How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss

Robert Faurisson

Rudolf Höss was the first of three successive commandants of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is often called "the Commandant of Auschwitz," and the general public knows of him from a book published under the title Commandant in Auschwitz.

He appeared before the International Military Tribunal as a witness on 15 April 1946, where his deposition caused a sensation. To the amazement of the defendants and in the presence of journalists from around the world, he confessed to the most frightful crimes that history had ever known. He said that he had personally received an order from Himmler to exterminate the Jews. He estimated that at Auschwitz 3,000,000 people had been exterminated, 2,500,000 of them by means of gas chambers. His confessions were false. They had been extorted from Höss by torture, but it took until 1983 to learn the identity of the torturers and the nature of the tortures they inflicted upon him.

The confessions of Rudolf Höss supply the keystone to the theory which maintains that systematic extermination of the Jews, especially by means of homicidal gas chambers, was a historical reality. These confessions consist essentially of four documents which, in chronological order, are the following:

1. A written deposition signed on l4 March (or l5 March?) l946 at 2:30 in the morning; it is an 8-page typed text written in German; I do not think, under normal circumstances, a court in any democracy would agree to take into consideration those pages lacking as they did any heading and any printed administrative reference; and crawling with various corrections, whether typed or handwritten, uninitialled and without a notation at the end of the total number of words corrected or deleted. Höss signed it for the first time after having written: "14.3.46 230." He signed again after two lines which are supposed to have been handwritten but which were typed, and which say:

I have read the above account and confirm that it is corresponding to my own statement and that it was the pure truth. (Official translation.]

The names and the signatures of the two witnesses, British sergeants, follow. One did not note the date, while the other indicated 15 March. The last signature is that of a captain of the 92nd Field Security Section, who certifies that the two sergeants were present throughout the entire proceedings, during which the prisoner Rudolf Höss made his statement voluntarily. The date indicated is 14 March 1946. Nothing indicates the place!

The Allies numbered this document NO-1210.

2. An affidavit signed 22 days later on 5 April 1946. It is a typed text, 20 pages long, written in English. That is surprising: thereby Höss signed a declaration under oath, not in his own language but in that of his guards. His signature appeared three times: at the bottom of the first two pages, then on the third and last page, after a text of four lines, still in English, still typed, which reads:

I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are true: this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion; after reading over the statement, I have signed and executed the same at Nurnberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.

There follows the signature of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith W. Brookhart after the statement: "Subscribed and sworn before me this 5th day of April 1946, at Nurnberg, Germany."

In its form, this text is, if possible, even less acceptable than the preceding one. In particular, entire lines have been added in capital letters in the English style, while others are crossed out with a stroke of the pen. There is no initialling in the margin next to these corrections, and no summary at the end of the document of the words struck out. The Allies assigned this document the number PS-3868.

In order to hide the fact that Höss had signed an affidavit that was in English when it ought to have been in his own language, and in order to make the crossed-out words and the additions and corrections disappear, the following trick was used at Nuremberg: the original text was recast and presented as a "Translation" from German into English! But the person responsible for this deception did his work too quickly. He thought that a handwritten addition to paragraph 10 (done in an English handwriting style) was an addition to the end of paragraph 9. The result of that misunderstanding is that the end of paragraph 9 is rendered totally incomprehensible. There are, therefore, two different documents that bear the same file number, PS-3868: the document signed by Höss and the "remake." It is the "remake," really a glaring forgery, that was used before the Nuremberg tribunal. One historical work that claimed to reproduce document PS-3868 by Höss in fact reproduced the "remake" but omitted (without saying so) the end of paragraph 9 as well as all of paragraph 10: see Henri Monneray, La Persécution des Juifs dans les pays de l'Est présentee à Nuremberg, Paris, Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation,1949, pp.159 - 162.

3. The spectacular oral deposition, which I have already mentioned, made before the IMT on 15 April 1946, ten days after the writing of document PS-3868. Paradoxically, it was a lawyer for the defense, Kurt Kauffmann, Ernst Kaltenbrunner's attorney, who had asked for Höss's appearance. His obvious intention was to show that the person responsible for the presumed extermination was Himmler and not Kaltenbrunner. When it came time for the representative of the prosecution (at that point the American assistant prosecutor, Col. Harlan Amen) to question Höss, he seemed to be reading from the affidavit signed by the latter but, in fact, he was reading excerpts from the "remake." Col. Amen gave an excuse for not reading paragraph 9 (and, at the same time, paragraph 8). Stopping after reading each excerpt, he asked Höss if that was in fact what he had stated. He received the following responses: "Jawohl," "Jawohl," "Jawohl" "Ja, es stimmt," a two sentence response (containing an obvious error about the Hungarian Jews supposedly having been killed at Auschwitz as early as 1943 even though the first convoy of them did not arrive at Auschwitz until May 2 of 1944), "Jawohl," "Jawohl," "Jawohl," a one-sentence response, "Jawohl," and "Jawohl." [IMT, XI, pp. 457-461]. Höss is quoted according to the text of the German-language edition of the IMT series.

In a normal murder case there would have been a hundred questions to ask about the extermination and the gas chambers (that is to say about a crime and an instrument of the crime which were without precedent in history), but no one asked those questions. In particular, Colonel Amen did not ask for a single detail nor for any additional information about the frightening text which he had read in the presence of journalists whose stories would make the headlines in newspapers around the world the next day.

4. The texts generally collected under the title Commandant in Auschwitz. Höss is alleged to have written these texts in pencil under the watchful eye of his Polish-Communist jailers, while in a prison at Cracow awaiting his trial. He was condemned to death on 2 April 1947 and hanged at the Auschwitz concentration camp fourteen days later. The world had to wait 11 years, until 1958, for the publication in German of his alleged memoirs. They were edited by the German historian Martin Broszat without regard for scholarly method. Broszat went so far as to suppress several fragments which would have too clearly made it appear that Höss (or his Polish jailers) had offered outrageous statements which would have called into question the reliability of his writings in toto.

The four documents that I have just enumerated are closely connected in their origin. Looking at them more closely, there are contradictions among their respective contents, but, for the most part, they are internally consistent. The eight pages of NO-1210 are in a sense summed up in the 2º pages of PS-3868; that latter document served as the central document in the oral testimony before the IMT; and, finally, the memoirs written at Cracow crown the whole. The base and the matrix are thus document NO-1210. It was in the Cracow memoirs, written under the supervision of Polish examining magistrate Jan Sehn, that Höss was to give particulars about how the British had obtained that very first confession.

Höss's Revelations about His First Confession (Document NO-1210 of 14 or 15 March 1946)

The war ended in Germany on 8 May 1945. Höss fell into the hands of the British, who imprisoned him in a camp for SS men. As a trained agronomist, he obtained an early release. His guards were unaware of the importance of their prey. A work office found him employment as an agricultural work at a farm near Flensburg, not far from the Danish border. He remained there for eight months. The military police looked for him. His family, with whom he succeeded in making contact, was closely watched and subjected to frequent searches.

In his memoirs Höss recounts the circumstances of his arrest and what followed. The treatment that he underwent was particularly brutal. At first sight it is surprising that the Poles allowed Höss to make the revelations he did about the British military police. On reflection, we discover that they might have done so out of one or more of the following motives:

to give the confession an appearance of sincerity and veracity;

to cause the reader to make a comparison, flattering for the Polish Communists, between the British and Polish methods, Indeed Höss later said that during the first part of his detention at Cracow, his jailers came very close to finishing him off physically and above all morally, but that later they treated him with "such decent and considerate treatment" that he consented to write his memoirs;

to furnish an explanation for certain absurdities contained in the text (NO-1210) that the British police had had Höss sign, one of these absurdities being the invention of an "extermination camp" in a place which never existed on any Polish map: "Wolzek near Lublin"; confusion with Belzec is not possible since Höss talks about three camps: "Belzek (sic), Tublinka (sic) and Wolzek near Lublin." Farther on, the spelling of Treblinka will be corrected. Let us note in passing that the camps of Belzec and Treblinka did not yet exist at the time (June 194l) when Himmler, according to Höss, told him that they were already functioning as "extermination camps."

Here are the words Höss uses to describe, in succession, his arrest by the British; his signing of the document that would that would become NO-1210; his transfer to Minden-on-the-Weser, where the treatment that he underwent was worse yet; his stay at the Nuremberg tribunal's prison; and, finally, his extradition to Poland.

I was arrested on 11 March 1946 (at 11 pm). My phial of poison had been broken two days before. When I was aroused from sleep, I thought at first I was being attacked by robbers, for many robberies were taking place at that time. That was how they managed to arrest me. I was maltreated by the Field Security Police. I was taken to Heide where I was put in those very barracks from which I had been released by the Bntish eight months earlier. At my first interrogation, evidence was obtained by beating me. I do not know what is in the record, although I signed it. Alcohol and the whip were too much for me. The whip was my own, which by chance had got into my wife's luggage. It had hardly ever touched my horse, far less the prisoners. Nevertheless, one of my interrogators was convinced that I had perpetually used it for flogging the prisoners. After some days I was taken to Minden-on-the-Weser, the main interrogation centre in the British Zone. There I received further rough treatment at the hands of the English public prosecutor, a major. The conditions in the prison accorded with this behaviour. After three weeks, to my surprise, I was shaved and had my hair cut and I was allowed to wash. My handcuffs had not previously been removed since my arrest. On the next day I was taken by lorry to Nuremberg, together with a prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a witness in Fritzsche's defence. My impnsonment by the Intemational Military Tribunal was a rest-cure compared to what I had been through before. I was accommodated in the same building as the principal accused, and was able to see them daily as they were taken to the court. Almost every day we were visited by representatives for all the Allied nations. I was always pointed out as an especially interesting animal. I was in Nuremberg because Kaltenbrunner's counsel had demanded me as a witness for his defence. I have never been able to grasp, and it is still not clear to me, how I of all people could have helped to exonerate Kaltenbrunner. Although the conditions in prison were, in every respect, good -- I read whenever I had the time, and there was a well stocked library available -- the interrogations were extremely unpleasant, not so much physically, but far more because of their strong psychological effect. I cannot really blame the interrogators -- they were all Jews. Psychologically I was almost cut in pieces. They wanted to know all about everything, and this was also done by Jews. They left me in no doubt whatever as to the fate that was in store for me. On 25 May, my wedding anniversary as it happened, I was driven with von Burgsdorff and Bühler to the aerodrome and there handed over to Polish officers. We flew in an American plane via Berlin to Warsaw. Although we were treated very politely during our joumey, I feared the worst when I remembered my experiences in the British Zone and the tales I had heard about the way people were being treated in the East. (Commandant in Auschwitz, Introduction by Lord Russell of Liverpool. English translation, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,. 1959, p. 173-175.)

Revelations in 1983 About the British Torturers of Rudolf Höss

The Revisionists proved a long time ago that the various confessions of Rudolf Höss contained so many gross errors, nonsensical elements, and impossibilities of all kinds, that it is no longer possible to believe them, as did the judges at Nuremberg and Cracow, as well as certain self styled historians, without any prior analysis of their content and of the circumstances in which they were obtained.

In all likelihood, Höss was tortured by the British soldiers of the 92nd Field Security Section, but a confirmation of that hypothesis was necessary. Confirmation has come with the publication in England of a book containing the name of the principal torturer (a British sergeant of Jewish origin) and a description of the circumstances of Höss' arrest, as well as his third-degree interrogation.

The book is by Rupert Butler. It was published in 1983 (Hamlyn Paperbacks). Butler is the author of three other works: The Black Angels, Hand of Steel and Gestapo, all published by Hamlyn. The book that interests us is entitled Legions of Death. Its inspiration is anti-Nazi. Butler says that he researched this book at the Imperial War Museum in London, the Institute for Contemporary History and Wiener Library, and other such prestigious institutions. At the beginning of his book, he expresses his gratitude to these institutions and, among others, to two persons, one of whom is Bernard Clarke ("who captured Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss"). The author quotes several fragments of what are either written or recorded statements by Clarke.

Bernard Clarke shows no remorse. On the contrary, he exhibits a certain pride in having tortured a "Nazi." Rupert Butler, likewise, finds nothing to criticize in that. Neither of them understands the importance of their revelations. They say that Höss was arrested on 11 March, 1946, and that it took three days of torture to obtain "a coherent statement." They do not realize that the alleged "coherent statement" is nothing other than the lunatic confession, signed by their quivering victim on the l4th or l5th of March 1946, at 2:30 in the morning, which was to seal Höss' fate definitely, a confession which would also give definitive shape to the myth. The confession would also shape decisively the myth of Auschwitz, the supposed high-point of the extermination of the Jews, above all due to the alleged use of homicidal gas chambers.

On 11 March 1946, a Captain Cross, Bernard Clarke and four other intelligence specialists in British uniforms, most of them tall and menacing, entered the home of Frau Höss and her children.

The six men, we are told, were all "practised in the more sophisticated techniques of sustained and merciless investigation" (p. 235). Clarke began to shout:

If you don't tell us [where your husband is] we'll turn you over to the Russians and they'll put you before a firing-squad. Your son will go to Siberia.

Frau Höss broke down and revealed, says Clarke, the location of the farm where her husband was in hiding, as well as his assumed name: Franz Lang. And Bernard Clarke added:

Suitable intimidation of the son and daughter produced precisely identical information.

The Jewish sergeant and the five other specialists in third degree interrogation then left to seek out Höss, whom they surprised in the middle of the night, sleeping in an alcove of the room used to slaughter cattle on the farm.

Höss screamed in terror at the mere sight of British uniforms. Clarke yelled "What is your name?" With each answer of "Franz Lang," Clarke's hand crashed into the face of his prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Höss broke and admitted who he was. The admission suddenly unleashed the loathing of the Jewish sergeants in the arresting party whose parents had died in Auschwitz following an order signed by Höss. The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: "Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse." A blanket was thrown over Höss and he was dragged to Clarke's car, where the sergeant poured a substantial slug of whisky down his throat. Then Höss tried to sleep. Clarke thrust his service stick under the man's eyelids and ordered in German: "Keep your pig eyes open, you swine." For the first time Höss trotted out his oft-repeated justification: "I took my orders from Himmler. I am a soldier in the same way as you are a soldier and we had to obey orders." The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Höss and he was made to walk completely nude through the prison yard to his cell. (p. 237)

So it is that Bernard reveals "It took three days to get a coherent statement out of [Höss]" (ibid.). This admission was corroborated by Mr. Ken Jones in an article in the Wrexham Leader. (October 17,1986):

Mr. Ken Jones was then a private with the fifth Royal Horse Artillery stationed at Heid[e) in Schleswig-Holstein. "They brought him to us when he refused to cooperate over questioning about his activities during the war. He came in the winter of 1945/6 and was put in a small jail cell in the barracks," recalls Mr. Jones. Two other soldiers were detailed with Mr. Jones to join Höss in his cell to help break him down for interrogation. "We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance," said Mr. Jones. When Höss was taken out for exercise he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Höss finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.

Clarke's statement, obtained under the conditions just described by bullies of British Military Security under the brutal inspiration of sergeant-interpreter Bernard Clarke, became Höss's first confession, the original confession indexed under the number NO-1210. Once the tortured prisoner had begun to talk, according to Clarke, it was impossible to stop him. Clarke, no more conscious in 1982 or 1983 than in 1946 of the enormity of what he forced Höss to confess, goes on to describe a series of fictitious horrors presented here as the truth: Höss went on to tell how after the bodies had been ignited, the fat oozing from them was poured over the other bodies (!). He estimated the number of dead during just the period when he was at Auschwitz at two million (!); the killings reached 10,000 victims per day (!).

It was Clarke's duty to censor the letters sent by Höss to his wife and children. Every policeman knows that the power to grant or withhold permission to a prisoner to write to his family constitutes a psychological weapon. To make a prisoner "sing" it is sometimes sufficient to merely suspend or cancel that authorization. Clarke makes an interesting remark about the content of Höss's letters; he confides to us:

Sometimes a lump came to my throat. There were two different men in that one man. One was brutal with no regard for human life. The other was soft and affectionate. (p. 238)

Rupert Butler ends his narrative by saying that Höss sought neither to deny nor to escape his responsibilities. In effect, at the Nuremberg tribunal Höss conducted himself with a "schizoid apathy." The expression is that of the American prison psychologist, G.M. Gilbert, who was in charge of the psychological surveillance of the prisoners and whose eavesdropping aided the American prosecution. We can certainly believe that Höss was "split in two"! He had the appearance of a rag because they had turned him into a rag.

"Apathetic", writes Gilbert on page 229 of his book; "apathetic, he repeats on the following page; "schizoid apathy," he writes on page 239 (Nuremberg Diary, 1947, Signet Book, 1961).

At the end of his trial at Cracow; Höss greeted his death sentence with apparent indifference, Rupert Butler comments as follows:

[Höss] reasoned that Allies had their orders and, that there could be absolutely no question of these not being carried out. (ibid.)

One could not say it any better. It seems that Rudolf Höss, like thousands of accused Germans turned over to the mercy of conquerors who were totally convinced of their own goodness, had quickly grasped that he had no other choice but to suffer the will of his judges, whether they came from the West or from the East.

Butler then quickly evokes the case of Hans Frank, the former Governor of Poland. With the same tone of moral satisfaction he recounts the circumstances of Frank's capture and subsequent treatment:

Celebrity status of any kind singularly failed to impress the two coloured GIs who arrested him and made sure he was transported to the municipal prison in Miesbach only after he had been savagely beaten up and flung into a lorry. A tarpaulin had been thrown over him to hide the more obvious signs of ill-treatment; Frank found the cover useful when he attempted to slash an artery in his left arm. Clearly, no such easy way out could be permitted; a US army medical officer saved his life and he stood trial at the International Military Tribunial at Nuremberg. (p. 238-239)

Rudolf Höss and Hans Frank were not the only ones to undergo treatment of that kind. Among the most celebrated cases, we know of Julius Streicher, Hans Fritzsche, Oswald Pohl, Franz Ziereis, and Josef Kramer.

But the case of Rudolf Höss is by far the most serious in its consequences. There is no document that proves that the Germans had a policy of exterminating the Jews. Léon Poliakov agreed with this in 1951:

As regards the conception properly called of the plan for a total extermination, the three or four principal actors committed suicide in May of 1945. No document has survived or perhaps has ever existed. (Bréviaire de la haine: Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, Calmann-Levy, 1951, Livre de Poche, 1974, p.171 )

In the absence of any document, historians à la Poliakov have repeatedly returned, primarily, to doubtful confessions like those of Kurt Gerstein or Rudolf Höss, sometimes modifying the texts to suit their convenience.

Bernard Clarke is "today a successful businessman working in the south of England" (Legions of Death, 1983, p. 235). One can in fact say that it is his voice that was heard at Nuremberg on 15 April 1946, when Assistant Prosecutor Amen read, piece by piece, to an astonished and overwhelmed audience, the supposed confession of Rudolf Höss. On that day was launched a lie of world-wide dimensions: the lie of Auschwitz. At the origins of that prodigious media event: several Jewish sergeants of British Military Security, including Bernard Clarke, "today a successful businessman working in the south of England."

The Testimony of Moritz von Schirmeister

During the war, Moritz von Schirmeister had been the personal press attaché of Joseph Goebbels. On 29 June 1946, he was interrogated before the IMT as a defense witness for Hans Fritzsche. His deposition was particularly interesting regarding the actual personality of Dr. Goebbels and the attitude of the official German news services toward the flood of atrocity stories about the concentration camps spread during the war by the Allies.

At the end of the war, Moritz von Schirmeister had been arrested by the British and interned in a camp in England, where he was given the task of politically "re-educating" his fellow prisoners. Before testifying at Nuremberg, he was transferred by plane from London to Germany. At first he was kept at Minden-on-the-Weser, which was the principal interrogation center for the British Military Police. From there he was taken by car (31 March -- 1 April 1946) to the prison at Nuremberg. In the same car rode Rudolf Höss. Moritz von Schirmeister is precisely that "prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a witness in Fritzsche's defense about whom Höss speaks in his "memoirs" (see above, p. 393).

Thanks to a document that I obtained from American researcher Mark Weber, who gave me a copy of it in Washington in September of 1983 (a document whose exact source I not yet authorized to indicate), we know that they were able to talk freely in the car that took them to Nuremberg. In that document, slightly more than two pages long, Schirmeister reports, as regarding the charges hanging over Höss, that Höss confided to him:

Gewiss, ich habe unterschrieben, dass ich 2 Millionen Juden umgebracht habe. Aber ich hätte genausogut untershrieben, dass es 5 Millionen Juden gewesen sind. Es gibt eben Methoden, mit denen man jedes Geständnis erreichen kann -- ob es nun wahr ist oder nicht.

"Certainly, I signed a statement that I killed two and a half million Jews. But I could just as well have said that it was five million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession can be obtained, whether it is true or not."

Another Confession Signed by Rudolf Höss

The British torturers of Rudolf Höss had no reason to exercise any restraint. After making him sign document NO-1210 at 2:30 in the morning of the l4th or l5th of March 1946, they obtained a new signature from him on March 16, this time at the bottom of a text in English, written in an English handwriting style, with a blank in the space where the name of the place ought to have been given. His guards made him sign a simple note written in English:

Statement made voluntarily at ______ Gaol by Rudolf Höss, former Commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on l6th day of March 1946. I personally arranged on orders received from Himmler in May 1941 the gassing of two million persons between June/July 1941 and the end of 1943 during which time I was commandant of Auschwitz. signed.

Rudolf Höss,

SS-Stubhr.

Eh. (?) Kdt. v. Auschwitz-Birkenau (even the word "signed" was written in an English hand).

The Auschwitz Myth

We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin. Arthur R. Butz has related the facts in his book, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, as has Wilhelm Stäglich in The Auschwitz Myth. The principal authors of the creation and the peddling of the "rumor of Auschwitz" have been, successively, two Slovaks, Alfred Wetzler (or Weczler) and Rudolf Vrba (or Rosenberg or Rosenthal); then a Hungarian, Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissmandel (or Weissmandl); then, in Switzerland, representatives of the World Jewish Congress like Gerhard Riegner, who were in touch with London and Washington; and finally Americans like Harry Dexter White, Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise. Thus was born the famous World Refugee Board Report on Auschwitz and Birkenau, published in Washington in November 1944. Copies of this report were included in the files of the judges advocate general in charge of prosecuting the Germans involved in the Auschwitz camp. It constituted the official version of the story of the alleged gassing of the Jews in that camp. Most probably it was used as a reference work by the inquirers-interrogators-torturers of "the Commandant of Auschwitz." All the names here mentioned are those of Jews.

Moreover we now see that Bernard Clarke, the first British torturer, was a Jew, The second British torturer, Major Draper (?), may also have been a Jew. The same for the two Americans: psychologist G.M. (Gustave Mahler) Gilbert and Colonel Harlan Amen. Finally, in Poland, Höss was faced with Polish Jews who treated him more or less the same way. When he wrote his "memoirs" it was under the supervision of instructing magistrate Jan Sehn, who was also probably a Jew.

Establishment historians dispute that Höss had been tortured and had confessed under duress. Since the publication of Rupert Butler's book in 1983, however, it is no longer possible for them to contest that. The Revisionists were right.

Since 1985 it is even less possible. In January-March 1985, the trial of Ernst Zündel, who was accused by a Jewish association and by the Crown of spreading Revisionist literature, took place in Toronto (Canada). Rudolf Vrba testified as a Crown witness. (He lives now in British Columbia). Affirmative and self assured as long as he answered the questions of the Crown, he suffered a spectacular rout when cross-examined by Ernst Zündel's lawyer, Doug Christie. For the first time since 1945 a Jewish witness to the alleged gassings in Auschwitz was asked to explain his affirmations and his figures. The result was so terrible for R. Vrba that finally the Crown itself gave a kind of coup de grace to its key witness. That unexpected event and some others (like the leading specialist of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, being caught red-handed in his lies) really made of the "Toronto Trial" the "Trial of the Nuremberg Trial."

The unintentional revelations of Rupert Butler in 1983 and unexpected revelations of the "Toronto Trial" in 1985 succeeded at last in showing entirely and clearly how the Auschwitz myth was fabricated from 1944 to 1947, to be exact from April 1944, when Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler are supposed to have escaped from Auschwitz to tell their story to the world up until April 1947, when Rudolf Höss was hanged after having supposedly told the same world his own story about Auschwitz.

It is remarkable that from beginning to end that story comes from essentially or perhaps even exclusively Jewish sources. Two Jewish liars (Vrba and Wetzler) from Slovakia convinced or seemed to have convinced other Jews from Hungary, Switzerland, United States, Great Britain, and Poland. This is not a conspiracy or a plot; it is the story of the birth of a religious belief: the myth of Auschwitz, center of the religion of the Holocaust.

This photograph was published after p. 161 of Lord Russell of Liverpool's Geissel der Menschheit, Berlin, Verlag Volk und Welt, 1960. The title of the original book in English is The Scourge of the Swastika. The caption of the photo says: 'The Confession of Rudolf Höss." It is not NO-1210 or PS-3868 but only a very short text of 16 March 1946. You will note the difference between the handwriting of the text of the confession and Höss's own handwriting. In his introduction to the English edition of Commandant in Auschwitz Lord Russell claims to furnish some information on the conditions in which Höss had to sign that note, but, since he commits errors in the chronology of the events in that regard, his information is to be received with reservations. (See Commandant in Auschwitz, p.18.)

The second photo was published as photo #22 in Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder (Britain, America and the Purging of Nazi Germany -- A Pledge Betrayed), Granada: London, Toronto, Sydney, New York 1981. The caption of the photo says: "Colonel Gerald Draper of the British War Crimes Group photographed as he finally secured the confession of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, to the murder of three million people." As one remembers, Höss said in his "memoirs": "I received further rough treatment at the hands of the English public prosecutor, a major" (Commandant in Auschwitz, p. 74). Did this major become a colonel and was his name "Draper"?

From The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87 (Vol. 7, No. 4), pages 380-403