Konrad Adenauer Prize

Transcription

(subtitles on) You once created a sensation with the statement: "The Holocaust is the biggest and most persistent lie in history." What do you mean by that? Well, naturally I said that somewhat in the style of Faurisson, of Robert Faurisson, who was one of the first to look for these alleged gas chambers — in the concentration camps — and found none. And I mean it in this sense today: there is, I believe, no lie that has operated more persistently and transformatively and indeed not only in Germany but practically worldwide as this Holocaust. I would have to search a long time to find something equivalent. Because it didn't happen, you believe. Yes, well. If it couldn't have worked with Zyklon B the way it is described, if there were no gas chambers as many people meanwhile have said, then the question must be answered: Where, then, were the six million killed? For five years I have asked this question systematically, with friends, and received no answer, not one. Then I wrote to the Justice Minister: "This is the situation. Could we now please have a public debate between both sides, pro and con?" No answer. So then I wrote to him: "Since you have no answer to that for me all that remains is to draw the natural inference and admit the conclusion: There was no Holocaust." And in that case it really is the biggest lie ever. I mean, there are legal experts who say that the whole post-war political system will fall apart if THAT is questioned. That's why it's so vehemently defended, quite logically. All that is, naturally, for . . . for — " . . . the normal citizen today a slap in the face." — Exactly. — Yes. Everyone has learned it that way: the Holocaust happened, it happened with six million deaths . . . Could you explain once more, in a few sentences as it were, why the Holocaust, for you, is a — is the biggest lie in history? Because it's the most persistent, because it has had the most impact. And when one can't get a straight answer even from the Central Council of Jews in Germany — and I've written to them at least four times on this account — as to where the Jews were killed, then that's one answer right there [to your question]. And the second answer is that when one needs a law that sets the Holocaust in stone and threatens punishment if anyone investigates it openly, well, there you have the next problem, no? For the truth needs no laws. In other words, that — It's clear from that that something's not right. And when one considers all that has been built upon it, and when the legal experts say that the whole post-war political system would fall apart if it were to be questioned, then really it is rather clear that it is the biggest — the biggest lie — since one gets no answers. And "Auschwitz" cannot stand. Seventy years after — after the Holocaust — naturally you might now just say you want to live your last years in peace. What keeps you going? Well, just these same contradictions that weigh down people's lives. And — I must add this as well — it is the members of my generation who suffered so terribly. Everything that is said about atrocities is only ever said with respect to others. What is never mentioned, however — there are no big memorials — is that fifteen million Germans from the lost eastern provinces, myself among them, were driven from their homes. That's equivalent to the entire population of Scandinavia. Try to imagine, that was it — a notice would appear on the door: "You must vacate the house by tomorrow at such-and-such o'clock, keys are to be left in the door, you may take with you no more than 20 kg each." And then they came. And as a result two-and-a-half to three million people truly brutally murdered: raped to death, crushed beneath tanks, and so on. And even Konrad Adenauer said in his first Bernauer speech in 1949, shortly after the founding of the Federal Republic: "We have many problems, but the biggest problem is the —" he says fourteen million, he claims to know that from the Americans — "the fourteen million German expellees, of whom six million have never arrived. They are dead and gone." Remarkably, he says six million. Today actually we know that it is probably three-and-a-half or two-and-a-half — it's never been possible to determine exactly how many didn't arrive, but perhaps Adenauer was right after all and we simply don't know. It's all a muddle. ( — But one cannot . . . ) But in any case, the number of victims at Dresden was not 25,000, as is claimed today. That would mean that Dresden was practically empty, right? Now there you have a lie so big it can't be topped either. The authorities in Dresden itself told me, after reunification — I had asked what was said in Dresden about the number of the dead — "About 235,000 — as far as we can determine. But there could be many more still lying under the rubble." And then fifteen years later, when I heard that a new group of historians was working on the problem I asked again at the very same institute and they told me "Well, right now we have 35,000 but it will probably come to 25,00." So you see, there are all sorts of lies from all sorts of sides, only the other side's are weightier. And then, of course, above all else this practically forced me into it: if we want a future that is humane and sustainable then we can't get there with lies. For then we need a solid foundation — among the different peoples too — and that solid foundation can only be the truth. And that's the reason why this question must be re-examined. And the crazy part is, the more you ask questions and try to get some ground beneath your feet the bigger the questions become. And what do the courts do? They have tried to hide their ignorance, as I really must call it, behind the word "self-evident." And that is connected with this Paragraph 130 [of the German Criminal Code] "Racial Incitation" which was formulated and presented to the Bundestag as a bill in 1994. And the Bundestag Deputies said no, that won't do, that's irreconcilable with Article 5 [of the German Constitution] "Freedom of Expression" "Freedom of Research." And then the whole lot got such a working over that on the second or third reading — I can't exactly recall now, there's something you can research — they passed the paragraph by a majority. And this paragraph, which in its language is already an absurdity — it says, namely, that "a punishment of up to five years in prison or a fine will be assessed on anyone" — and then comes a reference to international law — "who approves of, denies or minimizes the crimes committed by National Socialism in a manner that is apt to disturb the public peace." So first of all it says crimes<i> committed</i> by National Socialism. It can't just be said, or believed or claimed, it has to be an established fact. But in the meantime this "fact" is much disputed, and so already that can be eliminated. Next comes "approve of." The greatest crime ever committed by humanity — which is what the Holocaust would be — could hardly be "approved of" by anyone if it were unequivocal. It's the same, for that matter, even if its just a single serious traffic accident or a single murder: the majority of people will cry "severest penalty!" Right? People are always calling for the severest penalty, they don't approve of these things. So that's all very unclear. And then, I was once in the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig on account of the Collegium institute, and the discussion turned to the word "deny." And the judge admitted, the presiding judge — there were five in all — "Indeed, we must in fact prove that you're convinced the Holocaust happened. For 'to deny' something means — " (I had said this myself earlier) "to claim something against one's better knowledge. The word 'deny' depends on the word 'lie.'" So if you accuse me of having denied something then you must prove against me — the judge was quite right — that I actually believe it. And yet they do the exact opposite in their indictments. And so that falls apart. And as for "minimize," he said, "It's really not entirely clear that that should be punishable." Good. Moreover, it's not the case that <i>any</i> denial or <i>any</i> minimization entails a punishment, but rather <i>only</i> — [aside, unclear] if it is apt to — if it's done in a <i>manner</i> that is apt to disturb the public peace. And here the Federal Constitutional Court says, quite correctly — in 2009, in the famous Wunsiedel Decision — That is an assumption. Who's to say if it is "apt" or not? How do they know that some statement somewhere is "apt" to do so? The "public peace." What after all is the public peace? That is all mere assumption. If that is the sole point on the basis of which a statement is liable to punishment, and it is only an assumption, then, says the Federal Constitutional Court, the whole thing is legally untenable. Indeed, jurist Heribert Prantl has gone so far as to write in the <i>Süddeutschen Zeitung</i> that the Holocaust, this Paragraph 130, thus becomes no more than an empty shell that is no longer legally applicable. And yet it still has not been struck down in the Bundestag. But that's just what an absurdity this law is: one sees clearly how the Deputies disagreed and were at odds with themselves, and thus wound up making this monstrous verbal formulation in which everything's back to front and nothing make sense. And afterwards they could take, for example, someone like Germar Rudolf, a chemist, who made a study of a chemical substance and whose results didn't sit well with the political world, and put him in jail for three and a half years. And Horst Mahler for twelve. Right? On the basis of such a law. And that must inwardly outrage any decent person and awake real doubt in a so-called nation of laws that allows such a thing. That really is something that, naturally, spurred me to action for I <i>want</i> a nation of laws, I don't want a nation of un-laws, I don't want a nation that constantly talks of law and justice and so on — of "freedom of expression" as in France again right now — and does the opposite. That is the situation that really upsets me the most, that it was my own generation that suffered so terribly and no one talks about that. Everyone only talks about the six million Jews. No school child knows how many of the German expellees died, they don't even know that Breslau was a German city. That is unbearable. So you go about openly claiming that Holocaust never happened. Yes, naturally, just so. And I also say — and I put this on the Internet as well — that that doesn't mean, however, that a single revisionist has ever claimed that there were no concentration camps. Of course there were concentration camps, and bad things happened in them. And there even were four concentration camp commandants who were prosecuted by an SS court-martial because they, in violation of the regulations in the Commandants' Orders, did not deal with prisoners appropriately but rather struck them or even shot some, and so on. And that was strictly forbidden and two of them were executed. But here's the kicker: I don't know that from the Jews who are always accusing us, I know that from the revisionists — they're the ones who discovered that such cases occurred and that the SS in fact took the strictest measures against them. So none of us would ever say that nothing happened there. Of course things happened. In times of war, the negative qualities in people are always aroused and encouraged and to that extent . . . But that has nothing to do with the notion that a unique, unparalleled, enormous crime was committed by the Germans One must see this in context. So, if I understand you correctly, the concentration camps did exist but a program of mass extermination, in the sense we understand it today, did not. Well then, what happened in the camps? Auschwitz was quite simply a huge industrial complex and they performed very valuable work there for the armaments industry. So the prisoners who were there were rightly there? That's another thing Prof. Nolte has established. If one goes by the Hague Conventions on Land War then every state, in the event of war, has the right to intern enemy nationals residing in its territory because the danger exists that they may commit espionage. Everyone did it. For example, one of my uncles was in India at the time but the English were there and so he was interned there. My mother's brother was in America and he was interned there. Everyone did it. And um, the Russians did it too, of course. One mustn't forget that. Against that background, then, what you're saying is that what happened in Auschwitz was right. Right? Well, "right" is rather . . . It was legally unassailable, let's put it that way. As to whether I find it "right" that people were . . . But then, my own high school class was also mobilized for the armaments industry and we too had to work on armaments. For example, I painted munitions crates and the like. So it wasn't just them — we were all mobilized, especially during the last year. Nor was that a special case. We all had very little to eat and hardly anything to wear, and above all no shoes. Or none that fit: young people's feet are always growing and we'd have to cut the fronts off. I'd like to turn now to the <i>Garrison and Commandant Orders</i>. Yes, these are truly paradigm-changing, even for me when I first read them. For these details — for example these dealing with nutrition. They're not in here, they're in the Special Orders. They actually recommended what we had to painstakingly learn in our senior Home Ec cooking class: not to overcook vegetables but rather to cook half until they are just soft and to just steam the other half as quickly as possible because then the vitamins are preserved better. And then they told them they must go out and gather wild herbs and the like and put them raw on top, in place of parsley as it were. And that they were to make a hearty, thick soup — not a thin broth, but a thick soup. And if the cook didn't, then he was to be removed and another cook put in his place. That was the sort of thing they were concerned with — in the middle of the war! It's really most remarkable. What conclusion do you draw from these<i> Garrison and Commandant Orders</i>? I draw the conclusion, that here we have the ultimate, perhaps most outstanding proof that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp but rather a work camp in which all of the workers interned there were indispensable for the armaments industry. That's what is said quite clearly, isn't it. So there was no mass extermination at Auschwitz? No, one cannot want to have armaments workers and exterminate them at the same time that makes no sense, it's a self-contradiction. And it makes even less sense when one asks them later, "Would you like to stay and be liberated or would you like to come with us to the Reich?" and they say, "No, we'd rather go with our murderers." It's schizophrenic. What did you think when you read that for the first time? Frankly I was rather amazed that it was all so clearly laid out here. — Until then I had . . . — What is so clearly laid out? That it was a work camp. Which is just what the veterans had always said. And everyone jumped all over them. And yet they were right, that's the really painful part. Is there anything about the gas chambers? No, nothing at all. And they can't be inferred from Reich orders either. How do you explain the fact that the gas chambers are not mentioned? Because there weren't any, naturally. One cannot mention something that doesn't exist. Why do you want to cling to the gas chambers when you can read what is written here? Above all, I find it presumptuous of people living today who think they know better than those who actually lived then. And the people who were there, all the old defendants said: "We never saw anything like that." But we know better what it was like there! We know better what it was like in the Third Reich than those who lived through it. That's the great failing, the lack of self-critique in those talking today. That's what is so astounding here and what . . . In other words, you conclude from the fact that no gas chambers are mentioned that at the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau there weren't any. No, you you just have to remember what I said earlier. That goes along with the fact that one simply couldn't have done it with Zyklon B. It wouldn't work. I mean, we live in a scientific age! We have to listen to the experts. And when the chemist Germar Rudolf says it wouldn't work and every chemical dictionary says so too, and when Fred Leuchter, the sole living expert in gas chambers — for there still are states in America that use them to execute people — takes a look at what is claimed and says, "That's completely absurd. One can execute a single individual in a hermetically sealed, highly complex technical structure, in such-and-such amount of time . . . " then the whole thing falls apart. And I am not ready to just take the lawyers at their word that they know better. And I don't just take others at their word either. But then that's why they didn't promote this book. They didn't promote it! What are the points that most persuaded you? All right, 7 February 1944: "Prisoner Transports." — OK. I find this quite astonishing, shall I read it out here? I can just sum it up. It is ordered that the camp doctor must first examine all prisoners before they go into the transport. Then how the transport wagons are to be procured. If it's cold, each car must be thickly strewn with straw and there must be a stove inside, and above all else — our people would have loved to have had that — there must be boiled water or tea available inside. And also stated explicitly: to take along sufficient food — the transports could be delayed by bombing attacks — in order that no one should starve. Our people went for seven days without getting anything to eat. So yes, that's quite striking. And it's also quite striking here . . . where it is again related how the sick are to be handled. Indeed there was . . . The Red Cross — I believe it was the Red Cross — also inspected Auschwitz and they found a very modern clinic there. And the sick were looked after very carefully in order that they become healthy again as quickly as possible. And also about the special diet — there was a special diet though naturally they had to provide it only within this infirmary. And that the condition of clothing must be continuously monitored, especially shoes. That makes sense. And then, hard-working prisoners could even earn special privileges — they even received bonuses for extra piecework — or their industriousness could be so rewarded that they be given early release. There's that too. It's all in here. Do you believe it also happened? I would assume so. Whether it still happened in the last . . . What year is it here? 1944 . . . in February. Whether that was still possible at the end of 1944, I doubt, but . . . In the footnotes there's a comment on this point that "No prisoner ever obtained freedom on account of industriousness. Despite repeated directives from the SS Economic and Administrative Office, the goal of interning and punishing concentration camp prisoners retained priority over the efficiency of labor deployment." — Does that not contradict . . . ? — Yes, but where . . . Where did the commentator in question get that from? It reminds one of the Foreword, which also completely dodges the issue. So I would immediately ask, where do you know that from then? If the order says one thing, how can you, a person living today, simply claim the opposite? You'll have to prove that to me, please. We are too trusting. We'll believe anything people say today. If someone says "I experienced such and such" then I can't simply claim the opposite, I have to prove it. Anyway, you know the lot — Otto Uthgennant and Enrico Marco and whatever they're called, all the people who have lied about us. Initially they got — they had to observe a two-hour midday break and have an evening break at four or five o'clock. And during the break, the deployment leader had to make sure that they did not receive any additional assignments. Because, first of all, one gets more out of one's food when one rests afterwards and secondly, because only then is one capable of working. This sleep-break directive really surprised me, I must confess. What do you conclude from it? That they wanted to have good workers. Curiously, it even says somewhere that there were very good watchmakers among the Jews who were then to be sent on to special locations. I never knew that the Jews were especially good watchmakers. So one's always finding something here that's odd — or astounding. "Foot-inspection for prisoners in every subcamp." Hmm? "Foot-inspection to be held 3 times [weekly] among the prisoners to check on foot injuries and cleanliness of prisoners." You see they placed — on account of this terrible typhus epidemic they placed, they <i>had</i> to place, enormous value on hygiene. And as a result this had to be respected. And hair had to be shorn not only among the prisoners but among the SS men as well. Because that's where the lice usually would get established. And they still weren't at all past this typhus epidemic. And I have also — Was it in here? Somewhere, anyway, I've read that the lice were brought into the camp from outside: the prisoners themselves had no lice. Naturally I can't verify that, I can only take it as is. So, in addition to everything up to this point, it really is quite remarkable what it says here under the title "Mistreatment of Prisoners": "On this occasion, I once more expressly draw attention to the standing order that no SS man may lay a hand on a prisoner. In this fifth year of the war every emphasis must be placed on maintaining the working strength of the prisoners. Should a prisoner violate regulations then a report should be made." So they weren't allowed to do it themselves. And that's why I said earlier and I point out again that strict punishments were carried out for any SS men who didn't follow such orders. — One can thus . . . — What conclusion you draw from that? Against the background [of claims] that at Auschwitz-Birkenau people were mistreated and ultimately killed? Presumably it's the same as what the English and Americans did as they entered Germany and distributed propaganda leaflets to "inform" their soldiers of the terrible atrocities that the Germans supposedly committed because the soldiers were so appalled by the destruction of German cities. And to make it comprehensible to them that this was justified they distributed these leaflets claiming the most awful atrocities which they hadn't, however, "discovered" among the Germans — they made them up. Sefton Delmer himself said that, right? And here it's just the same: everything has been twisted and turned into its opposite. And sadly one must also say that a great deal, for example, of what German POWs went through on the Rheinwiesen or in the gulags in Russia, they accused us of. And the women — an the Russians themselves said so. It was them, that Bolshevism-infected army, that actually encouraged its soldiers to rape women. On our side that stood under penalty of death. We had two very good friends, one my husband's and one my father's, who discovered that a man in their unit had raped a Pole or a Russian. And they had to hand them over to a military court martial even though they needed every man they had for the war, knowing full well that they would be executed. And that weighed upon them for their whole lives. But that's just how strict it was. Why do these Garrison Orders, in your eyes, have supreme, independent credibility? Because they are originals. And because they're also consistent with the Reich Orders decoded by Enigma. It's no anomaly. Each side complements the other. And they are complementary as well with the stories of those who lived through it all. And to that extent they are the final confirmation that was missing. If they are such paradigm-changing documents, why haven't they been talked about? You can answer for that yourself. Because it wasn't desirable. To whom? Them. The people who brought the whole business about. Why publish it then? Because one feels — That's just it, I said this earlier. Wherever you go, you find this sort and that sort. And that goes as well for these institutes. Martin Broszat, for example, when he said that there were no gassings in Germany itself — authentic, from the Institute for Contemporary History — after they'd been saying for more than a decade that there were gassings everywhere. And that's just how it is: one tries to pass off the negative things one has done onto the other, defeated side and history is always written by the victors. And so they had this material, and they thought, "We must publish this, as the Institute for Contemporary History we cannot just lock it away." But it simply wasn't discussed. And so for ten years it remained in obscurity. Could it be that the responsible officials who wrote these orders consciously left out the aspect of the extermination of prisoners, or internees, in order to leave no evidence for the future, as it were? That would be completely unrealistic, in the middle of war. The question is completely unrealistic. In the middle of a war in which one is fighting for one's very survival, and one's trying to reach the labor quotas that are being demanded of one, they wouldn't have had five minutes for such a thing. It's simply unimaginable. Everyone still believed in victory. It was only very late in the war that people started to doubt. The book has been published for some time now . . . It was published in 2000, but only came to the attention of a few historians in 2013. Before that, it was dead. Why? Because people had decided . . . So really Norbert Frei, as editor, should have said that history has to be rewritten here or at least, the history of the Holocaust. So you say: he should have said that. But you know that Germans are all afraid. Back then, there still weren't — To be fair to him, I would even say there hadn't yet been all those trials, there weren't yet so many facts that had come to light, so many contradictions, in 2000 as today. To that extent, fear of the consequences for one's career and one's fate really was much more pressing then than it is today. Today one can say more, because meanwhile more contradictions have become evident. That still wasn't possible then. So I would grant Frei that much, that he — that they all, all five of them here — might have said, "But we'll keep quiet about that. We won't discuss it. We have to do it because we're historians and the Institute for Contemporary History has such things as its mission, but . . . we won't try to publicize it." And none of them spoke about it. Have you ever spoken with Professor Frei, as editor . . . ? No, I don't know him. I've mostly dealt with Nolte. — Not about the <i>Garrison and Commandant Orders</i>? — No. Why not? It never really occurred to me to. — Yeah but . . . — I simply don't know the man. I've spoken with Walter Post and Stefan Scheil and Ernst Nolte. But if you take this as evidence, as the last piece of the puzzle, for the non-existence of the Holocaust might you not have asked why . . . Why did he do it? Maybe you should ask him. . . . why he published it, and whether his interpretation is the same as yours? If he has courage then it will be. If he doesn't have courage he'll try to avoid it, like in the Introduction. That's quite clear. What does the Introduction say? In the Introduction they attempt, desperately — but it really is quite desperate and quite obvious that it's false — to find something somewhere showing that someone was gassed — I'm not sure they say "gassed," but murdered, anyway. Some big number. But it doesn't hold water, what they say in the Introduction. One can refute it quite quickly. What do you think: would he acknowledge that, on the basis of the <i>Garrison and Commandant Orders</i>, one can call into question the Holocaust in the form it's known in today? I couldn't say, I don't know him. I don't know how courageous the man is. I couldn't say. But might he not say that the orders have to be seen in context, they relate to individual areas in the concentration camp, that there were parts of the camp that are fairly described by precisely those aspects which you have just mentioned, but . . . ? Yes, but the whole place was a giant armaments complex, there were all sorts of armaments firms there. There was a film once on television about a woman who worked there as a secretary. And naturally she too said, "I never saw anything of the sort. I had to manage the list for the bordello and things like that." Those who were there always said something quite different and now we're trying to reconcile that with what we've been taught for 50 years in school. That is our problem, and naturally it is very hard. Above all, one must then say, "My teachers and parents lied to me." That is bitter. What does that mean then for history if the extermination of the Jews was essentially, as we learned in school, a part of the ideology of National Socialism? What does that mean for history if the concentration camps, and the extermination of the Jews didn't happen? Well, I think there have now been quite enough investigations of that. It was not a matter of extermination, it was a matter of removal from Germany. And that indeed on the basis of the experience of two world wars. Hitler knew quite well that, already in the nineteenth century, it had been decided to destroy Germany. And we knew about the declarations of Morgenthau and Nizer and whatever they were all called. So that meant, ultimately, that Hitler wanted Germany freed from this Jewish influence. But they also said, "I'll decide who's a Jew." So if a Jew had converted to Christianity, or if they . . . for example, the many popular and respected pediatricians, and even in the military — Erhard Milch was a half-Jew. Right? And yet he remained in the military. So "extermination" does not fit, "resettlement" fits. But the Zionists themselves wanted that. And to that extent they even collaborated on it. The Zionists wanted to have a state . . . In 1897 was the big Jewish Congress where Herzl presented the plan and on that account they collaborated on it. They had the same goal: one side wanted their own state — and above all they wanted the German Jews since they were the cleverest, the bankers . . . though Herzl said they didn't want the really rich bankers . . . but the real technicians, engineers and so on — "We'll take those!" And Hitler wanted to be rid of them, so it all went together quite well. But that doesn't mean exterminating them. If, as you say, the mass extermination did not happened as claimed then did these crimes not happen as well? Didn't I say that four camp commandants had to appear before an SS court? Inevitably there were some crimes, but that wasn't the goal. But then that means Hitler was not the greatest criminal in history. It should be apparent by now that that's not right. Hitler wasn't a criminal? Now it's Putin who is the greatest criminal. But Hitler was not a criminal back then? When it comes to pinning such a label on anyone, I would be <i>very</i> cautious. All right, but if you say the mass extermination — ? There is no order for extermination! But of course Hitler isn't accused of just that. He's supposed to have done many other things, and certainly did do many other things. But as to calling a person a criminal, that goes against my nature because I know that in every person there is a spark of the divine and it needs to be addressed as well. And if I pin a label on someone and say, "You are a criminal!" then the divine in him can only be smothered, so I would never do that. I wouldn't say it of any person. But must the figure of Hitler be seen in a new light as a result? Well, more than anything, I can say something to that. The view of Hitler that we currently have is already in complete contradiction with the view that historians like Joachim Fest or Werner Maser and so on presented in their big biographies back in the seventies or sixties — sixties. Fest says, "Hitler was, for ten years, the center of movement for the world." That's not exactly negative. And if you read Lloyd George and the English writers who came to Germany, in some cases in secret, in order to determine what was really happening here in the 1930s . . . they spoke in astonishingly positive terms about Hitler. And they published it too: Hans Grimm, for example. And just as he is presented today, the further one gets away from that time the more negative everything becomes for the Germans. And do you know why? Because they're afraid that a change may come again and that the lies will be exposed. That's the only reason. Why are they now using Burger like another Frankfurt Trial pulled from the drawer, even though that's now all been proven in all possible trials to be a fake? So you say Hitler was not a criminal? I just told you, I would not say of anyone, "He is a criminal." A man has the most various possibilities to develop personally. And when I read the statements from that time then its clear he was of great significance for world history. And that brings me to the fourth level of historical understanding: Why do such men appear in history? Hitler always spoke of Providence to which he felt responsible, as it were. And he felt himself to be called to his task. And one could never call that criminal. Didn't you learn anything else in school about bad things Hitler did — just the Jews? Well, yeah, that he killed a lot of other people. One hears, one learns. And that he was more or less responsible for the greatest — That he started the war. Yes, they teach that to children too. But that isn't so? No, of course not. But really that is rather obvious. We won't have to wait so long as we did for Clark and his <i>Sleepwalkers</i>. Just as the Germans have nothing to answer for in the First World War one will soon discover that they have nothing to answer for in the Second. That won't take nearly so long. Many people already — Even, what's his name? Haffner. The Second World War, he said, began at Versailles. Versailles is the cause of WW II then, not Hitler. In every person there are changes. Hitler did many positive things, which many significant people recognized — read the biographies by Fest and Maser — and a great many things are foisted on him that he did not do. — But he was a man . . . — For example the Holocaust. Yes. A man with his highs and lows and so on. And my husband always said — he'd met Hitler in person, and he was always being urged, "Write a book about Hitler!" — and he always said, "That's such a complex personality and there's so much — " the most in all literature, the person about whom there are the most biographies, etc. — "I must first read all that . . . I leave that to future generations in a hundred years. For now, we will always only be able to say something false." And I would say the same. When you call the Holocaust into question seventy years afterwards, is that not a slap in the face to the relatives of victims, and above all to survivors? I find the real slap in people's faces are those individuals who have written books — which are flogged in our schools — and told about their sufferings in a concentration camp without ever having been in one. And it seems that even goes for Elie Wiesel, who's still working on touching up his autobiography. — But were you ever in a concentration camp? — I'm sorry? — Were you ever in a concentration camp? — Of course not. No. I was still too young. I was seventeen. — But then you say, of course . . . — No, look for a moment. . . . the concentration camps, in the generally recognized form, did not exist. I say that the concentration camps existed and that terrible things happened. In any case, it's always something about Auschwitz, it is the symbol. But it was a work camp . . . It was a work camp and the <i>Commandant Orders</i> confirm that. And there weren't six million people killed; the reduction on the memorial tablets at Auschwitz confirms that. And above all that is confirmed by my own unsuccessful efforts to get to the bottom of it. Really, I asked everyone. Not a single one of them could tell me where the six million were killed. And in that case, one must show a little courage and say that it's a lie. Or one must indeed say <i>there</i> and <i>there</i>. One or the other. But that is a task for others, not me; I can only point out what the questions are. At the same time, it just so happens it will soon be 70th anniversary of the war . . . It's going to be talked about everywhere. . . . and naturally it's a big topic, and there are many survivors who have made it their task to remember the Holocaust, to say, as it were, "Don't forget the evil that happened here." But when you say that the Holocaust, in its recognized form, did not in fact occur, is that not a slap in the face for these people? No. The slap in the face is this: it is seventy years not only since the end of the war, not only since the liberation of Auschwitz, but also since the expulsion of 15 million Germans from their ancestral homeland with the murder — proven murder — of 2.5 million of them, and probably many more. That is never mentioned, not a word. That is something I might actually call a slap in the face. I might ask the question, Why not this? Why only that? These pictures of piles of bodies in Auschwitz and in Bergen-Belsen . . . In Auschwitz there couldn't have been any since the prisoners were evacuated, the majority, and the rest they left behind to be liberated. And when you see pictures of them they look quite normal. But then where do they come from, these pictures? Don't you know about the piles of bodies in our ruined cities? From Hamburg, from Pforzheim from Hildesheim, from Dresden . . . And they were brought into the camps? No need to bring them in. One makes the piles of bodies, takes some pictures, and . . . They can piece it together with pictures, there's no great art to it. One young man managed to be everywhere. In Dresden, and <i>there</i> and <i>there</i>. It was always the same young man. We know all that, you just have to read! The piles of bodies at Bergen-Belsen certainly were real, but why did they occur? They have nothing to do with the camp system, or rather they do, but only in the sense that all access routes had been destroyed by bombing and that they thus could no longer get any food or medicine. The director of the camp went in desperation to the local farmers but they all had hardly anything to eat themselves. After all, this was 1945, in May. And then the English came and made huge quantities of sardines available to them. I know that because a good friend of ours had a brother-in-law who was there and told us. And the starving prisoners couldn't tolerate such food, and they all got dysentery and so on. And when someone lay down to die, there they lay, since no one was left to bury them. But one can't call that something of the Germans' doing. That has nothing to do with it. You know, this kind of mendacity, we never could have imagined it, me included. It is enormously difficult for me to imagine that anyone could ever lie the way they've lied to us. But they have lied to us like that. And when one thinks today — You mean that the completely emaciated people, the pictures of emaciated people . . . There are other reasons! . . . the piles of bodies in Dachau, in Buchenwald, in Theresienstadt, in Auschwitz, where did they come from? I just told you where they come from. Besides, at the end of the war we were all starved; my mother weighed only ninety pounds! We were all emaciated. — You mean to say the . . . — And the bombs! . . . the terrible condition of these poor people was not the result, as it were, of what the Germans had established in the camps? They were not the result, or at any rate not the goal. But they were the result of the war. Think about it: when you no longer have the least scrap of transport infrastructure, when everything is broken . . . the bridges were broken, you couldn't drive at all, you could still get about by bicycle, but otherwise . . . then the prisoners could no longer be supplied. Of course not. But all the same, you must admit that is still the result of how the Germans acted toward them in the camps. No. It is a result of how the enemies of Germany acted by completely bombing Germany to pieces. People today cannot imagine it. Do you believe that you could convince the majority of Germans that the Holocaust, in its recognized form, did not occur, that it never happened? Even now, I already have the impression that the majority of thinking Germans have experienced so many contradictions that they, at the very least, doubt it strongly. And perhaps even more so, a great many tradespeople and the like, precisely because they're people with their feet on the ground, also say, "That simply can't be right." I take their word. What can't be right? The gas chambers and so on, all those technical things that tradespeople understand better than we do. And they say that simply can't be right. And then, in the war — we old folks all lived through the war and we know what short supply everything was in — and when you think how many men would have been needed to run it all, it makes no sense. So that's that, but as to whether everyone will come around . . . I'm afraid so. And it will be very uncomfortable for people. Why, in your opinion, is it important to pass down to the next generation doubt about the historicity of the Holocaust? Because otherwise they'll suffer under it uselessly for all eternity. And they do, they're told they have to. This guilt complex is so deeply rooted — and above all then there are the demands too: give more submarines, give more this, do more that, and so on. All of that is founded upon "we and our past . . ." They heard that in school too. And above all the worst of it is, the Jews themselves don't want it. They make it a reproach to us now that we do as much. Read the open letter by . . . What was his name now? — Meir Margalit, written after the visit to Israel by Chancellor Merkel and her speech to the Knesset, which he himself heard. At that rate we have to despair of ourselves all the more. They make it a reproach to us now that we do that. We must, and — No, I can't imagine that thinking people will go along with that for much longer. What events do you organize in order to spread this idea . . . I don't organize anything. . . . where do you appear, how do try to pass this on to young people? I don't do anything at all from my side. I get asked questions, on every possible subject, not just that. And who comes then, what sort of people are they? All sorts of people, old and young mixed, but lots of young people. The young, however, mostly want to hear about what you asked about earlier, the Third Reich. That interests them the most. Are they for the most part National Party members then, or . . . I don't think so. No, no, I wouldn't say that. The NPD is not highly regarded by the young. Or I have that impression, anyway. Though perhaps the fault for that lies . . . well, I can't generalize. But in any case, with regard to the young people who invite me to speak I would say, no. They're mainly not NPD. They're quite critical of it. But they do want to be German! That's what it is. And even just to be German today is "fascist." That is the problem. It probably has to be — thought I haven't yet finished sorting out what I think about this . . . Why did these events — why did this conflict, Jews and Germans, become so stark, and why this hate of the Jews, why did it have to happen? It's still completely unclear to me. But perhaps I'll manage someday. — The hate of the Jews for the Germans? — Yes. I have never read, from any other people, such hate-filled expressions about another people as from the Jews. — Why . . . — More than the hate of the Germans toward Jews? That's much later, the hate of the Germans. The Jews were much earlier. And it's . . . all you have to do is read the Talmud. I have all twelve volumes there in the authorized, most recent translation and edition, 2002. I bought them with Horst Mahler because we wanted to verify the commonly circulated statements from the Talmud. Are they accurate? (Especially compared with an authorized edition.) And I couldn't read more than three pages, it made me feel ill. That's how revolting it is, all the stuff in it about sexuality and so on, about how you can do it with a three-year-old child, and and and . . . You know, it's all just so <i>alien</i> to us. I don't even want to think about it. As a last question I'd like to ask you, since you just mentioned Horst Mahler . . . The things that you say and that you believe — namely, that the Holocaust in particular did not happen, as you say — saying this, naturally, could land you in prison. Well then, that's just a risk I have to take if people want to do that. Better to stick to your beliefs. That's, that's . . . look, I'm old. I've had a long life, a good life, as I've told you. That's just the price that one must pay. I always think of Schiller,<i> Wallenstein's Camp</i>: "Rise up, my comrades, to horse! to horse!" And it ends, "And if you will not stake your lives, You'll never win life as your prize." Very simple. That's what your motto must be. And you must also be prepared — And Nehru, by the way, said that to the Kurds too: if a people is ready to pay the price for freedom, then no one can make them unfree. It just depends on the price one is ready to pay. (Subtitles by Kladderadatsch. Thanks for watching!)