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Judge Wilhelm Stäglich
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[back] Auschwitz-Birkenau
Was tried and convicted in post-war German courts. Had his doctorate stripped from him and his pension cut for speaking out.
Background and contribution: Judge Stäglich, stationed during WWII in the Auschwitz area with an anti-aircraft unit, published a groundbreaking book "Der Auschwitz Mythos" (The Auschwitz Myth) - seized, forbidden and destroyed by West German court order.
During the Second World War he served from mid-July to mid-September 1944 as
an Ordonnanzoffizier (orderly officer) on the staff of an anti-aircraft
detachment stationed near the Auschwitz camp. As part of his duties, he
maintained contact with the SS camp command, and had unlimited access to the
Auschwitz main camp, where the command was headquartered.
Disturbed by the obvious
discrepancies between what he had witnessed during the war at Auschwitz , and
the portrayal of the camp that emerged at war’s end, he resolved -- after years
of silence -- to speak out, and to undertake a serious investigation of this
important subject.
As punishment for some revisionist
essay, he was dismissed as a judge in 1975 by court order, and forced into early
retirement with a reduction of his pension.
Wilhelm
Stäglich
Book
The Auschwitz Myth by Wilhelm Stäglich
Quotes
As the years went on, Auschwitz by and large receded into the
background. A decade after the war, the public knew virtually nothing about it.
This may be attributed partly to the fact that the Soviets did not permit
outsiders to inspect the grounds of the Auschwitz complex. What is more, none of
the German and Austrian soldiers interned at Auschwitz, which served for several
months as a Soviet prisoner of war camp, found any traces of the alleged mass
murders, not even in Birkenau, supposedly the actual extermination camp, and so
reported after their release. Of course, remnants of the crematoria were there
to be seen, but the quantity of rubble did not match what would have been left
behind by crematoria of the size required for the mass extermination of several
thousand people per day.
One may well ask: If this
allegation were true, why then did not the Soviets immediately exhibit the camp
to journalists from all over the world and place the evidence of the alleged
mass murders under international control? I shall leave it to the reader to
answer this question for himself.
The Auschwitz Myth by Wilhelm Stäglich
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