Ravensbrück

In May of 1939, a concentration camp for women was established near the town of Ravensbrück, some 90 km north of Berlin. It entered the stage of Holocaust historiography only after the war, when former inmates claimed during several show trials staged by the British that homicidal gas chambers had been built in that camp in February 1945 on Himmler’s order, so that sick inmates could be killed. Subsequently, either some 1,500, 2,300+ or up to 3,000 inmates were killed that way, depending on which witness one is inclined to believe (if any).

There is no documental or material trace for such a facility. Its existence was “confirmed” by former members of the camp staff only after they had been softened up by the British with their customary torture.

The absurdly late construction of this alleged gas chamber contains the refutation of this false claim:

• In late 1944, the Bergen-Belsen Camp was turned into a collection camp for sick detainees from other camps, meaning there was no order to kill sick inmates.
• By late 1944, Himmler negotiated with the Swedish Red Cross and the World Jewish Congress behind Hitler’s back about saving camp inmates. The negotiations resulted in the liberation of 7,800 female detainees from Ravensbrück before the end of the war. Claims that Himmler at once gave orders to kill all sick Ravensbrück inmates are preposterous.
• In Auschwitz, the crematoria were being destroyed in fall of 1944 – presumably to erase traces, but in fact to prevent the Soviets from abusing them for their propaganda. Hence, new gas chambers would never have been built right under the nose of the invading Allied armies as late as February 1945!
• When the Germans evacuated the Auschwitz Camp in January 1945 – which was supposedly an extermination camp – they did not kill sick inmates unable to walk, but simply left them behind.
• When the Auschwitz Camp was evacuated, almost 5,000 female inmates, plus some Auschwitz staff members, were transferred to Ravensbrück, bringing with them rumors and propaganda tales of gas chambers. It is hardly a coincidence that this is also the time when gas-chamber rumors started to circulate at Ravensbrück.
• In February 1945, Germany’s infrastructure had totally collapsed. Almost nothing could be obtained for the various camps – fuel, water, food, medicine – and most certainly not construction material, machinery, and experts skilled at building a homicidal gas chamber.
• At that point, every German knew that the war was lost and coming to an end soon. In such a situation, no one would have even tried building a mass-atrocity facility that could be used only briefly – the claim is for just three weeks.
• The claimed victims – 1,500 or 2,500, depending on the witness – disappeared tracelessly, because they were all allegedly cremated. However, there wouldn’t have been any fuel to cremate them, because in February/March/April of 1945 no one anywhere in Germany had any fuel. The country was completely shut down.
• Orthodox historians claim that Himmler ordered in the fall of 1944 that all exterminations must stop. (See the entry on Kurt Becher.) How does that fit with a new order to start such activities again in February 1945?

Few of the testimonies describing the alleged gas chamber(s) or the gassing procedure contain any details that would make it possible to critique them. Everything is superficial, and when it comes to former inmates, their claims are evidently based on hearsay and rumor. Former inmate Irma Trksakova, for instance, claimed she had learned from an inmate who allegedly “was able to escape” from the gas chamber [sic]:

“It was a rather small room, whose cracks were plugged with blankets [sic!]. The SS men threw gas bombs [sic!] into the chamber; some women were only stunned; they were then cremated in this condition [sic!].”

All claims about homicidal gas chambers, no matter how contradictory, senseless, and cliché-laden, are taken at face value and rubber-stamped as “true” by orthodox historians regarding their core content: that gas chamber(s) existed.

In the case of gas-chamber claims at Flossenbürg, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, orthodox historians agree that those are wrong; that no homicidal gas chambers existed there. Yet the only difference between those cases and Ravensbrück is that for Ravensbrück we have a slightly larger quantity of claims. But the sheer number of claims, whether small or large, does not mean that impossible things can happen.

The British interrogators not only falsified the historical record with regard to the alleged homicidal gas chamber, but they also exaggerated the camp’s death toll, as was done with almost all German camps. While orthodox historians today claim that 28,000 inmates died in Ravensbrück, the British set that number at 92,000.

(For more details, see Mattogno 2016e, pp. 180-197.)