Six Million a true figure?

[BulgarianSoldier]

Not only those crematoriums PeterG.Stefan Shande write about mensachenmuhle every day the germans manige to kill 3000-6000 jews. Shande is explaning that trains with jews are enetering in tunels where thousends of jews are forced to step on metal that is under 1 meter water,then the germans put electricity in the water.All jews were killed then the metal is going up outside of the water and the germans put electricity again the metal was becoming extreamly hot and almost all of the jews are burned complity leaving nothing.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by sapper

Remembering the SS. It does not surprise me at all. What sort of human? being could countenance such behaviour.

Primo Levi wrote the introduction to Hoess' autobiography, here are his opening words:

Usually when you agree to write the introduction to a book, you do so because you truly care about the book: it's readable, it's got high literary quality, so that you like or at least admire the author. This book, however, is the extreme opposite. It's filled with evil, and this evil is narrated with a disturbing bureaucratic obtuseness; it has no literary quality, and reading it is agony. Furthermore, despite his efforts at defending himself, the author comes across as what he is: a coarse, stupid, arrogant, long-winded scoundrel, who sometimes blatantly lies.

Commandant of Auschwitz - The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess first published in 1959 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Republished 2000 in paperback by Phoenix Press. ISBN 1 84212 024 7.

[von Poop]

The trouble with Hoess's book is, as the man says, it never quite rings 'true', so much of it reads like the desperate sub-rambling of a man on trial for his life trying to make some sort of point that he's really not bright enough to make.
The amount of obvious lying going on casts a pall of doubt over the rest of the rather banal description of the progress of the camp. What he's choosing not to tell us becomes more interesting than what he actually is.
Excellent example of how primary(ish) sources, especially personal ones, can often be the most unreliable and partial of all.
My copy fell to pieces eventually, had an excellent 1970's schlock-horror cover. Quite appropriate that it had obviously been sold at some point amongst other penny dreadfuls.
Find myself wondering how many copies were sold, and who the royalties went to (if any) as it is a very common book in secondhand shops.

[Za Rodinu]

I never heard that story about Jew-barbeque. Cremated, buried, burnt on pyres, yes, but barbequed on the grill never.

Also I am aware of execution by busses with the exhaust spewing inside, showers which poured Zyklon instead of water, hangings, shootings, phenol injections, but electrocussion in a water tunnel never, but one never knows what new perfidy those Nazis invented.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

The amount of obvious lying going on casts a pall of doubt over the rest of the rather banal description of the progress of the camp. What he's choosing not to tell us becomes more interesting than what he actually is.

Primo Levi is talking about Hoess's claims about trying to make the gassings as humane as he possibly could, not about falsifying the running of the camp. For example his description of the 'kapos', the criminals who conducted a rain of terror over the inmates, Hoess says

They were soulless and had no feelings whatsoever. The Budy bloodbath [a well attested incident] is still before my eyes. [then we have this lying gem] I find it incredible that human beings could ever turn into such beasts.

Levi was in Auschwitz and he attests in his introduction to the veracity of Hoess's description and running of the camp. It is when he claims, as he frequently does "Now I realise ... Now I understand", that Levi says he is brazenly lying - as do today's political 'penitents' and all those who express remorse in words rather than deeds. Levi who was there says

Precisely because the author is uneducated, he cannot be suspected of deliberately perpetrating a colossal falsification of history he would have been incapable of that.

Can you indicate to me where else he is lying? I have read the book several times and cross-checked with other sources. His descriptions of cremations are accurate and tally with those of surviving inmates who had to dig up the mass graves and burn the corpses. The testimony of survivors of the Sonderkommando chimes both with the record and with Hoess's detailed account. The Sonderkommando had the most gruesome job in accompanying victims to the gas chambers then cleaning up and burning the corpses, at its peak some 900 were employed on the four crematoria. When reading these accounts a normal person is shocked into almost non-belief, reality seems too difficult to accept. Hoess is suspected of lying about his youth and about his Vehmgericht murder trial when he was in the Freikorps and sentenced to ten years in prison (he served six). His claims that he wasn't the ringleader simply do not ring true, but do not jump from this to rejecting all his evidence as unreliable.

Another thing is that Levi highlights the banality of evil, he says

On the whole, this book is substantially truthful: it is the autobiography of a man who was not a monster and who never became one even at the height of his career at Auschwitz, when at his orders thousands of innocent people were murdered daily. What I mean is that we can believe him when he claims that he never enjoyed inflicting pain or killing: he was no sadist, he had nothing of the satanist. By contrast, satanic features can be found in Hoess's portrait of his peer and best friend, Adolf Eichman; however, Eichman was far more intelligent than Hoess ...

[von Poop]

You make it sound like I attack the book. Please don't imply that any casting of doubt over Hoess or it is denialist. My comment was on the overall tone of it and the effect it has on the emotion of 'belief' while reading it. Until you read other works it feels unbelievable because of the very nature and history of the man who wrote it. I'd have thought it went without saying that the banality of the whole business is the most chilling aspect. Hoess's stumbling style, as I implied, adds to the banality.
I refer to lies because as above & despite knowing of it's truth it's almost impossible for me to comfortably believe someone like Hoess or in Hoess's position at the time of writing. The claims of not enjoying it and being forced to act by circumstance never ring true for me and read like so many other criminal's (or even many other more conventional, personal) memoirs, 'it wasn't really me' 'I'm not all bad' etc. that it damages the 'faith' when reading, as I said; "it casts a Pall". It's a very slim book, fascinating, but far from the be all and end all.

Wasn't this supposed to be about the origins of the figure of 6 million anyway? Rather than a book club.
Cheers,
Adam.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

It's a very slim book, fascinating, but far from the be all and end all.

Wasn't this supposed to be about the origins of the figure of 6 million anyway? Rather than a book club.
Cheers,
Adam.

Adam

The only reason I quoted from this book was because BS expressed disbelief in the existence of crematoria in Auschwitz, followed by Kitty saying that "I don't think burying that many corpses would work ... . They'd have been easily found in the post war investigations. Crematoria are the only way. ... As to near the end of the war when fuel was scarce, that was when bodies were either dumped in mass graves". It seemed to me that the Kommandant of Auschwitz account of the mass graves preceding the use of crematoria was relevant and should settle the matter. The slimness of the book is irrelevant, surely, and I did not even vaguely suggest that it was 'the be all and end all'.

On another point you raised earlier regarding royalties. The following appears in all copies (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and Phoenix): The royalties from this macabre but historically important book go to the fund set up to help the few survivors from the Auschwitz camps.

Peter

[Owen]

I'm finding this all really interesting .

It is relevant as it shows how many, many people can be killed and leave no trace. That is why there is doubt over the figures is it not?
6 Million graves could be counted.
Ash can't.

I've never looked into the Holocaust beyond , "Oh it happened, millions died, terrible event, mustn't be forgotten."

[BulgarianSoldier]

Originally Posted by Za Rodinu

I never heard that story about Jew-barbeque. Cremated, buried, burnt on pyres, yes, but barbequed on the grill never.

Also I am aware of execution by busses with the exhaust spewing inside, showers which poured Zyklon instead of water, hangings, shootings, phenol injections, but electrocussion in a water tunnel never, but one never knows what new perfidy those Nazis invented.

I readed in a Bulgarian site about the holocoust, there were even more methods but this was the only method that can make the bodys 'disapear'.
I dont know if this method is true, but only god knows what can pass in the SS sick minds.

[PeterG]

I have located a photo taken of Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, just as Hoess records, following which he gave orders to Hoess to dig up the all mass graves and incinerate the corpses.