- 1) What is historical revisionism?
-
- As more facts about past events come to light, it becomes
necessary to re-evaluate them taking the new information into account.
All history is constantly being reviewed. It is a natural process. It is
an important process. The only way to judge the future is to accurately
compare current trends and events to those of earlier times. It has been
said that the good thing about experience is that one can recognize a mistake
when it is made again. So it is with history, the sum of recorded human
experience. Historical revisionism is the process of changing the human
record so that it more accurately represents events as they actually occurred.
Often there is resistance to the process of bringing history in accord
with the facts. The reason for this is history is not simply a record of
events, but is also a resource from which a world view is drawn. A re-
examination or re-evaluation of important historical events can be viewed
as a threat to the political status quo and to interests upon whose power
partially rests the established view of these events. It has also been
said that historians have the power to upset everything. Vested interests
take a dim view of having everything upset.
-
- 2) What is the Holocaust?
-
- The Holocaust, or Shoah, is the term used to label the
fate of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis during World War Two.
It is a broad term used to cover all events involving Europe's Jews usually
between 1933 and 1945, and especially during the six year period between
November 1938 (Kristallnacht) and November 1944 (alleged Himmler order
to stop the Final Solution program) . Six extermination centers are said
to have been established between 1941 and 1943 by the Nazis in Poland for
the purpose of killing Jews and "other minorities." The number
of Jews killed by the Nazis during this period is generally estimated to
have been six million.
-
- A) "The Holocaust" : An all-encompassing neologism
used in reference to the (alleged) extermination of European Jews by the
Nazis during World War Two. Use of the term in this context presumes the
following:
-
- (1) The Nazis implemented and succeeded in a premeditated
plan to destroy (not resettle) European Jewry,
- (2) Approximately six million or more Jews perished as
a result, and
- (3) A majority of these were killed by use of poison
gas (Zyklon B) [and internal combustion engine exhaust] in gas chambers
built for the purpose of taking human life. [...]
-
-
- 3) Do revisionists 'deny the Holocaust'?
-
- The phrase "Holocaust denial" was invented
by a Holoscribe named Deborah Lipstadt who occupies the Dorot Chair in
Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Its purpose is
to imply Holocaust revisionists are not rational in their opinions. Dr.
Lipstadt believes the current view of the Holocaust cannot be questioned
and debate on the topic cannot be tolerated. To this end she created the
epithet "Holocaust denier."
-
- Revisionists are skeptical of postwar testimony of gas
chambers at the Nazi concentration camps and are of the opinion the six
million figure is a baseless exaggeration. It is not a matter of denying
anything. The issue is whether this emotionally charged and politically
important event can be examined critically. Researchers--some professional,
some amateur--have been questioning aspects of the Nazi extermination story
since the war ended fifty years ago. The evidence has been difficult to
obtain, but in the last twenty-five years enough has been gathered to conclude
the gas chamber story is definitely false and the Nazi program to kill
the Jews is a myth. The problem that has arisen is established political
interests have done their best to suppress this research and prevent the
evidence to support these startling conclusions from being presented to
the general public.
-
-
- 4) What aspects of the Holocaust do revisionists believe
to be supported by evidence?
-
- Here is a summary of what happened to the Jews:
-
- Before the war, the Nazis encouraged emigration of German
Jewry. Laws were instituted and governmental pressures were brought to
bear to make life more difficult for Jews in many professions which Jews
came to dominate in the Weimar Republic. The 'Ha'avara' or transfer agreement
was reached with Zionist leaders to facilitate the emigration of German
Jews to Palestine. Emigrating Jews very often were forced to abandon much
of their wealth when they left Germany. After the defeat of France, a plan
was discussed by the Nazis to remove the Jews from Europe to the French
colony on Madagascar. This plan was soon dropped in favor of a resettlement
plan which transferred Jews into ghettos and work camps inside Soviet territory
following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. This was to be the
first stage toward the ultimate creation of a Jewish homeland after the
war.
-
- As the Germans invaded and the Russians retreated, large
shifts in population occurred in eastern Europe. This shift went from west
to east. Tens of millions of people were involved. Many were forcibly deported
into the Russian interior. Others willingly accompanied the Communists
as the Red Army retreated eastward. General Gehlen estimated in his memoirs
that a third of the population in the areas the German army was to occupy
was evacuated eastward ahead of the German invasion.
-
- Since Jews were viewed by many eastern Europeans as willing
accomplices of the Communists who had occupied the area in the years and
months preceding the German assault, pogroms occurred after the retreat
of the Red Army and prior to arrival of the German army. Many of these
assaults on local Jews were in reaction to the murdering of political prisoners
by the Soviet police as they prepared to retreat. These events left areas
of eastern Europe, now occupied by the German Wehrmacht and under Nazi
administration depopulated. The Nazis took the situation as an opportunity
to remove Jews eastward into the areas abandoned during the Soviet retreat.
Jews were assembled at train terminals and deported to ghettos and concentration
camps established for them in the east. Some Jews were not deported, however,
due to the fact their work was considered too important to the German war
effort.
-
- A result of the tremendous movement of people is many
families and communities were scattered and people lost contact with one
another. Many of these contacts were not reestablished after the war due
to a multitude of reasons the greatest of which were the splitting of Europe
in two after the war and the establishment of the state of Israel. Guerrilla
groups were formed to fight the Nazi occupation. A campaign of sabotage
and assassination by these groups was countered by repression on the part
of the occupiers in the form of the Einsatz groups. The Einsatzgruppe fought
the partisans in ways which included reprisal shooting of civilians. Jews
were believed to make up the majority of partisans. They were also the
people targeted for reprisals. These reprisals took several forms which
included the shooting of hostages or their deportation to ghettos and concentration
camps.
-
- During the summer of 1942 a major typhus epidemic swept
the Nazi concentration camp system. The most severely affected camp was
Auschwitz camp in Poland. The epidemic continued for many months. Crematories
were built in some of the concentration camps as part of hygienic measures
established to fight the epidemics. The fumigant Zyklon B was used to exterminate
the typhus-bearing body louse which spread the disease. The total number
of Jews and others who died in the camps is not known, but the total is
probably in the hundreds of thousands. As the Germans suffered military
reversals in 1944 and 1945, the Nazis took many who were in labor camps
with them as they retreated westward. Others were left behind. As this
happened, tens of millions of people were again uprooted as civilians abandoned
almost everything in an effort to escape the approaching Red Army. The
migration in 1941-42 was eastward. In 1944-45 it was westward.
-
- In the beginning, Europe's Jewish communities were concentrated
in eastern Europe. By the end of the war, Europe's Jews were still in eastern
Europe, but the communities were shattered. Tens of millions of people,
particularly Germans and Jews were left homeless by the war. As a result,
millions of Jews emigrated. Many settled in Palestine. Many more moved
to North America. Others settled in Australia, South America, and South
Africa. The war was a boon for the Zionist movement.
-
- The Holocaust become the founding myth of modern day
Israel. As such it became an excuse for behavior of the Israelis which
would have been inexcusable. It also became the excuse for billions of
dollars in aid and 'reparations' being sent to Israel from Germany and
the United States even though Israel did not exist during the war and its
citizens were not subject to Nazi repression. Much of the aid the new Zionist
state was to receive was for the purpose of resettling European refugees
who did not want to go there, but had little alternative at the time.
-
-
- 5) What aspects of the Holocaust do revisionists believe
to be unsupported by evidence?
-
- While there is no universal agreement on many aspects
of WWII and the Holocaust, but one might be classified as a Holocaust revisionist
if one is skeptical of the following:
- * Hitler ordered the extermination of the Jews in writing
, orally, or through mental telepathy.
- * The Nazis cremated 1,500,000 to 4,000,000 bodies at
Auschwitz/Birkenau in less than two years using between 30 and 52 single-body
crematory ovens and were able to keep it all a secret until late 1944 despite
the fact Auschwitz was a major bombing target photographed by American
planes throughout that year.
- * The Nazis were able to destroy all documentation of
the extermination program before the total German surrender in mid 1945.
This despite the fact all German secret codes had been broken by the British
and many SS communications had been intercepted by them.
-
-
- 6) Wasn't the Holocaust proven at the war crimes trials?
-
- No. The NMT and IMT set out to prove nothing. The crimes
themselves were never an issue. The courts took judicial notice of the
crimes.. This means the crimes were assumed to be true based purely on
the allegations. No proof was needed. The war crimes tribunals also suspended
the normal rules of evidence. They accepted into evidence documents, hearsay
testimony, and other material which would never be accepted in anything
other than a sham court. The point of the tribunals was to demonstrate
the moral authority of the new world powers. In demonizing the Nazi regime
through these trials England, France, The United States, and the U.S.S.R
secured their positions as the occupiers of Germany and justified the annexation
of German territory along with the expulsions of millions of Germans into
the dismembered rump Germany. Allied plans for the future of Germany at
that time included the de- industrialization of Germany. The standard of
living was to be the lowest in Europe. The economy was to be agrarian despite
the fact it being the most densely populated nation on the continent. In
this context, it had to be shown to the world and the Germans themselves
that they were evil and deserved the horrendous treatment they were to
receive. The country was to be "de-Nazified" and reduced to the
point where Germany could "never threaten world peace again."
Since the nature of the war crimes trials was purely political, nothing
that went into them or came out of them should be taken at face value.
-
- 7) Didn't the Nazis themselves admit there was a program
to exterminate the Jews?
-
- a) Since the war crimes courts took judicial notice of
the crimes, pleading innocent on the basis the crime did not occur was
not an option. The strategy of many defendants was demonstrate non-involvement
or distance themselves from the alleged crime. Backbiting and finger- pointing
were also common. In order to save their lives, the accused placed blame
on others- particularly people who were either dead, or had evaded capture
by the Allies. The jailers of the Nazis used torture and threats of torture
to obtain many confessions. Sometimes threats against the prisoners' families
were made. For some, like Rudolf Hoess, sleep deprivation was used to get
them to sign confessions. The contents of confessions such as those by
Hoess and Kurt Gerstein are enough to simply throw them out as evidence.
They contain internal contradictions, absurdities, and facts that are verifiably
false. Nevertheless most high Nazi officials who survived to be tried disputed
the charge that the final solution to the Jewish question involved their
elimination though mass murder . Julius Streicher stated he believed it
was technically impossible to kill that many people and simply did not
believe it was true or even attempted.
-
-
- 8) Do the photographs taken at the Nazi concentration
camps at the end of the war prove the Nazis were exterminating people?
-
- a) How often have we heard the phrase "bodies stacked
like cordwood"? Certainly, the photos of the sickening conditions
in some of the Nazi concentration camps in the spring of 1945 were not
faked, but they were taken out of context. Many concentration camp prisoners
survived the war in very good physical condition. Others died for a variety
of reasons.
-
- As World War Two approached its conclusion in Europe,
Germany was a chaotic mess. The Allies controlled the sky all over Germany.
One of the missions of the Allied pilots was to disrupt German communications
as much as possible. This meant they shot at just about anything that moved.
Trains with supplies bound to concentration camps were attacked just like
any other train. Rail lines, roads, bridges, and airstrips were bombed
and destroyed to prevent the supply and movement of the German army.
-
- As Germany collapsed upon itself, it suffered from many
shortages. This included medicine, food and fuel. Not being the highest
priority, concentration camps were affected as well. Some camps had not
received supplies for days before the British or American troops arrived.
Add to this the Germans retreat. Prisoners were evacuated from labor camps
near the fronts and moved to other camps. As a result, the remaining camps
became extremely overcrowded. Combine the overcrowding with the lack of
food and medicine. Conditions became perfect for the outbreak of epidemics.
This is what happened.
-
- Bergen Belsen which had been designed by the SS as a
sick camp in the waning days of the war became the destination of many
prisoners who were already sick from other camps. A typhus epidemic was
raging there when the British captured the camp where an uncounted number-usually
estimated to be between 10,000 and 30,000- of prisoners died primarily
from disease. Similar circumstances contributed to the awful conditions
discovered at Dachau, Buchenwald, and several other concentration camps.
Germany's enemies used the scenes of dead and dying prisoners as documentary
evidence of German malevolence.
-
- While the pictures are authentic, the films of bodies
being bulldozed into trench graves do not tell the whole story. There was
a war going on. It is in this context that these pictures need to be viewed.
There are several reasons the Germans didn't simply release those in the
camps. Many of the inmates were common criminals. Many were politically
anti-German or anti-Nazi. Those infected with disease posed the threat
of spreading the epidemics into the countryside if allowed to roam Germany.
The healthy prisoners had nowhere to go. There was a war raging all around.
Their homes were on the other side of the battle lines. Additionally, the
likelihood that freed prisoners would form criminal gangs was too high
for them to be released. Many were imprisoned because they were considered
risks to security to begin with. Releasing them to roam the countryside
was out of the question.
-
-
- 9) Do captured German documents prove the Nazi regime
was exterminating people
-
- No. Quite the opposite is true. Documents such as Wannsee
Protocol state quite clearly that the final solution to the Jewish question
was a program of evacuation and resettlement in the East. The conditions
under which this population transfer took place were not ideal and were
in some cases inhumane or even cruel. Executions took place. Many families
and communities were shattered in the process. It is shameful, but something
very different from an intentional mass murder of the Jews.
-
- Other documents which are erroneously presented to support
the thesis extermination was the intent of the resettlement program generally
depend on postwar interpretation of supposed "code words" the
SS used. The interpretation of these code words as indicating there was
a policy to murder the Jews depend on postwar testimony. This means the
proof is not in the documents but in the testimony. In addition to the
resettlement program documents, Einsatzgruppe records are also offered
as proof of an extermination program which targeted Jews. The aim of the
Einsatzgruppe was to fight communist guerrillas inside captured Soviet
territory. Some partisan groups were largely ethnically Jewish. The Einsatzgruppe
targeted Jewish civilians for reprisals when partisans committed acts of
sabotage or murder. The Einsatzgruppe documents indicate hundreds of thousands
of Jews were killed.
-
- Some historians, however, question the accuracy and even
the authenticity of many of these records since the source of these is
Stalin's Soviet Union. There is definitely a subset of documents offered
as proof of an extermination program that are forgeries produced for the
war crimes trials. These exist in the form of "certified copies"
of documents the originals of which are nowhere to be found. One of the
most notable examples of this type of document is the Franke-Gricksch "Resettlement-Action
Report". A final category of suspicious documents are those which
appear damning but for some odd reason the signer of the documents was
not prosecuted even though he was in Allied custody. Dr. Butz discusses
a case concerning documents relating to the deportation of Hungary's Jews
where the signer was simply let go. The implication here is the Allies
agreed to let the Nazi official go in exchange for him signing some bogus
documents. The documents could then be used as evidence against a "bigger"
Nazi.
-
-
- 10) What was 'the Jewish question?'
-
- The Jewish question was 'What was to be done with an
ethnic minority with no homeland of its own which refuses to assimilate
into the dominant German culture?'.
-
-
- 11) What was 'the final solution to the Jewish question'
if it was not extermination?
-
- A) The Wannsee Protocol states the following:
-
- II[...] The primary responsibility for the administrative
handling of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem will rest with the
Reich Leader SS and the Chief of the German Police [...] -regardless of
geographic boundaries.[...] The most important aspects are-
- a. Forcing the Jews out of the various fields of the
community life of the German people.
- b. Forcing the Jews out of the living space of the German
people. In execution of these efforts there was undertaken - as the only
possible provisional solution - the acceleration of the emigration of the
Jews from Reich territory on an intensified and methodical scale.[...]
-
- III The emigration program has now been replaced by the
evacuation of the Jews to the East as a further solution possibility, in
accordance with previous authorization by the Fuehrer. [...] ======
- Because the retreating Soviets had depopulated areas
later captured by the advancing Nazis in 1941 by as much as a third, or
twenty-two million people, the Nazis leadership decided to expel the Jews
under their control to ghettos and labor camps in the east as a step toward
a final expulsion to a Jewish homeland/reservation/ghetto-nation which
was to be set up outside Europe after the war. The final solution was the
expulsion of all Jews from Europe, not their murder. Even so, it did not
matter to the Nazis if people died in the process. The Nazis believed such
a move was needed because Jews were viewed as a threat to national morale
and security during the war.
-
-
- 12) What is the origin of the six million figure?
-
- The six million figure is not based on any body count,
records, or census. The number came into use during the war in Zionist
propaganda and appears to have symbolic numerological significance. When
the digits in six million are summed they add up to six. Six million is
six times ten raised to the sixth power. In numerology the number six is
considered 'perfect'. Six is the number of days God used to create the
earth in the story of creation in the book of Genesis. It holds a special
significance for the Jews who use the hexagram as their symbol. In the
Holocaust itself, the six million figure was used in propaganda emanating
from Zionist and Jewish organizations as early as 1941. Before the Russian
Bolshevic revolution, anti-Czarist propaganda generated by Jews used the
six million figure in describing the magnitude of the plight of Russian
Jews under the Czar. The chief rabbi of Britain recently called for the
re-examination of the six million figure which he considered totally arbitrary
in nature.
-
-
- 13) Where did the six million Jews go if they were not
killed?
-
- Since the six million number is not based on a census
or survey or any other type of documentation, this question cannot be answered
in an accounting 'balance sheet' type manner. However, a general explanation
is possible. There are several circumstances one has to keep
in mind when considering what happened to the Jews of Europe between 1939
and 1948.
-
- Before the outbreak of the war, the Jews of Europe were
concentrated in the east. Poland, The Soviet Union, Hungary, and other
countries that fell into the Soviet sphere of influence after the war contained
the bulk of the population in question. Since the very definition of Jew
changed with the governments, no accounting of how many Jews remained in
these areas after the defeat of Nazi Germany is possible, but everything
indicates a large Jewish population remained after the end of the war.
During the war, populations in eastern Europe shifted several times. In
1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and occupied the western half. Stalin's
U.S.S.R. occupied the eastern half. During the period that followed, many
Jews shifted to the Soviet half. The Russians deported millions of people
into the Russian interior ahead of the German invasion.
-
- When Nazi Germany attacked The U.S.S.R. in 1941, the
German army found that the areas they were to occupied had been depopulated
by the Soviets of a third of its people. The Germans estimate 22 million
people were moved eastward into the Soviet interior from Poland, Ukraine,
White Russia, the Baltic States and other regions the Germans were to temporarily
take from the Soviets. As the Communists retreated, the Soviet secret police,
known under the acronyms NKVD and OGPU, murdered thousands of political
prisoners in Poland, the Baltic states, and Ukraine. In reaction to these
murders the local populations killed many Jews because the Jews were viewed
as collaborators in the Communist occupation and the suppression of nationalist
organizations. In late 1941, the Nazis began deporting Jews from central
and eastern Europe into the areas captured from the Soviets. These were
generally concentrated into Ghettos and labor camps. The conditions
under which these expulsions took place were far from ideal and many thousands
died in the process. In addition, over one million Jews are believed to
be serving in the Red Army during the time with over one hundred thousand
dying while in uniform.
-
- As the Germans retreated in 1944 and 1945, millions of
people from the east came with them. Some came willingly in order to avoid
the Red Army. Others, mostly conscripted for labor, were forcibly evacuated.
Millions of people, mostly ethnic Germans, died during this collapse of
Nazi Germany through expulsions that came during and after the defeat as
part of the brutal occupation of the Allies. Germany lost a fourth of its
territory. Poland was shifted westward. The Baltic countries would not
regain their independence for decades. After Germany's surrender, Europe
was a chaotic mess with millions of refugees from scattered communities
wandering in all directions. There was no way to determine how many Jews
had died at that point despite the fact that the six million figure had
been part of the anti-German propaganda long before the war was over.
-
- During the war years and the first years after the war,
millions of people--Jews included--left Europe for other parts of the world
including the U.S., the Middle East, Australia, Canada, South America,
and South Africa. In the case of the Jews, there were organizations assisting
their relocation, particularly to British- controlled Palestine. It is
very easy to claim a European Jewish population on eleven million in 1939
and a Jewish population of five million in 1945, but there is no way to
verify either number. Nevertheless, simply due the fact that there were
massive shifts in population in the areas where Jews were most concentrated
and much of the most ruthless and destructive warfare was practiced in
eastern Europe, it is very likely Jewish casualties were heavy and may
have exceeded one million dead. The remainder of the 'missing' were absorbed
into the U.S.S.R. or moved to The U.S., Palestine/Israel, Argentina, South
Africa and other countries.
-
-
- 14) Why would concentration camp survivors lie about
their treatment?
-
- There are a variety of reasons former prisoners of the
Nazis would lie about their treatment.
-
- A. Many concentration camp inmates were imprisoned not
simply for ethnic reasons. They were there because they were common criminals.
Some of these people were not honest to begin with and used this opportunity
to turn the tables on their former captors. It is a way to take revenge
and to distract attention away from their own crimes.
-
- B. Many concentration camp inmates were there for political
reasons-- particularly communists. They might lie for ideological reasons.
Alleging atrocities and abuse would help to discredit the Nazi regime and
system that imprisoned them.. On a more personal level, communists and
Jews who spent the war in a camp working for the Nazis need to justify
their actions while in custody. This usually entailed working in German
shops and factories for the Germans. Claiming heavy abuse, or involvement
in sabotage are ways of satisfying questions of personal political hygiene.
-
- C. Some former prisoners testified to abuse after their
liberation from the Nazis simply because that was what was expected of
them from their liberators. In the postwar trials some people became paid
professional prosecution witnesses who were willing to testify to just
about anything. Perjury by prosecution witnesses was not something that
was punished-instead it was often encouraged.
-
-
- 15) Why do revisionists not find the eyewitness testimony
credible?
-
- Eyewitness testimony, even when it is not politically
motivated, is the lowest quality of evidence. Memory is a very malleable
thing even under normal circumstances. In the highly charged atmosphere
of the ideological conflict that destroyed a major part of Europe, the
testimony of people who have good reason to hold a grudge should be highly
suspect and examined carefully. When inspected critically, many of the
cornerstone testimonies regarding the Holocaust contain many factual errors
and absurdities. Another important point to consider is the circumstances
under which the testimonies--particularly those of the Nazis-were obtained.
Torture was used in some cases to obtain "confessions." In others,
threats were made against the lives and health of members of the "war
criminal's" family. Under the conditions that prevailed at the end
of the war, the Allied governments could obtain any sort of testimony they
wanted to get. And they did. It is not just the revisionists who view the
supposed eyewitness testimony with caution; Authors like Arno Mayer, J.C.
Pressac, and Tom Segev also are aware of just how unreliable "survivor"
and other postwar testimony is. Despite this, these authors regard this
testimony to be, in a general sense, true even though they are exaggerated,
or contain hearsay information.
-
-
- 16) Why does the U.S. government endorse the Holocaust
story?
-
- World War Two was the event which drew the United States
back onto the global political scene after following a politically neutral
foreign policy since the end of World War I. It defined the United States
as the world's economic and military superpower, with only the Stalinist
U.S.S.R. as a major competitor. The U.S. began to follow an ideologically
messianic foreign policy under Roosevelt which sought to internationalize
the New Deal. This political messianism solidified and became more sharply
defined under Truman and the development of the Cold War. Part of the justification
for the international role the U.S. has played has been its new obligation
to fight 'evil' regimes and protect 'democratic' ones. The paradigm for
the U.S. role in international politics is its involvement in W.W.II and
the paradigm for the 'evil' it is fighting is Hitler and Nazi Germany--particularly
as it has become defined in its attempt to exterminate the Jews.
-
- Since Stalin, our ally, could be argued to be every bit
as evil as Hitler, a reason had to found to define what made Nazi Germany
so much more evil than Soviet Russia. The idea that we fought Germany because
Hitler declared war after extensive U.S. provocation does not serve an
active interventionist policy. The Holocaust serves the purpose of justifying
U.S. political messianism which insisted on the unconditional surrender
of Germany, bombed German cities into ruins, suppressed German economic
recovery for three years after the surrender, and put the country under
U.S. military occupation for nearly fifty more.
-
- Questioning the Holocaust therefore would also be a round-about
threat to messianic myth which drives U.S. interventionist foreign policy.
There are other factors involved in the U.S. endorsement of the Holocaust
which involve its prosecution of 'Nazi war criminals' at the show trials
that followed the war; Except for the alleged attempt to exterminate the
Jews, the U.S., British, and the Soviets committed all of the same crimes
they accused and hanged the Nazis for. Of course, not least of all, the
political power wielded by the 'AIPAC' and other branches of the 'Jewish
lobby' work to ride herd on the U.S. government when it feels its interests
are threatened. The Holocaust is Zionism's most important political tool
and weapon.
-
- 17) Why does the current German government endorse the
Holocaust story?
-
- The postwar German government of West Germany, based
in Bonn, which has become the government of a reunified Germany has endorsed
and protects the Holocaust story by law because West Germany wished to
rejoin the community of nations that had rejected it during the war years.
In order to do that West Germany had to demonstrate its rejection of its
Nazi past. Part of this act of contrition is its recognition and support
of the Zionist state of Israel which states in its declaration of independence
that the reason for its foundation was the Holocaust.
-
- Any rejection of the Holocaust story by the German government
would be regarded as a sign of backsliding by the United States, Israel,
the international Jewish lobby organizations, such as the World Jewish
Congress, and other interested parties. In exchange Germany has again been
allowed to become a major political and economic force in Europe. The myth
that the Nazi regime was composed of a few thugs who intimidated the German
nation and that therefore Germans are not collectively guilty for the sins
of Nazi Germany has been promulgated as part of the new German political
order. A re-examination of the twelve years of Nazi rule is viewed by the
German establishment as potentially having only negative results. It prefers
the status quo where it pretends to be a new Germany which has rejected
its past rather than a creature of the Allied occupying powers.
-
- 18) What was the purpose of Nazi concentration camps
like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and so forth?
-
- The Nazi concentration camp system served as a source
of labor and income for the SS which rented prison labor to private industry.
It was a prison system for common criminals and political enemies. Auschwitz
and Birkenau held many unemployed prisoners, many of them with no job skills
or too sick to work. These included inmates with chronic illnesses such
as tuberculosis. Some camps were designated transit camps where Jews being
resettled in ghettos in the East were deloused before being sent on to
their final destinations. In some cases Jews were placed in quarantine
before being sent to their final destinations to prevent the introduction
of diseases like typhus into the Eastern ghettos. This is not to say many
Poles, Gypsies, and others did not die in the Nazi concentration camps.
They did, but the context of their deaths is quite different than the one
usually portrayed.
-
- 19) Why was the Wannsee conference held?
-
- Because of the rapid acquisition of huge amounts of territory
which had been depopulated by the retreating communists, the Nazi leadership
saw this as an opportunity to expel the Jews. Germany now had control of
an area into which to put them until the end of the war. Because of the
war, an international boycott of German goods and limits on immigration
in Palestine and other areas, Germany had difficulty getting the Jews to
emigrate. In addition, the defeat of Poland in 1939, and the annexation
of Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia before that brought millions of
additional Jews under German control. The Wannsee conference was where
Germany's new policy toward the Jews was outlined.
-
- The Nazis believed the Jews constituted a security risk
due to the 'stab in the back' of World War One in which they blamed the
Jews for Germany's defeat. By expelling and isolating the Jews the Nazis
hoped, among other things, to keep the Jews from agitating inside Germany
and detrimentally affecting the morale of the country. They also believed
Jews could not be assimilated and were a negative cultural influence. In
the process of expulsion, many of the Jews being relocated would also be
put to work on various projects related to the war effort in the east and
according to the Wannsee protocol many were expected die in the process.
After the war, it was planned that a homeland for the Jews would be created
outside of Europe through an international agreement. The Jews resettled
in Russia, would be relocated once again to this new, remote homeland once
this expected agreement was reached.
-
-
- 20) What did Himmler refer to in his Posnan speech if
not a policy of killing the Jews?
-
- The quote from the October 4,1943 Himmler Posnan speech
usually cited as evidence that the Nazis were attempting to exterminate
the Jews is this:
-
- 'I am referring to the evacuation of the Jew, the annihilation
of the Jewish people. This is one of these things that are easily said.
"The Jewish people is going to be annihilated," says every party
member. "Sure, it is our program, elimination of the Jews, annihilation-we'll
take care of it." And then they all come trudging, 80 million worthy
Germans, and every one has one decent Jew. Sure, the others are swine,
but this one is an A-1 Jew. Of all those who talk this way, not one has
been through it. Most of you must know what it means to see a hundred corpses
lie side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck this out
and - excepting cases of human weakness-to have kept our integrity, that
is what has made us hard. In our history, this is an unwritten and never-to-
be-written page of glory, for we know how difficult we would have made
ourselves if today-amid the bombing raids, the hardships and the deprivations
of war-we still had the Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators,
and demagogues. If the Jews still ensconced in the body of the German nation,
we probably would have reached the 1916-17 stage by now.'
-
- Some revisionists question the authenticity of the Posnan
speech, while others believe it to be authentic. In any case, the meaning
of this one paragraph taken from a long, rambling speech by Himmler to
SS officials is ambiguous. Himmler does not mention gas chambers, or death
camps, or specifically to mass killings. The meaning of this passage is
unclear. Himmler speaks of large numbers of corpses and the "annihilation"
of the Jews, but he also makes reference to "bombing raids, the hardships
and the deprivations of war" which would also produce large numbers
of corpses. Himmler does not say whose corpses are lying side by side.
In 1943 Nazi Germany had suffered a major reversal of fortune on the Russian
front. The SS was involved in fighting the Red Army and partisan guerrillas
behind the front. To say Himmler is talking about killing large numbers
of Jews in gas chambers is reading a lot into the text of this one paragraph.
The point Himmler appears to be making in this quote is though expelling
the Jews is a difficult, thankless task, but if it had not been done German
morale would be low and Germany would have be suing for peace with the
Russians because of internal disorder caused by the Jews. This quote should
be taken in the context of the Nazi myth of the Jews stabbing Germany in
the back and causing its defeat in World War I.
-
-
- 21) Weren't gas chambers for killing people found at
some of the Nazi concentration camps when they were captured by the Allied
armies?
-
- No. The 'gas chambers' on display at Dachau and Auschwitz
were originally crematory morgues. The Dachau crematory morgue was altered
by the U.S. Army and Soviet Army into mock-up 'gas chambers disguised as
a shower' for 'educational' purposes. The one at Majdanek was actually
a delousing chamber for the fumigation of mattresses and other material.
Several forensic examinations of these rooms and others which are now in
ruins conclude none of these facilities could have been used as execution
chambers for the killing of large numbers of people. Their designs are
all wrong. Despite the fact that these 'reconstructions' are displayed
to hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, Holocaust historians such
as Arno Mayer and Hugh Trevor-Roper admit nobody knows what the gas chambers
looked like or how they operated. This is no reason not to believe the
gas chambers are a myth according to these two authors, but others take
a more skeptical view.
-
-
- 22) How many Jews died during the war if the 6 million
is not the correct number?
-
- This is not known, but several demographic studies indicate
the number of Jews who lost their lives in the war from all causes is somewhere
around one million persons. There are several difficulties in determining
what the Jewish population is at any point in time. First, a definition
has to be agreed upon. If the definition is religious, then a population
decrease might be attributable to conversions to other faiths. Are those
who no longer practice any religion to be counted? Once a definition is
determined, how does one go about counting the population? Between 1939
when the Germans invaded Poland and the German surrender in 1945 uncounted
millions of people were displaced by the war. People who lived in Poland
in 1939 were in the U.S.S.R in 1945 and they didn't have to move at all.
National borders were redrawn all over eastern Europe. In any case, taking
a Jewish census was not a top priority in 1945 and none was taken. Most
estimates of Jewish losses in Europe are baseless, or at least flawed in
that they do not include Jewish population increases due to immigration
in areas outside Europe during the 1930's through the 1950's. Even today
in a world without the restrictions in communication that existed in the
preceding five decades estimates in world Jewish population vary by several
million persons depending on who is doing the estimating and how and why
the guesses are being made.
-
-
- 23) What did the term 'selection' refer to?
-
- Holocaust literature often uses 'selection' as meaning
a process in which prisoners were segregated into a group that would be
put to work and a group that would be put to death. Of course, the process
of sorting prisoners by sex and age before the delousing procedure was
a standard and implied nothing sinister since the prisoners had to strip
in order to take a shower. The Nazi concentration camps generally segregated
prisoners by sex with children under 14 staying with their mothers if an
entire family was put into the camp. Prisoners were also selected and organized
by the type of work that was assigned to them. Selections also took place
when prisoners were to be reassigned to other camps, or were to be released.
Many who spent time in Auschwitz served sentences of less than a year and
went home after completing their sentence. In addition sick prisoners were
triaged and sent to hospital blocks. Many of these procedures required
a quick visual examination by an SS doctor who to part in the camp selections.
The 'selection' process was part of routine camp procedures and has since
been given an evil meaning in survivor testimony and Holocaust literature.
-
- 24) What did the term 'special treatment' refer to?
-
- Several German words with the 'Sonder' or 'special' prefix
have been designated as code words in the Holocaust lexicon. 'Sonderbehandlung'
can mean many different things in German depending on the context. In many
documents in the Auschwitz files, the 'Sonder' prefix designated something
that had to do with the hygienic regimen that was instituted in the camps
after the epidemics of the summer of 1942. There was 'special action',
'special treatment', 'baths for special purpose' and other terms which
referred specifically to procedures put in place to control body lice and
the spread of typhus.
-
-
- 25) What did the term 'special action' refer to?
-
- The diary of SS doctor Josef Kremer makes repeated references
to his taking part in 'special actions' while he was assigned to duty at
Auschwitz during the Fall of 1942. This was during the worst time of the
typhus epidemic at that camp. While his diary does not make clear what
he was doing during one of these special actions, it appears his duty was
one of giving clinical (i.e. visual) examinations to groups of prisoners
being transferred from other camps and sub-camps of Auschwitz (e.g. Birkenau.)
Because of the typhus epidemic many of prisoners were in very bad shape
and prompted Kremer to record the horrible conditions that prevailed in
the camp at the time. In his private diary he referred to Auschwitz as
the butt hole of the world and compared it to Dante's Inferno. A 'special
action' could refer to any number of activities at the camp. The use of
this term in German refers to any unscheduled activities or duties performed
that were outside the norm.
-
-
- 26) What is Zyklon-B used for?
-
- Zykon-B is a commercially made fumigant designed to
rid man-made structures, such as buildings, ships, silos, etc. of destructive
pests including moths, rodents, termites, and--most importantly during
World War II--the typhus-bearing body louse. Many of the Nazi concentration
camps suffered from typhus epidemics which killed hundreds of thousands
of prisoners. Camp staff members also became sick and died from typhus.
To control the epidemics, a hygienic regimen was instituted which included
the periodic fumigation of camp buildings with Zyklon-B. Decontamination
facilities were also built to delouse clothing, luggage, etc. Some of these
facilities used steam, others used Zyklon-B. The hygienic practices also
included shaving the hair of incoming prisoners and forcing them to take
a shower as part of a delousing procedure. Large shipments of the fumigant
was sent to many of the Nazi concentration camps and not just to the alleged
'death camps.' So the presence of Zyklon-B in a camp is not an indication
that it was there to be used to gas prisoners. Zyklon-B is a fumigant.
There was a hygienic need for a fumigant in the camps. It's use in the
camps is not evidence of a genocide program. In fact, it is just the opposite.
Zykon-B was used in an effort to save the lives and health of camp inmates
and staff.
-
- 27) Why would German documents designate Zyklon-B as
material for Jewish resettlement?
-
- The resettlement of Jews by the Nazis meant they would
have to be moved to housing in the east. This housing in some cases needed
to be fumigated before it was turned over the resettled Jews. Transit camps
were also set up where Jews, and their luggage, being transported eastward,
would be deloused before being sent to their final destinations. Since
the delousing of Jews and their belongings and the fumigation of buildings
was part of the resettlement process, there is nothing unusual in the fact
in some documents the fumigant Zyklon-B would be labeled 'material for
Jewish resettlement.'
-
-
- 28) Why did the Nazis equip some of their camps with
crematories?
-
- From 1942 until the end of the War in 1945, the SS fought
epidemics of typhus and other diseases in the concentration camps. One
of the largest camps and the one hardest hit by the epidemic was Auschwitz
and its satellite camps. An average of about one hundred prisoners out
of population of around fifty thousand died there every day. The crematories
were built as a sanitary measure to dispose of the bodies of the dead.
Auschwitz/Birkenau's crematories were completed during the first half of
1943 after it was decided to expand the camp to hold two hundred thousand
prisoners. This decision and the already high death rate at the camp is
why the four crematory facilities were built there. Many of the concentration
camps had crematories and many did not. Included in those that did not
is Treblinka which is alleged to have been an extermination camp. The conclusion
that has to be drawn is the presence of crematories is not an indication
of the existence of gas chambers or an extermination program. Several studies
of the crematories conclude these facilities were designed to handle the
camp disease mortality rate and little more.
-
- 29) Why were Jews required to wear a yellow hexagram
on their clothing in Nazi Germany?
- a)From the time the Hitler became Chancellor, the policy
of the Nazi regime was to institute laws which would politically, socially,
and economically isolate the Jews of Germany and encourage their emigration.
The yellow Star of David was only one of many harassing laws applied to
the Jews to get them to leave Germany.
-
- 30) What role did the Einsatzgruppen play in the German
war effort?
- a)Because the fight between the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany was a largely ideological one, and the Soviet Union was not a signatory
of Geneva Convention agreements on the conduct of war, it was rightly assumed
by Hitler that the Soviets would not fight by the rules. The Einsatzgruppen
were police units assigned to the pacification of occupied territories
in the east. Their duties included fighting anti-German partisan guerrillas,
shooting captured communist 'commissars' and executing civilians in reprisal
for acts of murder and sabotage committed by the guerrillas.
-
- 31) Why were so many dead bodies found in the Nazi camps
when they were captured by Allied troops?
- a) By the early spring of 1945, when the British and
American troops began occupying German territory containing Nazi prison
and labor camps, Germany was in a state of economic chaos. Allied bombers
and fighter planes made the communication of goods very difficult and many
of the concentration camps had not received enough supplies for weeks or
months to feed the camps, or to provide the sick in the camps with medicine.
In addition, as German military forces retreated from the advancing Red
army in 1944 and 1945 many prisoners retreated with them; most did so voluntarily.
More and more people were crowded into fewer and fewer camps. The overcrowding
and lack of supplies combined to contribute to the spread of disease in
the camps in the final months of the war. The death rate in the camps outstripped
the capacity of the crematoria in the camps to dispose of them. In some
cases there was no fuel to run the crematoria even if death rates were
at 'normal' levels. This increase in camp population, and breakdown in
support services to the camps led to an increased death rate. The bodies
piled up in the days and weeks before the surrender of the camps to the
advancing Allied armies in the spring of 1945.
-
- 32) Why is the Holocaust story important to Israel?
- a) Israel's 1948 declaration of independence states the
reason that state was being founded was the Holocaust had shown there was
a need for a Jewish state as a place of refuge for Jews suffering persecution.
Without the Holocaust, there is no demonstrated need for a Jewish state.
The Israeli government therefore considers any questioning of the Holocaust
to be a questioning of Israel's right to exist. It passed a law in the
early 1980's making questioning, or minimizing the Holocaust a crime punishable
by a sentence of five years in prison-a sentence more severe than the one
in Israeli law for questioning God's existence.
-
- 33) What was Babi Yar?
- a) Babi Ravine [ = Yar] is a ravine in Ukraine where
over 100, 000 Jews are said to have been shot by the Nazis and buried in
a mass grave. The bodies were later exhumed and the evidence destroyed.
-
- 34) What evidence exists for the massacre at Babi Yar?
- a)The basis of the Babi Yar allegation is Soviet wartime
propaganda, some documents purporting to be Nazi reports of the massacre,
and post war testimony. According to these claims the bodies of the victims
were exhumed and destroyed by the Nazis before the Soviets recaptured the
territory. There is no physical evidence of the massacre. Air photographs
taken of the area soon after the mass exhumation is supposed to have occurred
show no evidence of it.
-
- 35) Why were Jews put into concentration camps by the
Nazis?
- a) Jews were put into concentration and labor camps for
a wide variety of reasons. Some were imprisoned because of criminal activities
or anti-Nazi political activities. Others, particularly after 1943 and
the reversal of Germany's fortunes on the eastern front, were taken from
ghettos for the purpose of working in factories and on farms and housed
in concentration camps to keep them socially isolated from the surrounding
community. The war produced a shortage of labor and Jews were exploited
to fill that need. This situation put Jews in the position of working for
the Nazis and the German war effort which was socially and politically
embarrassing for them once Germany surrendered and Nazism defeated. Since
Jewish inmates could therefore be seen as collaborating with the German
war effort, there was pressure upon them to explain why they had worked
for the Nazis. The explanation, like that used by Germans who were accused
of participating in the extermination of the Jews, was the only alternative
was death. If the inmate did not work, he or she was murdered The excuse
then was they had to cooperate to save their lives. Some have added to
this reason the self-inflated "in order to bear witness" reason
for their working for the Nazis, if saving their own skins was not reason
enough. If the need to bear witness overrides any reason not to cooperate
with the Nazis, then what was witnessed needs to be extraordinary. In this
may be a core reason for the wild tales told by some former concentration
camp inmates because after the war they were viewed with scorn by other
Jews and wished to rehabilitate their standing in the community. The Zionists
living outside Europe referred to the Jews who survived Nazi occupation
as "soap" because of their lack of resistance to the Nazi occupation
and the extermination program.
-
- 36) What was the function of Treblinka camp?
- a)Records indicate there were two Treblinkas. Treblinka
I was a labor camp that included a gravel quarry. Treblinka II was a smaller
camp and was probably a delousing station for Jews being resettled in the
east. Train loads of Jews would arrive at T-II to be deloused. Their luggage
would also be deloused. Once the procedure was completed, the Jews would
board a new train that would take them to their final destination which
was either a labor camp or ghetto somewhere in occupied Soviet territory.
German documents indicate Jews were being funneled through Treblinka which
was designated a transit camp. T-II played a major role in the deportation
of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to labor camps and ghettos farther east.
-
- 37) What evidence is used to support the Treblinka death
camp story?
- a) There are wartime news reports that Jews were being
killed in large numbers at Treblinka and there are also the postwar recollections
of about 70 people who claim to have worked as prisoners at the camp. There
are also the 'confessions' of Nazis who were either assigned to the camp
or claim to have visited it during the year or so that it was operational.
The content of the testimonies is largely contradictory and in some cases
very funny. Read about Treblinka from three or more sources and compare
what they say about the method used to kill Jews there and you will understand
why I say that. There is no physical evidence that hundreds of thousands
of people were killed at Treblinka. The camp was totally dismantled by
the Nazis and the site today contains an elaborate memorial that was built
long after the war was over.
-
- 38) Why were Gypsies put into concentration camps?
- a)Some groups of Gypsies were put into Nazi concentration
camps for several reasons. The German government considered them a security
risk, but more importantly the Romany led a wandering lifestyle and did
not occupy themselves in what the Nazis considered productive employment.
Because they refused to abandon their traditional lifestyle, they were
put to work in labor camps.
-
- 39) Why is the question of the gas chambers important?
- a)The gas chambers are supposed to be the end result
of a long chain of events that evolved into a genocide program. They then
constitute the physical application of Nazi policy toward the Jews. Whether
the policy the exterminate the Jews was the intention from the start, or
whether it evolved into it over time because of circumstance, the gas chambers
are unambiguous signs the extermination program existed. So, if the silly
gas chamber allegation is abandoned in favor of shootings, or starvation,
or clubbings the whole fabric of the Holocaust story begins to unravel.
If the gas chamber story is false, why has it been pushed for half a century
by those who insist it is true? If the extermination of the Jews is true,
why falsely allege gas chambers were used when another method of murder
was applied? The gas chamber story and the extermination story are twins
joined at the heart. If one dies, so does the other. On another level,
men were hanged because of the gas chambers. The German nation has spent
half a century apologizing over the gas chambers. The orientation of European
and Middle Eastern politics revolves around the gas chamber story as justification
for many actions taken by various governments. The question of the gas
chambers is important because outcome of W.W.II is the basis on which the
world has rested for the last half century and how that war is viewed has
a lot to do with how many countries view their current role in the political
world.
-
- 40) How did the Holocaust story originate?
- a)The Holocaust story of German extermination of the
Jews originated during the war. The charge of gassings of Jews in concentration
camps was leveled by the Zionist and Jewish organizations appear around
1942 and were picked up and given lip service by the American and British
governments at about the same time. Some Zionists were looking to leverage
the British into opening Palestine up to more Jewish immigrants. By pleading
a refuge in Palestine was needed due to the crisis of Nazi Germany's mass
murder of the Jews, these groups hoped to embarrass the British to life
immigration restrictions and to pressure the U.S. government to use its
influence to get Great Britain to make the changes to its policies regarding
the Jews and Palestine they desired. Other Jewish organizations wished
to stop the Germans who were deporting entire Jewish communities east.
Many of these deportations were taking place under inhumane circumstances.
Various plans were floated to purchase groups of Jews from the Nazi regime
to get them out of Europe or to terminate the deportations and though the
Nazis appear to have been willing to negotiate, none of them were implemented.
The Soviets also began accusing the Germans of murdering civilians soon
after the mass graves containing the bodies of executed Polish Army officers
were discovered in the forests near Katyn by the German Army. Stalin accused
the Germans of the Katyn forest massacre as well. Katyn was one of the
crimes for which Germans were prosecuted after the war. The Russians finally
admitted responsibility for that crime only a few years ago. As a propaganda
story among many meant to discredit the Axis war effort and overshadow
Soviet atrocities, the genocide charge took on a similar role during the
IMT and NMT war crimes trials and the post war de- Nazification programs.
The point to it was and is to discredit the NS regime and place it beyond
the political pale. The Holocaust became the paradigm which demonstrated
the evil of the Nazi regime and therefore justified the amount of destruction
inflicted on Europe to defeat it. The evil of Germany revealed in the Holocaust
became the reason Germany and Europe remained divided for so long and why
the United States needed to become western Europe's guardian. Since Europe
could not be trusted to protect itself after the defeat of Nazism from
the new menace of Russian Communism which had recently swallowed eastern
Europe, the United States had an excuse to remain engaged in European politics
and retard Germany's political and economic recovery. As an indication
the status quo established by World War Two is still in place, recent commemorations
of the Nuremberg trials have lionized them as a dispensation of justice
rather than repudiating them for the show-trials they were.
-
- 41) Are there precedents to what happened to the Jews?
- a) The forced transfer of populations is something that
has happened as long as history has been recorded. In more recent times,
the Turks and the Greeks exchanged populations when borders were redrawn
at the end of W.W.I. At the end of W.W.II millions of Germans were relocated
under horrible conditions. In the United States, Indian tribes were resettled
multiple times as the country expanded westward. Stalin uprooted millions
of various ethnic minorities in Russia and forcibly resettled them in Siberia.
The forcible expulsion of ethnic groups is not a unique occurrence and
definitely not rare even in the last one hundred years. SR)
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