"No Gassing in Dachau"By Dr. Martin Broszat

"No Gassing in Dachau"

By Dr. Martin Broszat

The following letter appeared in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit under the headline "Keine Vergasung in Dachau." It appeared in the German edition of August 19, 1960, and in the US edition of August 26, 1960 (p. 14). Dr. Broszat writes in the name of the prestigious Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte).

Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The gas chamber in Dachau was never entirely finished or put "into operation." Hundreds of thousands of prisoners who perished in Dachau and other concentration camps in the Old Reich were victims, above all, of the catastrophic hygienic and provisioning conditions: according to official SS statistics, during the twelve months from July 1942 through June 1943 alone, 110,812 persons died of disease and hunger in all of the concentration camps of the Reich. The mass extermination of the Jews by gassing began in 1941-1942 and occurred exclusively in a few facilities selected and equipped with appropriate technical installations, above all in the occupied Polish territory (but at no place in the Old Reich) (aber nirgends im Altreich) in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Sobibor on the Bug, in Treblinka, Chelmno and Belzec.

It is at those places, but not in Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Buchenwald, where the mass extermination facilities, spoken of in your article, were built and disguised as shower baths or disinfection rooms. This necessary differentiation does not, of course, change anything regarding the criminal character of the facility that was the concentration camp. However, it may perhaps help eliminate the annoying confusion that arises from the fact that some ineducable people make use of a few arguments that, while correct, are polemically torn from the context, and that, rushing to respond to them are other people who, although they have the correct overall view, rely upon false or mistaken information.

Dr. M. Broszat
Institute for Contemporary History
Munich

Reprinted by permission from The Journal of Historical Review Vol. 13, No. 3, May / June. 1993.
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW
Post Office Box 2739
Newport Beach, California 92659
Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic. $50 per year, foreign.

http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconbroszat.html