Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen, by Gordon J. Horwitz. 1990. Free Press, New York, Toronto

Mauthausen Gas Chambers. Many Holocaust Myths Addressed and Rebutted

This work includes seldom-mentioned information. I focus on this.

THE NAZIS DID NOT INVENT ASSEMBLY-LINE GENOCIDE FOR USE ON JEWS!

Holocaust supremacists commonly get greater attention for the Jews’ Holocaust by presenting “industrial genocide” as something special, and by asserting that the Nazis developed it specifically for use on Jews. Neither is even true, as shown below. This argument deliberately confuses the method of genocidal killing with the significance of the genocidal killing. Ironically, more than half of the 6 million Jews did not die because of “industrial genocide”“. They died from “ordinary” methods of causing death, namely shooting and starvation. Finally, not only did the Nazis not have a special means of killing Jews, but had actually first developed “industrial genocide” for use on the mentally handicapped and the like. Only then did they “recruit” so-called industrial genocide for use on the Jews.

Horwitz realizes all these facts, “The implications of the program were far-reaching. The technical capacities perfected in the euthanasia program became the model for use in concentration and extermination camps. The operations demonstrated the effectiveness of assembly-line procedures for mass murder, and established the technical feasibility of the gas chamber as an instrument of mass killing. The integrated killing unit contained gas chamber, corpse-storage area, and crematorium first was used in the euthanasia centers. By 1942 the experience of the euthanasia killing centers had been applied on a monumental scale in the extermination centers: Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Lublin-Maidanek, Auschwitz. In that year, Mauthausen established its own gas chamber.” (p. 200. Emphasis added).

For more on industrial genocide used on the handicapped before it was used on Jews, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/holocaust-exceptional-gassing-only-of-jews-a-myth-friedlander/

Nor were the targets of the subsequent expanded mass gassing only the Jews. The Germans performed large-scale mass gassing of Russian POWs and others at Mauthausen, an “ordinary” concentration camp, beginning in March 1942. (p. 18). A Linz disinfectant firm supplied the deadly Zyklon-B. (p. 41). For more on the mass gassing of Mauthausen inmates, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/10/03/pioneering-poles-lead-role-evil-german-vicarious-liability/

STATIONARY KILLING CENTERS (DEATH CAMPS) WERE NOT SPECIAL EITHER

Note, from the above quote (“The technical capacities perfected in the euthanasia program became the model for use in concentration and extermination camps.”), that there is no valid dualism between so-called death camps (where mostly Jews were slain) and “ordinary” concentration camps (where mostly non-Jews were slain). This false dualism is one that Holocaust supremacists sometimes try to make in order to try to dichotomize the Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Nazis and to elevate the former over the latter.

POLES WERE NOT INCARCERATED JUST FOR CAUSE

Holocaust supremacists actively try to minimize the significance of Polish suffering by asserting that, whereas Jews were slain merely for being Jews, Poles were slain only “because they did something”, such as offering resistance. In actuality, the Nazis killed both Jews and Poles for an assortment of “rational” and “irrational” reasons, including racism. Horwitz thus translates from a German-language source, “From the beginning of the war, the largest influx [at Mauthausen] was from Poland. In 1940, some 8,000 Polish prisoners were sent to Mauthausen alone. This was the result of the policy of resettlement (Aussiedlung), of racial ideology, and of the battle against a relatively fast-developing resistance.” (p. 191. Emphasis added).

NAZISM WAS ANTICHRISTIAN

Ironic to those who try to blame Christianity for the German-made Holocaust, Horwitz describes the situation in ostensibly Catholic Austria. He writes, “SS men also desecrated religious shrines. They liked to fire their guns at crucifixes on tavern room walls. On one occasion they even lifted a statue of the Virgin Mary from a pillar and defecated into the opening…In spite of such complains, the SS behaved as they pleased. By their conduct they demonstrated that they were above the law.” (p. 32).

NAZISM WAS AN AUSTRIAN-GERMAN MOVEMENT, NOT JUST A GERMAN ONE

Horwitz comments, “It is estimated that ‘although the Austrians accounted for only eight percent of the population of the Third Reich, about one third of all people working for the SS extermination machinery were Austrians. Almost half of the six million Jewish victims were killed by Austrians.'” (p. 182. Emphasis added).

MAUTHAUSEN GAS CHAMBERS. POSTWAR AUSTRIANS TRY TO SWEEP THEIR GUILT UNDER THE RUG

Soon after the war, the question came up what should be done with the Mauthausen facilities. Horwitz makes these revealing comments, “By 1949 voices were raised in open opposition to the proposal of preserving the main camp at Mauthausen as a memorial and warning for present and future generations…Were there not other projects in greater need of funds, it was asked, than ‘these works of renovation little serving the peace and understanding of peoples and especially by no means the prestige of Austria?'” (p. 169. Emphasis added).

This has broader implications. Few Nazi facilities have survived in Germany and Austria, and so it is harder for Jews to internalize the German-Austrian responsibility for the Holocaust. In contrast, Auschwitz has survived in Poland, and it draws many Jewish visitors, making it easier for Jews to blame Poland for the Holocaust in place of the Germans and Austrians. This has been noted by an Israeli author. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/07/29/yishai-sarid-jews-hate-poles-more-than-jews-hate-germans-and-germans-buy-jewish-forgiveness-jedwabne-exhumation-forbidden-pretext-destroyed-genocidal-nakba-naqba-wished-sarid/