Most Hungarian Jews Survived Auschwitz-Birkenau
British historian David Cesarani wrote that, in the unremittingly grim record of the Holocaust, no single chapter is quite so awful as the fate which befell Hungary’s Jewish population. He said that, with the full cooperation of the local administration, the Eichmann Kommando quickly set about plundering and deporting Hungary’s Jewish population. Cesarani estimated that 437,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the short period from May 5 to July 9, 1944. He wrote that only a fraction of these Jews was selected for work, and of them only a few thousand survived.1
This article documents that, contrary to Cesarani’s statement, most Hungarian Jews survived their internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Physical Evidence
The official number of Hungarian Jews allegedly exterminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau is impossible for numerous reasons. First, there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Reports, articles, testimony, books and videos from Fred Leuchter, Walter Lüftl, Germar Rudolf, Friedrich Paul Berg, Dr. William B. Lindsey, Carlo Mattogno, John C. Ball, Dr. Arthur Butz, Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom, Dr. Robert Faurisson, Wolfgang Fröhlich, Dr. Ing Franco Deana, Dr. James H. Fetzer, Richard Krege, Arnulf Neumaier, Cyrus Cox and David Cole have proven that there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The books The Real Case for Auschwitz by Carlo Mattogno2 and The Chemistry of Auschwitz by Germar Rudolf3 are probably the best books available for anyone wanting to make a thorough study of this subject.
Another factor making impossible the official number of Hungarian Jews dying at Auschwitz-Birkenau is that thousands of corpses could not have been cremated every day at Auschwitz-Birkenau as is commonly claimed. The authors of The Holocaust in Hungary acknowledge this fact and write: “The Nazis’ main problem: they were killing more people in the gas chambers than they could burn in the furnaces. The crematoria simply could not keep up with the task.” Thus, these authors state that the Germans decided to burn many dead Hungarian Jews in open pits.4
Holocaust historian Robert Jan van Pelt agrees that the crematoria at Birkenau could not keep up with the task of cremating the Hungarian Jews. Van Pelt writes: “During the Hungarian Action, when the daily number of gassed Jews far exceeded the official incineration capacity of the crematoria, open-air pyres took care of the excess.”5
However, we know that massive numbers of Hungarian Jews were not burned on open-air pyres at Auschwitz-Birkenau because aerial photographs taken during the height of the alleged extermination of the Hungarian Jews at Birkenau show an uneventful camp without smoke emanating from the crematoria or open pits.
The U.S. government released wartime aerial photographs in 1979 of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp taken on several random days in 1944 during the height of the alleged extermination period. Many of these photographs were taken at mid-morning on typical workdays. None of these photos shows huge pits or piles of bodies, smoking crematory chimneys, masses of Jews awaiting death outside of the alleged gas chambers, or mountains of coke used to fuel the crematoria. All of these would have been visible if Auschwitz-Birkenau had been the extermination center it is said to have been.6
In his book Auschwitz: The End of a Legend, Carlo Mattogno writes regarding the Allied aerial photographs taken at Birkenau on May 31, 1944:
It is pointed out also that the aerial photographs taken by the Allied military on 31 May 1944, at the crucial time of presumed extermination, on the day of the arrival at Birkenau of about 15,000 deportees, and after 14 days of intense arrivals (184,000 deportees, averaging 13,000 per day) and with an extermination toll (according to Pressac’s hypothesis) of at least 110,000 homicidally gassed, which would have had to average 7,800 per day, every single day for 14 consecutive days; after all of that, the photographs do not show the slightest evidence of this alleged enormous extermination: No trace of smoke, no trace of pits, crematory or otherwise, burning or not, no sign of dirt extracted from pits, no trace of wood set aside for use in pits, no sign of vehicles or of any other type of activity in the crucial zones of the courtyard of Crematory V nor in the earth of Bunker 2, nor in Crematories II and III. These photographs constitute irrefutable proof that the story of extermination of the Hungarian Jews is historically unfounded.7
John C. Ball writes that most of the Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau from May 28 through May 31, 1944 are said to have been killed on the spot and cremated. Since the crematories at Auschwitz-Birkenau could have cremated only a small fraction of these bodies, by necessity most of them would have been cremated on gargantuan pyres outdoors. Therefore, if the orthodox story was true, the area would have been blanketed in smoke. However, the Allied air photo of Birkenau on May 31, 1944 shows a peaceful and uneventful camp devoid of any smoke emanating from the crematoria or open pits.8
The Auschwitz Album
The Auschwitz Album is sometimes used to prove the mass extermination of Hungarian Jewry. This album, which was published in 1981, contains dozens of photographs showing deported Hungarian Jews upon their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of these photos show children and elderly men and women who were obviously unable to contribute to the German war effort. These photos contradict Dr. Arthur Butz’s statement in his book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century that probably less than 100,000 employable Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for labor purposes only.9
The photographs collected in the Auschwitz Album were taken on May 26, 1944 by SS photographers Bernhard Walter and Ernst Hofmann. These photos, however, do not support the claim that the Hungarian Jews unfit for work were gassed and cremated upon arrival. For example, several photos show that deportees fit for work left all their luggage on the platform at Birkenau. By contrast, Hungarian Jews deemed unfit for work kept a light luggage consisting of backpacks, bags, and various containers. Carlo Mattogno asks the simple question: “Why were those unfit for work sent to the ‘gas chambers’ with bags, backpacks, pots and pans?”10
Photos in the Auschwitz Album also show all the chimneys of the crematoria at Birkenau. None of these chimneys was smoking; therefore, we can conclude they were inactive. These chimneys were inactive even though official Holocaust historiography and many eyewitness statements claim that the crematorium chimneys were smoking on an almost nonstop basis.11
Holocaust historian Danuta Czech, for example, wrote in her entry for May 16, 1944 in her book Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945:
The first long block arrest for prisoners is ordered in Auschwitz II. Three freight trains arrive on the track connection; they are the first RSHA transports of Hungarian Jews. The arriving Jews are ordered to unload their luggage; thereafter they are to stand in rows of five and are led in the direction of the crematoriums. From this night on the chimneys of the crematoriums begin to smoke. (emphasis added).12
The crematorium chimneys in the photos published in the Auschwitz Album would have been emitting smoke if the Hungarian Jews were being gassed and cremated. These photos of the crematorium chimneys prove that the Hungarian Jews were not being subjected to a mass extermination program.
Like the Allied air photos of Birkenau in May 1944, none of the photos in the Auschwitz Album shows smoke emanating from open pits or gargantuan outdoor pyres. Such smoke would have been visible if the Hungarian Jews unfit for work were immediately gassed and cremated upon arrival.13 This is another reason why the photos in the Auschwitz Album indicate that the unemployable Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau were not subjected to a program of mass extermination.
Hungarian Jewish Survivors
Tamas Stark writes that it is nearly impossible to track even roughly the migrations of Jews in the wake of the Holocaust.14 However, evidence from numerous sources, including mainstream Holocaust historians, indicates that most Hungarian Jews survived their internment in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
There is no question that large numbers of Hungarian Jews were transited from Auschwitz-Birkenau to other locations. Even Jewish Holocaust historians now widely recognize that Auschwitz-Birkenau was a transit camp. For example, Edwin Black writes that Auschwitz was a labor camp, a transit camp, as well as an extermination camp where Jews were immediately exterminated in gas chambers upon arrival.xv
Danuta Czech writes:
The separate section of Camp B-IIe for unregistered male and female Jews, Camp B-IIc, and Section B-III (Mexico) are referred to in camp documents as the so-called Auschwitz II Transit Camp. The female Jews without numbers are referred to in the camp records as “transit Jews.”16
By the spring of 1944, the Germans were transferring large numbers of Jews to concentration camps in Germany. Dr. Franciszek Piper, the head of the Department of Historical Research at the Auschwitz Museum, acknowledged that “The subsequent lifting of the prohibition [of sending Jews to Germany] in the spring of 1944 marked the onset of mass transfers of manpower surpluses into the Reich.” Piper wrote that, from the spring of 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau “became the center for the distribution of Jewish labor for the entire network of concentration camps.”17
The transfer of large numbers of Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz-Birkenau to other camps has been documented by many historians. German historian Isabell Sprenger, for example, wrote a history of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp that lists a chronology of all known transports to Gross-Rosen. At the beginning of the Hungarian deportations, from May 16-17, 1944, she references a transport of 1,500 Hungarian Jews arriving in Gross-Rosen from Auschwitz-Birkenau. From May 24, she lists another transport of 3,189 Hungarian Jews arriving in Gross-Rosen from Auschwitz-Birkenau. On June 8, she records another transport of 4,000 Hungarian Jews transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Gross-Rosen. Other transports of Hungarian Jews were made from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Gross-Rosen later in the fall.18
Germar Rudolf writes about Jews transited to the Stutthof Camp:
Since late June 1944, large transports of Jews arrived at Stutthof. They came mainly either from the Baltic countries or from the Auschwitz Camp. The first set was the result of the Red Army advancing into these countries, leading to the evacuation of all sorts of camps in that area, while the second set consisted of Jews from Hungary and the Lodz Ghetto, for whom Auschwitz had only been a transit camp…
If we follow the orthodox narrative, the vast majority of the Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz since May 1944, as well as the Jews deported to Auschwitz from the Lodz Ghetto in August 1944, are said to have been murdered on arrival without having been registered. The data about the Stutthof Camp prove, however, that at least some of these unregistered Jews (23,566, to be precise) were not murdered on arrival but were transferred to other camps as forced laborers.
One should not surmise that all Jews from the Baltic countries, Hungary and Lodz who were transited through Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 ended up in Stutthof, because that was only a small camp and merely one among many others. Further research about admissions to other camps, to the extent that the records still exist, may reveal that many more Jews were alive and kicking of whom orthodox historians had assumed that they had been murdered. Based on data available to him in 2001, Mattogno was able to prove that at least 79,200 of the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz but remained unregistered, had been transported to other camps– without having been murdered (Mattogno 2001b).
Stutthof demonstrates therefore that the orthodox conjecture about the mass murder of inmates who were not registered on arrival at Auschwitz is untenable.19
Robert Abzug writes that thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent from Auschwitz to Mauthausen in December 1944:
As with the other camps, conditions at Mauthausen began to get even worse after 1943 with the movement of prisoners west from Poland. Mauthausen, because of the geographical proximity of Hungary, was particularly affected by the late but efficient roundup of the country’s Jews. Especially after the evacuation of Auschwitz in December 1944, the Nazis sent thousands of Hungarian Jews to Mauthausen and its sub-camps.20
The Mauthausen records also indicate that a shipment of 2,000 Hungarian Jews were transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Mauthausen on May 28, 1944.21
Some Hungarian Jews were also transited from Auschwitz-Birkenau to locations not affiliated with any concentration camp. These include Moerfelde-Walldorf near Frankfurt, and Unterlüss near Hannover, where large numbers of Hungarian Jewish women worked. Many Hungarian Jews were also transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to concentration camps and labor camps in the Baltics, including Kovnoa, Klooga, Riga-Kaiserwald, and several sub-camps. One of these sub-camps, at Dundaga, employed between two to five thousand Hungarian Jewish women who had been transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau.22
Carlo Mattogno’s Research
Carlo Mattogno, in his book Politics of Slave Labor, provides additional reasons why Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau who were unfit for work were not subject to a mass extermination program. For example, there were 578 Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau when the Soviets arrived in January 1945. Of this total, 29 Hungarian Jews were ages one to 10 years old. Most of these young Hungarian Jewish children would have been unfit for work, yet the Germans let them live.23
Mattogno writes that the unregistered Hungarian Jews were housed in the Transit Camp under primitive conditions because the camp administration was unprepared to accommodate such a large group of people. However, the Germans did not gas sick Hungarian Jewish deportees, but rather treated them, even with surgery. According to a June 28, 1944 report, 3,138 Hungarian Jews received medical treatment during the reporting period. Such medical treatment is inconsistent with a German extermination program of unregistered Hungarian Jews.24
Beginning May 17, 1944, huge numbers of Hungarian Jews were transferred from the Birkenau Transit Camp to other concentrations camps. Mattogno provides testimonies of Jews deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to other camps and subcamps. These testimonies were made available on the DEGOB website (the Hungarian National Committee for Assistance to Deportees). Some of the German camps and subcamps where Hungarian Jews were transferred include Plaszow, Krakow, Kratzau, Warsaw, Riga, Kiviöli, Dörnhau, Wolfsberg, Geislingen, Markkleeberg, Görlitz, Gelsenkirchen, Gelsenberg, Reichenbach, Lippstadt, Salzwedel, Merzen, Weisswasser, Fallersleben, Erlenbusch, Bunzlau, Hamburg, Mettenheim, Neusalz, Peterswaldau, Mühldorf, Hessisch-Lichtenau, Boizenburg, Bremen-Hindenburgkaserne, Fallersleben, Natzweiler, and many others.25
We should keep in mind that the Hungarian Jews were sent to many more locations than these. The periodical Hirek az elhurcoltakror listed 322 of them in alphabetical order in its Issue No. 5 of October 20, 1945 (pp. 14f.). These locations are where Hungarian Jews unfit for work might have been sent, not excluding the still-occupied territories outside the Greater German Reich.26
Conclusion
The deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May-July 1944 had the primary purpose of procuring a slave-labor force for the German armaments industry. Auschwitz-Birkenau served as a sorting center for Jewish labor. Of the more than 430,000 deportees, about one-third turned out to be fit for work, so that at least 128,700 Hungarian Jews were interned at the camp, and then transferred to numerous camps in Germany to contribute to the German war effort.27
It cannot presently be established with documents, and hence with certainty, what was the fate of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau who were deemed unfit for work.28 However, most Hungarian Jews survived their internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau. No homicidal gas chambers existed at Auschwitz-Birkenau to carry out a massive extermination process. The crematoria capacity at Auschwitz-Birkenau was also not sufficient to cremate the alleged dead Hungarian Jews in the time-period claimed by Holocaust historians. Finally, photographs in the Auschwitz Album and the Allied aerial photographs taken at the height of the alleged extermination program at Birkenau show an uneventful camp devoid of any evidence of a mass extermination program.
Endnotes
1 Cesarani, David (ed.), Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944, Oxford: Berg, 1997, p. 5.
2 Mattogno, Carlo, The Real Case for Auschwitz: Robert van Pelt’s Evidence from the Irving Trial Critically Reviewed, 2nd ed., Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2015 https://shop.codoh.com/book/the-real-case-for-auschwitz-en/389/.
3 Rudolf, Germar, The Chemistry of Auschwitz: The Technology and Toxicology of Zyklon B and the Gas Chambers. A Crime-Scene Investigation, Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2017 https://shop.codoh.com/book/the-chemistry-of-auschwitz-en/389/.
4 Vagi, Zoltan, Csosz, Laszlo, Kadar, Gabor, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2013, p. 220.
5 Van Pelt, Robert Jan, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 256.
6 Rudolf, Germar, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, 4th edition, Bargoed, UK: Castle Hill Publishers, January 2023, pp. 187-195.
7 Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: The End of a Legend, Newport Beach, CA: The Institute for Historical Review, 1994, p. 32.
8 Ball, John C., Air-Photo Evidence, in Rudolf, Germar (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of Truth and Memory, Uckfield, UK: Castle Hill Publishers, 2019, pp. 275-277.
9 Butz, Robert, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1993, pp. 170, 217.
10 Mattogno, Carlo, Politics of Slave Labor: The Fate of the Jews Deported from Hungary and the Lodz Ghetto in 1944, London: Academic Research Media Review Education Group Ltd., 2024, p. 129.
11 Ibid., pp. 131-132.
xii Czech, Danuta, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1990, p. 627.
13 Mattogno, Carlo, Politics of Slave Labor: The Fate of the Jews Deported from Hungary and the Lodz Ghetto in 1944, London: Academic Research Media Review Education Group Ltd., 2024, pp. 133-143.
14 Stark, Tamas, Hungarian Jews During the Holocaust and After the Second World War, 1939-1949: A Statistical Review, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 5.
15 Black, Edwin, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, p. 351.
16 Czech, Danuta, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1990, p. 564.
17 Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (editors), Piper, Franciszek, “The System of Prisoner Exploitation,” Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 47.
18 Crowell, Samuel, “Beyond Auschwitz: New Light on the Fate of Hungarian Jews,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, March/April 2001, p. 29.
19 Rudolf, Germar, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, 4th edition, Bargoed, UK: Castle Hill Publishers, January 2023, pp. 304-305.
20 Abzug, Robert H., Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 107.
21 Crowell, Samuel, “Beyond Auschwitz: New Light on the Fate of Hungarian Jews,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, March/April 2001, p. 29.
22 Ibid., p. 30.
23 Mattogno, Carlo, Politics of Slave Labor: The Fate of the Jews Deported from Hungary and the Lodz Ghetto in 1944, London: Academic Research Media Review Education Group Ltd., 2024, p. 127.
24 Ibid., pp. 128-129.
25 Ibid., pp. 60-99.
26 Ibid., pp. 143-145.
27 Ibid., pp. 145-146.
28 Ibid., p. 129.
Recent Comments