What Gröning actually said
I HAVE just read the article "The fight against Holocaust denial" by
Raffi Berg, quoted by your site from BBC News. In that article, we
read the following:
"The fear that deniers could gain the upper hand led an SS camp
guard, Oskar Gröning, to break a lifetime of silence earlier this year
in a BBC documentary, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. 'I
saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I
was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took
place,' said Mr Gröning, now in his 80s. 'I would like you to believe
these atrocities happened -- because I was there.' "
Mr. Berg's quote is intriguing. I happen to have not only watched, but
also tape-recorded, the BBC documentary he mentions, when it was
broadcast last March 8 [2005] on the Portuguese channel RTP-2, in its
original English version subtitled in Portuguese, and I was struck by
the contradiction between the subtitles and the actual words one can
hear in the film.
They differ in one important detail from what one can distincly hear,
both in the German words spoken by Gröning and their superposed
English translation.
The Portuguese subtitles, like Mr. Berg's quote, follow what I gather
to be the BBC-distributed text that one can find here (Gröning
speaking): http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/about/transcripts_6.html
"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things
that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that
Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I
want to tell those deniers: I have seen the gas chambers, I have seen
the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits - and I want you to
believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there."
Now here are the actual words one gets in the English superposed
commentary, which is a faithful translation of the German words one is
also able to hear beneath the English:
"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things
that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that
Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I
want to tell those deniers: I have seen the crematoria, I have seen
the burning pits - and I want you to believe me that these atrocities
happened. I was there."
Spot the difference.
Tough luck. Back to Höss's "confessions" (never mind Richard Baer or
Arthur Liebehenschel) and, of course, the Germans that also confessed
to have seen the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:
Hans Stark (10 years for gassing Jews, under juvenile law due to his
age, in the Frankfurt 1963-65 "Auschwitz Trial") and Pery Broad (5
years, same trial)...
A. S. Marques
Lisbon, Portugal
--
"Your claim that a revision of the 4 million number necessitates a
revision in the 6 million number is not proven by the fact that people
make mistakes." Rich Green. Prof.- Holomath(tm).
.
|
