Code language

Facing an astounding lack of documents supporting the claim that a Holocaust was going on, orthodox scholars resort to the auxiliary hypothesis that the National-Socialist bureaucrats used code words when writing their documents. These code words stated one thing, when in fact something entirely different was meant.

The 1993 book Nazi Mass Murder is a classic example of an orthodox work created primarily to refute Holocaust skeptics. Before presenting their evidence, the editors of this volume enlighten their readers that they must read into this evidence something different than what these documents actually say. If a document states that people were resettled or expelled, it really means that they were shot or gassed to death (Kogon et al. 1993, pp. 11f.).

However, the problems arising from this are insurmountable. For instance, there are many documents from the high-level bureaucracy of the German wartime government using words such as emigration, evacuation, resettlement, or deportation. Even orthodox scholars admit that, in many cases, these words did in fact mean what they say, hence were not code words at all. This is uncontested for all documents created until the alleged beginning of mass exterminations (mid- to late-1941). But even after that, there are many cases where it can be shown that a document using these innocuous words was telling the truth.

If that is so, then how was a recipient of a letter or an order supposed to know from which point onward, or in which particular cases, he was to do literally what he was told — evacuate, resettle, deport, relocate? And how was he to know in which cases he was to radically contravene orders given by NOT moving a set of persons, but rather killing them?

When words of central importance could arbitrarily and radically change their meaning in an instance, complete language chaos would have ensued. To avoid this, strictly defined and generally announced rules would have to be set and disseminated, explaining what each term means under which circumstances. It goes without saying that there is no trace of that ever having been done. Moreover, any such defined and disseminated rules would have undermined secrecy, and secrecy was the claimed reason for the alleged use of code words in the first place.

The utter absurdity of the code-word hypothesis becomes palpable within the context of the so-called Aktion 1005. Here, secret reports of mass graves exhumed behind the retreating eastern front were supposedly sent as fake weather data, with the cloud height giving the number of corpses exhumed. Or maybe they were water-level reports, or watering-hole reports, depending on the witness. In any case, no such secret report was ever found.

Particularly blatant is the attempt to distort the historical record with code-word explanations when it comes to the Auschwitz Camp. This camp’s documentation of comprehensive measures implemented to save inmates’ lives, particularly during the phase when mass murder allegedly occurred (1942-1944), is vast and incontrovertible. In the face of this, claims that some documents containing the term special meant mass murder are ludicrous.

(For more details on this, see the entries special treatment, resettlement, healthcare, criminal traces, and the section Documented History of the entry on Birkenau.)