As is well known, no order or any other kind of directive from Hitler or Himmler exists that call for the extermination or gassing of the Jews. On the other hand, Allied propaganda alleges that there was an order from Himmler to stop the gassings.[1] If such an order indeed existed, it would provide strong evidence that gassings actually took place. The allegation in question is based upon an affidavit signed by SS Standartenführer Kurt Becher before the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, where we read:[2]

"Between the middle of September and October 1944 I caused the Reichsführer SS Himmler to issue the following order, which I received in two originals, one each for SS Generals Kaltenbrunner and Pohl, and a carbon copy for myself:

'Effective immediately I forbid any liquidation of Jews and order that, on the contrary, hospital care should be given to weak and sick persons. I hold you (and here Kaltenbrunner and Pohl were meant) personally responsible even if this order should not be strictly adhered to by lower echelons.'

I personally took Pohl's copy to him at his office in Berlin and left the copy for Kaltenbrunner at his office in Berlin."

No such order was ever found, and no one could prove that it had existed. This caused Raul Hilberg to write:

"In November 1944, Himmler decided that for practical purposes the Jewish question had been solved. On the twenty-fifth of that month he ordered the dismantling of the killing installations."[3]

In a footnote, he gives as his source:

"Affidavit by Kurt Becher on March 8, 1946, PS-3762."

However, this affidavit says nothing of the sort.[4] Other Holocaust writers have since copied Hilberg, using his book as their source. A demonstrative example may be found in the work of Berenbaum and Gutman. There we read once again about Himmler’s alleged order of November 25 for the “demolition of the Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria.” In the respective note, we read:[5]

"According to the testimony of the leader of the Hungarian Zionists, Reszo Kastner, a copy of an order to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria, shown to him by Himmler’s associate Kurt Becher, bore the date November 25, 1944."

This date is also found in the notes of an anonymous author, a prisoner and alleged member of the Sonderkommando, who wrote that the demolition of Crematorium II had begun on November 25.

For me as an officer, it makes a very remarkable impression that the dreaded SS Colonel Kurt Becher goes around showing Jewish leaders a top-secret Himmler order. The order was so secret that it had only been issued in three copies, and had not been kept or registered anywhere because of its explosive contents – but Jewish confidants were allowed to read it!

Back in 1972, I met an elderly German former cavalry officer married to one of the most-famous dressage riders.

Over the years, I met this gentleman named Kurt Becher on several occasions during equestrian events in Germany. But it was only very late, probably in 1993, that I realized that he was the SS Colonel known from the war.

I therefore requested a meeting with him in Bremen on 26 October 1994, where he received me, and – obviously amused by my interest – told me in detail about himself as an officer in the Waffen-SS, serving in the 8th Mounted SS Division Florian Greyer during the war.

In the summer or fall of 1944, Becher was in Hungary, in part to purchase horses for his own division but also for the German Army. In the process, he came into contact with leading Hungarian Jews, including Mr. Kastner. Becher succeeded in getting Himmler to allow about 1,000 of the richest Budapest Jews, including the arms industry magnate Weiss, who later lived in New York, to leave for enemy territory via Bergen-Belsen in the fall of 1944. This was also the time of the infamous negotiations between Kastner and Becher to allow another 100,000 Budapest Jews to travel to Palestine in exchange for 10,000 U.S. trucks.

During these talks, the leading Jews expressed their concern about what would happen to their fellow believers if the front approached the German concentration camps, from Auschwitz in the east to Natzweiler in the west. Surely, the guards would not then begin to execute the Jews? Remarkably, then, they harbored no great uneasiness about what might happen to the Jews in the camps before the battle fronts reached these places.

Becher reassured the Hungarian Jews by saying that he would meet Himmler shortly and raise their concerns. Becher met Himmler at the turn of September to October, probably on September 25, hence the recurring date of the 25th. Himmler immediately wrote an order that,

"On the advance of enemy troops to the concentration camps, they should be surrendered without a fight. Necessary measures should be taken so that this could be done in an orderly manner, and without losses to the inmates."

When I asked Kurt Becher how it happened that his affidavit in Nuremberg says something so entirely different, he only said ambiguously that I did not know the conditions in Nuremberg at that time.[6]

Kurt Becher later made a great fortune doing business with the State of Israel.

Our conversations were unfortunately cut short by his death in August 1995, which prevented me from obtaining some more desirable clarifications.

Anyone who would have heard Becher’s hearty laugh in response to my question regarding the alleged 25 November 1944 order to destroy the gas chambers at Auschwitz would clearly recognize that this statement is attributable to the usual falsifiers of history.

The order which Kurt Becher actually received from Himmler was, according to Becher, written out in three copies: one for the head of Germany's Department of Homeland Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, one for the chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt), SS-General Oswald Pohl, who was in charge of all concentration camps; and the third copy Kurt Becher kept, but he never produced it. Becher personally delivered the order to the two persons mentioned.

It is easy to explain why the order was only written out in three copies, and kept secret in such a way that it was personally handed over by a colonel: What Himmler printed here was an unequivocal admission that the war was lost, and that the enemy would advance into the interior of Germany. Hence, it clearly was a defeatist document, for which the author could expect the death penalty if it fell into the wrong hands. That such a qualified secret paper should have been shown to a person associated with a hostile power, such as Kastner, seems so preposterous that this assumption is more in line with oriental than European thinking.

Since Kurt Becher was amused by our conversation, and made such a sincere impression, I finally asked him:

“What then is the truth about the gassing of the European Jews, and what do you know about it? After all, you spent much time together with the best-informed and leading Hungarian Jews."

To this, Becher replied:

"I heard about these things for the first time when I was brought to Nuremberg as a prisoner. What the truth really is, I don't know, but the allegations are in any case enormously exaggerated, as we all know."

So, Kurt Becher received an order at the turn of September to October 1944 to hand over peacefully any concentration camp approached by enemy forces in order to spare human lives. And from this, the Nuremberg falsifiers of history cooked up a claim that Himmler supposedly issued an order to Kurt Becher on 25 November 1944 to put a stop to homicidal gassings, and to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz.

Notes

This article was originally published in German in Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, No. 1(4) (1997), pp. 258ff.