Original blueprint of Auschwitz Crematorium I
by Maria Temmer
1. Introduction
2. How
Long Was Mueller in the Auschwitz Crematorium Detail?
3.
Auschwitz Krema I Operations in the Late Spring of 1942
4. Mueller’s Poor
Description of Auschwitz Krema I
5. Was Mueller Ever in
Isolation in Auschwitz?
6.
Rubbing Elbows with the Big Guys at Auschwitz Crematorium I
7. The Summer of 1942 to
the Summer of 1943
8. Mueller’s
Confusing Journey From Birkenau KII to KV
9.
Mueller’s Descriptions of Birkenau Crematoriums II and III
10.
Mueller’s Descriptions of Birkenau Crematoriums IV and V
11. The Birkenau Cremation Pits
12. Mueller
Gives Crematoria Floor Plan to Escapees
13. Was Mueller in
an Isolation Block in Birkenau?
14. Hunger in the Crematorium
Detail
15. Mueller Asks
Himself What the World Will Say
Final Remarks
Former Auschwitz-Birkenau inmate Filip Mueller is known as the only prisoner in the Sonderkommando (the alleged secret Special Command used in homicidal gassing facilities in the Third Reich’s concentration camp system) who is believed to have spent nearly his entire three years in concentration camps working the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau and lived to tell about it. As such, he is widely known and widely quoted in holocaust education circles, and his memoir, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, is stocked in public, university and even middle school libraries all over the western world and is also required reading in some university holocaust studies courses. His unique story makes him arguably the most famous and most cited witness of homicidal gassings at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His testimony in two Auschwitz-related trials aided in the convictions of several German officers.
Mueller’s memoir is considered so credible and definitive that it has been used both as the primary source (in fact, usually the only source) of biographical information about not only Mueller himself but also as a main source of Sonderkommando witness testimony used in historical writings and websites regarding mass gassings at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the claimed Nazi machine of death. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg cited this memoir numerous times in his three-volume work The Destruction of the European Jews, [1] without bothering to read anything else from Mueller. [2] Hilberg was quite impressed with the memoir. “I have been through this book page by page, and I am hard-put to find any error, any material significant error in this book. It is remarkable,” and gives us his seal of approval about Mueller himself, “I'd say that Filip Mueller as a witness, is a remarkable, accurate, reliable person.” [3]
The forward of Mueller’s Eyewitness Auschwitz, which was written by historian Yehuda Bauer and was published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, states that the memoir contains “no embellishment, no deviation. This is not a work of art. It is a testimony.” It is an “unembellished telling” that “is a terrible accusation against God and humanity” and is a “shattering, centrally important testimony.” The title of the memoir itself lends further credence to the idea that the memoir is an accurate and truthful witness account and Mueller himself does not state anywhere in it (or anywhere else) that anything but a factual accounting of what he experienced is given to the reader, and the numerous educators that use this memoir do so in the good faith that the memoir is honest and accurate as possible. Also indicative of the seriousness of this witness testimony is that on the upper corner of the back cover the words HOLOCAUST / WORLD HISTORY are printed for book store stockers. Bauer’s foreword tells us that “Mueller came to Auschwitz with one of the earliest transports from Slovakia in April 1942, and began working in the gassing installation and crematoria in May,” and Yad Vashem’s biography of Mueller says, “Filip Muller was born in 1929 in Sered, Czechoslovakia. He was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 where he was assigned prisoner number 29236. He worked as a prisoner in the Sonderkommando until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945.” [4]
In The Death Factory, the English translation of Die Todesfabrik (originally published in 1957) by Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, Mueller recites the same chronology in dramatic fashion: “I am the oldest member of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Sonderkommando and the only one to have been through everything. I only escaped death as a result of a number of lucky chances; it was indeed a miracle. What I went through seems incredible to me today, like some sort of evil dream. It was much more terrible than could ever be described.” [5]
As a witness at the 1947 Polish Supreme National Tribunal’s Auschwitz camp garrison trials which led to the hangings of numerous German defendants, Mueller testified, “I was present at the gassings in the crematorium from May, 1942 until January 18, 1945.” [6]
Eyewitness Auschwitz was recommended personally to CODOH’s Bradley Smith by a University of Georgia professor as proof of homicidal gassings [7] and a clearly displeased Op-Ed writer at Penn State quoted the book as evidence against Mr. Smith’s revisionist position and snapped, “Tell Filip Mueller there were no gas chambers. Mueller considered suicide because he couldn't stand life in a camp anymore. He changed his mind when another prisoner told him his decision to die wouldn't save anyone.” [8]
Why wouldn’t Mueller’s memoir be recommended reading, after all, when Mueller himself spoke of the need to tell the world what had happened? He recalled his old Auschwitz bunker trustee Jakob urging him on, “Every Sunday following afternoon roll-call he let us out of the block, not without first urging us to tell everyone in the camp exactly what was going on here.” [9] The legendary Kapo Kaminsky, hero of the camp resistance told him, “You are still young: it is vital that you should see everything, experience everything, go through everything and consciously record everything in your mind. Maybe you are one of those who will one day be free.” [10] Even gassing victims insisted that Mueller live to tell the world, “We must die, but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp and tell everybody about our last hours…” [11] Why it took Mr. Mueller until the 1970s to do this, well, go figure.
Not only is Mueller’s memoir fiction, but Mueller himself has been telling tall tales for decades which have been published in various places. Mueller’s deceit extends into the courtroom where he piled on the lies to convict German defendants, as we shall see.
Notes to Introduction:
[1] From Raul Hilberg’s Destruction of the European Jews, example
citations from two sections of Volume III: Origins of the Killing Centers, p.
883; Killing Operations, pages 970, 972-973, 976, 978, and Liquidation of
Killing Centers, p. 982. For many more examples, see Jürgen Graf’s "Hilberg's
Favorite Jewish Witness: Filip Müller" in The Giant With Feet of Clay,
(Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, Alabama, 2001) p. 94.
[2] Hilberg, Raul, testimony from the 1988 Ernst Zundel trial in Toronto,
Canada,
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd09hilberg.html
[3] Ibid.
[4]
http://www1.yadvashem.org/education/january_27/family.pdf
[5] Kraus, Ota and Kulka, Erich, The Death Factory, (Pergamon Press,
Ltd., London, England, 1966, First Ed.) p. 160.
[6] Mueller, Filip, testimony from the Polish Supreme National Tribunal quoted
in Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: Crematorium I, pages 33-35. Available
online at http://vho.org/dl/ENG/aci.pdf
[7]
http://bradleysmithsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/filip-mueller-and-one-name-with-proof.html
[8]
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1994/02/02-08-94tdc/02-08-94dops-edit.asp
[9] Mueller, Filip, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers
(Ivan R. Dee Publisher, Chicago, IL., USA, first paperback edition, 1999)
p. 52.
[10] Ibid., p. 114.
[11] Ibid., p. 113.
Mueller’s story has been that while he was in the Auschwitz crematorium I detail, he and his mates were kept in a cell in block 11, the isolation penal block. On the stand in the Polish tribunal, Mueller testified, “We stayed in that cell for a year and a half, i.e., until the liquidation of the Auschwitz crematorium.” [1] In Eyewitness Auschwitz, he says, “After almost fourteen months of isolation in block 11, living together with my fellow prisoners gave me a feeling of solidarity because we shared the same fate.” [2]
Mueller’s testimony on the witness stand in Frankfurt says something quite different.
“Presiding Judge:
In May to Fischl command and remained there until?
Witness Filip Müller:
There until the end of June.
Presiding Judge:
By the end of June?
Witness Filip Müller:
June 1942.” [3]
So we’ve gone from 18 months to 14 months to six weeks in isolation working the secret “Fischlkommando” in the alleged homicidal gas chamber of Auschwitz Crematorium I.
We have Mueller lying on the stand in the Polish tribunal and in the memoir, at the least…
Notes to How Long Was Mueller in the Auschwitz Crematorium Detail?
[1] Mattogno, pp. 33-35.
[2] Mueller, p. 53.
[3] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20507 (vgl. AP179.009, S. 0)
Mueller claimed to have begun his forced labor in May, 1942 in Auschwitz crematorium I (KI). “From the end of May, 1942 one transport after another vanished in this way into the crematorium at Auschwitz. At the same time, the siting of the crematorium in the immediate vicinity of the camp was fraught with danger: there was the distinct possibility that The Secret Matter of the Reich could not remain hushed up forever, notwithstanding its top-secret classification. It was for this reason that the columns of deported Jews were conducted into the ‘showers’ either at daybreak when the camp inmates were still asleep, or late at night after roll-call.” [1] In court at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials he testified, “So it went for six weeks. Stark must have sent at least 10,000 to 11,000 people to the gas,” [2] and, “Those gassings, I witnessed them many, many times, that is in May, June 1942. The gassings took place in the morning before roll call, or in the evening after roll call.” [3]
Let’s compare this to what historians Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert-Jan Van Pelt have said about the functionality of KI during May and June, 1942, based on Auschwitz camp archives.
“The new gas chamber in the morgue at crematorium I operated probably intermittently from January 1942 until May, when it had to be shut down for construction of the third furnace.” [4]
“The crematorium in the main camp was in the meantime repaired and modified. On May 30, everything seemed ready, but as the three furnaces were started up, something went wrong. The hooping of the smokestack broke off, deep cracks appeared in the masonry, and the men of the Political Department began to fear that the smokestack would collapse on their offices. Bischoff ordered an investigation, and on the basis of the report, Kammler approved a complete overhaul… Work began on June 12.” [5]
“To this point, Auschwitz had played a completely marginal role in the killing of Jews. The cumulative evidence of documents in the archive of the Zentralbauleitung proves that the adaptation of the camp for genocidal purposes only started in June 1942… The mass murders were to begin on July 1.” [6]
So we have an alleged gas chamber which gassed “transport after transport,” “many, many times” upwards of 11,000 victims gassed and cremated in a space of 6 weeks in May-June 1942 in a facility which was nominally operational at best for months before it went down completely for the installation of a new oven and then a smokestack overhaul in the same time period when Mueller witnessed gassing after gassing which took place before the alleged genocide had not yet begun? Rubbish!
Filip Mueller not only lied in his memoir and on the stand in Poland, but also lied on the witness stand in Frankfurt against Hans Stark (and others), who was given 10 years imprisonment. Not only did Mueller falsely testify of Stark participating in gassing people as above, he also testified that he saw Stark shooting people:
Witness Filip Müller:
They are unable to continue. Stark takes his revolver and shoots, in front of my eyes. Filip Weiss, Goldschmidt and Neumann were all shot by Stark. [7]
And,
Witness Filip Müller:
…And Stark notices it. “Eh Israel, no, come here, quick!” [He puts him against the wall]. First, he shoots him into the foot. He falls. He leaves him lying for a while, then picks him up, he himself, [shoots] into the second foot. The person falls. He then takes a suitcase, because even though shot him into both feet he is still alive. [He places the suitcase against the wall]. This is how he places the suitcase, then seats the innocent person on it and shoots for the third…
Presiding Judge:
In the head.
Witness Filip Müller:
I don’t know if he shot him into the head. Anyway, he shoots and kills him. You see Mr. Judge (Your Honor), I only wanted to [a] few, I didn’t want to – but I intended to show you what Stark was. For instance, a transport arrives. Often he takes Jewish woman, eight, ten, five [unintelligible]: “To the wall, Sarah!” All of them go to the gas (are to be gassed). Now he takes two women, but before he does he goes to the political department and brings a gun. [8]
These lies against Stark and others about crimes which Filip Mueller never witnessed are repeated in Eyewitness Auschwitz.
Notes to Auschwitz Krema I Operations in the Late Spring of 1942
[1] Mueller, p. 39.
[2] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20619 (vgl. Blatt Stark-81, S. 176). This claim is repeated
Ibid., Seite (page) 20504.
[3] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20617 (vgl. Blatt Stark-80, S. 175)
[4] Pressac, Jean-Claude, with Van Pelt, Robert-Jan, "The Machinery of Mass
Murder at Auschwitz," in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Gutman,
Yisrael and Berenbaum, Michael, Eds., (Indiana University Press, Bloomington &
Indianapolis, 1994) p. 209.
[5] Ibid., p. 212.
[6] Ibid., p. 213.
[7] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20479-20480 (vgl. AP178.041, S. 0)
[8] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20501 (vgl. AP178.070, S. 0)
Mueller described being lined up repeatedly by truncheon-wielding Germans in Auschwitz crematorium I near a window that did not exist in 1942. “Today, we noticed, they did not carry any truncheons. Once more we had to stand by the wall beneath the window in the cremation room.” [1]
The original crematorium I blueprint has no window. There is no way to have stood near a window were it there since the new third oven was built nearly flush against that wall (upper left in below diagram) which was a converted autopsy room.
Also, Mueller describes three running furnaces with a total of six ovens in this time, when the third furnace was only being installed in May, 1942, when Mueller claimed to have been there. As we’ve seen, this third furnace was not functional until some time after Mueller left Auschwitz for Monowitz.
In the memoir, he describes, “When all six ovens were loaded, we returned to our job of stripping corpses.” [2] Again, “When all six ovens were working, Stark hustled us next door to strip more corpses while he stayed behind in the cremation room.” [3] In Frankfurt, he also spoke of six working ovens. [4]
He repeats this in the Claude Lantzmann documentary "Shoah," “…I suddenly saw a building. It had a flat roof and a smokestack. I saw a door in the rear. I thought they were taking us to be shot. Suddenly, before a door, under a lamp in the middle of this building, a young SS man told us, ‘Inside, filthy swine!’ We entered a corridor. They drove us along it. Right away, the stench, the smoke choked me. They kept on chasing us, and then I made out the shapes of the first two ovens.” [5] He says, “The first two ovens” as if there are more out of view.
Not only was there no working third furnace in this building when Mueller claimed to have been there, but there was also no “corridor” in the building, but only an anteroom.
Notes to Mueller’s Poor Description of Auschwitz Krema I
[1] Mueller, p. 35.
[2] Ibid., p. 16.
[3] Ibid., p. 17.
[4] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20477 (vgl. AP178.037, S. 0)
[5] Latzmann, Claude, Shoah: The Complete Text of the Film (Pantheon
Books, New York, 1985) p. 58.
Needless to say, without a properly functioning cremation complex which was shut down for most, and most likely all, of the time Mueller claimed to have been there, there is no need to be locked in a secret basement prison cell. Comparing Mueller’s own conflicting accounts tells us that something is amiss. First Mueller speaks of life in isolation in Eyewitness Auschwitz, “The entrance door to block 11 was locked. One of the guards rang the bell. Oberscharrführer Plagge unlocked the door and let us in… The lock creaked as Plagge unlocked the iron-barred door through which we went into the center corridor… The rattling of keys, the opening of iron-barred gates, the unlocking of cell doors, the steps of the prison guards, all these sounds aroused in the prisoners locked in their cells a feeling of almost unbearable tension.” [1]
“Our life of isolation continued. For, although we did not realize this at first, we had become privy to a secret and were no longer allowed to come into contact with other prisoners or with SS men not in the know. That was why we no longer attended roll call. We were accounted for on a special list of prisoners on which we were only referred to by our cell number.” [2]
Another account reads, “…They took us back to the camp where we were again put in the dark cell which we had occupied up to August, 1943.” [3]
Mueller describes escort by SS guards, “They had been brought here by the SS guard, as had we that afternoon,” [4] and, “Once more we were escorted by guards through the gate and along the camp street which ran between the two-storey red-brick prison blocks. We halted outside block 11.” [5]
“After almost fourteen months of isolation in block 11, living together with my fellow prisoners gave me a feeling of solidarity because we shared the same fate. I no longer felt quite as forlorn and despondent as before. Although this new block was isolated from the rest of the camp, compared to it our bunker cell in block 11 at Auschwitz had been a black hole. Here I could at least get a breath of fresh air in the yard, go to the wash-room if I wanted a wash, and talk to my fellow prisoners…” [6]
The description of security procedures Mueller gives us in Eyewitness Auschwitz is very similar to that in the Broad Report. “The door of block 11, unlike others in the camp, was always locked. If one rang, an SS guard appeared; his steps echoed through the deserted-looking building. He would look suspiciously at every visitor and would take care of him through a sliding window. Only if absolutely necessary would he admit him. Once one was inside, a huge metal gate with a grill door which shut off the rear part of the building could be seen in the semidarkness.” [7]
Blockführer Bruno Schlage outlined some guard duties on the stand in Frankfurt, which included, “the opening and closing of cells, and taking the prisoners to the washroom and latrine in the morning… Speaking was prohibited.” [8]
Now to the slips. Let’s first look at a clue from Mueller’s Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials testimony, in which he describes how he got out of working in the Auschwitz crematorium.
Witness Filip Müller:
Well, this is how it was: I also need to describe how I was able to get out of the crematorium… Some prisoners were standing at the gates, a work detail, and they said: “Take the inmates into the camp!’. Yes, this was already towards the end of my stay. He then takes us into the camp. Then work service prisoner [Arbeitdienst] comes to me to tell me: “You, if you bring me a lot of dollars”, yes, he didn’t say how many – “I’ll get you out from there”. And I did it.
Presiding Judge:
What have you brought him?
Witness Filip Müller:
I brought the prisoner a large package of American dollars.
Presiding Judge:
Yes.
Witness Filip Müller:
That was in the morning. When we returned, I gave it to him and he told me: “Stay (remain) here”. And on the other side of the kitchen there was a Block and he told me: “Here, stay in the wash room”. I wait and he returns and takes me to Block 14. And I worked in Block 14. Later I was transported to Buna, Monowitz. [9]
How could Mueller wait in a washroom for an inmate from the Arbeitdienst (the Prison Labor Service, who made camp work assignments) to bribe him? Wasn’t he in his cell where he sat with no roll call and was known only by his cell number, only allowed out by SS guards under escort in a penal block which was locked and guarded at all times? Guess not! It’s unbelievable that Frankfurt didn’t question this obvious fiction and challenge him on it. It’s telling of the quality and purpose of war crimes trials.
Mueller may also wish to debate this point with Henryk Tauber who testified in Poland that, “I would emphasize that the crematoriums and the Kommandos who worked in them came under the Political Section. The personal records of the prisoners working in these Kommandos were kept in the Political Section… Authorization to leave the Kommando and transfer into another did not depend on the Arbeitdienst, but on the Political Section.” [10] It would seem that these secret Sonderkommando men couldn’t make up their minds on even the most basic things. Mueller is a bad liar either way.
Another slip, from Eyewitness Auschwitz, “Every Sunday following afternoon roll-call he [inmate bunker trustee Jakob] let us out of the block, not without first urging us to tell everyone in the camp exactly what was going on here.” (Bracketed comment mine) [11]
What happened here? Did the staff of SS guards magically vanish? The idea that only a single inmate bunker trustee is all that is between Mueller’s dark isolation cell in the basement of a notorious prison block and freedom to roam the camp to bribe people and spread the news of gassings (in a broken crematorium) like Paul Revere is laughable on its face.
Notes to Was Mueller Ever in Isolation in Auschwitz?
[1] Mueller, pp. 22-23.
[2] Ibid., p. 29.
[3] Kulka and Kraus, p. 157.
[4] Mueller, p. 19.
[5] Ibid., p. 27.
[6] Ibid., p. 53
[7] Naumann, Bernd, Auschwitz: A Report on the Proceedings Against Robert
Karl Ludwig Mulka and Others Before the Court at Frankfurt, (Praeger, New
York, 1966), p. 165.
[8] Ibid., p. 47.
[9] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20507-20508 (vgl. AP179.009, S. 0)
[10] Tauber’s Polish Supreme Tribunal deposition as reprinted in, Pressac, Jean
Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, (Beate
Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989) p. 483. Read online at:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0483.shtml
[11] Mueller, p. 52.
Mueller claimed to have seen both Himmler and Mengele while working in Auschwitz Crematorium I in the spring of 1942.
Let’s start with Himmler.
Mueller says in The Death Factory, “June 17th, or 18th, 1942, was a beautiful sunny day. The camp was thoroughly tidied up at great speed. We noticed that the SS were all on edge. Evidently something was in the wind but we had no idea what it could be, except that we suspected that some V.I.P. was due to visit the camp.
“About half-past nine, a high-ranking SS officer in a white uniform appeared at the entrance to the crematorium enclosure, accompanied by two SS officers. It was Himmler himself. He made a careful inspection of everything. We were in the room containing the clothes of persons who had been executed when he came round. At the sight of those blood-stained garments, he turned to our SS chiefs in great surprise and asked why they were in this state. Dissatisfied with the answer he was given, he flew into a rage and thundered: ‘We need the clothing of those accursed dogs for our German people! It’s a waste to gas people in their clothes!’
“After this the gas chambers were converted into mock bathrooms with water-pipes and taps, and the people had to undress before they went to their death.” [1]
One problem.
Himmler’s supposed visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau was July 17 and 18, 1942, when Mueller was at Monowitz. Also as we’ve already seen, the Auschwitz crematorium was undergoing a smokestack overhaul which had begun on June 12. It was not functioning on the 17th and 18th. Filip Mueller absolutely did not see Heinrich Himmler in Auschwitz and the blood-spattered clothing of the executed absolutely was not lying about in that building.
Ok, How About Mengele?
Mueller testified in the Polish tribunal, “In the Auschwitz camp, I also saw that the flesh of the non-Jewish detainees who were shot was used for various purposes. They were often shot in the presence of Mengele and others, whose names I do not know, and with Aumeier and Grabner present as well. Right away, the flesh of their calves would be put into cans, and in this way they put aside 6–8 cans of flesh each week. It sometimes happened that a delegation from Germany arrived, with their swastika armbands, when Aumeier and Grabner were around, asking whether there was any human flesh. Aumeier used to say: ‘We could also use horse meat, but it would be a pity to waste it!’” [2]
In the Auschwitz camp… That would mean May or June, 1942. Mengele biographers say otherwise. “In January 1942 Mengele joined the medical corps of the Waffen SS's Viking division. It eventually penetrated farther into Soviet territory than any other German unit deployed after the Russian offensive launched the previous June. Most of Mengele's time was spent hack of the front line in a defensive position, perhaps fighting partisans. In July the Viking division moved up to the front to engage in the battle for Rostow and Bataisk, a battle lasting five bloody days. It was during this period that Mengele won his Iron Cross First Class… Toward the end of 1942 Mengele was posted back to the Race and Resettlement Office, this time at its headquarters in Berlin… In May 1943 the posting came. By the end of the month he arrived at a vast barbed-wire enclosure in a swampy valley an hour out of Krakow in southern Poland. This was Auschwitz, or to the Germans, who love to abbreviate everything, ‘the KZ,’ shorthand for Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp.” [3]
That’s right, more fiction under sworn testimony from this professional witness.
Mengele did not arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau until May 30, 1943, 11 months after Mueller claimed (in Frankfurt, anyway) to have left Auschwitz Crematorium I. [4].
Notes to Rubbing Elbows with the Big Guys at Auschwitz Crematorium I
[1] Kraus and Kulka, page 158.
[2] Mattogno, pp. 34-35.
[3] Posner, Gerald L., and Ware, John, Mengele: The Complete Story
(Cooper Square Press, New York, First Cooper Square Edition, 2000) pp. 17-18.
[4] Lifton, Robert J., The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology
of Genocide, (Basic Books, 1986) p. 338.
In Eyewitness Auschwitz and The Death Factory, as we have seen, Mueller deceitfully claimed to have worked from May, 1942 through the summer of 1943 in Auschwitz crematorium I, where he transferred directly to the Birkenau crematoriums. In this duration of time, Mueller packs his memoir with sights both bizarre and grotesque, such as:
“Like cattle dealers they felt the thighs and calves of men and women who were still alive and selected what they called the best pieces before the victims were executed. The doctors proceeded to cut pieces of still warm flesh from thighs and calves and threw them into waiting receptacles. The muscles of those who had been shot were still working and contracting, making the bucket jump about.” [1]
”The people gassed here were simply buried in mass graves which had been dug nearby. When, in the summer of 1942, the hot sun began to burn, the corpses started to swell and the earth’s crust to burst open. A black, evil-smelling mass oozed out and polluted the ground-water in the vicinity.” [2]
"In mid-December 1942 all who belonged to this Sonderkommando were
gassed and
cremated. On removing their bodies from the gas chamber we found on some of
them scraps of paper with notes scribbled on them to the effect that their plan
to escape had been betrayed by certain barrack orderlies." [3]
“We were ordered to keep the fires going which meant feeding them with two wheelbarrowfulls of coke every half hour… Another party of SS Unterführers arrived, among them Quackernack, Hustek, Emmerich, Schillinger, and Obersturmführer Schwarzhuber, together with Dr. Thilo, medical officer on duty. All was now ready to receive this clearly out-of –the-ordinary transport… After a short time more than 1,000 people were standing in the yard… Schwarzhuber spoke first: ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he began. ‘On behalf of the camp administration I want to welcome you…’” [4]
“In the lunch break I ran across a mate of mine whom I had first met at the beginning of 1943, during his ‘training’ as a stoker in the old crematorium at Auschwitz.” [5]
Throughout Eyewitness Auschwitz, Mueller always conveniently happens to be in a position to where he’s able to hear the welcoming dialogue given by the SS men to the unsuspecting gassing victims.
On the witness stand in Frankfurt, however, we get a much less sensational
account of what Mueller experienced during this period of time. We’ll pick up
after Mueller bribed the Work Service prisoner for a transfer to the Monowitz
industrial area, “But he became ill, and during his convalescence was allowed to
peel potatoes in the rehabilitation block. However, Aumeier, the officer in
charge, found this out and ordered him into the special detail of the Birkenau
crematories, ‘into the death factory.’” [6]
Specifically, in court testimony, a piece of iron injured his thigh while he
worked the industrial area of Monowitz. He was given medication and sent to a
sick prisoner’s block where he was given light-duty work in the
Kartoffelschälerkommando, literally, the Potato-Peeling Command. [7]
Needless to say, Mueller’s writings make no mention of Monowitz or potato peeling. It’s all gas, gas, gas.
The only space of time Mueller’s memoir mentions that he was not working in the gas chambers was when he was doing odd jobs and cleaning the Kommandoführer’s office near the Birkenau gas chambers where his timing was so splendid that he was privy to a major secret:
“Meanwhile I remained in the Kommandoführer’s office. Carefully I closed the door, having first made sure that the coast was clear. Then I hurried to the table and with shaking hands picked up the sheet of paper and hastily read it. Its content made my blood run cold. When Voss returned with the two Kapos I had difficulty in not giving myself away… For according to the secret order which I had read, crematorium 5 was to be ready as from 8 a.m. to deal with the gassing of the inmates of the Family Camp.” [8]
Notes to The Summer of 1942 to the Summer of 1943
[1] Mueller, pp. 46-47.
[2] Ibid., p. 49.
[3] Ibid., p. 50.
[4] Ibid. pp. 82, 83.
[5] Ibid., p. 59.
[6] Naumann, p. 266.
[7] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20620-20621 (vgl. Blatt Stark-82, S. 177). See also Das
Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß,
S. 20595 (vgl. AP180.034, S. 0)
[8] Mueller, p. 96.
Not only do we have two versions of how Mueller went from Auschwitz Crematorium I to Birkenau, but we’ve also been blessed with three versions of Mueller’s journey from Birkenau crematorium II to V.
Version 1: Memoir version, KII to KIII, and finally to KV in late February, 1944, then ping-ponging back and forth between KV and KII until returning to and staying in KV.
After a short time working KII, Mueller writes, “A few days later our team was ordered to work in crematorium 3, which on the outside looked exactly like crematorium 2.” [1]
He did not mention working in KIII on the stand in Frankfurt, as we will see below.
In the late summer or early fall of 1943, Mueller says, “For some weeks now I had been a stoker in crematorium 5.” [2]
Finally, on page 93 we get back to KV. “One evening towards the end of February I was on night-shift. When our team arrived at crematorium 5 a few hundreds corpses were lying in the changing room waiting to be cremated.” [3]
February, 1944 is given as the date of events on page 91, and the narrative continues over to page 93. On page 106, he’s back at KII for a short time in March 1944, and then goes back to KV.
Version 2: The witness stand in Frankfurt. Mueller has already told us that he was returned to Birkenau in the summer of 1943. What Mueller called KI in this testimony is commonly called KII today and what he referred to as KIV is called KV.
“Presiding Judge: How long were you doing in the crematorium I?
Witness Filip Müller:
There I remained [+ a] few weeks ago, against five or six weeks.
Presiding Judge:
Five, six weeks?
Witness Filip Müller:
Maybe even less, but I can [I] did not ...
Presiding Judge:
So you said but, in the summer of 1943 then you came and stayed about five to six weeks?
Witness Filip Müller:
Four, five, six, I do not know.
Presiding Judge:
Yes. And then?
Witness Filip Müller:
Then I was transferred to the crematorium IV
Presiding Judge:
Crematorium IV
Witness Filip Müller:
IV [4]
Let’s assume the version given under sworn testimony is the most accurate. Here is another slip courtesy of Mueller. The operation of Birkenau crematorium II in the summer of 1943, in summary, is as follows, “[This] work continued until the end of August. After three months of stoppage, crematorium II was started up again in September.” [5]
Ok, how about crematorium V?
“… The new head of the Bauleitung, SS-Obersturmführer Werner Jothann… also hoped to reactivate crematoria IV and V, which had not been used since September 1943,” and was not reportedly used again until the spring of 1944. [6]
So Mueller wishes us to believe that he worked four to six weeks in one, and for some six-plus months in another facility neither of which were operative during the time he claimed to have been there witnessing gassing after gassing. Yet more lies on the witness stand. Mueller’s trail of lies now extends through 1943 and well into 1944.
Version 3: Directly from KII to V, apparently late 1943.
In this narrative from The Death Factory, he refers to Birkenau KII as “Crematorium I,” and Birkenau KV as “Crematorium IV”:
“Work at the Birkenau crematoria was the same as at Auschwitz, except that at Auschwitz the crematorium was only a small affair whereas at Birkenau it was an enormous factory – four factories, in fact – turning out death on an assembly line.
“I started work at Crematorium I. I was proposed for the post of Kapo, since my prison number was lower than those of all the others working there, which meant that I was the oldest prisoner. I did not accept this function, and by way of punishment was transferred to Crematorium IV… Here I witnessed the ‘scientific’ experiments performed by SS doctors Fischer, Klein, and Mengele. Between 100 and 150 men and women, aged from eighteen to thirty, were selected and shot… A piece of flesh was then cut from their thighs and forwarded to the Bacteriological Institute in Rajsko… The youngest women also served as a source of blood which would be drained from their veins for several minutes until they collapsed, after which they would be thrown half-dead into the fire. The blood was poured from a pail into special bottles which were then hermetically sealed. I was told that it was urgently needed at the military hospitals.” [7]
The idea of pouring fresh blood intended for human use into a pail is grossly unhygienic. If you want to give someone a deadly systemic blood infection, that’s a great way to do it. Mueller obviously has no knowledge of the blood collection and transfusion process and was yet again inventing things off the top of his head.
There are apparently more sightings of Mengele than of Elvis. He’s Omnipresent. Miklos Nyiszli, who testified to have had worked for Mengele in the Sezierkommando (dissecting command) said that dissections were done in KII, [8] not KV, until late November, 1944. [9] The account given in Eyewitness Auschwitz in this regard is parallel to that offered by Nyiszli and is likely a rip from the Nyiszli memoir, more so as Mueller’s account appears on the same page as the speech of the “rabbinical student” which Mueller clearly plagiarized (almost verbatim) from the Nyiszli memoir’s speech of the “Dayen.” Compare Nyiszli page 144 to Mueller pages 161-162. See this and other examples of Mueller’s plagiarism of the Nysizli memoir and other writings at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p--5_Mattogno.html.
The above nonsense means that Filip Mueller continued to lie about his whereabouts into late 1944. Another reason we know that Mueller is lying about his whereabouts in 1944 and even into 1945 is due to his descriptions of crematoriums IV and V, as we will see below in Section 10.
First, however, in the next section we will see how it can be known that Filip Mueller never set foot in Birkenau crematoriums II or III, even if they had been functional in the time he says he was there.
Notes to Mueller’s Confusing Journey from Birkenau KII to KV
[1] Mueller, p. 65.
[2] Ibid., p. 68.
[3] Ibid., p. 93.
[4] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20523-20524 (vgl. AP179.028, S. 0)
[5] Pressac and Van Pelt, p. 236.
[6] Ibid., p. 237.
[7] Kulka and Kraus, p. 159
[8] Nyiszli, Miklos, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account (Crest
Books, New York, Third Crest Printing, 1963) p. 60.
[9] Ibid., p. 146.
Mueller’s accounts of these two buildings have been consistently wrong. In his memoir he claimed that the external entryway to these two buildings had a wide stair. “They entered from the yard down wide concrete steps.” [1]
Birkenau Crematorium II ruins, looking at the entry steps from the alleged
undressing room. Not wide by any means.
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Birkenau/RuinsII01.html
Birkenau Crematorium III ruins, from stairway entry into alleged undressing room. Again, as you can see, these steps are anything but “wide.” http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Birkenau/RuinsIII01.html
He also frequently gets the number of alleged gas chambers in these crematoria wrong.
In Claude Lantzmann’s documentary "Shoah," Mueller said, “In Birkenau there were four crematoriums, Crematoriums 2 and 3, 4 and 5. Crematorium 2 was similar to 3. In 2 and 3 the ‘undressing room’ and the gas chamber were underground. A large ‘undressing room’ of about three thousand square feet and a large gas chamber where one could gas up to three thousand people at a time.” [2]
In the memoir the lower floors of these buildings are similarly described, “Normally the concrete floors in the gas chamber as well as in the changing room were damp: today they were carefully dried.” [3] Again, in the memoir, in the spring of 1944, Mueller still describes crematoria II and III having one gas chamber each, “In addition, in crematoria 2, 3 and 4 with a total of five gas chambers and thirty-eight ovens work went on at full speed.” [4]
Putting aside that Zyklon B doesn’t work as well in damp environments, Pressac, Van Pelt, and Franciszek Piper all reported that both of the rooms claimed to house the gas chambers in KII and KIII were divided into two during renovations throughout 1943, thereby turning a single gas chamber in each facility into two gas chambers each, with work ongoing throughout 1943 and the specific time of completion in late 1943. [5] Regardless of the use of these rooms, if Mueller had been there, he would have known of changes but rather his descriptions of them are more consistent with pre-renovation floor plans which date to months before Mueller’s claimed arrival.
There is another problem with Mueller’s description of these two facilities: the morgue. Mueller’s descriptions of crematoriums II and III have always included a morgue which was in use as a morgue, separate from the “changing rooms” and “gas chambers” in the building. From the memoir, “Some time later an SS man took us down on the lift. There we waited in the corridor from which doors led to the gas chamber, the mortuary, and the changing room… Eventually Oberscharführer Voss took us into the mortuary. There behind a pile of emaciated corpses six hand-painted signboards were propped against the wall. They had the letters A-D, E-H, and so on, down to Z, painted on them in black letters and had arrived at the crematorium some days earlier; nobody could imagine what they were meant for… Then we were marched into the changing room where we took our places along one of the walls, facing the people who had come with the transport.” [6] And, “Standing to attention in front of Voss they waited for his orders. He demanded to know how many corpses were still uncremated in the mortuary… He stood up and rushed into the changing room, the two Kapos trailing close behind.” [7]
According to the standard account, however, the mortuaries in both of these buildings were converted to gas chambers and undressing rooms, because as Van Pelt says, in “February, 1943 all the morgues in crematoria 2 and 3 had been redesigned and were being equipped to function as undressing rooms and gas chambers, while the morgues in crematoria 4 and 5 were to destined as undressing rooms. By the time the crematoria were finished, Auschwitz had virtually no permanently dedicated morgue capacity.” [8] The only other two rooms on the bottom floors of crematoriums II and III, according to Piper, were used for storage, not corpses. [9] If there were mortuaries in these buildings, there were no gas chambers, so if Mueller had actually been there, his testimony greatly damages the exterminationist thesis.
Another problem is the corpse chute. Mueller agrees with the revisionist position in this case. Twice in the memoir, Mueller mentions the existence of a functional corpse chute from the outside into the lower floor of crematorium II. “When we entered the morgue we found lying in a heap some 200 emaciated corpses, all of whom had obviously died of hunger, disease, or exhaustion. They had been thrown down the concrete chute from the yard into the mortuary basement. It was here that I met Kapo Kaminsky.” [10]
Mueller “met” the legendary Kapo Kaminsky in a place where he was not because he was in Monowitz at the time, in a room that according to the standard account did not exist because it was converted to a gas chamber after the chute was boarded over. That’s a pretty neat trick!
The standard account states that the corpse chute in crematorium II was covered with wood during the renovation process in 1943 which took place when Mueller claimed to have worked in these facilities. [11] Revisionists state that there is ample evidence that the chute remained in use throughout, thereby making it impossible to install a gas chamber in the morgue. [12] Either way, Mueller is toast.
Below Mueller thinks the stairs for victims to the undressing room are inside the crematorium complex. The standard account (and sometimes Mueller) says that the stairs to the undressing room are those external entries which Mueller wrongly referred to as “wide” steps in his memoir, as pictured above.
From the documentary "Shoah," “That night I was at Crematorium 2. As soon as the people got out of the vans, they were blinded by floodlights and forced through a corridor to the stairs leading to the ‘undressing room.’” [13]
What corridor? Again, as with Auschwitz crematorium I, Mueller describes a corridor which was not there.
Mueller’s lying about his presence in these buildings means that the poor sap who wrote the angry Op-Ed about Bradley Smith’s skepticism of gassings (see footnote 8 of the Introduction above) was taken in by Mueller’s storytelling. Mueller’s account of attempted suicide (in a gas chamber) took place in Birkenau KII, which was not operative in the time Mueller testified to having been there. The tear-jerker appears on pages 111 to 114 of the memoir.
Notes to Mueller’s Descriptions of Birkenau Crematoriums II and III
[1] Mueller, p. 61.
[2] Lantzmann, p. 123.
[3] Mueller, pp. 82-83.
[4] Ibid., p.143.
[5] Pressac and Van Pelt, p. 224, and Piper, Franciszek, "Gas Chambers and
Crematoria," in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Gutman and
Berenbaum, eds., pp.167-168.
[6] Mueller, p. 85.
[7] Ibid., p. 96.
[8] Van Pelt, Robert-Jan, The Pelt Report, p. 210.
[9] Piper, p.168.
[10] Mueller, p. 60.
[11] Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers, (The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989) p. 302. Read online at
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0302.shtml
[12] Faurisson, Robert, "Reply to Jean-Claude Pressac on the Problem of the Gas
Chambers," in Auschwitz: Plain Facts (Theses and Dissertations Press,
Chicago, Illinois, September 2005) p. 83. Also see Section 11 of Carlo
Mattogno’s critique of Van Pelt and Dwork’s Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present
at
http://vho.org/GB/c/CM/irving-eng.html
[13] Lantzmann, p. 163.
Even though Mueller cannot make up his mind about when he was present in KIV and KV, he does claim to have spent much time in and near these buildings.
In late May or June of 1944, Mueller speaks of crematorium IV, “During the day-shift there were, on average, 140 prisoners working in and around crematoria 4 and 5.” [1] “The remaining prisoners worked in crematorium 4, where operations went on ‘normally,” [2] and, “In addition, in crematoria 2, 3 and 4 with a total of five gas chambers and thirty-eight ovens work went on at full speed.” [3]
There’s a little bit of a problem with crematorium IV. It never functioned in 1944.
According to Auschwitz camp records, “The delays in the completion of crematorium II in March [1943] had made crematorium IV the first to be officially handed over to the camp administration on March 22… The double four-muffle furnace in crematorium IV functioned well for only a short time… By mid-May the furnace was again out of service, and crematorium IV ceased to be used, once and for all.” [4]
In Frankfurt, Mueller claimed to have been transferred to living in KIV from the Birkenau main camp. Again, here he refers to Crematorium IV as III:
Witness Filip Müller:
Late in the summer. The plan was this: If the commands engage, there we will also shift to the camp, even though we were already living in Crematorium III.
Presiding Judge:
No longer in 13
Witness Filip Müller:
No longer in Block 13, but in Crematorium III. [5]
In the memoir, Mueller also mentioned eventually being moved into KIV. “Some of us made their quarters in the lofts of crematoria 2 and 3 while the majority, including myself, was billeted in the changing room of crematorium 4.” [6] This was the summer of 1944, less than 30 pages from the end of Mueller’s memoir and only three pages after mentioning above that KIV was up and running with the other crematoria, and it shows that at through 1944 and into 1945 to the end of his claimed stay in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando, Filip Mueller was lying about his whereabouts; otherwise he’d have known that KIV was shut down for good in the spring of 1943, and therefore was not running ‘normally’ during the entire year-plus he claimed to have worked within close proximity of it. Filip Mueller’s entire stay in the Sonderkommando is then debunked.
A couple of the sensational stories Mueller has to offer us during this time are, “Another unusual entertainment in which he [Moll] would indulge every now and then was called swim-frog. The unfortunate victims were forced into one of the pools near the crematoria where they had to swim around croaking like frogs until they drowned from exhaustion,” [7] and another in which Mueller’s perverse imagination was a bit too active, “Moll was in his element. Sexually excited he shouted at the defenseless women: ‘Just you look at that, look at it well! In a moment you’ll burn exactly like them down there!’ And then, from behind, he shot them one after the other, with a silenced carbine, and they fell forward into the inferno of the pit.” [8]
Notes to Mueller’s Descriptions of Birkenau Crematoriums IV and V
[1] Mueller, p. 136.
[2] Ibid., p. 137.
[3] Ibid., p. 143.
[4] Pressac and Van Pelt, p. 234. See also Van Pelt and Dwork, Auschwitz
1270 to the Present (W.W. Norton, New York, 1996) p. 331.
[5] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20551 (vgl. AP179.057, S. 0)
[6] Mueller, p. 147.
[7] Ibid., p. 142.
[8] Ibid., p. 141.
Version 1: Two pits in the yard of KV, according to Frankfurt testimony. Again, here he refers to KV as KIV:
“In crematorium IV, there were two pits. There Oberscharführer Moll threw the children in, if they still lived, into the pits into the cooking fat of the corpses.” [1]
Version 2: Five pits in the yard of KV, which he personally helped dig. “Soon after his arrival, Moll ordered the excavation of five pits behind crematorium 5, not far from the three gas chambers… We were divided into five work teams. Urged on by constant threats and blows we now began to dig the sticky clay soil.” [2]
Mikos Nyiszli reported all alleged cremation pits were well outside of the boundaries of Auschwitz-Birkenau:
“We set off in the direction of the thick twisting spiral of smoke. All those unfortunate enough to be brought here saw this column of smoke, which was visible from any point in the KZ, from the moment they first descended from the box cars and lined up for selection. It was visible every hour of the day and night. By day it covered the sky above Birkenau with a thick cloud; by night it lighted the area with a hellish glow.
Our path took us past the crematoriums. After showing the SS guards our safe conduct, we passed through an opening cut in the barbed wire and reached an open road… But soon my watchful eyes discerned, about a hundred yards away, the guards of the second line… We crossed a clearing and came to a small pine forest. Once again we found our way blocked by a fence and gate strung with barbed wire… The SS guards on duty here were men from the crematoriums, and the 60 Sonderkommando men who worked at the pyre were also crematorium personnel from number two.” [3]
Nyiszli’s description is most telling, for it shows us that there were no cremation pits or “pyres” in the yard of Krema V at all. Surely if there had been smoke from burning bodies at this location, Nyiszli would have been more than happy to report it.
Notes to The Birkenau Cremation Pits
[1] Das Verfahren: 97. Verhandlungstag (05.10.1964). Der 1. Frankfurter
Auschwitz-Prozeß, S. 20624 (vgl. Blatt Allgemeines-98, S. 179)
[2] Mueller p. 126.
[3] Nyiszli, 68-69.
In Eyewitness Auschwitz, Filip Mueller takes credit for being a
major source on the Birkenau crematoriums to Rufolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who
escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944 and presented their testimony to the
Allied governments in what became known as the Auschwitz Protocols (also known
as the Vrba-Wetzler Report) which is credited for exposing the
homicidal gassings in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex to the world. He mentioned
this as well in a letter he wrote to an inquiring holocaust revisionist,
“The following factors were decisive as far as my own fate is concerned:
Mueller writes about passing information to escaping inmates in the spring of 1944, “I handed to Alfred a plan of the crematoria and gas chambers as well as a list of names of SS men who were on duty there. In addition I had given to both of them notes I had been making for some time of almost all transports gassed in crematoria 4 and 5. I had described to them in full detail the process of extermination so that they would be able to report to the outside world… In the course of many long talks I had described to them both the tragedy which was constantly being enacted behind the crematorium walls.” [2]
In another account, Mueller writes, “I found that while they had been able to form a clear idea of the general extent and function of Birkenau, they did not know all the details that I was able to pass on to them.” [3]
Rudolf Vrba, in his own memoir, I Cannot Forgive, which exclaims on the lower half of the front cover, “The amazing true story of a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy who defied the Germans at Auschwitz and escaped to alert the world to the Nazi horror camps!” tells us that Mueller was a great source of information for him. "In Birkenau, too, I had far greater opportunities for checking, counter-checking, and amplifying my figures. Fred in the mortuary was a help. I met other registrars, as well, and renewed contact with Philip Mueller who became one of my most valuable sources of information. Philip stoked the furnaces in the crematorium. By the amount of fuel made available, he could reckon how many bodies were to be burned because the S.S. never wasted fuel by overloading their fires. Every day, in fact, my dossier grew and the more determined I became to make a break." [4]
This is the diagram of the crematoria and gas chambers from the Auschwitz Protocols: [5]
“Rough” is an understatement. This diagram was drawn by an obviously clueless person who was clearly never in any of the cremation facilities and assumed that these crematoria were one-story only, as visible by the naked eye from the barracks of Birkenau. The facilities with the alleged “roof traps” are known as Birkenau Crematoriums II and III. Both buildings are mirror-images of each other and in the floor plan below, you can see that Vrba and Wetzler’s description was completely off:
On the witness stand in the District Court of Toronto in 1985, Vrba inadvertently let the cat out of the bag and exposed Filip Mueller:
“Q. Sure. I now produce and show to you a diagram which came from, I suggest,
your War Refugee Report of 1944 in which you depicted a crematoria. Correct?
A. That's right.
Q. Is it accurate?
A. This I cannot say. It was said that as we were not in the large crematoria,
we reconstructed it from messages we got from members of the Sonderkommando
working in that crematorium, and therefore, that approximately how it transpired
in our mind, and in our ability to depict what we have heard.
Q. That is what you depicted, though?
A. Yes.
Q. And it is accurately depicting what you depicted?
A. That's right. It is accurately depicting what I heard that it might look
like.” [6]
Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Vrba, albeit 41 years late.
Vrba himself has also lied under sworn testimony. He lied about his contacts with Filip Mueller in the same 1985 trial in Toronto. Vrba trips on his own tongue and again unknowingly exposes deceit – this time, his own:
“A. When I was working in Kanada, in November 1942, I have been
taken to the
dumping truck to Krematoria I in Auschwitz…
Q. I asked you if you had been in Krema I in Auschwitz when people
were being
gassed, and I think the answer is no. Correct?
A. The answer is no. I went there for collecting their clothes from the gas
chamber in Krematorium I.
Q. From the gas chamber?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you inside?
A. Yes… So we collected the clothes from there, and at that moment I saw
through the
window of the crematorium a friend of mine from Slovakia, Phillip Mueller.
Q. Who was he?
A. Phillip Mueller.
Q. Phillip Mueller in Auschwitz I?
A. In Auschwitz I crematoria.
Q. Yes.” [7]
Recall that Mueller was transferred to Monowitz at the end of June, 1942; therefore it’s impossible that Vrba could have seen him or conversed with him at Auschwitz crematorium I in November of 1942.
Notes to Mueller Gives Crematoria Floor Plan to Escapees
[1] This letter is viewable at
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v01/v01p267_Brandon.html
[2] Mueller, pp. 121-122.
[3] Kulka and Kraus, p. 159.
[4] Vrba, Rufolf, with Bestic, Alan, I Cannot Forgive (Bantam Books,
1964), p. 170.
[5] The Auschwitz Protocols are viewable online at
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.net/othercamps/auschproto2.html
[6] Vrba, Rufolf, quoted from District Court of Toronto transcript
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/vrba4.html
[7] Ibid.
Mueller claimed to have been housed in an isolation block in Birkenau with other Sonderkommando during most of his stay there beginning in 1943 (after his stint peeling potatoes) to until late 1944 when moved to KIV.
Obviously, Mueller isn’t going to be put into a secret isolation block to work in a non-functioning crematorium, so it goes without saying that the Birkenau isolation block story is concocted. Other ways in which this can be deduced is in Mueller’s descriptions of a suspiciously lax living arrangement in his isolation block. “At Birkenau life was a little freer. I found several fellow-countrymen in the camp. After evening roll-call I used to climb over the wall of our isolated block and visit my friends in the camp, more especially at the locksmiths’ workshop.” [1]
“After our transfer we were assigned to this new B2d camp, with our living quarters in block 13… Unlike other yards ours was surrounded by a wall. The door in this wall was almost always locked. The only exit was through a door in the front. It was guarded by a prisoner who was young and strong and armed with a wooden stick. It was his business to see that nobody from the outside had any contact with the prisoners who lived here and who were in on the secret.” [2]
“One the one hand we had to be isolated from the rest of the camp, on the other hand, the strict observation of this isolation was supervised by other prisoners. Clearly this opened wide the doors to large-scale corruption.” [3]
“As soon as I returned to the camp I went to the breadstore.” [4]
We’re supposed to believe Mueller went from a 24-hour lockdown prison cell to a loosely-secured block with an easily climbable fence guarded by a corrupt stick-wielding prisoner where once out, Mueller could roam with apparent impunity and not be missed or recognized? Consider this another slip. This man was never in isolation.
Notes to Was Mueller in an Isolation Block in Birkenau?
[1] Kulka and Kraus, p.159.
[2] Mueller, pp. 52-53.
[3] Ibid., p. 62.
[4] Ibid., p. 118.
From very early on in Eyewitness Auschwitz, we are told that Mueller and his fellow prisoners working the crematorium suffered grinding hunger, which was only offset by theft and bartering of the goods of gassing victims.
From the spring of 1942: “Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a half-opened suit-case containing food. Pretending to be busy undressing a corpse with one hand, I ransacked the suit-case with the other. Keeping one eye on the door in case Stark returned suddenly I hastily grabbed a few triangles of cheese and a poppyseed cake. With my filthy, blood-stained fingers I broke off pieces of cake and devoured them ravenously…” [1] Also, “Before we left, an SS man distributed bread rations. Our hands were filthy with blood and excrement, but we did not care: hunger and starvation had taught us to appreciate a hunk of bread.” [2]
From mid-1943: “Almost every prisoner in the Sonderkommando spent a great deal of energy on organizing,* partly because it helped alleviate the harsh living conditions, but also because it drew our minds off the horrors around us.” [3]
(*Organizing is camp slang meaning to steal or scrounge.)
Mueller tells us things worsened when he no longer had stolen items from the gassed dead to barter for food with.
From late 1944: “All this time our living conditions deteriorated steadily. As, with no more transports arriving, we were totally dependent on the meagre fare of the camp kitchen, we were forced to use our small hoards of diamonds, gold and the odd dollar note to barter for foodstuffs and cigarettes until we had nothing left to offer. Accustomed to black market deals with us, the SS guards on the other side of the barbed-wire kept approaching anybody coming within earshot to find out whether they had any gold or diamonds in exchange for which they offered bread, sausage, margarine, cigarettes, tobacco, and vodka… My mouth watered at the thought of a loaf of bread and a piece of sausage.” At this point Mueller and his comrades risked tricking the SS men by giving them fake gold teeth to exchange for food and cigarettes. [4]
Miklos Nyiszli reported working in the Birkenau crematorium II dissection room where he wrote of crematorium workers who were well-fed, “I learned from a fellow prisoner, who also informed me that the crematorium personnel were known as the Sonderkommando, which means, namely, kommandos assigned to special work. They were well fed and given civilian clothes.” [5]
Mainstream historians believe both of these men’s memoir’s accounts of their claimed time in these facilities, so which one is telling the truth? At least one has to be lying.
Notes to Hunger in the Crematorium Detail
[1] Mueller, p. 13.
[2] Ibid., p. 20.
[3] Ibid., p. 62.
[4] Ibid., p. 163.
[5] Nyiszli, p. 36.
In the closing pages of Eyewitness Auschwitz, Mueller reflects,
“The long march across the snow-covered landscape gave me a chance to ponder the events of the last few days. I still could not quite grasp that I had really left Auschwitz. Again and again I asked myself why we, the last few remaining Sonderkommando prisoners, had not been shot before the evacuation. Then again I told myself that I should not be marching in this column but for my indomitable will to survive; that I had to thank chance and a kindly fate for escaping one Sonderkommando selection after another. And finally I remembered those brave Czech girls who threw me out of the gas chamber when I wanted to end my life. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a free man again, in a world without barbed wire, without gas chambers, and without hecatombs of corpses. I wondered what the world would say when I told them the horrific story of how I had spent the last few years.” [1]
Indeed, what will the world say when the realization that Filip Mueller is a liar of massive proportions hits them and people begin asking questions? Revisionism, and revisionism alone, can be thanked for exposing this con artist and dispatching him to his deserved place in the trash can of history.
Notes to Mueller Asks Himself What the World Will Say
[1] Mueller, p. 166.
Holocaustianity states that WWII memoirs which tug at the heart strings of the masses are inviolate; more so in the case of inmate memoirs. The word of these inmates is as good as gold without bothering to verify anything, so holocaust historians freely quote from these books, and often only from these books, as bona fide historical narrative to educate and move us all. Even if historians were to admit that inmate memoirs are notoriously unreliable and promise to quit using them, it still creates a problem. They also cannot rely on testimony on oath because as we have seen, professional witness Filip Mueller lied there, too. The common historical method of simply looking at witness claims and basing the decision that they’re valid on general similarities to other accounts and trials is deeply flawed. These claimed witnesses could have simply gleaned a generalized picture from watching media and began parroting it as their own experience. How many Communist propagandists and other hostile parties’ false claims have slipped through the woodwork because of this and ended up in the annals of history? Mueller’s own admission of his reading postwar holocaust literature gives us a good idea of why his story is generally along the lines of the standard account, while it’s fatally lacking in the proper details and consistencies that someone who actually experienced what he claimed to have would know. Pieces of Mueller’s story can be seen in writings from Pery Broad, Henryk Tauber , Miklos Nyiszli, and even the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials testimony of Bruno Schlage, which is where the story of the inmate bunker trustee Jakob comes from. [1]
The totality of a claimed witness’ statements must be weighed and checked as much as possible, and the witness himself must be questioned as much as possible for consistency and his stories must be compared to camp records to see if it was even possible for him to have been where and seen what he claimed to have. Why wouldn’t an accuser of a crime be under the same weight of scrutiny as the accused? Both have stories which must be verified and reconciled as much as possible. How else do we arrive at an accurate picture? Handling one side with kid gloves and trashing the other is neither history nor proper jurisprudence, but an extension of politics.
Taking sides by allowing accusing parties to slide by unscrutinized is begging for trouble, assuming one actually cares for the truth and is not a propagandist, of course. Perhaps these historical writers just don’t care. Post-war courts certainly didn’t. At best, the methods of court historians are grossly flawed and their research sloppy, their attentiveness lacking, and in their arrogance or ignorance they refuse to mend their ways. Are historians cheerleaders? In the field of holocaust studies, at least, yes, many are.
The validity of Filip Mueller’s testimony as presented in the memoir, like the entire standard narrative of mass gassing to these historical writers, is a foregone conclusion. That they are using unverified and potentially false witness testimony to spackle the story of the holocaust together simply doesn’t enter their minds, so the poorly scrutinized quotations of the Muellers, Vrbas, and others continue to be fed to the public.
If among professional scholars a true atmosphere of open inquiry, honesty, and professionalism reigned, people like Filip Mueller wouldn’t pass the smell test. Since a truly professional atmosphere does not reign in holocaust studies, we will not be hearing the end of the Filip Muellers of the world any time soon.
Eyewitness Auschwitz will continue to be peddled to the public as non-fiction and will continue to be used in holocaust studies programs on that premise. Mueller’s biography as presented in his memoir will continue to be standard fare in academic circles and holocaust museums will continue to hawk the memoir and tell his story to frightened, impressionable children. You can bet on it.
Notes to Final Remarks
[1] Naumann, p. 108.