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Author : Mattogno Carlo
Title : Auschwitz The End of a Legend Critique Of Jean-Claude Pressac
Year : 1994

Link download : Mattogno_Carlo_-_Auschwitz_The_End_of_a_Legend.zip

Jean-Claude Pressac is the author of a large-format book on the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex entitled Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, published in 1989 by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 515 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. That work, which was acclaimed at the time of its publication as the definitive proof of the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, brought Pressac praise as specialiste inconteste des recherches sur les techniques de l'extermination nazie ("unquestionable specialist in the research of Nazi extermination techniques") and as expert inconteste, sinon unique (''unquestionable expert, if not unique")! in this field. But to the expert eye Pressac evinces a surprising ignorance of the chemical-physical properties of ZykIon B and its use for the purpose of disinfestation, as well as the structure and functioning of crematory ovens.2 This double incompetence in the two essential aspects of the problem inevitably led Pressac to unfounded conclusions in his 1989 work. Despite this, his book is valuable for its considerable documentation and for a critical spirit uncommon in the traditional historiographic field, where, regarding the sources, a systematized theological dogmatism rules. Pressac should furthermore be acknowledged for his courage in overcoming, or at least attempting to overcome, the traditional historiographic methodology in this field, which he justifiably labels as: a history based for the most part on testimonies, assembled according to the mood of the moment, truncated to fit an arbitrary truth, and sprinkled with a few German documents of uneven value and without any connection with one another.3 That book provided enough arguments for historical Revisionism to be considered crypto-revisionist, evidently even by its own publisher, because it has been practically impossible to obtain. Another book by Jean-Claude Pressac, entitled Les crematoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse (The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Machinery of Mass Murder) published in Paris, 1993, should have complemented his earlier book by virtue of the amount of documentation he studied in Moscow, particularly the archives of the Bauleitung (the Auschwitz construction management), which were left intact in the hands of the Soviets (p. 1). But in fact, reading his Les crematoires d'Auschwitz, one senses an uncomfortable reversion: Jean-Claude Pressac returned to the worst cliches of the worst traditional historiography. This was inevitable: In the 80,000 (eighty thousand!) documents at Moscow, and in the entire archives of the Bauleitung, Pressac found NO PROOF of the existence of one single homicidal gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For example, concerning Crematory II at Birkenau, no "criminal trace" (Pressac's term) is dated prior to 31 March 1943, the date of the official consignment of the crematory to the administration of the camp. ...