Konrad Morgen
[back] Eye Witnesses
[back] Auschwitz-Birkenau
[It is remarkable to read that Morgen went to Buchenwald and had a commandant executed for killing inmates!]
Quotes
Morgen worked as both
investigator and judge prosecuting officials and guards in the concentration
camps for illegal activities. In the Buchenwald camp, four people were arrested,
including the former camp commander's wife, Ilse Koch. The main issue was that
3-4 prisoners had been killed some years earlier. Morgen sentenced two of them
to death. Ilse was acquitted on the charge of embezzlement, and the charge
against her levelled by the inmates of making items out of human skin was
withdrawn due to lack of evidence. Morgen had interviewed the prisoners at
Buchenwald, but couldn't prove their stories about Ilse making tattooed lamp
shades so he withdrew the charge.
....What Morgan did during the war flies in the face
of the standard holocaust story: Morgen sentenced to death the top two officials
of a concentration camp for killing just 3-4 inmates, years earlier. Not
hundreds, not thousands. Yet holocaust survivor stories tend to describe the
average guard as killing that many people every day, with and without an
alcoholic drink in one hand. Contrast with Morgen: he moved to the Buchenwald
area for 8 months, and had to really look, placing his staff to live in the
concentration camp itself. He wasn't investigating the current camp commander
Hermann Pister, but rather the former camp commander who had left 2 years
earlier. After some major sleuthing, Morgen found some corruption practices but
turned up no murder leads. Finally, near the end of 8 months, and looking at
records that were 3-5 years old, Morgen uncovered a stealthy way in which the
camp commander, Karl Koch, with the help of the camp doctor had killed around 4
inmates, and Koch was tried and sentenced to death. That doesn't fit with the
holocaust at all does it? In short, Morgen spent an enormous amount of time in
regard to the deaths of a few inmates that had occurred years before.
Konrad
Morgen
The Allied Psychological Warfare Department (called PWD-SHAEF) came up with a plan to exploit a rumor which they had heard about. The rumor was that at Buchenwald, Ilse Koch, the sadistic wife of the camp commander Karl Koch, would ride out into the prison yard on a horse, have prisoners strip, and then choose tattoos on their bodies she liked. These prisoners would then be sent to a place where they would be killed, so that their tattooed skin could be removed and made into lampshades and other items. Konrad Morgen
The Buchenwald Report, translated, edited, and with an introduction by David
A. Hackett, Westview Press, 1995
Professor David A. Hackett, who is not a holocaust denier, documents this in the
introduction of his book, page 5. The book is a translation of the 1945 "The
Buchenwald Report."
Hackett inadvertently reveals that nearly everyone in psyche warfare involved
regarding Buchenwald was Jewish. You can tell from their names: Edward A.
Tenenbaum, Albert G. Rosenberg, Daniel Lerner, Saul Padover. Rosenberg was
German Jewish. Tenenbaum was American Jewish. Jews were probably around 2
percent of the US population at the time. Tenenbaum was the first American to
arrive at the camp along with a civilian named Egon Fleck. On page 5 of
Hackett's book, it mentions that Tenenbaum stayed overnight in block 50. Maps
show that that is in the medical experiments area, which would have been the
right place to plant skin and shrunken heads. Then again Rosenberg could have
planted them when he arrived 5 days later.
Then shortly after, an American film crew arrived,
headed by Billy Wilder, an Austrian Jew turned American Film Corps officer, and
lo and behold, there on a display table ready to be filmed were dried pieces of
tattooed human skin. Oh, and two shrunken heads. Never mind that they were South
American shrunken heads.
Konrad Morgen
The Logic of The Psych Warfare Plan: Ilse Koch was killing prisoners
and making items out of their tattooed skin. When the Americans were coming in
April 1945, she hastily left, and morbid objects indicating what she had done
were there for the Americans to find.
Konrad Morgen
The Problem with The Psych Warfare Plan: If Psych Warfare had known about
Konrad Morgen, they might have done the math. The math is that no one associated
with the rumor of the tattooed skin, shrunken heads, and lampshades had been at
Buchenwald for almost two years. Morgen had arrested four people: Karl Koch, his
wife, the deputy camp commander, and the lead camp doctor, all in late 1943. In
the subsequent trial the charge against Ilse Koch regarding making items out of
skin was withdrawn due to lack of evidence, (20) and Ilse
was acquitted on the charge of embezzlement, but her husband was found guilty of
murdering 4 inmates. He was sentenced to death and later executed, as was the
deputy. When the Americans arrived, Ilse Koch hadn't lived at Buchenwald for
almost 2 years. And during the Morgen crackdown, one would think the camp would
have been run by the book. The new commander of Buchenwald, Hermann Pister, was
already there in July 1943 when Morgen started his 8 month investigation. Karl
Koch had transferred to be the head of Majdanek in 1941. The new commander,
Hermann Pister, was never charged by the SS nor later the Americans with making
shrunken heads or procurring human skin, so it doesn't make sense that the
Americans would find these items when they arrived almost 2 years later. Morgen
threw a wrench into the works of the Psych Warfare plan, because they didn't
know about him.
But the plan worked anyway, because
when it comes to a psychologically powerful atrocity spectacle, the public
doesn't really think. That could be seen in 1991, when a Hungarian Jew turned US
congressman, Tom Lantos, staged a spectacle: A 15 year-old girl testified that
she had been in a Kuwait hospital room when the Iraqi soldiers came in and
yanked babies off life-support systems so they could take the incubators back to
Iraq. No one noticed that the girl testifying spoke perfect American English.
She had no accent whatsoever. What are the chances of a 15 year old Arab girl in
Kuwait speaking flawless American English happening to be in the neo-natal
intensive care unit when Iraqi troops barge in? The horrible spectacle she
described, her brown skin, and her Arabic name was enough to fool everybody.
Konrad
Morgen
So Morgen's name enters the court transcript, but as part of a lie Dodd is telling in order to save the integrity of his presentation. Because Morgen never saw a head, tattoos and lampshades in his investigation of Buchenwald. And as mentioned, that charge against Ilse Koch was withdrawn due to lack of evidence. At that point, around January 1946, the Americans start looking for Morgen in Germany. When they find him, they imprison him at Dachau and threaten to turn him over to the Soviets if he doesn't testify that he saw the tattooed human skin, lampshades and shrunken heads. He refuses. Konrad Morgen
Dodd claims that SS Judge Konrad Morgan, saw a shrunken head, saw the
tattooed skin, and saw a human skin lampshade. But, explains Dodd, Morgen simply
didn't prosecute Koch for these offenses. Dodd says this to protect his famous
presentation of a head and skin in the Nuremberg courtroom; and to hedge against
the logic that the skin, shrunken heads, and lampshades might have come up in a
trial by the Nazis against Karl Koch. And Dodd isn't going to be "called" on
that because the Americans have SS Judge Konrad Morgen imprisoned at Dachau. It
will be a months of delay before the German lawyers are finally able to find
Morgen so that he can testify. Ideally, Dodd wanted Morgen to take the stand and
say all this himself and tried to get him to do so. In David Irving's free
online book Nuremberg, The Last Battle, page 223, we read how Konrad Morgen felt
about this:
"But he (Konrad Morgen) refused to give perjured
testimony at Nuremberg to the effect that Ilse Koch, widow of the commandant
hanged by the S.S., had made lampshades out of human skin. 'That was a legend,'
he said: 'totally untrue. The Americans almost killed me,’ recalled Morgen.
‘They threatened three times to turn me over to the Russians or French or
Poles.'"
and here is Irving's source:
Note 492. Transcript of John Toland’s interview with Konrad Morgen,
attorney, Frankfurt, Oct 25, 1971. (Roosevelt Library, John Toland papers, box
53). For Morgen’s Nuremberg testimony see IMT, Aug 7-8, 1946, pages 488-515
Nazi Shrunken
Heads
From July 1943 until the end of the war, Morgen investigated some 800 cases
of corruption and murder within the SS, which resulted in about 200 trials. Five
concentration camp commanders were arrested, and two of them were shot. For
example, Buchenwald commandant Karl Koch was executed by the SS for corruption
and murder. After the war Morgen established himself as a successful attorney in
Frankfurt.
I quoted from Morgen's description
of Buchenwald, where he lived for eight months:
The prisoners were healthy, normally fed, sun-tanned, working ... The
installations of the camp were in good order, especially the hospital. The camp
authorities, under the Commander Diester, aimed at providing the prisoners with
an existence worthy of human beings. They had regular mail service. They had a
large camp library, even books in foreign languages. They had variety shows,
motion pictures, sporting contests and even had a brothel. Nearly all the other
concentration camps were similar to Buchenwald. (Source: IMT "blue series,"
Vol. 20, p. 490)
Morgen also explained the reason
for the terrible conditions in the camps in the final months of the war, which
resulted in the horrible scenes filmed by the British and Americans when they
overran the camps:
To a great extent the horrible conditions at times prevailing in some
concentration camps did not arise from deliberate planning, but developed from
circumstances which in my opinion must be called force majeure, that is to say,
evils for which the local camp leaders were not responsible. I am thinking of
the outbreak of epidemics. At irregular intervals many concentration camps were
visited by typhoid fever, typhus, and other sicknesses caused especially by the
arrival of prisoners from the concentration camps in the eastern areas. Although
everything humanly possible was done to prevent these epidemics and to combat
them, the death rates which resulted were extremely high. Another evil which may
be considered as force majeure was the fluctuating numbers of new arrivals and
the insufficient billets. Many camps were overcrowded. The prisoners arrived in
a weakened condition because, due to air raids, the transports were under way
longer than expected. Towards the end of the war, there was a general collapse
of the transportation system. Supplies could not be carried out to the necessary
extent; chemical and pharmaceutical factories had been systematically bombed,
and all the necessary medicines were lacking. To top all, the evacuations from
the East further burdened the camps and croweded them in an unbearable manner.
(IMT "blue series," Vol. 20, pp. 498-499)
[1989] My Role in the [Ernst]
Zündel Trial
Pearson later made quite a lot of the fact the Morgen also testified at
Nuremberg that he believed that mass killings of Jews were carried out. However,
I was able to show that Morgen believed that these mass killings were carried
out not at Auschwitz I (the main camp) or Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is supposed
to have been the main Auschwitz extermination center, but instead at
Auschwitz-Monowitz, which no serious historian, including those who accept the
Holocaust extermination story, now contends was an extermination center.
Pearson suggested that Morgen may
have mixed up the two sites, but I was able to point out that the SS official
not only referred to "the extermination camp Monowitz" several times, but that
he also specifically said that it "lay far away from the concentration camp. It
was situated on an extensive industrial site and was not recognizable as such
and everywhere on the horizon there were smoking chimneys." As even Pearson had
to concede, this clearly refers to Monowitz and not Birkenau. (Source: IMT, Vol.
20, pp. 499, 503, 504.)
I also pointed out that Morgen was
not able to complete his judicial investigation of the Monowitz extermination
story and bring formal charges against Commandant Höss before the Soviets
overran the camp complex. Finally, I quoted Morgen as confirming that an
internal inquiry established that there was no German or SS extermination
policy. In this case, I emphasized, the prosecution has failed to carefully read
or understand its own evidence, which actually refutes the Holocaust story. (IMT,
vol. 20, pp. 507, 510)
It is not surprising that Morgen
might have made the mistake of believing that mass killings were being carried
out at Auschwitz-Monowitz, I said. Apparently most Auschwitz inmates believed
the same thing, and its likely that Morgen accepted their testimony. In this
regard, I quoted from an affidavit by Charles Coward, a British soldier who was
interned at Monowitz in 1943 and 1944. He testified after the war that
"everybody" there believed that mass gassings were being carried out. This is
quite understandable, I said, when one considers the following portion of
Coward's affidavit:
... At Auschwitz we got radio broadcasts from He outside speaking about He
gassings and burnings at Auschwitz. I recall one of these broadcasts was by
[British foreign secretary] Anthony Eden himself. Also, there were pamphlets
dropped in Auschwitz and the surrounding territory, one of which I personally
read, which related what was going on in the camp at Auschwitz. These leaflets
were scattered all over the countryside and must have been dropped from planes.
They were in Polish and German. Under those circumstances, nobody would be at or
near Auschwitz without knowing what was going on. (Nuremberg Document NI-11696,
printed in NMT "green series." vol. 8, p. 606)
[1989] My Role in the [Ernst]
Zündel Trial
To my knowledge, every item on the Buchenwald table is now missing except the
PhD dissertation, and that's because Albert G.
Rosenberg took it home with him.
Karl Koch trial judgment and transcript have disappeared.
The Nazis themselves executed Karl Koch in front of the Buchenwald inmates, but
not for anything involving shrunken heads, lampshades, or tattooed skin, but
rather because Koch had a few people killed. In the Nuremberg transcript on
page 199 , on
1/14/46 we see that Dodd's staff has talked to the SS Judge who convicted
Koch, Konrad Morgen. Dodd doesn't mention that his staff talked to Morgen at
Dachau where the Americans had imprisoned him. Dodd then lies about Morgen
seeing skin, heads, and lampshades as a way to "save face" for his own
presentation of the shrunken head. Then
on page 200, a German lawyer, Dr. Kurt Kauffmann tries to get the Karl Koch
trial documents, and the judge states that it's up to Kauffmann to get these
documents himself, but the German lawyers didn't have access to documents in
archives, or to Morgen in the same way that the allied prosecution teams did.
See page 482
in the transcript The German lawyers weren't even able to find out that
Morgen was currently in Dachau, let alone ask him for a copy of the Karl Koch
judgment. Also Konrad Morgen told John Toland in 1971 that the Americans almost
killed him for not saying he'd seen heads and tattooed skin but Morgen still
refused to lie. The source is David Irving's free online book "Nuremberg, The
Last Battle" page 222 and 223 where Irving went into the Roosevelt Library and
read John Toland's 1971 Konrad Morgen interview notes. If the Americans jailed
Morgen and tried to coerce him to lie, and even hid him for a time from the
German defense lawyers (Dodd knew where he was but the German defense lawyers
didn't) then is it conceivable that the American prosecution team would destroy
the Karl Koch Trial judgement which Morgen wrote? As well as the trial
transcripts? Yes. And these documents are nowhere to be found today.
Nazi Shrunken
Heads
According to a book entitled "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of
Hitler's SS," by Heinz Höhne, Otto Koch had extorted money from Jewish prisoners
who were sent to Buchenwald in November 1938 following the state-sponsored
pogrom known as Kristallnacht. Approximately 10,000 Jewish men had been brought
to Buchenwald in November 1938 but they were offered the opportunity to be
released if they promised to leave Germany with their families within six
months. Koch was accused of taking money from these prisoners without official
authorization. Koch had also ordered the deaths of two prisoners, allegedly in
an attempt to cover up his misdeeds.
Another version of the story,
according to the Buchenwald Report commissioned by the US Army, is that Koch had
syphilis and he had ordered the deaths of two hospital orderlies to prevent them
from revealing his secret.
Before his crimes at Buchenwald
were uncovered, Commandant Karl Otto Koch had been transferred to the Majdanek
death camp in Poland in September 1941, but his wife stayed behind, continuing
to live in the Commandant's house. According to the Buchenwald Report, it was
rumored that Ilse Koch was having simultaneous love affairs with Dr. Waldemar
Hoven, a Waffen-SS Captain who was the chief medical doctor at Buchenwald, and
Hermann Florstedt, the Deputy Commandant.
Both Florstedt and Dr. Hoven were
put on trial in the special Nazi court, which was run by Dr. Georg Konrad
Morgen, also an officer in the Waffen-SS. Florstedt was convicted by the Nazi
court and was executed. Dr. Hoven, who was a Communist sympathizer, was
convicted of killing non-Communist Buchenwald prisoners by injecting them in the
heart. He was sentenced to death by the SS court, but his sentence was never
carried out. After serving 18 months in the Buchenwald camp prison, he was
reprieved because there was a shortage of doctors in the camp and his services
were needed.
After the war, an International Military Tribunal again charged Dr. Hoven with
killing Buchenwald political prisoners by injection. He was one of 23 Nazi
doctors who were put on trial in June 1947 in the case of USA vs. Karl Brandt
and others at Nuremberg, where he was again convicted of murder and sentenced to
death. Dr. Hoven was executed by hanging on June 2, 1948.
The Trial of Ilse Koch