Clichés about the Holocaust

Stories about the Holocaust have permeated Western societies since the end of the war to such an extent that almost everyone knows certain buzzwords and can repeat certain standard memes. However, many of these clichés about the Holocaust are distorted or even false. Some of these are listed and explained below, with links to entries where they are discussed in more detail:

Assembly-Line-Style, High-Tech Mass Murder

Cliché: In terms of science and technology, wartime Germany was the most advanced country in the world. As such, it used the most advanced high-tech equipment to implement the mass murder of the Jews quickly and efficiently.

If the National-Socialist government had a mass-murder plan, one would expect this approach. In fact, however, uncoordinated, makeshift and downright primitive methods are said to have been used at all claimed crime scenes. (See the entry Plan to exterminate the Jews.) At the same time, existing high-tech solutions were never considered, let alone used:

• Poison-gas generators, built and deployed in their hundreds of thousands, were never used for murder (see the entry Producer Gas).
• State-of-the-art Zyklon-B circulation systems were never considered or used for homicidal purposes. (See the section Zyklon B Fumigations of the entry on Fumigation Gas Chamber).
• Although mass cremation facilities were briefly considered during the catastrophic peak of the typhus epidemic in Auschwitz, they were never planned, let alone built (see Mattogno/Deana, Part 1, pp. 143-155, 288-294).
• In the so-called pure extermination camps (see the entries on Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka), no crematoria were ever built. Chełmno only received a primitive field furnace. (See the entry on that camp.)

Common Physical Abuse

Cliché: Concentration-camp prisoners, especially Jews, were constantly physically abused by their guards and superiors. This was done with the connivance or even encouragement of the top SS hierarchy.

SS men were forbidden to lay a hand on prisoners, and had to confirm this in writing when they were assigned to duty. If they did so anyway, their victims could lodge a complaint with the camp’s headquarters, and demand that the perpetrator be punished. The SS doctors were obliged to report injuries caused by ill-treatment, including the perpetrators, for the purpose of prosecution.

What looks good on paper in the original documents collapsed the moment the members at the headquarters were themselves corrupt and ignored, condoned or encouraged physical abuse by SS subordinates, or committed this themselves. As the prisoners could not report such abuse to the public, they were at the mercy of their camp’s headquarters for better or worse. This is demonstrated by the cases of the commandants Karl Koch, Hermann Florstedt and Amon Göth. They were prosecuted by the internal SS judiciary for corruption, physical abuse of prisoners and even murder. (See the entries on Amon Göth, Majdanek, Karl Koch, Konrad Morgen; see also Mattogno 2016a, pp. 22-30).

Deliberate Starvation

Cliché: The Nazi government or the administration of the concentration-camps deliberately put the concentration camp prisoners on a starvation ration in order to let them slowly starve to death.

Documents from the concentration-camp administration make it clear that the prisoners’ food rations were to be adequate in terms of both calories and nutritional value. For example, on 28 December 1942, Richard Glücks, head of the concentration-camp inspectorate, passed on Himmler’s order to all camp commanders to reduce the death rate in the camps by all means, including by serving better food.

On 26 October 1943, Oswald Pohl, head of the concentration-camp administration (Economic and Administrative Main Office) ordered all camps to do everything possible to keep the prisoners strong and healthy, including by providing them with proper and appropriate nutrition.

The documentation of various camps proves that the amount of food delivered to the camps was adequate until late 1944. (See, for example, the entry on Russell Barton.) This only changed in the last months of the war, when the German infrastructure collapsed due to Allied carpet bombing and invading enemy armies. In the last months of the camps’ existence, nothing could be delivered to the camps in sufficient quantities. Hunger and epidemics developed into catastrophes due to this force majeure.

In certain camps, there were also corrupt SS functionaries who diverted some of the food supplied, and appropriated it for themselves or sold it on the black market. Another part of the food that reached the camps was sometimes misused by the inmate elite for their own lavish consumption, before the remainder was distributed by this elite to the inmate masses. As a result, some of the camp inmates did indeed suffer from malnutrition. (See Rassinier 2022 on Buchenwald.)

However, these hunger phenomena were not the result of a planned starvation policy.

(For more details, see Mattogno 2016a, pp. 13-38.)

Extermination by Labor

Cliché: The Nazi regime’s ultimate goal for its concentration-camp slave laborers was to exploit these prisoners to the maximum through exhaustion and then let them perish. Original documents from Himmler on down, however, prove the exact opposite: the intention of the SS leadership was to keep the prisoners strong, healthy and cooperative in order to obtain maximum productivity from them. (For more details, see the previous section of this entry, Deliberate Starvation).

Fat Accumulation during Corpse Cremations

Cliché: As soon as corpses are placed in a fire — either on a pyre or in a cremation muffle — body fat liquefies, leaks out, drips down, collects at the bottom, may run into collection pits and can be scooped off there. However, fat is highly flammable and would therefore not be able to accumulate anywhere in a fire. (See the entry Fat Extracted from Burning Corpses.)

Flame-Spewing Chimneys

Cliché: Flames burst out of concentration-camp crematorium chimneys. However, this is technically impossible. (See the entry Flames out of Crematorium Chimneys).

Gas Ovens

Cliché: Jews were murdered in gas ovens. No one has ever claimed that gas ovens were used for murder, and they never existed. There are said to have been gas chambers for murder, and there were furnaces for cremating corpses in certain locations. The term gas oven mixes two completely separate concepts. Those who use it are only demonstrating their historical and technical ignorance. (See the entry Furnace.)

Gas Showers

Cliché: In the homicidal gas chambers, the poison gas escaped from shower heads. According to the orthodox version, there were fake shower heads in some of the claimed homicidal gas chambers, but they were not connected to anything. Zyklon B consists of liquid hydrogen cyanide absorbed onto gypsum granules. It is not under pressure and therefore cannot be passed through pipes/shower heads. (See the entry on Showers.)

Josef Mengele

Cliché: Dr. Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death at Auschwitz, carried out most of the selections for gassings at that camp, and performed cruel, often fatal experiments on prisoners, especially on many twins.

Auschwitz had many doctors who shared the work proportionately. Mengele was only in Auschwitz for the last year and a half of the camp’s existence. Documents prove Mengele’s benign behavior in Auschwitz. Almost all the twins who were under his care in Auschwitz survived unharmed. Their survival rate was considerably higher than that of other prisoners. (See the entry on Josef Mengele.)

Lampshades and Other Objects Made of Human Skin

Cliché: The SS murdered prisoners with attractive tattoos and turned their skin into everyday objects. This is primarily claimed for the Buchenwald Camp. No such objects have ever been found. The claim is based on a campaign of psychological warfare by the U.S. armed forces. (See the entries Lampshades of Human Skin, Buchenwald and Ilse Koch).

Sardine Packing

Cliché: People were crammed so tightly into the gas chambers that they could not fall over even after death, but kept standing upright. First, such a packing density could have been achieved only with discipline and cooperation, which was impossible to expect, and second, dead people slump to the ground no matter how close they may have lined up. (See the entries Packing Density and Standing Upright).

Self-Immolating Corpses

Cliché: Under certain circumstances, human corpses can burn by themselves in cremation furnaces and on pyres without the need for any fuel. However, this is technically impossible, especially with emaciated, low-fat corpses from concentration camps. (See the entry Self-Immolating Bodies.)

Six Million

Cliché: Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Orthodox demographic studies could only arrive at the total of six million missing Jews by ignoring the emigration of Jews from the German sphere of influence before, during and after the war, and by systematically counting all causes of Jewish population reduction as Holocaust victims, many of which have nothing to do with German murders. (See the entries on Demography and Six Million.)

Smoke-Shrouded Sky

Cliché: The sky over Auschwitz was covered in thick smoke due to the heavily smoking crematorium chimneys and huge smoking pyres, especially at the time of the extermination of the Jews from Hungary (May-July 1944).

Air photos taken by reconnaissance planes over Auschwitz between May and August 1944 prove that neither the crematoria nor any huge pyres or cremation pits were smoking. (See the entry Air Photos.)

Soap Made from Human Fat

Cliché: The fat of murdered Jews was used to make soap and lubricants. This false cliché, generally recognized as an atrocity tale, was adopted from the time of the First World War. (See the entry Soap from Jewish Corpses.)

Stench of Burning Corpses

Cliché: The air in the concentration camps stank of burning corpses. Coke-fired crematoria, which existed in some German wartime camps, sometimes spread the smell of burning coke. The temperature inside the cremation chambers (muffles) is so high that no smell of burning hair or burning flesh is emitted. However, the situation is different with open-air incinerations on pyres, where such odors are unavoidable. Such incinerations undoubtedly took place at Auschwitz in the late summer and fall of 1942 during the catastrophic peak of the typhus epidemic. Similar events could have been expected at other Holocaust sites where such open-air incinerations are also said to have taken place. (See the entries Aktion Reinhardt Camps and Aktion 1005.)

Systematically Planned Mass Murder

Cliché: The Nazis systematically planned the mass murder of the Jews. However, there is no evidence of an order to develop a plan, nor any trace of any plan. In fact, all alleged decisions in this context were random, uncoordinated, chaotic and without any recognizable system. (See the entries Hitler Order and Plan to Exterminate the Jews.)

Violent Reception of Deportees

Cliché: Prisoners were violently greeted on arrival at a German wartime camp, especially if it was an extermination camp: Screaming, armed SS men who sometimes shot at random or executed prisoners, as well as snarling German shepherds that were sometimes let loose on prisoners.

The only objective evidence in this regard are photographs taken in Auschwitz on 26 May 1944 during the arrival of a transport of Jews in Auschwitz. They show a few, calmly behaving SS men without weapons and without dogs in a sea of arriving deportees. (See the entry Auschwitz Album.)

Sowing panic among the deportees would have run counter to the goal of their German guards, namely that the new arrivals should surrender to their fate and be cooperative. Panic-inducing behavior should therefore have been avoided at all costs. Moreover, for security reasons, guards who enter the interior of a camp or prison, where the inmates are the vast majority and could easily overpower them, never carry weapons.

Wanton Shooting of Inmates

Cliché: SS men shot prisoners in the camp or outside, sometimes completely arbitrarily, sometimes even as a kind of pastime, during which prisoners were used as targets or for exotic shooting competitions.

As explained in the section Violent Reception of Deportees, camp and prison officials never entered the interior of a camp or prison armed. Only guards who guarded the camp from the outside had firearms. They usually only came into contact with prisoners during escape attempts. Many prisoners who tried to escape were indeed shot — in accordance with the (questionable) legal situation at the time. As in every guard unit, the ammunition given to the guards was counted, and reasons had to be given for used ammunition. Therefore, these guards could not shoot indiscriminately.

As described in the section Common Physical Abuse, SS men were forbidden to assault prisoners under threat of punishment. Of course, this also included the use of firearms.

Arbitrary gun terror by SS men would have undermined the SS leadership’s overarching goal of gaining the cooperation of the prisoners in order to maximize their productivity. Therefore, such behavior would never have been tolerated by the SS leadership.