Mis-Chronicling Auschwitz

Description

In 1958, the Polish “International Auschwitz Committee” managed to goad the German authorities into initiating criminal investigations into what presumably happened during WWII in the infamous Auschwitz Camp. To influence the massive trial resulting from it, Polish Historian Danuta Czech of the Auschwitz Museum started compiling and publishing what the Museum claims happened at Auschwitz, most importantly in a German-language periodical specifically established for the purpose. These articles, published between 1959 and 1964, had a major influence on the German Ausch­witz trial, whose verdict in turn canonized the Museum’s version of history into a legally unassailable “truth.”

Revised versions of Czech’s articles, assembled and published as a large-format book in 1989 in German and in 1990 in English with the title Auschwitz Chronicle (see front cover), has been for decades a mainstay of officially sanctioned historiography about the Auschwitz Camp. In fact, the book has obtained the status of a sacred text among the orthodoxy. Subjecting it to critical scrutiny is considered near-blasphemous, hence has never been done – up to now.

The present work finally does what should have been done 60 years ago: it analyzes the sources adduced in Czech’s massive work in support of the claim that Jews and Gypsies were systematically exterminated at Auschwitz. Comparing what Czech claims about her sources with what they really state, and with the many sources she ignored, the author demonstrates in hundreds of instances that the Chronicle is a mere jumble of conjectures, distortions, inventions and omissions, a fable that is the result of an intentionally deceptive and pathologically mendacious method, evidently designed to serve political goals. As a result, it is strongly recommended to relegate Czech’s propaganda work to the dustbins of history.