention of Hoess.

You've raised an interesting issue, signore Silla:

The "Wolzek" Paradox

The second error is that the last camp named, "Wolzek," does not exist, and never existed. And from this apparent contradiction, deniers rush to conclusions. The conclusion they prefer is that Höß was tortured, and that his whole confession, and his testimony, indeed everything Höß ever said or wrote, is wrong.

Fortunately, an explanation that requires much less mental contortion is readily available. Not only was Höß not tortured into inventing "Wolzek" and then forced to write about that torture to unvex future historians, Höß was not tortured into inventing "Wolzek" in the first place. Because "Wolzek" is not an invention.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschw ... k-paradox/ by Jamie McCarthy

I known very well the essay by Jamie McCarthy.
I have precisely quoted the statement by Höß from this essay, as everyone can check.
This essay is, all in all, bad researched, highly conjectural and don't prove anything -in my opinion, naturally - more than personal opinions of Mr. McCarthy.
I must repeat that the mention of Wolzek by Hoess (or, more precisely, by his british captors) is an absurdity.
That Höß would say - as suspected by James McCarthy - Sobibor and not Wolzek is only one hypothesis (not new, perhaps, because , Adalbert Rueckerl have advanced this thesis in "NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, Munchen, 1979, p. 38) nothing more.

McCarthy stress that "the paradox is resolved by reading the interrogation transcript [where only Treblinka and Belzak,sic, are mentioned, but neither Wolzek nor Sobibor] and looking at the map. The camp [Sobibor, because Wolzek - i repeat - don't exist, NB] was there. It was not invented, just misnamed [sic!]."

In reality Höß insist about the existence of Wolzek (sometimes also called by him Wolzec, but this can be an error of translation) THREE TIMES, in THREE DISTINCTS DATES!:
- in Nur. doc. NO-1210 (interrogation dated 20 march 1946)
- in Nur. doc. PS-3868 ( statement to the IMT court dated 5 april 1946)
- in Nur. doc. NO-034 (affidavit dated 20 may 1946).

And after all this McCarthy have also the courage of stress "Fortunately, an explanation that requires much less mental contortion is readily available."(sic!).

But let's go to a more deep analysis of Höß statements.

<<In the summer of 1941 (1), I am unable to recall the exact date, I was suddenly ordered by Himmler's adjutant to report directly to the Reichsführer SS in Berlin.Contrary to his usual custom, his adjutant was not in the room. Himmler greeted me with the following: "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question.We the SS have to carry out this order. The existing extermination sites in the East are not in a position to carry out these intended operations on a large scale.I have, therefore, chosen Auschwitz for this purpose. (...) After your meeting with Eichmann I want you to immediately send me the plans of the intended installations. (...)
A short time after that Eichmann came to see me at Auschwitz.He revealed the secret plans of the police roundups in the individual countries. I cannot recall the exact sequence anymore. The Jews in eastern Upper Silesia were to be first, then the neighboring areas of the General Gouvernement [the southern part of Poland]. At the same time and according to their location, the Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia, and finally from the West, France, Belgium, and Holland, were to be sent to Auschwitz. He also mentioned to me the approximate numbers anticipated to be transported, but I don't recall the exact figures. We further discussed how the mass annihilation was to be carried out. Only gas was suitable since killing by shooting the huge numbers expected would be absolutely impossible and would also be a tremendous strain on the SS soldiers who would have to carry out the order as far as the women and children were concerned.
Eichmann told me about the killings by engine exhaust gas in the gas vans and how they had been used in the East up until now (5).But this method was not suitable in view of the expected mass transports to Auschwitz.We also discussed killing by carbon monoxide through the shower heads in the shower rooms, but this would also create a problem because too many intricate installations would be needed.(...). Eichmann wanted to find a gas that was easy to produce and one that would require no special installations; he then would report back to me. We drove around the Auschwitz area to locate a suitable place.We thought the farmhouse at the northwest corner of Birkenau near planned Section III would be suitable. The house had been abandoned, and it was hidden from view by the surrounding trees and bushes and not too far from the railroad.The bodies could be buried in long, deep pits in the nearby meadows. We didn't think about burning them at this time. We calculated that in the space available in the farmhouse [later called Bunker I], approximately eight hundred people could be killed using a suitable gas after the building was made airtight.We later found this to be the actual capacity. Eichmann was unable to tell me the precise starting time of the operation because everything was still being planned, and Himmler had not yet given the order to begin.
Eichmann returned to Berlin to report our meeting to Himmler (11).Several days later I sent a courier to Himmler with a detailed layout and an exact description of the designed installations.I never received a reply or a decision. Later on, Eichmann told me that Himmler agreed with my plan.At the end of November there was an official conference in Eichmann's Berlin office about the overall Jewish operation to which I was also invited. (..) Eichmann still had not found a suitable gas (12). (Death Dealer : The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. editor, Steven Paskuly - tr. Andrew Pollinger, Prometheus Books. Buffalo, NY, 1992 pp.26ssg.)>>
------
"The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe (2). I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941 (1). At that time (4), there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek (3). These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD (6). I visited Treblinka [in the spring of 1942, for NO-1210] to find out how they carried out their exterminations (7). The Camp commandant at treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year (8). He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto (9). He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient (10). So when i set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening." (PS-3868, IMT vol. XXXIII, p. 277).
------
(1) UNTRUE.
According to Gerald Reitlinger:
"Here, however, we come up against the testimony of a much-implicated person, Lt.-Colonel Rudolf Hoess, who was for three and a half years the commandant at Auschwitz and who took Gluecks's place as acting inspector, of concentration camps towards the end of the war. Hoess stated that he was summoned to Himmler's presence as early as June, 1941, when Auschwitz was-still a very small camp, and told that the extermination of the Jews of Europe would take place in Auschwitz because of its suitability as a railway junction. In July Hoess received further details from Eichmann, who visited him in the camp, but in the meantime Hoess had already been to Treblinka death camp in Poland to study gassing methods. Hoess came back with a poor opinion of Treblinka and decided to experiment on his own with 'Zyklon B' crystals, which he used effectively soon after Eichmann's visit.
Here then we have Himmler deciding on Auschwitz more than six months before the Gross-Wannsee conference and at a time when Heydrich had not received his brief for the 'Final Solution' from Goering. Hoess, however, though a very frank witness, had a habit of confusing several incidents together in his memory, for in another affidavit he declared that he went to Treblinka at a time when 80,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto had been exterminated, that is to say in August, 1942, nearly a year after his own first experimental use of 'Zyklon B.' This would confirm--as appears clear enough from other evidence--that it was in the summer of 1942 and not in the summer of 1941 that Himmler decided on Auschwitz as the extermination centre for the Jews of Western Europe, having in fact waited till Heydrich was dead."
( see The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. Gerald Reitlinger Beechhurst Press. New York. 1953. Pp.103- 104).
The explication given by Reitlinger (and also McCarthy) is simply unreliable.
Hoess have confirmed the date in NO-1210,PS-3868, NI-036, IMG vol.IX p.440, and in his memoirs three times.
Dating this a episode one year later, is even more contraddictory, because the convocation at Berlin in 1942, signify that the FIRST HOMICIDAL GASSING at Auschwitz (occured between Sept.3-5 1941 for Polish Authority of Auschwitz Musum) have been occurred BEFORE.
Also the construction of BUNKER I have been occurred before the SUMMER of 1942 (in March 1942 for Auschwitz Museum).
So Hoess would have be anticipated the order by telepathy!
So all in this untrue and the explications given are also more untrues.

(2) UNTRUE. The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in June 1941 signify the Madagaskar Plan or East Plan i.e. the trasnsfert of Jews to Madagascar or to the East, but not the phyical extermination of Jews.

(3) UNTRUE. Wolzek camp never existed.

(4) UNTRUE. Belzec was activated on date 17 march 1942.
Treblinka was activated on date 23 july 1942.

(5) UNTRUE. The Gaswagen was created by SS-Ober. Walter Rauff in september 1941 ( NS Masstoetungen durch Gifgas, p.82).

(6) UNTRUE. The camps of belzec and treblinka were under the exclusive control of the SS und Polizeifuhrer Odilo Globocnik (R. hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, 1961 ed. p. 572)

(7) UNTRUE. see above § 4.

(8) UNTRUE. As above.

(9) UNTRUE. As above.

(10) UNTRUE AND CONTRADDICTORY. Hoess would have been in Treblinka in the fall of 1941 and in spring 1942 at the same time!

(11)UNTRUE UNRELIABLE, CONTRADDICTORY All the episode is one falsification by Hoess, which have meet Eichmann for the first time after the date of 11 nov. 1943, when Hoess was transferred to SS WHVA (see L.Poliakov, Auschwitz, paris 1964 p.185). In reality, don't exist anyone document which attested anyone visit of Eichmann to Auschwitz.

(12) As above.

I limited here my analysis to these simple points, but also much other aspects of "Hoess memoirs"were and are only the result of the torture by his british captors and after of the fantasy of the Poish Authority.

Best Regards
LFS

[michael mills]

May I congratulate Lucius Felix Silla on a masterful analysis of the falsehoods in Hoeß's account, given in his November 1946 statement "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question at KL Auschwitz".

One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius. That is not surprising, since anyone who analyses the chronology of the claims made by Hoeß about the Himmler order, the visits by Eichmann, the alleged search for a gas, can only come to that conclusion.

On the surface, Reitlinger's solution seems plausible. An extermination order given by Himmler in the summer of 1942 would fit in with the known course of events (and in fact, Hoeß, in another statement "my Meetings with Himmler", claims that Himmler gave him the extermination order during his visit to Auschwitz in July 1942). Furthermore, the planning meeting in November referred to by Hoeß actually did take place, but in 1942, not 1941. Funnily, in his April 1946 interrogations by US intelligence, Hoeß actually said that the planning meeting took place in November 1942. Why did he change the date when he was in POlish captivity? Obviously because his Polish interrogators induced him to make the change.

The problem with Reitlinger's solution is that by the summer of 1942, Zyklon-B had been used for homicidal gassing, albeit on a small scale, for several months, since December 1941. Therefore everything Hoeß says about Eichmann looking for an appropriate gas and choosing the place for the gas-chamber is totally false.

Close analysis shows that Hoeß has combined two separate stories about the start of homicidal gassing with Zyklon-B, a true one and a false one.

The true story goes like this. Soviet POWs identified as dangerous fanatical Communists were being sent to Auschwitz for execution. At first they were shot. Then the camp staff decided to experiment with Zyklon-B, which they were already using for delousing. The experiments, carried out in the cellar of a building in the Auschwitz main camp, were a success, and gassing was used for the executions. Then Crematorium I was converted into a gas chamber by drilling holes in the ceiling. Finally, some time early in 1942, the gassing was relocated to a location near the new camp of Birkenau by converting a peasant house in the village of Brzezinka that was being demolished.

Note that the true story of the introduction of homicidal gassing involves the execution of Soviet POWs. It has nothing to do with a plan to exterminate Jews. Later, the gassing technology was also used for prisoners who had become sick and weak and were no longer able to work.

The false story is the one involving Eichmann, where Eichmann comes to Auschwitz, decides that gas will have to be used for the planned extermination of the Jews, helps to choose the site for the gas-chamber, and then goes off to find a suitable gas. All demonstrably false, since its chronology is all wrong.

The question is, why did Hoeß make up this false story involving Eichmann.

I doubt that Hoeß was lying on his own initiative. If so, why include the true story in his account? I believe that he told the true story, but his interrogators, first the British, then the Americans, and finally the Poles, simply refused to believe it. They had the pre-conceived notion that the extermination of the Jews was a grand plan decided at the centre of the German Government, and the decisions on gassing must have come from there. Accordingly, they required Hoeß to come up with a story that they believed to be the truth, so Hoeß made up the story about Eichmann coming to Auschwitz.

[chalutzim]

(...) One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius.(...)

There's a easy explanation for that touching concordance of souls: signore Silla had read your "analysis".

(...) That is not surprising, since anyone who analyses the chronology of the claims made by Hoeß about the Himmler order, the visits by Eichmann, the alleged search for a gas, can only come to that conclusion.(...)

"Anyone"? I may agree that for those who believe that the Wannsee Conference was a tea party with cookies attended by idle housewives it's easy to dismiss the whole that Hoess said.

[demonio]

(...) Wolzek simply is an invention of Hoess.

You've raised an interesting issue, signore Silla:

The "Wolzek" Paradox

The second error is that the last camp named, "Wolzek," does not exist, and never existed. And from this apparent contradiction, deniers rush to conclusions. The conclusion they prefer is that Höß was tortured, and that his whole confession, and his testimony, indeed everything Höß ever said or wrote, is wrong.

Fortunately, an explanation that requires much less mental contortion is readily available. Not only was Höß not tortured into inventing "Wolzek" and then forced to write about that torture to unvex future historians, Höß was not tortured into inventing "Wolzek" in the first place. Because "Wolzek" is not an invention.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschw ... k-paradox/ by Jamie McCarthy

I known very well the essay by Jamie McCarthy.
I have precisely quoted the statement by Höß from this essay, as everyone can check.
This essay is, all in all, bad researched, highly conjectural and don't prove anything -in my opinion, naturally - more than personal opinions of Mr. McCarthy.
I must repeat that the mention of Wolzek by Hoess (or, more precisely, by his british captors) is an absurdity.
That Höß would say - as suspected by James McCarthy - Sobibor and not Wolzek is only one hypothesis (not new, perhaps, because , Adalbert Rueckerl have advanced this thesis in "NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, Munchen, 1979, p. 38) nothing more.

McCarthy stress that "the paradox is resolved by reading the interrogation transcript [where only Treblinka and Belzak,sic, are mentioned, but neither Wolzek nor Sobibor] and looking at the map. The camp [Sobibor, because Wolzek - i repeat - don't exist, NB] was there. It was not invented, just misnamed [sic!]."

In reality Höß insist about the existence of Wolzek (sometimes also called by him Wolzec, but this can be an error of translation) THREE TIMES, in THREE DISTINCTS DATES!:
- in Nur. doc. NO-1210 (interrogation dated 20 march 1946)
- in Nur. doc. PS-3868 ( statement to the IMT court dated 5 april 1946)
- in Nur. doc. NO-034 (affidavit dated 20 may 1946).

And after all this McCarthy have also the courage of stress "Fortunately, an explanation that requires much less mental contortion is readily available."(sic!).

But let's go to a more deep analysis of Höß statements.

<<In the summer of 1941 (1), I am unable to recall the exact date, I was suddenly ordered by Himmler's adjutant to report directly to the Reichsführer SS in Berlin.Contrary to his usual custom, his adjutant was not in the room. Himmler greeted me with the following: "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question.We the SS have to carry out this order. The existing extermination sites in the East are not in a position to carry out these intended operations on a large scale.I have, therefore, chosen Auschwitz for this purpose. (...) After your meeting with Eichmann I want you to immediately send me the plans of the intended installations. (...)
A short time after that Eichmann came to see me at Auschwitz.He revealed the secret plans of the police roundups in the individual countries. I cannot recall the exact sequence anymore. The Jews in eastern Upper Silesia were to be first, then the neighboring areas of the General Gouvernement [the southern part of Poland]. At the same time and according to their location, the Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia, and finally from the West, France, Belgium, and Holland, were to be sent to Auschwitz. He also mentioned to me the approximate numbers anticipated to be transported, but I don't recall the exact figures. We further discussed how the mass annihilation was to be carried out. Only gas was suitable since killing by shooting the huge numbers expected would be absolutely impossible and would also be a tremendous strain on the SS soldiers who would have to carry out the order as far as the women and children were concerned.
Eichmann told me about the killings by engine exhaust gas in the gas vans and how they had been used in the East up until now (5).But this method was not suitable in view of the expected mass transports to Auschwitz.We also discussed killing by carbon monoxide through the shower heads in the shower rooms, but this would also create a problem because too many intricate installations would be needed.(...). Eichmann wanted to find a gas that was easy to produce and one that would require no special installations; he then would report back to me. We drove around the Auschwitz area to locate a suitable place.We thought the farmhouse at the northwest corner of Birkenau near planned Section III would be suitable. The house had been abandoned, and it was hidden from view by the surrounding trees and bushes and not too far from the railroad.The bodies could be buried in long, deep pits in the nearby meadows. We didn't think about burning them at this time. We calculated that in the space available in the farmhouse [later called Bunker I], approximately eight hundred people could be killed using a suitable gas after the building was made airtight.We later found this to be the actual capacity. Eichmann was unable to tell me the precise starting time of the operation because everything was still being planned, and Himmler had not yet given the order to begin.
Eichmann returned to Berlin to report our meeting to Himmler (11).Several days later I sent a courier to Himmler with a detailed layout and an exact description of the designed installations.I never received a reply or a decision. Later on, Eichmann told me that Himmler agreed with my plan.At the end of November there was an official conference in Eichmann's Berlin office about the overall Jewish operation to which I was also invited. (..) Eichmann still had not found a suitable gas (12). (Death Dealer : The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. editor, Steven Paskuly - tr. Andrew Pollinger, Prometheus Books. Buffalo, NY, 1992 pp.26ssg.)>>
------
"The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe (2). I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941 (1). At that time (4), there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek (3). These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD (6). I visited Treblinka [in the spring of 1942, for NO-1210] to find out how they carried out their exterminations (7). The Camp commandant at treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year (8). He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto (9). He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient (10). So when i set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening." (PS-3868, IMT vol. XXXIII, p. 277).
------
(1) UNTRUE.
According to Gerald Reitlinger:
"Here, however, we come up against the testimony of a much-implicated person, Lt.-Colonel Rudolf Hoess, who was for three and a half years the commandant at Auschwitz and who took Gluecks's place as acting inspector, of concentration camps towards the end of the war. Hoess stated that he was summoned to Himmler's presence as early as June, 1941, when Auschwitz was-still a very small camp, and told that the extermination of the Jews of Europe would take place in Auschwitz because of its suitability as a railway junction. In July Hoess received further details from Eichmann, who visited him in the camp, but in the meantime Hoess had already been to Treblinka death camp in Poland to study gassing methods. Hoess came back with a poor opinion of Treblinka and decided to experiment on his own with 'Zyklon B' crystals, which he used effectively soon after Eichmann's visit.
Here then we have Himmler deciding on Auschwitz more than six months before the Gross-Wannsee conference and at a time when Heydrich had not received his brief for the 'Final Solution' from Goering. Hoess, however, though a very frank witness, had a habit of confusing several incidents together in his memory, for in another affidavit he declared that he went to Treblinka at a time when 80,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto had been exterminated, that is to say in August, 1942, nearly a year after his own first experimental use of 'Zyklon B.' This would confirm--as appears clear enough from other evidence--that it was in the summer of 1942 and not in the summer of 1941 that Himmler decided on Auschwitz as the extermination centre for the Jews of Western Europe, having in fact waited till Heydrich was dead."
( see The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. Gerald Reitlinger Beechhurst Press. New York. 1953. Pp.103- 104).
The explication given by Reitlinger (and also McCarthy) is simply unreliable.
Hoess have confirmed the date in NO-1210,PS-3868, NI-036, IMG vol.IX p.440, and in his memoirs three times.
Dating this a episode one year later, is even more contraddictory, because the convocation at Berlin in 1942, signify that the FIRST HOMICIDAL GASSING at Auschwitz (occured between Sept.3-5 1941 for Polish Authority of Auschwitz Musum) have been occurred BEFORE.
Also the construction of BUNKER I have been occurred before the SUMMER of 1942 (in March 1942 for Auschwitz Museum).
So Hoess would have be anticipated the order by telepathy!
So all in this untrue and the explications given are also more untrues.

(2) UNTRUE. The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in June 1941 signify the Madagaskar Plan or East Plan i.e. the trasnsfert of Jews to Madagascar or to the East, but not the phyical extermination of Jews.

(3) UNTRUE. Wolzek camp never existed.

(4) UNTRUE. Belzec was activated on date 17 march 1942.
Treblinka was activated on date 23 july 1942.

(5) UNTRUE. The Gaswagen was created by SS-Ober. Walter Rauff in september 1941 ( NS Masstoetungen durch Gifgas, p.82).

(6) UNTRUE. The camps of belzec and treblinka were under the exclusive control of the SS und Polizeifuhrer Odilo Globocnik (R. hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, 1961 ed. p. 572)

(7) UNTRUE. see above § 4.

(8) UNTRUE. As above.

(9) UNTRUE. As above.

(10) UNTRUE AND CONTRADDICTORY. Hoess would have been in Treblinka in the fall of 1941 and in spring 1942 at the same time!

(11)UNTRUE UNRELIABLE, CONTRADDICTORY All the episode is one falsification by Hoess, which have meet Eichmann for the first time after the date of 11 nov. 1943, when Hoess was transferred to SS WHVA (see L.Poliakov, Auschwitz, paris 1964 p.185). In reality, don't exist anyone document which attested anyone visit of Eichmann to Auschwitz.

(12) As above.

I limited here my analysis to these simple points, but also much other aspects of "Hoess memoirs"were and are only the result of the torture by his british captors and after of the fantasy of the Poish Authority.

Best Regards
LFS

Hoess lying served no Utilitarian value and convergence of other testimonies and documents generally support his version of events

[demonio]

May I congratulate Lucius Felix Silla on a masterful analysis of the falsehoods in Hoeß's account, given in his November 1946 statement "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question at KL Auschwitz".

One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius. That is not surprising, since anyone who analyses the chronology of the claims made by Hoeß about the Himmler order, the visits by Eichmann, the alleged search for a gas, can only come to that conclusion.

On the surface, Reitlinger's solution seems plausible. An extermination order given by Himmler in the summer of 1942 would fit in with the known course of events (and in fact, Hoeß, in another statement "my Meetings with Himmler", claims that Himmler gave him the extermination order during his visit to Auschwitz in July 1942). Furthermore, the planning meeting in November referred to by Hoeß actually did take place, but in 1942, not 1941. Funnily, in his April 1946 interrogations by US intelligence, Hoeß actually said that the planning meeting took place in November 1942. Why did he change the date when he was in POlish captivity? Obviously because his Polish interrogators induced him to make the change.

The problem with Reitlinger's solution is that by the summer of 1942, Zyklon-B had been used for homicidal gassing, albeit on a small scale, for several months, since December 1941. Therefore everything Hoeß says about Eichmann looking for an appropriate gas and choosing the place for the gas-chamber is totally false.

Close analysis shows that Hoeß has combined two separate stories about the start of homicidal gassing with Zyklon-B, a true one and a false one.

The true story goes like this. Soviet POWs identified as dangerous fanatical Communists were being sent to Auschwitz for execution. At first they were shot. Then the camp staff decided to experiment with Zyklon-B, which they were already using for delousing. The experiments, carried out in the cellar of a building in the Auschwitz main camp, were a success, and gassing was used for the executions. Then Crematorium I was converted into a gas chamber by drilling holes in the ceiling. Finally, some time early in 1942, the gassing was relocated to a location near the new camp of Birkenau by converting a peasant house in the village of Brzezinka that was being demolished.

Note that the true story of the introduction of homicidal gassing involves the execution of Soviet POWs. It has nothing to do with a plan to exterminate Jews. Later, the gassing technology was also used for prisoners who had become sick and weak and were no longer able to work.

The false story is the one involving Eichmann, where Eichmann comes to Auschwitz, decides that gas will have to be used for the planned extermination of the Jews, helps to choose the site for the gas-chamber, and then goes off to find a suitable gas. All demonstrably false, since its chronology is all wrong.

The question is, why did Hoeß make up this false story involving Eichmann.

I doubt that Hoeß was lying on his own initiative. If so, why include the true story in his account? I believe that he told the true story, but his interrogators, first the British, then the Americans, and finally the Poles, simply refused to believe it. They had the pre-conceived notion that the extermination of the Jews was a grand plan decided at the centre of the German Government, and the decisions on gassing must have come from there. Accordingly, they required Hoeß to come up with a story that they believed to be the truth, so Hoeß made up the story about Eichmann coming to Auschwitz.

To ignore and dismiss the testimonies and memoirs of Hoess as bogus or bunk or whatever the popular term "historians" such as yourself use is utterly ridiculous. Of course it should not be taken as gospel. Next you will be telling me that sections of the memoirs were written under duress again.

[demonio]

(...) One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius.(...)

There's a easy explanation for that touching concordance of souls: signore Silla had read your "analysis".

(...) That is not surprising, since anyone who analyses the chronology of the claims made by Hoeß about the Himmler order, the visits by Eichmann, the alleged search for a gas, can only come to that conclusion.(...)

"Anyone"? I may agree that for those who believe that the Wannsee Conference was a tea party with cookies attended by idle housewives it's easy to dismiss the whole that Hoess said.

Discussing this subject with people that conveniently ignore what does not fit their faith is akin to masturbating with a cheese grater

[demonio]

(...) One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius.(...)

There's a easy explanation for that touching concordance of souls: signore Silla had read your "analysis".



Birds of a feather....

[David Thompson]

demonio -- Please avoid personalizing the argument with coarse similes.

[Lucius Felix Silla]

(...) One of my first contributions to this forum was an analysis of that statment by Hoeß, and I came to essentially the same conclusion as Lucius.(...)

There's a easy explanation for that touching concordance of souls: signore Silla had read your "analysis".

(...) That is not surprising, since anyone who analyses the chronology of the claims made by Hoeß about the Himmler order, the visits by Eichmann, the alleged search for a gas, can only come to that conclusion.(...)

"Anyone"? I may agree that for those who believe that the Wannsee Conference was a tea party with cookies attended by idle housewives it's easy to dismiss the whole that Hoess said.

Dear Mr. Chalutzim,

I found Your hypothesis absolutely offensive. I don't have read none analysis of Mr. Michael Mills. I'm very grateful to Mr. Michael Mills if he can post here his back posts about this topic.
Mr. Michael Mills, have a very good knowledge of arguments but - with the greatest respect for his opinions - mine personal conclusions about the presumed gassing of Russians POW's in Block 11 are absolutely differents, because i suspect that this episode never occurred.
So, Mr. Chalutzim, You can post anyone arguments against my analisis and show me that Hoess memoirs are genuines and reliables or You can only advance simply offensive insinuations and totally inappropriate comments?

Best Regards
LFS