Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
German History
Angaben zur Quelle:
25,2 (2007) 162-191
Keywords:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
National socialism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
"New wave" historians view Auschwitz as a marginal institution in regard to the origins of the Holocaust. According to them, this camp only gradually evolved as a killing ground, while the Holocaust was already under way. This fits a larger historiographical tendency, attributing the Final Solution to local initiative within a disorganized German state. Examines testimonies of the Nazi architects Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl, and of prisoner-engineers forced to serve the SS, from the Vienna Auschwitz trial held in 1972, as well as of employees of the Topf & Söhne firm - Gustav Braun, Fritz Sander, Kurt Prüfer, and Karl Schulze, who in 1945-48 were interrogated by the Soviets. These testimonies leave little doubt that the crematoria of Birkenau were intended from the beginning, in October 1941, to burn the bodies of Jews murdered in the gas chambers.
DOI:
10.1177/0266355406075720
URL:
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