This is the Auschwitz Main Camp or Stammlager.
There are three parts to what is known as Auschwitz.
There is Auschwitz I, the Main Camp,
a well-built compound which existed before World War II as a military barracks
and was slightly modified by the Germans when they took it over.
Then there's Auschwitz II, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau,
which was constructed during the war as an expansion of the Main Camp.
And there's Auschwitz III, or Auschwitz-Monowitz,
a large industrial area where many inmates were forced to work.
It is Auschwitz I, the Main Camp, which is the center of Auschwitz tourism.
It is here that tours are conducted hourly in English, Polish, German, and French.
By their own figures, over half a million people visit here every year,
and the place has become a curious shrine,
a mix of crass commercialism and religious reverence,
with a hotel, restaurant, gift shop, and booths selling all manner of video equipment
like batteries and videotapes in all formats
so that no one need worry about missing a shot of the Final Solution.
This is a shrine which combines Catholic expressions of identity and mourning
with Jewish ones, and this has traditionally caused some tension.
Jewish groups have charged that the Poles down-play the role of Jewish suffering,
and while few would openly suggest it, it could be said that, in the West,
Jews have attempted to monopolize Auschwitz as a uniquely Jewish experience.
Already we reach an important point in our examination of the Holocaust.
It is an event interpreted differently in various corners of the world.
The Soviets have always stressed the suffering of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, and others.
Post-World War II Soviet propaganda films often made little mention of Jews.
To the Polish locals, Auschwitz is given a Catholic face, with all the usual fetishes –
the suffering of Polish priests and other martyrs is stressed,
and attempted extermination of the Polish people is the preferred theme.
But in the Western world, we get a single-mindedly Jewish interpretation,
with the non-Jewish deaths being used mainly
to keep non-Jewish interest in the Holocaust alive by giving non-Jews some involvement in it.
But we are told that even though non-Jews suffered as well,
it is the Jews and the Jews only who are marked for extermination.
This schism has often resulted in well-publicized disputes
such as the convent of Carmelite nuns who took up residence here at Auschwitz
against the wishes of many Jewish groups,
and the time a touring Polish Auschwitz exhibit was protested for not being Jewish enough.
However, at the camp itself, there is more than enough victimization to go around.
The layout of the Auschwitz Main Camp is fairly simple.
A square of barbed wire fence surrounds rows and rows of inmates' barracks,
a large mess hall, and a few surprises which we will get to later.
Outside the fenced-in area are the SS headquarters, these two buildings,
— and the SS hospital and restaurant.
Across from that is the building known as Crematorium I,
the infamous gas chamber and crematorium.
Most of the inmates' barracks have been converted into museums
which make up the bulk of the guided tour.
The rest of the barracks are used as either archives or offices for museum staff.
One barrack, Block 11, has been kept in its original state.
It was the camp prison and it is now referred to, naturally, as "The Block of Death."
Which brings up another interesting point:
what is shown on the tour and what is not.
During the tour, you are shown "The Block of Death,"
the so-called "Wall of Death"
— naturally right next door to "The Block of Death" —
and exhibit after exhibit specifically designed to affirm atrocity stories
and portray Auschwitz as a death machine,
a place where internment meant extermination.
But what don't they show you?
To start with, a building which could conceivably be called "The Block of Life,"
a massive disinfestation complex where Zyklon B gas was used daily
to combat lice and the disease they carried.
These were the real gas chambers, except their victims were clothing and mattresses,
and their purpose was to preserve the health of the inmates.
Holocaust experts don't deny the purpose of this building;
they just don't like mentioning it.
After all, why complicate things?
Also forgotten is the Auschwitz camp theatre,
the current home of the aforementioned convent of nuns.
The last pictures taken inside this building showed pianos and costumes
and a stage where the inmates used to put on productions.
These days, however, the nuns don't allow pictures to be taken inside.
And finally, we have the Auschwitz swimming pool.
Yes, that's right: swimming pool,
situated inside the prison compound right alongside of the inmates' barracks.
A beautiful pool with a diving board and 'starters' blocks for races.
To their credit, the Auschwitz camp officials have not tried to remove this distraction.
But if you want to see the pool,
you need to know already that it exists because you won't find it on the tour.
So basically, what we have is a tour that consists mainly of tourists
who already believe in the Holocaust story
and are perhaps emotionally connected to it in some way,
being given a selectively edited tour filled with horror story after horror story
and ending up at the final stop — the gas chamber.
At this point, the tour group is emotionally primed to believe anything
and the gas chamber is like the featured performer after a two-hour warm-up act
to get the crowd in the mood.
Literally, the gas chamber is the objective proof
that everything they've heard on the tour is true;
objective proof of the Holocaust.
But is it?
We'll see in a minute.
I went to Auschwitz in September of 1992
to see for myself this place that I have studied for so long.
I paid extra for a personal English language tour guide,
a young lady named Alicia, who gives tours in Polish, German, and English.
And I wore my yarmulke just so nobody missed the point that I'm Jewish.
I figured that way I could ask my questions
in a manner that would not make me look like a revisionist.
You see, in the past, revisionists haven't had much success
in getting answers from the Auschwitz officials.
But I would come off as a righteous Jew wanting to know the real facts
and answer those who say the Holocaust never happened.
For the sake of clarity, not only am I a revisionist,
I am also quite proudly an atheist.
But my parents are both Jewish, so if you're a Jew by birth, you're a Jew by birth.
It's not anything I'd be ashamed of.
Alicia, like the other tour guides, had to take a class and memorize a spiel to become one.
This is an important point because I'm hoping to show that the people who run Auschwitz,
like Dr. Franciszek Piper and the tour guide supervisor you'll meet shortly,
teach their tour guides to say things they know aren't true.
But this shouldn't reflect badly on Alicia;
she only repeats what she's been told,
and I'm sure she never had to put up with a tourist like me before.
I have over four hours of footage of me taking the tour,
asking one obnoxious question after another.
This footage will be re-edited into a separate tape.
This time, we're just going to concern ourselves with the gas chamber
and my interview with Dr. Franciszek Piper,
Senior Curator and Head of Archives at the Auschwitz State Museum.
I came to Auschwitz as a confirmed skeptic about the gas chamber story.
I know to some people, critically examining the Holocaust is the ultimate sacrilege.
But you'll have to realize that I have no sacred cows
and understanding what really happened is important to me,
and I'd ask that you respect that.
I know from years of my own research and the research of others
that proofs of the Holocaust are few.
Literally, all there is are the "eyewitness" testimonies and postwar confessions.
There's no picture, plan or wartime document dealing with homicidal gas chambers
or a plan to exterminate the Jews.
And we can't use the excuse the Nazis destroyed all the evidence
because after we had broken the German code,
we were able to intercept their secret transmissions
including those that came from Auschwitz.
The key to understanding the Holocaust story is
understanding the true nature of the things passed off as proofs.
Everything that is used as evidence of the Holocaust
also can be said to have a perfectly normal explanation.
For example, these exhibits are said to be the material proofs of exterminations.
There are the piles of human hair.
But what does that prove?
It is acknowledged that each inmate had his or her head shaved because of the lice problem.
That's not denied, so why wouldn't there be piles of human hair?
What about the piles of shoes and clothing?
Is that a proof?
It's a fact that the prisoners were issued a uniform upon arrival, including shoes.
So why wouldn't there be piles of inmates' shoes and clothing?
It doesn't prove anybody was killed.
And that's giving the Soviets and Poles the benefit of the doubt
that the clothes and hair are genuinely from the camp during its operation.
What about the canisters of gas?
No one denies that Zyklon B was used to disinfect clothes and also buildings.
Zyklon B was one of the premier pest control agents in Europe at that time.
It was present in most of the concentration camps
including those that are not said to have had homicidal gas chambers in them.
The typhus epidemic that spread throughout Europe during the war
and also spread through the camps called for stringent lice control procedures.
In his book "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers,"
published by the [Beate] Klarsfeld Foundation and meant to refute revisionists,
Jean-Claude Pressac admits that over 95% of the Zyklon B used by the Germans
was used to disinfect.
He assigns only 5% to homicidal purposes.
And this from a Holocaust supporter.
So what other proofs are offered?
Well, there's the usual pictures of sick inmates
which proves the ground-breaking thesis that people got sick in the camp.
Once again I'll add that nobody denies the typhus epidemic which resulted in many deaths.
Then there's the artwork
and the pictures of children.
But at this point it's looking pretty bad
for somebody looking for objective proofs of the gas chamber.
And some of the proofs they present actually work against the concept.
For example, they have one of several aerial photographs
taken at Auschwitz by the Allies during the war.
They don't mention, however, that when blown up,
these photographs don't show people being gassed or bodies being burned,
even though they were taken during the time
killings were said to be going on almost non-stop.
I won't even go into the special money the Germans printed for Auschwitz inmates
or the fact even though it was said that Jewish children were killed immediately,
both Anne Frank and her sister were sent to Auschwitz and survived,
later being transferred to the Bergen-Belsen Camp
where they are said to have died from typhus.
But all this bickering would be pointless
if we could see a genuine gas chamber for ourselves.
That, of course, would most effectively end the argument.
Which brings us to the building I'm standing in front of, the gas chamber and crematorium.
Pictures of this building have been featured in book after book on the Holocaust.
After all, what better proof it all happened?
Revisionists don't dispute that this is a real building from during the war.
We say that it was indeed a crematorium and a mortuary
which also was used as an air-raid shelter
for the SS men in the hospital and restaurant right across the street from it.
The Auschwitz people say it was indeed a mortuary and a crematorium,
with the mortuary part, which you're looking at right there,
later being used as the gas chamber.
They also say that it was used as an air-raid shelter.
And they have, in the past, admitted that the large brick chimney
at the side of the building is a reconstruction,
which is no big shock to anybody
because it clearly isn't connected to the building in any way.
Now let's go inside.
Once inside, we can see why revisionists have had such a field day with this building:
Obvious marks on the walls and floors, where apparently walls had been knocked down.
Equally obvious holes in the floor where bathroom facilities had been.
We maintain that, unlike the large hollow chamber we now see,
this room had once been five rooms, including a bathroom.
I should add, there is no Zyklon B blue staining in the walls
as there would have been with repeated Zyklon B use
and as there were and still are in the disinfestation chambers.
A flimsy wooden door with a big glass pane in it
and a doorway with no door and no fittings for a door leading to the crematorium ovens.
And I should also mention the big manhole, right in the middle of the gas chamber.
Yet the building does have what appears to be evidence of criminal usage —
four holes in the ceiling which lead to the roof where four little chimneys stand.
It is said that through these four holes, Zyklon B crystals were dropped.
And indeed, there seems to be no other explanation for them.
Do these holes prove homicidal gassings?
Revisionists have claimed in the past
that these holes were added after the camp's liberation,
and that the inside walls were knocked down and the bathroom facilities removed
to make the room look like a big gas chamber.
As Alicia and I approached the building,
we passed the gallows where the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss,
was hanged by the Soviets in 1947, executed directly in front of the evidence of his crime.
Here, in front of the gas chamber,
I asked Alicia about the authenticity of that building.
"Now, let's start again talking about this building here. This…"
"This is a crematorium/gas chamber."
"But this is a reconstruction?"
"It is in [its] original state."
"Original."
"Original state."
Now there Alicia has very clearly represented the gas chamber as being in its original state.
Once inside, I asked her specifically about the four holes in the ceiling.
I then asked Alicia if any walls had been knocked down
in the room exhibited as the gas chamber.
"Uhu."
"But here, here…"
"It was only one room; only one room."
"That… Here I, I know here…"
"When here I show a picture of gas chamber, it was only one room."
"No."
Let's pause here to re-cap the gas chamber according to our tour guide.
She states that the room is in its "original state,"
that the ceiling holes are original and that no walls were knocked down.
Unsatisfied with her answers,
I continued to badger poor Alicia about the real history of this room.
Feeling somewhat exasperated at the fact that nothing she could say would shut me up,
Alicia went to get a woman who was introduced to me
as the Supervisor of Tour Guides for the Auschwitz State Museum.
When I saw this woman approach,
I figured I was either going to get a straight answer or kicked out of the camp.
"This [is] what I can suggest."
"It will be much better to go to our scientist in the State Museum and to talk…"
"They show a lot of plans which we're still having in the archives, and they…."
"Where would that be?"
"I don't think that it's open today, but probably on Monday it will be possible."
"That the, ah, the Auschwitz State Museum?"
"Yes."
"Is that in Oswiecim [Auschwitz]?"
"Here, in Block 24 or 23... I'm not sure about that."
"Would it be possible for me to make an appointment to see him on Monday perhaps?"
"That's true."
So, it was here that it was first suggested I meet with the Head of Archives
and Senior Curator, Dr. Franciszek Piper.
Still, fearing that such a meeting might not come about,
and assuming that the supervisor was probably in the loop regarding any reconstructions,
I decided to get her input regarding the supposedly original holes in the ceiling.
"Are those the original holes in the ceiling?"
"No."
"They've been rebuilt?"
"Yes."
"Okay. After the war?"
"After the war."
So, if you're keeping score,
that makes it one vote for original, one vote for not original.
I guess that would make Dr. Piper the tie-breaker.
Now, before we proceed any further,
a little digression is needed about some genuine Holocaust revisionism.
Dr. Franciszek Piper is one of the Holocaust experts
most directly responsible for the lowering of the Auschwitz death count
along with other scholars like Israeli Holocaust expert Dr. Yehuda Bauer.
It was decided around 1989 to admit publicly that fewer people died at Auschwitz
than had previously been reported.
In his book "Auschwitz – How Many Perished?,"
Dr. Piper concludes that the old Soviet-provided figure of four million is wrong
and that the real figure is closer to 1.1 million.
Now that's no small revision,
an admission that the Soviets exaggerated the figure by almost four times.
We can also see how the fraudulent figure has been an ingrained part
of supposedly factual Holocaust history for almost fifty years.
As late as 1988, in the official Auschwitz State Museum Guidebook,
you'll find on page 19 an official affirmation of the four-million figure.
And these figures are…
Well, this shows that not only was fraudulent Soviet evidence admitted as fact at Nuremberg,
but also that survivors and experts can be wrong.
And, if it matters, many Holocaust revisionists believe
that the actual total of dead at Auschwitz is even less than 1.1 million.
But still, there is no possibility
that even the most extreme Holocaust revisionist in the world
could possibly revise the figure any more than the Holocaust "experts" already have.
Which rather neatly brings us to this man, Dr. Franciszek Piper.
I interviewed him in his office at the Auschwitz State Museum.
At first, he was a little apprehensive about being videotaped.
But I explained to him that since I already had the tour guide on tape,
giving out what I had now come to believe was incorrect information,
I should have a videotape which could set the record straight.
Once he consented, I immediately asked him about changes made in the gas chamber.
"Were the holes in the ceiling put in in the same way that they were…?"
Here I think we should recap what Dr. Piper has told us.
According to him, the room was a gas chamber but was later turned into an air-raid shelter
at which time dividing walls were built, the holes in the ceiling were removed,
and a new door was added on one side of the gas chamber.
However, after the camp's liberation, the dividing walls were knocked down,
the holes were put in the ceiling, however, the new door was not removed.
I think here there are three main points that have to be made.
The first of these is that we are looking at a clear deception.
As I have shown, the gas chamber is shown off to tourists as being in its original state
even though the museum officials know better.
Dr. Piper appears to be very nonchalant about the fact that changes were made after the war.
But if it isn't such a big deal, then why hide it from the tourists?
And that's not all.
In May of 1992, British historian David Irving was fined by a German court
for telling a meeting in Munich exactly what you just heard Dr. Piper tell you.
In fact, Piper was even called as a defense witness.
But the judge wouldn't allow him to testify even though it might have cleared Irving.
Once again I'll say, if this is not such a big deal, why fine somebody for saying it?
Our next point is, the "gas chamber" is no longer valid as proof in its present state.
It is not a roof of homicidal gassings unless it can be shown that
at some time during the war this building had four holes in the ceiling
and no dividing walls during the time the Germans were operating the camp.
Which brings us to our final point, the reconstruction itself.
With the information we now have,
we can say there are two different views of the gas chamber reconstruction.
The first one, the official view, holds that the Soviets and Poles created a "gas chamber"
in an air-raid shelter that had been a gas chamber.
The revisionist view holds that the Soviets and Poles created a "gas chamber"
in an air-raid shelter that had been — an air raid shelter [correct: mortuary].
So how do we know which one is correct?
Well, obviously the burden of proof is on those who say
that there was a gas chamber at one time in that building.
Do they have any evidence at all to support that claim?
In my tenure as a Holocaust revisionist, I'm sure if there was any I'd have seen it.
I can also add that those questionable four holes in the roof of the building
are not detectable in any of the aerial photograph blow-ups that I've seen.
To get to the truth of this matter,
there are some other pertinent questions that can be asked.
If there was at one time a functioning gas chamber in this building,
why was its operation halted,
especially if the Nazis were running Auschwitz as an extermination center?
Well, Dr. Piper has an answer for that one, too.
In an essay published in the Polish book "Auschwitz,"
Piper writes that exterminations were moved
to new gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex
because it had become too difficult
to keep the gas chamber at the Auschwitz Main Camp a secret from the inmates.
This has apparently become part of official Auschwitz lore
because it's something Alicia repeated to me on the tour:
Now, let's be perfectly clear about this.
They say that exterminations were moved to Birkenau
because the gas chamber at the Main Camp was too close to the inmates,
and therefore they could know what was going on.
But is this even remotely accurate?
Let's refer back to our map of the Main Camp.
Now, here's the gas chamber right there, and there's the rows of inmates' barracks.
As you can see, the gas chamber is well outside of the prison compound,
and is hidden from view by the three SS buildings
which effectively hide it from the inmates' sight.
Plus we're told, the arrivals who are going to be gassed would be taken in through here,
thus avoiding any and all contact with the other inmates.
This was a gas chamber that could have functioned completely isolated from anybody's notice.
Now this is Auschwitz-Birkenau in an Allied aerial photo from September 1944.
These are the two crematoriums and "gas chambers," with the crematoriums above ground
and an L-shaped below-ground rooms that were either gas chambers or mortuaries;
and here you have the rows and rows of inmates' barracks.
Now, the thing that becomes immediately clear is
there is nothing but a barbed wire fence hiding the inmates' barracks from the gas chambers.
And this over here was the Auschwitz [Birkenau] sports field,
right next door to the "gas chambers."
And another thing to notice is not only could you see
the "gas chamber" parallel with the barracks,
but you could see diagonally to the one across the way from you.
Nothing was hidden form the inmates.
Another interesting thing was the train that would come up, carrying the doomed inmates.
You would have thousands of inmates being marched off the train
into one of these two gas chambers in full view of the entire camp.
This was a spectacle that nobody it the camp could miss;
they would see thousands of people marching into those buildings and nobody coming out.
These were "gas chambers" that were not isolated from anyone,
and indeed, when these aerial photographs were released in the late 70's,
they contradicted many supposed eyewitness claims
about how the Nazis had tried to camouflage the gas chambers at Birkenau.
I spent several days here at Birkenau,
and the footage I have, which is available on a separate tape,
dramatically shows everything I have just been saying.
Frankly, I don't think Piper's claim holds any water.
Another question that should be asked:
Is there any Zyklon-B residue in the gas chamber,
knowing that cyanide gas would, in fact, leave a residue?
In 1988, execution equipment expert Fred Leuchter conducted forensic examinations
on the gas chambers at Auschwitz to answer that question.
He took samples from the four gas chambers at Birkenau,
the one at the Main Camp and the control sample from one of the disinfestation chambers
that we know did use Zyklon B.
Now, the gas chamber samples showed almost no appreciable traces
whereas the disinfestation sample literally went right off the scale.
More importantly though, in 1990,
the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow decided to conduct their own forensic tests
to see if they could refute Fred Leuchter's findings.
And they did this with Dr. Piper's help.
Their own tests got back the same results.
So, since then, the question has not been
"Are there any appreciable traces of Zyklon-B residue in the gas chambers?"
but instead, "Why are there not any appreciable traces?"
I put this question to Dr. Piper.
I asked him: Why are there so few appreciable traces in the homicidal gas chambers
compared to the large amounts of traces found in the disinfestation chambers.
Now let's be perfectly clear about what Dr. Piper is saying.
I asked him,
"Why is the residue count high in the delousing chambers, but low in the homicidal ones?"
And he answers, because the delousing chambers were used, quote, "day and night"
whereas the homicidal ones were used, quote, "about 20, 30 minutes during 24 hours,"
which would account for roughly one gassing a day.
Now, not only does this contradict the eyewitness testimonies
which speak of repeated homicidal gassings going on day and night,
but Dr. Piper also manages to contradict himself,
because later on in the interview I asked him how many groups of people a day would be gassed,
and he, too, speaks of repeated gassings.
And what about the gas itself?
We are shown many canisters of Zyklon B gas as proof of the Final Solution.
But apart from delousing, which everyone agrees on,
and homicidal gassings, which the Auschwitz officials maintain,
did the gas have any other uses?
Now, let's recap again.
We now know that Zyklon-B gas was used to delouse clothes, to disinfect buildings,
and if you will remember the calculations of Holocaust supporter Jean-Claude Pressac,
over 95% was used for disinfection with only 5% or less used for homicide.
This seems like a great amount of effort on the part of the Germans
to preserve the health of people who were meant to be exterminated.
And I think at this point we can move on.
We return now to our job of trying to decide
between the two alternate views of the reconstructed gas chamber.
Is it a fake or a faithful reconstruction?
One very important question is this:
Can we trust the Soviets to have faithfully reconstructed the gas chamber?
Since there is no wartime proof of there ever having been four holes in the ceiling,
or of any gas chamber usage,
we literally have to take the Soviets and Poles at their word
that they simply returned the four holes to where they had originally been
and "reconstructed" instead of fabricated a gas chamber.
If we're going to try to establish Soviet intent,
we need to look at what precedent there is
concerning Soviet truthfulness regarding the Holocaust story.
Do the Soviets have a history of fabricating "Holocaust" evidence
or using deception to support the concept?
Well, as we've already shown,
the Soviets quite brazenly exaggerated the figures of dead at Auschwitz
by at least four times.
But was this simply a well-intentioned error on their part?
We are told in the Auschwitz guidebook and also by other sources
that the reason it was so difficult to ascertain the number of victims at Auschwitz was
because the Nazis had destroyed the appropriate records.
This concept was also repeated to me by Dr. Piper:
But in fact, the Auschwitz camp death records were held by the Soviets…
not released until 1989.
These documents were not destroyed by the Nazis.
I think we can assume that,
during all those years the Soviets were handing out their exaggerated death figures,
they knew they had these books in their possession.
We can also look at discredited charges made by the Soviets
and supported by the other Allies at the Nuremberg Trial.
The Soviets claimed there were "steam chambers"
for killing inmates at the Treblinka Camp in Poland.
Now, of course, that claim has been quietly dropped.
Also dropped are the claims of "electro-chambers."
Most interestingly, we have the Soviets at Nuremberg claiming
that it was the Nazis, not the Soviets,
who murdered thousands of Polish officers in the infamous Katyn Forest massacre.
These days, of course, the Soviets have admitted that they are the ones responsible,
and most legitimate historians knew this all along.
But at Nuremberg, the Soviets claimed that the Nazis bribed and threatened people
to falsely blame the Soviets.
The now-discredited atrocity stories of Nazi-created shrunken heads
and human skin lampshades were also exhibited as fact.
And in an almost inconceivable charge,
it was claimed that the Nazis exterminated Jews with an atomic bomb.
Also presented as fact was the story that the Nazis made soap from the bodies of Jews.
Let's examine this one a little more closely.
Now, the Soviets actually submitted supposed Jewish soap at the Nuremberg Trial.
But today, Holocaust scholars like Raul Hilberg, Yehuda Bauer and Deborah Lipstadt
agree that these accusations are groundless.
In a "Los Angeles Times" editorial from 1981, Deborah Lipstadt is quoted as saying:
The questions this raises are numerous.
If the claim is false,
then that means the Soviets were not being truthful
about that hunk of soap they exhibited as evidence.
and all the Nuremberg transcripts dealing with human soap are wrong.
But my question is:
When were these charges "thoroughly investigated," as she says?
This is just another case of a Holocaust expert
trying to make us believe that Holocaust experts know what they are talking about,
and are straight about what did and didn't happen,
which they are not.
To prove my point, I submit the fact that Dr. Piper still believes in the human-soap story:
Apparently, some war propagandas never seem to die.
Indeed, the specter of fraudulent Holocaust evidence from the Soviets
has reared its head in more current events
like the prosecution of Ukrainian-American John Demjanjuk
whose incredibly flawed war crimes conviction was based, in part,
on faulty Soviet evidence.
And speaking of fraudulent evidence,
some Holocaust experts seem to have difficulty explaining the difference
between what's fraudulent and what's real.
We return briefly to Jean-Claude Pressac's book on Auschwitz,
a book meant to refute revisionists.
Here he shows us a picture of a gas-tight door from a delousing room
which he claims the Soviets falsely represented to be from a homicidal gas chamber.
Yet several pages later,
he shows us a door which he claims is a genuine homicidal gas chamber door
because of the metal hemispherical grid protecting the peephole.
Pressac offers this door as a proof that homicidal gassings occurred.
But there's just one unanswered question.
How does Pressac know that this door, too, isn't a Soviet put-on?
If we admit that the Soviets went around misrepresenting and reconstructing things,
how can we tell the difference between what's real and what's not?
In the case of that supposedly genuine door with a metal grid over the peephole,
I asked Dr. Piper if I could see it for myself:
"In Pressac's book, he has a picture of a gas-tight door"
"with a metal grid around the peephole."
"Is that still around anyplace? Does it still exist?"
"Crematorium I?"
"Yes, in Crematorium I."
"Is it possible for me to see that?"
"It is visible…"
"Through a window?"
"Through the window."
"I would very much like to see that."
Well, guess what?
After the interview we went to the director's office, got the keys,
and explored every room in Crematorium I,
and no homicidal gas chamber door with a metal grid over the peephole.
No one knew where it went.
I guess it simply vanished, like magic.
So, in answer to our question about precedent regarding Soviet trustworthiness,
I think we've established that we can't really accept anything on faith
because evidence, certified as real one year, might be considered fake the next.
Evidence you are told is genuine can, in fact, be a so-called "reconstruction."
And if the Holocaust experts themselves can't agree on what's real and what's not,
then surely they proved themselves hypocrites
when they insist that homicidal gassings cannot be questioned.
With all this talk about Soviet deception,
I think it's necessary to put this matter in its proper historical perspective.
You see, we live in a time now when the old Soviet Union has fallen apart,
and it's now okay for both liberals and conservatives, as well as everybody else,
to speak ill of the dear, departed communist state.
But it was not always that way.
During World War II, the Soviets were more than just a military ally.
Their anti-Nazi propaganda was readily accepted by the other Allies
because it served all of their purposes.
It has to be understood that Russia's communists and Germany's fascists
had had a long-running propaganda battle, both before the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact
and, of course, after, with the outbreak of war.
Both Stalin and Hitler were men capable of and quite adept at propaganda.
Yet the vestiges of our acceptance of Soviet propaganda still linger to this day.
For example, when we see an anti-communist German poster,
we most likely immediately dismiss it as paranoid Nazi anti-communist propaganda.
Yet are we so conditioned
to dismiss a similar Soviet work as paranoid, anti-fascist propaganda?
The point is that we have a hard time realizing that Stalin's anti-German propaganda
was just as virulent as Hitler's anti-Soviet propaganda
and that, as the victors,
the Soviets got to commit their propaganda to the history books as fact.
But all charges and counter-charges made during World War II
must be re-examined with the 20-20 hindsight we now have:
the knowledge of Stalin's despotism
and the KGB's history of misinformation and deception.
And this re-examination must include the charges of genocide made against the Nazis,
especially considering that for Auschwitz, as well as the other camps in Poland
– Majdanek. Belzec, Chelmno, Treblinka and Sobibor –
we've had to rely on the Soviets for most of our information.
And if the Soviets exaggerated the number of dead at Auschwitz,
who's to say they didn't also do it at the other camps?
Why would they exaggerate Auschwitz by four times
and then be brutally honest about Treblinka?
However, lest I appear to be unfair,
it should be added that our own army and propaganda department did not sit idly by
and let the Soviets have all the atrocity propaganda fun.
After the war, it was claimed at the Dachau Camp that people were gassed.
In fact, the army produced several propaganda films supporting that notion.
"Hanging in orderly rows were the clothes of prisoners"
"who had been suffocated in a lethal gas chamber."
"They had been persuaded to remove their clothing"
"under the pretext of taking a shower for which towels and soap were provided."
Yet now it is no longer claimed that anyone ever died in a Dachau gas chamber.
This is a clear case of wartime propaganda.
It should also be added, in fairness, that it was the British
who obtained by torture the confession of Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz,
before turning him over to the Soviets and Poles.
This has been confirmed in a book published in 1983, titled "Legions of Death,"
which contains the recollections of British Sergeant Bernard Clark
who brags about having tortured Höss to get a confession out of him,
and of threatening his family.
Which brings us back to Auschwitz.
It was here, behind the building we've talked so much about, the supposed gas chamber,
that Höss was hanged for running an extermination camp.
But can we say now that was a just sentence,
with the main evidence being a confession obtained by torture and a reconstructed air raid shelter?
Perhaps you will answer that the sentence was still a just one
because of the fact that he indeed ran an internment camp
where people did indeed die in large numbers
from disease and malnutrition.
But then, what should have been done with the American troops
who ran the internment camps we had in the United States for the Japanese?
Or more appropriately to General Eisenhower and his troops,
who ran post-war POW camps for the Germans,
in which anywhere from hundreds of thousands to over a million Germans died
also because of disease and malnutrition.
Should they have been hanged, too?
When does war end and war crimes begin?
These questions have no easy answers.
And this debate is far from over.