>>96567193(14/?)
We also have the confessions of guards. SS Unterscharfuhrer Pery
Broad was captured on May 6, 1945, by the British in their zone of occu-
pation in Germany. Broad began work at Auschwitz in 1942 in the
"Political Section" and stayed there until the liberation of the camp in
January 1945. After his capture, while working as an interpreter for the
British, he wrote a memoir that was passed on to the British Intelligence
Service in July 1945. In December 1945, he declared under oath that what
he wrote was true. On September 29, 1947, the document was translated
into English and used at the Nuremberg trials regarding the gas chambers
as mechanisms of mass murder. Later in 1947, he was released. When
called to testify at a trial of Auschwitz SS men in April 1959, Broad
acknowledged his authorship of the memoir, confirmed its validity, and
retracted nothing.
I give this context for Broad's memoir because deniers dismiss damn-
ing Nazi confessions as either coerced or made up for bizarre psychologi-
cal reasons (while accepting without hesitation confessions that support
deniers' views). Broad was never tortured, and he had little to gain and
everything to lose by confessing. When given the opportunity to recant,
which he certainly could have in the later trial, he did not. Instead, he
described in detail the gassing procedure, including the use of Zyklon-B,
the early gassing experiments in Block 1 1 of Auschwitz, and the temporary
chambers set up in the two abandoned fanns at Birkenau (Auschwitz II),
which he correctly called by their jargon name, "Bunkers I and II." He also
recalled the construction of Kremas II, III, IV, and V at Birkenau, and
accurately depicted (by comparison with blueprints) the design of the
undressing room, gas chamber, and crematorium. Then Broad described
the process of gassing in gruesome detail:
