The Treblinka Visit
Hoess says he got his orders in 1941 and that mass killings were already underway at Treblinka at that time. That is universally acknowledged to be wrong since TII had not opened yet, but this problem is usually brushed off by saying that Hoess was bad with dates. Okay, so let's be generous and set aside the calendar dates and focus instead on the basic sequence of events in Hoess's story. From PS-3868.
I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the general government three other extermination camps, BELZEC, TREBLINKA and WOLZEK. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The Camp Commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was crystallized Prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening.
A - Receives order to implement "Final Solution"Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each.
B - Visits Treblinka which was already in operation
C - Sets up extermination facilities at Auschwitz (as an improvement upon the Treblinka procedures)
However,
-Deportations to Treblinka did not begin until July 22, 1942
-Hoess says the exterminations at Treblinka had been going on for "one-half year" which would push the Treblinka visit all the way to January 1943
-Elsewhere Hoess mentions bodies being dug up and burned at Treblinka which would push the visit well into 1943.
Key Point: Within Hoess's story, the Treblinka visit is early (1941), but based on his description it would have to be very late (1943).The last camp where cremation of the corpses was instituted was Treblinka. During Himmler's visit to the camp at the end of February/beginning of March 1943, he was surprised to find that in Treblinka the corpses of over seven hundred thousand Jews who had been killed there had not yet been cremated. The very fact that cremation began immediately after his visit makes it more than possible than Himmler, who was very sensitive about the erasure of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany, personally ordered the cremating of the corpses there. (Arad, 215)
The problems get worse when we consider the timeline for Auschwitz gassings.
Block 11, Krema I - around Sep 1941 link
Bunker 1 - Mar 20, 1942 (HH#11, pg. 20)
Bunker 2 - Jun 30, 1942
Kremas II-V - Mar 15, 1943 (II) - Jun 25, 1943 (III) link (with the plans going back to summer 1942 and even earlier)
These dates are fundamentally irreconcilable with a 1943 Treblinka visit.
Now that we are familiar with the key dates, the contradictions and anachronisms in Hoess's story should be more obvious. I will quote from the Goldensohn interview as I think that version makes the problems especially clear.
In the summer of 1941, I was called to Berlin to see Himmler. I was given the order to erect extermination camps. I can almost give you Himmler's actual words, which were to the effect: 'The Fuehrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date."
That was Himmler's explanation. Then he explained to me why he selected Auschwitz. There were extermination camps already in the East but they were incapable of carrying out a large-scale action of extermination. Himmler could not give me the exact number, but he said that at the proper time Eichmann would get in touch with me and tell me more about it. He would keep me informed about the incoming transports and like matters.
I was ordered by Himmler to submit precise plans as to my ideas on how the extermination program should be executed in Auschwitz. I was supposed to inspect a camp in the East, namely Treblinka, and to learn from the mistakes committed there.
A few weeks later, Eichmann visited me in Auschwitz and told me that the first transports from the General Government and Slovakia were to be expected. He added that this action should not be delayed in any way so that no technical difficulties would arise and that the schedules of transports should be maintained at all costs.
Meanwhile, I had inspected the extermination camp of Treblinka in the General Government, which was located on the Bug River. Treblinka was a few barracks and a railroad line side track, which had formerly been a sand quarry. I inspected the extermination chambers there.
How did they remove the bodies? "They were removed by other internees. At first they were placed in mass graves in the sand quarries, and later when I inspected they had just started burning the corpses in open sand quarries or ditches and had begun to excavate the mass graves and burn those that had been buried." How long did you stay in Treblinka? "Only a few hours, then I went back to Auschwitz."
"Then the first transports arrived in Auschwitz.
I had two old farmhouses somewhat removed from the camp which I had converted into gas chambers. I had the walls between the rooms removed and the outer walls cemented to make them leakproof. The first transport that arrived from the General Government was brought there. They were killed with Zyklon B gas."
He very clearly refers to bodies being burned in Treblinka which according to Arad did not occur until ~March 1943, nearly two years later than his 1941 dating he gives for the visit. To make things worse, he explicitly mentions converting the two "bunkers" into gas chambers and says this was AFTER the Treblinka visit. But the bunkers would be March 1942 whereas the Treblinka visit is March 1943 at the earliest. Impossible. And there are no alternative dates that would resolve the issue.I believed that crematoriums could be erected fast and so wanted to burn the corpses in the mass graves in the crematory, but when I saw that the crematory could not be erected fast enough to keep up with the ever-increasing numbers exterminated, we started to burn the corpses in open ditches like in Treblinka. A layer of wood, then a layer of corpses, another layer of corpses, etc.
Essentially Hoess takes a 1943 Treblinka description and inserts it into a 1942 Auschwitz timeline.
Further Reading: https://codoh.com/library/document/on-r ... treblinka/
Receiving the Extermination Order
Hoess says he got the orders in the summer of 1941. As this is way too early, the typical suggestion is to say he got things shifted by a year and really meant summer of 1942 (when Himmler visited the camp). But the summer of 1941 dating was typical at that time and is fully consistent with the IMT judgment.
Another problem with the year-shift explanation is that in at least one statement Hoess refers directly to the Himmler visit and gives the correct date for it. The order came a year before this, according to Hoess.In the summer of 1941, however, plans were made for the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question in Europe. This ‘final solution’ meant the extermination of the Jews, which early in 1939 Hitler had threatened would be one of the consequences of an outbreak of war, and a special section in the Gestapo under Adolf Eichmann, as head of Section B 4 of the Gestapo, was formed to carry out the policy.
The plan for exterminating the Jews was developed shortly after the attack on the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, formed for the purpose of breaking the resistance of the population of the areas lying behind the German armies in the East, were given the duty of exterminating the Jews in those areas. (IMT, Vol 1, pg. 250)
In the 'final solution' documents (included as an appendix in most printings of the "autobiography"), Hoess says:
In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer SS, directly by his adjutant's office.
I cannot say on what date the extermination of the Jews began. Probably it was in September 1941, but it may not have been until January 1942.
During his visit to the camp in the summer of 1942, the Reichsfuhrer SS watched every detail of teh whole process of destruction from the time when the prisoners were unloaded to the emptying of Bunker II. At that time the bodies were not being burnt.
Note that Hoess gives the correct date for the Himmler visit (summer 1942), and he is also correct on the dates for the crematoria construction. Given this, I do not think we can ignore his 1941 dating for the hypothetical order as is typically done. In relative terms he clearly places the original order well before the Himmler visit. To conflate the order with the 1942 visit is not a reasonable interpretation of the statement.The two large crematoria I and II were built in the winter of 1942-3 and brought into use in the spring of 1943.
So we have a 1941 order, a visit to Treblinka, a 1942 visit from Himmler. Within the timeline, TII didn't exist yet. But his description corresponds to 1943. These are fatal flaws in his story.
"He's Just Bad With Dates!
This excuse doesn't cut it here. You can play around with the dates as much as you want. Hoess's story will never work because he gives a late Treblinka description and weaves it into his Auschwitz narrative in a way that cannot be fixed. If he simply got the dates the wrong, then it should be possible to supply the correct dates he should have used. This can't be done because the actual sequence of events he describes is impossible.