Stroop Report Fraud

It was supposedly a leather-bound commemorative book, created by SS general Jürgen Stroop, chronicling the defeat of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and was created as a present to be given to Heinrich Himmler. Only three copies exist. The book has three sections: it begins as a commentary and background of the ghetto; the next section is comprised of supposed copies of daily battle reports; and the final section offers around 65 photos--one of which is the famous photo of the little boy with his hands raised up, which is the most famous photo of the holocaust.

There was a Warsaw ghetto, and there was an uprising, but the Stroop Report is a fraudulent log of that event which you can see for yourself simply by reading it. While doing so keep the following three points in mind:

A) The Forger Got The Gun Wrong. It's unlikely a German General would misidentify his only large gun, but conceivable that a forger would. The Stroop Report lists a howitzer in the short list of weapons, but it doesn't match what's seen in a photo that is part of the report. In the list of weapons we read "1 10-cm-Howitzer."

click for source:

The Problem: there are photos of the gun in the Stroop Report, and it's clearly not a 10 cm. howitzer. The photos are not entirely uniform in the three copies of the Stroop Report, but enough people have scanned different Stroop Report copies, and I've put some of the photos below.

What is a "howitzer"?
A howitzer or "haubitze" in German, is a type of gun that lobs an 8-20 pound bomb (projectile) at the enemy. Usually landing 3-5 miles away. Howitzers are different from large guns because large guns shoot straight. In contrast the trajectory of a howitzer projectile would be similar to someone serving in a volleyball game. In other words, slightly lobbed. You can see how it's not the best choice for a weapon for inner-city fighting, but weapons choice is a minor mistake of the forger, the larger mistake is the following:

There are photos in the Stroop Report of the gun. They aren't great photos, but clear enough to see it's not a 10 cm howitzer. It's a 75 mm Russian field gun, circa 1902. This report is suppsedly written by a general who would have reviewed ammunition orders for the weapon; and who was a WWI veteran. Stroop would have had 25 years of experience with howitzers. The gun in the photo is neither 10 cm. caliber nor is it even a howitzer, nor is it German.

The give-away is the protective shield. The shield on this model of gun is unique. It's a 75mm wz. 02-26 Polish divisional field gun. A gun with a 40 year run, as mentioned above originally made in Russia in 1902. The models have variations but you can see from the shield details that the maker is the same. The caliber of this gun was never 100 mm. It was 76.2 and 75 mm. Whether 75 caliber or 100 caliber seems minor but it's not. Imagine how shoe size is minor, but a few sizes larger translates to a larger person. Same here for size of gun.

With the last photo (of the gun sequence) it's hard to know what's going on. It's possible these are Jewish and/or Polish resistance dressed as Nazis, using an old gun to bring down a building that is merely a bombed out façade, possibly hit by a German bomber in 1939. You can see right through it in the first image of the sequence. Perhaps they are in an already demolished part of the city, and are trying to get propaganda photos. That might be why that grinning man has that stereotypical German face: he was a Pole or Jew picked for that look. Also it would explain why they don't seem to be worried about sniper fire from the buildings on either side of them. It also might explain why the field gun is seemingly used in an unintelligent way: why shoot into the wall? Why take out an already destroyed shell of a building? I'm not sure if I believe this scenario, but it's possible.

Images of howitzers that are not the gun in the Stroop Report photo. Click to enlarge:

Below: Images of the type of gun that is in the Stroop Report photo. Click to enlarge. The last photo calls attention to details on the shield of the two guns which show they are variation of the same make of gun. It's not a 10 cm. howitzer. It's a 75mm wz. 02-26 Polish divisional field gun.

Special thanks to an anonymous Australian who pointed out the howitzer issue, and who also pointed out that the forger got the caliber of the anti-aircraft gun wrong, which is mentioned later in this essay.

The last two points mentioned above are:
1) No deadly explosions
2) Not enough Germans killed

Now let's take 5 days in the middle of the conflict, from April 25-29, 1943 to see how these points apply to the report. Any other set of 5 days wouldn't be that much different:

And when you read the report you find that the Jews have lots of guns, lots of ammunition, hundreds of prepared dugouts and bunkers, and sniper vantage points in buildings. Yet with around 550 Germans entering the ghetto and searching large areas while lifting the covers off of bunkers, the Germans didn't lose a single man for the 5 day period. That's just not believable.

You might wonder: "Maybe the Jews didn't have weapons." Except during those 5 days the Germans captured 10 kilograms of explosives, 100 hand grenades, ammunition, 25 pistols, and 5 rifles. And these are just the weapons that were found.

You might wonder: "Maybe the Germans kept themselves very protected." Not the case. The Germans are described in those 5 days as doing something that makes them very vulnerable to attack: Discovering and then lifting covers off fortified dugouts, to find people underneath. One theme in the report is that there are hundreds of hidden bunkers. Yet the Germans seem to approach them, full of people, without ever getting shot. Eventhough the Jews apparently believe they are being captured in order to be sent to death camps, and thus, one might assume, would resist being taken alive.

Also for the 5 days given, the Germans evacuated every night, giving the Jews time to set up sniper positions in buildings, booby trap buildings, bury bombs. None of which they ever did.

Ten Other Points To Consider

1) An unlikely photo for a commemorative book.
The most famous photo of the holocaust comes from the Stroop Report. It is the photo of the little boy with his hands raised up, with a soldier behind him holding a gun. Would a German general choose to include such an un-chivalric photo in a commemorative book? Any person in any culture is going to be turned off by the "bully" implication of the photo: a nice little boy scared into putting his hands up by a grown man with a gun. Who, below, is more likely to put this into a photo album:

A) A Jew trying to vilify the Nazis

B) A Nazi General

As a means to grasp the absurdity, try to imagine General Patton sending General Eisenhower a commemorative photo of an American soldier herding 5 year old Japanese children at gunpoint into some enclosure.

The forger who created the Stroop Report couldn't have predicted this photo becoming the world's most famous holocaust photo. Thus it was problematic when New York doctor, Tsvi Nussbaum, recognized himself as the little boy, and mentioning that he had never been in the Warsaw ghetto, but just outside of it, just after the uprising, at the Hotel Polski. This would have been the time the forger was working on creating the book. See how Nussbaum's account fits with the Stroop Report being a forgery and the photo being taken after the uprising, at the time the forger would have been working on creating it.

2) A great piece of trial evidence.
The leather-bound commemorative book theme works great as trial evidence. Indeed such a book was mentioned (but never produced as evidence) at the trial of Ilse Koch. In her case, we have the lie that she had a family album bound in tattooed human skin. Another example is the Kurt Franz photo album. Evidence in the 1960's Kurt Franz trial where similar to the Stroop Report, an incriminating album of Treblinka pictures was simply found in Franz's apartment (upon arrest 15 years after the war) with an album title that would anger any jury: "Good Times." Franz, who was accused of skimming millions of dollars in addition to sadistically murdering Jews, lived in a modest apartment under his real name for 15 years prior to his arrest, and it evidently never occured to him to throw this incriminating piece of evidence away. I'm being facetious as the "Good Times" photo album was likely another planted fake document. In short, the Stroop Report fits in with other faked albums which had the aim of serving as courtroom evidence. Jürgen Stroop was sentenced to death by a Polish court and an American court. Kurt Franz got life in prison.

3) The Stroop Report is too readable.
It reads like a fiction book, with some interesting new curious thing happening every day, and with not enough specific details or mentioning of technical issues--an indicator that the author is making it up. The daily reports are one general (Stroop) communicating to another general (Krüger). Considering that, you'd think there would be at least one paragraph somewhere that would be hard for a layman to understand, reading it in a foreign country 64 years later. But there isn't. Could I understand everything one executive chef said to another? Or completely understand a conversation between two jet aircraft pilots? One would think there'd be at least something hard to understand in a report by one SS general to another SS general.

4) Another reason why the German death toll is not believable.
The Jewish Underground report known as the "November 1942 Report" had been issued 5 months before. That report described the Treblinka death camp. The report was propaganda for the overseas media, but it was also likely used to make fellow Warsaw Jews resist deportation, and the Treblinka death camp story could have easily been disseminated in the Warsaw ghetto. If that's the case you would have had armed Jews refusing to be taken alive (because they believed they were going to be sent to a deathcamp if captured) while in fortified dugouts. Which makes the low German casualty rate even harder to believe.

5) A different Jewish strategy due to the Germans losing the Battle of Stalingrad?
The standard account is that 7 months earlier (in July through September 1942), the Germans deported around 300,000 Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto and there was no resistance: the Jews went willingly because the Germans told them they were being deported to labor camps. It was the truth: The Germans, upon entering Warsaw, had found a lot of Jews who had no visible means of income. No apparent legitimate job. They wanted to have the Jews learn to work in labor camps in order to prepare them to move to a temporary Jewish state in occupied USSR. After the war, perhaps a better place could be found like Madagascar. This goal was in sync with Zionism which is why it's covered up nowadays. The Battle of Stalingrad perhaps changed all that. Suddenly there was the specter that the Germans might lose the war. Prior to this battle, it looked like the USSR was going to fall to the Germans soon. One can speculate that the Jews wanted to be seen as collaborating with the winning side, not the losing side, and didn't want to find themselves geographically stuck in the Soviet Union after the war in a Jewish state set up by the Nazis. That wouldn't have looked too good for them for the Soviet Army to come upon that.

Thus the holocaust myth became the new Jewish strategy and made possible the goal of getting a Jewish state in Israel. We see evidence of the new strategy in a February 1943 Reader's Digest article called "Remember Us" written by Irgun member Ben Hecht, which subtley communicates the new strategy of using a holocaust myth (which, he writes, might possibly kill up to six million!) to get Israel after the war.

To summarize: that 300,000 Jews complacently left the ghetto 7 months earlier at the Nazi's request, to go East to labor camps is more likely due to a seemingly invincible Germany and a Soviet Union about to fall, than to ignorance about a secret holocaust. The Battle of Stalingrad changed all that, leading to a new prediction that Germany was going to lose the war, and from this, a new strategy won out in the Jewish community which involved promoting a holocaust myth. But the evidence of a previous strategy exists: The Judenrat councils, and 300,000 Jews peacefully going East. Certainly the Warsaw Jewish Stalinists would have never been in favor of collaboration with the Nazis, and they certainly would have got new clout after the battle of Stalingrad. But they were just one faction that was perhaps outvoiced prior to the battle.

6) The beginning of the report contains a short philosophical summary of the Jews in Europe, which seems out of place for a general writing it for two superior generals:

We read in the report:

"The creation of special areas to be inhabited by Jews, and the restriction of the Jews with regard to residence and trading is nothing new in the history of the East. Such measures were first taken far back in the Middle Ages; they could be observed as recently as during the last few centuries. These restrictions were imposed with the intention of protecting the aryan population against the Jews."

The Stroop Report is purportedly a commemoration book meant as a limited edition printing of 3 copies, 2 of which are given to generals Himmler and Kruger. So why include a background information passage like that? This seems written for an audience who either had no prior knowledge of the ghetto or who only heard some vague stories of it. And other background passages of the report seem to be written by a good writer with a good knowledge of recent Jewish history, which fits with the real writer being Rachel Auerbach (see below) who was involved with the Ringelblum archives at the time, which was a group helping to promote the hoax under the guise of documenting it. She later had a career as a staff member of Israel's Holocaust Museum.

7) A weapons caliber that doesn't exist.
An Australian man who has studied WWII weapons for many years, brought to my attention that the type of anti-aircraft gun mentioned in the report is a "2.28-cm A.A. Gun." The problem is that caliber doesn't exist. "2.28 cm" was not a caliber used by any military. But that's not the only problem with this gun. We read the full line:

They have 3 guns and "2/24" means 2 officers and 24 enlisted men. It would thus appear that 8 enlisted men operate each gun. The problem is that in the German army, there was a 4-man crew for anti-aircraft guns. Not 8. How did the forger make this mistake? She likely had access to some fairly poor reference material or photos and didn't quite understand what she was looking at. For instance 2.28 meter is the chassis width for a German anti-tank gun, the Wespe and Marder II. Would a general writing this with everything fresh in his mind make this mistake? No. It's about as likely as a rural American making a mistake for "a 22 rifle" and calling it a "21.28 rifle." It's hard to believe that it's a clerical error when you consider it represented a significant part of his arsenal, and that he would have been signing off for nearly a month on ammunition consumption and requisition forms for it. See list of weapons here and here.

8) Over-the-top use of the word "bandit" and "subhuman."
It's hard to believe, but the word "bandit" appears in the Stroop Report 99 times. Perhaps the superior generals and headquarters intelligence experts might want to know who these bandits are? Polish Communists? Polish Home Army? Polish Soviet communists? ZZB? or ZOB? Reports are useful for hard intelligence, which can then be used to assess other Jewish ghettos in Poland. However using derogatory names makes complete sense for a forger who is trying to make Stroop look bad. This report was a key piece of evidence which got him executed. Do a keyword search on "bandit" on the Avalon Project Stroop Report and see for yourself how often the word is used. At one point it doesn't even make sense where, near the end of the report, we find:

"180 Jews, bandits, and subhumans were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence."

O.K. so we have the Jews mentioned. And the bandits must be the Poles, and the "subhumans" are?

9) A Picture of acute scoliosis
It looks more like a medical photo. Nazi philosophy had a racial component to be sure, but it didn't involve running to the hospital of conquered cities and taking photos of people with rare medical problems in order to point out their inferior characteristics. The intended supposed recipients of the Stroop Report, Generals Himmler and Krüger, would have known that scoliosis exists in Germany also. It would seem the forger is trying to vilify Stroop based on a strawman portrayal of Nazi racial ideology. Hence the caption: "dregs of humanity."

In a combat situation, it must be pretty hard to get that mid-air photo of a man jumping out of a 4 story building. Particularly since there might be someone else in the building who refuses to be taken alive and has a gun and might shoot at soldiers below. Setting up the camera and being ready to click at just that right moment might be tough. However for a faked photo to be used for propaganda, you'd want just that: you'd want the man caught mid-air. When I've looked at old black and white photos I've noticed that their resolution is incredible, and German cameras were considered the best, like the Leicas. Old photos circa WWII rarely have blotches on them either, so it's odd that this photo has a blotch right on that crucial spot: on the man's face so we can't see if perhaps it's a dummy. We see smoke coming out of an apartment. Not the apartment he's jumping out of though. The rest of the apartments don't have smoke and many have curtains which haven't gone up in flames. These things point to this photo being staged. The caption is "These bandits are avoiding arrest by jumping down."

My guess is the author was Rachel Auerbach. I suspect the author was a woman who was a feminist and a zionist, and who was connected to a propaganda group headed by Adolf Berman and Emmanuel Ringelblum. The one person who fits that mold is Rachel Auerbach. A passage in the Stroop Report that perhaps reveals the true voice of the author is the following passage from section II of the introduction:

"During this armed resistance the women belonging to the battle groups were equipped the same as the men; some were members of the Chaluzim movement. Not infrequently, these women fired pistols with both hands. It happened time and again that these [women had pistols or hand grenades (Polish "pineapple" hand grenades) concealed in their bloomers up to the last moment to use against the men of the Waffen SS, Police, or Wehrmacht."

First of all, General Stroop never mentions the real names of the Jewish combat organizations in his report. The forger makes the mistake of portraying him as too ignorant. As if, with all the possible interrogation opportunities from the thousands of captured Jews, Stroop would never mention the organizations behind the fighting: the ZOB and ZZW. The author poorly gauged how knowledgable she should make Stroop. But here's the kicker: we're supposed to believe he can just throw out the word "Chaluzim." A term that means "Young Pioneers"-- A Jewish group centered around learning skills to take with them in their future immigration to Israel. Does that seem like Stroop's voice or a momentary revealing of the voice of the true author?

Secondly the passage promotes women as fighters which might point to a woman writing it. But it's an absurd notion that an SS general would admire the enemy for doing something as ridiculously "wild west" as firing pistols with both hands. Stroop supposedly writes, " Not infrequently, these women fired pistols with both hands." Wouldn't it be better just to have one pistol and hold it with two hands to steady the aim? Considering the Resistance hardly ever killed a German, aiming is probably more of an issue than doubling your rate of fire with two guns. Would Stroop admire their brazen courage or wonder why they are so poorly trained by the ZOB and ZZW? The forger wants to make the women in the Resistance look courageous and attempts to convey this through Stroop's admiring voice.

The last thing we look at in analyzing this indulgent paragraph, is the heroic women hiding grenades and pistols in their bloomers (a loose-fitting pair of long shorts.) The problem is the Stroop Report doesn't include a single death by a grenade thrown by a Jew. The forger uses the phrase "time and again." Yet the German death rate contradicts this. Admittedly, there is one German who dies by an exploded grenade, but it's his own grenade in his hand that gets hit by a bullet. But with so few German deaths, what is the likelihood that a grenade in a German's hand is going to get hit by a bullet? It seems more like a good story.

In the Stroop Report we see that the author employs a sardonic style, juxtaposing a chummy camaraderie of cheerful troops with the deplorable killing of meek Jews who venture out at night with the humble goal of making contact with a neighbor or finding some food. It's the irony of doing a despicable deed with gusto:

"The longer the resistance lasted, the tougher the men of the Waffen SS, Police, and Wehrmacht became; they fulfilled their duty indefatigably in faithful comradeship and stood together as models and examples of soldiers. Their duty hours often lasted from early morning until late at night. At night, search patrols with rags wound round their feet remained at the heels of the Jews and gave them no respite. Not infrequently they caught and killed Jews who used the night hours for supplementing their stores from abandoned dug-outs and for contacting neighboring groups or exchanging news with them.

Considering that the greater part of the men of the Waffen-SS had only been trained for three to four weeks before being assigned to this action, high credit should be given for the pluck, courage, and devotion to duty which they showed. It must be stated that the Wehrmacht Engineers, too, executed the blowing up of dug-outs, sewers, and concrete buildings with indefatigability and great devotion to duty. Officers and men of the Police, a large part of whom had already been at the front, again excelled by their dashing spirit."

In other words the common German soldier tirelessly perseveres at something so ignominious. The idea being that the German people, not just the Nazis were the murderers. Would even three-four weeks of training be needed for this instinct to come out? That's the theme Auerbach is trying to convey and remarkably we can find her articulating that same idea using her sardonic style in an essay she wrote called "In The Fields of Treblinka." which is found in Alexander Donat's compilation book "Treblinka" (1979) Here are some passages from her essay:

"The catastrophe never touched them, (the Germans) and this alone was enough to give them a splendid self-confidence. Precisely in the face of this abyss of human degradation into which they watched masses of Jews drowning, they saw themselves as masterful and exalted." (pages 40 to 41)

"If one could prove that he was a particularly proficient and dedicated worker at the job of annihilation, then he could stay on and get promoted." (page 43)

"The specialists in this new profession were businesslike, practical and conscientious. The instructor in incineration at Treblinka was nicknamed by the Jews as 'Tadellos' (perfect); that was his favorite expression. 'Thank God, now the fire's perfect,' he used to say when, with the help of gasoline and the bodies of the fatter females, the pile of corpses finally burst into flames" (Page 38)

The person who wrote it wanted to make General Jürgen Stroop look cruel and evil, while at the same time engendering sympathy for the Jews. That's done with passages like the following:

Examples of "cruel and evil"

"During today's operation several blocks of buildings were burned down. This is the only and final method which forces this trash and subhumanity to the surface. " (April 26, 1943)

"Again we caught a great number of bandits and subhumans." (April 30th)

"As reported some days a number of subhumans, bandits, and terrorists still remain in the dug-outs, where heat has become intolerable by reason of the fires. These creatures know only too well that their only choice is between remaining in hiding as long as possible or coming to the surface and trying to wound or kill off the men of the Waffen-SS, Police, and Wehrmacht who keep up the pressure against them." (May 8th)

Examples of "sympathy for the Jews"

"Masses of them- entire families-were already aflame and jumped from the windows or endeavored to let themselves down by means of sheets tied together or the like. Steps had been taken so that these Jews as well as the remaining ones were liquidated at once." (April 22nd)

"With their bones broken, they still tried to crawl across the street into blocks of buildings which had not yet been set on fire or were only partly in flames." (Part II of introduction)