Emil Lachout´s testimony at Ernst Zundel´s trial in 1988 on torture of German prisoners and false accusations by some camp inmates

 

Ernst Zundel

                           Emil Lachout 

Emil Lachout was the seventeenth witness called by the defence. He testified on April 11 and 12, 1988. 

Emil Lachout was a lieutenant in the Military Police Service in Austria in 1948. His job was to accompany the Military Police and members of the Allied War Crimes Commission during the arrests of alleged war criminals to ensure that the suspects were not tortured or abused. Lachout was also involved in the investigation of the Austrian camps, including Mauthausen.  

In 1944, Lachout had been a member of the German Military Police.  The Allied War Crimes Commission was composed of two military police investigators from each country and two Austrian observers, himself and Major Müller. It had been formed as a result of Allied mistreatment of alleged war criminals in such trials as Malmédy where it had been proven that false statements were extracted by torture. The Allies wanted to prevent such things from happening again.  The Commission was disbanded in 1949, and was reconstituted thereafter only for individual cases.  

Lachout personally saw instances of tortured Allied prisoners. He talked to them privately and had to "break the ice" in order to get statements from them. Sometimes the men didn't dare to speak because they suspected an Allied officer was there as well. On the basis of his observations, Lachout had instructed that the men be examined by doctors; it was clear that the men had been tortured.  

The Commission conducted an investigation, in which Lachout was involved, into the allegation that a gas chamber had been used in Mauthausen. It concluded that there were no gas chambers in the camp. In the investigations he was involved in, they found that many of the accusations made, particularly by former concentration camp inmates, were false.  Although Lachout was not personally involved in the investigations of camps in Germany, his office received documentation from the War Crime Commissions located there, pursuant to which he freed prisoners who had been wrongly accused and imprisoned. 

Christie (Zundel´s lawyer) produced a copy of a Circular Letter of the Military Police Service dated October 1, 1948 which Lachout read to the court: Military Police Service Copy Circular Letter No. 31/48 Vienna, 1 Oct. 1948 10th dispatch 603 1. 

The Allied Commissions of Inquiry have so far established that no people were killed by poison gas in the following concentration camps: Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen and its satellite camps, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Niederhagen (Wewelsburg), Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Theresienstadt. In those cases, it has been possible to prove that confessions had been extracted by tortures and that testimonies were false. This must be taken into account when conducting investigations and interrogations with respect to war crimes. The result of this investigation should be brought to the cognizance of former concentration camp inmates who at the time of the hearings testified on the murder of people, especially Jews, with poison gas in those concentration camps. Should they insist on their statements, charges are to be brought against them for making false statements. 

2. In the C.L. (Circular Letter) 15/48, item 1 is to be deleted. The Head of the MPS Müller, Major" Certified true copy: Lachout, Second Lieutenant Lachout testified that he had drafted this letter for Major Müller's signature and had watched him sign it. He had then had copies made in the office which he certified, signed and stamped. The letter was translated into three languages and confirmed by the controlling officer. Only then was it allowed to be issued. (29-7954, 7957) The letter was circulated to every military Kommando in the Russian zone to keep personnel aware of the state of investigations.

No one (no inmate) was ever charged with making false statements because they withdrew their statements as soon as they heard about the letter.  

In September 1987, Lachout was approached by representatives of the President of Austria, shown the original Müller document, and asked if he was the person who signed it. Lachout checked his own records and certified in District Court, Vienna, on October 27, 1987, that the signature on the document was his. (29-7946; Müller letter entered as Exh. 120)

https://tiqets.tp.st/234ifFlq

The Jewish witness Joseph G. Burg testifies on German ''Death Camps'' in Ernst Zundel trial in 1988

                       

                       Greenhouses in Auschwitz

                           Joseph G. Burg 

Joseph G. Burg was the twelfth witness called by the defense. He testified on Tuesday, March 29 and Wednesday, March 30, 1988. 

For an eight or nine year period prior to 1981, Zündel had been in communication by letter and in visits with Joseph G. Burg, a Jewish author who had written several books on the Second World War.

 These books included Guilt and Fate, Scapegoats, Zionist Nazi Censorship in the Federal Republic of Germany, National Socialist Crimes of Bad Conscience by Germans Against Germans under Zionist Direction and Major Attacks of Zionists against Pope Pius XII and the German Governments. 

Burg had discussed these books with Zündel and believed the latter had received them.  In his books, Burg dealt with the subject of the alleged Nazi extermination camps. Burg had spoken to hundreds of people who had been in Auschwitz and had visited the camp in the fall of 1945. Burg had wanted to see the crematoria, the hospitals, and in particular, a large new bakery. He also wanted to find the gas chambers although at that time gassings were not yet in fashion. 

He did not find any gas chambers. Burg formed the opinion that there were no "extermination" camps at all, that gas chambers had never existed and that there had been no plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. These opinions were published in his books and in his correspondence with Zündel.  Burg also visited Majdanek three times. He did find gas chambers in Majdanek, but testified that they were disinfection gas chambers for liquidating lice and fleas: bugs which caused epidemics. The chambers were standard in each camp and had the German words "Attention! Poisonous Gas!" under a death skull. Zyklon B was the new formula used to disinfect the clothing. It destroyed the bugs but not the fabric.   After the war, Burg heard a lot about the allegations that people were gassed at Auschwitz and Majdanek. He proved that it was either out of stupidity or propaganda. Up to now, he pointed out, no document had been found showing who gave the order for gassings, who built them and where they were built. The German authorities especially had been called the "super-bureaucracism." It therefore couldn't be that after all these years not a document could be found.   

Burg testified that he spoke to hundreds of people who serviced and operated the crematoria but the people who operated gas chambers were impossible to find. Nobody had published anything in which it was claimed that he worked in a gassing institution for human beings. There was literature about gassing that was completely contradictory. Why? Because it was all made up. These opinions were published in his books.   

In every camp there were crematoria. It was a practical issue. People died. When the Germans occupied the eastern territories, the huge camps were established and there were larger and more crematoria as the war progressed. Epidemics broke out causing an increased number of deaths. The question of crematoria was one of hygiene: the process was more hygienic than burial and took less space. Like all other activities in the camp, the inmates looked after the crematoria. It was the most difficult work because of the heat and the lifting of corpses into the ovens. 

The inmates worked very often in three shifts around the clock.  These workers did it voluntarily. They were asked by the Jewish council or the Jewish police. It was important to ask how the Jewish council or police co-operated with the German SS.  When they were in full operation, the chimneys had an increased amount of smoke. So, logically, depending on the weather or the time of day, the colour of the flames was different. People invented stories that inside devilish things were going on. They said living human beings were being burned. They invented the story that every crematorium was a gas chamber. It had even gotten to the point that the authors had such large imaginations that when they saw the blue colour of the smoke, they knew that Jews were being burned.  

Others invented the story that living Jews were being pushed in to be burned. Burg testified that he would like to see a Jew who had given such statements during a trial. He said such a Jew should be forced to take an oath under the rabbi rites with the skull cap, without pictures of Christ, with the Hebrew Bible, in the presence of a rabbi or a pious religious Jew. Then he should swear an oath that he had seen something like that. Then these false statements, these sick statements, would go down by 99.5 percent because the superficial oath was not morally binding for these Jews.   At the time he was in a displaced persons camp, Burg spoke to thirty or forty people about gas chambers and to about five to ten people about the crematoria. He had a special permit allowing him to visit the different areas where Jewish displaced persons were. He tried to get interviews from various ghettos and camps because at that time he had already checked various false statements. 

In 1946 Burg attended the Nuremberg trials at times when matters involving Jews were being raised. During one of these attendances he met Ilya Ehrenburg and a Jewish publisher who had been in Auschwitz for several years. Burg asked the publisher whether he had seen any gassing institutions for human beings and he said no. Ehrenburg, who had been the head of propaganda for the Red Army during the war, told Burg he had been to Auschwitz but he too had not seen anything of gassings. 

Burg had discussed this information with Zündel in general. Burg could not understand the emphasis on gassings.  Burg himself was the son of Jewish parents and spent the war years in Transnystria, an area set aside by the Germans for banned people such as Jews. The Jews were banned because they had greeted the Red Army. The people in this area lived in small villages and towns but had to fend for themselves and were therefore worse off than those who were in the concentration camps. In the camps the German authorities looked after the inmates because, on average, they were used for work. There were attacks on the Jews in this area by foreign ethnic groups, but no attacks organized by the Germans.  In 1946 and 1947, Burg lived in Freising, a camp for Jewish displaced persons near Munich in the American Zone. The director was a Jewish-American officer. Burg served as a factotum: he organized the police, the prison, the newspaper, cultural affairs. He organized groups and drove them around Bavaria to show them the sights, the museums and castles. His experiences in the camp were included in the book Guilt and Fate.   

Burg was read a passage from Did Six Million Really Die?:  The first Nazi proposals for a Madagascar solution were made in association with the Schacht Plan of 1938. Burg testified that the emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany who did not go to Palestine was hindered by the Zionists. The Zionists prevented the Jews from going to other countries because their interest was in making the Jews go to Palestine. Furthermore, most countries blocked entrance to Jewish emigration.  The German Reich wanted to get the Jews out: how and where were secondary questions. The people under Göring dealing with the Jewish question picked up a plan which came from the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, which involved moving the Jews to Uganda or Madagascar. Both of these colonies belonged to France. The plan did not work out, but the existence of the plan alone proved logically that a liquidation of the Jews did not exist. Their labour was needed as well. 

Burg emphasized there was no liquidation of the Jews by the Germans.  The Transfer (Haavara) Agreement of 1944 was one of the most important incidents in the Holocaust framework. Under this agreement some 2.5 million Jews were to be traded for trucks. The agreement never came to fruition because the Zionists could not take that number of Jews to Palestine.  Burg had discovered that the German Zionist leaders requested as early as 1933 that the Jews be required to wear the yellow star. The Zionists saw it not as an insult but as a heroic gesture, just like the SS wore the swastika. 

In 1938 the director of the Zionist movement in the Third Reich brought about the wearing of the yellow star by the Jews against the wishes of both Göring and Goebbels. Burg wrote in his books about the co-operation which existed between the Zionist leadership, including David Ben-Gurion, with the Nazi regime prior to the war.  Several days after Hitler had been named Chancellor, Rabbi Leo Baeck, a leader of the Zionist organizations in Germany, announced publicly that the interests of Jewry were identical with the interests of National Socialism. 

Burg testified that Baeck meant "Zionism," not "Jewry." The Zionists at that time in Germany constituted one and a half percent of the Jewish population. A few days later another Zionist leader made a similar declaration. The sense of these declarations, testified Burg, was as follows: 'We nationalist Jews, meaning Zionists, are in agreement with this regime. We are not ashamed of our nationalist thoughts.' 

The Germans who had to deal with the Jewish question co-operated immediately with this minority of Jews in order to prove to the whole world that they were not anti-Jewish but were cooperating with the Jews.  

In the early 1930s, as result of this co-operation between the Nazis and Zionists, some 120,000 Jews emigrated from Germany to Palestine. Difficulties began, however, when Britain, which administered Palestine, refused to issue any more immigration permits because of Arab unrest.  

Zionists in Germany worked at organizing schools for children in the Jewish language, workshops for young people, etc., to help prepare people to emigrate at some point to Palestine. The Zionists were interested only in emigration to Palestine and did everything they could to make sure that outside of Palestine no Jews were admitted. The Nazis were interested in getting the Jews to emigrate wherever they could. Nevertheless, co-operation continued between the Zionists and the Nazis, such people as Adolf Eichmann, Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion, until 1942 when the Zionist leaders were of the opinion they had reached their goal. Burg stated that even at that point Germany's defeat could be seen and the Zionists became like "rats leaving a sinking ship."  

Burg discussed the topic of Nazi and Zionist co-operation often with Zündel. Burg believed that the Zionists were the guilty party and that the Germans had been trapped. To brush everything over, the Zionists behaved like the cunning thief who runs ahead of the police screaming "Stop the thief!" 

It was Zündel's duty to fight against it and Burg stated he would help. Why? "Because otherwise it will never come to a reconciliation of the people. The truth is slowly coming out, and this is how, provoked by the Zionist leaders, a hatred against the Jews is growing.   Zündel had told Burg that thanks to his book Guilt and Fate, published in 1962, Zündel had become what he now was, a fighter for the truth, a fighter against the false accusations made against his people. 

Burg testified that there was no liquidation in the concentration camps. The healthier people were used for free labour. Burg pointed out that even a golden cage was a limitation of freedom and even a crime, but the invention of gassings came from sick minds. Burg wanted to prove that even at Birkenau, where gassings allegedly occurred, Jewish men and women could get special treatment. An example was Benedikt Kautsky, a Jew who was a spiritual personality in the Socialist-Marxist world movement. Kautsky was in Birkenau during the war doing office work. His mother, aged 79, was also sent to Birkenau. When she became sick she got a separate room and a special diet ordered by the doctor. This was "special treatment," given so the woman's life could be prolonged if not cured. She died when she was 80 years of age. When he was liberated, Dr. Kautsky returned to Vienna, Austria where he continued his scientific work. 

 In 1946, immediately after the liberation, Dr. Kautsky was one of the first to publish a book. It had the German title Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned). Burg testified that the book was the truth and had historical value. However, the whole edition was burned. One and a half years later, he published another edition in which he rewrote portions and made changes. But he didn't completely rewrite it. 

There was no documentation about gas  chambers and Kautsky himself admitted he never saw a gas chamber himself.  In Schuld und Schicksal (Guilt and Fate) Burg dealt with the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. When the German troops occupied Warsaw, they wanted to concentrate the Jewish population. Real ghettos had been there for centuries but the assimilated or emancipated Jews had lived far way from the ghettos. Now the Germans wanted to have the Jews all together. In a practical sense, the ghetto was also organized for the protection of the Jewish population. 

The Zionists were happy with this arrangement. An appointed Jewish Council was the governing body of the ghetto. They had their own police, jails and everything else. Naturally, there were some who were cruel. One of these was the vice president of the police, who was later executed. In Burg's eyes, this execution was evidence that Jews defended themselves against the minority of Zionists who were using the majority of Jews for their own purposes.  In the Lodz ghetto there was a Jewish police force, a Jewish bank, Jewish money, a Jewish post office, stamps only for Jews. There were workshops for Jews. If there was a German plan to liquidate the Jews, why were there workshops?, asked Burg. Why those expenses? Why train children for jobs? Thanks to Berlin, Burg testified, the Jews practiced a small Israel. These things could not be said today, however, because it was now said that there was a "Holocaust" and the Jews were murdered.  The German people, not just the Nazis, had been blamed falsely; and not just Germans living in Germany but Germans living throughout the world. Burg had an interest in this because he believed it provoked hatred against Jews. Zionist leaders even today had a interest in the origination of pogroms against the Jews and Burg was testifying to prevent this.  

In 1982 Zündel wrote to Burg twice asking him for help against the Zionists in Toronto who were creating problems for him, and for a recommendation. Zündel had been of the opinion that this could be helpful for him.  Burg had frequently discussed the subject of German restitution with Zündel. In Burg's opinion, if the Holocaust hadn't been invented, the Germans wouldn't be paying restitution and, he pointed out, "they are paying." He dealt with the subject in his book Guilt and Fate which Zündel read in the 1960s.   Israel was created in 1948 and in 1951 still had no diplomatic ties with the Federal Republic of Germany. 

In that year, Israel gave Dr. Nahum Goldmann, a representative of the World Jewish Congress, authority to negotiate with Dr. Adenauer, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, concerning Germany's guilt. Israel, under Ben Gurion, wanted money from the "damned Germans" but didn't want to sit down at a table together with them to negotiate. The negotiations between Goldmann and Adenauer resulted in a recognition by Germany that it had committed a holocaust against the Jews.   Burg testified that it was important to distinguish payments to the state of Israel. Israel did not exist during the war. It was Palestine then and belonged to the British administration. During the whole of the Second World War, not one single German soldier was in Palestine. What was there to make good again, to repair?, asked Burg.  Israel submitted a document to Germany stating that of four European Jews, three had been killed and for those dead people Israel demanded restitution. The document did not claim that 6 million died. Neither gassings nor murder were obvious from the document. The word used was "killed." The initial sum of 3.5 million marks had grown and not only today's Germans would pay but also the newborns. The sums were justified by inventions that 40 million Jews were gassed, then 25, then about 6 million, the level at which it had stayed. 

Burg testified that the reason for the continuation of war crimes trials in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States was to prove to everybody that the Germans, even the ones born in America and Toronto, were to be blamed for the murdering and gassing of Jews.  

Israel existed on the basis that a Holocaust happened. The German people of the Federal Republic paid money honestly earned by work to Israel, a barrel without a bottom.  Goldmann also negotiated for those who had been liberated from the concentration camps. These were the ones who had suffered, said Burg, who had their homes and apartments taken away from them, who had left everything behind. Special offices for restitution were set up around the world where Germany had representations.  Burg discussed with Zündel who was responsible for the upset in the world between Germans and Jews. 

He told Zündel that the First World War had brought the Zionists a homestead in Palestine but not a nation. This was much too little and everything had to be done to create a state of Israel. This was only possible by war activity. A world war had to come about. The Zionists therefore co-operated with what was known as Wall Street. Wall Street brought about the Second World War, just as they had brought about the First World War. Burg noted that the Hitler regime had also been supported because it was supposed to fight the Communists. Like the National Socialists, the Communists did not want to subordinate themselves to Wall Street. The plan of Churchill, together with the Zionists and the Americans of Wall Street, was to ensure that the National Socialists and Communists "knocked each other out." 

Chaim Weizmann had stated that he was willing to sacrifice German Jewry in the interest of a state of Israel.   Burg agreed that Zündel had shown a sincere curiosity about the Jewish question. Zündel was a German and he was defending his country, said Burg. Zündel had told him that he saw it as his life's work to defend his people because they were being defamed. Burg himself believed the German people were being defamed. He had expressed this view in his books "again and again" and suffered personally as a result. Burg was happy that Zündel had learned a little from him, by not talking automatically of "Jews" but instead emphasizing "Zionists."  

If the Holocaust story went on the way it was going, said Burg, there would never be a sincere relationship between the Jews and the Germans. The Zionist leaders would see to that. Burg had told Zündel that films such as Holocaust and Shoah were fortifications of a falsification of history, made for the purpose of showing Germans why they had to pay and that the paying would go on for another few generations.  

Burg testified that if Zündel had gone along with the current, he wouldn't have the problems he did. It would have been a much easier life for him. It was Burg's opinion that if there were another two or three Zündel's, it would be better for Jews as well. 

The Crown chose not to cross-examine Burg.

Tijudar Rudolph Testifying in Ernst Zundel´s case in Canada in 1988

 

                                                Lodz Ghetto

Tijudar Rudolph [Tijudar Rudolph was the tenth witness called by Zundel defence. He testified on Monday, March 28, 1988.] ´

Rudolph testified that he was 77 years old and was born and educated in Lodz, Poland. He was trained from the age of 16 by Jewish bosses to be a businessman. Rudolph was trained three years, then worked selling kosher edible oils and coconut butter to Jewish shops. He spoke five languages: German, Polish, English, French and Yiddish. Before the war broke out, Rudolph worked for such Jewish companies as Imperial Chemical Industries and Unilever in Great Britain.  

At the beginning of August, 1939, Rudolph, who was a German, was arrested with many other Germans by the police and taken by train to Warsaw. From Warsaw they were marched to a Polish concentration camp. Rudolph escaped after a few days. He believed he was arrested because he was a German.  

Rudolph made his way back to Germany but returned to Lodz within a matter of weeks working as an interpreter knowledgeable in the Polish and Yiddish languages with the security police, the SD. Rudolph worked for one year in the office at security headquarters translating documents and acting as an interpreter when Jews complained that they had been robbed by Germans. This happened very often in the first weeks after the Germans took over. Jews laid their complaints which would then be investigated and the culprits caught. Rudolph's superior in the office was an SS officer, Captain Schumann. His superior was a man named Schäfer.  

Rudolph left Lodz a year later when a good friend of his in the same unit, Major Liska, asked him whether he would like to come with him to Cracow. Liska told him the job, in an anti- espionage division, was interesting and much better suited to Rudolph's knowledge.  In Cracow, the office was concerned with Soviet counter-intelligence. Rudolph acted as an interpreter, filed all the letters and kept dossiers up to date. He also worked translating captured documents of Polish intelligence services.   

It was during his time in Cracow, in the autumn of 1941, that Rudolph's superior was in contact with the Red Cross. Said Rudolph: "We had the first snow and Major Liska came to me and said, 'I will have to go the next ten days and to guide the Swiss delegates who have announced they are coming and guide them through our concentration camps', and he gave me some orders how to keep in his absence the correspondence and how to keep the filing operating and so on. And he gave me the copy of the letter written by the Swiss headquarters in Geneva, saying would you be kind enough to let our delegates come and see the concentration camps and guide them around.   After about ten days, Major Liska returned and dictated to Rudolph his report addressed to Hans Frank, the Governor General [of occupied Poland]. The report was written in German and Polish and copies were sent to Berlin and to other concerned officers. Said Rudolph: "...the contents was, in short, we have guided the Swiss guests through the concentration camps, and as far as I remember, it was Auschwitz and Majdanek for sure, and we have shown them everything they did want to -- they have been entitled according to the Geneva Convention to go around the camps, freely, unhampered and ask people, but the main object was to ascertain whether the mailing and the parcels from Swiss did arrive in the camp and have been distributed correctly and equally to all inmates and this was a topic of their coming and at the end, they were dismissed by Frank at the castle where he had his headquarters, and the Swiss delegates did express their thanks.  Rudolph did not have a copy of the report: "I would be happy if I had." 

He had written several letters to the International Red Cross and asked why, as an international neutral body, it had never made reports about these visits. He never got a reply.   In Lodz, said Rudolph, there was contact and co-operation between the German administration and the Jewish ghetto workers. The Jewish elder, Chaim Rumkowski, told the Jews that it was suicide to combat the Germans and that they must co operate and that those who worked honestly with the Germans would not be deported. Rudolph testified that those Jews who hated the Germans and refused to work were deported. 

Of 160,000 Jews in the Lodz ghetto, some 75,000 to 100,000 remained in Lodz during the war working in factories that produced such things as the German army steel helmet and winter white camouflage suits. The people deported were thieves, misfits, criminals and those who refused to work.   In Rudolph's opinion, the book The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944 was a truthful account of what happened in Lodz during the war. It comprised a diary by Jews of the daily events of the ghetto and confirmed what Rudolph had experienced himself.   

In 1942, Rudolph became a soldier himself. He served as a member of the Signal Corps with Rommel in North Africa. The entire unit was captured by the Americans in 1945. They were discharged after one month.  Rudolph met Ernst Zündel in 1969 and in the intervening years he had discussed his experiences with him very often, including his experience concerning the Red Cross visit. Rudolph did not believe that there was an extermination of Jews in Auschwitz Birkenau. He said: "...Germany had to fight a terrible fight against Bolshevism. They didn't fight against Jews. But the Jews did declare war on Germany in 1933 and so it has been known that they are enemies of Germany. They had to be kept close in any camp and this was done. It wasn't an extermination. I never have seen any Jews gassed. It's absolutely lie. 

During the war, Rudolph never saw or heard anything that gave any indication there was any extermination in progress of the Jews of Europe. It was only after the war that he heard this allegation, and not by the Germans, but by the Jews themselves, such as Reitlinger and Hilberg. There were now legions of books and writers; Rudolph believed none of them.   Rudolph told Zündel that to cremate anyone took two hours. Thus, to cremate 6 million people in 16 ovens working 12 hours a day would take 171 years. No crematory could work 24 hours a day for even three months. After three months they would collapse because of the internal temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius required to burn the human body. Rudolph told Zündel that the extermination allegation was technically impossible. 

At first, Zündel was skeptical. He attempted to find out if Rudolph had made any errors but there were none.  The last time Rudolph had gone to Poland to examine the concentration camps was one month before.  Under cross-examination, Rudolph testified that he left Poland in about April of 1942 after training as a soldier.  The figures Rudolph had testified to regarding numbers of Jews deported from Lodz came from books which he read after the war. Those deported included women and children. He had no personal knowledge of the numbers himself as he was only an interpreter in the office. Nevertheless, he knew what was going on in the ghetto because he was interested; he had worked there before the war, knew many of the Jews and spoke Yiddish.  

The SD, of which he was a part, had the role of protecting the soldiers at home and on the front. The Einsatzgruppen were a combat unit fighting with the army with the duty of eliminating partisans. The ordinary SD were police who had the duty of keeping order in the towns and cities.  Rudolph testified that the SD were trained to make accurate, truthful reports and had a strong sense of duty to report things as they really were. To a suggestion that the Einsatzgruppen reports therefore indicated things as they really were, Rudolph testified that it depended on whether or not the documents had been falsified. He pointed out that the documents had no signatures, no dates, no numbers; in Rudolph's opinion, these were not documents of Germany where every document had to be signed, numbered, and an indication given of the office from which it came and the office to which it was going.  

Rudolph testified that when he said that the only Jews who were deported were thieves, misfits and criminals, he was using the words of Rumkowski, the chief and elder of the Jewish ghetto.  

In the Lodz ghetto, Rudolph indicated there was a small lake district with some of the nicest houses in Lodz. Some of these villas were reserved for children and recreation and 1,200 children were kept there, fed, looked after and educated. 

DR Russell Barton Testimony about Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp at Ernst Zundel trial in Canada in 1988

 

Soldiers and inmates in Bergen Belsen in 1945

Dr. Russell Barton [Dr. Russell Barton was the third witness called by the defence. He testified on Wednesday, March 9, 1988.] 

Dr. Russell Barton testified that he was the same Russell Barton referred to in Did Six Million Really Die? and confirmed that the quotes from his article in Purnell's History of the Second World War (vol. 7, no. 15) dealing with his experiences as a medical student at Belsen camp after its liberation were correct and consistent with his recollections of the event. 

Barton testified that he arrived at Belsen concentration camp on May 2, 1945. He had the view of most people at the time regarding Belsen; that it was a camp in which people had been ruthlessly exterminated and deliberately starved to death.  The impression of the camp he first gained was one of "horror"; some inmates were dead and piled up outside the huts, others were in various stages of dying, disease and dehydration. In one hut, the inmates were in relatively good condition, they could get up and walk.  In other huts, there was the pervasive smell of feces, vomit and decay. People were crying for doctors. Many could not feed themselves. 

The death rate when Barton first came was about 300 to 500 people a day. The inmates pushed dead people out of the huts because the lice which carried typhus left dead bodies and went to the living. 

Everybody was terrified of getting typhus, including the British. The bodies were in a state of severe malnutrition, and very few were clothed. A fire burned constantly at Belsen, upon which the clothes of the dead were thrown to burn the lice. Other garbage was also thrown into the fire, as there was no garbage collection. A dreadful smell permeated the camp which could be smelt about three miles away.  

Barton testified that typhus was a febrile disease which was caused by the bite of the human louse. The louse bite the skin, which itched. When the individual then scratched the itch, he scratched into the spot the feces which the louse had defecated onto the area where it had bitten. It was like a bacteria, but not quite a bacteria. It then spread throughout the body. It was essentially a disease of the blood vessels. The bacteria ate away within the lining of the blood vessels, thereby causing symptoms. For example, they often hit the blood vessels in the brain, causing a very severe headache. It sometimes caused pneumonia and often, gangrene. 

Victims of typhus lost weight very rapidly because of nausea. The individual felt terribly tired and exhausted. Other symptoms were pneumonia and skin falling off. In 1945, there was no cure for typhus. Today, there was; chloramphenicol was fairly specific. 

Typhoid was a different disease. It was caused by salmonella, an organism which affected the guts and the gall bladder, causing diarrhea, dysentery, and so forth, but it didn't interfere with the blood vessels in the way typhus did.  Many of the inmates died because the British soldiers gave them food and their stomachs burst; the medical students were giving them a mixture of glucose and flour and milk powder which made the inmates vomit. When they vomited, they often inhaled and died because they were so weak. 

Later they fed them a powdered milk gruel.  Although the vast majority of the inmates were emaciated, some were quite plump and well-fed, and this puzzled Barton from the first day.  He asked questions to determine the reason for this and was told that if there were a majority of Poles or French or Russians in one hut, that group would command all the food which was left outside the door of the hut. 

They would take what they wanted and leave the rest for distribution among the rest of the inmates. There was no overseeing by the camp staff and there hadn't been since before Christmas of 1944. Before that time, the food had been distributed reasonably and everybody was getting a fair share. "It was a terrible internal tyranny that...developed," said Barton.  

He got the impression that at least 50 percent of the inmates were Jewish because of the prayers and religious exercises they carried out. Barton was made an unofficial dietitian and found the camp had a kitchen set up with 450-kilo vats that were steam heated.  There were four in one room and four in another. He also found record books listing the food that had been cooked and distributed going back to about 1942. Each of the different hut's larders listed the amount of food that had been sent in the big churns for distribution. He mentioned to his colleagues that if there had been a deliberate policy of extermination, why should there be this elaborate kitchen equipment? This, however, was not a popular view. Barton made inquiries with inmates, including Jewish doctors, who told him that Belsen had not been too bad until the autumn of 1944. Then, as the Russian armies were advancing, they said they had been given the choice of remaining in the camps about to be overrun by the Soviets or being repatriated back to Germany. Many chose to return to Germany. As a result, from the autumn of 1944 to early 1945, some 53,000 people were moved into Belsen, which had room for only 3,000 inmates. The overcrowding was gross and the staff at the camp resented it. Josef Kramer, the commandant of Belsen, felt he had a responsibility to his 3,000 inmates but was apparently angry about the 53,000 that were dumped into the camp. Dr. Klein, the medical doctor at the camp, didn't know what to do.

 Barton spoke to his superior, Dr. Meiklejohn, about the way the camp had been run. Meiklejohn felt it was best not to look into these things too deeply, that in the time of "fervour and distress" Barton's views would not make him very popular. This proved to be correct.  Barton testified that on May 21st, it was decided to burn the camp down and to have the scene filmed for the purpose of showing the British to be "white knights" coming in to clear up the dreadful situation. Everything was arranged; work stopped for the whole of that morning. The flame throwers were ready in the tanks but the film makers hadn't got their cameras rolling yet. Suddenly, one of the tank commanders, in apparent enthusiasm, blew a flame into the hut that was to be burned, resulting in "tremendous consternation." They had to rush and put the flames out and start over again. That was but one example of what went on; there was the arranging of scenes that were pictured. 

Barton felt such artificial filming of the camp was the presentation of something which had no real purpose because the facts spoke for themselves; what worried him more, as he got towards the end of his stay at Belsen on June 1st, was the lack of integrity in dealing with the situation as it really was.  

He believed the old view that Belsen was an "extermination camp" was now largely corrected, but it depended to whom one spoke.

 A.J.P Taylor, the English historian, realized it when Barton talked to him after the furor came with the Purnell article.  Barton was asked to contribute the article to Purnell's. He wasn't "keen" to do it, but it didn't seem to be a very big magazine so he did what he thought was the correct thing: to write without fear or favour. 

Having experienced the results of writing as he did on the subject, however, Barton testified that he would not do it again for publication in his lifetime.  He was dubbed "Belsen-Not-So-Bad Barton" by Scientology magazine, and this name continued to be quoted. 

The London Times used the inflammatory headline "Belsen Not So Bad, says Psychiatrist."  There were letters to the Times criticising him. He wrote letters rebutting the more stupid and accusatory letters; there were television interrogations and other debates. The matter was "hot and furious. Years later, when he was on a talk show in America, speaking on Scientology, one of the ministers of the church charged: "This man killed 15,000 Jews." It was an attempt to discredit what Barton was saying but it nevertheless had repercussions. Even today, when he gave evidence in murder trials, the lawyer on the opposing side would often attack him collaterally by bringing up the Purnell article or alleging that: "He agrees he killed 15,000 Jews. 

He agreed that nothing he had ever said or written had caused him as much injury as had the Purnell article.  

His objective in writing the article was simply to give his evidence, not about the whole of Germany or people in Germany, not about all concentration camps, but about what he had actually seen and the conclusions he thought a reasonable person might come to. It was a terrible outbreak of typhus and the death of, he thought, some 30,000 people. He didn't think that it was going to be a public issue. Barton was also qualified as an expert in the field of psychiatry, specifically brainwashing and mass hysteria. There was such a psychiatric phenomenon as brainwashing, said Barton; usually it was used for political purposes. He described the brainwashing process of small groups  but stated that brainwashing could affect whole societies. He never thought the whole of Nazi Germany was brainwashed, although he thought some were brainwashed thoroughly such as the poor, maladjusted people who hadn't got jobs and hadn't much prospect of getting jobs. These were brought into meetings characterized by songs and music and torch light parades and were rewarded by being given places to live; usually places taken from previous owners. That's why people were pushed into concentration camps, so that their houses could be given to people who really wouldn't have lived at that standard. There was the brainwashing that there was the Aryan race that was superior to all others and that the other races were of no consequence. He thought this was the minority of German people, although he really hadn't any idea, but he thought a "tremendous number" of Germans hated Hitler and the loss of their freedoms. Barton believed he wasn't that suggestible, but noted that in the business of life one didn't really sit back and think. If a person was confronted with a convenient story in the newspaper, the tendency was to believe it. People only began to look into things when they themselves were threatened or when something seemed so grossly unfair and dreadful that the common decency of most people said: "This is wrong." 

Barton testified that this was what happened to him during the month he was at Belsen.  When he was in Germany, the fashionable belief among the British was that all Germans were bad people who bombed helpless civilians in cities and who exaggerated their personal problems into the most terrible crusades of murder and extermination of people they thought were inferior. This belief system affected their willingness to accept what Barton had said. When a dogma had been accepted, it was a rare man who would challenge it.  He stated that confessions could be obtained which were false by means of coercive measures and thought that the German people that were being examined after the war had to follow the new current line of thought. Barton believed that this was a tragedy for the German people. He thought the Germans were brainwashed after the war with respect to their guilt. The "pressures on them were tremendous."  

On cross-examination, Barton testified that probably a substantial majority of people could resort to barbaric activities if the circumstances were right. He agreed it had nothing to do with nationality. He believed the leaders of Nazi Germany, such as Adolf Hitler and Goebbels, were masters at propaganda and agreed that they elevated it to a new science. He agreed that part of the propaganda message was that the Jews were the cause of Germany's problems, that they used a variety of techniques to convince the populace that that was the case, that they used very graphic and insulting publications like Der Stürmer which parodied the archetypal Jew and had cartoons of Jewish people. He thought it was not parody, but an attempt to increase the hatred against one group by giving them qualities they didn't have, such as race. It was destruction of reputation, which in his opinion, was entirely unwarranted. It was easy to satisfy it in the minds of less intelligent people, the less critical people, because intelligence and criticism weren't in the same dimension.  

Barton agreed that techniques of propagandists and politicians included the "Big Lie" that a group of people, because of nationality or race, all had an identifiable characteristic, such as greed. He agreed that prior to the Second World War in Germany popular newspapers painted a distorted picture of the Jews, followed by the preventing of Jews from following their professional callings such as medicine or law, and pushing them out of the civil service; he agreed that legislation was then passed confiscating their property and that such property was given to the party faithful. 

 Christie objected at this point in the cross-examination on the grounds that Barton had not been qualified as a historian, and asked whether Crown counsel was going to prove the allegations of fact made in his hypothetical questions. Judge Thomas overruled the objection: "This man served his country at the time of the Second World War. He experienced it. He lived it. He was involved in it. There are no hypothetical questions being asked here. The questions that are being asked are questions that this man indicates he has knowledge of, personal knowledge of. Proceed." (21-5186) Barton was shown Exhibit 91, the cartoon published by Ditlieb Felderer, and agreed that the cartoon had the characteristics of the Nazi version of what a Jew looked like and attempted, by implication, to undermine his credibility. It was making fun of a great tragedy, he agreed. He further agreed that this was the type of cartoon published in Der Stürmer to identify Jews as an inferior people without rights. He agreed that if people were conditioned to view people as sub human, it would give them an excuse not to treat them like humans, and that this technique worked with quite a number of people.  He agreed that the goal of the Nazi regime was to force the Jews out of Germany; that when the war began, Hitler was initially successful militarily; that the Nazi empire expanded at a great rate; that the number of Jews who fell under Nazi domination increased significantly; that while the Nazis were successful on land, militarily, the British navy still controlled the seas; that this prevented the shipment of Jews to Madagascar; that the Jews were then rounded up and put in concentration camps along with other races and nationalities; that Nazi racial theory wasn't concerned only with Jews; that the Slavs and Poles were considered sub-human by the Nazis along with anybody else that had any property they wanted, including Whites; that the Jews occupied the bottom rung, however, and were the main scapegoat at one time (although Barton pointed out, there were Jews such as Einstein who were exceptions); that the Jewish community in Germany, prior to 1943, was a very vibrant community; that it made great contributions to German culture; that it resulted in there being many people whom the Nazis needed who were Jews; and while the Nazis had a racial theory that placed the Jews on the bottom rung, they were quite prepared to use the genius of the Jewish race when it suited them; that these people were used by the Nazis (Barton added that some died rather than be used); that Jewish doctors, while they didn't like working for the Nazis, felt they had a professional obligation to stay even though in their hearts they may have wanted to leave; that there were German doctors who stayed and wanted to help the dying and the sick. 

He agreed that all he could really tell the court about was Bergen-Belsen; that it was the camp where the Nazis kept the people that they wanted to trade; that before the influx of 1945, the people who were captive at Bergen-Belsen were viewed by the Nazis as a commodity; he agreed that they were hostages to be traded as a way of getting money, getting equipment to continue the war with; he agreed it made sense for the Nazis to keep people they were going to trade in relatively good condition; he agreed that could explain why the facilities in Bergen- Belsen were relatively good because if one was going to trade somebody, one had to keep them well-fed, although he thought, like everyone else when he was in Belsen, that they had been put there to be exterminated.  He agreed that if these people were to be traded and they had arrived in the United States in an emaciated condition, it would have looked bad for the Nazis; he agreed that it was entirely in the interests of the Nazi regime to keep these people they were trading in good condition; he agreed that 53,000 people who had arrived in Belsen in 1945 came from the east as a result of evacuations of the Polish camps; he agreed the trip for these people from the eastern camps to Bergen-Belsen was horrendous and had been told that thousands died; he agreed these were, in effect, death marches, but he had never seen any of them arriving; the evacuations ended by the very beginning of 1945. Some marched, some were in cattle trucks that were sent out to the Eastern front.  He stated that the inmates had told him they wanted to come west rather than be "liberated" by the Soviets. 

Most people were very worried about the way the Russian soldiers were behaving. He had no direct knowledge of what happened in the eastern camps such as Auschwitz, although he heard horror stories from the former inmates.  Barton agreed that one of the functions of propaganda in the Nazi regime was to incite racial hatred; he agreed that a certain percentage of the population of any country would be susceptible to that type of propaganda; he agreed that many factors could have a bearing on the impact of such propaganda; he agreed that people who were not susceptible during good economic times could become susceptible during bad economic times; he agreed that the group picked as a target for propaganda would also affect how successful the propaganda was; that a group different from the mean would improve the chances of the propaganda succeeding; differences including colour, religion.  He agreed that people under psychiatric care would not admit that they had a problem; that some people who underwent psychiatric care viewed the psychiatrist as being part of a conspiracy against them (although Barton added that sometimes such a view was justified.) He agreed that they would often point to external things as being the reason why they were in psychiatric care, such as the "Zionist conspiracy," through the use of projection, the attributing to other people of things that were denied in themselves.  

Barton had never read Did Six Million Really Die? right through, but he believed 6 million Jews did die. Nevertheless, he did not think it was pursuant to a policy of extermination. He thought there were many causes, including typhus and tuberculosis at Belsen. He admitted that on the topic of whether or not there was an official policy of extermination he could not give evidence as it was not his area of expertise. He himself saw thousands die. He did not know that his work was going to be published in Did Six Million Really Die?. Asked if it was misleading for the author to include Barton's observations in a booklet whose thesis was that millions of Jews didn't die, Barton replied that it was if "we're just discussing did they die or not." He believed each person was valuable, that the figure might have been 6 million or 5 million or 8 million; he didn't think anybody really knew the number and that there never would be any way of knowing. 

He did not know enough to say whether the Holocaust was an invention to extort moneys from Germany. He accepted the figure of 6 million but did not know whether or not it was a deliberate policy. He knew it wasn't a deliberate policy of the German people. He didn't think he was brainwashed about the 6 million figure. He agreed that it was the generally accepted view that millions of Jews died during the Second World War under Nazi control and agreed he was not suggesting that everyone had been brainwashed into believing it.  He agreed that former inmates of Nazi concentration camps might well be outraged by Did Six Million Really Die?. He agreed it was possible that someone might conclude, from the inclusion of Barton's material in Did Six Million Really Die?, that he supported its thesis. When asked if it was unfortunate for him that Harwood chose to use his observations in his booklet, Barton replied that it was "unfortunate for me. It's brought me here again, but... I think what I said is honest, and I stand by it. That's why I'm appearing here."  Asked again if he thought it was misleading for Harwood to use his observations, Barton replied: "Well, it is misleading because I believe they did die. I believe 6 million, give or take, did die, but I don't necessarily connect in the causal chain of events that there was a policy of extermination. 

I don't know that all Germans were bad. I don't know. I don't think they were, and so on and so forth. So I have reservations, but when one makes a statement, I think one has to have it used against one." He stated that if his observations were being used in Did Six Million Really Die? to make people take a second look at whether or not there was a deliberate policy of extermination by all German people, then it was a "good thing" it had gone in. 

He agreed he would have preferred if his views as expressed in the court had gone in instead and that it would have been less misleading.  He stated that people would not have gotten the typhus to the same extent if they had not been in the camp. It was the placing of people together with poor sanitary conditions which brought the lice. He testified there was a neutral area around the camp guarded by Hungarian soldiers, the idea being to contain the typhus from spreading all over Europe, possibly all over the world. The soldiers were not emaciated and Barton agreed that rations were probably issued on a scale of human worth. He didn't think the inmates were worthless to the Germans; they were a potential source of income.  Asked if the Holocaust was not the major indictment against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, Barton replied that the Holocaust was really something that developed in the late 1950s and 1960s. People didn't talk of the Holocaust in the 1940s and 1950s. 393 He thought it had become trivialized and sensationalized, that a dogma had developed, which was unfortunate since it did not get to the real cause of why one group could suddenly behave so viciously and thoughtlessly to another.  Barton was asked if it was fair to say that A.J.P. Taylor, the eminent British historian, believed that historical study required that one look very objectively at events and attempt to denude them of nationalistic overtones; to look at history as objectively as possible. 

Barton replied that what Taylor stated was: Don't try and fit the facts into a preconceived hypothesis but try and look at the facts and from them abstract the cause or hypothesis. Asked if he would ever suggest that A.J.P. Taylor would falsify history, Barton replied that he wouldn't suggest it, but would never trust anybody 100 percent either. Said Barton: "Judicious distrust and benign skepticism are the sinews of understanding." Barton felt that unless we doubt we begin the slippery slopes of getting lost.  He agreed that the researcher must be honest with the facts and approach matters objectively with no hidden agenda. He pointed out, however, that it was usually the victors who wrote history and the vanquished who had to accept whatever views the victors put across. 

He therefore liked the attempt of revisionism to look at historical events from all sides. Asked if none of that involved falsifying history or denying the facts, Barton replied that he had to say yes and no, that people reinterpret facts, and when they play down one fact and play up another they were making their thesis rather than dealing with what had actually happened. To some extent, one always had to be suspicious if facts were being falsified to put a point of view across.  Barton testified he didn't think Hitler was right but didn't know if he exterminated millions of Jews either. It happened but was it Hitler? Was it the thugs in the SS? Was it Himmler, a man who was a beast of the first order? How in the name of God could it ever happen?, asked Barton. Who decided that large masses of people could be shoved into concentration camps and neglected or abandoned? Who would allow the beastly bullying of the sort of little man, the lower man in the immediate day-to-day contact with the prisoners? Who would allow that to go on without disciplining them and so forth? He didn't know where it started. He agreed that this was the stuff of historical debate; he stated that it was not only what happened and how it happened, but most importantly, could we stop it again? The idea of the Aryan elite, the superior people, was the primary racism of Germany; the idea that Germany had a special role in the world and the rest of the people were peasants and peons to be controlled and used for their glory. The anti semitic business was not their primary purpose but a very convenient way of getting scapegoats and uniting hundreds of people, thousands of people, who had lost their savings, who didn't have jobs. 

It was a dreadful use of the destruction of reputation. Barton was shown a sentence in Did Six Million Really Die? under the heading "The Race Problem Suppressed." It read: Thus any rational discussion of the problems of Race and the effort to preserve racial integrity is effectively discouraged. Asked if the proposition being put forward in the booklet was that the deaths of millions of Jews effectively discouraged discussions of race, Barton disagreed. He couldn't see that it did discourage it and thought that the very fact that this could happen was a reason to look at the problem of race and ask: why? Superficial concepts of race had to be looked at much more closely, and he did not know that this statement in Did Six Million Really Die? was valid.  He agreed that there was a great lesson to be learned from the deaths of millions of Jews during the Second World War, and agreed further that the lesson was that people should not adopt racist attitudes. 

Nevertheless, Barton felt it was no good denying racism. The fact had to be faced that many people felt a kinship with others which was irrational and very damaging and destructive, if not to themselves, to another group whom they thought was different from them. It was only by understanding that "there is this basic beastliness to be with people like one and to disparage and to dislike those who don't fit in within the pattern" that people would be able to come out of this morass, this mess, this emotional miasma. If one said that the baser instincts were not there and that everybody was really nice and happy together, then this was not facing reality. 

The goal was to acknowledge the instincts that one had in oneself against someone of another country, and so on, and to regard such instincts as one would regard all misleading passions that sweep the human mind, and say, 'Well, I feel this way, but it is not right to act on it. Barton turned at this point to Judge Thomas and apologized for appearing to lecture. Thomas replied: "No, no. I'm grateful for the manner in which you are answering. Thank you."  Asked if it wasn't true that one of the greatest lessons of the Second World War was that, under the leadership of a "particular regime," the things talked about by Barton were not recognized, Barton agreed and stated they were not only denied but were promoted. "Tolerance was almost a dirty word, as I understand it.  On re-examination, Barton agreed that not only the Nazis were good at propaganda but the British also. He testified that a dogma seemed to be established concerning the "Holocaust" for the purpose of establishing a general belief. Asked what happened to anyone who denied the general belief he answered: "Mr. Christie, it is very difficult to remain on either side. You make enemies on both sides and few friends on either."  The best antidote to brainwashing was the reaffirmation of the basic principles that were necessary in the affairs of human beings, namely, fair play and compassion. The "Holocaust" should be looked at under light, rather than heat. When people's feelings began to run high, then the light was gone and people became enlisted into one course of action or one group or one camp. 

The most important faculty human beings had was the ability to doubt and not to be enlisted.  Barton derived his knowledge of Nazi racial theory from readings done for an article on the subject by the National Association of Mental Health.  Barton had never read Der Stürmer, although he had seen copies of it. He couldn't read German but he had seen that type of cartoon in publications of the Nazi period.    Barton based his opinion that millions of Jews died on population studies of the various countries before the war and the estimates of the numbers of people in the camps from whatever records were left. He admitted such records were not that good and that he had never looked at them himself. He nevertheless felt that people had looked into this matter very carefully and made an estimate. It was certainly not a 100 million; it was certainly not a 100,000, but there were different strands of evidence suggesting that it was in the neighbourhood of 5, 6 or 7 million.  Barton agreed that he never at any time had any objections to being quoted by anybody.  He testified that there had to be dissent on all issues apart from the need for dissent. Unless people could subject their beliefs to reason, and to adversarial procedures which were designed to get at the truth and not score personal points, people would begin to accept dogmas and be led down the pathways chosen for them by charismatic leaders.

 He did not believe the court process was satisfactory for the resolution of historical issues. In history, one was not dealing with facts which could be delineated or defined. The courts on the other hand were to a large extent set up to deal with concrete facts. It was more satisfactory for people with well-tuned minds to discuss historical issues and to avoid the temptation to exaggerate their own personal problems into crusades, taking sides, either side. People had to learn to stand aside and be independent but in the busy practical affairs of mankind people took a lot of things for granted and made a lot of decisions that they hadn't really looked into.  Barton admitted he did not know very much about the reparations paid by Germany to Israel. He stated that people who had been brainwashed usually didn't know it. He knew of no other historical event or figure that was more frequently discussed than the "Holocaust" and the "6 million." The discussion concerning this event had increased with time.  He personally was not enraged by Did Six Million Really Die?. He thought the discussion contained in it was necessary. He himself did not believe the Holocaust was a hoax to get money out of people but if it was a point of view that was genuinely held by someone, it could not be dismissed out of hand. One had to look at the evidence, weigh it up and then dismiss it. 

He did not believe he could dismiss what someone else thought peremptorily, without at least according them some intelligence, some inductive reasoning, some ability to arrive at solutions and conclusions as they saw it, and he did not think one could ever deprive or want to 396 deprive another person of this ability. When people arrived at wrong conclusions, one could say to them: "I'm holding the mirror up to you. These are the choices you've made. These are the conclusions you've reached. These are the attitudes that seem to be overriding. Is that how you want to go on?" He did not think one could go much further than that. One could not coerce people into thinking or believing.  Other people were enraged by his own writings but that was not a reason not to publish. He did not think his critics were looking at his writings objectively. He believed A.J.P. Taylor would not want to silence those who took views contrary to his. The way to deal with racial problems was not suppression but ventilation. Issues had to be brought out and discussed. Things could not be suppressed for long and inevitably there would be protests leading to countermeasures and so on. The better way was the more reasoning way.  

After his experiences at Belsen, he did not think it possible for an objectively truthful history of events to emerge. Nevertheless, he thought that did not relieve people of the obligation to try and arrive objectively at true belief. 

Truth required courage in the first place and "we are not always courageous.