The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/german//max-planck-institut/rudolf-dismissal.01


Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 17:19:42 EDT
From: JOHN DROBNICKI 
Subject: Rudolf Report

In case those interested in Germar Rudolf missed this:  the following
article is from _Nature_ v.368 (7 Apr. 1994), p. 483.

"Holocaust Denial Research Disclaimed," by Alison Abbott

Munich.  The Max Planck Society has reached an out of court settlement
with a former graduate student whom it sacked last summer for
producing research which "proved" that gassing of prisoners at
Auschwitz never happened.

The student, Germar Rudolf, was fired without notice from the Max
Planck Institute of Solid State Physics in Stuttgart last June, after
senior staff members found out that he had used his position at the
institute to carry out the research, the results of which have been
widely circulated by groups who deny that the holocaust took place.

The affair has left the Max Planck Society, which runs dozens of
prestigious research institutes across Germany, angry that its name
has been tarred by association with the holocaust denial movement, and
Rudolf bitter that he gets no compensation and has little chance of
finding another job.  The March 22 settlement pays Rudolf no
compensation, but rewords his dismissal as an "ending of the contract
through mutual agreement."

The story began several years ago when ex-Nazi general Otto Ernst
Remer -- who led the suppression of the _putsch_ against Hitler in
July 1944 -- was charged with inciting race hatred.  He had long
campaigned for an end to what he calls the "Auschwitz lies," claiming
that the holocaust had not happened.

During his trial, his lawyer Hajo Herrmann commissioned Rudolf to
conduct experiments which could be used to support Remer's claim. 
Contact between the two had been established after Rudolf had a letter
published in a newspaper about the Leuchter report, which had made
claims that mass exterminations could not have happened at Auschwitz.

At the time Rudolf had just started his PhD at the Institute for Solid
State Physics, where he was initially considered to be a good
scientist, earnestly concerned about Germany's past, but not
necessarily a fascist.

He travelled to Auschwitz is summer 1991, and took samples from the
walls of one of the gas chambers and one of the delousing chambers. 
Using Max Planck stationary, he sent the samples to an analytical
laboratory in Taunusstein, the Fresenius Institute.

Analysis showed no detectable cyanide in the samples taken from the
gas chamber, but detectable cyanide in samples taken from the
delousing chamber.  These results formed the basis of a 120-page
report in which he elaborated his theory -- also based on an analysis
of the structure of the gas chambers -- that the gassings could not
have taken place.

Whether Rudolf was paid by Remer's lawyer for his work is not clear,
although he was certainly given expenses.  Rudolf had presented his
report to the lawyer on the understanding that it would be used only
in the court case and would not be distributed more widely.  As it
turned out, the report was not used as evidence in Remer's trial.

But within weeks Remer had distributed the report, along with his own
annotations, to a wide circle of addresses in Germany.  He claimed
that it had the support of the Max Planck Society.  Rudolf halted the
distribution by reminding Remer and Herrmann that the report was only
for use at the trial.

But keen to publish his report without Remer's political comments --
which he claims to find offensive -- he began in spring 1992 to seek a
publisher himself.  Having been turned down by most of Germany's
publishing houses, he finally sold the rights to Ruediger Kammerer, a
right-wing extremist, last May.

At that time its publication in Germany was illegal to Kammerer
published the report, with a 16-page summary, in Brighton, England. 
Kammerer claims to have distributed over 10,000 copies.

The Max Planck Society is said to be extremely upset by the affair,
and has been working to distance itself from the work since it heard
about it last May.  It is particularly annoyed, a spokesman says,
about claims from right-wing groups that the society supported the
report's findings and that Rudolf's dismissal was orchestrated by the
Central Council for Jews in Germany -- charges which the Society
vigorously denies.

Last week it issued a statement saying that it supports the German
Supreme Court's ruling that the mass murderes of Jews in concentration
camps is a historical fact that needs no further proof.

A spokesman for the society says that even if the samples sent to the
Fresenius Institute were genuine, Rudolf's interpretation of the data
is invalid because there are so many unknown factors involved, such as
whether or not the chosen chamber was one of the many known to have
been rebuilt before the allied troops entered the camp, or whether
residues in the delousing chamber could have remained because much
higher concentrations of cyanide were used to kill lice.

The Institute for Solid State Physics dismissed Rudolf without notice
on 7 June, saying that he was wrong to use the institute's facilities
for work which would bring it into disrepute.  It said that Rudolf had
misled the Fresenius Institute by implying that the samples were
related to work at the Max Planck institute, because he had used
institute notepaper.

But Rudolf argues that several people at the institute had known of
his work for more than a year before the dismissal, including his
supervisor Hans Georg von Schnering, who, he claims, was sometimes
supportive.  He says the work was done in his free time and the
Fresenius institute knew from telephone conversations that his work
was independent.

He is bitter about his dismissal, and the publicity around it which
has made it impossible for him to find a job.  He is also angry that
the University of Stuttgart is refusing to consider his submitted
thesis, and that no-one [sic] will discuss with him the scientific
content of his report.

"My only chance now is to prove that I am right," he says, and he is
now working with around 20 people from different countries on doing
just that.

He refuses to talk about the political implications of his work,
claiming that he is only interested in "the truth." Von Schnering
admits that he knew of Rudolf's work, but says that the clause in
Germany's constitution, guaranteeing freedom of research, prevented
him from reporting to senior staff at the institute what Rudolf was
doing in his spare time.  "Rudolf was a good student scientifically,
but the conclusions of the report were all wrong," he now says.

Neither side intend to take the dismissal further.  But Rudolf's new
allies from the extreme right plan to publish the report in several
other languages including English, Japanese and Russian.  "Our
motivation is to spread the truth," says Kammerer. Last month a German
court, in a case brought by the leader of the right-wing National
Democratic party, overturned a ruling that the report could not be
published in Germany.

Copyright 1994 by Macmillan Magazines Ltd.


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