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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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2. Declarations of Members of the SS

On the subject of the camp at Auschwitz we are in possession of two fundamental testimonies of two particularly qualified members of the SS.

A certain ex SS-Unterscharführer Pery Broad was captured on May 6, 1945, in the British zone of occupation. A citizen of Brazil and who spoke English very well, he became an interpreter for the British authorities. In 1945 he drew up a lengthy memoir concerning the camp of Auschwitz which he entered in 1942 and where he was attached to the "Political Section" ("Politische Abteilung") until the liberation of the camp in January 1945 (6). On July 13, 1945, he gave this memoir to the authorities of the British Intelligence Service. On December 14, 1945, at Minden, he made a declaration under oath which is a sort of abridged version of his memoir (18). These documents were not rendered public and remained unknown to the International Court which judged Goering and his consorts in 1945-46. During the last trimester of 1947, when the American Military Tribunal opened proceedings against the German industrialists implicated in the deliveries of large quantities of "Zyklon B" to the camp of Auschwitz, these documents were produced. It is thus that the declaration of Broad of December 14, 1945, was translated into English only on September 29, 1947, nearly two years later. On October 20, 1947, at Nuremberg, Broad deposed new testimony which was translated into English on November 20 of that year (20). In all of these testimonies and declarations, Broad relates the procedures of mass murders in the gas chambers of Auschwitz with some details when compared to his memoir of July 13.

In 1947, Broad was released by the English and worked in diverse private companies without being bothered until April 30, 1959, the date at which he was accused in the trial of the former SS of Auschwitz which was held in Frankfurt from December 20, 1963, to August 20 1965 (29, p. 537; 30 p. 372). In the course of this trial, the memoir of 1945 was presented to Broad, who acknowledged being its author. He was clearly surprised and embarrassed, for in his memoir he very cleverly represented himself as innocent if not a victim of fate; whereas he accused his former colleagues, presently his co-defendants, of atrocities. Discussing certain details concerning the latter, he retracted nothing of his account of the events and evoked neither torture nor pressure from the British in 1945. It is from this time on that his memoir finally became really known to the public and to historians.

In his memoir Broad described the first temporary arrangement of a place for experimenting with murder by means of the gas "Zyklon B" in the cellars of Block 11 of Auschwitz (6, pp. 61 8), the first permanent an "home made" gas chambers installed in the two abandoned farms at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and designated in the jargon of the camp as "Bunkers I and II," (6, pp. 69 78) and finally, the construction at Birkenau of four enormous complexes with undressing room, gas chamber and crematorium, designated by the numbers I, II, III and IV. He precisely described their characteristics and their functioning (6, pp. 80-
     
   

 
The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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