I just read Beatrice Faust‘s article on the Holocaust. As the “Nazi historian” (your odious phrase) at the centre of the controversy, can I comment as follows? —

BEATRICE Faust (Jan.15 -16) has fallen for much of the mythology of the Holocaust.

Can I take up one point? “The fact that Zyklon-B was used in small quantities as a pesticide is hardly evidence that it was not also used in large quantities for the gas chambers.” In fact even Jean-Claude Pressac, the Holocaust historians’ own tame historian and expert on the technique of gas-chambers, states that 95% of the Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz was used as a pesticide.

As for the bills of lading for shipping the Zyklon to SS Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein, to which Ms. Faust refers, I checked a few months ago on the surviving originals at the National Archives in the United States — a country I can still freely travel to.

These bills of lading run from Feb.16 to May 31, 1944 and reveal an odd thing: the cases of cyanide crystals (Zyklon) are numbered in sequence (Nos. 50,053 to 50,210), so none is missing; each shipment consisted of thirteen cases, totalling 195 kg (not “2 1/2 tons”); and identical shipments — six each — went to Auschwitz and Oranienburg concentration camps, although nobody has ever suggested there were gas chambers at Oranienburg.

Yours sincerely

David Irving
International Campaign for Real History

1. We shall publish images of the Bills of Lading elsewhere on this site.

©Focal Point 1998    write to David Irving