- Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
-
- The world is learning a long-overdue lesson: That atrocity
stories are fabricated primarily for political and monetary gain, to function
as "false flares", to divert attention from an inconvenient revelation,
to deflect guilt onto an innocent bystander - or even to cause or to justify
wars. 9/11 and the Berg beheading are merely two of the more recent examples.
If you ask the man in the street, he will more or less agree with you
that when you hear such stories, you can't believe it all and something
may smell fishy.
-
- However, for most people, despite decades of revisionist
work, the "gassing of the six million Jews" is cast not only
in cement but in granite. It is astounding to me how people cling to that
force-fed story for dear life with white knuckles - folks who are otherwise
fed up to the hilt with the lies and deceptions of our mutual enemies.
Why is that? What emotional investment could such people possibly have?
-
- A few days ago, I posed the following question to one
of my journalist friends who has moved all his life in high-brow liberal/libertarian
circles:
-
- "On a scale of 1-10, one being an absolute believer
in the Holocaust schmalz, and ten being a sterling Faurisson, where would
you put the [name deleted] crowd? I have been trying to make friends with
a few people there, but they all shy away from me. [...] I need to break
into mainstream with Ernst's story in the worst way, but everything moves
like molasses."
-
- Here is my friend's reply:
-
- "Probably 5, but unwilling to admit to more than
1. [One of my editors] has advised me that my next piece for him should
reflect that I am not "a defender of those sort of people." He
wants me to write something that will establish that I am not a Nazi.
[...] These people are very brave and principled, but I'm not sure you
realize the leap it represents for people to accept that WW2 propaganda
never stopped."
-
- Such is the power of relentless indoctrination!
-
- Some of my readers will be familiar with the name of
Joel Hayward. Search the Internet and read up on the name if his personal
experience interests you. He is (or I should say was) a "self-hating
Jew", as his own tribal brethren have vilified him. In other words,
he was willing to examine the incongruent findings that stand askew to
the traditional Holocaust myth.
-
- In very broad strokes, let me just say that Hayward was
a New Zealand Jew much in the Norman Finkelstein vein, though not nearly
as outspoken and courageous. About a decade ago, he did a doctoral dissertation
on Revisionist sleuthing and found himself soon after in the crosshairs
of Abe Foxman et al. The spitballs simply flew! The assault was too much
for his psyche, and I understand he has done penance since and taken himself
to the woodshed, essentially renouncing what he believed a decade ago.
-
- I really don't know more than that about Hayward - other
than the fact that Ernst served as a resource for a while and thought highly
of him while he was chiseling away at his dissertation. Ernst tried to
help him with document sources and forensic findings, much of which is
reflected in the summary below - a kind of ABC of the revisionist position.
-
- Print it out and give it to your friends if they want
to argue the "six million gassed Jews" with you because they
are stuck on their favorite atrocity story like a fly on a fly paper strip:
-
- [START]
-
- How it functions ... a mini-case study by Joel S. A.
Hayward in 1993
-
- As "Operation Desert Shield" was gaining momentum
in the last months of 1990 and the first months of 1991, it was widely
reported that the Iraqis had carried out appalling atrocities in Kuwait.
The worst of the individual atrocities, which made headlines around the
world, involved over three hundred premature babies who died after Iraqi
soldiers took them from their incubators in order to cart the equipment
off to Iraq. The Red Crescent Society, the Muslim equivalent of the Red
Cross, was the first organization to report the terrible incident. Several
eyewitnesses, including a young, obviously distressed Kuwait woman who
remained anonymous for reasons of security, appeared in dozens of television
news items and confirmed the verity of the story. Kuwait's embassy in Washington
publicly condemned Iraq for this act of barbarity, and numerous world leaders,
including President Bush on several occasions, cited it as evidence of
Iraq's brutal maltreatment of innocent Kuwaiti civilians. That the incident
occurred was said to have been proven "beyond doubt".
-
- Nonetheless, within weeks of the US-led coalition's stunning
victory over Iraq, it was discovered by ABC journalist that the "incubator
atrocity" never occurred. Many premature babies had indeed died, but
not as a result of Iraqi brutality. Basically, they died because the nursing
staff deserted them and because the maternity hospital itself locked the
incubators away in storage rooms. Dr. Mohammed Matar, who ran the hospital,
admitted that the widely-circulated atrocity claims were "just for
propaganda". It later turned out that the much-publicized "eyewitness"
was the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, that she
had not even been in Kuwait at the time the atrocity was said to have been
committed, and that her story was entirely concocted.
-
- This case has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet other
now discredited Gulf War atrocity claims are similar in nature and substance,
although not in scope, to certain Holocaust claims. For example, at the
height of the Gulf War The Jewish Press, which promotes itself as "the
[world's] largest independent Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper", reported
that on Saddam Hussein's orders Iraq had constructed gas chambers for exterminating
all Jews in the Middle East. The February 15, 1991 issue carried the headline,
in huge letters: "IRAQIS HAVE GAS CHAMBERS FOR ALL JEWS". Similarly,
a number of newspapers reported that the Iraqis had constructed a "death
camp in occupied Kuwait", where civilians, including children, were
being executed en masse. These claims, although supported by seemingly-genuine
eyewitness accounts and citations to official sources, were later proven
to be entirely groundless.
-
- It would, of course, be extremely irresponsible to conclude
from these examples of blatant propaganda falsehood that Nazi atrocities
against Jews must also have been the invention of propaganda. These examples
are intended only as a useful reminder that during wartime truth is often
abandoned in favor of propaganda, and that atrocity propaganda is still
used as a weapon against enemies.
-
- Atrocity propaganda is one of the hallmarks of modern
warfare, due mostly to the development of the mass media. During the First
World War the German public was told that staff members of French and Belgian
hospitals were gouging out the eyes of captured German soldiers. The British
public was told by their own newspapers, and the propaganda ministry set
up by Charles Masterman in September 1914, that babies in Belgium were
thrown up and caught on the end of German bayonets, that Belgian children
had their arms or hands cut off, and that the Germans were making soap
from human cadavers. After the introduction of gas onto the battlefield
in 1915, homicidal gassings of civilians began to feature in atrocity propaganda.
For example, in March 1916 the Daily Telegraph reported that the Austrians
and the Bulgarians had murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbians using
poison gas. In one case, stated this newspaper, three thousand women, children
and elderly men were gassed in a church in Belgrade. Government sources,
documents and seemingly credible eyewitness accounts were provided to support
these sorts of claims.
-
- During the Second World War Josef Goebbels and his Reich
Ministry of Information and Propaganda were not the only propagandists
disseminating untrue stories of atrocities committed by their enemies.
The British Government, like those of its allies, was active in spreading
anti-German and anti-Japanese atrocity propaganda. The Political Warfare
Executive and the Ministry of Information were two of the government agencies
involved in disseminating this type of misinformation. In his book on Allied
diplomacy, for instance, Edward Rozek notes that the following memorandum
was sent in June 1944 from the Ministry of Information to high-level civil
servants, leading media figures and to the higher British Clergy:
-
- " Sir,
-
- :I am directed by the Ministry to send you the following
circular letter: It is often the duty of the good citizens and of the pious
Christians to turn a blind eye on the peculiarities of those associated
with us. But the time comes when such peculiarities, while still denied
in public, must be taken into account when action by us is called for.
-
- "We know the methods of rule employed by the Bolshevik
dictator in Russia itself from, for example, the writing and speeches of
the Prime Minister himself during the last twenty years. We know how the
Red Army behaved in Poland in 1920 and in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Galicia
and Bessarabia only recently.
-
- "We must, therefore, take into account how the Red
Army will certainly behave when it overruns Central Europe. Unless precautions
are taken, the obviously inevitable horrors which will result will throw
an undue strain on public opinion in this country.
-
- "We cannot reform the Bolsheviks but we can do our
best to save them - and ourselves - from the consequences of their acts.
The disclosures of the past quarter of a century will render mere denials
unconvincing. The only alternative to denial is to distract public attention
from the whole subject.
-
- "Experience has shown that the best distraction
is atrocity propaganda directed against the enemy. Unfortunately the public
is no longer so susceptible as in the days of the "Corpse Factory"
and the "Mutilated Belgian Babies" and the "Crucified Canadians."
Your cooperation is therefore earnestly sought to distract public attention
from the doings of the Red Army by your wholehearted support of various
charges against the Germans and Japanese which have and which will be put
into circulation by the Ministry.
-
- "Your expression of relief in such may convince
others. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,
-
- "(signed) H. HEWETT, ASSISTANT SECRETARY
-
- "The Ministry can enter into no correspondence of
any kind with regard to this communication which should only be disclosed
to responsible persons."
-
- These few words about atrocity propaganda are not intended
to cast a shadow of doubt upon the nature of the Holocaust. They are intended
only to illustrate the need for historians to approach all reported wartime
atrocities - including those by Nazis against Jews - with a heightened
sense of circumspection. However, throughout this study it was noted that
many people, including historians, have incautiously accepted a number
of allegations of brutality or crimes against Jews which, in fact, cannot
survive the standard tests of historical evidence. For example, for almost
fifty years it was claimed (and is still claimed by many non-specialists)
that the skin of murdered Jews was tanned by certain Nazis and used to
make book covers and lamp shades. Physical samples of these human-skin
products were even produced at the International military tribunal, and
eyewitnesses came forward to testify that they had seen these atrocities
occurring. It is now known, however, that the samples produced as evidence
were made of goat skin and the testimonies of the eyewitnesses were fraudulent.
It is the same with the allegation that Nazis turned Jewish cadavers into
soap. Plentiful evidence for the soap story was presented at the International
Military Tribunal.
-
- Eyewitnesses testified or signed affidavits, providing
the prosecutors with specific details such as the names of those involved
in the soap production, the names and locations of factories where the
soap was made, chemical 'recipes' and so forth. A cake of human soap was
also produced as evidence. Even Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor,
stated in his closing address that the bodies of the Nazis' victims were
"used to make good the wartime shortage of soap". Although one
or two historians rejected the human soap story in the 1980s, it was not
until 1990 that historians, following the lead of Yehuda Bauer, really
began to abandon it. They apparently did so because Revisionists were easily
disproving such claims.
-
- A careful and impartial investigation of the available
evidence pertaining to Nazi gas chambers reveals that even these apparently
fall into the category of atrocity propaganda. Because of the seriousness
of this statement it is necessary to make the following defence. First,
the RSHA monitoring service for foreign broadcasts discovered that the
BBC and other Allied radio stations were broadcasting right across Europe
a number of atrocity claims. These included allegations that Jews were
being exterminated in gas chambers. These broadcasts, sent regularly throughout
the second half of the war, were in a number of languages, including German,
Polish and Spanish. On July 2, 1944, for example, the BBC broadcast in
Spanish the claim that 400,000 Jews had been deported from Hungary to Germany
and killed in gas chambers. These radio broadcasts would have been received
by a number of resistance organisations in the concentration and labour
camps, which, as numerous memoirs by former internees attest, had secret
radio sets. Although it is difficult to gauge the influence these broadcasts
had on those who received them in the camps, they doubtless contributed
to the widespread belief that such atrocities were occurring.
-
- Second, Allied aeroplanes dropped large numbers of leaflets,
written in German and Polish, over the Auschwitz camps stating that gassings
were occurring. One source worth quoting, because it describes both these
pamphlet drops and the Allied radio broadcasts, is the affidavit of Charles
J. Coward which was submitted to the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947.
Coward, a Battery Sergeant in the 8th Reserve Regimental Royal Artillery,
was captured by the Germans in May 1940 and placed in a succession of different
Stalag camps. In December 1943 he was transferred to Auschwitz to work
at the I.G. Farben industrial c omplex, and was housed in camp E715. The
relevant section of Coward's affidavit states:
-
- " Even while still at Auschwitz we got radio broadcasts
from the outside 'speaking about the gassings and burnings at Auschwitz.
I recall one of those broadcasts was by Anthony Eden himself. Also, there
were pamphlets dropped in Auschwitz and the surrounding territory, one
of which I personally read, which related what was going on in the camp
at Auschwitz... These leaflets were scattered all over the countryside...
-
- Third, the rumor that people were being gassed by the
Nazis was widespread in certain regions of Europe during the war, and led
to some people believing in gassings without seeing any evidence for them.
Others, of course, heard the rumors and believed them for a time, only
to reject them later. For example, in December 1942 Maria van Herwaaden
was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for having sexual intercourse with a Polish
forced laborer who worked with her on an Austrian farm. During the train
journey from Vienna to Auschwitz Herwaaden was told by a [p. 332] Gypsy
woman that they would all be gassed on arrival. Shortly after she arrived
in Auschwitz Herwaaden was taken with other women into a building where
their hair, both head and pubic, was shaved and their clothes were taken
from them. They were then moved into a large, cold concrete room without
windows. They were told they were to have a shower. The women were absolutely
terrified because they were sure they were about to be gassed, as the Gypsy
had said. However, to their great relief, only water flowed from the shower
heads. Herwaaden remained in Auschwitz until January 1945, and although
she witnessed numerous deaths by suicide on the electric fences and thousands
of deaths by disease she saw no evidence of gassings, shootings or any
other types of extermination. There are numerous examples of internees
even hearing and believing rumors of gassings in camps where gassings are
now claimed by orthodox scholars not to have taken place.
-
- Fourth, gas chambers were only one of a number of apparatus
originally claimed in Allied reports to have been used by Nazis to exterminate
Jews. As already noted, both during the war and at the main Nuremberg trial
it was seriously claimed that Jews were also killed in steam chambers or
by electrocution in mechanically-operated vats of water. Even the OSS,
the United States' main intelligence agency, reported that Jews were steamed
to death in Treblinka. It was also claimed by the Polish government that
Jews were killed in chambers by suffocation when the air was extracted
by huge pumps. The evidence produced at that time in support of these now-discredited
claims is not qualitatively different from the evidence produced in support
of the gassing claims.
-
- Eyewitnesses even came forward to testify or sign affidavits
about the steamings, electrocutions and suffocations. Their accounts of
the killing processes were detailed and contained descriptions of the machinery
and buildings involved. However, despite the simile (sic) evidence for
these killings, allegations of steamings, electrocutions and suffocations
have been quietly dropped whilst the gassing claims remain. Historians
have never explained why they considered the evidence for gassings more
credible than the evidence for these other methods of extermination.
-
- Fifth, at the International Military Tribunal (and for
the next two decades or so) it was claimed that the Nazis systematically
gassed Jews not only in camps in occupied territories but also in camps
on German soil. At Buchenwald, Dachau and several other German camps murder
was conducted, said Sir Hartley Shawcross, "like some mass production
industry in the gas chambers and crematories." 230,000 persons were
said to have died in Dachau alone, many of them in the gas chamber. Eyewitnesses
testified and signed affidavits about these gassings, which they sometimes
described in gruesome detail. The gas chambers were mentioned in official
government reports, were inspected and photographed, and Dachau's was even
opened up to the public. In fact, the evidence provided for the existence
of these gas chambers is not qualitatively different from the evidence
for the gas chambers in the camps in Poland now referred to as 'death camps'.
However, despite the fact that the evidence for gassings in Germany is
no less credible than the evidence cited for gassings in Poland, specialists
in the field now state that no systematic exterminations in gas chambers
occurred on German soil. The claims about gassings in Germany were quietly
abandoned decades ago. Systematic mass gassings, according to accepted
opinion, only occurred in six camps in Poland: Auschwitz (I and II), Majdanek,
Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka. Historians have never explained
why they consider the evidence for gassings in the east more credible than
for gassings in the west.
-
- Sixth, it is apparent that the descriptions of gassings
in the eastern death camps given by former internees and SS personnel contain
many lapses, errors, fabrications and distortions. A number of these flaws
are major, and seriously diminish the sources' overall reliability and
credibility. We noted, for example, that the so-called 'confession of Kurt
Gerstein', is amongst the most widely cited sources for gassings at Belzec.
Yet Gerstein insisted that "at least twenty million persons"
had been gassed in the Nazi concentration camps, that in Belzec 700-800
persons were gassed at a time in rooms the size of an average bedroom,
that he saw in Belzec a pile of shoes the height of a ten story building,
and that he saw in Treblinka a pile of clothes the same height. He also
insisted that "in Auschwitz alone millions of children were murdered
by having a pad [translated by many scholars as "tampon"] of
hydrocyanic acid held under their noses". It is the same with Miklos
Nyiszli's widely cited account of gassings in Birkenau. Aside from the
number of other errors and fabrications in his account, the fantastic gas
chambers he described are almost the same length as two New Zealand rugby
fields end on end. These sources are unfortunately typical of the evidence
supporting claims of gassings in the eastern camps. They will not survive
the standard methodological tests of historical evidence.
-
- Seventh, the scores of original German blueprints and
architectural plans for the crematory buildings in Auschwitz allegedly
housing gas chambers contain no evidence that these buildings were ever
used for homicidal purposes. On the contrary, the specifications revealed
in the blueprints and plans show that the rooms now designated as gas chambers
could not possibly have held anywhere near the numbers of persons purportedly
gassed in them at a time. It would have been physically impossible. The
blueprints and plans, which also record all structural changes made to
the buildings, clearly indicate that the only ventilation devices in the
morgues (the alleged gas chambers) were ordinary morgue air ventilators.
The rooms had no air exhaust devices suitable for gas extraction. They
also had no air heating or circulation systems, both of which would be
necessary for gassings with Zyklon-B.
-
- Eighth, inspections of the physical remains of the crematory
buildings in Auschwitz and Majdanek (nothing is left at the other camps)
confirm that the buildings were constructed in accordance with the blueprints
and architectural plans, and that no additional structural changes were
made to transform them into gas chambers. Moreover, whilst blue staining
(indicating the presence of iron-cyanide compounds) is clearly visible
on the surfaces of the delousing chambers, no staining can be detected
on the surfaces of the alleged gas chambers. Physical samples taken from
these rooms by specialists (including scientists from the Krakow institute)
and submitted for chemical analysis also show that the rooms were never
exposed to significant amounts of cyanide.
-
- Ninth, whilst the specifications and layouts of the buildings'
physical remains match identically those shown in the original blueprints,
descriptions of the gas chambers given in the already contradictory and
implausible eyewitness accounts resemble neither the physical remains nor
the buildings shown in the plans. Nyiszli, for example, described multiple
corpse elevators and automatically-opening cremation ovens. Building plans
and contemporary photographs clearly reveal that these never existed. Similarly,
in the WRB report of November 1944 the layout of the rooms, the layout
and number of ovens, and the method of removing corpses bear no resemblance
either to other eyewitness accounts, to the original blueprints, or to
the physical remains of the buildings. Of course, we now know that the
authors of that section of the WRB report never actually entered the buildings
they described, but relied instead on hearsay evidence.
-
- Tenth, it is not possible even today with our sophisticated
and technologically-advanced equipment to cremate human cadavers at anywhere
near the rate claimed in most books on the Holocaust. Whereas today an
average-sized adult body can be cremated in around eighty minutes, in the
early 1940s it took two hours or more. Claims that corpses were incinerated
in ten or twenty minutes (or even less, if we are to believe some 'eyewitnesses')
are extremely far-fetched, to say the least. In order to be sure of his
facts on such a grisly matter the present writer consulted cremation experts
and even took the opportunity to observe the cremation of a[n] average-sized
male body in a modern oven which reached almost 1900°F. He can confirm
that even after thirty minutes the corpse was well burned but still very
much intact. Therefore, the claims of historians of the Holocaust and former
internees that 6,000 or more bodies of gassed Jews were cremated each day
in the forty-six retorts in Birkenau are very irresponsible. The highest
claim the present writer is aware of is 17,280 per day, which is preposterous.
Including 'down time' no more than 250 bodies could have been cremated
each day.
-
- Eleventh, detailed aerial photographs of the entire Auschwitz
complex taken on random occasions throughout the period in 1944 when the
gassing process was supposed to be at its height (ten thousand or so per
day) show no signs that any murderous activities were occurring. Despite
the claims of many former internees that smoke and flame emanated continually
from the crematory chimneys, and was visible for miles around, not even
one of the detailed photographs show any flames or smoke. In any event,
having studied the blueprints of the ovens and chimneys, and having submitted
them to an American cremation expert for his opinion, the present writer
can confirm that the Auschwitz crematories, like the crematories in Christchurch
and all other major cities, could not emit any flames or dense smoke. Additionally,
and clearly more importantly, none of the photographs show any signs of
the piles of corpses, large pyres, burial pits, and so forth that are claimed
to have been in Auschwitz at this time.
-
- Finally, the gassing claim is irreconcilable with the
overwhelming weight of evidence on the nature of official Nazi policy on
the Jewish question. That policy, our careful and unbiased reading of the
evidence suggested, was not one of total extermination, but was a brutal
policy of deportation and forced labour.
-
- This departure from accepted opinion on the gas chambers
does not represent an ideological defence of one school of historical thought
on this issue against the other. Nor is it an attempt to rehabilitate the
Third Reich. The present writer considers the Nazis' brutal and destructive
treatment of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the
physically and mentally ill and other such groups to be abhorrent. As a
libertarian he also finds repugnant the Nazis' assault on freedom of thought,
freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, and considers their persecution
of political dissenters and academic and artistic free-thinkers worthy
of the international condemnation it was and continues to be met with.
-
- Moreover, although the weight of evidence supports the
view that the Nazis did not systematically exterminate Jews in gas chambers
or have an extermination policy as such, it cannot be denied that Jews
in German hands suffered terribly during the Second World War. Even Hitler
threatened that "brutal methods could be used, if necessary"
to force the Jews to the east and to put them to work. "Really, the
Jews should be grateful to me for wanting nothing more than a bit of hard
work from them", exclaimed the exasperated Führer after learning
of an Allied radio broadcast that the Jews were being exterminated. To
understand what exactly Hitler meant by this understatement "wanting
nothing more" it is appropriate to return to his comments to Horthy
in April 1943: "The Jews are just parasites.... If the Jews there
[in Poland] refused to work, they were shot. Those who could not work just
wasted away." Gas chambers or no gas chambers, Hitler was responsible
for the terrible maltreatment of the Jewish people. The total number of
Jewish deaths is probably impossible to determine, as even scholars upholding
orthodox opinion agree. Figures range from four million to six or more
million. No estimate has been offered in this thesis, although the total
would undoubtedly be more than one million and far less than the symbolic
figure of six million. Random atrocities, pogroms by local inhabitants
in occupied territories (particularly Latvia and Lithuania), and the actions
of the murderous Einsatzgruppen claimed the lives of many hundreds of thousands.
As Himmler himself revealed in his above-[cit]ed speech to the naval officers
in Weimar on December 16, 1943, thousands of innocent Jewish women and
children were killed along with the men in the occupied Soviet territories
as the Einsatzgruppen carried out various reprisals and hunted out commissars,
partisans, political agitators, criminals and other security threats and
undesirables. Sometimes hundreds of Jews or more at a time were robbed
of their possessions, lined up in front of ditches, and mowed down by rifle
or machine-gun fire. Because of the squalid conditions they were forced
to live and work in, hundreds of thousands more Jews died of typhus, diarrhea
and a variety of other diseases. Tens of thousands more died during the
deportations and of malnutrition and overwork, and routine brutality claimed
the lives of countless more. These deaths cannot by justified.
-
- But what of the Revisionists? It is worth repeating one
point made above: some Revisionist books and articles (such as those by
Weber, Irving and Faurisson) are balanced and authoritative, containing
both solid research and highly-developed analysis. They contribute substantially
to the accumulated body of knowledge about the Holocaust, and should not
be ignored or discounted out-of-hand by historians upholding received opinion.
The truth-seeking historian has nothing to fear from these scholars.
-
- The present writer recently read in an American newspaper
an excellent letter from Laird Wilcox, the political commentator described
in the introduction to this study. Because they seem to sum up nicely,
albeit slightly more harshly, the points made in this thesis it is worth
using Wilcox's words to round off this conclusion.
-
- "I think revisionists have an exaggerated faith
in their own beliefs and arguments, as though if you can disprove Jewish
holocaust claims, then all the Jews will say, "Son-of-a-gun! You
guys sure caught us on that one. I guess all we can do now is march into
the sea and disappear!"
-
- This, however, is not to be. Even absent gas chambers
and six million dead, Adolf Hitler's onslaught against human rights, civil
liberties, and basic human rationality are only exceeded by the Marxist-Leninists.
There is still one helluva lot to explain about the mistreatment of Jews
and others. The Nazi regime was horrible even by the most generous standards,
and no amount of debunking one claim or another can erase the totality
of their brutality. Even if Jews are removed from the issue entirely, Nazism
was brutal beyond any justification....
-
- Extremists and fanatics on both sides have tended to
make this subject a "no man's land" where most scholars fear
to tread. I think it's especially important to keep a clear head, to give
full recognition to the human factors involved, and to be as honest and
objective as possible. If there are errors in contemporary accounts of
the holocaust, they should be investigated and brought to light. But this
is not the same as ameliorating the responsibility of Adolf Hitler and
his evil regime, and it is not an indictment against the Jews should they
prove to be wrong about the holocaust in some respect or other.
-
- Now having said all of this, I also believe that Jewish
organizations have been incredibly heavy-handed and repressive in confronting
the holocaust revisionist issue. Typically, they revert to name-calling
and harassment and advocating silencing revisionists. What this has done
is give revisionists a decided underdog image and lend credibility to their
charges that Jews are afraid to debate the issues because they fear the
results. This argument has some merits, and one has to really wonder what
they have to fear.
-
- What they have to fear is not that the holocaust will
be debunked. I think the Jewish community has the resources and personnel
to give the revisionist movement a serious challenge in a debate situation.
In terms of the bulk of expert testimony alone the Jewish community could
snow their opposition. What the Jewish community fears is that to allow
the holocaust to even be debatable is an admission of uncertainty, and
that cannot happen. There is probably no issue so central to Jewish identity
as the holocaust. One can argue whether this should or shouldn't be, but
it nevertheless is.
-
- In my view, this inflexibility, and stridency is a mistake.
Its like putting all your eggs in one basket. Had I been in charge of this
issue I would have anticipated that someday I might have to say, "OK,
so maybe our figures aren't etched in stone, and maybe gas chambers weren't
as prevalent as we thought. So what? It really doesn't change anything
much, does it? However extensive it was, or wasn't, it was still terrible
and deserves the universal condemnation of mankind."
-
- Had they done this, they wouldn't have boxed themselves
into a corner as they have. What could happen (and I think it will happen)
is that no amount of repression and name-calling will keep scholars from
investigating this issue (some might even be attracted by it on those grounds
alone), and it's probably just a matter of time until some mainstream scholar,
possibly nearing retirement, will publish the revisionist book that will
break the dam and then all this effort has been for naught.
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