Auschwitz historian hoax

20th January 2012

A historian who claimed to have discovered boxes of SS documents from Auschwitz concentration camp has said it was a hoax to promote his new book.

Mieczyslaw Boyko made his confession after his original claims sparked wild enthusiasm amongst historians in the belief they were about to get fresh information on SS personnel at Nazi Germany’s most notorious death camp, including new documents of Joseph Mengele.

Adding to the buzz of excitement was also the possibility that the “three crates” of files Boyko said he had found in a village near Jelenia Gora may have also contained evidence on where the Germans may have hidden a stockpile of valuable items stolen from the camp’s victims.

The claims had also sparked a criminal investigation after Boyko said he had been working on behalf of two Germans who had taken the files out of the country, in contravention of laws prohibiting the unlicensed export of items of great historical value, after paying him EUR 5,000.

“It was part of plan to promote a new book,” admitted the shamed historian. But he added that he had explained to journalists the boxes of files were an element of a book he was writing, but they had “misunderstood” and preferred to “make it a sensation because it sells”.

This, however, is disputed by journalists covering the story.

“There was never any suggestion that what he told me wasn’t true,” Piotr Slowinski, a journalist from Radio Wroclaw who had covered the story extensively, told the newspaper Fakt.

“When I first started writing about this Mieczyslaw Boyko didn’t say anything about a book he was writing,” added Zbigniew Rzonca, a journalist from the Nowiny Jeleniegorskie newspaper. “The first time I found out about it was this week from another journalist.”

But despite the historian’s confession about the hoax the criminal investigation will continue.

“This may be his line of defence but the prosecutors have no choice but to establish the facts,” said Professor Aleksandra Sulej from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the body leading the investigation. “We do not know whether the gentleman was telling the truth earlier or if what he is saying now is the truth.”  

The credibility of Boyko’s claims may have rested on his reputation of an able local historian who had already made a couple of notable discoveries. The historian unearthed tunnels in a mountain near Bolkow in Lower Silesia dug by inmates from the Gross Rosen concentration camp, and he had discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of some 300 soldiers in the same region.