The Holocaust Historiography Project

Epstein, Berthold

Berthold Epstein was a professor of medicine from Prague, who was incarcerated at the Auschwitz Camp until it was captured by the Soviets on 27 January 1945. Together with three other European professors — Bruno Fischer, Henri Limousin and Géza Mansfeld — and coached by their Soviet conquerors, he signed an appeal on 4 March 1945 To the International Public, which contained many untrue propaganda clichés about Auschwitz:

  • On arrival at the railway ramp, selections of inmates for the gas chambers were conducted by the ineluctable Dr. Josef Mengele while whistling a tune.
  • The gas-chamber doors were opened after only four minutes ventilation time. This would have never sufficed for any of the claimed gassing facilities at Auschwitz.
  • Gigantic open-air incineration pyres operated during the time when transports with Jews deported from Hungary arrived in May-July 1944. However, air photos prove that no such pyres existed at Auschwitz during that time.
  • Oils and fats were extracted from corpses to assist in their cremation, thus saving other fuel. However, fat catches fire and burns as soon as it comes into contact with fire or embers, so no fat can be extracted from a corpse on a pyre.
  • The corpses were processed to obtain technical oils, machinery grease and laundry soap.

(See Mattogno 2021, pp. 296f.)