The new book, called "In the Name of Humanity: The Secret Deal to End the Holocaust," by Canadian journalist Max Wallace, sheds an alternative light on the holocaust during the Second World War.
According to the conclusions of his 17 years of research, head of the Nazi SS Heinrich Himmler and former President of Switzerland Jean-Marie Musy had reached a secret agreement that led the Nazis to close their gas chambers in fall of 1944, half a year before Germany's defeat. Wallace believes that the agreement saved roughly 300,000 Jews from death.
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According to the journalist, Himmler was in return vaguely promised a "united Allied-German front against the Soviet Union." He also claimed that the negotiations that led to this alleged agreement were backed by Orthodox rabbis and the Vatican.
Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, interviewed by The Times of Israel, pointed out that Himmler's attempts to strike a deal with Western countries are well known, but there is no evidence of a success of such a magnitude. Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, also interviewed by the Israeli media outlet, called the theory "extremely difficult to prove," although admitted that several small deals had been struck between Jewish groups and the Nazis to save "as many Jews as possible."
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The book by the Canadian journalist gives new life to the notion that the Nazis closed and dismantled their gas chambers in Auschwitz in November 1944, not due to approaching Red Army, but due to some other reason. Another explanation circulating among historians suggests that the dismantling of the gas chambers and crematories at Auschwitz began because almost all the Jews in Poland had either fled or had already been killed.