Kollerstrom's Deception on the Visit of the International Committee of the Red Cross to Auschwitz

The British Revisionist Nicholas Kollerstrom has been nominated for the most blatant example of a denier deception. There are undoubtedly many good candidates out there, but Kollerstrom is in a good position with this contribution (submitted by iwh and called to my attention by Jeff_36 of the Skeptics Society Forum).

Kollerstrom claimed that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inspected shower units in Auschwitz. However, the passage he quoted from an ICRC report to support his claim doesn't refer to Auschwitz, but to camps for civilians from belligerent nations such as those for Germans in the Near East. The only known visit of an ICRC delegate to Auschwitz consisted of nothing but a 30 - 45 min talk to an SS man in the commandant's office of the main camp in late September 1944.

Here's what Kollerstrom wrote in his book Breaking the Spell:

"By way of contrast with these fantastic holohoax tales, we have encountered three different authentic eyewitness accounts of the Auschwitz camps in the course of this treatise. There was, firstly, the International Red Cross’s three-volume report published in Geneva in 1948. They regularly inspected the camps. This commented for example upon the shower units at Auschwitz:

'Not only the washing places, but installations for baths, showers and laundry were inspected by the delegates. They had often to take action to have fixtures made less primitive, and to get them repaired or enlarged.'

These are the real shower-units – not the ones which metamorphosed into the hallucinatory homicidal gas chambers!"

(Kollerstrom, Breaking the Spell, p. 233; note the lack of proper reference for the quote and his unscholarly vocabulary of "fantastic Holohoax tales", as if did not want to leave a doubt that he did not even try to deliver a reasonable piece on the subject)

Earlier in the book Kollerstrom wrote that "the International Red Cross...visited Auschwitz regularly throughout the war to checkout its hygiene standards" (Breaking the Spell, p. 75).

So according to Kollerstrom, the International Committee of the Red Cross "regularly inspected" the Auschwitz camps including the "shower units at Auschwitz". Wow, didn't know that. Neither you? That's because Holocaust deniers have made it up. The extract quoted by Kollerstrom doesn't mention Auschwitz, but is embedded in a paragraph on German and Italian civilians interned in the Near East:

"In the first place, the delegates had to satisfy themselves that water, the chief factor in hygiene, was available in sufficient quantities. In dry districts they recommended the internees not to waste it, and gave advice for planning its use in a rational manner. Thus, in Saudi Arabia, sweet water was completely lacking, and the German and Italian internees learned how to obtain it by the evaporation and condensation of sea water. At Fayed (Egypt), water was available only for two or three hours a day, at a rate of 50 litles for each person for all requirements of the camp, which means that it was impossible to have showers.
Not only the washing places, but installations for baths, howers and laundry were inspected by the delegates. They had often to take action to have fixtures made less primitive, and to get them repaired and enlarged. They supplied quantities of toilet articles (linen, soap, shaving soap, blades, tooth brushes, tooth powder, etc.). At Mansurah (Egypt) German, Italian and Greek women internees were living in such a deplorabe hygienic conditions that, on his first visit in 1942. the delegate gave the camp commandant a sum of 20 Egyptian pouns to meet immediate needs (purchase of insect powder, disinfectants, linen, etc.)."

(Report of the International Committee Of The Red Cross On Its Activities During The Second World War, Volume 1, page 594, my emphasis)

The only German camps mentioned in this section "Visits to Internee Camps" are Biberach, Milag Nord, Vittel, Würzach, Liebenau, Laufen, Tittmoning, Kreuzburg and Würzburg, i.e. it is on camps for civilians from belligerent nations. The German camps for political prisoners are covered in the next section "Other Civilian Internees (Political Detainees, Deportees, Hostages and others)", and Jewish prisoners have their own part in another section termed "Special Categories of Civilians". The quote, presented by Kollerstrom as referring to Auschwitz, has nothing to do with Jewish people deported to concentration and extermination camps from Germany, its Allied states and occupied countries.

It seems evident that Kollerstrom didn't study the ICRC Report (despite being in his bibliography) and copied & pasted the extract from another Holocaust denier without checking the context. His source of inspiration may have been something from rense.com, which he cited on p. 75. However, this article does not specifically relate the quote to Auschwitz (instead of to German camps for Jews generally; this claim appeared in Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? and was rebutted in Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust; Lipstadt was right that the passage "had nothing to do with German concentration camps", but it does not necessarily refer only "to Allied camps for civilian internees in Egypt"). Hence, Kollerstrom would have distorted this source even further. Or he may have helped himself with scrapbookpages.com, where the quote is already related to Auschwitz. But perhaps Kollerstrom wants to explain this to us himself?

There is no evidence that any delegates of the ICRC inspected the Auschwitz camps. On 29 September 1944, the ICRC delegate Maurice Rossel visited the commandant's office of Auschwitz main camp. He wrote a report about his trip. It is clear that Rossel did not manage to enter and inspect its prisoner's compound (let aside Birkenau, where the extermination sites were located). The prisoner's compound of the main camp consisted of 25 barracks, yet Rossel only saw "six to eight very large red brick barracks". Hence, he only saw it from the commandant's office. Furthermore, Rossel did not speak to Auschwitz prisoners. He only talked to what he thought was the camp commandant and had to trust his word ("We have no evidence, but our impression is that the commandant told the truth when he says that these distributions are regularly and that theft is punished very severely").

This is confirmed by the memoirs of Johannes Schwarzenberg, who was in charge of the ICRC's activities in the concentration camps, as well as how Rossel himself described his visit after the war:

"I arrived at that Kommandatur where I was received very correctly by the camp commander. [...] I asked him...if it would be possible that we would support the infirmary, that we would visit....He said: – No, these are internees, you have no right to see whatever. But if you would like to send help to the infirmary, or medications, you can do that.' [...]

[Lanzmann:  How long did this last, your meeting?]

Half an hour, 45 minutes.

[Lanzmann: And what did you see of the camp?]

Nothing. Of the camp. I saw barracks. I saw those from where I was. [...] Wooden barracks. They were.... Possibly they were barracks for the guards. But at any rate, I did not see the crematory ovens in action from where I was sitting

 [Lanzmann: Because Auschwitz is not built of wood, it is bricks, red bricks.]

Yes, bricks, but... these were regular barracks, military barracks. I have seen detainee groups, I crossed their paths; I crossed the path of several of those groups of detainees. [...] The striped pajamas, a little cap on the head. These people were slim, like.... there is no need to say it, is there? And .... they watched this car pass with... a pennant 'International Committee of the Red Cross,' with their eyes....

[Lanzmann: And you did not suspect anything of Birkenau, for example....]

No, Birkenau, I did not...."

(Maurice Rossel interviewed by Claude Lanzmann in 1979)