National Journal, first published: 02/05/2009

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

A young and brilliant historian

Hitler's War

The Leuchter Report

Irving vs Lipstadt

Jail in Austria

Irving's trip to Poland

My questions to Irving and his reply

The missing answer on question four

 David Irving’s evidence for the mass murder

Irving's death toll

The absurdities do not end

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

The case of the missing murder weapon

The diesel gas chamber story

The evolution of the extermination legend

The results of the excavations at Treblinka (1945)

The results of the archeological drillings at Belzec (1997-1999)

Sobibor or the scientific report that never was

Two important documents Irving deliberately ignores

The three Reinhardt camps were transit camps

Once a "Holocaust denier", always a "Holocaust denier"!

A warning to David Irving

An advice to David Irving

Part 9 - Sources

Jürgen Graf , April 2009

David Irving and the “Aktion Reinhardt Camps”

David Irving’s evidence for the mass murder of Jews at the three Reinhardt camps

In his answer to my questions, David Irving mentioned seven reasons for his belief that the three Reinhardt camps had been extermination centers. Five of these reasons are based on documents, the remaining two on hearsay. We will examine the documents first.

- “The well known correspondence between Wolff and Ganzenmüller concerning Malkinia/Treblinka.”

On July 28, 1942, Albert Ganzenmüller, Secretary of State in the Reichsverkehrsministerium (Imperial Ministry of Transport), stated in a letter to SS-Gruppenführer Karl Wolff: “Since July 22, a train with 5000 Jews makes a daily trip from Warsaw to Treblinka via Malkinia, in addition to a train with 5000 Jews traveling twice a week from Pryemysl to Belzec.”[13] On August 13, Wolff replied: “I have noted with especial pleasure that a train with 5000 members of the chosen people has already been running for 14 days to Treblinka every day, and we are thus in a position to carry out this movement of population in an accelerated tempo.”[14] Neither Ganzenmüller nor Wolff stated that the Jews were being killed at Treblinka; Wolff spoke of a “movement of population” which clearly shows that he regarded Treblinka as a transit camp.

- “Himmler’s order not to leave any traces at Treblinka and later to build a farmhouse there.”

As I do not know this order, I asked David Irving to send me a copy. On April 9, he answered that he would do so later. Since I have not got the document yet, I am unable to comment on it, however I am absolutely sure that it does not contain any reference to mass murder, for if this were the case, it would be quoted in every single work of Holocaust literature.

- “The decoded Höfle radio message from January 1943 and in this connection the Korherr report.”

In his well-known 1943 report[15], Richard Korherr wrote that by the end of 1942 1,274,166 Jews had been moved through the camps in the General Gouvernement. The Höfle radio message[16] confirms Korherr’s figure of 1,274,166 and specifies that 24,733 of the deportees had been sent to L. (Lublin/Majdanek), 434,508 to B. (Belzec), 101,370 to S. (Sobibor) and 713,355 to T. (Treblinka). Neither of the two documents states that the deportees were killed.

“For 1942 and 1943, Himmler’s documents which reveal the extent of the Reinhardt loot: Jewels, watches, coins.”

The fact that the Germans robbed the Jews of their jewels, watches and coins does not prove that they murdered them.

Thus none of the documents mentioned by Irving furnishes any proof that the Reinhardt camps were extermination centers.

The last two “proves” belong to the category of hearsay. What the Mufti of Jerusalem claimed to have heard from Himmler, or what somebody claimed the Mufti had claimed to have heard from Himmler, has no historical value. Even more preposterous is the reference to the “personal interrogation of two witnesses about Belzec”. Imagine the following dialogue:

Hiroshima denier: “I do not believe for a moment that the Americans really dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. That’s just silly Japanese atrocity propaganda.”

David Irving: “I think you are wrong. Two years ago, I went to Hiroshima where I personally interrogated two old Japanese who had witnessed the bombing as children. If their statements are true, they prove that the Americans indeed dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.”

If hundreds of thousands of Jews had really been murdered at Belzec, we could do without “eyewitness evidence.” Irving’s argument reminds me of the pathetic “Belzec expert” Michael Treguenza who wrote about the pyres of Belzec:

“There is much disagreement on the subject of the number of pyres at Belzec. Witnesses from the village state that up to five pyres were in use, whereas SS personnel spoke of two pyres during the judicial proceedings in Munich in 1963/1964. Assuming that a minimum of 500,000 corpses were burned on two pyres, one has to assume, for five pyres, a much higher figure – possibly twice as high – than the 600,000 persons officially assumed so far.” [17]

So Treguenza “proves” the murder of up to 1,200,000 Jews at Belzec by means of gossip he has heard from some old people several decades after the war! This kind of “evidence” may be good enough for a clown like Treguenza. For a serious and self-respecting historian, it is in no way good enough.

David Irving’s death toll for the Reinhardt camps

In his standard work about the “Holocaust,” Raul Hilberg claims that 750,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka, 550,000 at Belzec, and 200.000 at Sobibor[18], which means that according to Hilberg, the total death toll for the three Reinhardt camps was 1.5 million. This figure is lower by 900,000 than the one peddled by David Irving (1.274 million for 1942 plus more than a million for 1943 = about 2.4 million).

But the absurdities do not end here. Consider the following:

-Hilberg’s figure of 550,000 Belzec victims is impossible because according to the Höfle document (which was not yet known in 1985 when Hilberg published the second and “definitive” edition of his book) 434,508 Jews were deported to Belzec until December 31, 1942. Since everybody agrees Belzec was closed at the end of 1942, no deportations to this camp can have occurred in 1943.
- In view of this fact, the total death toll for this camp can not possibly have exceeded 434,508, even if every single Jew deported to Belzec was killed there (as both Hilberg and Irving assume).
- If Irving is right, and if 2.4 million Jews were indeed exterminated at the three Reinhardt camps, but “only” 434,508 of them at Belzec, the remaining 1,965,492 victims must have been murdered at Treblinka and Sobibor. This would mean that Hilberg’s combined figure for these two camps (750,000 + 200,000 = 950,000) is too low by more than one million!

Difficile est satiram non scribere – It is difficult not to write a satire!