ROBERT JAN VAN PELT AUSCHWITZ, HOLOCAUST-LEUGNUNG UND DER IRVING-PROZESS Robert Jan van Pelt Auschwitz, Holocaust-Leugnung und der Irving-Prozess In 1987 I decided to investigate the career and fate of the came an Ortsgeschichte of Auschwitz. This history, publis- architects who had designed Auschwitz. That year I had hed as Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (1996), tried to re- obtained a teaching position at the School of Architecture create the historical context of the camp that had been of of the University of Waterloo in Canada. Considering the relevance to the men who created it. In 1939, at the end of question of the ethics of the architectural profession, I be- the Polish Campaign, the Polish town of Oswiecim had came interested in the worst crime committed by archi- been annexed to the German Reich, and a process of eth- tects. As I told my students, “one can’t take a profession nic cleansing began in the town and its surrounding coun- seriously that hasn’t insisted that the public authorities tryside that was justified through references to the medie- hang one of that profession’s practitioners for serious pro- val German Drang nach Osten. Also the large-scale and fessional misconduct.” I knew that physicians everywhere generally benign “Auschwitz Project,” which was to lead had welcomed the prosecution and conviction of the doc- to the construction of a large and beautiful model town of tors who had done medical experiments in Dachau and some 60,000 inhabitants supported by an immense synthe- other German concentration camps. But what about the ar- tic rubber plant, was begun with a clear reference to me- chitects who had designed the gas chambers of Auschwitz? dieval precedents of German settlers founding and buil- Had any architectural association ever demanded that they ding new towns in the Wild East. would be prosecuted? Had any professor of architecture ever discussed in class the crimes committed by The discovery of this “other” history of Auschwitz—a his- architects? tory that had been only very partly realized to be comple- tely overtaken by the history we know, a history defined I began by making a literature search, but found no refe- by the murder of more than one million human beings, rence to any discussion on the criminal culpability of ar- mostly Jews, in architect designed factories of death—was chitects in the Holocaust. Then I made a three-week rese- very exciting. When I had begun my work in the archives, arch trip to Jerusalem. In the Yad Vashem archive I found the consensus of historians was that Himmler’s choice of an indictement [Anklageschrift] issued by the Vienna State Auschwitz as a site of mass extermination had been deter- Court for Criminal Cases [Landesgericht für Strafsachen] mined on the basis of his assessment that that place wasn’t against two Austrian architects: Walter Dejaco from Reut- good for anything else.1 The discovery of ample evidence te, and Fritz Ertl from Linz. Both of these men had been that the Germans invested in 1941 and early 1942 great re- identified in the early 1960s by Auschwitz survivor Her- sources in trying to transform Auschwitz into a model city mann Langbein as key members of the Auschwitz Central for Germans raised, of course, the question why and how Construction Authority [Zentralbauleitung]. But it had ta- that “Auschwitz Project” had come to a stop, and why and ken the Austrian authorities a decade to bring the two men how Auschwitz became a landscape of murder. It was a to trial in 1972. The archive also had the final judgment: phenomenon that reminded me sometimes of the Strange both men were acquitted. Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and at other times of A Tale of Two Cities. What was the hinge that connected the- Intrigued by the trial, I traveled to Vienna to study the trial se two characters, these two cities? I’ll not give away the documents in the State Court. These provided some insight key element of the plot. You may read it for yourself in in the scope and nature of the role of professional archi- Chapter Nine of the book (which, incidentally, was publis- tects in the Holocaust. My focus began to change: if I had hed in German as Auschwitz: 1270 bis Heute). been initially focused on the question of professional cul- pability, I now became fascinated by the question of archi- The publication of the book led to an unexpected twist in tectural practice in extremis and questions pertaining to in- my career. I had turned to the topic because I had been in- terplay of political, economic, financial, social and crimi- terested in the general question of professional culpability nal forces that had shaped the development of the Ausch- of architects. The book had reached beyond that by provi- witz camps as man-made environments. Would it be possi- ding what may be defined as a cultural history of a death ble to write an architectural history of Auschwitz? camp. But in the wake of its publication, I was called upon to become an agent in the battle against Holocaust Denial. With the materials discovered in the State Court archive, In 1997 I was approached by the filmmaker Errol Morris in the archive of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in to help him complete a documentary that focused on the Oswiecim, the German Federal Archive in Koblenz, and the Osobyi [Special] Archive in Moscow, which hold a re- markable collection of captured German documents, inclu- 1This theory was first proposed by Jan Sehn. “Concentration and sive many records of the Auschwitz Construction Authori- Extermination Camp Oswiecim (Auschwitz-Birkenau),” in Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, German ty, I wrote, in collaboration with Debórah Dwork, what be- Crimes in Poland, 2 vols. Warsaw: Central Commission, 1946-7: 1, 27f. 1 Robert Jan van Pelt Auschwitz, Holocaust-Leugnung und der Irving-Prozess American Holocaust Denier Fred Leuchter,2 and in 1998 I because of its symbolic significance, but also because the was asked to join the defense team of Deborah Lipstadt, abundance of material remains of the gas chambers and who had accused the English historian David Irving of the crematoria were essential to their forensic games. In being a Holocaust Denier and, as such, a falsifier of histo- order to succeed, they cannot invoke the testimony of eye- ry. Both Morris and Lipstadt desired my expertise because witnesses, because it is difficult to use eyewitness evi- in both cases the interpretation of the historical evidence dence to attest to a non-event. In general, Holocaust De- of the role of Auschwitz in the Holocaust was of central niers like to rely on the interpretation of some material pie- importance. Leuchter had written an engineering report in ce of evidence by expert witnesses. They discredit and dis- which he had come to the conclusion that the Auschwitz card all eyewitness testimony as either false (because the gas chambers and ovens could not have killed the alleged eyewitnesses were beneficiaries of indemnification) or un- number of victims, while Irving, on the basis of The reliable (because the condition in the camps was chaotic), Leuchter Report, had converted to Holocaust Denial to be- and focus on the interpretation by expert witnesses of ma- come its most famous and perhaps also notorious champi- terial evidence such as blueprints of the crematoria, figures on. of the fuel supply to these buildings, technical data about the behavior of cyanide at various temperatures, measure- Holocaust deniers consider the established historiography ments of cyanide compounds in the walls of the so called of Auschwitz to be the key citadel that they needed to de- gas chambers, and so on. They believe that they can chal- stroy to be successful in convincing the world of the vali- lenge and overturn the historiography of the Holocaust by dity of their cause. They realize well its great symbolic va- finding one or more sleuths who share Sherlock Holmes’ lue as of “the capital” of the Holocaust because it is, first talent for deduction based on an expert knowledge of the of all, the site where the single largest group of Jews were minutiae of arcane subjects. The deniers, who have no murdered: at least one million. Furthermore Auschwitz is hope to advance their argument with the help of eyewit- particularly important because it was in its technology and ness testimony, relish Holmes’ forensic deduction because organization thoroughly “modern.” The crematoria offered material clues cannot protest when you misinterpret them. in the logical arrangement of undressing rooms, gas cham- They’re always silent, and only acquire a voice through bers, and crematoria ovens carefully thought-out producti- the expert who interprets them.4 on facilities of death. Furthermore, only in Auschwitz did the whole process of extermination take place inside, ma- A detective who desires to establish or for that matter king the procedure anonymous—and hence deniable. Most overturn the truth by interpreting clues needs material evi- important, however, is the fact that there are many survi- dence as a point of departure. The problem Holocaust de- vors who, and material remnants that, can bear witness to niers face is that both the gas vans that has operated in the genocide committed in Auschwitz. Of the 1.1 million Russia and in Chelmno and the Operation Reinhard death Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, some 100,000 Jews camps have left few if any clues to provide a basis for Hol- left the camp alive.