American World War II Air Force pilots were prisoners at Buchenwald until rescued by the Luftwaffe

On the last train out of Paris, just before the Allies liberated the city, were 168 American fighter pilots who had been shot down over France.  They were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, not as POWs, but as “terrorfliegers” (terror flyers) because they had allegedly been aiding French Resistance fighters, whom the Nazis called “terrorists.”

Nazi poster called French Resistance an “Army of Crime”

According to the Geneva Convention of 1929, the French Resistance fighters were non-combatants who did not have the rights of Prisoners of War if they were captured. The same rules applied to Americans who were believed to be aiding the French Resistance. That’s why the 168 flyers wound up at the Buchenwald concentration camp instead of a POW camp.

This blog post gives information about a new book that will be coming out soon; the book tells the story of Joseph F. Moser, one of the American flyers who was imprisoned at Buchenwald. According to the book, Joe Moser very narrowly survived bailing out of his P-38 with an engine on fire. He and 167 other Allied pilots were  sent to Buchenwald on orders from Berlin to be executed as “terrorfliegers.” Four days before their scheduled “extermination,” they were rescued by Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officers and shipped instead to the most famous POW camp in Germany: Stalag Luft III.

World War II started when France and Great Britain declared war on Germany after Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. By September 28, 1939 Poland had been conquered, with the help of the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. However, Poland never surrendered and there was no peace treaty. The Poles continued to fight throughout World War II, not on the battlefield, but as  “illegal combatants” according to the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1929. Captured Polish Resistance fighters were sent to the Dachau concentration camp, instead of being sent to a POW camp.

Germany finally invaded France on May 10, 1940, and on June 17, 1940, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, the new prime minister of France, asked the Germans for surrender terms; an Armistice was signed on June 22, 1940. The French agreed to an immediate “cessation of fighting.”

The French Resistance movement was in direct violation of the Armistice signed by the French, which stipulated the following:

“The French Government will forbid French citizens to fight against Germany in the service of States with which the German Reich is still at war. French citizens who violate this provision are to be treated by German troops as insurgents.”

The Buchenwald concentration camp held many French Resistance fighters as prisoners. The photo below shows a monument at Buchenwald in honor of the Resistance fighters.

Buchenwald monument in honor of Resistance fighters

The excerpts from the book about Joe Moser, which were posted on the blog, caught my attention because it was mentioned that the American flyers at Buchenwald complained about the Germans not treating them in accordance with Geneva Convention of 1929.

For example, this quote is from the new book which will soon be published:

After our first meal, we gathered back together in the open area where we had slept. It was about this time that Colonel Phillip Lamason stepped forward. Col. Lamason was the senior officer among the 168 of us, a tall, good looking Squadron Leader from the New Zealand Air Force. I consider it one of the greatest blessings of this challenging time to have Col. Lamason as our commander. His quiet, strong but aggressive leadership was a critical factor not only in holding us together but also in facilitating our eventual release.

“Attention!” he said unexpectedly in his clipped New Zealand accent. We instinctively quickly got up, tried to get ourselves in some semblance of order, and stood stiffly waiting.
“Gentlemen, we have ourselves in a very fine fix indeed,” he went on. “The goons have completely violated the Geneva Convention and are treating us as common thieves and criminals. However, we are soldiers! From this time on, we will also conduct ourselves as our training has taught us and as our countries would expect from us. We will march as a unit to roll call and we will follow all reasonable commands as a single unit.”

The “goons,” to whom Col. Lamason was referring, were the Germans who were fighting on the battlefield while the French, who had signed an Armistice after only 5 weeks, were fighting as what Americans today call “terrorists.”  Great Britain and America were aiding the “terrorists” in France, which meant that these flyers, who were captured while allegedly aiding the French Resistance, were fighting in violation of the Geneva Convention.

The American flyers were scheduled to be executed on October 24, 1944, but a  Luftwaffe officer came to Buchenwald just in time to rescue them.

Here is another quote from the blog about the forthcoming book:

“One thing is certain, Col. Lamason never let an opportunity pass by where he didn’t make it clear that we strenuously objected to our treatment and that our tormentors were violating the Geneva Convention.”

The attitude of the British and the Americans in World War II was that the Geneva Convention applied only to the Germans.  No British or American soldiers were ever put on trial for violating the Geneva Convention with regard to German POWs.

At Dachau, American soldiers executed the Waffen-SS soldiers who had been sent from the battlefield to surrender the camp.  At Bergen-Belsen, the British executed some of the Hungarian soldiers who had been sent to the camp to help with the voluntary transfer of the camp to the Allies.  After World War II ended, the British held the first trial of the Germans; staff members of the Bergen-Belsen camp were put on trial as war criminals.

Staff members of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps were prosecuted by an American Military Tribunal for violating the Geneva Convention with regard to Soviet POWs although the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention and the Soviets were not treating German soldiers according to its rules.

The British SOE was formed in order to aid the French Resistance, which was a violation of the Geneva Convention since the French had signed an Armistice and promised to stop fighting.  After the war, Germans were put on trial for allegedly executing British SOE agents, although there was no proof whatsoever that the agents were even dead.

The Allies made sure that there were no German Resistance fighters after Germany surrendered in World War II; they kept millions of German soldiers in captivity for years after the war.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower designated German POWs as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) so that America would not have to follow the Geneva Convention with regard to German POWs.  The Soviet Union kept German POWs in camps for ten years after World War II ended.

Out of the 168 flyers that were sent to Buchenwald, 166 survived their two months imprisonment at Buchenwald.  Instead of being grateful that Luftwaffe officers took them out of Buchenwald and put them into a POW camp, the survivors of this fiasco are still whining about the Germans not following the Geneva Convention with regard to what we now call “terrorists.”  These Allied flyers should have been advised, before they were sent on their mission, that they would not be entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention in the event that they were captured.

Elie Wiesel — Holocaust survivor # A7713?

On March 25, 2010, Elie Wiesel spoke to students at the University of Dayton in Ohio as reported by the Dayton Daily News.

Here is a quote from the Dayton Daily News article:

One student wondered if Wiesel still has his concentration camp number and if it serves as a reminder of those terrible experiences.

“I don’t need that to remember, I think about my past every day,” he responded. “But I still have it on my arm – A7713. At that time, we were numbers. No names, no identity.”

At the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where Elie Wiesel says he was a prisoner from May 1944 to January 1945, the Jews, who were chosen to work, had an identification number tattooed on their arm. The Jews who arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944 were tattooed with a number preceded by the letter A.

Noor Inayat Khan — if you tell a lie often enough, does it become the truth?

I was searching the blogs yesterday for anything about Dachau and came across this blog, which has an article about Noor Inayat Khan with the title “A Remarkable True Story for Women’s History Month.”  Noor Inayat Khan was a British SOE  spy who was allegedly executed at Dachau.

Whenever you see the word “allegedly” on my blog, it means that there is no proof whatsoever for whatever else is in that sentence.

Here is a quote from the “True Story” which I copied from the blog:

“In September 1944, Noor and three other female agents – Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman and Yolande Beekman – were taken to the concentration camp at Dachau, just outside Munich.

“The three other agents were shot by the Germans on the day they arrived, but Noor was singled out to be beaten, tortured and possibly raped for hours before she was finally shot by an SS officer.

“As he placed the gun to her head and despite her tortured, weakened state, at least one source states that she summoned up the energy and courage to call out one final word before she died: ‘libertié‘.”

Noor Inayat Khan

After reading the information above, I did a new search on Noor Inayat Khan and found numerous blogs about her, all with essentially the same story about how Noor was beaten before she was executed at Dachau.

Here is a quote from another blog:

“It was a crisp Munich morning on September 13, 1944 when the four shackled women were led to the execution grounds. All were made to kneel. Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, the SS trooper in charge of executions, gave the orders to shoot. By eyewitness account, one by one the troopers shot Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman, and Yolande Beekman.

“Come the turn of the fourth prisoner, Wilhelm stopped the executioners. He stepped forward and hit the fourth prisoner with his gun butt. When she fell to the ground, he kicked her till she was reduced to a bloody mess. She was raised to her knees forcibly. Wilhelm then shot her in the back of her head thus bringing to an abrupt end the short life of Princess, spy, heroine, martyr Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, a great great granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the last Muslim sovereign of South India. One died fighting British imperialism. The other died for Britain fighting Nazi imperialism. Her last word was “Liberté”. She was 30 years old.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert is the man standing on the right

Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert is shown in the photo above; he is the man with a card around his neck with the number 2 on it.  The photo was taken during an American Military Tribunal proceeding at Dachau at which Ruppert was accused of participating in a “common plan” to commit war crimes by virtue of his job as the officer in charge of executions at Dachau.

Ruppert was specifically charged with supervising the execution of 90 Soviet Prisoners of War who had been condemned to death by an order from Adolf Hitler.  If he had refused to carry out an order given by Hitler, Ruppert would have been executed himself, but “superior orders” was not an acceptable defense, according to the American Military Tribunal; Ruppert was convicted and hanged.

Ruppert was not charged with beating Noor Inayat Khan and then personally shooting her. Why? Because nothing about this alleged execution was known at that time. There is no record of any British SOE women being brought to Dachau for execution nor for any other reason. There is no record of an order for the execution of any British SOE women being sent by the Berlin office of the Gestapo to Dachau.  There is no documentation or records of any kind that would prove that any British SOE women were ever executed at Dachau.

One of the witnesses against Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert at the American Military Tribunal was Rudolf Wolf, a 35-year-old German engraver from Frieberg, who was a prisoner at Dachau from September 1942 until the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. Wolf testified that he had often seen Ruppert personally beat the prisoners. Wolf said that he had seen Ruppert kick the prisoners and also beat them with a whip so hard that the men became unconscious. According to Wolf’s testimony, Ruppert was a man who could beat people without changing expression; he was like a blacksmith striking cold iron.  Rudolf Wolf was a paid prosecution witness, whose testimony was not corroborated.

Ruppert’s sadistic nature was established by this dubious testimony at his trial which might have prompted an anonymous former Dutch prisoner at Dachau to contact author Jean Overton Fuller after reading her biography of British SOE agent Noor Inayat Khan. This anonymous prisoner, known only by his initials A.F., claimed to have witnessed the execution of Noor Inayat Khan on September 12, 1944 at Dachau. According to his story, A.F. had seen Wilhelm Ruppert undress Noor Inayat Khan and then beat her all over her body until she was a “bloody mess” before personally shooting her in the back of the head.

Execution spot where condemned prisoners were shot at Dachau

Condemned prisoners were executed with a shot in the neck at close range (Genickschuss). The execution place was located north of the crematorium; it was surrounded by thick shrubbery and trees. There was no bleacher section where the other prisoners could watch; the whole area was completely separate from the prison enclosure at Dachau.

The fact that the alleged witness said that Noor was “shot in the back of the head,” instead of being killed by a Genickschuss, shows that he knew nothing about the executions at Dachau, and had not seen anything.

Wilhelm Ruppert was an SS officer; it was not his job to personally execute prisoners at Dachau; he was the administrator in charge of the executions.  If he had personally beaten anyone, Ruppert would have received a visit from Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, the SS judge in charge of prosecuting SS men who committed crimes in the concentration camps.  For example, Amon Göth, the Commandant who allegedly shot prisoners from his balcony at the Plaszow camp in the Schindler’s List story, was arrested by Dr. Morgen and was awaiting trial when World War II ended.  He had been arrested on a charge of stealing from the camp warehouses, but not for shooting prisoners from his balcony because that never happened.

Noor Inayat Khan has been heavily promoted as a great heroine by the British in order to cover up what really happened.  Noor was chosen to be sent to France as a wireless operator because she was the least qualified woman in the SOE; the British wanted an SOE agent to be caught so that the Germans could acquire a British radio. The British wanted to  send messages that would be intercepted.  The messages would consist of incorrect information which the British wanted to give the Germans about the invasion of Sicily.

Noor was chosen for the job because she “was not overly burdened with brains,” in the words of her instructor.  Sure enough, when Noor was captured, the Germans found a notebook in which she had written down all of the codes that they would need in order to use her radio.  The Germans used Noor’s radio to send messages to the British and the British answered by sending misinformation about the invasion of Sicily.

According to Sarah Helm’s book A Life in Secrets, Hans Kieffer, the man who ordered Noor to be sent to Pforzheim prison after she made several escape attempts, said that he had no knowledge of her execution.

Sarah Helm wrote that the SOE was not above fabricating stories about Noor Inayat Khan in order to make her into more of a heroine than she actually was. In the citation for Noor to receive the George Medal, an award given to civilians for gallantry, it was noted that Noor “has also been instrumental in facilitating the escape of 30 Allied airmen shot down in France.” Such an escape never happened, according to Sarah Helm.

Famous photo of Buchenwald survivors – revisited

Barrack #56 at Buchenwald concentration camp

The famous photo above was taken at the Buchenwald concentration camp, inside  Block #56, by Private H. Miller of the Civil Affairs Branch of the U. S. Army Signal Corps on April 16, 1945, five days after the camp was liberated by the Sixth Armored Division of the US Third Army on April 11, 1945. The photo was published by the New York Times on May 6, 1945 with the caption “Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald.”

Schindler’s List for sale for $2.2 million

This morning I read this on the Reuters news web site:

(Reuters) – A New York memorabilia dealer is selling what he claims is the last privately-owned copy of a World War Two manuscript of Jewish names known as “Schindler’s list” and made famous in a 1993 movie of the same name.

The list was kept by German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a 1000 Jewish lives from the Holocaust by employing them in his factory during World War Two.

Where are the bodies of the prisoners who died at Dachau?

When the US Seventh Army arrived at Dachau on April 29, 1945 to liberate the concentration camp, many of the American soldiers reported later that the smell of the smoke from the burning of the bodies was horrific.  Some said that they had seen partially burned bodies in the ovens.  Others reported seeing smoke coming from the chimney on top of the crematorium.

There were stories told by the American liberators about the ashes that they saw flying in the air, or ashes covering the ground like snow.  Some visitors today imagine that they can still smell the burning bodies at Dachau. Others completely freak out when they see the ovens in the crematorium.

Some of the tour guides tell visitors today that the Nazis were killing the prisoners at Dachau as fast as they could before the American liberators got there.  Actually, the prisoners were dying at the rate of up to 400 per day in a typhus epidemic, and the Germans had run out of coal to burn the bodies.

Theresienstadt survivor tells British school children about Red Cross visit

Theresienstadt is a former military fort in what is now the Czech Republic; during World War II, the Nazis turned it into a concentration camp for the prominent Jews, including many artists and musicians. Theresienstadt is now known as Terezin.

Theresienstadt is famous for die Verschönerung, the beautification program in which the Nazis cleaned up the ghetto in preparation for a visit on June 23, 1944 by two Swiss delegates of the International Red Cross and two representatives of the government of Denmark.

More self-flagellation by the Germans

In the news today is an article with the headline Study: Dresden Bombing Exaggerated.

The city of Dresden after it was bombed in World War II

Here is a quote from the article:

(March 19) — On Feb. 13-15, 1945, British and U.S. bombers pounded the eastern German city of Dresden with 3,900 tons of high explosives and incendiaries. How many people lost their lives in the devastating firestorms that followed has long been a subject of contention — the Nazis claimed the dead numbered close to 500,000; modern historians have estimated up to 40,000.

Now a five-year study by a panel of German historians has concluded that about 25,000 people died in the attack, far fewer than most experts thought. Researchers pored over records from the city’s archives, cemeteries, official registries and courts. They discovered that the death toll among refugees from the Eastern Front was lower than previously reported. They also dismissed the idea that hundreds of thousands of bodies could have lain undiscovered in the smoldering ruins.

The German people love to beat themselves up and atone for their past sins; they consider it wrong to have any pride in being German or to have any loyalty to their country.  Can you imagine Americans doing a five-year study to prove that a war crime committed against America was not so bad?

The Dachau Uprising, 28 April 1945

Today I am writing about the “Dachau Uprising” in answer to a comment that was made by Taff, who says he is a Dachau tour guide.  Taff commented on my post about the “Dachau Massacre” when Waffen-SS soldiers, who had been sent from the battlefield to surrender the Dachau concentration camp, were killed by the American liberators after they had surrendered.

An excerpt from Taff’s comment is quoted below:

“The photographic evidence shows SS men wearing spotty cammo uniforms which were not worn by the camp guard staff so it is entirely likely that at least some of the executed were indeed Waffen-SS. You are going to cry over an error of this magnitude which took place only 200 metres away from the abomination that was KZ Dachau? Put things in perpspective. […] Those jolly, innocent lads of the Waffen-SS had not listened to demands for mercy during the Dachau Uprising on the 28th of April 1945.”

Equating the killing of unarmed Prisoners of War, in violation of the Geneva Convention, with the killing of civilians in a battle between soldiers and citizens of a town, really got me riled up.  So I am going to tell you about the Dachau Uprising, in which Taff implies that the civilians demanded mercy and were nevertheless killed by Waffen-SS soldiers.

Gordon Hogan, Dachau tour guide

Today, I read an article posted on this website with the headline “Genocide, the stench of death and eating lunch in a gas chamber.”

The article is about an Irishman from Tipperary, named Gordon Hogan, who conducts tours for visitors to the Dachau Memorial Site. According to the article, Gordon “is one of the leading tour guides at the Nazi death camp of Dachau.”

The following quote is from the article:

“Gordon, 29, who lives in Munich, knows everything there is to know about the dark history of the horrific Dachau concentration camp.

“So who better to show the camp to the huge number of visitors who come to see it annually than the Templemore artist?”

Who better?  I think maybe someone who knows about the real history of the Dachau concentration camp would be better. The visitors probably already know the “dark history of the horrific Dachau concentration camp.”  What the visitors need is an unbiased tour guide with a Neutral Point of View (NPV) and a knowledge of history.

A visitor to Dachau who took Gordon Hogan’s tour on June 30, 2008 wrote this on his blog:

“… we got to see the actual crematorium and gas room that prisoners would be taken to to kill and later incinerate.  It was a somber place to be but I am very glad to be given the opportunity to witness this place first hand.  The gas room was a serious site.  To stand in a room where at least, I think, about a 1,000 prisoners were gased (sic) to death was a sad place to see.”

Some time ago, I read another visitor’s blog about her trip to Dachau. She didn’t identify her tour guide by name, but she did identify him by his accent; how many tour guides with an “Irish accent” could there be at Dachau? I’m guessing that there is only one: Gordon Hogan.

Regarding the Dachau gas chamber, the blogger wrote this:

The guide spoke of how they cleverly pumped warm air into the room, waited for the poisonous capsule to change to cyanide and then 20 minute for the people to die. Then they moved the bodies into the next room and removed the gold fillings. Finally onto the ovens.

Dachau gas chamber has heating vent near the floor, May 2001

The photo above shows the west wall of the Dachau gas chamber; notice the square vent in the corner near the floor.  This appears to be a heating vent to warm what looks like a shower room.  A portable sign in the corner informed visitors in 2001 that this room was never used as a gas chamber or never put into operation as a gas chamber; the sign was removed in 2003.

According to tour guide Gordon Hogan, poisonous capsules were poured into the Dachau gas chamber through two vents on the east wall of the room, as shown in the photo below.

Two vents on the east wall of the Dachau gas chamber

Close-up of  vent through which cyanide pellets were poured into the Dachau gas chamber

The vents shown in the photos above are on the opposite side of the room from the heater. Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to put the heater closer to where the pellets were poured in so that they would heat up faster?

There are two serious problems with Gordon Hogan’s version of how poisonous capsules were put into the Dachau gas chamber disguised as a shower room.  The first problem is that the American prosecutors at Nuremberg showed a film of the gas chamber in which it was explained that the gas came through the shower heads and the gas flow was regulated by control wheels behind the west wall of the gas chamber, as shown in the photo below. According to the evidence presented at Nuremberg, the poisonous gas was not in the form of capsules.

Still photo from film shown as evidence at Nuremberg

Notice the peep hole in the photo above.  The person who was operating the control wheels could look inside the gas chamber to see when all the prisoners were dead.  There was no peep hole on the opposite wall where Gordon tells visitors that poisonous capsules were poured onto the floor. Shouldn’t the peep hole be on the side where the gas is being poured in?

In the film that was shown at Nuremberg, the narrator said that poison gas was vented through empty light fixture boxes and that the input of the gas was regulated by push buttons which you can see in the black and white photo above.

Empty light fixture box described as a “gas vent” in Nuremberg film

The photo above shows a light fixture box in the northeast corner of the Dachau gas chamber. Note the wiring for the light fixture that was removed. This box was described as a “gas vent” in the film, made on May 3, 1945, which was shown at the Nuremberg IMT on November 29, 1945.

How come the American liberators didn’t notice the openings on the east wall where Gordon Hogan tells visitors that poisonous capsules were poured into the room?  Why weren’t these openings mentioned at the Nuremberg IMT? Could it be that these openings weren’t there until much later?

The film that was shown at Nuremberg, which includes the gas chamber footage, can be seen on YouTube.

The second problem with Gordon’s version of the gassing procedure is that Dachau had four machines that were supplied by the Degesh company, which manufactured the poisonous pellets, but there was no Degesh machine in the gas chamber disguised as a shower room.  The Degesh machines were installed in the four disinfection chambers where the clothing was deloused with Zyklon-B, the same gas that was used for homicidal gassing. These machines automatically opened a can of Zyklon-B pellets, poured them into a wire basket and then blew warm air over the pellets.  After the clothing had been deloused, the pellets were retrieved from the basket, put back into the can and returned to the Degesh company to have more poison put into the pellets.  In Gordon’s version of the story, the pellets would have gone down the six floor drains in the gas chamber and poisoned the whole camp. There were no floor drains in the disinfection chambers for this very reason.

Machine used for putting gas pellets into Dachau disinfection chambers

To me, the big question is why didn’t the Germans use one of these Degesh machines in the homicidal gas chamber where people were gassed at Dachau?

Here is a quote from “The Official Report by the U.S. Seventh Army, released only days after the camp was liberated”:

“The internees who were brought to Camp Dachau for the sole purpose of being executed were in most cases Jews and Russians. They were brought to the compound, lined up near the gas chambers, and were screened in a similar manner as internees who came to Dachau for imprisonment. Then they were marched to a room and told to undress. Everyone was given a towel and a piece of soap, as though they were about to take a shower. During this whole screening process, no hint was ever given that they were to be executed, for the routine was similar upon arrival of all internees in the camp.”

The official report seems to be saying that either water or gas could come out of the shower heads since “the routine was similar upon arrival of all internees.”  However, the prisoners would not have been fooled; the photo below shows what a real shower room at Dachau looked like. This shower room is in the building that is now the Dachau Museum.  The shower fixtures have been removed.

Shower room in what is now the Dachau Museum

The gas chamber, that was disguised as a shower room at Dachau, apparently did not have shower fixtures that looked like those in the photo above.   When I visited in 2001, the one remaining shower head was just stuck into the ceiling. Sometime after the film was shown at Nuremberg, it was discovered that the shower heads were not connected to any pipes.  But in the film, there were pipes shown behind the west wall of the gas chamber and those pipes entered the gas chamber disguised as a shower room.

If you look through a window behind the gas chamber, you can see that the pipes shown in the Nuremberg film are still there.  The photo below was taken through the window.

Photo taken through a window shows pipes going into gas chamber

If someone were to cut a hole in the 7.6 ft. dropped ceiling of the Dachau gas chamber, would we be able to see water pipes hanging from the real 10 ft. ceiling above? The two rooms on either side of the gas chamber both have 10 ft. ceilings.

After a group of U.S. Congressmen visited Dachau on May 1, 1945, they wrote a report in which they described the ceiling of the gas chamber as being 10 ft. high. On May 3, 1945, when the film that was shown at Nuremberg was made, the ceiling was 7.6 ft. high.

Curiously, no one was ever put on trial for a war crime involving the gas chamber at Dachau.  Autopsies were conducted on hundreds of bodies at Dachau by Dr. Charles Larson, but no evidence of death by gassing was ever found.

The Dachau Memorial Site leaves it up to the individual tour guides to tell visitors whatever they want to about the gas chamber at Dachau.

Holocaust denial is against the law in Germany.  But what about telling Holocaust lies?  Shouldn’t there be a penalty for that also?