The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

How could such a mass program have been kept secret from Jews who were scheduled for extermination?


34. How could such a mass program have been kept secret from Jews who were scheduled for extermination?

The IHR says (original):

It couldn't have been kept secret. The fact is that there was no such mass-gassing anywhere. The extermination rumors came from strictly Jewish sources.

The IHR says (revised):

It couldn't have been kept secret. The fact is that there were no mass gassings. The extermination stories originated as wartime atrocity propaganda.

Nizkor replies:

The Nazis made a tremendous effort to keep the extermination process secret, although it eventually leaked out. For example, see the testimony of Dr. Hans Münch, who said that exposing the gassing and extermination process:

...would have been a completely useless undertaking which would have very shortly caused me and my family to be liquidated very quickly, because the Gestapo was so well organized and the threats for nonobservance of the secrecy that surrounded the Auschwitz exterminations were so clearly worded for members of the SS that everybody avoided telling even his closest friend about it, because experience taught us that anybody who talked about it in any way was very quickly found because the Gestapo sniffed out every rumor very consistently that spread about Auschwitz.

Also see the 1943 German court verdict against SS-Untersturmführer Max Taubner, which apart from declaring the existence of the extermination effort itself, also declared that the defendent was to be punished for taking photographs of it:

By taking photographs of the incidents or having photographs taken, by having these developed in photographic shops and showing them to his wife and friends, the accused is guilty of disobedience. Such pictures could pose the gravest risks to the security of the Reich if they fell into the wrong hands...

The Poles living near the camps knew that mass extermination was going on, because they saw hundreds of thousands of Jews arriving by trains into camps which could not house even a tenth of them, and because the amounts of food brought into the camps were far less then what was needed to keep these people alive. They saw the trains leave the camp, filled with the victims' clothes and other belongings, and smelled the stench of burning flesh. They knew what was happening and reported it to the outside world.

Finally, note the elimination of the original phrase, "strictly Jewish sources." When revisionism was young, it did not mind airing its prejudices in public. Now, it is aiming for the mainstream and must be more careful. One sees this a lot.


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