- Nearly everyone has heard that the Germans killed some
six million Jews in Europe during the Second World War. American television,
motion pictures, newspapers and magazines hammer away on this theme. In
Washington, DC, an enormous official Holocaust Museum has been built.
-
- Scholars Challenge Holocaust Story
-
- During the past decade, though, more and more "revisionist"
historians, including respected scholars such as Dr. Arthur Butz of Northwestern
University, Prof. Robert Faurisson of the University of Lyon in France
and best-selling British historian David Irving, have been challenging
the widely-accepted extermination story.
-
- They do not dispute the fact that large numbers of Jews
were deported to concentration camps and ghettos, or that many Jews died
or were killed during the Second World War. Revisionist scholars have,
however, presented considerable evidence to show that there was no German
program to exterminate Europe's Jews, that numerous claims of mass killings
in "gas chambers" are false, and that the estimate of six million
Jewish wartime dead is an irresponsible exaggeration.
-
- Many Holocaust Claims Abandoned
-
- Revisionists point out that the Holocaust story has changed
quite a lot over the years. Many extermination claims that were once widely
accepted have been quietly dropped in recent years.
-
- At one time it was alleged that the Germans gassed Jews
at Dachau, Buchenwald and other concentration camps in Germany proper.
That part of the extermination story proved so untenable that it was abandoned
more than 20 years ago.
-
- No serious historian now supports the once supposedly
proven story of "extermination camps" in the territory of the
old German Reich. Even famed "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal has
acknowledged that "there were no extermination camps on German soil."
(note 1)
-
- Prominent Holocaust historians now claim that masses
of Jews were gassed at just six camps in what is now Poland: Auschwitz,
Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzec. However, the "evidence"
presented for "gassings" at these six camps is not qualitatively
different than the "evidence" for alleged "gassings"
at the camps in Germany proper.
-
- At the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946 and during
the decades following the end of the Second World War, Auschwitz (especially
Auschwitz-Birkenau) and Majdanek (Lublin) were generally regarded as the
most important "death camps." For example, the Allies alleged
at Nuremberg that the Germans killed four million at Auschwitz and another
1.5 million at Majdanek. Today, no reputable historian accepts these fantastic
figures.
-
- In addition, more and more striking evidence has been
presented in recent years that simply cannot be reconciled with the allegations
of mass exterminations at these camps. For example, detailed aerial reconnaissance
photographs taken of Auschwitz-Birkenau on several random days in 1944
(during the height of the alleged extermination period there) were made
public by the CIA in 1979. They show no trace of the piles of corpses,
smoking chimneys and masses of Jews awaiting death, all of which have been
alleged and would have been clearly visible if Auschwitz had indeed been
an extermination center.
-
- We now also know that the postwar "confession"
of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, which is a crucial part of the
Holocaust extermination story, is a false statement that was obtained by
torture. (note 2)
-
- Other Absurd Holocaust Claims
-
- At one time it was also seriously claimed that the Germans
exterminated Jews with electricity and steam, and that they manufactured
soap from Jewish corpses. For example, at Nuremberg the United States charged
that the Germans killed Jews at Treblinka, not in gas chambers, as is now
claimed, but by steaming them to death in "steam chambers." (note
3)
-
- Such bizarre stories have also been quietly abandoned
in recent years.
-
- Disease Claimed Many Inmates
-
- The Holocaust extermination story is superficially plausible.
Everyone has seen the horrific photos of dead and dying inmates taken at
Bergen-Belsen, Nordhausen and other concentration camps when they were
liberated by British and American forces in the final weeks of the war
in Europe. These unfortunate people were victims, not of an extermination
program, but of disease and malnutrition brought on by the complete collapse
of Germany in the final months of the war. Indeed, if there had been an
extermination program, the Jews found by Allied forces at the end of the
war would have long since been killed.
-
- In the face of the advancing Soviet forces, large numbers
of Jews were evacuated during the final months of the war from eastern
camps and ghettos to the remaining camps in western Germany. These camps
quickly became terribly overcrowded, which severely hampered efforts to
prevent the spread of epidemics. Furthermore, the breakdown of the German
transportation system made it impossible to supply adequate food and medicine
to the camps.
-
- Captured German Documents
-
- At the end of the Second World War, the Allies confiscated
a tremendous quantity of German documents dealing with Germany's wartime
Jewish policy, which was sometimes officially referred to as the "final
solution." But not a single German document has ever been found which
even refers to an extermination program. To the contrary, the documents
clearly show that the German "final solution" policy was one
of emigration and deportation, not extermination.
-
- Consider, for example, the confidential German Foreign
Office memorandum of August 21, 1942. (note 4) "The present war gives
Germany the opportunity and also the duty of solving the Jewish problem
in Europe," the memorandum notes. The policy "to promote the
evacuation of the Jews [from Europe] in closest cooperation with the agencies
of the Reichsführer SS [Himmler] is still in force." The memo
noted that "the number of Jews deported in this way to the East did
not suffice to cover the labor needs."
-
- The document quotes German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop
as saying that "at the end of this war, all Jews would have to leave
Europe. This was an unalterable decision of the Führer [Hitler] and
also the only way to master this problem, as only a global and comprehensive
solution could be applied and individual measures would not help very much."
-
- The memorandum concludes by stating that the "deportations
[of Jews to the East] are a further step on the way of the total solution
... The deportation to the [Polish] General Government is a temporary measure.
The Jews will be moved on further to the occupied [Soviet] eastern territories
as soon as the technical conditions for it are given."
-
- This unambiguous document, and others like it, are routinely
suppressed or ignored by those who uphold the Holocaust extermination story.
-
- Unreliable Testimony
-
- Holocaust historians rely heavily on so-called "survivor
testimony" to support the extermination story. But such "evidence"
is notoriously unreliable. As one Jewish historian has pointed out, "most
of the memoirs and reports [of "Holocaust survivors"] are full
of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects,
overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism,
unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." (note 5)
-
- Hitler and the 'Final Solution'
-
- There is no documentary evidence that Adolf Hitler ever
gave an order to exterminate the Jews, or that he knew of any extermination
program. Instead, the record shows that the German leader wanted the Jews
to leave Europe, by emigration if possible and by deportation if necessary.
-
- A document found after the war in the files of the Reich
Ministry of Justice records his thinking on the Jews. In the spring of
1942, State Secretary Schlegelberger noted in a memorandum that Hitler's
Chief of Chancellery, Dr. Hans Lammers, had informed him: "The Führer
has repeatedly declared to him [Lammers] that he wants to see the solution
of the Jewish problem postponed until after the war is over." (note
6)
-
- And on July 24, 1942, Hitler emphasized his determination
to remove all Jews from Europe after the war: "The Jews are interested
in Europe for economic reasons, but Europe must reject them, if only out
of self-interest, because the Jews are racially tougher. After this war
is over, I will rigorously hold to the view ... that the Jews will have
to leave and emigrate to Madagascar or some other Jewish national state."
(note 7)
-
- Himmler's SS and the Camps
-
- Jews were an important part of Germany's wartime labor
force, and it was in Germany's interest to keep them alive.
-
- The head of the SS camp administration office sent a
directive dated Dec. 28, 1942, to every concentration camp, including Auschwitz.
It sharply criticized the high death rate of inmates due to disease, and
ordered that "camp physicians must use all means at their disposal
to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps." Furthermore,
it ordered: "The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the
past the nutrition of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration,
submit improvement recommendations to the camp commandants ... The camp
doctors are to see to it that the working conditions at the various labor
places are improved as much as possible." Finally, the directive stressed
that "The Reichsführer SS [Himmler] has ordered that the death
rate absolutely must be reduced." (note 8)
-
- The head of the SS department that supervised the concentration
camps, Richard Gluecks, sent a circular letter to each camp commandant
dated January 20, 1943. In it he ordered: "As I have already pointed
out, every means must be used to lower the death rate in the camp."
(note 9)
-
- Six Million?
-
- There is no real evidence for the incessantly repeated
claim that the Germans exterminated six million Jews. It is clear, though,
that millions of Jews "survived" German rule during the Second
World War, including many who were interned in Auschwitz and other so-called
"extermination camps." This fact alone should raise serious doubts
about the extermination story.
-
- A leading newspaper of neutral Switzerland, the daily
Baseler Nachrichten, carefully estimated in June 1946 that no more than
1.5 million European Jews could have perished under German rule during
the war. (note 10)
-
- One-Sided 'Holocaustomania'
-
- Even after more than 40 years, the stream of Holocaust
films and books shows no sign of diminishing.
-
- This relentless media campaign, which Jewish historian
Alfred Lilienthal calls "Holocaustomania," portrays the fate
of the Jews during the Second World War as the central event of history.
There is no end to the heavy-handed motion pictures, the simplistic television
specials, the vindictive hunt for "Nazi war criminals," the one-sided
"educational courses," and the self-righteous appearances by
politicians and celebrities at Holocaust "memorial services."
-
- Britain's chief rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, has accurately
described the Holocaust campaign as "an entire industry, with handsome
profits for writers, researchers, film-makers, monument builders, muse-um
planners and even politicians." He added that some rabbis and theologians
are "partners in this big business." (note 11)
-
- Non-Jewish victims just don't merit the same concern.
For example, there are no American memorials, "study centers,"
or annual observances for Stalin's victims, who vastly outnumber Hitler's.
-
- Who Benefits?
-
- The perpetual Holocaust media blitz is routinely used
to justify enormous American support for Israel and to excuse otherwise
inexcusable Israeli policies, even when they conflict with American interests.
-
- The sophisticated and well-financed Holocaust media campaign
is crucially important to the interests of Israel, which owes its existence
to massive annual subsidies from American taxpayers. As Prof. W.D. Rubinstein
of Australia has candidly acknowledged: "If the Holocaust can be shown
to be a ÔZionist myth,' the strongest of all weapons in Israel's
propaganda armory collapses." (note 12)
-
- Jewish history teacher Paula Hyman of Columbia University
has observed: "With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to
forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense
of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense
only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews
under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected
to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy."
(note 13)
-
- One major reason that the Holocaust story has proven
so durable is that the governments of the major powers also have a vested
interest in maintaining it. The victorious powers of the Second World War
-- the United States, Soviet Russia and Britain -- have a stake in portraying
the defeated Hitler regime as negatively as possible. The more evil and
satanic the Hitler regime appears, the more noble and justified seems the
Allied cause.
-
- For many Jews, the Holocaust has become both a flourishing
business and a kind of new religion, as noted Jewish author and newspaper
publisher Jacobo Timerman points out in his book, The Longest War. He reports
that many Israelis, using the word Shoah, which is Hebrew for Holocaust,
joke that "There's no business like Shoah business." (note 14)
-
- The Holocaust media campaign portrays Jews as totally
innocent victims, and non-Jews as morally retarded and unreliable beings
who can easily turn into murderous Nazis under the right circumstances.
This self-serving but distorted portrayal is meant to strengthen Jewish
group solidarity and self-awareness.
-
- A key lesson of the Holocaust story for Jews is that
non-Jews are never completely trustworthy. If a people as cultured and
as educated as the Germans could turn against the Jews, so the thinking
goes, than surely no non-Jewish nation can ever be completely trusted.
The Holocaust message is thus one of contempt for humanity.
-
- Holocaust Hatemongering
-
- The Holocaust story is sometimes used to promote hatred
and hostility, particularly against the German people as a whole, eastern
Europeans and the leadership of the Roman Catholic church.
-
- The well-known Jewish writer, Elie Wiesel, is a former
Auschwitz inmate who served as chairman of the official U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council. He received the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. This dedicated
Zionist wrote in his book, Legends of Our Time: "Every Jew, somewhere
in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -- healthy, virile hate --
for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German."
(note 15)
-
- Let Both Sides Be Heard
-
- As even defenders of the orthodox extermination story
concede, skepticism about the Holocaust story has grown dramatically in
recent years.
-
- Responding to this trend, officials in some countries
-- including France and Israel -- have made it a crime to challenge the
Holocaust story. Revisionists in France and Germany have been heavily fined
for their views. Teachers in the United States and elsewhere have been
summarily dismissed from their positions for daring to doubt the Holocaust
story. Criminal thugs have brutally attacked prominent Holocaust revisionists;
one was even killed for his views.
-
- In spite of desperate restrictions on free speech, frantic
media attacks against those who "deny the Holocaust," a seemingly
perpetual Holocaust media campaign, and even physical attacks, considerable
headway is being made. More and more thoughtful people in the United States
and around the world are willing to express doubts about at least some
of the more sensational Holocaust claims.
-
- Summary
-
- The Holocaust extermination story is breaking down as
suppressed evidence becomes better known, and as more people become aware
of the facts about what is certainly the most hyped and politicized chapter
of modern history.
-
- Artificially maintaining the hatreds and passions of
the past prevents genuine reconciliation and lasting peace.
-
- Revisionism promotes historical awareness and international
understanding. That's why the work of the Institute for Historical Review
is so important and deserves your support.
-
- Notes
- 1. Books and Bookmen, London, April 1975, p. 5, and in
Stars and Stripes
- (Europe), Jan. 24, 1993, p. 14.
- 2. Ruper Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp.
235-237, and R.
- Faurisson, Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87,
pp. 389-403.
- 3. Nuremberg document PS-3311 (USA-293). IMT blue series,
Vol. 32, pp.
- 153-158; IMT, Vol. 3, pp. 566- 568.; NMT green series,
Vol. 5, pp. 1133, 1134.
- 4. Nuremberg document NG-2586-J. NMT green series, Vol.
13, pp. 243-249.
- 5. Samuel Gringauz in Jewish Social Studies (New York),
January 1950, Vol.
- 12, p. 65.
- 6. Nuremberg document PS-4025. D. Irving, Göring:
A Biography (New York:
- 1989), p. 349.
- 7. H. Picker, Hitlers Tischgesprche im Führerhaupt
quartier (Stuttgart:
- 1976), p. 456.
- 8. Nuremberg document PS-2171, Annex 2; NC and A red
series, Vol. 4, pp.
- 833-834.
- 9. Nuremberg document NO-1523; NMT green series, Vol.
5, pp. 372-373.
- 10. Baseler Nachrichten, June 13, 1946, p. 2.
- 11. H. Shapiro, "Jakobovits," Jerusalem Post
(Israel), Nov. 26, 1987, p. 1.
- 12. Quadrant (Australia), Sept. 1979, p. 27.
- 13. New York Times Magazine, Sept. 14, 1980, p. 79.
- 14. The Longest War (New York: Vintage, 1982), p. 15.
- 15. Legends of Our Time (New York: Schocken Books, 1982),
chap. 12, p. 142.
-
- http://Ihr.org/leaflets/bothsides.shtml
-
-
-
- Comment
From Jim Mortellaro
- Jsmortell@aol.com
- 4-9-4
-
- Wow signal! Gee, thanks so much for clearing this up
for us. Gosh, I mean ... golly ... now I have a totally different perspective
on my aunt's life at Auschwitz and Dachau.
-
- My aunt told me just a little about her internment at
Auschwits, but she told me that most of her relations were roasted, toasted
and gassed. Now I can tell her she was just imagining all of the mayhem.
Out of 92 men, women and children at Auschwits, two survived. My aunt and
uncle. The rest must have died of boredom.
-
- (sigh)
-
- Oh, and as for the six million, well, maybe it was five.
Or four. Or one. Maybe no one, eh? Likely in the millions. So, perhaps
we should apologize to the German People for our error in accounting. Yeah.
Let's all apologize.
-
- I'll start.
-
- I am so sorry my aunt and uncle lied to me about the
labor camps. And so sorry they told me falsehoods. The tattoo on Aunt Olga's
wrist and (may he rest in peace) her brother were put there by each other
just to make people feel sorry for them.
-
- Well, I will surely reprimand my aunt when I next see
her. She may be gone by then though. She has suffered all her life from
the experiences she imagined. And now faces death. Not too soon for her.
See, she's tired. Very tired. Of PTSD, of the cancers she suffered, of
her breast removal and her abdominal disorders. Almost like many perceived
abductees. Hmmm. Maybe they were taken and made to imagine all that suffering?
-
- Ain't it just like a woman to exaggerate?
-
- Hey, Mr. Weber, maybe you should reconsider your association.
You are German are you not? Ahah! You haf relatifs now livink in Deutchland?
-
- Jim Mortellaro, Ph.D.
-
-
- Comment
- From David Silberman
4-9-4
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- While I don't agree with many things in Mr. Weber's article,
I do believe the debate is healthy. I would also urge all interested parties
to read Prof. Julian Finkelstein's book 'The Holocaust Industry' for another
eye-opening dimension to this terrible chapter in human history.
|
