The 'Achilles heel' of 'THE holocaust' - witnesses!

[been-there]

The weakest part of the currently accepted 'holocaust' narrative is ironically the very thing presented as its strongest, viz. 'eye-witness testimony'.
The problem being that so much of it is demonstrably false, often physically impossible and unbelievable 'eye-witness testimony'.

I have recently posted the new to me quite incredible 'story' of how Lili Jakob - Meier - Zelmanovich claimed to have come into possession of a photo album from Auschwitz

There are many such similar cases. As is detailed here:

Gerald Reitlinger cautioned readers of his detailed study, The Final Solution, that Holocaust evidence, including Nuremberg documents and testimony, cannot be accepted at face value: "A certain degree of reserve is necessary in handling all this material, and particularly this applies to the last section (survivor narratives) ... The Eastern European Jew is a natural rhetorician, speaking in flowery similes." /56 French historian Jean-Claude Pressac likewise warned in his detailed book about Auschwitz that "extreme care is required with the testimony of survivors ..." /57

Jewish historian Hannah Arendt observed in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem that the "eyewitnesses" who testified in the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann were only rarely able to distinguish between what actually happened to them years earlier and what they had read, heard or imagined in the meantime. /58 Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz similarly noted that "the survivor's memory is often distorted by hate, sentimentality, and the passage of time. His perspective on external events is often skewed by the limits of his personal experience." /59

French historian Germain Tillion, a specialist of the Second World War period, has warned that former camp inmates who lie are, in fact, /60

very much more numerous than people generally suppose, and a subject like that of the concentration camp world -- well designed, alas, to stimulate sado-masochistic imaginations -- offered them an exceptional field of action. We have known numerous mentally damaged persons, half-swindlers and half fools, who exploited an imaginary deportation. We have known others of them -- authentic deportees -- whose sick minds strove to even go beyond the monstrosities that they had seen or that people said happened to them.

Jewish historian Samuel Gringauz, who was himself interned in the ghetto of Kaunas (Lithuania) during the war, criticized what he called the "hyperhistorical" nature of most Jewish "survivor testimony." He wrote that "most of the memoirs and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." /61

Shmuel Krakowki, archives director of the Israeli government's Holocaust center, Yad Vashem, confirmed in 1986 that more than 10,000 of the 20,000 "testimonies" of Jewish "survivors" on file there are "unreliable." Many survivors, wanting "to be part of history" may have let their imaginations run away with them, Krakowski said. "Many were never in the places where they claimed to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given them by friends or passing strangers." He confirmed that many of the testimonies on file at Yad Vashem were later proved to be inaccurate when locations and dates could not pass an expert historian's appraisal. /62

We now know that witnesses at the main uremberg trial gave false testimony. Perhaps the most obvious were the three witnesses who ostensibly confirmed German guilt for the Katyn massacre of Polish officers. /63

Stephen F. Pinter of St. Louis, Missouri, served as a US Army prosecuting attorney from January 1946 to July 1947 at the American trials of Germans at Dachau. Altogether, some 420 Germans were sentenced to death in these Dachau trials. In a 1960 affidavit Pinter stated that "notoriously perjured witnesses" were used to charge Germans with "false and unfounded" crimes. "Unfortunately, as a result of these miscarriages of justice, many innocent persons were convicted and some were executed." /64

A tragi-comic incident during the Dachau proceedings suggests the general atmosphere. US investigator Joseph Kirschbaum brought a Jewish witness named Einstein into court to testify that the defendant, Menzel, had murdered Einstein's brother. But when the accused pointed out that the brother was, in fact, sitting in the courtroom, an embarrassed Kirschbaum scolded the witness: "How can we bring this pig to the gallows if you are so stupid as to bring your brother into court?" /65

August Gross, a German who worked as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army at the Dachau trials, later declared: /66

The American prosecutors paid professional incrimination witnesses, mostly former criminal concentration camp inmates, the amount of one dollar per day (at that time worth 280 marks on the black market) as well as food from a witness kitchen and witness lodging. During the recess periods between trial proceedings the US prosecuting attorneys told these witnesses what they were to say in giving testimony. The US prosecuting attorneys gave the witnesses photos of the defendants and were thereby able to easily incriminate them.

A young US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947, Joseph Halow, later recalled the unwholesome situation:

The witnesses in the concentration camp cases were virtually all of the sort we court reporters termed "professional witnesses," those who spent months in Dachau, testifying against one or another of the many accused... It was to their economic advantage to testify, and many of them made a good living doing so. As one might well imagine, the motive of the professional witnesses was also one of spite and revenge... In many instances their vengeance included relating exaggerated accounts of what they had witnessed. It also included outright lying.

In one case, testimony provided by the prosecution witnesses "appeared to raise more questions then provide answers. Some of it was obviously fabricated, or so grossly exaggerated as to render it unbelievable. There were repeated instances of mistaken identity of the same accused, and vague, uncertain statements about some of the others." Moreover, Halow reported, the US courts paid "scant attention to testimony by and for the accused." /67

In the 1947 "Nordhausen-Dora" case, American defense attorney Major Leon B. Poullada protested against the general unreliability -- and frequent outright lying -- of prosecution witnesses in this US military trial of former concentration camp officials. /68

Use of such unreliable testimony continued in "Holocaust" trials in later years. Federal district judge Norman C. Roettger, Jr., ruled in 1978 in a Florida case that all six Jewish "eyewitnesses" who had testified to direct atrocities and shootings at reblinka by Ukrainian-born defendant Feodor Fedorenko had wrongly identified the accused after being misled by Israeli authorities. /69

New York "Nazi hunter" Charles Kremer visited Israel in 1981 looking for Jews who could confirm atrocities allegedly committed by a former Ukrainian SS man living in New Jersey. But Kremer cut short his visit, bitterly disappointed by the numerous Jews who offered to provide spurious "testimony" in return for money. As the Brooklyn Jewish Press reported, "Kremer was stricken with gastronomic pains -- a malady he attributes to his difficulties in dealing with hucksters who tried to use his search for their personal gain." /70

One of the most blatant examples of perjury by Jewish Holocaust witnesses in recent years was in the case of a retired Chicago factory worker named Frank Walus who was charged with killing Jews in his native Poland during the war. A December 1974 letter from "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal that accused Walus of working for the Gestapo prompted the US government's legal campaign. During his trial, eleven Jews testified under oath that they personally saw Walus murder Jews, including several children. After a costly and bitterly contested four-year legal battle, Walus was finally able to prove that he had actually spent the war years as a teenager quietly working on German farms. A lengthy article copyrighted by the American Bar Association and published in 1981 in the Washington Post concluded that "... in an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man." /71

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55. Raul Hilberg has noted that Martin Gilbert's 1985 book, The Holocaust, relies heavily on such questionable testimony. See interview with Hilberg in: "Recording the Holocaust," Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending June 28, 1986, pp. 8, 9.; On the general unreliability of "witness testimony," see Witness for the Defense (by E. Loftus & K. Ketcham), reviewed by John Cobden in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 2), pp. 238-249.

56. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Sphere books, pb., 1971), p. 581.

57. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz : Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (1989), p. 23.

58. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Compass/Viking, 1965), p. 224.

59. L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (1976), p. 11.; Jewish Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny has complained about those who have simply "invented Holocaust events." See: G. Sereny, New Statesman (London), July 17, 1981, p. 17.

60. G. Tillion, "Le Systeme concentrationnaire allemand," Revue de l'histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale, July 1954. (Quoted in: IHR Newsletter, No. 59, July 1988, pp. 5, 6.)

61. Jewish Social Studies (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations), Jan. 1950, Vol. 12, pp. 65-66.

62. B. Amouyal, "Doubts over evidence of camp survivors," Jerusalem Post (Israel), August 17, 1986, p. 1.; Similarly, many American imposters have falsely but convincingly claimed heroic participation in pitched battles or involvement in horrific atrocities during the Vietnam war. See: "Fighting Lies for Vietnam: Phony Soldiers," The Washington Times, June 4, 1990, pp. D1, D5.; "Imitation Vietnam Syndrome," Baltimore Sun, March 20, 1988, pp. 1E, 5E.

63. R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 454.; A. de Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (1990), pp. 230-235.

64. Sworn and notarized statement by Pinter, Feb. 9, 1960. Facsimile in: Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: 1988), p. 429.; Note also Pinter report in Der Weg, No. 8, 1954, reprinted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Politkriminologie," Historische Tatsachen Nr. 43 (Vlotho: 1990), pp. 20 ff.

65. Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 195.

66. Written declaration of A. Gross, in: Erich Kern, Meineid gegen Deutschland (1971), p. 264.

67. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-1990, pp. 459-483. ; Halow deals with this entire issue in greater detail in his book, Innocent at Dachau, to be published by the IHR. In 1948 German bishop Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, who been interned for several years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau camps during the war, condemned the use of such "professional witnesses" in American run trials, and cited a particularly blatant example. Münchner Katholische Kirchenzeitung, Nov. 7, 1948. Quoted in: D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Dec. 13, 1985, p. 6.

68. "Major Poullada's Final Defense Plea in the Nordhausen-Dora Concentration Camp Case," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 1), pp. 81-119.

69. Letter by former OSI director Walter J. Rockler, National Law Journal, Dec. 8, 1980, p. 14.; See also: B. Amouyal, "Treblinka witnesses were discredited," Jerusalem Post -- International Edition, Week ending April 5, 1986.

70. "Nazi Hunter Looks for Witnesses, Finds Hucksters," Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY), Dec. 4, 1981, p. 2.

71. "The Nazi Who Never Was," The Washington Post, May 10, 1981, pp. B5, B8.; Michael Arndt, "The Wrong Man," Sunday, The Chicago Tribune Magazine, Dec. 2, 1984, pp. 15- 35.; Kirk Makin, "Media distorted ...," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Feb. 15, 1985, pp. M1, M3.

[been-there]

The other side of this 'Achilles heel' eye-witness testimony 'proof' of 'THE holocaust' narrative, is the admissions of guilt and participation in the alleged gassings by alleged Axis perpetrators and collaborators. Again, on the face of it, this looks to be an almost incontestable 'proof': the perpetrators of the crime have admitted to it and provided incriminating detail. It was to my own surprise that I myself discovered that these testimonies contain so much false detail and mutually contradictory claims as to be the very opposite of proof for the currently accepted 'holocaust' narrative. They prove that it could NOT have happened as claimed.

And then the question naturally arises (I write 'naturally', meaning for anyone truly intent on looking at the evidence fairly and impartially without attachment to any pre-concieved conclusions) ...the question naturally arises, 'why would these people incriminate themselves with false admissions?

The same article quoted above details this aspect of holocaust testimony also:

Torture and the threat of torture or other ramifications

Allied prosecutors used torture to help prove their case at Nuremberg and other postwar trials. /72

Former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss was tortured by British officials into signing a false and self-incriminating "confession" that has been widely cited as a key document of Holocaust extermination. His testimony before the Nuremberg Tribunal, a high point of the proceeding, was perhaps the most striking and memorable evidence presented there of a German extermination program. /73 Höss maintained that two and half million people had been killed in Auschwitz gas chambers, and that another 500,000 inmates had died there of other causes. No serious or reputable historian now accepts either of these fantastic figures, and other key portions of Höss' "confession" are now generally acknowledged to be untrue. /74

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has cited the case of Jupp Aschenbrenner, a Bavarian who was tortured into signing a statement that he had worked on mobile gas chambers ("gas vans") during the war. It wasn't until several years later that he was finally able to prove that he had actually spent that time in Munich studying to become an electric welder. /75

Fritz Sauckel, head of the German wartime labor mobilization program, was sentenced to death at the main Nuremberg trial. An important piece of evidence presented to the Tribunal by the US prosecution was an affidavit signed by the defendant. (Nuremberg document 3057-PS.) It turned out that Sauckel had put his signature to this self-incriminating statement, which had been presented to him by his captors in finished form, only after he was bluntly told that if he hesitated, his wife and children would be turned over to the Soviets. "I did not stop to consider, and thinking of my family, I signed the document," Sauckel later declared. /76

Hans Fritzsche, another defendant in the main Nuremberg trial, was similarly forced to sign a self-damning confession while he was a prisoner of the Soviet secret police in Moscow. (Nuremberg document USSR-474.) /77

Nuremberg defendant Julius Streicher, who was eventually hanged because he published a sometimes sensational anti-Jewish weekly paper, was brutally mistreated following his arrest. He was badly beaten, kicked, whipped, spat at, forced to drink saliva and burned with cigarettes. His genitals were beaten. Eyebrow and chest hair was pulled out. He was stripped and photographed. Fellow defendant Hans Frank was savagely beaten by two black GIs shortly after his arrest. August Eigruber, former Gauleiter of Upper Austria, was mutilated and castrated at the end of the war. /78

Josef Kramer, former commandant of both the BergenBelsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, and other defendants in the British-run "Belsen" trial, were reportedly also tortured, some of them so brutally that they begged to be put to death. /79

Although most of the defendants at the main Nuremberg trial were not tortured, many other Germans were forced to sign affidavits and give testimony against their former colleagues and superiors. A simple threat to turn the subject over to the Soviets was often enough to persuade him to sign an affidavit or provide testimony needed in court. Threats against the subject's wife and children, including withdrawal of ration cards, delivery to the Soviets or imprisonment, often quickly produced the desired results. If all else failed, the subject could be placed in solitary confinement, beaten, kicked, whipped or burned until he broke down. /80

The testimony of the prosecution's chief witness in the Nuremberg "Wilhelmstrasse" trial was obtained by threat of death. The American defense attorney, Warren Magee, had somehow obtained the transcript of the first pretrial interrogation of Friedrich Gaus, a former senior official in the German Foreign Office. Despite frantic protests by prosecuting attorney Robert Kempner, the judge decided to permit Magee to read from the document. During the pretrial interrogation session, Kempner told Gaus that he would be turned over to the Soviets for hanging. Tearfully pleading for mercy, Gaus begged Kempner to think of his wife and children. Kempner replied that he could save himself only by testifying in court against his former colleagues. A desperate Gaus, who had already endured four weeks in solitary confinement, agreed. When Magee finished reading from the damning transcript, Gaus sat with both hands to his face, totally devastated. /81

American soldiers repeatedly beat former SS captain Konrad Morgen in an unsuccessful effort to force him to sign a perjured affidavit against Ilse Koch, a defendant in the US military's 1947 "Buchenwald" case. American officials also threatened to turn Morgen over to the Soviets if he did not sign the false statement. /82

Luftwaffe General Field Marshal Erhard Milch was warned by a US Army Major to stop testifying on behalf of Hermann Göring in the main Nuremberg trial. The American officer told Milch that if he persisted, he would be charged as a war criminal himself, regardless of whether or not he was guilty. /83 Milch did not back down and was indeed charged. In 1947 a US Nuremberg court sentenced him to life imprisonment as a war criminal. Four years later, though, the US High Commissioner commuted his sentence to fifteen years, and a short time after that Milch was amnestied and released. /84

Reports of widespread torture at the postwar American-run "war crimes" trials at Dachau leaked out, resulting in so many protests that a formal investigation was eventually carried out. A US Army Commission of inquiry consisting of Pennsylvania Judge Edward van Roden and Texas Supreme Court Judge Gordon Simpson officially confirmed the charges of gross abuse. German defendants, they found, were routinely tortured at Dachau with savage beatings, burning matches under fingernails, kicking of testicles, months of solitary confinement, and threats of family reprisals. Low ranking prisoners were assured that their "confessions" would be used only against their former superiors in the dock. Later, though, these hapless men found their own "confessions" used against them when they were tried in turn. High ranking defendants were cynically assured that by "voluntarily" accepting all responsibility themselves they would thereby protect their former subordinates from prosecution. /85

One Dachau trial court reporter was so outraged at what was happening there in the name of justice that he quit his job. He testified to a US Senate subcommittee that the "most brutal" interrogators had been three German-born Jews. Although operating procedures at the Dachau trials were significantly worse than those used at Nuremberg, they give some idea of the spirit of the "justice" imposed on the vanquished Germans.

Virtually all of the US investigators who brought cases before American military courts at Dachau were "Jewish refugees from Germany" who "hated the Germans," recalled Joseph Halow, a US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947. "Many of the investigators gave vent to their hated by attempting to force confessions from the Germans by treating them brutally," including "severe beatings." /86

The case of Gustav Petrat, a German who had served as a guard at the Mauthausen, was not unusual. After repeated brutal beatings by US authorities, he broke down and signed a perjured statement. He was also whipped and threatened with immediate shooting. Petrat was prevented from securing exonerating evidence, and even potential defense witnesses were beaten and threatened to keep them from testifying. After a farcical trial by a US military court at Dachau, Petrat was sentenced to death and hanged in late 1948. He was 24 years old. /87

Use of torture to produce incriminating statements has not been limited to postwar Germany, of course. Such techniques have been systematically used by governments around the world. During the Korean War, American airmen held as prisoners by the Communist North Koreans made detailed statements "confessing" to their roles in waging germ warfare. Under physical and psychological torture, 38 US airmen "admitted" dropping bacteriological bombs that caused disease epidemics and claimed many Korean civilian lives. These statements were later shown to be false, and the airmen repudiated them after returning to the United States. Their phony confessions were the same kind of evidence given by Rudolf Höss and others at the Nuremberg trials. Under similar circumstances, Americans proved at least as ready to "confess" to monstrous but baseless crimes as Germans. /88

One of the most important and revealing Nuremberg cases is that of Oswald Pohl, the wartime head of the vast SS agency (WVHA) that ran the German concentration camps. After his capture in 1946, he was taken to Nenndorf where British soldiers tied him to a chair and beat him unconscious. He lost two teeth in repeated beatings. /89 He was then transferred to Nuremberg, where American military officials intensively interrogated him for more than half a year in sessions that lasted for hours. Altogether there were about 70 such sessions. During this period he had no access to an attorney or any other help. He was never formally charged with anything, nor even told precisely why he was being interrogated.

In a statement written after he was sentenced to death at Nuremberg in November 1947 by the American military court ("Concentration Camp" Case No. 4), Pohl described his treatment. /90 He reported that although he was generally not physically mistreated in Nuremberg as he had been at Nenndorf, he was nevertheless subjected to the less noticeable but, as he put it, "in their own way much more brutal emotional tortures."

American interrogators (most of them Jews) accused Pohl of killing 30 million people and of condemning ten million people to death. The interrogators themselves knew very well that such accusations were lies and tricks meant to break down his resistance, Pohl declared. "Because I am not emotionally thick-skinned, these diabolical intimidations were not without effect, and the interrogators achieved what they wanted: not the truth, but rather statements that served their needs," he wrote.

Pohl was forced to sign false and self-incriminating affidavits written by prosecution officials that were later used against him in his own trial. As he recalled:

Whenever genuine documents did not correspond to what the prosecution authorities wanted or were insufficient for the guilty sentences they sought, "affidavits" were put together. The most striking feature of these remarkable trial documents is that the accused often condemned themselves in them. That is understandable only to those who have themselves experienced the technique by which such "affidavits" are obtained.

He and other defendants were "destroyed" with these affidavits, which "contain provable errors of fact regarding essential points," Pohl wrote. Among the false statements signed by Pohl was one that incriminated former Reichsbank President Walter Funk, whom the Nuremberg Tribunal eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. /91

American officials also made use of false witnesses at Nuremberg, Pohl wrote:

Whenever these productions [affidavits] were not enough to produce the result sought by the prosecuting authorities, they marched out their so-called 'star witnesses,' or rather, paid witnesses ... A whole string of these shady, wretched characters played their contemptible game at Nuremberg. They included high government officials, generals and intellectuals as well as prisoners, mental defectives and real hardened criminals ... During the WVHA trial [of Pohl] a certain Otto appeared from a mental institution as a "star witness." His previous lifestyle would have been considered exemplary by any hardened criminal. The same is true of prosecution witness Krusial who presented the most spectacular fairy tales to the court under oath, which were naturally believed ...

Pohl also protested that defense attorneys were not allowed free access to the German wartime documents, which the prosecution was able to find and use without hindrance:

For almost two years the prosecution authorities could make whatever use they wanted of the many crates of confiscated documentary and archival material they had at their disposal. But the same access right was refused to the German defendants despite their repeated efforts ... This meant a tremendous or even complete paralysis and hindrance of the defense cases for the accused, for those crates also contained the exonerating material that the prosecution authorities were able to keep from being presented to the court. And that is called "proper" procedure.

Because Pohl held the rank of general in the German armed forces, his treatment by the British and Americans was illegal according to the international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war.

"As result of the brutal physical mistreatment in Nenndorf and my treatment in Nuremberg, I was emotionally a completely broken man," he wrote. "I was 54 years old. For 33 years I had served by country without dishonor, and I was unconscious of any crime."

Pohl summed up the character of the postwar trials of German leaders:

It was obvious during the Dachau trials, and it also came out unmistakably and only poorly disguised during the Nuremberg trials, that the prosecution authorities, among whom Jews predominated, were driven by blind hatred and obvious lust for revenge. Their goal was not the search for truth but rather the annihilation of as many adversaries as possible.

To an old friend Pohl wrote: "As one of the senior SS leaders I had never expected to be left unmolested. No more, however, did I expect a death sentence. It is a sentence of retribution." /92

He was hanged on June 7, 1951. In his final plea to the Nuremberg court, Pohl expressed his faith that one day blind hysteria would give way to just understanding: /93

After distance and time have clarified all events and when passion has ceased and when hatred and revenge have stilled their hunger, then these many millions of decent Germans who have sacrificed their lives for their fatherland will not be denied their share of sympathy which today is being attributed to the victims of the concentration camps, although a large number of them owe their fate not to political, racial or religious characteristics, but to their criminal past.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72. Emil Lachout, an Austrian officer who served with the postwar Allied War Crimes Commission, testified under oath in a 1988 court case that German officials had been tortured to produce fraudulent statements about alleged killings of Jews in German camp gas chambers. He also provided what he said was a copy of a 1948 document confirming this. See: Robert Lenski, Holocaust on Trial (1990), pp. 274, 278.; Müller circular notice, Oct. 1, 1948, published in: Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1988, pp. 117-124.

73. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-239.; R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-1987, pp. 389-403.

74. Höss statement, April 5, 1946. Document 3868-PS (USA-819).; Höss statement, May 20, 2946. Document NI-034.; Höss testimony at the Nuremberg Tribunal, published in: IMT ("blue series"), vol. vol. 33, pp. 275-279 ; NC&A ("red series"), vol. 6, pp. 787-790.

75. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago I-II (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 112 (n. 15).

76. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 15, pp. 64-68.

77. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 17, p. 214.; K. Heiden, "Why They Confess," Life magazine, June 20, 1949, pp. 92 ff. (During the trial Fritzsche recanted his forced statement.)

78. W. Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (1979), pp. 51-52, 47, 60.; K. Stimely, "The Torture of Julius Streicher," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1984, pp. 106-119.; "Streicher Case Opens," The Times (London), April 27, 1946, p. 3.; Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 238-239.; Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (Regnery, 1949), p. 90.

79. Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (1949), pp. 80-81. Cited in: A. Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, p. 189.

80. Nuremberg "Case 8" presiding judge Wyatt took note of the charges of torture. "During the course of the trial," the American jurist declared, "several witnesses, including some defendants, who made affidavits that were offered as evidence by the prosecution, testified that they were threatened, and that duress of a very improper nature was practiced by an interrogator." Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Trials of the War Criminals ... ("green series,"/ Washington, DC: 1949-1953), NMT, vol. 15, p. 879.

81. Letter by Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk written in Essen, April 15, 1975, shortly before his death. Published in: Die Bauernschaft (Mohrkirch), April 1981, pp. 34-35.; Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 172.; T. Bower, Blind Eye to Murder (1983), p. 314.; "US Ankläger Kempner schwer belastet," Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung, Feb. 23, 1973. Cited in: Austin App, No Time for Silence (IHR, 1987), p. 17.

82. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), p. 774.; Karlheinz Pintsch, an adjutant of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, was tortured for months by the Soviet secret police in Moscow in an effort to force him to sign a statement designed to incriminate Hess. In spite of his cruel treatment, Pintsch never gave in. Wolf R. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess (London: 1986), p. 62.

83. Milch sworn statement, April 9, 1947. Quoted in: E. Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (1988), p. 400.

84. R. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza, 1984), p. 210.

85. On Dachau trial abuses see: Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), pp. 185-200.; Judge Edward L. van Roden, "American Atrocities in Germany," The Progressive, Feb. 1949, pp. 21-22. Reprinted in: The Congressional Record -- Appendix, Vol. 95, Sec. 12, (March 10, 1949), pp. A1365-66.; Dachau trial defense attorney Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, Jr., reviewed prosecution methods in a petition submitted to the Supreme Court. Complete text in: The Congressional Record -- Senate, Vol. 95, Sec. 2, (March 10, 1949), pp. 2159-2165. Important excerpts were published in: The Congressional Record -- Appendix, Vol. 95, Sec. 13, (April 5, 1949), pp. A-2065-67. Also useful are: Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (Regnery, 1949).; Reginald T. Paget, Manstein: His Campaigns and His Trial (London: 1951).

86. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90, p. 459.; See also: T. Bower, Blind Eye to Murder, pp. 304, 310, 313.

87. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90 (Vol. 9, No. 4), pp. 452-483. Note especially pp. 478-482 (G. Petrat statement of Sept. 10, 1948).

88. "Korean War," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973 edition, Vol. 13, p. 474.; Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (1975), p. 355.

89. Legal brief for Oswald Pohl ("Grundzüge des Systems der Deutschen Konzentrationslager und Bemerkungen zum Urteil des Militärtribunals II gegen Oswald Pohl"), pp. 23-27. Compiled (in 1948?) by defense attorney Dr. Alfred Seidl. Copy provided to the author in 1990 by the defendant's grandson, Fritjof Pohl.; W. Maser, Nuremberg (1979), p. 100.; See also Oswald Pohl's written statement of June 1, 1948, cited below.

90. Written statement by Pohl, June 1, 1948. Deutsche Hochschullehrerzeitung (Tübingen), Nr. 1/2, 1963, pp. 21-26. Reprinted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Lügen um Heinrich Himmler, II. Teil," Historische Tatsachen Nr. 47 (Vloth: 1991), pp. 35-40.; Although I have not been able to obtain a copy of the original text of Pohl's 1948 statement, its essential accuracy can be confirmed by comparing it with the text of the legal brief (cited above) compiled by his attorney, Dr. Siedl. Fritjof Pohl (Oswald Pohl's grandson) and Wigbert Grabert (son of the editor-publisher of the Deutsche Hochschullehrerzeitung) have also confirmed the authenticity of Pohl's 1948 statement.

91. W. Maser, Nuremberg (New York: 1979), p. 100.

[Cerdic]

Hoess freely describes his torture at the hands of the British in his memoirs. In these memoirs, he also gives the far more correct figure of around 1.1 million Jewish deportees to Auschwitz, which fits nicely in with known demographic data. This suggests that Hoess was writing down his true recollections in these memoirs - which is rather damaging to Revisionism.

Can Revisionism explain the trials in Germany in the 50s and 60s, which (as noone I am aware of has ever disputed) were fair and did not contain use of torture - when SS men freely admitted to gassings in Auschwitz and the AR camps? Refer to Bernard's posts in the "Credible AR witnesses" thread.

[Statistical Mechanic]

Hoess freely describes his torture at the hands of the British in his memoirs. In these memoirs, he also gives the far more correct figure of around 1.1 million Jewish deportees to Auschwitz, which fits nicely in with known demographic data. This suggests that Hoess was writing down his true recollections in these memoirs - which is rather damaging to Revisionism.

Can Revisionism explain the trials in Germany in the 50s and 60s, which (as noone I am aware of has ever disputed) were fair and did not contain use of torture - when SS men freely admitted to gassings in Auschwitz and the AR camps? Refer to Bernard's posts in the "Credible AR witnesses" thread.

The Einsatzgruppen case, part of the NMT series, didn't rely on witnesses at all - IIRC the prosecution called just one or two - but was based exclusively on German documents. When the defendants tried testifying, their explanations - both inconsistent and oblivious - only underscored what the documentary record said. Torture, poor recall, liewitnessing, or other revisionist pipedreams enter into this . . . not even a little.

Additionally, it has to be pointed out with regard both the IMT and NMT that the correlation of various kinds of documentary evidence with eyewitness testimony was the norm - not a simple reliance on witnesses. All those documents that scholars so often refer to by their Nuremberg number were, er, used in the prosecution of defendants at Nuremberg. A different trial - the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in the early/mid 'sixites - had many instances of witness testimony challenged and, when warranted, rejected. One of the purposes of the visit to the camp that was a part of the proceeding was to examine the physical layout against witness claims.

[been-there]

Can Revisionism explain the trials in Germany in the 50s and 60s, which (as noone I am aware of has ever disputed) were fair and did not contain use of torture - when SS men freely admitted to gassings in Auschwitz and the AR camps? Refer to Bernard's posts in the "Credible AR witnesses" thread.

The explanation is demonstrated by what happened to those who were NOT accused of any crime but who bravely contradicted by their own personal 'eye-witness' testimony, the prevalently accepted 'holocaust' mass-gassing paradigm. Thies Christofersen and Dr. Wilhel Stäglich.

The punitive, inhumane and vindictive official treatment of these two is in my opinion quite shameful. I feel sure that future generations will correctly see it as that. It is a sign of our own societies moral degradation and hypocrisy that the majority currently do not.
Any 'historical truth' that has to resort to such behaviour is quite obviously no 'truth' at all but a vulnerable and weak belief-system.

Its time to reassess all that, honestly and impartially.
Clearly there was institutionalised racial persecution of Jews.
Clearly a great many died as a result of that.
Undoubtedly it was a shameful occurence.
Lets acknowledge that whilst simultaneously acknowleding the extent of that has been mythologised and exaggerated.

[Balsamo]

The weakest part of the currently accepted 'holocaust' narrative is ironically the very thing presented as its strongest, viz. 'eye-witness testimony'.
The problem being that so much of it is demonstrably false, often physically impossible and unbelievable 'eye-witness testimony'.

I have recently posted the new to me quite incredible 'story' of how Lili Jakob - Meier - Zelmanovich claimed to have come into possession of a photo album from Auschwitz

There are many such similar cases. As is detailed here:

Gerald Reitlinger cautioned readers of his detailed study, The Final Solution, that Holocaust evidence, including Nuremberg documents and testimony, cannot be accepted at face value: "A certain degree of reserve is necessary in handling all this material, and particularly this applies to the last section (survivor narratives) ... The Eastern European Jew is a natural rhetorician, speaking in flowery similes." /56 French historian Jean-Claude Pressac likewise warned in his detailed book about Auschwitz that "extreme care is required with the testimony of survivors ..." /57

Jewish historian Hannah Arendt observed in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem that the "eyewitnesses" who testified in the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann were only rarely able to distinguish between what actually happened to them years earlier and what they had read, heard or imagined in the meantime. /58 Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz similarly noted that "the survivor's memory is often distorted by hate, sentimentality, and the passage of time. His perspective on external events is often skewed by the limits of his personal experience." /59

French historian Germain Tillion, a specialist of the Second World War period, has warned that former camp inmates who lie are, in fact, /60

very much more numerous than people generally suppose, and a subject like that of the concentration camp world -- well designed, alas, to stimulate sado-masochistic imaginations -- offered them an exceptional field of action. We have known numerous mentally damaged persons, half-swindlers and half fools, who exploited an imaginary deportation. We have known others of them -- authentic deportees -- whose sick minds strove to even go beyond the monstrosities that they had seen or that people said happened to them.

Jewish historian Samuel Gringauz, who was himself interned in the ghetto of Kaunas (Lithuania) during the war, criticized what he called the "hyperhistorical" nature of most Jewish "survivor testimony." He wrote that "most of the memoirs and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." /61

Shmuel Krakowki, archives director of the Israeli government's Holocaust center, Yad Vashem, confirmed in 1986 that more than 10,000 of the 20,000 "testimonies" of Jewish "survivors" on file there are "unreliable." Many survivors, wanting "to be part of history" may have let their imaginations run away with them, Krakowski said. "Many were never in the places where they claimed to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given them by friends or passing strangers." He confirmed that many of the testimonies on file at Yad Vashem were later proved to be inaccurate when locations and dates could not pass an expert historian's appraisal. /62

We now know that witnesses at the main uremberg trial gave false testimony. Perhaps the most obvious were the three witnesses who ostensibly confirmed German guilt for the Katyn massacre of Polish officers. /63

Stephen F. Pinter of St. Louis, Missouri, served as a US Army prosecuting attorney from January 1946 to July 1947 at the American trials of Germans at Dachau. Altogether, some 420 Germans were sentenced to death in these Dachau trials. In a 1960 affidavit Pinter stated that "notoriously perjured witnesses" were used to charge Germans with "false and unfounded" crimes. "Unfortunately, as a result of these miscarriages of justice, many innocent persons were convicted and some were executed." /64

A tragi-comic incident during the Dachau proceedings suggests the general atmosphere. US investigator Joseph Kirschbaum brought a Jewish witness named Einstein into court to testify that the defendant, Menzel, had murdered Einstein's brother. But when the accused pointed out that the brother was, in fact, sitting in the courtroom, an embarrassed Kirschbaum scolded the witness: "How can we bring this pig to the gallows if you are so stupid as to bring your brother into court?" /65

August Gross, a German who worked as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army at the Dachau trials, later declared: /66

The American prosecutors paid professional incrimination witnesses, mostly former criminal concentration camp inmates, the amount of one dollar per day (at that time worth 280 marks on the black market) as well as food from a witness kitchen and witness lodging. During the recess periods between trial proceedings the US prosecuting attorneys told these witnesses what they were to say in giving testimony. The US prosecuting attorneys gave the witnesses photos of the defendants and were thereby able to easily incriminate them.

A young US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947, Joseph Halow, later recalled the unwholesome situation:

The witnesses in the concentration camp cases were virtually all of the sort we court reporters termed "professional witnesses," those who spent months in Dachau, testifying against one or another of the many accused... It was to their economic advantage to testify, and many of them made a good living doing so. As one might well imagine, the motive of the professional witnesses was also one of spite and revenge... In many instances their vengeance included relating exaggerated accounts of what they had witnessed. It also included outright lying.

In one case, testimony provided by the prosecution witnesses "appeared to raise more questions then provide answers. Some of it was obviously fabricated, or so grossly exaggerated as to render it unbelievable. There were repeated instances of mistaken identity of the same accused, and vague, uncertain statements about some of the others." Moreover, Halow reported, the US courts paid "scant attention to testimony by and for the accused." /67

In the 1947 "Nordhausen-Dora" case, American defense attorney Major Leon B. Poullada protested against the general unreliability -- and frequent outright lying -- of prosecution witnesses in this US military trial of former concentration camp officials. /68

Use of such unreliable testimony continued in "Holocaust" trials in later years. Federal district judge Norman C. Roettger, Jr., ruled in 1978 in a Florida case that all six Jewish "eyewitnesses" who had testified to direct atrocities and shootings at reblinka by Ukrainian-born defendant Feodor Fedorenko had wrongly identified the accused after being misled by Israeli authorities. /69

New York "Nazi hunter" Charles Kremer visited Israel in 1981 looking for Jews who could confirm atrocities allegedly committed by a former Ukrainian SS man living in New Jersey. But Kremer cut short his visit, bitterly disappointed by the numerous Jews who offered to provide spurious "testimony" in return for money. As the Brooklyn Jewish Press reported, "Kremer was stricken with gastronomic pains -- a malady he attributes to his difficulties in dealing with hucksters who tried to use his search for their personal gain." /70

One of the most blatant examples of perjury by Jewish Holocaust witnesses in recent years was in the case of a retired Chicago factory worker named Frank Walus who was charged with killing Jews in his native Poland during the war. A December 1974 letter from "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal that accused Walus of working for the Gestapo prompted the US government's legal campaign. During his trial, eleven Jews testified under oath that they personally saw Walus murder Jews, including several children. After a costly and bitterly contested four-year legal battle, Walus was finally able to prove that he had actually spent the war years as a teenager quietly working on German farms. A lengthy article copyrighted by the American Bar Association and published in 1981 in the Washington Post concluded that "... in an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man." /71

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55. Raul Hilberg has noted that Martin Gilbert's 1985 book, The Holocaust, relies heavily on such questionable testimony. See interview with Hilberg in: "Recording the Holocaust," Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending June 28, 1986, pp. 8, 9.; On the general unreliability of "witness testimony," see Witness for the Defense (by E. Loftus & K. Ketcham), reviewed by John Cobden in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 2), pp. 238-249.

56. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Sphere books, pb., 1971), p. 581.

57. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz : Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (1989), p. 23.

58. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Compass/Viking, 1965), p. 224.

59. L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (1976), p. 11.; Jewish Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny has complained about those who have simply "invented Holocaust events." See: G. Sereny, New Statesman (London), July 17, 1981, p. 17.

60. G. Tillion, "Le Systeme concentrationnaire allemand," Revue de l'histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale, July 1954. (Quoted in: IHR Newsletter, No. 59, July 1988, pp. 5, 6.)

61. Jewish Social Studies (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations), Jan. 1950, Vol. 12, pp. 65-66.

62. B. Amouyal, "Doubts over evidence of camp survivors," Jerusalem Post (Israel), August 17, 1986, p. 1.; Similarly, many American imposters have falsely but convincingly claimed heroic participation in pitched battles or involvement in horrific atrocities during the Vietnam war. See: "Fighting Lies for Vietnam: Phony Soldiers," The Washington Times, June 4, 1990, pp. D1, D5.; "Imitation Vietnam Syndrome," Baltimore Sun, March 20, 1988, pp. 1E, 5E.

63. R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 454.; A. de Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (1990), pp. 230-235.

64. Sworn and notarized statement by Pinter, Feb. 9, 1960. Facsimile in: Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: 1988), p. 429.; Note also Pinter report in Der Weg, No. 8, 1954, reprinted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Politkriminologie," Historische Tatsachen Nr. 43 (Vlotho: 1990), pp. 20 ff.

65. Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 195.

66. Written declaration of A. Gross, in: Erich Kern, Meineid gegen Deutschland (1971), p. 264.

67. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-1990, pp. 459-483. ; Halow deals with this entire issue in greater detail in his book, Innocent at Dachau, to be published by the IHR. In 1948 German bishop Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, who been interned for several years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau camps during the war, condemned the use of such "professional witnesses" in American run trials, and cited a particularly blatant example. Münchner Katholische Kirchenzeitung, Nov. 7, 1948. Quoted in: D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Dec. 13, 1985, p. 6.

68. "Major Poullada's Final Defense Plea in the Nordhausen-Dora Concentration Camp Case," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 1), pp. 81-119.

69. Letter by former OSI director Walter J. Rockler, National Law Journal, Dec. 8, 1980, p. 14.; See also: B. Amouyal, "Treblinka witnesses were discredited," Jerusalem Post -- International Edition, Week ending April 5, 1986.

70. "Nazi Hunter Looks for Witnesses, Finds Hucksters," Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY), Dec. 4, 1981, p. 2.

71. "The Nazi Who Never Was," The Washington Post, May 10, 1981, pp. B5, B8.; Michael Arndt, "The Wrong Man," Sunday, The Chicago Tribune Magazine, Dec. 2, 1984, pp. 15- 35.; Kirk Makin, "Media distorted ...," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Feb. 15, 1985, pp. M1, M3.

Where is the problem Been-there?
your own quotes shows that the problem has been recognized.

[been-there]

Can Revisionism explain the trials in Germany in the 50s and 60s, which (as noone I am aware of has ever disputed) were fair and did not contain use of torture - when SS men freely admitted to gassings in Auschwitz and the AR camps? Refer to Bernard's posts in the "Credible AR witnesses" thread.

The explanation is demonstrated by what happened to those who were NOT accused of any crime but who bravely contradicted by their own personal 'eye-witness' testimony, the prevalently accepted 'holocaust' mass-gassing paradigm. Thies Christofersen and Dr. Wilhel Stäglich.

And here I thought that this thread was about eyewitnessing - not the trials and tribulations and lies of former Waffen-SS dandelion farmers turned neo-Nazi?

Holy moly! Thies Christofersen and Dr. Wilhel Stäglich were eye witnesses to the treatment of inmates of Aushwitz!!!
Sheesh! The strawman misrepresentation and the blatant denial or ignorance reaches new heights.

[Cerdic]

Thies Christofersen

Already dealt with by Zimmerman.

Thies Christophersen

The inability of deniers to produce a favorable German witness who was at a killing site appeared to change in 1973 with a pamphlet published by Thies Christophersen, who was at Auschwitz in 1944. His pamphlet has been published as The Auschwitz Lie. It was first published in English as Auschwitz: Truth or Lie in Canada. This particular edition advertises such publications as Adolf Hitler Was A Genius, Hitler: Psychic and Prophet, The Hitler We Loved and Why and other like-minded writings.
According to Christophersen he was stationed in that part of Auschwitz known as Rajsko from January 15, 1944 onwards. Botanical and agricultural research were conducted at Rajsko, which was more than one mile from Birkenau. Thus, Christophersen has placed his own location far enough away from anywhere at Auschwitz which could implicate him in mass murder. Christophersen was never charged with any crimes and therefore did not have to testify, nor did he, at any of the post-war trials of those accused of war crimes. He never really explains this failure.
His pamphlet promoted two denier myths. First, he cited a French publication as quoting Richard Baer that he had never seen any gas chambers at Auschwitz. As was noted earlier, Baer was not lying, if indeed he said this, because the Auschwitz main camp, which Baer commanded, did not have gas chambers while he was commandant. As was also noted, however, Baer did admit to the existence of gas chambers in Birkenau. Christophersen also stated that those who admitted to crimes did so to secure advantage.116
Christophersen wrote: "During all the time I was in Auschwitz I never in the least observed anything that even indicated mass killings in gas chambers." However, the killing occurred in Birkenau and this is where Christophersen becomes vague. He states that he was in Birkenau to make a "selection" of female prisoners to work in Rajsko. He never stated how many times he was in Birkenau and it is possible that he may have only been there once. He stated that one evening he was asked about crematoriums where bodies were burned but did not know about such matters. He then checked a mining camp in Bielitz where there were smoke stacks, but found nothing.
This is where Christophersen's story starts to break down. He does not say he made any inquiries in Birkenau, the logical place to ask such questions since there were four crematoriums and 46 ovens — a fact admitted to by all deniers. Yet, Christophersen stated that he was told that there "was a crematorium in Auschwitz. . ." Here he gives the impression that he is talking about the Auschwitz main camp which had one crematorium and six ovens, not Birkenau with its four crematoria and 46 ovens. Moreover, the crematorium in the main camp had closed down by the time Christophersen arrived at Auschwitz. Once again, he is attempting to place himself as far way from Birkenau as possible.
He also denied the many reports of burning flesh hovering over the camp.117 In a 1988 trial involving a Holocaust denier who published denial materials, Christophersen even stated that he never saw any smoke over the camp.118 We know from the Auschwitz Death Books that many registered prisoners died up to the end of 1943. Therefore, there must have been a considerable number of deaths in 1944 in which the bodies were cremated. Why else would 46 ovens be built? Yet, Christophersen saw no smoke!
Christophersen also stated that "t is an absolute certainty that no people were shot at Auschwitz." Even Faurisson has admitted to executions in Block 11, a fact not disputed by other deniers. Yet, Christophersen tells us no one was shot.
Christophersen must have certainly been aware that while he was in Auschwitz the Hungarian deportations took place. He said nothing about the trains that began to arrive in Birkenau in May-July 1944. If his claim was that more than 430,000 Jews were never shipped to Auschwitz, then he could have stated that it never happened. After all, Butz said it never happened. However, Christophersen never addressed the issue of any new arrivals at Birkenau or anywhere else in the camp. Moreover, in October 1944 a revolt took place in the camp which resulted in much gunfire and bloodshed.119 Yet, Christophersen said nothing about this revolt. He could have addressed the issue if only to deny that it happened. His silence on both of these issues is very revealing.
Christophersen changed his written account in two subsequent trials involving a Holocaust denier. He first stated that he had been at Birkenau 5, 6 or 7 times; then in the second trial it was 20 times.120 He was asked about his written account where he says nothing about Birkenau but only mentions the Bielitz camp. Christophersen then claimed he never said he was at Bielitz "I only said in the direction of Bielitz". He now claimed that he really drove around Birkenau, not Bielitz.121 In fact, this is not what he said in his pamphlet.

"... I went in the direction of Bielitz and there found a mining camp in which some inmates also worked. I traveled around the entire camp and examined all five grates and all smoke stacks, but found nothing."122 (italics added)

Thus, he clearly stated that he was at the Bielitz mining camp, not Birkenau. He wrote the same thing in a 1985 article.123 He changed his story at the trial because his pamphlet, if it is to be believed, clearly showed that he had no familiarity with Birkenau. He probably calculated at the time of the denier trial, in 1988, that he could not get into trouble if he said he was constantly in Birkenau. Christophersen died in 1997 and we may never know where he went on that day. What we do know is that since these two accounts are diametrically opposed to one another — not merely an inconsistency — he lied in one of those versions.
There are also problems with some of his other information. He quoted the Austrian Jew Dr. Bendikt Kautsky as saying that he never saw any gas chambers while he was in German concentration camps. Christophersen was attempting to give the impression that Kautsky was questioning the existence of gas chambers. Kautsky spent three years in the Monowitz section of Auschwitz, several miles away from Birkenau, and therefore would not have seen a gas chamber. Kautsky did state that he spoke with dozens of inmates who did see these installations.124
Christophersen claimed that an article by Hanson Baldwin in the New York Times in 1948 lists 18,700,000 Jews in the world whereas there were less than 16 million before World War II. He identifies Baldwin as "a well known population expert". The article appears in the February 22, 1948 issue. Baldwin was giving a military analysis of the Arab-Israel conflict. In the course of his article he stated that there were 15 to 18 million Jews in the world. He simply made a mistake. Moreover, Baldwin was not a "population expert." Nevertheless, the author personally remembers Hanson's erroneous figures being quoted in all manner in the 1960s by other deniers trying to argue that this was some type of key information to prove that the Nazis never engaged in mass murder of the Jews.
Christophersen quotes a Red Cross Report that it could not verify rumors of gas chambers when it visited the camp. This is captioned as "Suppressed Red Cross Report". In fact, as the Red Cross informed Staglich in a letter dated April 28, 1978: "Our report expressly states that our delegates never got past the camp commandant's office."125
There is, however, one particular statement made by Christophersen which allows us to test his credibility as to what he saw. In discussing packages received by inmates he states that only rarely were items withheld.

"These things, however, remained the property of the inmates and were stored in a huge warehouse called "Kanada", where also all possessions of Jews interned at Auschwitz, were kept."126 (italics added)

The Kanada section of Auschwitz was where the authorities kept items stolen from Jews for the German war effort. This is common knowledge among historians and is confirmed by a letter from Oswald Pohl, Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, dated July 24, 1944, the same time Christophersen was in Auschwitz. The letter states that Jewish property had been confiscated for the benefit of the Reich: "It is impossible to enclose a list because of the vast quantity involved. The valuables accumulate in concentration camps."127 As will be recalled from Chapter 1, clothing stolen from murdered Jews was shipped to ethnic Germans.128
Therefore, Christophersen lied by saying that items held in Kanada were being held for the Jews. Even if one wanted to give Christophersen the benefit of the doubt on the many inaccuracies and questionable statements made in his pamphlet, it is simply inconceivable he could not have known the true nature of the property held in Kanada. Since he had already conceded that he knew of Kanada's existence — a tactical error on his part — he could not admit that these items would not be returned to the Jews because to do so would also be to admit that they no longer needed their property. Dead people would have no use for the items held in Kanada.
In 1985 Christophersen wrote an article claiming that he could not find any eyewitnesses to the gassings. "Instead, people would tell me that they know someone who knew someone else, who talked about it."129 Yet he makes no mention of trying to contact anyone involved in the post war trials such as those that took place in Frankfurt in the mid 1960s. Did he contact anyone who had been acquitted or had served a sentence? He does not say. One gets the impression that he either did not make a very sincere attempt to contact anyone or that those he did contact did not tell him what he wanted to hear.
Perhaps Christophersen's overall attitude towards the Jews can be gleaned from his statement that the Jews declared war on Germany in 1933.130 He based this absurdity on an article which appeared in a London newspaper in 1933 and which will be examined in more detail in Chapter 8.

http://web.archive.org/web/201004102059 ... p2_ch6.htm

[Statistical Mechanic]

Can Revisionism explain the trials in Germany in the 50s and 60s, which (as noone I am aware of has ever disputed) were fair and did not contain use of torture - when SS men freely admitted to gassings in Auschwitz and the AR camps? Refer to Bernard's posts in the "Credible AR witnesses" thread.

The explanation is demonstrated by what happened to those who were NOT accused of any crime but who bravely contradicted by their own personal 'eye-witness' testimony, the prevalently accepted 'holocaust' mass-gassing paradigm. Thies Christofersen and Dr. Wilhel Stäglich.

And here I thought that this thread was about eyewitnessing - not the trials and tribulations and lies of former Waffen-SS dandelion farmers turned neo-Nazi?

Holy moly! Thies Christofersen and Dr. Wilhel Stäglich were eye witnesses to the treatment of inmates of Aushwitz!!!
Sheesh! The strawman misrepresentation and the blatant denial or ignorance reaches new heights.

So now you are supporting the reliability of supposed eyewitnesses? Make up your damned mind!

At any rate, get your story straight: Christoferson is more accurately a perpetrator than an eyewitness, given his role in presiding over forced laborers in the dandelion operation at Raisko, a subcamp near Auschwitz and dedicated to agricultural projects. You do know that conditions at the subcamps varied, and that the subcamps were not where Jews were put to death factory-style? IIRC Christoferson claimed he had been to Birkenau a time or two but had trouble explaining all that.

At Raisko, Christoferson perpetrated the Dandelion Aktion - right? - he was a perpetrator, not a witness. But you credit him?

So, just to get what you're saying clear, do you mean that the word of a perpetrator is to be believed, whilst that of a bystander, observer, or victim isn't?

[rollo the ganger]

Been-there, are you saying you don't believe Bomba the Barber?