Paging Bartlett's

Guess who said this:

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed ... were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."

Well, according to an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday (thanks to Information Clearinghouse for the link), it was Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz.

Now, I admit to being wary here; the quote wasn't sourced and I'm always suspicious of too-good-to-be-true quotes that can't be tied to an original source. Certainly Hoess' testimony at the Nuremburg trials displays no hint of such evasions. But just in case it proves to be entirely accurate, I figured you should see it.

Footnote: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting the op-ed's author, Scott Horton, a lecturer in international humanitarian law at Columbia University in New York City, made the quote up. But I want some source closer to the original before I'll accept it accurate rather than a potential urban myth.