The Holocaust Historiography Project

Himmler Visits

Himmler’s service calendar proves that he visited Auschwitz on 17 and 18 July 1942, in order to follow up on the implementation of plans to expand the Birkenau Camp. The orthodoxy claims that, on this occasion, Himmler attended the gassing of a transport of Jews. However, Himmler’s service calendar, showing that he was busy doing something else during his entire visit, and the lack of any incoming Jewish transports that could have been gassed demonstrate that Himmler cannot have witnessed a gassing. (See Mattogno 2016d, pp. 16-25; 2020b, pp. 242-250.)

The next day, 19 July 1942, Himmler briefly visited the Sobibór Camp, which he visited again in early 1943. (See Graf/Kues/Mattogno 2020, pp. 58-60; Mattogno 2021e, pp. 150f.) There is no evidence showing that Himmler visited the Auschwitz Camp a second time, or that he ever visited any of the other alleged extermination camps (Belzec, Chełmno, Treblinka).

Despite these facts, several witnesses claimed that Himmler visited the Treblinka Camp in early 1943, issuing an order to exhume and burn all buried victims. Many Auschwitz survivors claimed that Himmler visited Auschwitz in early 1943, on occasion of a claimed festive inauguration of the first Birkenau crematorium (or on a later date for a crematorium inspection). No such inauguration party ever happened.

These false testimonies are a convergence of evidence in a lie. This indicates that these claims are not based on personal experience, but on black propaganda, rumor mongering, false-memory syndrome and/or coaching or even coaxing of witnesses by investigating judicial authorities. Here is a list of witnesses who made these false claims:

See also the entry on Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski for the claimed Himmler visit of an Einsatzgruppen execution.