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Brian Renk of British Columbia relates, Thursday, May 19, 2005, his investigation into the origins of the controversial Franke-Griksch report
A new Franke-Griksch Report is found THE English-language document is said to have been located recently (2005) in the Kew archives. A German original has not been found. No further information has been disclosed by the "ARCFI" [Aktion Reinhardt Camps Foundation International] (see http://www.deathcamps.org/ ) or their associates. Eric M. Lipman of 5310 Riverside Dr. Richmond Virginia 23225 wrote on the other, notorious document. Jean-Claude Pressac claimed that Lipman had discovered it "somewhere in Bavaria". I have a letter from Lipman before me, dated January 23, 1991. This is only an intermediate reply to your letter of 7th January- I found it fascinating and shall try to reply to all your questions in due course. I am 78 yrs. old and have disposed of most of my Nazi documents to various institutions, including Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, The Tauber Institute at Brandeis University and to the archives of Temple Beth Ahaba [sp.?] in Richmond. Please do be patient as I am trying to assist you as best I can. I then wrote, sending photocopies. He didn't remember the document at all -- hence, the reply above. Called him again, and he hadn't the foggiest idea. Handwriting comparison indicates that Lipman did write on the document with the English-language heading some time after the war. Lipman certainly made a "true copy" of the Umsiedlungsaktion document with the Engish heading, no question. I seriously doubt however that a German original ever existed. Gerald Fleming [Gerhard Flehinger], in response to my query about his assertion that "one of three carbon copies from Alfred Franke-Gricksch's report, written on a service mission through the Generalgouvernement between 14 [sic] and 16 of May 1943, is in author's possession" (see page 143 of Fleming's book), sent me a photocopy of his document. It was the same typed document without Lipman's signature. I also wrote to Ekkehard Franke-Griksch (the son). He sent a bundle of documents about his father and wrote that Alfred Franke-Gricksch had committed treason by conspiring with the Strassers, was sentenced to death, and went into exile, but that his friend Himmler had given him a new identity (Franke) and eventually made him an SS officer, training Death's Head Division recruits in Dachau 1935-39, than later promoting him to the SS Personell Main Office in January 1943. Ekkehard also stated that his father may have visited Auschwitz, but that he would have reported only on matters concerning the SS personell and their activities: "As a consequence of his position in the SS Personell Office, my father visited the concentration camps, but this was only out of concern for the SS men who worked there. It was out of this that the falsification was produced". He did not believe that his father had written the Auchwitz gassing report published by Fleming and Pressac. Alfred F-G was released from British captivity in 1948 and then mysteriously "lured" into the Soviet zone of Berlin in 1951. He died in Vorkuta Gulag in 1953. His wife Liselotte is said to have submitted her husband's From the Diary of a Fallen SS Leader into evidence at the Treblinka Trial of 1965, but we have only Fleming's wild speculation that it was written to provide a context for the Auschwitz report. As Ekkehard wrote, F-G was concerned with the discontent of the SS personell stationed in the camps: "Duty in Auschwitz is frontline duty". To this day, no original German report of 1943 has been presented bearing the name or signature of Alfred Franke-Gricksch, nor Alfred Franke. If Ekkehard's story is true, any wartime document should bear the nom de plume "Franke". The gassing document is a fabrication, no question. Lipman merely copied what he had found and signed it. This new document could be the original Franke-Gricksch report, if authentic. It would have provided a suitable file in which to plant the fabrication, most importantly providing the dates May 4 -16 1943 in which to suggest that a gas chamber report was written, and a suitable context to present it within, a secret SS officer's report for his superiors. It could not have been written for Maximilian von Herff, [Chef des SS Personalhauptamtes] who evidently accompanied him. Whatever is found, remember that Franke-Gricksch's "Chief" [ von Herff,] died in British captivity in 1945, but Franke-Gricksch was released without sentence. Why? Did Franke-Gricksch make a deal with the British? This document perfectly fits into the context of SS discontent, reporting on the great social, industrial, economic, agricultural and sanitary achievements they had made possible through their difficult assignment in the camps. I am not surprised that it should be located in a British archive, since both von Herff and Franke-Gricksch were in British captivity. Our detractors are already speculating this is the original "sanitized" report, and that the Auschwitz gassing report could have been a secret file-within-the-file, but there is an open reference to an eventual or possible -- not immediate -- "liquidation", so there would be nothing to hide if mass liquidations had already been undertaken. I also see a blatant contradiction between an SS officer reporting on the verified plans for an expansion of the camp for 200,000 inmates (with a commensurate non-homicidal cremation facility expansion) and an extermination facility in which 10,000 a day were to be killed and cremated upon arrival. Here, only one of the report versions can be correct...
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