Bruno Baum

This is a significant revelation needing further discussion.

On December 4, 1935, Baum was arrested together with Honecker and Edwin Lautenbach. Baum spent 18 months in custody in Plötzensee. He was then sentenced to 13 years in prison for treason. From 1937 to 1943, Baum was imprisoned in Brandenburg-Görden Prison and then transferred to Auschwitz.  At Auschwitz he became head of the "combat group".


Kampfgruppe Auschwitz was founded in 1943. In 1944, together with the Polish Underground State, the Kampfgruppe set up an overall Auschwitz Military Council to coordinate resistance.  The majority of members of the Group were communists, socialists, captured Polish and Soviet partisans, members of anti-Nazi resistance movements, and former members of International Brigades. The members of the Kampfgruppe were from Austria, Poland, France, Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Among them were also many Jews.

Three months after the end of the war, on July 31, 1945, this same Bruno Baum boasted as follows in an article entitled “We Were Radioing From Hell,” published in the German newspaper Deutsche Volkszeitung¸ the central organ of the German Communist Party at that time:

“All the propaganda that now began to circulate about Auschwitz in foreign countries originated with us, assisted by our Polish comrades.”

“I believe it is no exaggeration if I say that the biggest part of Auschwitz propaganda, which was spread in the world around that time, has been written by us in the camp... We spread this propaganda to the public at large until the very last day of our stay in Auschwitz.

In his early post-war statements, Baum also stated that the SS improved the conditions in the camp to such an extant that “Auschwitz became a model camp in the end.”

Sir,

I am directed by the Ministry to send you the following circular letter:

It is often the duty of the good citizens and of the pious Christians to turn a blind eye on the peculiarities of those associated with us.

But the time comes when such peculiarities, while still denied in public, must be taken into account when action by us is called for.

We know the methods of rule employed by the Bolshevik dictator in Russia [Stalin] itself from, for example, the writing and speeches of the Prime Minister himself during the last twenty years. We know how the Red Army behaved in Poland in 1920 and in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Galicia and Bessarabia only recently.

We must, therefore, take into account how the Red Army will certainly behave when it overruns Central Europe. Unless precautions are taken, the obviously inevitable horrors which will result will throw an undue strain on public opinion in this country.

We cannot reform the Bolsheviks but we can do our best to save them — and ourselves — from the consequences of their acts. The disclosures of the past quarter of a century will render mere denials unconvincing. The only alternative to denial is to distract public attention from the whole subject.

Experience has shown that the best distraction is atrocity propaganda directed against the enemy. Unfortunately the public is no longer so susceptible as in the days of the “Corpse Factory,” and the “Mutilated Belgian Babies,” and the “Crucified Canadians.”

Your cooperation is therefore earnestly sought to distract public attention from the doings of the Red Army by your wholehearted support of various charges against the Germans and Japanese which have been and will be put into circulation by the Ministry.

Your expression of belief in such may convince others.

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

(signed) H. HEWET, ASSISTANT SECRETARY

The Ministry can enter into no correspondence of any kind with regard to this communication which should only be disclosed to responsible persons.