Holocaust testimonial evidence

Holocaust testimonial evidence constitutes the major part of the evidence allegedly supporting the politically correct view on the Holocaust. Holocaust revisionists have criticized these claims and generally argued that Holocaust documentary evidence and especially Holocaust material evidence are more reliable and important forms of evidence.

This article will primarily discuss the postwar testimonial evidence, while wartime statements (including from speeches and diaries) are primarily discussed in the article on the Holocaust documentary evidence, including in the section Speeches, diaries, and private conversations by the National Socialist leaders.

Aside from the issues of coerced and deliberately fabricated testimonies, the limited value of also sincere testimonies and the unreliable, easily influenced/manipulated nature of human memory are argued to be generally recognized in the scientific literature as well as in judicial systems, when making judgments on other issues than the Holocaust.

Holocaust revisionist have made numerous criticisms of testimonies/confessions allegedly supporting the politically correct view. Furthermore, a seldom mentioned aspect is the numerous witnesses who have rejected the politically correct views.

Witnesses rejecting atrocities

As discussed in other sections, there were and are numerous very powerful reasons for witnesses (both German and non-German) to support the politically correct version. Despite this, there have been many who have rejected atrocities.

Note that this section only discusses individuals rejecting atrocities and not those alleging atrocities, but doing so in ways that contradict the politically correct version of events, are absurd, or have been proven to be false. Such claims and possible causes are discussed in other sections.

Central German leadership

Members of the personal staff of top National Socialists have, even shortly before their deaths, stated that no one in these staffs knew of the alleged Holocaust mass extermination. See the articles on:

• Brunhilde Pomsel
• Karl Wolff
• Nicolaus von Below
• Otto Günsche
• Richard Schulze-Kossens
• Rochus Misch
• Traudl Junge

David Irving has stated that "Every one of Hitler's private staff was closely interrogated on precisely this issue by Americans and British after the war, and all of them stated independently of each other that at Hitler's headquarters, in his secret circle, there was never even the slightest hint or mention of anything untoward happening to the Jews in the east or in the concentration camps. I have the interrogation reports.

"On June 9, 1977, I planted Hitler's personal adjutant Richard Schulze-Kossens (you can see him in the background at the Kremlin signing of the Ribbentrop-Stalin pact in August 1939) in the London audience of the live David Frost Programme, and invited this former S.S. colonel, when I was challenged on this point, to stand and tell the multi-million television audience just that: that from 1942-1944 he had been charged by Hitler to attend every single conference, even the most secret ones alone with Heinrich Himmler, and that not once had any extermination of the Jews been discussed or even mentioned in these conclaves."

Alleged statements by Hitler on the Holocaust‎, as well as alleged statements on the Holocaust during the war by Himmler and Goebbels, have been cited by both anti-revisionists and revisionists, with revisionists arguing that careful and non-cherry picked analyses of the statements of these leaders support the revisionist view, as discussed in the linked articles.

Oswald Pohl, the chief SS administrator of the camp system, was tortured and "confessed", but later retracted this.

Alfred Rosenberg. His diary was recovered in 2013, after having been missing for many years.

Alfred Rosenberg, an important National Socialist ideologue and official, is claimed to have been closely involved in many aspects of the Holocaust, such as when serving as "Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories". His diary was stolen by the notorious Jewish Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Kempner and went missing until 2013. Revisionists have argued that "In fact, had the Holocaust occurred as generally understood and as relayed through many books, films, and museums, the Rosenberg Diary should have contained a wealth of horrifying discoveries. One might have even expected a philosophical defense of the policies that led to mass extermination. But the diary contains no such evidence. There is no justification of brutal policies; in fact, there is no mention of an order for extermination. There is no mention of gas chambers. There is no suggestion that Rosenberg was even aware of such policies."

Richard Korherr, the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the SS and author of the 1943 Korherr Report on Jewish demographics, stated that he had no knowledge of a supposed ongoing extermination of Jews.

Alois Brunner, "right hand man to Adolf Eichmann", stated in an interview that he had never heard of the alleged gas chambers during his period of service.

Hans Lammers was head of the Reich Chancellery under Hitler. He stated on the Holocaust that he "knew nothing about it until the moment of the collapse, that is, the end of April 1945 or the beginning of May, when I heard such reports from foreign broadcasting stations. I did not believe them at the time, and only later on I found further material here, in the newspapers. If we are speaking now of the elimination of a harmful influence that is far from meaning annihilation. The Fuehrer did not say a word about murder; no mention was ever made of such a plan." A wartime document stated that in March or April 1942, Hitler had repeatedly informed Lammers "that he wanted to postpone the solution of the Jewish question until after the war." This despite mass killings in the Holocaust camps allegedly already having started at this date.

All surviving participants of the Wannsee Conference (except Adolf Eichmann) stated that nobody talked about killing Jews.

See the article on the Posen speeches on participants rejecting the politically correct view.

See also the section "Confessors indirectly rejecting or rejecting parts of the politically correct version" on this topic, which includes the "confessions" of many prominent National Socialists during the Nuremberg trials, notably Hermann Göring and other IMT defendants.

Camp personnel

Revisionists argue that Holocaust camp personnel "denying" the Holocaust were often punished in various ways, including torture and harsher sentences, as discussed in more detail in the section "Trial confessions". Despite this, some rejected the politically correct version.

Richard Baer was an Auschwitz commandant and planned to be the main defendant at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. According to various sources, Baer refused to confirm the existence of homicidal gas chambers, shortly before his alleged suicide.

Karl Höcker, adjutant to Baer, stated that prisoners were principally not killed.

Robert Mulka, adjutant to Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, denied any knowledge of homicidal gassings.

During the postwar period, to his son and in private writings, Joseph Mengele rejected that he had been involved in atrocities and stated that he had instead saved many lives at Auschwitz.

Also other Auschwitz personnel, such as Johann Breyer and Fritz Gaar, have rejected the politically correct view.

Fritz Frenzel, Hermann Hagerhoff, and Walter Otto (Auschwitz guards) and Ernst Romeikat and Theodor Grewe (Auschwitz administration of inmate property) all stated that they had no personal knowledge of the alleged mass killings.

Thies Christophersen, stationed at Auschwitz, and author of the book The Auschwitz Lie, also rejected the politically correct view.

Sobibor deputy commander Gustav Wagner and officer Kurt Bolender reportedly denied the politically correct view, shortly before their alleged suicides.

Camp prisoners

A common perception is that every Holocaust camp prisoner was an eyewitness to genocidal mass killings. However, even according the politically correct standardized version, the number of such prisoner eyewitnesses would have been very limited, with most prisoners only hearing camp rumors and hearsay. See the section "Witness testimonies" on more on this.

As noted in the section "Witnesses in the Zündel trials, the movie Shoah, and the Vrba-Wetzler report" revisionists argue that the only two "witnesses" to the alleged homicidal gas chambers who were ever cross-examined in a court, Rudolf Vrba and Arnold Friedman, had to admit that their accounts were false, based on hearsay and rumors, and that they had not seen any exterminations.

In contrast, Maria van Herwaarden, a prisoner at Auschwitz from December 1942 to January 1945, also testified in a court and was cross-examined without changing her testimony in 1988. She testified that she did not "ever see any indication of a mass murder or extermination of Jews.

Another prisoner was Marika Frank, who arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau from Hungary in July 1944, when 25,000 Jews were supposedly gassed and cremated daily. She testified after the war that she heard and saw nothing of gas chambers during the time she was interned at Auschwitz. She heard the gassing stories only later.

Jakob Fries was the work foreman for all the work groups at Auschwitz main camp. He stated that he learned only after the war and through media reports of the exterminations.

Emil Behr, a prisoner who worked as a driver at Auschwitz, stated that he had no personal knowledge of mass killings.

Esther Grossman was an Auschwitz prisoner, who stated that she saw no gas chambers and did not hear of them until after the war.

A prominent part of the politically correct version on Auschwitz is that those not fit for work, such as the young and the elderly, were gassed immediately on arrival to the camps. Revisionists argue that many such individuals who should have been killed on arrival have stated that this did not occur. See Holocaust demographics: Argued inconsistencies and absurdities regarding treatment and registration on arrivals to the camps.

Holocaust revisionist analysis of the statements of "Holocaust survivors" have shown that (contrary to the standardized politically correct version) several have stated that they, and hundreds of others accompanying, them transited through Treblinka without being killed, before going to other camps in the General Government. Similar statements have been made by many Jews deported to Sobibor. Examples include that "Cato Polak, deported on March 10, 1943, remained in Sobibór one or two hours and was then transferred to Lublin with 30 women and 12 men. [...] Sientje and Jetje Veterman, sent to Sobibór on April 6, 1943, were sorted out together with 28 other women for work and transferred to Trawniki with them. [...] Elias Alex Cohen, deported to Sobibór on March 17, 1943, spent only a few hours in the camp and was sent to Lublin with 35 other Jews. [...] Jules Schelvis writes that ‘in Sobibór, after the arrival of transports, the fresh work forces for Dorohucza’ were ‘selected.’ At Dorohucza, 5 km from Trawniki, was a labor camp where peat was cut. According to Schelvis, at least 700 Dutch Jews were transferred there directly after their arrival in Sobibór [...] Dorohucza was only one of many Jewish labor camps, which overlay the Lublin district like a dense network. Edward Dziadosz and Józef Marszałek count no fewer than 110 of them. [...] It is characteristic that nearly all the Dutch Jews, who had been transferred from Sobibór to another camp, returned home by way of Auschwitz-Birkenau; instead of being liquidated as bearers of top-secret knowledge, they survived even this ‘extermination camp.’"

Einsatzgruppen personnel

Walter Haensch was an SS Lieutenant Colonel who was in command of a Sonderkommando in group C of the Einsatzgruppen for about seven weeks. The book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century stated that the main Nuremberg trial (the IMT trial) established as "truths" various alleged Einsatzgruppen crimes (and various alleged German crimes more generally) that later trials (such as the 9th Nuremberg trial, the "Einsatzgruppen trial") were explicitly forbidden from questioning. "The fact that Haensch had not testified previously when others were on trial and the fact that his lower rank made the a priori constraints on Case 9 of lesser effect in his case, gave him a freedom that Ohlendorf did not enjoy. He testified that absolutely nobody, in giving him his orders, had ever mentioned Jews as such in connection with executive activities of the Einsatzgruppen and that his Sonderkommando had not, as a matter of fact, had a policy of executing Jews as such. He estimated that his Sonderkommando executed about sixty people during his period of service. All of these claims were completely in conflict with what are said to be the reports of the Einsatzgruppen."

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was in charge of major Einsatzgruppen operations in the Soviet Union and elsewhere during the war. At the Nuremberg trials, he was a prominent politically correct witness and likely as a reward was never punished for various alleged wartime crimes. In 1961, he repudiated his Nuremberg testimony, stating regarding the alleged Einsatzgruppen atrocities that he had only heard rumors during the war. After this less politically correct statement, he was sentenced to additional imprisonment for alleged prewar crimes and died in prison.

Others

Another example of rejecting the politically correct version was the senior engineer Walter Schreiber, who was responsible for constructions in Auschwitz, including of several alleged homicidal gas chambers. He asked his testimony to be published only after his death since "knowledge about these facts is dangerous".

German National Railway General Director Julius Dorpmüller stated after the war that he had heard nothing of the alleged Jewish "death trains".

Wilhelm Stäglich, a German postwar judge, stated that he had visited Auschwitz several times during the war and did not see any evidence of a genocide.

Albert Hoffmann, deputy Gauleiter of Silesia, visited Auschwitz together with Himmler and stated that "what Allied propaganda is now claiming, that is totally untrue."

Rudolf Göckel was a station master who became a liaison between the Belzec train station and the Belzec camp. In this position, he would have had an excellent overview of the trains arriving at or leaving the camp. He described the camp as a transit camp.

Marian Olszuk passed close by the Treblinka camp every day, as he went to work at a quarry. When he worked on the family plot, he was also right near the "extermination camp." The camp was small and practically devoid of trees or large shrubbery. As a result, the neighboring farm folk and passers-by could easily observe, through the barbed-wire fence, the prisoners and the guards, as well as the various buildings of a camp that is now said to have been ultra-secret. Olszuk never noticed any signs of homicidal activities. This despite the politically correct version stating very large cremation and burial pits in the camp.

Alfred Franke-Gricksch, an SS officer, allegedly wrote a report on Auschwitz, which has been criticized as a forgery and that even non-revisionists rarely mention today. More recently, the real report has been argued to have been discovered, stating nothing on gassings, and contradicting that "Aktion Reinhardt" involved mass killings. See also the article on Alfred Franke-Gricksch.

Herman Kruk, a librarian at the Vilnius ghetto in Lithuania, wrote in his diary on Jews from the Netherlands and other Western European countries being transported through Vilnius to destinations further to the east, contradicting the politically correct version. He also wrote on having contacts with Jews from the Łódż Ghetto, who had been sent to work in the east and who knew of no mass killings at the Łódż Ghetto, despite these Jews supposedly having been gassed at the Chelmno camp.

Many witnesses have stated the presence of Dutch and French Jews in Minsk, which contradicts the politically correct version. One list states eleven such witnesses (both Jews and non-Jews). The revisionist authors in addition stated that "For the most part, the existence of the above-mentioned witness statements have been revealed to the world via sparse footnotes in isolated exterminationist publications. How many more such testimonies are gathering dust in archives, ignored by orthodox holocaust historians?"

The Jewish Holocaust revisionist Joseph G. Burg.

In 1988, at one of Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials, the Jewish Holocaust revisionist Joseph G. Burg testified that he after the end of the war, in 1945, had visited Auschwitz and had also visited Majdanek, had spoken to hundreds of people who had serviced and operated the crematoria, and had concluded that no homicidal gas chambers existed and that there had been no plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Affidavits

Also at the Nuremberg trials, the defense presented evidence against prosecution claims of German "criminal organizations" (such as by involvement in the Holocaust). This included the testimony of 102 witnesses and 312,022 notarized affidavits. Revisionists argue that this enormous amount of testimonial evidence was almost completely ignored by the courts.

Heinz Fanslau, a senior Waffen-SS officer, "visited most of the German concentration camps during the last years of the war. Although a front line soldier of the Waffen S.S., Fanslau had taken a great interest in concentration camp conditions, and he was selected as a prime target by the Allies for the charge of conspiracy to annihilate the Jews. It was argued, on the basis of his many contacts, that he must have been fully involved. When it was first rumoured that he would be tried and convicted, hundreds of affidavits were produced on his behalf by camp inmates he had visited. When he read the full scope of the indictment against the concentration camp personnel in supplementary Nuremberg Trial No. 4 on May 6th, 1947, Fanslau declared in disbelief: “This cannot be possible, because I, too, would have had to know something about it.”"

Dr. Horst Pelckmann, defense counsel for the SS at the Nuremberg trials, stated that "On the question of whether the SS members recognized the destruction of Jewry as an aim of the leaders, 1,593 out of 1,637 affidavits which mention this problem state that the Jewish problem was not to be solved by killing or the so-called "final solution," and that they had no knowledge of these intentions of the leaders. They point out that the SS members were forbidden to undertake individual acts against Jews. As evidence, numerous members refer to the fact that many death or other severe sentences were passed because of crimes against Jewish persons or Jewish property." See also the article on Konrad Morgen.

Letters and postcards from supposedly killed Jews

Revisionists argue that many letters and postcards from Jews were sent during the war from locations where they could not have been, if they had been killed in the "extermination camps". Thus, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto received letters from locations in the occupied Soviet Union, despite these Jews supposedly having been killed. Non-revisionists claim that such letters were forged under duress at Treblinka, but revisionists argue that not a single one of the self-described survivors of Treblinka has made claims of this kind.

See also Alleged German conspiracy to hide the Holocaust.

Internal German resistance and Allied intelligence operations

Holocaust revisionists argue that there is no evidence that the German resistance to National Socialist Germany, including the important part of it that had infiltrated the German military intelligence (such as its head Wilhelm Canaris), was in any way aware of a program of exterminating Jews, and no such information was passed on to the Allies despite contacts.

See also Holocaust documentary evidence: Spies, cracking of all German message codes, and other intelligence gathering activities.

Witnesses changing their accounts to fit the politically correct version

Revisionists have argued that there are several individuals who in their first statements rejected exterminations, but who revisionists argue were threatened and/or tortured to change this in later statements, as discussed in the articles on these individuals.

• Fritz Sauckel
• Hans Aumeier
• Josef Kramer
• Konrad Morgen
• Nicolaus von Below
• Rudolf Höss
• Wilhelm Pfannenstiel

Maryla Rosenthal was a Jewish prisoner and a secretary at the political department at Auschwitz. She rejected knowledge of exterminations. When intensely pressured with this contradicting the politically correct version by interrogators and by more politically correct "witnesses", she speculated that this might be due to "suppressed" memories (which she could still not remember).

Unreliable testimonies in general

The existence of witches and alien encounters/alien abductions are some of many examples of claims that have been supported by numerous testimonies/confessions, including at numerous trials such as during the witch-hunts, but that despite this have been generally seen as false. Explanations for such false testimonies/confessions have included:

• Torture.
• Threats.
• Various forms of monetary and other personal gain.
• Conflicts/grudges/hatred with or against the accused, or a group the accused belongs to, for reasons other than the crimes falsely claimed in the testimonies.
• Propaganda, rumors, and hearsay believed to be true.
• Group pressure.
• Misunderstandings.
• Various psychological mechanisms causing sincere but false beliefs and false memories.

Holocaust revisionists have argued for such and other mechanisms explaining the presence of argued incorrect Holocaust testimonies/confessions.

There are also many more possible explanations, which are mentioned elsewhere in this article. Just one example of the limited value of eyewitnesses in general is that the reliability of eyewitness testimony has been argued to diminish greatly after only a few days, and after several months to be so severely influenced and altered by the replacement of forgotten details with subsequent impressions that it retains hardly any value as evidence. This time aspect may be particularly relevant for Holocaust trials, which often have occurred many years or decades after the events testified on. Another example is that human memory is stated to be especially unreliable and vulnerable to outside influences and the formation of false memories when dealing with emotional events.

Admitted false confessors and witnesses

Also many non-revisionists have admitted that many claims by alleged "confessors" and "witnesses" are false.

This may include many or all claims by "witnesses" such as:

• Adolf Rögner
• Bernard Brougham
• Binjamin Wilkomirski
• Denis Avey
• Einstein (Holocaust witness)
• Enric Marco
• Henry Bily
• Hermann Graebe
• Herman Rosenblat
• Jerzy Kosinski
• Joe Corry
• Joseph Hirt
• Lauren Stratford
• Martin Gray
• Misha Defonseca
• Rosemarie Pence
• Salomón Isacovici

This may include many or all claims by "confessors" such as:

• Adolf Eichmann
• Alfred Franke-Gricksch
• Hermann Rauschning
• Kurt Gerstein
• Otto Ohlendorf
• Rudolf Höss

Such claimed "witnesses" and "confessors" have been admitted to be false even by non-revisionists only when it has been proven, for example, that a "witness" spent the entire war in another country. In some cases, some non-revisionist Holocaust authorities have expressed regret that such frauds were exposed and that the deception attempts were not more subtle, for reasons such as the frauds being seen as damaging the credibility of the politically correct Holocaust version.

Even if fraud is proven, this is argued to be handled gently by the media, and not prosecuted, even if "witnesses" have lied under oath. This has been argued to encourage false statements.

More generally, Shumel Krakowski, the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust institution in Jerusalem, in a 1986 interview in The Jerusalem Post: "Krakowski says that many survivors, wanting ‘to be part of history’ may have let their imaginations run away with them. ‘Many were never in the place where they claim to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given them by friends or passing strangers’ according to Krakowski. A large number of testimonies on file were later proved inaccurate when locations and dates could not pass an expert historian’s appraisal." The Jewish scholar Samuel Gringauz has stated 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." One of the most prestigious Holocaust scholars, Raul Hilberg, expressively supported this statement.

Examples of other non-revisionists warning against the reliability of "eyewitnesses" include the Jewish historian Hannah Arendt, who stated on the Eichmann trial that the "eyewitnesses" who testified only rarely were able to distinguish between what actually happened to them years earlier and what they had read, heard or imagined in the meantime. 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." Well known Holocaust historian Gerald Reitlinger cautioned against testimonies and stated that "The Eastern European Jew is a natural rhetorician, speaking in flowery similes."

"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.""

Eleven Jews testified under oath that they personally saw Frank Walus murder Jews, including several children, in Poland. Walus proved that he had actually spent the war years working on German farms. The case was initiated after Simon Wiesenthal had accused Walus of working for the Gestapo. An article copyrighted by the American Bar Association concluded that "in an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man."

During the trial of Otto Hoppe, numerous witnesses made claims of atrocities by Hoppe against individuals who were later revealed to be dead long before the war, to never have existed, or to be missing during the trial, but who later turned up and stated that they not been mistreated by Hoppe. In one dramatic gesture, the witness Przyjemski placed his denture onto the table in front of the judge, explaining that Hoppe had knocked out his teeth. It was later found out that Przyjemski was not in the camp at the time. "It became more and more obvious that the witnesses, so adept at juggling with dates and names that concorded so perfectly and that – much later – were unmasked as pure lies, had only reached such perfection by learning and rehearsing these testimonies beforehand. The witness Przyjemski with his twelve teeth allegedly smashed in had to finally admit that he had performed his testimony on the basis of a little note that had been specially prepared for him." In total, 130 witnesses made accusations against Hoppe, who was convicted to a double life sentence plus 15 years, despite the even during the trial acknowledged numerous falsehoods by the witnesses.

The revisionist Mark Weber has written on the Dachau trials that "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?""

The revisionist Germar Rudolf has stated on John Demjanjuk, who was wrongly accused by "witnesses" and wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, that this was "not different from other similar trials which ended in sentences of death or incarceration, since the type and content of the witness testimonies, including internal and external contradictions and technical impossibilities, had not, of course, made their first appearance at the Demjanjuk proceedings, as we will discover later. It was only that during this trial they were successfully challenged for the first time. But if it was determined that all witnesses gave false testimony, which led to a misjudgment, then would not complaints have to be lodged against the false witnesses? And would not other trials, in which the same witnesses appeared or in which testimonies of similar questionable content were given – be it in Israel, in Germany, or in Poland – have to be reopened and retried? But nothing of the sort occurred. The cloak of silence was simply spread over this embarrassing matter."

See the article on the Western Holocaust camps regarding testimonies by a large group of "witnesses" and "confessors" that are now admitted to be false or exaggerated.

Argued absurd Holocaust claims

Elie Wiesel is often described as the world's most famous "Holocaust survivor".

In the original version of his book Night (published before the later stricter "standardization" of the Holocaust narrative), Wiesel did not mention the alleged gas chambers killings. Instead, the supposed killing method was being burned alive in open fire pits. The revisionist Robert Faurisson has written that "Forced to choose from among several Allied war propaganda lies, he chose to defend the fire lie instead of the boiling water, gassing, or electrocution lies. In 1956, when he published his testimony in Yiddish, the fire lie was still alive in certain circles. This lie is the origin of the term Holocaust. Today there is no longer a single historian who believes that Jews were burned alive. The myths of the boiling water and of electrocution have also disappeared. Only the gas remains."

Wiesel wrote in one of his books: "‘What are you writing?’ the Rebbe asked. ‘ – Stories,’ I said. He wanted to know what kind of stories: true stories. ‘About people you have known?’ Yes, about people I might have known. ‘About things that happened?’ Yes, about things that happened or could have happened. ‘But they did not?’ No, not all of them did. In fact, some were invented from almost the beginning to almost the end. The Rebbe leaned forward as if to measure me up and said with more sorrow than anger: ‘That means that you are writing lies!’ I did not answer immediately. The scolded child within me had nothing to say in his defense. Yet, I had to justify myself. ‘Things are not that simple, Rebbe. Some events do take place but are not true; others are – although they never occurred.’"

A large number of "witness" statements and "confessions" have been argued to be absurd and contradictory, as in these external links:

• Examples of Absurd Claims Regarding the Alleged National Socialist Genocide
• Made in Russia: The Holocaust
• Exposing the Holocaust™ Hoax Archive - A HolyHoax Museum: Tales of the Holohoax
• Most Outrageous Tales of the Holocaust

Some "confessor" statements have even been seen as so absurd that they have been seen as a form of covert signalling that the "confessions" were involuntary and false.

Argued absurd and contradictory statements are not limited to claims by some minor "witnesses" and "confessors", but are argued to often be present also in the claims by the most important and frequently cited "witnesses" and "confessors". It has been argued regarding Auschwitz that despite the many "Holocaust survivors" from this camp and the central importance of this camp for the politically correct version(s) that "There are a number of recorded witness statements and memoirs, but unfortunately virtually all of them contain serious flaws."

Lack of cross-examination

In ordinary trials, "witnesses" and "confessors" are allowed to be properly cross-examined by the opposing side, which may cause effects such as revealing previously unknown inconsistencies and absurdities, and even cause false "witnesses" and "confessors" to admit to having made false claims. Revisionists argue that no proper cross-examination of "witnesses" and "confessors" were done in any of the Holocaust trials before 1985, in the first of the Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials. See the section "Witnesses in the Zündel trials, the movie Shoah, and the Vrba-Wetzler report".

Recent trials have been affected by the increasing number of countries outlawing "Holocaust denial", including in cross-examinations.

See also the section "Paul Rassinier" on his confrontations with alleged "witnesses".

"Convergence of evidence"

Despite the many argued absurd and contradictory testimonies and confessions, non-revisionists have instead pointed to similarities between selected testimonies and confessions (or between selected parts of selected testimonies and confessions) as being a "convergence of evidence" supporting the existence of the standardized politically correct version.

See the article Holocaust convergence of evidence on this and revisionist criticisms, such as argued cherry picking and selective citations, while ignoring the many argued absurdities and contradictions.

Postwar confessions and testimonies relatively rarely cited as evidence against "Holocaust denialism"

Postwar confessions and testimonies are very important sources for the politically correct view(s) on the Holocaust. However, such postwar statements are relatively rarely used as arguments against "Holocaust denialism", which may be seen as an indirect admission of their unreliable and unconvincing nature. Instead, supporters of the politically correct view often prefer to cite German wartime documents/statements. See Holocaust documentary evidence on such statements, including in the section Speeches, diaries, and private conversations by the National Socialist leaders.

Trial confessions

Various trials that have included "confessions" by the accused are part of the politically correct evidence for the Holocaust. They include the Nuremberg trials, various other trials conducted in the immediate post-war period (in particular the many trials in the Stalinist Eastern Europe/Soviet Union with a long Stalinist tradition of political show trials and "confessions"), various later trials in Western Europe, and trials in Israel.

Revisionists have argued that these "confessions" are of little value and that the trials were often show trials. The accused may have been affected by factors similar to those mentioned below in the "Witnesses" section. In addition, the confessions may have been cause by factors such as fears of reprisals, threats, brainwashing, nervous breakdowns due to pressure, and torture.

Furthermore, revisionists argue that the "confessions" are often demonstrably false, absurd, and contradictory.

Violent methods

The Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss at the Nuremberg trials. Revisionists argue that he and others were tortured (sometimes by Jewish torturers) into making confessions that also non-revisionists now agree are false (such as three million being killed at Auschwitz) and that sometimes are absurd (such as using dynamite to blow up the bodies in order to dispose of them). See the article on Höss for more details.

In some cases, outright physical torture is argued to be documented or now to have been admitted. A number of prisons run by the western Allies are argued to have been “torture centers” and in late 2005 the British finally admitted that they had run torture centers in Germany by releasing the respective documents. See also the article on Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres.

Argued violent methods, including torture, during the Nuremberg and related trials are described in the articles on

• Belsen trials
• Dachau trials
• Einsatzgruppen: Otto Ohlendorf
• Josef Kramer
• Nuremberg trials
• Oswald Pohl
• Posen speeches: Comments by argued audience members on the 4 October speech
• Rudolf Höss

Richard Baer was the last commandant of Auschwitz. He avoided capture until 1960 and died in custody in 1963, under argued mysterious circumstance, after having refused to support the politically correct Holocaust version during the upcoming trial. His mysterious death is argued to possibly have influenced other trials "confessors". See the article on Baer for more details.

Several other prominent National Socialists have also been argued to have "died in a fashion which could be described as “convenient” to the upholders and propagators of the officially sanctioned Holocaust narrative. They are all individuals who must have had insight into the truth regarding the “Final Solution” and the alleged gas chambers. A number of them are also known to have denied the existence of such killing facilities."

Non-violent methods

It is also argued to be well-known that it is very often possible to get false confessions by using psychological manipulations and harsh but non-violent interrogation methods and that such methods were used.

Other argued problems include manipulated "affidavits" (written statements sworn to be true) in which exonerating passages were deleted and content often distorted by rewording, prisoners buying their freedom by serving as prosecution witnesses against others, court-appointed attorneys with poor command of German and little interest in defending the defendants and who sometimes threatened the defendants and advised them to make false confessions, hearsay being admissible as proof, and many other problems.

Threats, such as of being deported to the Soviet Union, or of family members being deported, are also argued to be documented. Documented threats or bribes are argued to have been applied to those testifying in favor or against the accused or their families.

One example is Fritz Sauckel, who signed a self-incriminating statement, with this argued to be due to Sauckel being told that his wife and ten children would otherwise be handed over to the Soviet Union. Another example, in relation to the Jewish Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Kempner: "His nasty method of extorting incriminating affidavits against the more important Nazi leaders is illustrated in the case of Dr. Friedrich Gaus, many years a minor official in the German foreign office. Dr. Kempner wanted him to testify falsely in order to get his superior Ribbentrop hanged. When Gaus complained that he could not honestly to testify, Kempner replied: The Russians are very interested in you, Mr. Gaus! For your violation of International Agreements! The only way for you to save your head, is that you tell the truth. Or do you wish as the right hand of Ribbentrop to go to the gallows? You know the old German saying, 'Captured with him, hanged with him!' Who were after Ribbentrop, the most guilty in the Foreign Office. Just say it; it serves no purpose, to spare these people. Whereupon the terrified Gaus incriminated Ribbentrop as Kempner wished; - and thereby secured immunity! He was immediatly released from solitary arrest and moved to the witness portion of the Nuremburg court."

See also the section "Witnesses changing their accounts to fit the politically correct version".

The legal strategy of acknowledging the Holocaust while attempting to shift blame

The Allies after the war disallowed regarding culpability the defense of having acted on superior orders (despite Allied legal documents during the war stating that this was a valid defense), but still allowed this to be taken into consideration during sentencing. This thus created an incentive for a defendant to not try to reject accusations the defendant would likely be convicted of, but to instead "confess" and state that the defendant had been forced to act due to superior orders.

In many cases, revisionists have argued, individuals supporting the politically correct view on the Holocaust (and in particular those testifying against others) were in fact often rewarded with lenient sentences compared to the crimes the individuals were accused of (or initial harsh sentences were quietly later greatly reduced in severity), demonstrating that the trials were primarily instruments for establishing the politically correct Holocaust version as the Truth.

Examples of "confessors" receiving no or lenient sentences, despite allegedly being involved in genocide(s) and/or other atrocities:

• Erhard Wetzel
• Erich Fuchs
• Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
• Kurt Becher
• Pery Broad
• Wilhelm Höttl
• Wilhelm Pfannenstiel
• "Confessing" Einsatzgruppen commanders - many initially severe sentences, including death sentences, were quietly later greatly reduced in severity with release from prison after relatively brief time periods.

European countries with "Holocaust denial" laws. In addition, some countries such as Australia and the Netherlands use other laws with the same effect.

In addition, after the initial trials (which are argued to have used the most coercive methods), the politically correct view on the Holocaust became a judicial fact that was not open for debate in later trials. Thus, the later Nuremberg trials after the IMT were explicitly forbidden to question the fundamental existence of the Holocaust (and other alleged German crimes) as established at the IMT. Furthermore, the basic treaty establishing the partial sovereignty of West Germany decreed that the verdicts of the IMT were final and binding for all official and judicial authorities of the Federal Republic. The Allies thus effectively placed the view of history resulting from their post-war judicial conclusions and verdicts beyond revision even for German courts. Even in the United States, the Holocaust was proclaimed to be "simply a fact" in one of the Mel Mermelstein trials (and any contrary evidence thus proclaimed inadmissible). In Canada, in one of Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials, the judge even before the trial started proclaimed that the Holocaust "is so notorious as to be not the subject of dispute among reasonable persons". In addition, "Holocaust denial" has become a crime in itself in many European countries, and this includes defendants or their lawyers "denying" the Holocaust in courts.

Thus, rejecting the Holocaust in trials is argued to have been a hopeless legal strategy, damaging to perceived credibility, likely causing increased negative feelings against the accused as being unrepentant and defending "Nazism", and very often simply inadmissible or a crime in itself, which may have contributed to legal strategies such as "acknowledging" the Holocaust, while attempting to minimize personal responsibility (including by claiming lack of personal knowledge, superior orders, and/or to have attempted to oppose the Holocaust) and instead blaming dead/absent others.

If rejecting the existence of the Holocaust, then the defendant could no longer even attempt to shift blame from himself, which has been argued to explain why the Auschwitz sub-commandant Josef Kramer changed his initial interrogation statement, that there were no gas chambers killings at Auschwitz, to a trial confession supporting that such killings had occurred, but were not under his control. See Josef Kramer: Two different statements.

Such defense claims in some cases did not work at all (even in gaining a more lenient sentencing), and the court declared the individual to have been lying regarding personal responsibility and/or motivation. Despite thus having been declared to be lying during the confession, confession statements by the same individual supporting the existence of the politically correct Holocaust version may be widely and often uncritically accepted as truths. Adolf Eichmann is a notable example.

Also non-revisionists historians such as "Kershaw concedes that some post-war court testimony of German military officers about the existence of an order from Hitler to exterminate the Jews is bogus: "The early post-war testimony of Einsatzkommando leaders about the prior existence of a Führer order has been shown to be demonstrably false, concocted to provide a unified defense of the leader of Einsatzgruppe D, Otto Ohlendorf, at his trial in 1947." [...] The tribunals that these German military men and National Socialist officials faced were committed, a priori, to the dictum that there was a Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews, and Adolf Hitler personally ordered this. It was not possible for them to contest this in court, so they simply built their defense strategies accordingly. By so doing, they placed the responsibility on Hitler and his National Socialist government in order to support their courtroom defense that they were only obeying the Führer’s commands–thus falsifying the historical record along the way." Similarly, "Alfred Streim, Director of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the Resolution of NS Crimes, wrote regarding this: "Ohlendorf 's testimony and submissions concerning the inauguration of the 'Führer Order' [...] are false. In the Einsatzgruppen Trial the former Head of Einsatzgruppe D was able to get his co-defendants to submit to a line of defense put forward by him with the suggestion that if one had, from the very beginning, carried out the extermination operations against the Jews on 'order of the Führer,' one could count upon a more lenient sentence." Such deliberate lying by trial confessors regarding central aspects, and even a conspiracy involving several trial confessors to deliberately lie in a unified way, arguably casts doubts on the trial confessions in general.

See Holocaust intentionalism and Holocaust functionalism on some non-revisionists stating that the superior orders defense may have caused false "confessions".

See also the Superior orders article on that the frequency of use of the superior orders defense is often exaggerated, compared to the defense of stating lack of personal participation/knowledge.

Confessors indirectly rejecting or rejecting parts of the politically correct version

Many Germans did not reject or confirm the politically correct version, but simply stated that they lacked personal knowledge of such mass killings. This may be seen as indirect rejection, if they were in positions where they would likely have had knowledge of such mass killings, if they had occurred. Many of the IMT defendants, such as Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, and Hans Frank, fall into this category.

In other cases, confessors stated that their personal knowledge confirmed some parts of the politically correct version, but that it rejected other parts. Some examples of this are Adolf Eichmann, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and many of the Einsatzgruppen commanders.

Confessors are also argued to frequently have made obviously absurd and contradictory claims, as discussed in the section "Argued absurd Holocaust claims". Some examples of this are Kurt Gerstein and Rudolf Höss.

"The Banality of Evil"

The expression "Banality of Evil" originally refers to an argued absence of displayed hatred or guilt by Adolf Eichmann in his trial in Israel, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job", and thus attempting to shift responsibility to others. The lack of hatred or guilt, despite the horrible crimes he confessed to, has been considered puzzling by politically correct observers. A not politically correct interpretation is that many of the crimes Eichmann were accused of had not occurred and that attempting to shift blame was in practice the only legal option available to him.

More generally, the Holocaust literature is argued to agree that the alleged Holocaust perpetrators generally returned to a perfectly normal civil life after the war, as if they had never experienced anything unusually cruel, or at least not more than that of others returning from the war. It has also been argued that there appears to be few cases of post-traumatic stress disorders among alleged Holocaust perpetrators, which is different from this being a common psychological disorder among soldiers involved in non-Holocaust atrocities. If there were those calloused enough to have been indifferent to what happened, or even perverted enough to have enjoyed these acts, as is claimed by many witnesses, it argued they would have displayed similar behavioral patterns after the war, which is argued to not be the case.

Holocaust confessors believing the argued Allied propaganda

Furthermore, revisionists have argued that "confessors" (and "witnesses") may have started to believe the argued massive Allied propaganda and therefore concluded that the politically correct Holocaust version was correct, despite their personal lack of knowledge, which could be seen as being due to the extreme secrecy allegedly concealing the Holocaust. See the article on Hermann Göring for an argued prominent example.

Some such individuals may therefore have seen little harm in making false statements supporting and acknowledging the politically correct Holocaust version, especially if this could cause leniency during sentencing or otherwise improve treatment.

Furthermore, individuals starting to believe that this version had occurred, despite having no memory of this, may also have started to subconsciously reinterpret their memories, so that the resulting new "memories" would fit with this belief, and may thus have started to believe that they had in fact witnessed Holocaust events. Subconscious elimination of "cognitive dissonance" so that beliefs and "memories" are in the end consistent with one another is well-known psychological process. Such processes may be especially important for trials decades removed from the events and during which time period the "confessor" had been repeatedly and constantly told by the media and other methods that the politically correct view on the events is the correct one.

The effect of the exposure to mass media repeatedly showing a particular view on the Holocaust stories has been argued to be demonstrated by comparing European, American and Israeli witnesses (high such exposure) with Australian witnesses (low such exposure). "Whereas western witnesses can almost always make definite statements on certain complexes of the matter at issue, investigators in Australia usually come away empty-handed. Nobody can quite remember anything any more there."

Even without such mass media exposure, the reliability of eyewitness testimony has been argued to diminish greatly after only a few days, and after several months to be so severely influenced and altered by the replacement of forgotten details with subsequent impressions that it retains hardly any value as evidence. This time aspect may be particularly relevant for Holocaust trials, which often have occurred many years or decades after the events testified on.

See Adolf Eichmann: Possible false memories on a possible example of false memories.

List of alleged Holocaust confessors

See Category:Alleged Holocaust confessors and the there linked articles for more information on each individual and the Holocaust.

For the purpose of this list all Germans officials alleged to have made some statement allegedly supporting the politically correct view on the Holocaust are listed as alleged confessors.

Witness testimonies

One of many statues of Anne Frank, with this one being located in Japan at a Japanese "Holocaust Education Center". Anne Frank is likely the most well-known Jew associated with the Holocaust, due to an emotional and very widely promoted diary that is extensively used in worldwide "Holocaust education".

Holocaust revisionists have criticized this for a variety of reasons, such as none of the thirteen persons associated with Anne Frank and Anne Frank herself and who were sent to Auschwitz were gassed, which has been argued to support the revisionists. See the article on Anne Frank for more details.

Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. The last camp Commandant Josef Kramer stated that the deteriorating conditions and diseases at the camp at the end of the war was in part due to the Allied bombings of Germany preventing transportation of foods and destroying the power plant pumping the camp's water. The civilian casualties due to Allied actions are rarely mentioned or memorialized. See Claimed mass killings of Germans by the WWII Allies.

Limited number of eyewitnesses

A common perception is that every "Holocaust survivor" was an eyewitness to genocidal mass killings. However, even if accepting the politically correct standardized version, the number of such eyewitnesses would have been limited even among Holocaust camp prisoners. Most surviving camp prisoners would not have seen the alleged gas chamber killings. Alleged eyewitnesses to the gas chamber killings include Sonderkommando members working in the gas chambers (but who were allegedly regularly killed) and individuals who miraculously survived alleged gassings.

Thus, even at the camps, most individuals would only have been aware of the alleged genocidal killings through hearsay and rumors.

See also Holocaust awareness.

Argued reasons for incorrect testimonies

Revisionists argue that "Holocaust survivors" and other "witnesses" accounts vary very widely, sometimes are contradictory (in particular the early testimonies), sometimes are demonstrably false, sometimes are absurd, and are widely acknowledged to be unreliable. Proposed reasons for the argued false testimonies have included:

• False rumors in the camps.
• False propaganda spread by (Communist) resistance groups and the Allies during the war as one part of the Allied psychological warfare.
• Misunderstandings (such as regarding showering when entering/leaving camps, the use of gas for delousing purposes, the camp crematoria, and the deaths caused by typhus).
• Horrible scenes due to epidemics and malnutrition (especially at the end of the war)
• Hallucinations and mass psychosis (caused by factors such as typhus and malnutrition).
• Economic compensation and other forms of personal gain.
• Wanting "to be part of history".
• Hatred of National Socialism.
• Religious significance (such as regarding the 6 million Jews number).
• Support for Israel and Jews more generally.
• Support for the Allies, such as by diverting attention from/excusing possible Allied war crimes.
• Jewish group pressure.
• Conformism.
• Fear of reprisals.
• Self-deception.
• Generally acknowledged unreliability of human memory, susceptibility of memory to more or less subtle external influences and/or deliberate manipulations, and easily formed false memories.
• Cognitive dissonance and other subconscious psychological effects causing effects such as "memories" being subconsciously changed to conform to and be consistent with beliefs.

Wartime atrocity propaganda from the Allies regarding atrocities in the camps is argued to have affected even the camps themselves. Thus, atrocity propaganda radio broadcasts and atrocity propaganda leaflets dropped from the air into the camps have been argued to have contributed to beliefs among inmates that exterminations were occurring.

One example of misunderstandings and rumors is that transfers from the camp (often involving going to a separate area for delousing before permanently leaving the camp) were misinterpreted as killings. Even non-revisionist descriptions state that many inmates wrongly believed that such transfers were killings.

See Holocaust demographics: Argued inconsistencies and absurdities regarding treatment and registration on arrivals to the camps on revisionist views on selections of prisoners for different purposes, such as work allocation at different locations on arrivals to camps (and with some of the prisoners often being transferred elsewhere, such as to other camps). Revisionists have argued that this was often misinterpreted as some prisoners being selected for killings.

Research on the human memory is argued to have shown that it is very unreliable and easily forms false memories under circumstances such as group pressure, rumor mills, suggestions, and only mild manipulations such as leading questions. See also the section "Holocaust confessors believing the argued Allied propaganda" on issues such as constant exposure to a particular version of events by the mass media as well as many testimonies being given long after the events, which have been argued to contribute to forming false memories of events.

A 2004 article stated that "According to this, memories of real experiences of the survivors are continuously overwritten by accounts and reports from others. As a result, the survivors themselves became a social group, relentlessly influencing each other, generating a psychological of group fantasies and of maryrdom in the process.''

''Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Loftus, North American expert for eyewitness criteria, has shown another approach to explain unlikely or simply false witness statements.[8] She describes the conditions, under which humans are incapable of distinguishing between actual experience and hearsay. It seems that especially under emotional stress our brain's control mechanism to distinguish between real memories and mere illusions or hearsay breaks down."

"Holocaust survivors" are argued to have become almost modern day saints, which is argued to have caused an absence of critical questioning, and is argued to have contributed to exaggerations, since an individual's status is argued to increase in proportion to the amount of horrors and atrocities reported.

Other argued motivations include individuals who had not been in the concentration camps but who had worked as laborers in Germany making false statements in order to not be accused of being collaborationists and ordinary criminals falsely claiming that they had been persecuted and imprisoned for political crimes in order to avoid being imprisoned again.

Also during the war, there were in the camps groups such as many ordinary criminals and Communists (both non-Jewish and Jewish). An important difference between camps is even argued to have been whether the ordinary criminals or the Communists were in control among the prisoners themselves. Both groups are argued to have practiced widespread terror and criminality against other prisoners. Members of these groups (not known for their truthfulness) may have made false testimonies for personal or ideological gains or in order cover-up crimes committed by themselves in the camps.

Bad smell in the camps and smoke/flames from crematoria chimneys

Apart from rumors and hearsay, prisoners who did not see the alleged gas chamber may cite bad smell in the camps, interpreted as having its origin from the burning of corpses from genocidal killings. Smoke from the crematoria chimneys may also be cited. Another claim is flames shooting out of the chimneys.

However, revisionists state that there were many non-genocidal deaths, crematoria, and burning of corpses in the camps. This does not prove the existence of homicidal gas chambers or genocidal killings.

Furthermore, crematoria do not cause strong odors outside the building. In addition, bad smell in a camp may have originated from causes such as the very large chemical factory complex next to Auschwitz, poor sanitation, and/or from camp diseases causing diarrhea.

Allegations of heavy smoke and/or flames shooting out of the crematoria chimneys have been seen as evidence of false testimonies. "Coke fires are very short-flamed and develop only little smoke, and this smoke usually burns within the muffle. Even carbonized, burning corpses do not generate any flame and smoke only slightly if the muffle is working inefficiently. That flames could penetrate through a 10 meter long flue and a 15 ft high chimney to the outside, is technically impossible. Even the fire’s reflections disappear in the flue."

Communists and witnesses

In Auschwitz, often Communist influenced resistance groups, beginning in 1941, spread an endless stream of horror stories and reports of mass killings of inmates. Revisionists argue that the alleged gas poison, the pesticide Zyklon B, was never even mentioned; instead, in a constantly changing manner, the killings were said to being committed by means of “electrical baths”, combat gases and a “pneumatic hammer.” Even after the liberation of the camp by the Red Army, a Soviet-Jewish war correspondent published a report on an “electric conveyor belt” in Auschwitz upon which inmates were killed with “electrical current.” The version in which Zyklon B became the murder weapon only became current during the following months.

Revisionists also argue that the prominent Communist and Auschwitz intern Bruno Baum after the war stated that "All the propaganda that now began to circulate about Auschwitz in foreign countries originated with us, assisted by our Polish comrades" and "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."

Communists are argued to have influenced witnesses also in trials in Western Europe. Thus, during trials in West Germany, "witnesses" from the Communist block are argued to have been checked for political loyalty before being allowed to leave, drilled on what story to tell during the trials, and watched at every step during their stay in the West by officials of Communist secret services and government agencies, in order to control that the witnesses did not deviate from the official story.

Argued dubious methods used to obtain witness testimonies

Witnesses at trials are argued to have in some cases been paid or to have been criminals being in the camps for severe crimes and who were promised impunity in exchange for incriminating statements. Such witnesses are argued to have been conspicuous by their frequent appearances at various trials, sometimes in groups.

Former camp inmates are argued to have been threatened by former fellow inmates with violence or reprisals against their families, or even told that statements and indictments would be prepared against them, should they refuse to make the desired accusations or statements against the targeted defendants in trials. The German “Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime” – later prohibited as an unconstitutional Communist association – was in the postwar period (when Germany was devastated and starving) allowed to decide which former inmates would receive food rations or be placed on a housing list and is argued to have used this to force witness statements.

An argued way to obtain witness statements for trials consisted of the prosecuting authorities using so-called “stage shows” or “reviews”: The prosecuting authorities assembled former concentration camp inmates and placed them in an auditorium of a theater or cinema. The defendants were placed on an illuminated stage, while the former concentration camp inmates sat in a dark room and were allowed to make any kind of wild accusation, often in complete pandemonium. If – contrary to expectations – no accusations were made, or if the accusations weren’t damaging enough, the prosecution is argued to have “lent a helping hand,” persuading the inmates to make accusations, often accompanied by the grossest intimidation and threats.

See also the "Trial confessions" section regarding more coercive methods, argued to have been applied also to witnesses.

Sonderkommando

According to politically correct terminology, "Sonderkommando" (special unit) was a term used for prisoners who worked in the homicidal gas chambers and with related tasks. As such, they are a very important group of witnesses. See the Sonderkommando article regarding Holocaust revisionist criticisms.

Witnesses in the Zündel trials, the movie Shoah, and the Vrba-Wetzler report

Rudolf Vrba. Revisionists argue that the only two "witnesses" to the alleged homicidal gas chambers who were ever cross-examined in a court had to admit in 1985, in one of the Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials, that their accounts were based on hearsay. Arnold Friedman was one of these "witnesses". The other "witness", Rudolf Vrba, also admitted that he had used "poetic license". The revisionist German Rudolf has written that "The prosecutor responsible for calling Vrba to the stand to testify about the gas chambers was so disgusted at this dishonesty that he interrupted Vrba’s examination personally on the grounds of obvious unreliability".

Revisionists argue that the only two "witnesses" to the alleged homicidal gas chambers who were ever cross-examined in a court had to admit in 1985, in one of the Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials, that their accounts were based on hearsay. Arnold Friedman was one of these "witnesses". The other "witness", Rudolf Vrba, also admitted that he had used "poetic license". The revisionist German Rudolf has written that "The prosecutor responsible for calling Vrba to the stand to testify about the gas chambers was so disgusted at this dishonesty that he interrupted Vrba’s examination personally on the grounds of obvious unreliability".

Vrba is one of the most famous Auschwitz witnesses, who, together with Alfréd Wetzler, wrote the very influential Vrba-Wetzler report on Auschwitz. It was the first to be officially sanctioned by the U.S. government, in the form of a 1944 report by the War Refugee Board, which had been created Jewish U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.

Vrba was also one of the "witnesses" in the "documentary" movie Shoah. Revisionists argue that when later asked if statements he made in the film were really true, Vrba’s answer was to the effect that: “I do not know. I was just an actor and I recited my text”. The movie also contained interviews with several SS men who supposedly were not aware of being recorded with a "hidden" camera. A critical analysis of one of these "witnesses" is argued to show that the statements made cannot be true and that he was aware of the being recorded. The director of the movie is argued to have admitted to paying his German "witnesses".

The Vrba-Wetzler report has been criticized for a number of argued errors, impossibilities, and implausibilities. In addition, some of the claims are argued to contradict the now politically correct Holocaust version.

Paul Rassinier

Paul Rassinier was a French professor of history and geography, a Communist, a member of the French resistance, and a forced laborer in German concentration camps. After the war, he became "the father" of Holocaust revisionism, in part due to the non-revisionist descriptions of the camps not corresponding to his own experiences. He started out believing that mass murders in gas chambers had existed somewhere, but gradually changed this view. In 1964, he wrote that "Each time when I was told during the last fifteen years that there was a witness in the part of Europe not occupied by the Soviets who claimed to have experienced a gassing himself, I immediately traveled to him in order to listen to his testimony. But in every case it ended the same way: With my folder in my hands, I asked the witness a series of precise questions, to which he could respond only with quite obvious lies, so that he finally had to admit that he had not experienced this himself, but that he had related only the story of a good friend, who had died during his internment and whose honesty he could not question. This way I traveled thousands upon thousands of miles throughout all of Europe."

"French priest Jean-Paul Renard promoted the deliberate lie that he saw “homicidal gassings at Buchenwald.” When former Buchenwald inmate Rassinier pointed out to him that there were no homicidal gas chambers or murderous gassings in the camp, Renard replied: “Right, but that’s only a figure of speech…and since those things [Hitler gas chambers] existed somewhere, its not important.”"

Memoirs of the Allied leaders

The three Allied leaders Eisenhower, Churchill, and de Gaulle wrote very extensive works describing their memories of World War II. "In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi "gas chambers," a "genocide" of the Jews, or of "six million" Jewish victims of the war."

Critics of this have stated that Churchill's first book has a sentence stating "The wholesale massacre by systematised processes of six or seven millions of men, women and children in the German execution camps". However, this does not mention Jews, genocide, or gas chambers, and is arguably surprisingly little on the topic, especially considering that Churchill's The Second World War book series consists of six volumes in the hardcover edition and twelve volumes in the paperback edition.

"Despite all of the authoritative declarations Churchill made or supported during the war with regard to the “reality” of the Nazi extermination of the Jews, when the war ended he made an astonishing statement that casts doubt on the sincerity of all of these wartime pronouncements. In a speech before the House of Commons on 1 August 1946, he emphatically declared that he knew nothing of the alleged Nazi mass murder of Jews while the Second World War was taking place. We quote him verbatim: “I must say that I had no idea, when the war came to an end, of the horrible massacres which had occurred; the millions and millions that have been slaughtered. That dawned on us gradually after the struggle was over. [...] The reader should take careful note of the implications of Churchill’s words. If Sir Winston was not aware during the war of the alleged mass killings of Jews, and if he and his associates realized only after the war ended that these supposed mass murders took place, then all of his “authoritative” declarations we listed above about the mass murder of Jews taking place during the war were just unconfirmed and baseless allegations in his estimation."

Regarding revisionist views on what Allied intelligence actually found on the Holocaust during the war, see Holocaust documentary evidence: Spies, cracking of all German message codes, and other intelligence gathering activities.

See Western Holocaust camps: Buchenwald on statements made by Eisenhower on visiting Buchenwald and organizing pro-Allied propaganda involving the camp.

Not politically correct statements on Auschwitz

See Auschwitz: Not politically correct witness statements on Auschwitz.

Auschwitz evacuation

See the articles on Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Israel Gutman on Jews stated to have preferred to join the SS when evacuating Auschwitz at the end of the war rather than to wait for liberation at the hand of the Communists. This has been argued to indicate that something is wrong with the politically correct view on Auschwitz.

See also Holocaust death marches and Holocaust Memorial Days.

List of alleged Holocaust witnesses

See Category:Alleged Holocaust witnesses and the there linked articles for more information on each individual and the Holocaust.

Other alleged confessors and witnesses

There are alleged confessors and witnesses not in the lists mentioned in this article. Some of these are discussed in the articles about various Holocaust trials (or in the links listed in their "External links" sections) such as the Nuremberg trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Others are discussed in the articles on individual Holocaust camps (or in the links listed in their "External links" sections). Revisionist arguments regarding these individuals are generally similar to the revisionist arguments regarding the individuals listed here.

See the article on the documentary The Last Days of the Big Lie regarding criticisms of the movie The Last Days and the witnesses appearing there.

See the article on the documentary The Jewish Gas Chamber Hoax regarding criticisms of "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation" and the witnesses appearing there.

See the article on the documentary Shoah regarding criticisms of the witnesses and confessors appearing there.

See also

• The Holocaust: Revisionist views: Hierarchy of evidence - On the argued lower value of party testimony compared to material and documentary evidence.

External links

• Examples of Absurd Claims Regarding the Alleged National Socialist Genocide
• Made in Russia: The Holocaust
• Exposing the Holocaust™ Hoax Archive - A HolyHoax Museum: Tales of the Holohoax
• Most Outrageous Tales of the Holocaust

Article archives

• Codoh: Witnesses

Downloadable books

• Holocaust Handbooks: Jürgen Graf: Auschwitz: Eyewitness Reports and Perpetrator Confessions of the Holocaust—30 Gas-Chamber Witnesses Scrutinized

Note that besides the external sources listed here, an alleged Holocaust confessor/witness may be extensively discussed in the external sources listed in the articles on the particular Holocaust camps and/or other Holocaust phenomena the individual is associated with.