|
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.Rating:
Release Date: 06 June, 2000 Retail Price: $24.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (5 total) |
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Reviews
Shabby Treatment
Shabby Treatment
Leuchter comes across just as straightforward and guileless on film as he is in real life. As a result, some viewers of earlier versions at the Sundance Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and Harvard University began to question the Holocaust extermination stories they'd been told, while others suspected that Morris himself might have been converted to Holocaust revisionism. At the eleventh hour, Morris re-edited the film in an effort to emphasize his anti-revisionist point of view. Character assassination aside, the question remains as to whether or not Leuchter's findings regarding the alleged Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau are correct.
Van Pelt
Perhaps in response to Holocaust revisionists, some anti-revisionists today are attempting to minimize the role of gas chambers in the Holocaust. Van Pelt is not among them. He tells the viewer:
Crematorium II is the most lethal building of Auschwitz. In the 2500 square feet of this one room, more people lost their lives than any other place on this planet. 500,000 people were killed.
In this short statement, van Pelt makes two errors. First, crematory building (Krema) II is not at Auschwitz, but rather at Birkenau. Second, Krema II is not comprised of one room of 2500 square feet, but rather of many rooms. The "one room" to which van Pelt refers is in one of the two large underground areas attached to the crematory building, which are designated on every known contemporaneous drawing and blueprint as a morgue [Leichenkeller], which may explain why Morris and van Pelt did not show them on screen.
If we assume that 2500 persons were packed into this space (that is, one person per square foot, which is extremely tight), there would have been 200 mass gassings in the 623 days Krema II was in operation (March 15, 1943, through November 27, 1944), or a minimum of roughly one mass gassing every three days in this one building alone. (Looser packing of victims would require even more frequent gassings.) In support of his belief in this fantastic level of homicidal activity, van Pelt offers four pieces of evidence: a letter requesting "gas detectors" for the crematory building, a letter referring to heating and ventilation in the alleged gas chambers, a letter referring to an order for a gas-tight door with a peep hole, and a letter in which the word Vergasungskeller (carburetion cellar) is underlined in red pencil. Although he mentions them elsewhere in the film as being readily available, van Pelt does not show any devices for introducing Zyklon-B into the alleged gas chambers. He also goes on record to say, "Every year, remains of human beings are found. Bones, teeth. The earth doesn't rest." He does not, however, produce any for the film, nor inform the viewer where these remains are located.
Van Pelt's first document, and thus presumably the strongest evidence in support of his claim that there were hundreds of thousands of gassing victims, is a telegram dated February 26, 1943, to the Topf company in Erfurt from SS Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) Pollok, "Send immediately ten gas detectors [Gasprüfer]. Invoice us later."
Van Pelt assumes that any mention of gas detectors implies the existence of a gas chamber in which they would be used. However, even one of van Pelt's collaborators, French anti-revisionist Jean-Claude Pressac, allowed that there might be a non-sinister use for these gas detectors. Without showing what type of gas detectors these were, and how and where they were used, this document is useless. (See Arthur R. Butz. "Gas Detectors in Auschwitz Crematory II," Sept.-Oct. 1997 Journal, pp. 24-30.)
Van Pelt's second document is a letter dated March 6, 1943, from camp architect SS Hauptsturmführer (captain) Karl Bischoff, who van Pelt believes was the person responsible for deciding to convert the morgue in Birkenau crematory building II into a homicidal gas chamber. Regarding Kremas II and III, Bischoff writes:
In accordance with your suggestion, Cellar I should be preheated. At the same time we would ask you to send an additional quotation for the modification of the air extraction installation in the undressing room.
Van Pelt's thinking is no doubt along the lines of Pressac, who believes that there is no need for a heater in a morgue, and that the ventilation system mentioned would be able to clear away residual gasses after a mass execution. However, heating a morgue would be highly desirable to prevent freezing during the winter, and the modified ventilation system alluded to has no more than the capacity normally specified for morgues in Germany at that time, and van Pelt fails to tell the viewer that it was never installed. The mention of a preheater and ventilation system prove the existence of a homicidal gas chamber only if one first assumes the existence of such a gas chamber. (See Carlo Mattogno, "The Crematories of Auschwitz: A Critique of Jean-Claude Pressac," Nov.-Dec. 1994 Journal, pp. 34-42.)
Van Pelt's third piece of evidence against Leuchter is a letter dated March 31, 1943, also from Bischoff, that states in part:
Three gas tight doors have been completed. We remind you of an additional order for the gas door from Krematorium III. This must be made with a spy-hole, with double 8 millimeter glass. This order is particularly urgent.
Morris illustrates this point by zooming in on the peep hole on the outside of a metal gas-tight door. Remarkably, however, the zoom "continues" through the peephole using special effects, and the viewer finds himself inside the alleged gas chamber at the Auschwitz main camp, not Krema III at Birkenau. Not only has it now been authoritatively acknowledged (even by van Pelt) that the alleged gas chamber at the Auschwitz main camp is not in its original state, contrary to claims made for many years, but additionally none of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz or Birkenau has such a door. Therefore, in order to prove van Pelt's point, Morris (who traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau during the making of this film) invents a gas chamber with a gas-tight door. Because Van Pelt neglects to tell us anything about this door, it may well have been for a delousing chamber, like the air-tight door on display at the US Holocaust Museum, or for an air raid shelter, as has been proposed by Samuel Crowell. (See "Wartime Germany's Anti-Gas Air Raid Shelters: A Refutation of Pressac's 'Criminal Traces'," July-August 1999 Journal, pp. 7-30.)
Van Pelt's penultimate piece of evidence to refute Leuchter is a single underlined word, used once in one German wartime document. Van Pelt interprets it as a reference to mass gassings of Jews:
There was a code. The Germans had a coded language. You never talk about extermination, you always talk about "special action," or "special treatment." There was a very clear policy; words like gas chamber would not be used. The letter of Bischoff of the 29th of January [1943], is a kind of exception in this, because it is a letter which is written by a person who manages the whole operation, and who himself had established a policy that you would never use the word "gas chamber." Somebody in the architecture office underlined the word Vergasungskeller, literally "gassing basement," and put on top a note: "SS Untersturmführer [second lieutenant] Kirschneck" exclamation mark. Which means, Kirschneck should be informed about this slip. And it doesn't occur after that. The Nazis were the first Holocaust deniers. Because they denied to themselves that it's happening.
It is worth noting that van Pelt has pulled this one word out of a document without quoting the document in full. This is unfortunate because the two sentences to which he refers tell us a great deal. These sentences read:
The formwork for the reinforced concrete ceiling of the mortuary cellar [Leichenkeller] could not yet be removed on account of the frost. This is, however, unimportant, as the Vergasungskeller [gassing cellar] can be used for this purpose ...
Here is confirmation that preheating might well be needed in an underground morgue in an area of bitterly cold winters. As for the word itself, even if Vergasungskeller could be interpreted to mean "gassing basement" (the German word for gas chamber is gaskammer), this definition raises more questions than it answers. There are no other documents, including blueprints, that make reference to a Vergasungskeller, which means that 1) no one knows for certain what is meant by this term, and 2) no one knows where it was located. Van Pelt concludes that this term refers to an unspecified room somewhere in the crematory building explicitly designated for mass executions, rather than asking if perhaps this "slip" by the very person who supposedly forbade the use of this word simply is nothing more than the use of the wrong terminology in referring to some other location, which would also explain why the term was never used again, and why the "gassing basement" does not appear on the drawings for the crematory building. (See Arthur R. Butz, "The Nagging 'Gassing Cellar' Problem," July-August 1997 Journal, pp. 20-23.) One wonders if van Pelt believes that more than a million persons were gassed to death at Auschwitz and Birkenau on the basis of these paltry items.
Van Pelt offers nothing even approaching a scientific test, let alone a thorough forensic investigation of the weapon of the crime -- the Nazi gas chamber -- despite having better resources and complete access to premises believed by van Pelt to have been the site of at least 200 mass homicidal gassings. According to the credits at the end of the film, there were more than two dozen other persons in the Morris entourage who could have helped van Pelt take samples and measurements. (Morris has stated elsewhere that he took a crew of 50 to Poland.) Van Pelt claims to have spared no expense in retracing Leuchter's steps, and was intimately familiar with the methodology used. Throughout the section on Auschwitz, there are numerous cinematic recreations of samples being chipped away with a hammer and chisel.
Yet, with all of these resources, with all the access, with all the time, with all the personnel, with all the knowledge about Leuchter's supposed errors, van Pelt (and Morris) failed to collect samples of their own for James Roth to test (putting his newly-acquired 20/20 hindsight to good use). Instead, van Pelt attacks Leuchter as an ignoramus and a sacrilegious fool for desecrating what van Pelt calls the "holy of holies": Auschwitz. This is not a scientist or dispassionate researcher talking, this is a True Believer wrestling with a heretic.
Van Pelt gets so carried away with his polemics against Leuchter that he makes an astonishing statement:
Leuchter has said a number of times that the place was untouched. I mean, you just open your eyes, you realize that this is utter nonsense.... Where are all the bricks of the crematoria?... I think I know where they are. The real places to sample are the farmhouses to the west of the crematoria, the farmhouses where people are living, children are playing, dogs are barking.
While van Pelt is saying this, the camera shows him walking along a low brick wall amid the ruins of a crematory building at Birkenau, and then cuts to brick homes apparently nearby. Many of the crematory building bricks may have been taken elsewhere, and Germar Rudolf established that the foundation walls now visible at the former locations of crematory buildings IV and V were built after the war. Even so, there still remain concrete, bricks and mortar at the alleged gas chamber room of crematory building II, much of which has been protected from the elements by the collapsed roof. As for the bricks from the other crematory buildings, Van Pelt suggests he might know where they are, criticizing Leuchter in passing for not testing them (thus implicitly acknowledging that Leuchter's fundamental approach was correct), and still he doesn't call for a chemical test of the building materials used in the alleged gas chambers.
Not True to his Art
Reviewers of "Mr. Death" have picked up on Morris' description that the film is a look at human hubris. This is accurate as far as it goes, but the hubris is not Leuchter's, but Morris'.
Like so many before him, Morris is a victim of the hubris of believing that he had not been lied to about the Holocaust, and that he knows the facts better than Leuchter, or any other skeptic. In front of the camera, however, far from coming off as some kind of nut, Fred Leuchter ably enunciated the revisionist position simply and persuasively in a way that Morris' editing could not mitigate. Initially unaware of what had taken on, Morris was caught off-guard by the logic, common sense, and verifiability of Leuchter's findings, and created a film that was too dangerous to release. Rather than admit to being flummoxed, however, he attempted to salvage his pride and protect the extermination myth at Leuchter's expense. The resulting film is neither as powerful nor as thought-provoking as it started out to be. "Mr. Death" will not change many minds, let alone provide the spark that at long last ignites a dispassionate look at Holocaust extermination claims.
Still, it is a step forward for historical awareness that forensic testing of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz is the subject of a feature-length film, dozens of articles and film reviews. As if that is not enough, anyone with the price of a movie ticket can see and hear the quiet, unassuming man who helped cause a revolution in Holocaust historiography: Fred Leuchter.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n5p62_Raven.html
A Non-Documentary-Feeling Documentary.
I think it goes without saying that most of the general public don't go wild for documentary films. The masses, that is, generally prefer a fictional cliffhanger/thriller with cleverly prefigured twists and turns.
That said, this is one documentary that would most certainly please those very masses. It plays like the highest rate cliffhanger and while the twists and turns are real, they are as clever as any fictive ones I've seen.
"Mr Death" is the story of Fred Leuchter, a self-taught but obviously intelligent "engineer" of execution equipment that is more humane than that currently in practice. The first part of the film is largely a biography of his rise from working on an electric chair in Tenessee, to redesigning a lethal injection room, a gallows, and even a gas chamber in other states.
If the first half is about his rise, the second half - the title suggests it - pertains to his fall. This happens when Ernst Zundel, a holocaust denier out of Canada, hires Luechter after being brought up on arcane charges by the Canadian government, where it is illegal to deny the holocaust on paper(?). Luechter's job is to go to Auschwitz to determine whether Zundel's claim that there were no gas chambers there is in any way rational. The film chronicles Luecther's travels and ultimate judgement that Zundel is correct.
From there - and Zundel eventually loses the case - Luechter's buzzing career enters a tail spin. No one in the states, that is, wants to work with a holocaust denier, much less on execution equipment. He is blackballed.
Most of the film consists of interviews with Luechter interspersed with scentery pertaining to the events being discussed. (Also interviewed are Ernst Zundel, another holocaust denier David Irving, Luechter's anonymous ex-wife, an historian who followed Luechter's Auschwitz travels with an eye towards discrediting them, and a few others.)
Like other Errol Morris films, Mr. Death will have you thinking about its subject matter long after the stop button has been pressed. It entertains questions such as how we are to feel towards Luechter. Is he an anti-semite who had mallicious intent? Is he an intelligent man who just did faulty research? Is he a man not nearly as smart as he thinks who simply wanted noteriety? Or is he - just entertain the thought - a man who has uncovered a politically unpopular truth? Who is this man Fred Luechter, and what were his motivations?
These questions are left up to the viewer. While I get the feeling that Morris wants us to feel sorry for Luechter as a man who got sloppy due to the excitement of the trial, the film never says one way or the other. The choice is yours.
So whether you like documentaries or mainstream thrillers, this is a film that is sure to ensnare you both while it is playing and after it has played.
More Customer Reviews (13 total)
You like Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.?
|
© 2004, 2005, 2006 DVD Booty | Don't Plunder Our Cache of Booty, Matey!
Hosting made possible by donations from Become Debt Free, Debt Counseling Hotline, and cash loan
