An Auschwitz Eyewitness Account
By Thies Christophersen
3-7-6
My booklet, The Auschwitz Lie, has become an under-the-counter bestseller. It has appeared in French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish and even Hungarian, as well as in several English language editions. Actually, there's nothing very remarkable about The Auschwitz Lie except that it was written by someone who was in Auschwitz and~who recorded his experiences and recollections. People generally prefer to read sensational reports, and my booklet is certainly not that.
In the spirit of Martin Luther, I try to speak positively and influence things for the best. But I was accused of "popular incitement" (Volksverhetzung) for doing that. I spent a year in prison, even though the charge of popular incitement was eventually dropped. However, the charges of "contempt against the state" and defamation of the Jews, who now enjoy special protection in this regard, were not dropped. I was also accused of defaming the memory of the dead.
In this regard, the son of Count Schenk von Stauffenberg appeared as a co-plaintiff against me because I had called his father a traitor. Well, I wouldn't like it either if my own father had been insulted, and so I wasn't offended when Stauffenberg junior sought to rehabilitate his father's reputation. All the same, there wasn't any need for a criminal indictment. If he had sent me a letter justifying his father's actions, I certainly would have published the complete text of it in my magazine. Of course, I would also have commented on it, as I always do with critical letters from readers.
I'd like to describe my experiences and observations since the publication of my first-person report about Auschwitz. When I wrote my report, I was criticized on the grounds that, although I was in the camp and saw nothing of mass gassings, that fact did not necessarily mean that there were none. All the same, I can say with certainty that there were no mass gassings at Auschwitz.
I don't write under a pen name. I even gave my address and telephone number. I have received thousands of letters and calls. Many of those who contacted me can confirm my statements, but are afraid to do so publicly. Some of those are SS men who were brutally mistreated and even tortured in Allied captivity.
I also immediately contacted those who claimed to know more about mass gassings. My experiences were precisely the same as those of French professor Paul Rassinier. I have not found any eyewitnesses. Instead, people would tell me that they knew someone who knew someone else, who talked about it. In most cases the alleged eyewitnesses had died. Other supposed eyewitnesses would quickly begin to stammer and stutter when I asked a few precise questions. Even Simon Wiesenthal had to finally admit before a Frankfurt district court that he was actually never in Auschwitz. All of the reports I have heard about are contradictory.
Everyone seemed to tell a different story about the gas chambers. They couldn't even agree about where they were supposed to have been located. This is also true of the so-called scholarly literature, which is full of contradictions.
I want to try to explain how such stories get started. When I tell fairy tales to my grandchildren, I often speak as if I am there in the story myself, so that the children will believe them. Many people also have a tendency to embellish what they say. Some enjoy getting others to believe their false tales. And then there are the so-called "bull stories" (Latrinenparolen). Every veteran knows about these. Those interned in prison camps particularly like to invent and spread such stories.
So, I have an explanation for how the story got started that corpses were burned in open fires at Auschwitz. There were also "bull stories" at Auschwitz. My maid, Olga, once told my mother, who was visiting me at Auschwitz, about a fire in which people were being burned. I asked Olga about that. She didn't know anything for sure, but she said that a fire could always be seen in the direction of Bielitz. I drove in that direction but found only a large industrial plant where inmates were also working. I looked over the entire camp and inspected all the fires and smoking chimneys. But I didn't find anything suspicious. I asked my colleagues, but they answered merely by shrugging their shoulders and saying that I shouldn't believe "bull stories."
There was indeed a crematory at Auschwitz. After all, 200,000 people lived there and every city has a crematory. Of course, people died there as well - and not just inmates. The wife of SS Lt. Col. Caesar, for example, died there of typhus. I was satisfied with those answers at the time.
Today, I know much more about this matter. At first, those who died at Auschwitz were buried, but because of the high ground water level (one meter) in this area between the Vistula and Sola rivers, that practice couldn't be continued. A labor team headed by SS Staff Sergeant Moll (who had been in charge of the agricultural nursery at Raisko) was assigned to dig up the buried corpses and burn them. This was done on an open fire. The most unbelievable stories were told about this procedure. West German television even broadcast a film of this which was supposedly made in secret by an SS man.
There's another factor which has played a role in all this. The defense attorneys for the so-called German war criminals were not entirely blameless. Every defense attorney wants freedom for his client and, as a result, the attorneys often argued that persons who were already dead were guilty of the alleged crimes. SS Sergeant Moll was killed in action in the final days of the war.
During this period I also received a report from the brother in-law of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. He lives in Flensburg, not far from my home. His report generally confirmed my own statements. Death sentences were certainly carried out and hostages were also shot. I pointed this out in my booklet. But these executions were not carried out in the camp itself. Otherwise they would have been heard.
I can't understand why Auschwitz is called a concentration camp. I consider it an internment camp. It's well known that enemy aliens are normally interned during wartime. In order to keep them from fighting against their host country, they are normally not expelled.
Of course, one can argue about whether the Jews should have been considered members of an enemy nation. After all, the state of Israel wasn't founded until after the war. Nevertheless, the Jews had already declared war against us in 1933, as the London Daily Express reported on 24 March of that year. On that basis, internment would have been justified even then. But the Jews weren't interned until after the outbreak of war in September 1939, and even then not all at once.
I am thus one of the few who can report on the actual situation in the Auschwitz camp, and I have done so. What has it brought me? Two years of living in exile and one year in prison. Even though, prudently enough, there wasn't anything about it in my verdict, I would never have been imprisoned if I had not written The Auschwitz Lie. The charge of "contempt against the state" was only a pretense. There's no parallel for such a charge in any other country of the western world, not even in those that are still monarchies.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p117_Christophersen.html
Author: Christophersen, Thies Title: Reflections on Auschwitz and West German Justice Source: The Journal for Historical Review http://www.ihr.org Date: Spring 1986 Issue: Volume 6 number 1 Location: Page 117 ISSN: 0195-6752 Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $60 per year."
 |
| Thies Christophersen (right) with Ernst Zundel |
Thies Christophersen (1918-1997) was a pioneer revisionist writer and courageous fighter for truth in history. In a memoir first published in Germany in 1973, he related his wartime experiences as a German army officer in the Auschwitz camp complex. "During the time I was in Auschwitz, I did not notice the slightest evidence of mass gassings," he wrote in Die Auschwitz-Lüge ("The Auschwitz Lie"). As one of the first important works squarely to confront the Auschwitz extermination legend, Christophersen's first-hand account was a major factor in the growth and development of Holocaust revisionism.
"The Auschwitz Lie" caused an immediate sensation in Germany, where it was soon banned. This did not stop publication of German-language editions in Switzerland and Denmark, however, and before long editions appeared in all the major European languages, including several in English. Christophersen predictably came under hostile and mendacious media attack.
Until the outbreak of war in Europe, he worked as a farmer in Schleswig, northern Germany. Called to military service, he was badly wounded in 1940 while serving in the western campaign. After recuperating and undergoing some specialized agricultural training, he was assigned to a research center in German-occupied Ukraine that experimentally cultivated a variety of dandelion (kok saghyz) as an alternative source of natural rubber derived from the plant's latex.
In the face of Soviet military advances, the center was transferred to the labor camp of Raisko, a satellite of Auschwitz. During the period he lived and worked there — January to December 1944 — Christophersen was responsible for the daily work of inmate laborers. The young second lieutenant supervised about 300 workers, many of them Jewish, of whom 200 were women from the Raisko camp, and 100 were men from the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. On a number of occasions he visited Birkenau where, it is alleged, hundreds of thousands of Jews were systematically gassed to death in May-July 1944. Although he knew of Birkenau's crematories, it wasn't until after the war that he first heard anything of "gas chamber" killings or mass exterminations.
After the war he returned to farming. An ardent and life-long defender of the interests of German farmers, he also turned his considerable talents as a writer to this cause. For years he edited and published the quarterly magazine Die Bauernschaft ("The Farming Community"), which served as a forum for his straight-forward reporting and forthright and often witty commentary on cultural, historical and current social-political issues. He also ran the Nordwind book service, which distributed a range of works, including revisionist titles.
In March 1988 he testified in the "Holocaust trial" in Toronto of German-Canadian Ernst Zündel. Under oath, he detailed his wartime experiences at Auschwitz, and answered numerous pointed questions by the prosecuting attorney.
Although he was never prosecuted for his "Auschwitz Lie" booklet, he was charged for other outspoken writings. In the 1980s he served a year in prison on charges of "insulting the state" and "insulting the memory of the dead."
Driven from his homeland, he was forced to live in exile in Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland. While Danish police stood by, hundreds of "anti-fascist" thugs attacked his modest home in the small town of Kollund, pelting it with stones and defacing it with spray paint. They also severely damaged his book warehouse and, using corrosive acid, ravaged his car and expensive copy equipment. After months of such abuse, in 1995 Christophersen was forced to leave Denmark. Ill with cancer, he sought treatment in Switzerland, but in December 1995 was forced to leave that country. He next found temporary refuge in Spain. Meanwhile, the German printer of his Bauernschaft magazine was fined 50,000 marks.
During his final months, German officials treated him as a virtual "enemy of the state." His bank account in Germany was closed down, and in early 1996 a German court rejected his application to return to his homeland for a brief visit to attend the burial of a son who had died in a car crash. On the grounds that he had no permanent place of residence, in 1996 German authorities cancelled his state medical insurance coverage and stopped payment of his modest state retirement pension (into which he had paid for 45 years), as well as his military service pension.
Christophersen was arrested for the last time a few weeks before his death. A German judge declared him too ill to be jailed, and he was released to a son's custody. He died a few days later, on February 13, 1997.