DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 01
truth and memory
The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
With a new Preface by the Author Deborah E. Lipstadt
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine
CHAPTER TWO The Antecedents
CHAPTER THREE In the Shadow of World War II
CHAPTER FOUR The First Stirrings of Denial in America
CHAPTER FIVE Austin J. App
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right
CHAPTER SEVEN Entering the Mainstream
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus
CHAPTER ELEVEN Watching on the Rhine
APPENDIX Twisting the Truth
To the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust and to those who preserve
and tell their story.
"Remember the days of yore, Learn the lessons of the generation that came
before you." -Deuteronomy 32:7
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
In April 1993, in conjunction with the opening of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Roper Organization conducted a poll to
determine the extent of Americans' knowledge of the Holocaust. Neither the
Roper Organization nor the American Jewish Committee, which sponsored the
poll, expected any startling results. But they were surprised by the
response to one of the questions. When asked "Do you think it possible or
impossible that the Holocaust did not happen?" 22% of American adults and
20% of American high school students answered, yes, it was possible.
[Ironically, those who conceived of the poll originally considered omitting
this question because they assumed that the affirmative responses would be
negligible.] The response shocked many people who had long dismissed
Holocaust denial as a wacky phenomenon of no more validity than the claim
that the earth is regularly visited by alien beings. The poll's results,
coupled with the deniers' recent forays onto college campuses in order to
publish ads in campus newspapers denying the Holocaust, convinced many
people that Holocaust denial constituted a clear and present danger. When
Denying the Holocaust appeared but a few weeks after the Roper poll, many
of these former skeptics hailed me for having realized long before
virtually anyone else that this was a serious threat.
Some reviews of the book made particular note of the fact that when I began
investigating the Holocaust denial phenomenon in 1987 I had been subjected
by colleagues and friends to some friendly and not-so-friendly skepticism
for "taking these kooks seriously." Among the most contrite were those who
had been most vigorous in their assaults on me for believing the deniers
worthy of serious scholarship. In a public mea maxima culpa, one reviewer
identified himself as one who had taken me to task for wasting my time on
this topic. Admitting his mistake, he declared the book a work of "stunning
relevance."
Ironically, I counseled and continue to counsel a more cautious, certainly
not benign, reaction to the Roper statistic. It is true that when a similar
question was asked in Britain and France, doubters numbered less than 7%.
But the 22% response must be considered within the American social context.
A significant number of Americans, when asked if the most outlandish
situation is possible or impossible, are prone to answer yes. [According to
certain surveys the number who believe Elvis Presley is alive is in the
double digits.] Second, the question was awkwardly constructed, with a
double negative embedded within it. Even the Roper organization
acknowledged that it could have been worded more clearly. (The same double
negative did not, however, appear to confuse those who were polled in other
countries.) There is also the possibility that respondents interpreted the
question in a more colloquial sense and that it was simply hard for them to
believe that the Holocaust might have happened.
My suspicions about the Roper poll were confirmed recently by a Gallup poll
which posed the same question but without the double negative. The results
were markedly different: 83% said the Holocaust definitely happened, 13%
said it probably happened and 4% said it did not or had no opinion. These
results indicate that the deniers have not made great inroads into public
opinion.
When this particular question is analyzed together with the responses to
the sixteen other questions on the poll there is cause for alarm, but not
about the deniers. The other responses indicate an appalling American
ignorance of the most basic facts of the Holocaust. 38% of adults and 53%
of high school students either "don't know" or incorrectly explain what is
meant by "the Holocaust." 22% of adults and 24% of students do not know
that it occurred after the Nazis came to power in Germany. The poll
demonstrates what will be possible in years to come if the deniers'
methodology and agenda are not exposed now and, more important, if basic
education about the Holocaust is not improved. It was this fear and not
prescience that prompted me to address this subject years ago. And it is
this fear about the potential impact of the deniers that prompts my
continued interest in this topic.
The deniers' window of opportunity will be enhanced in years to come. The
public, particularly the uneducated public, will be increasingly
susceptible to Holocaust denial as survivors die. The dramatic difference
between hearing a story directly from one who has experienced it and
hearing it second- or third-hand has long been illustrated for me by my
cousins' experience. Approximately fifteen years older than I, they grew up
in Cincinnati. Their father employed an elderly African American gentleman,
Charlie Washington, who had been born a slave on a plantation. My cousins
heard stories of slavery from him and some of his friends who had also been
slaves. For my cousins the Civil War and slavery are not events of the
distant American past. They occupy primary places in the storehouse of
their childhood memories. In contrast, though I recognize them as
exceptionally important aspects of our nation's history, they are for me
part of nineteenth-century America. So too with the Holocaust. Future
generations will not hear the story from people who can say "this is what
happened to me. This is my story." For them it will be part of the distant
past and, consequently, more susceptible to revision and denial.
The results of the Roper poll have also elicited challenges to my steadfast
refusal to debate deniers. Since the book's appearance I have received
numerous invitations to appear on television talk shows aired nationally in
the United States. Whenever the plans include inviting a denier I
categorically decline to appear. As I make clear in these pages the deniers
want to be thought of as the "other side." Simply appearing with them on
the same stage accords them that status. Those who have challenged me to
reconsider this policy fear that when I refuse, the deniers are left free
to posit their claims with no one to challenge them. In fact, whenever I
refused an invitation to appear on such a show, the producers abandoned the
idea for the show shortly thereafter. Refusal to debate the deniers thwarts
their desire to enter the conversation as a legitimate point of view.
The deniers have painted my refusal to debate them and my resistance to the
publication of Holocaust denial ads in campus newspapers as a reflection of
my lack of tolerance for the First Amendment and my opposition to free
intellectual inquiry. In an ad they began to circulate in the fall of 1993,
they have labeled me an "intellectual fascist." However, their claim that
the Holocaust is treated as a sacrosanct subject that is not open to debate
is ludicrous. There is little about the Holocaust that is not debated and
discussed.
Among the questions continually being debated in any conference or class on
the Holocaust are:
Was the Final Solution a product of Hitler's evil machinations alone, or
was it devised and proposed by lower-level officials in response to
war-related developments?
Is the Holocaust the same as a variety of other acts of persecution and
genocide, e. g., the massacre of Native Americans or the "ethnic cleansing"
in Bosnia?
Could Jews have resisted the Nazis more forcefully?
Were the actions of the non-Jewish rescuers heroic or the minimum one might
have expected from any person who professed to be God-fearing and decent?
Were the Judenrat, the Jewish councils installed by the Nazis in every
ghetto in order to supervise ghetto life, too compliant with Nazi demands?
Was a Judenrat's refusal to alert the ghetto population to the fate
awaiting it an act of collaboration or an attempt to ease the victims'
mental anguish during their final days?
Could American Jewish organization have had a significant impact on the
course of the Holocaust if they had been more organized and less engaged in
internecine warfare?
There is a categorical difference between debating these types of questions
and debating the very fact of the Holocaust.
This is not to suggest that students who ask how we evaluate the veracity
of certain testimony should be shunted aside. It is crucial that they be
shown how we know what we know, e.g., how oral testimony is correlated with
written documentation; how testimony is evaluated for its historical
accuracy; and how artifacts are determined to be genuine. Some conclusions
we once thought to be true we now know are not. The intellectual process is
rooted in the constant re-evaluation of previous findings based on new
information. So too with the Holocaust. We will debate much about it but
not whether it happened. That would be the equivalent of the scholar of
ancient Rome debating whether the Roman Empire ever existed or the French
historian proving that there really was a French Revolution.
In the academic arena there have been those who have interpreted this
stance as inconsistent with the free pursuit of ideas for which the academy
stands. This reflects a failure to understand both the ludicrousness of
Holocaust denial and the nature of the academy. It reflects the moral
relativism prevalent on many campuses and in society at large. The
misguided notion that everyone's view is of equal stature has created an
atmosphere that allows Holocaust denial to flourish.
This kind of confusion surfaced on a number of college campuses in the fall
of 1993 in response to an advertisement attacking me and the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. The ad, which makes the wild accusation that the
museum contains no proof of homicidal gassing chambers, also claims that
"the Deborah Lipstadts - and there is a clique of them on every campus -
work to suppress revisionist research and demand that students and faculty
ape their fascist behavior." The New York State University College at
Buffalo ran the ad. In a column explaining his decision, the editor
dismissed Holocaust denial as lacking all validity. There is enough
undeniable proof for the existence of the Nazi atrocity for the educated to
understand why it shouldn't happen again. The real question is not whether
it happened, but how many people don't know that it happened?
Despite this he ran the ad because, he claimed, "there are two sides to
every issue and both have a place on the pages of any open-minded paper's
editorial page." The Georgetown Record offered the same justification.
According to its editor-in-chief "the issue of freedom of expression
outweighed the issue of the offensive nature of the advertisement." The
editors discussed running a disclaimer next to the ad but rejected it
because it "didn't seem like the true spirit of freedom of expression."
Given this position one should logically expect to find op-ed columns,
letters to the editor, and advertisements claiming that women should be
kept barefoot and pregnant, that individuals of African descent should be
physically separated from America's "European" population, that the moon
landing was staged in Nevada, and a variety of other nonsensical positions
that are held by some portion of the population. Those who take this
position fail to understand that which Hannah Arendt observed in an essay
called "Truth and Politics." Opinion must be grounded in fact. Facts inform
opinions and opinions, inspired by different interests and passions, can
differ widely and still be legitimate as long as they respect factual
truth. Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is
guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute.
One can believe that Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Moscow.
However sincere one's conviction, that does not make it a legitimate
opinion or "other side" of a debate. In the name of free inquiry we must
not succumb to the silly view, as these editors did, that every idea is of
equal validity and worth. Although the academy must remain a place where
ideas can be freely and vigorously explored it must first be a place that
differentiates between ideas with lasting quality and those with none. [The
University of Michigan editors displayed the same confused thinking that
typified their colleagues' behavior two years earlier. While explicitly
rejecting the notion that the Holocaust was a hoax, the editors ran the ad
as an op-ed piece in the paper's Viewpoint section. They claimed that
because the first time they ran the ad there had been such a strong
reaction on campus, this new ad was "relevant" to the community. (One could
argue that if there had been a homophobic incident on the campus,
everything homophobes wrote would be relevant to the university community.)
The editors' primary reason for running the ad was that if it was
"suppress[ed]" the notions it expounded "would fester and grow." The
editors contended that it was their responsibility to make sure that such
claims received the "scrutiny they deserve." While they did not fall prey
to a mistaken notion that this was a First Amendment issue, the wisdom of
their tactic is open to question. They could have published an analytical
article that used segments of the ad to explain Holocaust denial's tactics
and nonsensical nature. Rather they gave this nonsense the status of a
viewpoint," something the deniers are quick to exploit. (Michigan Daily,
October 6, 1993) The editors of Brandeis University's Justice took a
similar approach and proclaimed that they ran the ad so readers would "know
that such thinking existed." When they were castigated by other students on
campus for their actions, the editors condemned the students for their lack
of "empathy." (The Justice, December 7, 1993; New York Times, December 12,
1993) The editor of the Stanford Daily published an eloquent and
impassioned editorial attacking Holocaust deniers and ran the ad, with the
address for additional information obscured, as a sidebar to the editorial.
Students and faculty protested that he could have accomplished the same
ends with the editorial but without the ad. (Stanford Daily, October 26,
1993) When the Notre Dame Observer ran the ad as a result of an oversight,"
it received a long letter from a student who compared the deniers' claims
to other historical assumptions that have been altered as a result of
scholarly inquiry including the Ptolemaic view that the earth is the center
of the solar system. This student granted the deniers exactly what they
wished: they became a legitimate other side that would eventually be
vindicated by the evidence. (The Observer, November 18, 19, 23, 1993)]
Finally, in the wake of the publication of my book, I have been asked
whether I believe that the threat posed by the deniers has been mitigated.
Given the attention accorded the Holocaust deniers and their methodology, I
would like to believe that it has been. I would like to imagine that my
study of people and material with "no redeeming social value" had denied
the deniers future success. But ultimately I recognize that though
Holocaust denial is totally irrational, in some strange fashion it appeals
to the quixotic side in us. We would prefer the deniers to be right.
Moreover, there is a part in everyone - including survivors - that simply
finds the Holocaust beyond belief. This may explain why some of the 22% who
answered Roper in the affirmative did so. They found it hard to believe the
Holocaust happened. Given that the Holocaust itself beggars the
imagination, it is predictable that the deniers will find good-hearted but
uneducated people who will succumb to these mental gyrations.
More important, we must remember that we are dealing with an irrational
phenomenon that is rooted in one of the oldest hatreds, anti-semitism.
Anti-semitism, like every other form of prejudice, is not responsive to
logic. We may battle against contemporary manifestations of it and hope
that we are successful, but none of us should be deluded into thinking that
any particular battle will be the last. Deniers may have been dealt a blow
by major developments such as the opening of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum and the film Schindler's List. But a museum and film alone
will not vanquish them. Either the deniers or the next genre of
anti-semites will eventually surface in some other form. As Albert Camus
reminds us in the final paragraphs of The Plague:
He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory.
It could be only the record of what had had to be done and what assuredly
would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and
its relentless onslaughts.. And indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy
rising from the town Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He
knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from
books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it
can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it
bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that
perhaps the day would come when .. it roused up its rats again and sent
them forth to die in a happy city.
In the 1930s Nazi rats spread a virulent form of anti-semitism that
resulted in the destruction of millions. Today the bacillus carried by
these rats threatens to "kill" those who already died at the hands of the
Nazis for a second time by destroying the world's memory of them. One can
only speculate about the form of the bacillus' next mutation. All those who
value truth, particularly truths that are subject to attack by the plague
of hatred, must remain ever vigilant. The bacillus of prejudice is
exceedingly tenacious and truth and memory exceedingly fragile.
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Atlanta, Ga.
January, 1994
PREFACE
When I first began studying Holocaust denial, people would stare at me
strangely. Incredulous, they would ask, "You take those guys seriously?"
Invariably I would be challenged with the query, "Why are you wasting your
time on those kooks?" My intention to write a book on this topic would have
evoked no stronger a reaction if I were to write about flat-earth
theorists.
That situation has changed dramatically. Regrettably, I no longer have to
convince others of the relevance of this work. In fact, those who once
questioned my choice of a topic now ask when the book will be available.
The deniers' recent activity has fostered enhanced interest that gives my
work unanticipated relevance. But rather than be delighted at no longer
having to convince people that this is a legitimate topic, I wish we could
still afford the luxury of wondering whether we should take these people
seriously. Given the terrible harm they can cause, I would have much
preferred to pursue something obscure than an issue that is now so
relevant.
This has been a difficult project because at times I have felt compelled to
prove something I knew to be true. I had constantly to avoid being
inadvertently sucked into a debate that is no debate and an argument that
is no argument. It has been a disconcerting and, at times, painful task
that would have been impossible without the aid and support of a variety of
people. Without them I would have never emerged from this morass. A number
of friends and colleagues carefully read and commented on portions of this
manuscript. Their observations and criticisms enhanced my work
immeasurably. My profound thanks to Arnold Band, Yisrael Gutman, Manuel
Prutschi, Michael Nutkiewicz, Regina Morantz-Sanchez, David Ellenson,
Michael Berenbaum, David Blumenthal, and Grace Grossman. In addition, I
received important assistance from Gail Gans and the research department of
the Anti-Defamation League. Adaire Klein, chief librarian of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, graciously made the Center's resources available to me,
as did Elizabeth Koenig of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Tony Lehrman of the Institute for Jewish Affairs in London generously
helped with research. Manuel Prutschi of the Canadian Jewish Congress
provided me with important background information on the activities of
Ernst Zuendel. Michael Maroko and Jeff Mausner shared important aspects of
the Mel Mermelstein case with me. Shelly Z. Shapiro was particularly
generous with her time and energy.
I would like to thank Yehuda Bauer, the chairman of the Vidal Sassoon
Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
who was a patient and valuable colleague throughout.
Elliot Dorff, Peter Hayes, Elinor Langer, Laurie Levenson, Doug Mirell,
Larry Powell, Claudia Koonz, Jason Berry, Alex Heard, Terry Pristin, Paul
Kessler, Joyce Appleby, Riki Heilik, Rutty Gross, Mark Saperstein, Glenda
B. Minkin, and Sherry Woocher all gave their time and insights. Kenneth
Stern of the American Jewish Committee provided important data on the
deniers' recent activities.
truth and memory
the outset. At a time when others were looking at me strangely and
wondering why I was bothering with this project, he urged me to move
forward with it. Adam Bellow was a precise and demanding editor, exactly
what I needed and wanted. His support of this project and his sensitivity
to the broader dangers of Holocaust denial were crucial in helping me reach
this stage. Susan Llewellyn copy edited with careful attention. Edith Lewis
helped ensure speedy production of the final manuscript.
I complete this book as one chapter of my life has closed and a new one is
opening. Finishing the book would have been impossible if not for the
support of a close circle of friends. They were like family: loving,
dependable - particularly at times of crisis - and supportive of me even
when it was difficult to be so. Though I am now physically distant from
most of them, they remain quite near, having taught me that God's presence
can be found in many different places and made manifest in a variety of
ways (Genesis 28:16).
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Atlanta, Georgia
January 14, 1993
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine
Holocaust Denial and the Limited Power of Reason
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." -Thomas Jefferson
(1)
"You are mistaken if you believe that anything at all can be achieved by
reason. In years past I thought so myself and kept protesting against the
monstrous infamy that is anti-semitism. But it is useless, completely
useless." -Theodor Mommsen (2)
The producer was incredulous. She found it hard to believe that I was
turning down an opportunity to appear on her nationally televised show:
"But you are writing a book on this topic. It will be great publicity." I
explained repeatedly that I would not participate in a debate with a
Holocaust denier. The existence of the Holocaust was not a matter of
debate. I would analyze and illustrate who they were and what they tried to
do, but I would not appear with them. (To do so would give them a
legitimacy and a stature they in no way deserve. It would elevate their
anti-Semitic ideology - which is what Holocaust denial is - to the level of
responsible historiography - which it is not.) Unwilling to accept my no as
final, she vigorously condemned Holocaust denial and all it represented.
Then, in one last attempt to get me to change my mind, she asked me a
question: "I certainly don't agree with them, but don't you think our
viewers should hear the other side?"
I soon discovered that this was not to be an isolated incident.
Indeed, in the months before I completed this manuscript, I had one form or
another of this conversation too many times. A plethora of television and
radio shows have discovered Holocaust denial. Recently the producer of a
nationally syndicated television talk show was astounded when I turned down
the opportunity to appear because it would entail "discussing" the issue
with two deniers. She was even more taken aback when she learned that hers
was not the first invitation I had rejected. Ironically - or perhaps
frighteningly - she had turned to me because she read my work while taking
a course on the Holocaust. When the show aired, in April 1992 deniers were
given the bulk of the time to speak their piece. Then Holocaust survivors
were brought on to try to "refute" their comments. Before the commercial
break the host, Montel Williams, urged viewers to stay tuned so that they
could learn whether the Holocaust is a "myth or is it truth."
My refusal to appear on such shows with deniers is inevitably met by
producers with some variation on the following challenge: Shouldn't we hear
their ideas, opinions, or point of view? Their willingness to ascribe to
the deniers and their myths the legitimacy of a point of view is of as
great, if not greater, concern than are the activities of the deniers
themselves. What is wrong, I am repeatedly asked, with people hearing a
"different perspective"? Unable to make the distinction between genuine
historiography and the deniers' purely ideological exercise, those who see
the issue in this light are important assets in the deniers' attempts to
spread their claims. This is precisely the deniers' goal: They aim to
confuse the matter by making it appear as if they are engaged in a genuine
scholarly effort when, of course, they are not. The attempt to deny the
Holocaust enlists a basic strategy of distortion. Truth is mixed with
absolute lies, confusing readers who are unfamiliar with the tactics of the
deniers. Half-truths and story segments, which conveniently avoid critical
information, leave the listener with a distorted impression of what really
happened. The abundance of documents and testimonies that confirm the
Holocaust are dismissed as contrived, coerced, or forgeries and falsehoods.
(3) This book is an effort to illuminate and demonstrate how the deniers
use this methodology to shroud their true objectives.
My previous book on the Holocaust dealt with the American press's coverage
- or lack thereof - of the persecution of the Jews from 1933 to 1945. Much
of the story that I told justly deserved the title Beyond Belief. For most
editors and reporters this story was literally beyond belief, and the press
either missed or dismissed this news story, burying specific news of gas
chambers, death camps, and mass killings in tiny articles deep inside the
papers.
When I turned to the topic of Holocaust denial, I knew that I was dealing
with extremist anti-semites who have increasingly managed, under the guise
of scholarship, to camouflage their hateful ideology. However, I did not
then fully grasp the degree to which I would be dealing with a phenomenon
far more unbelievable than was my previous topic. On some level it is as
unbelievable as the Holocaust itself and, though no one is being killed as
a result of the deniers' lies, it constitutes abuse of the survivors. It is
intimately connected to a neo-fascist political agenda. Denial of the
Holocaust is not the only thing I find beyond belief. What has also shocked
me is the success deniers have in convincing good-hearted people that
Holocaust denial is an "other side" of history - ugly, reprehensible, and
extremist - but an other side nonetheless. As time passes and fewer people
can personally challenge these assertions, their campaign will only grow in
intensity.
The impact of Holocaust denial on high school and college students cannot
be precisely assessed. At the moment it is probably quite limited.
Revisionist incidents have occurred on a number of college campuses,
including at a Midwestern university when a history instructor used a class
on the Napoleonic Wars to argue that the Holocaust was a propaganda hoax
designed to vilify the Germans, that the "worst thing about Hitler is that
without him there would not be an Israel," and that the whole Holocaust
story was a ploy to allow Jews to accumulate vast amounts of wealth. The
instructor defended himself by arguing that he was just trying to present
"two sides" of the issue because the students' books only presented the
"orthodox view." (4) When the school dismissed him for teaching material
that was neither relevant to the course nor of any "scholarly substance,"
some students complained that he had been unfairly treated. (5) During my
visit to that campus in the aftermath of the incident, a number of his
students argued that the instructor had brought articles to class that
"proved his point." Others asserted, "He let us think." (6) Few of the
students seemed to have been genuinely convinced by him, but even among
those who were not, there was a feeling that somehow firing him violated
the basic American ideal of fairness - that is, everyone has a right to
speak his or her piece. These students seemed not to grasp that a teacher
has a responsibility to maintain some fidelity to the notion of truth. High
school teachers have complained to the United States Holocaust Memorial
Council that when they teach the Holocaust in their classes, they
increasingly find students who have heard about Holocaust denial and assume
it must have some legitimacy. I have encountered high school and college
students who feel that the deniers' view should at least be mentioned as a
"controversial" but somewhat valid view of the Holocaust. Colleagues have
related that their students' questions are increasingly informed by
Holocaust denial: "How do we know that there really were gas chambers?"
"What proof do we have that the survivors are telling the truth?" "Are we
going to hear the German side?" This unconscious incorporation of the
deniers' argument into the students' thinking is particularly troublesome.
It is an indication of the deniers' success in shaping the way coming
generations will approach study of the Holocaust.
One of the tactics deniers use to achieve their ends is to camouflage their
goals. In an attempt to hide the fact that they are fascists and
anti-semites with a specific ideological and political agenda - they state
that their objective is to uncover historical falsehoods, all historical
falsehoods. Thus they have been able to sow confusion among even the
products of the highest echelons of the American educational establishment.
A history major at Yale University submitted his senior essay on the
Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War to the Journal of Historical Review, the
leading Holocaust denial journal, which in format and tone mimics serious,
legitimate social science journals. The student acknowledged that he had
not closely examined the Journal before submitting his essay. He selected
it from an annotated bibliography where it was listed along with respected
historical and social science journals. Based on its description, title,
and, most significantly, its proximity to familiar journals, he assumed it
was a legitimate enterprise dedicated to the re-evaluation of historical
events.
Deniers have found a ready acceptance among increasingly radical elements,
including neo-Nazis and skinheads, in both North America and Europe.
Holocaust denial has become part of a melange of extremist, racist, and
nativist sentiments. Neo-Nazis who once argued that the Holocaust, however
horrible, was justified now contend that it was a hoax. As long as
extremists espouse Holocaust denial, the danger is a limited one. But that
danger increases when the proponents of these views clean up their act and
gain entry into legitimate circles. Though they may look and act like "your
uncle from Peoria," they do so without having abandoned any of their
radical ideas. (7) David Duke's political achievements are evidence of
this. The neo-Nazi Duke, a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a
Holocaust denier, was elected to the Louisiana state legislature in the
late 1980s. Two years later he won 40% of the vote in the race for the U.S.
Senate. In his November 1991 race for governor, he received close to
700,000 votes. He subsequently entered the 1992 presidential campaign.
Despite the fact that his efforts were soon eclipsed, he managed to attract
a significant number of followers. Duke, who celebrated Adolf Hitler's
birthday until late in the 1980s, has been quite candid about his views on
the Holocaust. (8) In a letter accompanying the Crusader, the publication
of the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) -
an organization Duke created - he not only described the Holocaust as a
"historical hoax" but wrote that the "greatest" Holocaust was "perpetrated
on Christians by Jews." (9) Jews fostered the myth of the Holocaust, he
claimed, because it generates "tremendous financial aid" for Israel and
renders organized Jewry" almost immune from criticism." (10) In 1986 Duke
declared that Jews "deserve to go into the ashbin of history" and denied
that the gas chambers were erected to murder Jews but rather were intended
to kill the vermin infesting them. (11) Under Duke the NAAWP advocated the
segregation of all racial minorities in different sections of the United
States. (Jews were to be confined to "West Israel," which would be composed
of Manhattan and Long Island.)
In order most effectively to spread their lies, deniers such as Duke must
rewrite not only the history of World War II but also their own past lives.
In order to forge his way in the political arena, David Duke had to
reformulate his personal history. His efforts to distance himself from his
more extremist past are reflective of deniers' tactics. They increasingly
avoid being linked with identifiable bigots. When Duke was identified as a
Klansman his access to the public arena was limited. When he decided to run
for office he shed his sheet and donned a three-piece suit, winning him, if
not adherents, at least a respectable audience. He gained political
respectability despite the fact that but a short time earlier he had sold
racist, anti-semitic, and denial literature including The Hitler We Loved
and Why and The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, from his legislative offices.
(12)
But it is not only former members of extremist groups who serve as vehicles
for disseminating Holocaust denial. More mainstream individuals have
assisted in this effort as well. Patrick Buchanan, one of the foremost
right-wing conservative columnists in the country, used his widely
syndicated column to express views that come straight from the scripts of
Holocaust deniers. He argued that it was physically impossible for the gas
chamber at Treblinka to have functioned as a killing apparatus because the
diesel engines that powered it could not produce enough carbon monoxide to
be lethal. Buchanan's "proof" was a 1988 incident in which ninety-seven
passengers on a train in Washington, D.C., were stuck in a tunnel as the
train emitted carbon monoxide fumes. Because the passengers were not
harmed, Buchanan extrapolated that the victims in a gas chamber using
carbon monoxide from diesel engines would also not have been harmed. (13)
He ignored the fact that the gassings at Treblinka took as long as half an
hour and that the conditions created when people are jammed by the hundreds
into small enclosures, as they were at Treblinka, are dramatically
different from those experienced by a group of people sitting on a train.
Asked where he obtained this information, Buchanan responded, "Somebody
sent it to me." (14) Buchanan has also referred to the "so-called Holocaust
Survivor Syndrome." According to him, this involves "group fantasies of
martyrdom and heroics." (15) [Buchanan's statements were made as part of
his defense of John Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto worker accused of
being Ivan the Terrible, a notorious camp guard and a mass murderer at
Treblinka. It is not Buchanan's defense of Demjanjuk with which I take
issue - it is his use of denial arguments to do so. Buchanan has
consistently opposed any prosecution of Nazi war criminals.] I am not
suggesting that Patrick Buchanan is a Holocaust denier. He has never
publicly claimed that the Holocaust is a hoax. However, his attacks on the
credibility of survivors' testimony are standard elements of Holocaust
denial. Buchanan's ready acceptance of this information and reliance on it
to make his argument are disturbing, [It is ironic that Duke's efforts to
win the Republican presidential nomination were overshadowed by Buchanan,
who had earlier advocated that the Republicans stop feeling guilty about
their "exploitation" of the Willie Horton issue and instead take a "hard
look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues" (New Republic, October 15,
1990, p. 19).] for this is how elements of Holocaust denial find their way
into the general culture. During the 1992 presidential campaign, when
Buchanan was seeking the Republican nomination, he refused to retract these
contentions. Nonetheless few of his fellow journalists were willing to
challenge him on the matter. As troubling as Buchanan's easy acceptance of
these charges was the latitude given him by his colleagues. (16)
Denial arguments have been voiced not only by politicians in the United
States but by those in other countries as well. Extremist nationalist
groups in those Central and Eastern Europe countries with a tradition of
populist anti-semitism have a particular attraction to Holocaust denial.
Many of the precursors of these movements collaborated with the Nazis.
Holocaust denial offers them a means of both wiping out that historical
black mark - if there was no Holocaust then cooperating with the Nazis
becomes less inexcusable - and rehabilitating those who were punished by
Communists for collaborating. Since the fall of communism, deniers in North
America and Western Europe have worked with like-minded groups in Eastern
European countries to establish "mini" Institutes for Historical Review
(referring to the California based pseudo-academic institution that is the
bastion of denial activities and publications). Their objective is to
attract people, particularly intellectuals, who are seeking an extremist
nationalism cleansed of taints of Nazism. (17) Former Communist bloc
countries are particularly susceptible to this strain of pseudo-history
because postwar generations have learned virtually nothing about the
specifically Jewish nature of Nazi atrocities. The Communists, engaging in
their own form of revisionism, taught that it was the fascists (not
Germans) who killed Communists (not Jews). The specifically Jewish facet of
the tragedy was excised.
While no politician has based his or her entire campaign on Holocaust
denial, a number have used it when it was in their interest to do so.
Croatian president Franjo Tudjman wrote of the "biased testimonies and
exaggerated data" used to estimate the number of Holocaust victims. And in
his book Wastelands - Historical Truth, he always places the word Holocaust
in quotation marks. (18) Tudjman has good historical reasons for doing so:
Croatia was an ardent Nazi ally, and the vast majority of Croatian Jews and
non-Jews were murdered by their fellow Croatians, not by Germans. (19)
Tudjman obviously believes that one of the ways for his country to win
public sympathy is to diminish the importance of the Holocaust.
It is likely that as Eastern Europe is increasingly beset by nationalist
and internal rivalries, ethnic and political groups that collaborated in
the annihilation of the Jews will fall back on Tudjman's strategy of
minimization. In Slovakia crowds of protesters at political gatherings have
chanted anti-semitic and anti-Czech slogans and waved portraits of Nazi war
criminal Josef Tiso, who was directly involved in the deportation of
Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz. In an effort to whitewash Tiso's anti-semitism
during World War II and to resurrect him as a national hero, his speeches
have been broadcast at these rallies. For Slovakian separatists Tiso's
regime constitutes the legal and moral precedent for a sovereign Slovakia.
Neither Tudjman nor the Tiso protesters are engaged in overt denial.
However, their efforts to diminish the magnitude of the deeds and roles of
the central players are critically important aspects of Holocaust denial.
(20) There is a psychological dimension to the deniers' and minimizers'
objectives: The general public tends to accord victims of genocide a
certain moral authority. If you devictimize a people you strip them of
their moral authority, and if you can in turn claim to be a victim, as the
Poles and the Austrians often try to do, that moral authority is conferred
on or restored to you.
Holocaust denial, which has well-established roots in Western and Central
Europe, has in recent years manifested itself throughout the world. The
following brief survey demonstrates the breadth of the deniers' activities,
many of which shall be explored in greater depth in the chapters that
follow.
In 1992 a Belgian publisher of neo-Nazi material distributed thousands of
pamphlets purporting to offer scientific proof that the gas chambers were a
hoax. In 1988 in Britain over 30,000 copies of Holocaust News, a newsletter
which maintains that the Holocaust was a myth, were sent to Jewish
communities in London, Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, Cardiff, Norwich,
and Leicester as well as to lawyers, schools, and members of Parliament
throughout the country. (According to the Sunday Times, Holocaust News is
published by the overtly racist British National party - which is composed
of those who find the extremist National Front too mild. It campaigns for
the repatriation of Jews and non-whites.) (21)
In recent years Holocaust denial in England has undergone a disturbing new
development. David Irving, the writer of popular historical works
attempting to show that Britain made a tactical error in going to war
against Germany and that the Allies and the Nazis were equally at fault for
the war and its atrocities, has joined the ranks of the deniers, arguing
that the gas chambers were a "propaganda exercise." (22) Irving, long
considered a guru by the far right, does not limit his activities to
England. He has been particularly active in Germany, where he has regularly
participated in the annual meetings of the extremist German political party
Deutsche Volks Union. (23) In addition, he has frequently appeared at
extremist-sponsored rallies, meetings, and beer hall gatherings. Irving's
self-described mission in Germany is to point "promising young men"
throughout the country in the "right direction." (Irving believes women
were built for a "certain task, which is producing us [men]," and that they
should be "subservient to men." (24) Apparently, therefore, he has no
interest in pointing young women in the right direction. [His solution to
unemployment would be to declare the employment of a female a "criminal
offense."] Ironically, young Germans who are dedicated German nationalists
find Irving and other non-German deniers particularly credible because they
are not themselves Germans. (25)
In France, Holocaust denial activities have centered around Robert
Faurisson, a former professor of literature at the University of Lyons-2
whose work is often reprinted verbatim, both with and without attribution,
by deniers worldwide. According to Faurisson the "so-called gassings" of
Jews were a "gigantic politicofinancial swindle whose beneficiaries are the
state of Israel and international Zionism." Its chief victims were the
German people and the Palestinians. (26)
Phillip Martin
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:4333f7aa1d68b4e2...@remailer.metacolo.com...
> legitimate
> questions that I nor any other Holocaust scholar can answer. The risk of
> appearing
> stupid is too great.) Unwilling to accept my no as
> final, she vigorously condemned Holocaust denial and all it represented.
> Then, in one last attempt to get me to change my mind, she asked me a
> question: "I certainly don't agree with them, but don't you think our
> viewers should hear the other side?"
>
> of people
> who are questioning the holocaust has grown dramatically ever since
> Schindler's List
> won Best Picture. The more people read about the facts of the Holocaust
> the more
> ridiculous it sounds.
>
> Indeed, in the months before I completed this manuscript, I had one form
> or
> another of this conversation too many times. A plethora of television and
> radio shows have discovered Holocaust denial. Recently the producer of a
> nationally syndicated television talk show was astounded when I turned
> down
> the opportunity to appear because it would entail "discussing" the issue
> with two deniers. She was even more taken aback when she learned that hers
> was not the first invitation I had rejected. Ironically - or perhaps
> frighteningly - she had turned to me because she read my work while taking
> a course on the Holocaust. When the show aired, in April 1992 deniers were
> given the bulk of the time to speak their piece. Then Holocaust survivors
> were brought on to try to "refute" their comments. Before the commercial
> break the host, Montel Williams, urged viewers to stay tuned so that they
> to
> know his place and do what Jews told him to do is the reason his show
> was cancelled.
>
> My refusal to appear on such shows with deniers is inevitably met by
> producers with some variation on the following challenge: Shouldn't we
> hear
> their ideas, opinions, or point of view? Their willingness to ascribe to
> the deniers and their myths the legitimacy of a point of view is of as
> great, if not greater, concern than are the activities of the deniers
> themselves. What is wrong, I am repeatedly asked, with people hearing a
> "different perspective"? Unable to make the distinction between genuine
> the issue in this light are important assets in the deniers' attempts to
> spread their claims. This is precisely the deniers' goal: They aim to
> scholarly effort when, of course, doing so attempts to make us look
> stuipd.
> are not. The attempt to deny the Holocaust is something nobody does.
> Holocaust
> deniers attempt to raise legitimate questions about certain aspects of the
> Holocaust
> that have become fundamental to our story. We enlist a basic strategy of
> absolute lies, confusing readers who are unfamiliar with the tactics of
> the
> information, leave the listener with a distorted impression of what really
> happened. The abundance of documents and testimonies that confirm the
> information
> obtained under torture or if they arise from the tragically flawed
> Nuremburg proceedings.
truth and memory
"criticism of texts and documents, investigation of meaning and
counter-meaning, of the true and the false." (27) There is a definite irony
in his choice of field because Faurisson, whose methodologies have been
adopted by virtually all other deniers, regularly creates facts where none
exist and dismisses as false any information inconsistent with his
preconceived conclusions. He asserts, for example, that the German army was
given "Draconian orders" not to participate in "excesses" against civilians
including the Jews; consequently, the massive killings of Jews could not
have happened. In making this argument Faurisson simply ignores the
activities of the Einsatzgruppen, the units responsible for killing vast
numbers of Jews. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, one of Faurisson's prime adversaries
in France and someone who has studied him closely, observed that Faurisson
is particularly adept at finding "an answer for everything" when
encountering information that contradicts his claims.
Faurisson interprets the Nazi decree which mandated that Jews wear a yellow
star on pain of death as a measure to ensure the safety of German soldiers,
because Jews, he argues, engaged in espionage, terrorism, black market
operations, and arms trafficking. German soldiers needed a means to protect
themselves against this formidable enemy. He even had an explanation as to
why Jewish children were required to start wearing the star at age six:
They too were engaged in "all sorts of illicit or resistance activities
against the Germans" against which the soldiers had to be protected.
Documents containing information that Faurisson cannot explain away or
reinterpret, he falsifies. Regarding the brutal German destruction of the
Warsaw ghetto, Faurisson wrote that in April 1943, "suddenly, right behind
the front," the Jews started an insurrection. The ghetto revolt, for which
the Jews built seven hundred bunkers, was proof of the quite serious threat
the Jews posed to German military security. Although it is true that the
Jews started an insurrection, it was not right behind the front but
hundreds of miles from it. Faurisson's source for the information regarding
the insurrection and the bunkers was a speech delivered in Posen in October
1943 by the Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. But even Himmler was more honest
than Faurisson: He described the uprisings as taking place in Warsaw and in
"territories in the rear." (28)
Faurisson has not worked alone in France. In June 1985 the University of
Nantes awarded a doctoral degree to a Faurisson protege, Henri Roques, for
a dissertation accusing Kurt Gerstein, one of those who transmitted the
news of the gas chambers to the Allies, of being a "master magician" who
created an illusion that the world accepted as fact. (29) Implicitly
denying the existence of the gas chambers, Roques tried to prove that
Gerstein's reports were so laden with inconsistencies that he could not
possibly have witnessed gassings at Belzec, as he maintained. There exist a
variety of official documents and testimonies attesting to Gerstein's
presence at these gassings. Roques, adhering to his mentor's pattern of
ignoring any document that contradicts his pre-existing conclusions, simply
excluded this material from his dissertation. (30) (After a public uproar
Roques' doctoral degree was revoked by the French minister of higher
education in 1986.) (31)
Though Faurisson and most of his admirers are on the political right, they
and their activities have been abetted by an extreme left-wing
revolutionary group, La Vieille Taupe (The Old Mole). (32) Originally a
bookstore, it has become a publishing house that shelters an informal
coterie of revolutionary types. Under the direction of its proprietor,
Pierre Guillaume, it has distributed periodicals, cassettes, comic books,
journals, and broadsheets all attesting to the Holocaust hoax. Guillaume is
France's leading publisher of neo-Nazi material. Twenty-four hours after
the Klaus Barbie trial began in France, the first issue of Annals of
Historical Revisionism, a journal edited by Guillaume and containing
articles by Faurisson, was distributed for sale to Paris bookstores and
kiosks. (33)
Suggestions of Holocaust denial have come from French political figures as
well. The leader of the far right National Front, Jean Marie Le Pen,
declared in 1987 that the gas chambers were a mere "detail" of World War
II. In a radio interview he asserted that he had never seen any gas
chambers and that historians had doubts about their existence. "Are you
trying to tell me [the existence of gas chambers] is a revealed truth that
everyone has to believe?" Le Pen asked rhetorically. "There are historians
who are debating such questions." (34) Le Pen, who has complained that
there are too many Jews in the French media, is considered the leader of
Europe's extreme right. A charismatic speaker, he has exploited French
fears about the immigration of Arabs from North Africa and has espoused the
kind of right-wing anti-semitism associated with the Dreyfus affair.
Popular support for Le Pen in France has been as high as 17%. In the 1988
presidential election he received 14.4% of the popular vote, coming in
fourth overall. (35)
Shades of Holocaust denial were evident at the Klaus Barbie trial when
defense attorneys, attempting to diminish the significance of the
Holocaust, argued that forcing people into gas chambers was no different
from killing people in a war, and that it was no more of a crime to murder
millions of Jews because they were Jews than it was to fight against
Algerians, Vietnamese, Africans, or Palestinians who were attempting to
free themselves from foreign rule. (36) These slight-of-hand attempts at
moral equivalence constitute a basic tactic of those who hover on the
periphery of Holocaust denial. (See chapter 11 for an analysis of Holocaust
relativism in Germany.)
In 1978 Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Vichy France's commissioner of Jewish
affairs and the person responsible for coordinating the deportation of
Vichy Jews to death camps, told the French weekly L'Express that the Nazi
genocide was a typical Jewish hoax. "There was no genocide you must get
that out of your head." Expressing the standard denier's explanation for
this hoax, he charged that the Jews' aim was to "make Jerusalem the capital
of the world." The rather ambiguous headline of the article, which ran
without any editorial comments, was "Only Lice Were Gassed in Auschwitz."
(37) Leon Degrelle, the leader of the World War II fascist movement in
Belgium and a Nazi collaborator, called on the European right to accept
neo-Nazis as honorable allies. He also wrote an "Open Letter to the Pope
about Auschwitz," informing the Polish-born cleric, who had witnessed the
war at close range, that there were no gas chambers or mass annihilation in
Hitler's Third Reich and that Jews who had been killed were actually
murdered by American and British bombings. (38) But one does not have to be
a committed neo-Nazi to be receptive to deniers' arguments. In Paris, in an
interview with the leftist monthly Le Globe, Claude Autant-Lara, one of
France's most acclaimed film directors and at the time a member of the
European parliament, described the Holocaust as a legend "stuffed" with
lies and claimed that France was in the hands of a left-wing cabal
dominated by Jewish internationalists and cosmopolitans. (39)
In Austria, where the Kurt Waldheim affair uncovered hidden anti-semitism,
Holocaust denial has been centered around a number of neo-Nazi publications
including the newspaper Sieg, which states that the number of Jews who died
under Nazi rule was less than 200,000. (40) The publisher, Walter
Ochensberger, has been repeatedly convicted by Austrian courts for the
crime of "incitement." During lecture tours in various countries including
the United States, he has preached the doctrine of denial. (41) The
publisher of another neo-Nazi denial magazine, Halt, was indicted for
Holocaust denial activities. (42) In addition to Sieg and Halt, denial
publications targeted at schoolchildren have appeared in Austria. (43)
Since the late 1980s the American Ku Klux Klan has established groups in
both Germany and Austria. These groups have added Holocaust denial to their
traditional racist extremism. (44)
In certain parts of Europe, Holocaust denial has found its way into the
general population. In the fall of 1992 a public opinion poll in Italy,
where a wide array of denial publications have appeared, revealed that
close to 10% of the Italian population believe the Holocaust never
happened. (45)
Denial arguments have permeated the work of those who would not describe
themselves as deniers. An English play entitled Perdition charged that
Zionist leaders both during and after the war were a separate class of rich
capitalists who betrayed the Jewish masses to the Nazis. The playwright
described the Holocaust as a "cozy set of family secrets, skeletons in
closets." In a key passage, the leading character charges that Jews who
died in Auschwitz "were murdered, not just by the force of German arms but
by calculated treachery of their own Jewish leaders." (46) Though the play
did not deny the Holocaust, the result was the same: The perpetrators were
absolved and the victims held responsible.
But it has not only been Europe that has witnessed this phenomenon. Since
1965, Holocaust denial material has been available throughout Latin
America. In Brazil, much of it has been released by a publishing house
specializing in Portuguese language anti-semitic materials. This publisher
recently claimed that within four years of publication, one of its denial
books had appeared in twenty-eight editions and was read by 200,000 people.
(Though the figures may be highly inflated, the publisher did boost sales
by offering bookstore owners extremely generous terms, allowing them to
keep half the cover price as opposed to the usual 30%, and giving them 120
days to pay, a major benefit in a country with a 40% monthly inflation
rate. Obviously, profit was not the publisher's primary motive.) (47)
Holocaust deniers have also been active in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and
Peru. In Australia and New Zealand, Holocaust denial has adopted a
particularly deceptive guise. The Australian Civil Liberties Union,
camouflaging its intentions behind a facade of defending civil liberties,
is in fact an ardently anti-semitic organization. Its bookstore sells an
array of traditional anti-semitic works, including denial tracts and its
leader, John Bennett, has called the Holocaust a "gigantic lie" designed to
foster support for Israel. Under him the Union has distributed denial and
neo-Nazi material and arranged for radio interviews by Fred Leuchter, the
self-described "engineer" and gas chamber expert who claims to have
conducted scientific tests at Auschwitz and Majdanek proving that the gas
chambers there could not have functioned as homicidal killing units. (For
an analysis of Leuchter's report see chapter 9 and the Appendix).The
league's meetings have been addressed by an assortment of Holocaust
deniers, including hard core Nazis and representatives of the
California-based Institute for Historical Review. When Leuchter was in
Australia, he was interviewed on the radio and given other significant
media coverage. The league, which uses conspiracy theories to attract
economically vulnerable members of the working class, informed unemployed
timber workers that their jobs had been lost because Jewish bankers had
taken over their forests and lands. (48) The Australian Human Rights and
Equal Opportunities Commission describes the league as the most
"influential and effective as well as the best-organized and most
substantially financed racist organization in Australia." (49)
New Zealand has its own League of Rights whose activities approximate those
of its Australian counterpart. Because these leagues do not have the same
offensive public image that some of the more blatantly anti-semitic and
neo-Nazi groups do, they have been more successful at winning popular
support. By projecting an image of being committed to the defense of free
speech, these pseudo-human rights organizations have attracted followers
who would normally shun neo-Nazi and overtly anti-semitic organizations and
activities. The manner in which they obfuscate and camouflage their agenda
is the tactic Holocaust deniers will increasingly adopt in the future. It
is part of the movement's strategy to infiltrate the mainstream.
In Japan, an array of anti-semitic books have reached the best-seller list
in recent years. Masami Uno, the author of some of the most popular of
these books, asserts that Jews form a "behind-the-scenes nation"
controlling American corporations. His books link Jews to Japan's deepest
economic fears, declaring America a "Jewish nation" and proclaiming Jews
responsible for Japan bashing. Uno, whose books have sold millions of
copies, has told Japanese audiences that the Holocaust is a hoax and the
Diary of Anne Frank full of "lies." (50) Holocaust denial in Japan must be
seen as part of the country's revisionist attitude toward World War II in
general. Japan has ignored those aspects of the war that focus on its own
wrongdoings. Japanese textbooks distort the historical reality of the
Japanese "rape of Nanking," calling it the "Nanking Incident." No mention
either is made of the medical experiments conducted by the Japanese on
prisoners of war, or the army's exploitation of Korean "comfort women."
Even the attack on Pearl Harbor is presented as a defense tactic which the
Japanese were compelled to take because of America's refusal to acquiesce
to reasonable Japanese demands. The use of Koreans as slave labor is also
left unmentioned in official war histories. (51) Since the Holocaust
deniers try to prove that it was the Allies, not the Axis, who committed
atrocities during World War II, Holocaust denial may find an increasingly
receptive audience in Japan, particularly if the economic situation there
worsens and a scapegoat is needed.
Not surprisingly, given deniers' objective of delegitimizing Israel, Arab
countries have proven particularly receptive. During the 1970s, when
Holocaust denial was first trying to present itself as a credible academic
enterprise, Saudi Arabia financed the publication of a number of books
accusing Jews of creating the Holocaust hoax in order to win support for
Israel. These books were distributed worldwide. (52) Articles denying the
genocide against the Jews have appeared in publications of the Palestine
Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, an
affiliate of the International Red Cross. The latter published an article
charging that "the lie concerning the existence of gas chambers enabled the
Jews to establish the State of Israel." (53) Another article in a
Palestinian journal chided Jews for complaining about Gestapo treatment
when they were really "served healthy food" by the Germans. (54) Arabs have
long argued that Israel was created by the United Nations because the world
felt guilty over Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. The deniers' claims
add fuel to these charges. Not only did the world, as Robert Faurisson said
to me, displace one people "from its land so another could acquire it," but
Holocaust denial proves that it was deceived into doing so. (55)
The confluence between anti-Israel, anti-semitic, and Holocaust denial
forces was exemplified by a world anti-Zionist conference scheduled for
Sweden in November 1992. Though canceled at the last minute by the Swedish
government, scheduled speakers included Black Muslim leader Louis
Farrakhan, Faurisson, Irving, and Leuchter. Also scheduled to participate
were representatives of a variety of anti-semitic and anti-Israel
organizations, including the Russian group Pamyat, the Iranian-backed
Hezbollah, and the fundamentalist Islamic organization Hamas. (56)
Echoes of Holocaust denial have also been heard from individuals who are
not associated with extremist or overtly anti-semitic groups. In an
interview with Esquire magazine in February 1983, Robert Mitchum, who
played a leading role in the television production of Herman Wouk's World
War II saga, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, suggested that there was
doubt about the Holocaust. Asked about the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews, he
replied, "so the Jews say." The interviewer, incredulous, repeated
Mitchum's comment verbatim, "So the Jews say?" and Mitchum responded, "I
don't know. People dispute that." (57)
The editor of The Progressive, a socialist monthly, recently observed that
while he is used to receiving a significant amount of "crackpot mail," the
material he receives from Holocaust deniers is a "more subtly packed,
slicker" form of hate propaganda. Despite its restrained and objective
tone, he wondered who if anyone might be convinced by such "pernicious
rot." His question was answered when he received a letter from a high
school senior who described himself as eager for articles that grappled
with difficult ideas. He complimented the editor for the wide variety of
topics covered in the magazine but urged that he also address
"controversial ideas about the Holocaust" such as the existence of gas
chambers. The editor, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, wrote the young
student assuring him that if he meant to suggest that there were no gas
chambers he was wrong. The student sent back a strongly worded challenge
asking the editor to reveal precisely how many gas chambers he had actually
seen and how he had managed to survive. (58)
In Illinois, two parents have conducted an extremely focused letter
campaign against the state law that mandates teaching of the Holocaust in
all schools in the state. Though many of their arguments are the standard
charges repeated ad infinitum in denial publications, these parents have
added a new element, threatening to withdraw their children from classes
that taught the history of the Holocaust to protect them from "this highly
questionable and vulgar hate material." (59) Their letter, sent to
thousands of people including elected officials, educators, academicians,
and parents, asked recipients to ponder how it was that a small minority
was able to use the school systems and to "manipulate our children for
their political and national purposes." (60)
The inroads deniers have been able to make into the American educational
establishment are most disconcerting. Defenders - Noam Chomsky probably the
best known among them - have turned up in a variety of quarters. The MIT
professor of linguistics wrote the introduction to a book by Faurisson.
Faurisson, whom the New York Times described as having "no particular
prominence on the French intellectual or academic scene," has argued that
one of the reasons he does not believe that homicidal gas chambers existed
is that no death-camp victim has given eyewitness testimony of actual
gassings. (61) This argument contradicts accepted standards of evidence. It
is as if a jury refused to convict a serial killer until one of his victims
came back to say, "Yes, he is the one who killed me." Such reasoning is so
soft that it makes one wonder who could possibly take him seriously.
Moreover, it ignores the extensive testimony of the Sonderkommandos who
dragged the bodies from the gas chambers.
Chomsky contended that, based on what he had read of Faurisson's work, he
saw "no proof" that would lead him to conclude that the Frenchman was an
anti-semite. (62) According to Chomsky, not even Faurisson's claims that
the Holocaust is a "Zionist lie" are proof of his anti-semitism. "Is it
anti-semitic to speak of Zionist lies? Is Zionism the first nationalist
movement in history not to have concocted lies in its own interest?" (63)
That students editing a college newspaper or television producers
interested in winning viewers should prove unable to make such distinctions
is disturbing. That someone of Chomsky's stature should confuse the issue
is appalling. Indeed, it was this kind of reasoning that led Alfred Kazin
to describe Chomsky as a "dupe of intellectual pride so overweening that he
is incapable of making distinctions between totalitarian and democratic
societies, between oppressors and victims." (64) Though Chomsky is his own
unique case, his spirited defense of the deniers shocked many people
including those who thought they were inured to his antics.
In his essay Chomsky argued that scholars' ideas cannot be censored
irrespective of how distasteful they may be. [It is ironic that this
internationally known professor should have become such a defender of
Faurisson's right to speak when he would have denied those same rights to
proponents of America's involvement in Vietnam. In American Power and the
New Mandarins he wrote, "By accepting the presumption of legitimacy of
debate on certain issues, one has already lost one's humanity." Though
written long before the Faurisson affair, his comments constitute the most
accurate assessment of his own behavior.] Throughout this imbroglio Chomsky
claimed that his interest was Faurisson's civil rights and freedom to make
his views known. (65) During the past few years, as deniers have
intensified their efforts to insinuate themselves into the university world
by placing ads denying the Holocaust in campus newspapers, echoes of
Chomsky's arguments have been voiced by students, professors, and even
university presidents. (See chapter 10 for additional information about
denial on campus.) In response to student and faculty protests about the
decision of the Duke Chronicle to run an ad denying the Holocaust, the
president of Duke University, Keith Brodie, said that to have done
otherwise would have "violated our commitment to free speech and
contradicted Duke's long tradition of supporting First Amendment rights."
(66) Brodie failed to note that the paper had recently rejected an ad it
deemed offensive to women. No one had complained about possible violations
of the First Amendment.
truth and memory
stand on any street corner and spread their calumnies. They have the right
to publish their articles and books and hold their gatherings. But free
speech does not guarantee them the right to be treated as the "other" side
of a legitimate debate. Nor does it guarantee them space on op-ed pages or
time on television and radio shows. Most important, it does not call for
people such as Chomsky to stand by them and thereby commend their views to
the public. [Chomsky's behavior can be contrasted with that of 34 of
France's leading historians who, in response to Faurisson's efforts, issued
a declaration protesting his attempt to deny the Holocaust. The declaration
read in part: "Everyone is free to interpret a phenomenon like the
Hitlerite genocide according to his own philosophy. Everyone is free to
compare it with other enterprises of murder committed earlier, at the same
time, later. Everyone is free to offer such or such kind of explanations;
everyone is free, to the limit, to imagine or to dream that these monstrous
deeds did not take place. Unfortunately, they did take place and no one can
deny their existence without committing an outrage on the truth. It is not
necessary to ask how technically such mass murder was possible. It was
technically possible, seeing that it took place. That is the required point
of departure of every historical inquiry on this subject. This truth it
behooves us to remember in simple terms: there is not and there cannot be a
debate about the existence of the gas chambers." The full text of the
declaration appeared in Le Monde, February 21, 1979.]
We have only witnessed the beginning of this movement's efforts to permeate
cultural, historical, and educational orbits. They must be taken seriously:
Far more than the history of the Holocaust is at stake.
While Holocaust denial is not a new phenomenon, it has increased in scope
and intensity since the mid-1970s. It is important to understand that the
deniers do not work in a vacuum. Part of their success can be traced to an
intellectual climate that has made its mark in the scholarly world during
the past two decades. The deniers are plying their trade at a time when
much of history seems to be up for grabs and attacks on the Western
rationalist tradition have become commonplace.
This tendency can be traced, at least in part, to intellectual currents
that began to emerge in the late 1960s. Various scholars began to argue
that texts had no fixed meaning. The reader's interpretation, not the
author's intention, determined meaning. Duke University professor Stanley
Fish is most closely associated with this approach in the literary field.
(67) It became more difficult to talk about the objective truth of a text,
legal concept, or even an event. In academic circles some scholars spoke of
relative truths, rejecting the notion that there was one version of the
world that was necessarily right while another was wrong. (68) Proponents
of this methodology, such as the prominent and widely read philosopher
Richard Rorty, denied the allegation that they believed that two
incompatible views on a significant issue were of equal worth. (69) But
others disagreed. Hilary Putnam, one of the most influential contemporary
academic philosophers, thought it particularly dangerous because it seemed
to suggest that every conceptual system was "just as good as the other."
(70) Still others rightfully worried that it opened the doors of the
academy, and of society at large, to an array of farfetched notions that
could no longer be dismissed out of hand simply because they were absurd.
Nonetheless, as a methodology this approach to texts had something to
recommend it. It placed an important, though possibly overstated, emphasis
on the role played by the reader's perspective in assigning meaning to a
text. It was also a reminder that the interpretations of the less powerful
groups in society have generally been ignored. But it also fostered an
atmosphere in which it became harder to say that an idea was beyond the
pale of rational thought. At its most radical it contended that there was
no bedrock thing such as experience. Experience was mediated through one's
language. The scholars who supported this deconstructionist approach were
neither deniers themselves nor sympathetic to the deniers' attitudes; most
had no trouble identifying Holocaust denial as disingenuous. But because
deconstructionism argued that experience was relative and nothing was
fixed, it created an atmosphere of permissiveness toward questioning the
meaning of historical events and made it hard for its proponents to assert
that there was anything "off limits" for this skeptical approach. The
legacy of this kind of thinking was evident when students had to confront
the issue. Far too many of them found it impossible to recognize Holocaust
denial as a movement with no scholarly, intellectual, or rational validity.
A sentiment had been generated in society - not just on campus - that made
it difficult to say: "This has nothing to do with ideas. This is bigotry."
This relativistic approach to the truth has permeated the arena of popular
culture, where there is an increasing fascination with, and acceptance of,
the irrational. One area in which this has been evident is in the recurring
debate regarding the assassination of President Kennedy. While there is
reason to question some of the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the
theories regarding the killing that have increasingly gained acceptance
border on the irrational. Notions of a conspiracy within the highest
echelons of American government are readily accepted as plausible.
According to Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK, a coup d'Etat was underway in
the United States, with the collusion of the vice president, Joint Chiefs
of Staff, chief justice of the United States, FBI, CIA, members of
Congress, and the Mafia. Stone's film imposed a neat coherence on a mass of
confusing information, providing a self-contained explanation for what
still seemed to be an unbelievable event. Many reviewers and moviegoers
alike pondered these charges with great seriousness. In another debasing of
history, serious credence has been given to reverse racist charges about
white scholarship. Some extremist Afrocentrists, who rightfully assert that
Africa's role in shaping Western civilization is too often ignored, would
have us believe that the basis of all intellectual and scientific thought
as we know it originated on that continent. Leonard Jeffries, professor of
Afro-American studies at New York's City College, has declared blacks to be
"sun people" and whites "ice people." All that is warm, communal, and full
of hope comes from the former; all that is oppressive, cold, and rigid from
the latter. (71) In these instances, history is rewritten for political
ends and scientific historiography is replaced, in the words of Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard, with
"ideological conformity." (72) Scholars who might once have dismissed these
outlandish views feel compelled to treat them as having some validity.
These attacks on history and knowledge have the potential to alter
dramatically the way established truth is transmitted from generation to
generation. Ultimately the climate they create is of no less importance
than the specific truth they attack - be it the Holocaust or the
assassination of President Kennedy. It is a climate that fosters
deconstructionist history at its worst. No fact, no event, and no aspect of
history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact
can be recast. There is no ultimate historical reality.
Holocaust denial is part of this phenomenon. It is not an assault on the
history of one particular group. Though denial of the Holocaust may be an
attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews, at its core it poses
a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are among the
keystones of our civilization. Just as the Holocaust was not a tragedy of
the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews, so
too denial of the Holocaust is not a threat just to Jewish history but a
threat to all who believe in the ultimate power of reason. It repudiates
reasoned discussion the way the Holocaust repudiated civilized values. It
is undeniably a form of anti-semitism, and as such it constitutes an attack
on the most basic values of a reasoned society. Like any form of prejudice,
it is an irrational animus that cannot be countered with the normal forces
of investigation, argument, and debate. The deniers' arguments are at their
roots not only anti-semitic and anti-intellectual but, in the words of
historian Charles Maier, "blatantly racist anthropology." (73) Holocaust
denial is the apotheosis of irrationalism.
Because the movement to disseminate these myths is neither scholarship nor
historiography, I have chosen to eschew the term revisionism whenever
possible and instead to use the term denial to describe it. The deniers'
selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of
their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to
portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional
practice of illuminating the past. For historians, in fact, the name
revisionism has a resonance that is perfectly legitimate - it recalls the
controversial historical school known as World War I "revisionists," who
argued that the Germans were unjustly held responsible for the war and that
consequently the Versailles treaty was a politically misguided document
based on a false premise. Thus the deniers link themselves to a specific
historiographic tradition of re-evaluating the past. Claiming the mantle of
the World War I revisionists and denying they have any objective other than
the dissemination of the truth constitute a tactical attempt to acquire an
intellectual credibility that would otherwise elude them.
Revisionism is also the name given to a more contemporary approach to
historical research. Associated with the noted historian William Appleman
Williams, a past president of the Organization of American Historians, it
addresses itself to questions of American foreign policy particularly as
they relate to the origins of the Cold War and the conflict between the
West and the Communist world. Because this form of revisionism is critical
of American foreign policy, which it sees as motivated by a desire for
hegemony via open-door imperialism, it is a useful model for the deniers.
(74) While many historians strongly disagree with its particular bias, all
agree that for the "Wisconsin school," as Williams's followers came to be
known, and its descendants, the canons of evidence are as incontrovertible
as they are for all other historians. In contrast, evidence plays no role
for deniers.
Finally I abjure the term revisionist because on some level revisionism is
what all legitimate historians engage in. Historians are not just
chroniclers - they do not simply retell the tale. Each one tries to glean
some new insight or understanding from a story already known, seeking some
new way of interpreting the past to help us better understand the present.
That interpretation always involves some constant "revisioning" of the
past. By its very nature the business of interpretation cannot be purely
objective. But it is built on a certain body of irrefutable evidence:
Slavery happened; so did the Black Plague and the Holocaust.
In order to maintain their facade as a group whose only objective is the
pursuit of truth, the deniers have filled their publications with articles
that ostensibly have nothing to do with World War II but are designed to
demonstrate that theirs is a global effort to attack and revise historical
falsehoods. Articles on the Civil War, World War I, and Pearl Harbor are
included in their journals as a means of illustrating how establishment
historians, with ulterior political motives, have repeatedly put forward
distorted views of history. The deniers aim to undermine readers' faith in
"orthodox" historians' commitment to transmitting the truth. They argue
that this tactic of distortion by "court historians" for political means
reached its zenith in the Holocaust "myth."
What claims do the deniers make? The Holocaust - the attempt to annihilate
the Jewish people - never happened. Typical of the deniers' attempt to
obfuscate is their claim that they do not deny that there was a Holocaust,
only that there was a plan or an attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
(75) They have distorted and deconstructed the definition of the term
Holocaust. But this and all the ancillary claims that accompany it are
embedded in a series of other arguments. They begin with a relatively
innocuous supposition: War is evil. Assigning blame to one side is
ultimately a meaningless enterprise. Since the central crime of which the
Nazis are accused never happened, there really is no difference in this
war, as in any other, between victor and vanquished. (76) Still, they
assert, if guilt is to be assigned, it is not the Germans who were guilty
of aggression and atrocities during the war. The real crimes against
civilization were committed by the Americans, Russians, Britons, and French
against the Germans. The atrocities inflicted on the Germans by the Allies
were - in the words of Harry Elmer Barnes, a once-prominent historian and
one of the seminal figures in the history of North American Holocaust
denial - "more brutal and painful than the alleged exterminations in the
gas chambers." (77) Once we recognize that the Allies were the aggressors,
we must turn to the Germans and, in the words of Austin App, a professor of
English literature who became one of the major "theoreticians" of Holocaust
denial, implore them "to forgive us the awful atrocities our policy caused
to be inflicted upon them." (78)
For some deniers Hitler was a man of peace, pushed into war by the
aggressive Allies. (79) According to them, the Germans suffered the bombing
of Dresden, wartime starvation, invasions, postwar population transfers
from areas of Germany incorporated into post-war Poland, victor's vengeance
at Nuremberg, and brutal mistreatment by Soviet and Allied occupiers.
Portrayed as a criminal nation that had committed outrageous atrocities,
Germany became and remains a victim of the world's emotional and scholarly
aggression.
But it is showing the Holocaust to have been a myth that is the deniers'
real agenda. They contend that the ultimate injustice is the false
accusation that Germans committed the most heinous crime in human history.
The postwar venom toward Germany has been so extreme that Germans have
found it impossible to defend themselves. Consequently, rather than fight
this ignominious accusation, they decided to acknowledge their complicity.
This seeming contradiction - namely that the perpetrators admit they
committed a crime while those who were not present exonerate them -
presents a potential problem for the deniers. How can a group that did not
witness what happened claim that the perpetrators are innocent while the
perpetrators acknowledge their guilt? The deniers explain this problem away
by arguing that in the aftermath of World War II the Germans faced a
strategic conflict. In order to be readmitted to the "family of nations,"
they had to confess their wrongdoing, even though they knew that these
charges were false. They were in the same situation as a defendant who has
been falsely convicted of committing horrendous crimes. He knows he will be
more likely to receive a lenient sentence if he admits his guilt, shows
contrition, and makes amends. So too the innocent Germans admitted their
guilt and made (and continue to make) financial amends.
The defendants at the war crimes trials adopted a similar strategy. They
admitted that the Holocaust happened but tried to vindicate themselves by
claiming they were not personally guilty. Arthur Butz, a professor of
electrical engineering at Northwestern University, is the denier who has
most fully developed this theory of what I call incrimination to avoid
self-incrimination. (For a fuller treatment of this see chapter 7.) Deniers
acknowledge that some Jews were incarcerated in places such as Auschwitz,
but, they maintain, as they did at the trial of a Holocaust denier in
Canada, it was equipped with "all the luxuries of a country club,"
including a swimming pool, dance hall, and recreational facilities. (80)
Some Jews may have died, they said, but this was the natural consequence of
wartime deprivations. [In an apparent emulation of the deniers, a small
group of Americans, led by a woman in California, Lillian Baker, has made
the same claims about the World War II Japanese concentration camps in the
United States. Manzanar, the infamous concentration camp for Japanese
Americans, contained only "voluntary visitors." They were treated royally,
given every amenity, and had "all they could eat at our government's
expense." Like the Jews, Baker and her group claim, the contemporary
Japanese Americans who foster this hoax have a rationale for doing so - to
divert attention from their community's complicity with Japan during the
war (Los Angeles Times, August 28 and December 6, 1991).]
The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but
victimizers. They "stole" billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good
name by spreading the "myth" of the Holocaust, and won international
sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the
paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to
"displace" another people so that the state of Israel could be established.
(81) This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin
of their argument. It constitutes a motive for the creation of the
Holocaust "legend" by the Jews. Once the deniers add this to the equation,
the essential elements of their argument are in place.
Some have a distinct political objective: If there was no Holocaust, what
is so wrong with national socialism? It is the Holocaust that gives fascism
a bad name. Extremist groups know that every time they extol the virtues of
national socialism they must contend with the question: If it was so
benign, how was the Holocaust possible? Before fascism can be resurrected,
this blot must be removed. At first they attempted to justify it; now they
deny it. This is the means by which those who still advocate the principles
of fascism attempt to reintroduce it as a viable political system (see
chapter 6). For many falsifiers this, not anti-semitism, is their primary
agenda. It is certainly a central theme for the European deniers on the
emerging far right.
When one first encounters them it is easy to wonder who could or would take
them seriously. Given the preponderance of evidence from victims,
bystanders, and perpetrators, and given the fact that the deniers are so
illogical, it appears to be ludicrous to devote much, if any, mental energy
to them. They are a group motivated by a strange conglomeration of
conspiracy theories, delusions, and neo-Nazi tendencies. The natural
inclination of many rational people, including historians and social
scientists, is to dismiss them as an irrelevant fringe group. Some have
equated them with the flat-earth theorists, worthy at best of bemused
attention but not of serious analysis or concern. They regard Holocaust
denial as quirky and malicious but do not believe it poses a clear and
present danger.
There are a number of compelling reasons not to dismiss the deniers and
their beliefs so lightly. First, their methodology has changed in the past
decade. Initially Holocaust denial was an enterprise engaged in by a small
group of political extremists. Their arguments tended to appear in poorly
printed pamphlets and in right-wing newspapers such as the Spotlight,
Thunderbolt, or the Ku Klux Klan's Crusader. In recent years, however,
their productivity has increased, their style has changed, and,
consequently, their impact has been enhanced. They disguise their political
and ideological agendas. (82) Their subterfuge enhances the danger they
pose. Their publications, including the Journal of Historical Review - the
leading denial journal - mimic legitimate scholarly works, generating
confusion among those who (like the Yale history student) do not
immediately recognize the Journal's intention. Their books and journals
have been given an academic format, and they have worked hard to find ways
to insinuate themselves into the arena of historical deliberation. One of
the primary loci of their activities is the college campus, where they have
tried to stimulate a debate on the existence of the Holocaust. It is here
that they may find their most fertile field, as is evident from the success
they have had in placing advertisements that deny the Holocaust in college
newspapers (see chapter 10). They have also begun to make active use of
computer bulletin boards, where they post their familiar arguments. Certain
computer networks have been flooded with their materials. Their objective
is to plant seeds of doubt that will bear fruit in coming years, when there
are no more survivors or eyewitnesses alive to attest to the truth. There
is an obvious danger in assuming that because Holocaust denial is so
outlandish it can be ignored. The deniers' worldview is no more bizarre
than that enshrined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a report
purporting to be the text of a secret plan to establish Jewish world
supremacy. (83) The deniers draw inspiration from the Protocols, which has
enjoyed a sustained and vibrant life despite the fact it has long been
proved a forgery.
Many years ago the prominent German historian Theodor Mommsen warned that
it would be a mistake to believe that reason alone was enough to keep
people from believing such falsehoods. If this were the case, he said, then
racism, anti-semitism, and other forms of prejudice would find no home. To
expect rational dialogue to constitute the sole barriers against the
attempts to deny the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry would be to ignore
one of the ultimate lessons of the event itself: Reasoned dialogue has a
limited ability to withstand an assault by the mythic power of falsehood,
especially when that falsehood is rooted in an age-old social and cultural
phenomenon. There was no rational basis to the Nazi atrocities. There was,
however, the mythic appeal of anti-semitism. Hitler and the Nazis
understood this. Mythical thinking and the force of the irrational have a
strange and compelling allure for the educated and uneducated alike.
Intellectuals in Nazi Germany were not immune from irrational, mystical
thinking. So, too, among the deniers.
B'enjamin C'ramer
> DENYING THE HOLOCAUST
>
> The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
Fucked yourself right there, haven't you.
There is no "truth" in the yid's version of the Holocaust(tm).
B'enjamin C'ramer
NEVER FORGET: "Deborah Lipstadt, author of the anti-revisionist polemic
Denying the Holocaust, has assigned [Binjamin Wilkormiski's book] Fragments
in her Emory University class on Holocaust memoirs. When confronted with
evidence that it is a fraud [the author spent the war in comfort in
Switzerland, not Auschwitz, and was not even a Jew], she commented that the
new revelations 'might complicate matters somewhat, but [the work] is still
powerful.'" -
In other words, who cares about fact or fiction where the Holocaust is
concerned?
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
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B'enjamin C'ramer
Deborah Lipstadt has written a very important commentary on Jimmy Carter and
his book on the Palestinians (I won?t link to it at Amazon as Amazon has
been playing peculiar games with it, presumably in order to suppress its
sale). Lipstadt, a woman who until now has been famous only for having all
of David Irving?s money, expressly makes the connection between Israeli
treatment of the Palestinians and what was done to the Jewish people in the
1930?s and 1940?s. This argument usually hides in the weeds. It is the
real basis behind all defenses of Israeli actions against the Palestinians,
as well as many of the peculiarities of Israeli exceptionalism, such as
Israel?s unique ability to shelter international gangsters on the basis
that they are Jews, or Israel?s unique right to make peremptory attacks
against other countries on the basis that there might be a possible threat
against the state of the Jewish people. This doctrine has now been
extended, in the case of Iran, to allow for peremptory attacks even when
there is no threat against the Jewish people.
In Lipstadt?s view, which is the view shared by all Jewish defenders of
Israel, Carter is wrong for failing to emphasize the Holocaust in a book
about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians today. This lack of logic
from Lipstadt would be the stuff of comedy if it did not form the basis for
all the atrocities that Israel commits. Most apologists for Israel are too
smart to put it in so many words, so we owe a bid debt of gratitude to
Lipstadt for being so fucking stupid as to let the cat out of the bag. In
fact, I think many people sympathetic to Israel don?t really realize the
basis for the chip on Israel?s shoulder as they can?t bring themselves to
believe that the basis could be something that is so insane.
The bigger picture is that many Jews feel that the Holocaust gives Jews, and
by extension the Jewish state, a permanent ?Get Out Of Jail Free? card.
The world stood by and let horrible things happen to the Jews, so the Jews
have a unique right to obtain retribution in whatever way they see fit.
One of the main ways they have seen fit to obtain justice is to grab
themselves a country. No non-Jew has the moral right to complain about it,
as every non-Jew inherits the guilt for the Holocaust. Thus, Jimmy Carter
has no right to criticize the Jewish state for what it is doing to the
Palestinians. Despite the fact the Palestinians had nothing to do with the
Holocaust (in fact hardly anyone alive today had anything to do with the
Holocaust), they also have no moral right to criticize what is being done
to them. This is the kind of reasoning which makes sense to young
children, and many criminals (?I have a right to rob banks because I had a
sad childhood?), but doesn?t make any sense to the rest of us.
One of the peculiarities of the Jewish post-Holocaust experience is the fact
that there is a certain sexual frisson created by fantasies of how the
world will again conspire to destroy the Jewish people (and seeing the
Holocaust everywhere can have some amusing consequences). Benny Morris (of
all people) is obviously getting off on describing how the Jews will be
destroyed by the inevitable nuclear attack from Iran, while the rest of the
world secretly applauds. It?s Jewish masochistic porn. Of course, Morris
isn?t an idiot, and is perfectly aware that Iran hasn?t threatened Israel?s
existence, has no nuclear weapons, and has no foreseeable chance of having
nuclear weapons, while Israeli leaders have directly threatened Iran and
Israel has such weapons, so Morris? fantasy is closer to sadistic porn
rather than masochistic porn. Morris is following the same reasoning as
Lipstadt. A Jew is entitled to write propaganda advocating an attack on
innocent civilians living in a country that poses no threat to Israel.
Why? Because of the Holocaust!
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/01/debt-we-owe-to-deborah-lipstadt.html
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B'enjamin C'ramer
By Curt Maynard
I've been saying for awhile that the alleged popularity of many public
figures today is more of a chimera than anything else, just today another
glaring example presented itself. Hard core Zionist and liar extraordinaire
Deborah Lipstadt wrote an article entitled Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
that was given prominent space in the Washington Post on Saturday, January
20, 2007.
In reality, Deborah Lipstadt is something of a nonentity, well-known only
among Zionist Supremacists in academia and the media and a few holocaust
Revisionists, but every now and again the mainstream Zionist media drags her
out of well deserved obscurity to write an article about what else,
anti-Semitism. On January 20th she set her delusional sights on Jimmy Carter
who recently wrote an honest book entitled "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."
Which focused on the influence Zionists enjoy in the American government and
media and how that plays directly into the terrorist and apartheid politics
embraced by the state of Israel. I won't dwell on Carter's book in this
piece as it really only emphasizes truths that have been written about by
thousands of others long before Carter ever put pen to paper. In fact,
Carter could only be said to have arrived at these ideas as a result of
"standing on the shoulders of giants" that preceded him.
In any case, Lipstadt's entire thesis in "Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem,"
rests on the idea that anything Israel does is justified because, you
guessed it, Jews suffered during the holocaust. I'm dead serious. Lipstadt
states clearly that Carter's concise narrative documenting the many crimes
against humanity committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians is
"unfair," because Carter doesn't emphasize the holocaust and how it
allegedly affected world Jewry. She writes:
"Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally
sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment,
expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of
Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic
stereotypes in defense.
One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history
of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to
destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter
either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant."
She then continues by adding that Carter was insensitive because his book
only made "two fleeting references to the holocaust." Well reader, believe
it or not, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle
are all guilty of insensitivity too, as not one of them bothered to leave a
single reference whatsoever to the holocaust in their extensive memoirs, but
don't expect Lipstadt to mention this fact, it might knock some of the
outrage out of her sails or worse, alert her readers to the fact that the
aforementioned never even bothered to mentioned this allegedly "well
documented" event, in their own war time diaries.
The funniest thing about the Post dragging Deborah Lipstadt out of the
bowels of Emory University to write this article about Carter is that nobody
has heard of her, she only becomes a "somebody" when the Zionists need her
to excoriate someone for holocaust skepticism or accurately and honestly
exposing the subversive behavior of some Zionist liar that screwed up badly
enough to get caught doing whatever it was he or she was doing. How do I
know nobody pays attention to Deborah Lipstadt in the real world, despite
her prominent position as a holocaust expert in the fantasy world created by
our media? Well, allow me to explain. Deborah Lipstadt has had a blogsite
for quite sometime now, she uses it to post her missives, and has done so
for more than two years. The funny things is, I seem to be it's only
visitor, no matter how often I go there, no matter what time of day, I
literally have never seen anyone comment on her articles. Don't believe me?
See for yourself.
Believe what you like, but from my humble point of view there are really
only two reasons why Lipstadt's own blog hasn't attracted enough interest
for anyone to comment on any of the essays within. Number one, nobody is
visiting her blog, which by the way is supported by Alexa.com a website
ranking instrument which has ranked her site as the 2,712,744th most popular
site on the Internet, making it even less popular than a Seattle based
website devoted to chicken manure which actually ranked in several hundred
thousand places in front of Lipstadt's blog.
My point of course is that nobody knows who Deborah Lipstadt is, and what's
more, nobody cares. Lipstadt only becomes a somebody for those few moments a
moron stupid enough to still be reading newspapers scans the article's
headline, although I am anything but well known, and am not a tenured
professor, I'm certain that more people will actually read this essay than
will read Lipstadt's latest piece in the Post. The only reason I came across
it is that I happen to have google working for me, google sends me anything
with the name Deborah Lipstadt attached to it that appears in the news.
Trust me, I rarely get anything on her, maybe something every couple of
weeks at the most.
The other possibility as to why I never find any comments on Deborah
Lipstadt's blog may be because so few visitors have anything positive to say
about her or her essays. I generally send her a few negative comments every
couple of weeks, but as yet, she hasn't posted a single one of my critiques.
Thus, I am left with one or two conclusions at most, she either has no
readers, or the readers that do visit her blogsite don't leave positive
comments. Personally, I think it's a bit of both, with the former being the
greater reason.
So what does this tell us? If we are to believe the media, Deborah Lipstadt
is a leader in her field, she's a well respected expert on the holocaust and
an advisor to all kinds of important people and groups on the issue of
anti-Semitism. Oddly, the very people she smears and accuses of embracing
pseudo-scientific approaches to historiography and/or being of no importance
whatsoever in the field of holocaust history are far more popular with the
Internet surfer than she is. Ernst Zundel, a man doing time at this very
moment in a German prison for questioning some very questionable aspects of
the OJV [Official Jewish Version] of what happened in Germany during the
Second World War is far better known than this trollop [in the untidy and
slovenly sense]. A quick check on Alexa.com revealed quickly that some of
the most obscure revisionist websites out there are still infinitely more
popular than Lipstadt's blog, which not only suggests that she herself isn't
well known, but her ideas aren't nearly as well known and/or well received
by the public as the media would have you and I believe.
The long and short of it is that Deborah Lipstadt is a nobody - she isn't
well known, she isn't widely read, despite all of the free and very positive
publicity she receives from the media and publishing industry, and therefore
she isn't very important. Personally I think this is the way we should treat
her - whenever anyone brings up the name Lipstadt, wave your hand in
dismissal, and tell whoever it was that brought up her name that Lipstadt is
less relevant than chicken manure and therefore unworthy of any intelligent
person's attention. Bye-bye Lipstadt.
The holocaust purveyors are being exposed - they cannot address the valid
questions that revisionists have put forth, because there are no valid
answers, only smear and innuendo, nothing more. The holocaust purveyors
would love for the public to believe their continuous lie that to address
the holocaust skeptics means that one is giving them the credibility they
don't deserve, but isn't that exactly the case with Deborah Lipstadt, aren't
we told that she's an expert, that she's well respected, aren't we led to
believe this by the fact that she is given considerable attention and
prominent space in a major American newspaper? But isn't the truth really
that she has been given far too much attention and credibility? I think so,
and if you're thinking properly, you'll think so too.
With that, I'll leave the reader with a paragraph from the book "Everything
you ever wanted to know about Jews, but were afraid to ask because you
thought you'd be called anti-Semitic" by J0hn "Birdman" Bryant, a helluva
good guy with special insight into the modern Zionist question:
The establishment Jewish [read Zionist if you prefer] position is, of
course, that the revisionists, in addition to being anti-Semitic scumbags
and reincarnations of the Devil himself, are of such a low order that their
arguments do not deserve to be answered. this is most likely establishment
Jewry's best strategy, since all their attempts to answer the revisionists
[in the past] have so far ended in defeat.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:1045de8e54e4f531...@remailer.metacolo.com...
B'enjamin C'ramer
USA, February 16, 2006
......... But as the case, which Anthony Julius had taken on pro bono, wound
its way through the British legal system, the bills began to pile up and the
case became the firm's biggest. One day, Julius broke the news to Lipstadt
that they could no longer proceed pro bono. The firm submitted a budget, at
Lipstadt's request, of $1.6 million. She quietly sought supporters,
including Ohio philanthropist Leslie Wexner. "I could fund this myself," she
said Wexner told her, "but when the history is written, it won't look good
that one Jew from Columbus helped one Jew in Atlanta."
Fund-raising for her legal expenses became an organized, if quiet,
arrangement, with support coming from the American Jewish Committee, the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, and other organizations. Support also came from
outside the Jewish community, including her own university, which gave her
$30,000 for travel and other expenses.
When it came time for the four-month trial to begin, she had to figure out
how to manage her responsibilities at Emory. She considered taking a
sabbatical or a leave of absence. The university had a different idea. The
provost, she said, told her, "We'll treat it as if you are teaching. Your
classroom is the courtroom, and we will all learn from you from afar."
Additionally, they hired someone to teach her classes.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:1045de8e54e4f531...@remailer.metacolo.com...
B'enjamin C'ramer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.stormfront.org/solargeneral/library/www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/Appeal/grounds1.html
1. The Claimant, Mr David John Cawdell Irving ("Irving") seeks permission to
appeal against two orders of Gray J, the first dated 11th April 2000, and
the second dated 5th May 2000.
2. By his order of 11th April 2000, Gray J ordered inter alia that judgment
should be for the Defendants, Penguin Books Limited, ("Penguin") and
Professor Deborah Lipstadt ("Lipstadt"), that the Claimant should be refused
permission to appeal, and that the Claimant should pay the costs of the
First and Second Defendants, to be the subject of a detailed assessment.
3. By his order of 5th May 2000, Gray J ordered inter alia that, by four
o'clock on Friday 16th June, 2000, the Claimant should pay the sum of
£150,000 on account of costs to the First and Second Defendants, pending the
detailed assessment directed by his order of 11th April 2000.
4. References in this skeleton argument to paragraphs by number are to the
paragraphs so numbered in Gray J's judgment, save where otherwise stated.
Background and Dramatis Personae
5. The background to the action and its Dramatis Personae are so well known
that little need be said about them, save that Irving does wish to draw the
Court of Appeal's attention to the intimidating atmosphere of hysterical
press hostility in which the trial took place, whipped up in particular by
The Guardian, which is a defendant in separate proceedings brought by Irving
against one Gitta Sereny and Guardian Newspaper Limited.
The issues as pleaded
6. There is a very fair summary by Gray J at paragraphs 1.1 to 2.16 of his
judgment, which Irving adopts, subject only to one point on paragraph 2.16,
set out at paragraph 7 below. Irving also adopts Gray J's words at 13.1:-
"The charges levelled at Irving's historiography appear to me to lie at the
heart of what Lipstadt wrote about him in Denying the Holocaust."
i.e., not charges of "racism" (whatever that might be) or anti-Semitism,
which (as Gray J rightly observed) were not alleged by Lipstadt in Denying
the Holocaust, nor pleaded by Irving as a libel upon him by his Statement of
Claim, nor yet pleaded or relied upon by way of particulars of justification
in either Defendant's Defence.
7. While Irving generally adopts Gray J's summary, he submits that the
natural and ordinary meaning of Lipstadt's words at p. 213 of Denying the
Holocaust, viz. "Nolte, echoing David Irving, argues that the Nazi
'internment' of Jews was justified because of Chaim Weizmann's September
1939 declaration that the Jews of the world would fight Nazism" is that
Irving approves of the imprisonment and (by the popular innuendo apparent
from the use of quotation marks around the word 'internment') the killing of
Jews in concentration camps. To the extent necessary, Irving will seek leave
to amend his Statement of Claim to plead this matter more fully.
The grounds of appeal
8. The Claimant seeks permission to appeal on the grounds (1) that the
findings of justification in respect of the defamatory charges on which the
Defendants succeeded were against the weight of the evidence, (2) that the
judge erred in law in admitting the evidence of Evans as to the construction
of the words "Holocaust denier," (3) that the judge erred in law in
admitting the evidence of Van Pelt (i) at all, or (ii) at any rate with
reference to (a) chemistry and (b) the technology of crematoria, and (4) in
applying section 5 of the Defamation Act, 1952 in respect of the libels on
which the Defendants offered no evidence, or which the Defendants wholly
failed to justify.
9. When refusing permission to appeal his order of 11th April 2000, Gray J
observed that "essentially [the] case turned on questions of fact, the most
important of which entailed assessing the Appellant's credibility. Public
interest can be [a] reason for granting permission, but that is a question
best left to the C.A."
10. Undoubtedly this case is of the greatest public interest. The trial at
first instance attracted worldwide publicity. The issues canvassed were of
the greatest importance for the interpretation of the political and military
history of the twentieth century. Irving relies on this ground in seeking
permission to appeal. He contends no less strongly that Gray J erred
seriously in weighing the evidence, so that his findings are wrong and
unjust.
11. The basis on which Gray J assessed the Appellant's credibility was not
an adverse general estimate of Irving, or his demeanour as a witness, or his
general character. Indeed, Gray J makes the most flattering observations
about Irving as a military historian at 13.7. Irving gratefully adopts all
that Gray J says in 13.7, and relies upon it in support of his submission at
paragraph [ ] below.
12. Neither Defendant gave oral evidence, nor did they call any witnesses of
fact, but only experts, to whom the Claimant returns at paragraph [ ] below.
It accordingly follows that Gray J was certainly not impressed by the
Defendants' demeanour, as Lipstadt took good care not to have her own
evidence tested in cross-examination.
The Law
13. Gray J's findings are based upon adverse inferences arising out of his
assessment of the weight of the real, expert and documentary evidence. Gray
J found that Irving could not honestly and reasonably have come to his
stated conclusions, faced with the historical record taken as a whole.
14. On such findings, the correct approach is laid down in Lord Reid's
speech in Benmax v. Austin Motor Co. Ltd [1958] A.C. 370 at 376:-
"... in cases where there is no question of the credibility or reliability
of any witness, and in cases where the point in dispute is the proper
inference to be drawn from proved facts, an appeal court is generally in as
good a position to evaluate the evidence as the trial judge, and ought not
to shrink from that task, though it ought, of course, to give weight to his
opinion."
15. See also per Baggallay J.A. in The Glannibanta (1876) 1 P.D. 283 at 287
to 288:-
"Now we feel... the great weight that is due to the decision of a judge of
first instance whenever, in a conflict of testimony, the demeanour and
manner of the witnesses who have been seen and heard by him are... material
elements in the consideration of the truthfulness of their statements. But
the parties to the cause are nevertheless entitled, as well on questions of
fact as on questions of law, to demand the decision of the Court of Appeal,
and that Court cannot excuse itself from the task of weighing conflicting
evidence and drawing its own inferences and conclusions, though it should
always bear in mind that it has neither seen nor heard the witnesses, and
should make due allowance in this respect."
16. It follows, it is submitted, that permission to appeal should be granted
if it appears to the Court of Appeal that Gray J has drawn the wrong
inferences from the real, documentary and expert evidence.
The weight to be attributed to the evidence of the Defendants' experts
17. "The duties and responsibilities of expert witnesses in civil cases"
(per Cresswell J) were, it is respectfully submitted, well described by
Cresswell J in The Ikarian Reefer [1993] 2 Lloyd's Rep. 68 at 81 to 82. This
part of Cresswell J's judgment was by no means disapproved when the C.A.
reversed him at [1995] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 455. They "include the following":-
"1. Expert evidence presented to the Court should be, and should be seen to
be, the independent product of the expert, uninfluenced as to form or
content by the exigencies of litigation.
"2. An expert witness should provide independent assistance to the Court by
way of objective, unbiassed opinion in relation to matters withing his
expertise. An expert witness in the High Court should never assume the role
of an advocate.
"3. An expert witness should state the facts or assumption upon which his
opinion is based. He should not omit to consider material facts which could
detract from his concluded opinion.
"4. An expert witness should make it clear when a particular question or
issue falls outside his expertise."
18. Gray J describes the Defendants' five expert witnesses and their
purported areas of expertise at 4.17.
19. Irving's case is that all five were motivated by ideological bias, and
that Evans in particular and Longerich to a lesser extent were motivated by
personal hatred, so transgressing against Cresswell J's principles 1 and 2,
that Evans offended gravely against 3 in relation to the Schlegelberger
memorandum (para. [ ] below) and the Bartz telex (para. [ ] below). Irving
contended throughout that Van Pelt is doubtfully an expert in any relevant
discipline at all. On the most generous view of Van Pelt's expertise, he
gave crucial evidence on matters in respect of which he did not even purport
to be an expert, contrary to 4, namely the chemistry of fumigation and
killing by gas chamber, and the fuel consumption of crematoria.
20. Further, the fees which the Defendants paid to these experts for giving
their evidence were so grotesquely large (Gray J was shocked by the figures
on 5th May 2000, especially the payment to Funke, who made a very short
appearance indeed at trial) that they could not possibly have given evidence
"uninfluenced as to form or content by the exigencies of litigation".
21. The experts' fees were: Van Pelt £109,244.24, Funke £92,557.94,
Longerich £76,195.25, Evans £70,181, and Browning a (relatively) modest
£27,632.12.
Subject Matter of Expert Evidence
22. It is an important part of Irving's application for permission to appeal
to challenge how far expert evidence is admissible at all on the meaning of
the words "Holocaust denier".
23. At 13.92 Gray J said: "I accept the evidence of Evans, which was not
challenged by Irving, that what characterises a 'Holocaust denier', in the
sense in which that term is used by Lipstadt in Denying the Holocaust, is
that he or she holds or expresses some or all of the views which I have
listed in paragraph 8.5 above."
24. Irving went through each of Evans's criteria in turn, asking Evans
whether, to be a Holocaust denier, he merely had to satisfy one of these
criteria, or all four. Evans never answered this question properly. Irving
contends that, as a matter of fact, he certainly does not satisfy Evans's
second and third criteria, which were not established against him on the
evidence. See para. [ ] below.
25. Moreover, as a matter of law, Gray J should not have received expert
evidence on the meaning of ordinary English words; see in this respect
Hodgkinson on Expert Evidence at p.155:-
"... it may appear to be of benefit to call an expert witness as to meaning,
or, as is more likely, to ask an expert, already giving evidence as to other
matters in the case, to express a view on meaning in the light of his
experience and skill. Save in limited and specific circumstances, though, an
expert's views are inadmissible and should not be canvassed."
26. As to the limited and specific exceptions, see Lovell and Christmas v.
Wall (1911) 104 L.T. 85 per Cozens-Hardy M.R.:-
"If a document is in a foreign language, you may have an interpreter. If it
contains technical terms, an expert may explain them. If, according to the
custom of a trade or the usage of the market, a word has acquired a
secondary meaning, evidence may be given to prove it."
27. As to the rule, see per Fry J. (a judge very learned in matters of
construction) in Holt & Co. v. Collyer (1881) 16 Ch. D. 718 at 720, when
rejecting evidence as to the meaning of a word:-
"In my view the principle upon which words are to be construed in
instruments is very plain. Where there is a popular and common word used in
an instrument, that word must be construed prima facie in its popular and
common sense. If it is a word of a technical or legal character, it must be
construed according to its technical or legal meaning. If it is a word which
is of a technical and scientific character, then it must be construed
according to that which is its primary meaning, namely its technical or
legal meaning. But before you can give evidence of the secondary meaning of
a word, you must satisfy the Court from the instrument itself or from the
circumstances of the case that the word ought to be construed, not in its
popular or primary signification, but according to its secondary intention."
28. The effect of receiving Evans's evidence on this crucial issue was to
allow Evans rather than the Court to set the parameters within which the
Defendants would have to justify the pleaded libels. It is submitted (1)
that Gray J erred in law in accepting Evans as an expert on the meaning of
two ordinary English words, (2) that he should have reached his own view
what "Holocaust denier" means, unassisted by expert evidence, and (3) that
since he failed to do so, the Court of Appeal ought now to do so instead.
The meaning(s) of German words
29. This is a proper subject for evidence. It is submitted that in
accordance with Fry J's criteria of construction, such words must be
construed prima facie in their popular and common sense. If, for example,
the Defendants suggest that the word abtransportiert should be translated in
some other sense than "deported", which is its popular and common sense, it
is for them to prove that.
Van Pelt's qualifications as an expert
30. On Day 9 (25th January 2000) the following somewhat extraordinary
exchange took place between Irving and van Pelt.:
"Q. You studied at the University of Leiden, am I correct?
"A: Yes, I did.
"Q: And you are now Professor of the History of Architecture at the
University of Waterloo in Toronto?
"A: No. The issue of my appointment is kind of confusing. I am in the
Department of Architecture and hence I am officially a Professor of
Architecture. Your title as Professor depends on the department you are in.
However, I teach in what we call the Cultural History stream, so normally,
in order to prevent confusion in ordinary usage, I would call myself
Professor of Cultural History because, both in my background, my PhD and my
teaching duties, I teach cultural history in the architectural school.
However, when I was advised about the way I had to create my curriculum
vitae for this proceeding, I was told that I had been to be extremely
precise in the legal sense of what I was, so again I put in Professor of
Architecture.
"Mr Justice Gray: So you are really a cultural historian?
"A: I am really a cultural historian.
"Mr Irving: This is a point of some substance, my Lord. We need to know
precisely what your qualifications are to offer your expertise to the court.
I do not mean this in the least sense in a derogatory manner because, as I
say, I have read both your book and your report with the utmost interest.
However, we need to know what your areas of expertise actually are. In
Britain, of course, we have the Royal Institute of British Architects. Are
you familiar with the fact that it is illegal in England to call yourself an
architect unless you are registered with the RIBA?
"A: That is in most countries like that, yes, I know.
"Q: In Holland, the equivalent is the Bond van Nederlandse Architecten, am I
correct? I am sorry about my pronunciation.
"A: Yes, Bond van Nederlandse Architecten.
"Q: Which is the rough equivalent of the RIBA?
"A: Yes.
"Q: Am I right in saying that you are not registered with the Bond van
Nederlandse Architecten?
"A: I have never had any reason to do so, since I never studied in an
architectural school..
"Q: So you cannot legally pretend to be an architect, if I can put it like
that?
"A: No, I could be prosecuted.
"Q: You could be prosecuted?
"A: Yes.
"Q: Rather like Mr Leuchter was prosecuted in Massachusetts for pretending
to be an engineer?
"A: Yes.
"Q: You can probably see the thrust of this particular question. In other
words, your expertise, as an architect, is the same as Mr Leuchter's
expertise was an engineer?
"A: I do not really know. I have been teaching in architecture school now
since 1984. I have taught design courses, specially in small architecture
schools one needs to chip in wherever one does. I have been on architectural
juries and quick sessions, mostly on a weekly, bi-weekly, kind of frequency.
I did...
"Q: You have never learned architecture? You have never studied architecture
at university? You have never taken a degree in architecture?
"A: I do not have a degree in it, but I have been confronted with the
architectural practice and, apart from that, I have worked for various
architects, one of them, Sir Dennis Leston, here in England, when he was
designing the Synagogue in Jerusalem. I have worked with Jack Diamond in
Toronto. So I have been in architectural offices very often and other
practices.
"Q: And, of course, you are now advising the present Auschwitz authorities
on the reconstruction, if I can put it like that, of the Auschwitz site?
"A: I was advising them, yes."
31. Even if Van Pelt has sufficient practical experience of architecture to
be classified as an expert in that field, which is certainly not conceded,
it is strongly submitted that Gray J erred seriously in law in admitting Van
Pelt's evidence on delousing (7.123) and the technology of crematoria
(7.124).
Section 5 of the Defamation Act, 1952
32. Gray J further states (rightly, it is submitted) at 13.167 that to
invoke section 5 of the Defamation Act, 1952 in respect of any libels which
they fail to justify, the Defendants have to prove that such libels do not
materially injure Irving's reputation compared with the defamatory charges
which they succeed in justifying. Gray J accepted that the Defendants
succeeded on section 5.
33. One of the three defamatory charges which the Defendants wholly failed
to justify was "Lipstadt's claim that Irving was scheduled to speak at an
anti-Zionist conference in Sweden in 1992, which was also to be attended by
various representatives of terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and
Hamas." (Per Gray J at 13.166).
34. It is submitted that this libel is so very grave that, as a matter of
law, section 5 does not avail the Defendants, even if Irving fails on every
other issue.
The Allegation that Irving is an "Extremist"
35. It is submitted that, as a matter of law, it is not sufficient to plead
by way of particulars of justification that someone is an "extremist," let
alone to introduce this point in the course of argument without pleading it
sufficiently or at all.
36. Greer LJ said in Tolley v. Fry [1930] 1 KB 467 at 479:-
"Words are not defamatory, however much they may damage a man in the eyes of
a section of the community, unless they also amount to disparagement of his
reputation in the eyes of right-thinking men generally. To write or say of a
man something that will disparage him in the eyes of a particular section of
the community but will not affect his reputation in the eyes of the average
right-thinking man is not actionable within the law of defamation."
37. A statement is not defamatory simply because it is untrue, so to suggest
that someone takes a particular political position is not defamatory per se,
even if it is completely untrue. See per Street J. in Slatyer v. Daily
Telegraph [1907] 7 NSWSR 488 at 498, a New South Wales case, which is
generally accepted as good law in England, and is cited with evident
approval at note 90 to para. 2.19 of Gatley.
38. That, it is submitted, is the case, however "extreme" the position in
question may be. True it is that there are cases (they are to be found at
note 88 to para. 2.19 of Gatley) in which it has been held that it is
defamatory to say of a man that he is a Communist, but they are best
explained on the basis that the libels complained of carried the implication
that the plaintiff was a traitor in the pay of a foreign power, or that he
advocated overthrowing the state by violence.
39. Thus Devlin LJ said in Kantorowicz v. Cookridge, The Times, 10 October
1960, at the height of the Cold War, and at a time when the full extent of
Stalin's crimes was already well known, that it would not in all
circumstances be defamatory of a man to say that he was a Communist.
40. An extremist is merely a man whose ideas depart radically from the
prevailing climate of opinion at a particular time. Anyone who suggested
that the suffrage should be extended to the working classes would have been
considered an extremist in the climate of opinion which held sway in 1800;
anyone who suggested that the suffrage should be extended to women would
have been considered an extremist in the climate of opinion which held sway
in 1900. These were never morally reprehensible positions. Thus to prove
that Irving associates with "extremists" ought to avail the Defendants
nothing.
41. The crucial distinction in this case, it is submitted, is between libels
8A and 8B at paras. [] and [] below.
42. The principal issues on appeal in relation to justification, numbered by
reference to the importance which Irving attributes to them, and not
chronologically, are Irving's treatment of (1) Hitler's personal knowledge
of the scale and scope of Nazi atrocities against the Jews during the Second
Word War ("WWII") generally, (2) Auschwitz in particular, and (3) the events
of Kristallnacht. Irving's case is that (1) and (2) are crucial, while (3)
is important.
43. The Defendants additionally sought (successfully) to justify by
reference to Irving's treatment of (4) Hitler's 1924 trial following the
unsuccessful Beer Hall putsch and (5) the crime statistics for Berlin in
1932. Irving contends that (4) and (5) are of secondary importance.
44. The Defendants further succeeded on their plea of justification by
reference to (6) Irving's account of the bombing of Dresden in February,
1945, (7) Irving's anti-Semitism and racism, and (8A) the claim that Irving
associates with right wing extremists.
45. The Defendants did not attempt to justify Lipstadt's allegation (8B)
that Irving associates with violent extremists, and failed to justify
Lipstadt's allegations that Irving (9) works in his office under a portrait
of Hitler, (10) had damaged the historic glass microfiches of the Goebbels
diaries in the Moscow archives, and (11) had broken an agreement with the
director of the Moscow archives.
46. As to (7) and (8A): on the Defendants' case as pleaded, (7) is
prejudicial and irrelevant, or goes at most to Irving's motive for treating
(1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) as he allegedly did, and could not of itself
justify the pleaded libels, while (8A) is irrelevant, and could not under
section 5 or otherwise justify the pleaded libels.
Hitler's personal knowledge of atrocities committed against the Jews during
WWII
47. Though anathemized by Lipstadt as a "Holocaust denier," Irving has never
denied (1) that the Nazis and their allies committed systematic mass murder
of Jews on a chilling scale, especially in the Baltic states, in Byelorussia
and the Ukraine, but also in Russia proper, in Poland, and in other occupied
countries in eastern Europe, or (2) that many mass killings were latterly
carried out as a matter of policy on the personal orders of Himmler and
Heydrich, though (3) particularly in the early stages of Operation
Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941), mass killings
were carried out not also by German forces, but also by local, non-German,
anti-Semitic elements, especially in the Ukraine and in the Baltic states,
acting independently of Himmler and Heydrich for reasons of their own.
48. Two examples are:-
(i) Irving has broadcast on Australian radio that, from June 1941 onwards,
over a million Jews were shot on the Eastern Front. A transcript of that
broadcast was in evidence.
(ii) In his book Hitler's War, Irving writes that by 1943:-
"The increasing brutalisation of the war showed itself in many ways. . .
Himmler revealed to his SS Gruppenführer (generals) on October 4, and to the
Party's Gauleiters on October 6 that by the end of 1943 the last Jews in
occupied Europe would have been exterminated."
49. The key issue under (1) is therefore the extent of Hitler's personal
knowledge of and responsibility for the systematic mass murder of Jews, the
historicity of which Irving does not dispute.
50. Irving's case (summarized by Gray J at 5.137, 5.138 and finally at
13.30) is that there is an important "chain of documents" which shows that,
so far from having "ordered the biological annihilation of European Jewry"
(5.94) Hitler intervened on occasion to check atrocities against the Jews,
in accordance with his policy of deferring a "solution to the Jewish
problem" until after WWII.
51. Irving does not dispute that there is also a contrary line implicating
Hitler. Having weighed the evidence as a professional historian, he prefers
the first line of documents to the second, and is, he says, amply justified
in so doing.
52. It was not however sufficient in order for the Defendants to make good
their plea of justification to persuade the Court that, on the balance of
probabilities, and in the light of the materials now available to scholars,
the second line is to be preferred to the first.
53. The distinction to be drawn is closely akin to that between the
differing tests for negligence and deceit. As Gray J rightly observes at
13.3, "the issue... is Irving's treatment of the available evidence," and at
13.4, "Irving rightly stresses that the Defendants have accused him of
deliberately perverting the evidence."
54. As to Gray J's findings under (1):-
The Schlegelberger Memorandum
55. The Schlegelberger memorandum is central to the appeal on the facts.
Contrary to Gray J's express finding at 5.162, Irving has never acknowledged
that the Schlegelberger memorandum is in any sense "unsatisfactory." On the
contrary, he has always contended that it is a contemporaneous, authentic,
brief, official, precisely worded, internal ministerial record of Hitler's
thinking on the Jewish question, and so of seminal importance.
56. Schlegelberger was a civil servant in the Reich Ministry of Justice. In
English translation his memorandum reads:-
"Mr. Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the Führer had repeatedly
declared to him that he wants to hear that the solution of the Jewish
Problem has been postponed until after the war is over. That being so, the
current discussions are of purely theoretical value, in Mr. Reich Minister
Lammers' opinion. He will moreover take pains to ensure that, whatever else
happens, no fundamental decisions are taken without his knowledge in
consequence of a surprise briefing by any third party."
57. Gray J errs in the gravest fashion in assessing the real evidence
actually before him when he states at 13.33 that the Schlegelberger
memorandum was "unsigned" and "an Abschrift (copy) rather than an original
document... " and that "there is no clear evidence of the context in which
the note came into existence."
58. A facsimile of the Schlegelberger memorandum was before Gray J in Court
at all times. As is apparent from the facsimile itself, it is not (unlike
most of the Defendants' documents) an Abschrift (typed copy) at all, but an
original with holograph signatures. The original is still in German Federal
Archives in its original Reich Justice Ministry file called Behandlung der
Juden ("Treatment of the Jews"), which provides all necessary contextual
material. The whole text makes it plain that the Judenfrage ("Jewish
question") to which Hitler refers is by no means confined to the issue of
Mischlinge (people of mixed descent), as suggested by Evans.
59. On the Defendants' case and Gray J's findings, the Schlegelberger
memorandum was generated at a crucial point in the chronology of the
Holocaust, just a few weeks after the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942,
as to the supposed importance of which see paragraph [ ] below. Gray J told
leading Counsel for the Defendants on Day 6, 19 January 2000, at page 168 of
the transcript:-
"Mr Rampton, does it simplify matters if I say I am prepared to accept that
there is good internal evidence that it is March or thereabouts 1942?"
60. While Gray J observes at 5.161 that:-
"The Defendants argue that no reputable and objective historian would nail
his colours to the mast in the way that Irving has done by admitting only
one possible interpretation of the note,"
he fails to point out that no reputable and objective historian other than
Irving has ever mentioned this memorandum at all, yet it mentions the
Führer, the "solution of the Jewish problem", and "decisions", all in one
paragraph, expressly stating that Hitler wished to see the "solution of the
Jewish problem" postponed until the war was over.
61. The Defendants have produced nothing whatsoever of this evidential value
relating to the critical issue, namely the role of Hitler himself. The
Defendants' experts have pretended in their books that it does not even
exist. Their conduct in this regard amounts to an egregious suppresio veri
et suggestio falsi.
The "Wannsee Conference"
62. As to 5.142 Irving's slim bundle of actually existing documents is set
against Evans's sweeping, grandiose and wholly unparticularized reference to
a "vastly greater number" of contradictory documents, not one of which does
Evans identify.
63. Lipstadt herself thought that the minutes of the so-called "Wannsee
conference" crucial to the historiography of the Holocaust, describing at
page 214 of Denying the Holocaust:-
"... the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which Heydrich and a group of prominent
Nazis worked out the implementation of the Final Solution... "
64. Gray J evidently agreed with this view. While at 13.36 Gray J said: "I
do not regard the arguments advanced by Irving... as being without merit:
they are worthy of consideration," he nevertheless rejects Irving's
interpretation of the Schlegelberger memorandum at 13.35, giving as one of
his principal reasons:-
"that the evidence suggests that at the Wannsee conference in January 1942
(where Heydrich claimed to be speaking with the authority of Hitler) a
programme for the extermination of Jews had been discussed and in broad
terms agreed upon."
65. Lipstadt's and Gray J's observations wholly disregard the contents of
the Wannsee protocol. Irving put the relevant quotes to Gray J in his
closing speech:-
"For a long time the confident public perception was that the Wannsee
protocol, of the 20 January 1942 meeting, recorded the actual order to
exterminate the European Jews. Yehuda Bauer, the director of Yad Vashem, the
world's premier Holocaust research institution in Israel, has stated quite
clearly: 'The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at
Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at.' In his opinion
Wannsee was a meeting but 'hardly a conference,' and he even said: 'Little
of what was said there was executed in detail.' (Canadian Jewish News, 30
January, 1992) Despite this, Your Lordship has had to listen to the 'silly
story' all over again in this Court from the expert witnesses." (Day 32, 15
March, 2000).
66. Moreover, anachronism is a widely recognized fault in historical
methodology. An approach based on the interpretation of documents written in
1942 in the light of events which happened in 1943 or 1944 is fundamentally
flawed.
67. As to the other documents discussed in Gray J's judgment:-
The deportation of the Berlin Jews and the Riga massacres
(paras. 5.90 to 5.110 and 13.21 to 13.25)
68. It is submitted that Irving's treatment of these episodes is (1) to be
preferred to Evans's, alternatively, (2) is a fair alternative
interpretation of the material available to Irving.
69. As to 5.106, Gray J wrongly summarizes the evidence when he says:-
"In relation to the entry in Himmler's log for 1 December 1941, Irving said
that he misread Himmler's spidery Suetterlin handwriting: he thought he had
written Judentransporte in the plural. It was, he said, a 'silly
misreading'."
70. In fact Judentransport occurs in the entry for 30 November, 1941 entry,
and haben zu bleiben, which Irving admitted misreading as Juden zu bleiben,
on 1 December, 1941. Irving never admitted misreading Judentransport as
Judentransporte.
71. Evans's criticism of Irving's explanation for this mistake cited by Gray
J at 5.110 is merely one instance of Evans's gross bias against Irving, and
anxiety to impute the worst possible motives to him at every turn. The
misreading of Himmler's difficult handwriting in respect of the phrase haben
zu bleiben as Juden zu bleiben was regrettable, and eventually corrected.
Irving was the first to find and transcribe these notes from Himmler's very
difficult old-German handwriting, using barely legible photocopies in the
1960s. He inevitably made numerous errors of transcription. Others have
since gone over the same notes and polished and refined the transcriptions.
The excision of this sentence from the text has made no difference to the
thrust of Irving's argument that there was a direct connection between
Himmler's arrival at Hitler's HQ on 30 November 1941 and his telephone call
to Heydrich, ordering a halt to the liquidation of the Berlin Jews.
72. Turning to this point at 13.21, Gray J says:-
"The second criticism (which is more important for the purpose of this case)
is that Irving is in error when he claims that the instruction not to
liquidate the Jews on that transport emanated from Hitler. There is no
evidence that Hitler 'summoned' Himmler to his headquarters and 'obliged'
him to telephone to Heydrich an order that Jews were not to be liquidated."
73. The sequence of events established by Himmler's agenda and telephone log
is as follows. Himmler went to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia on the
morning of 30 November 1941, and "from the bunker" spoke at 1.30 p.m. by
telephone to Heydrich, forbidding the liquidation of the trainload of Jews
from Berlin. Himmler certainly saw Hitler either before or after this
telephone call. Evans's claim at 5.104 that there were "several" bunkers at
Hitler's HQ was refuted on the spot by Irving: Evans admitted that his map
of the HQ was from 1944. Gray J makes no reference to Evans's poor
methodology on this issue.
74. As Irving has recorded in many books, the trainload of Berlin Jews had
however already been liquidated on arrival in Riga at around 9 a.m. on the
morning of 30 November 1941. The culprit, SS Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, was
severely criticised by Himmler (in a message intercepted by British
codebreakers on 1 December 1941) for arbitrarily and disobediently exceeding
the guidelines laid down by Himmler and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(Heydrich):-
"SS Obergruppenführer Jeckeln. The Jews being out placed to Ostland [the
Baltic states] are to be dealt with only in accordance with the guidelines
laid down by myself and/or by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt on my orders. I
would punish arbitrary and disobedient acts. (sgd) Himmler." See Day 3, 13
January 2000.
75. That same day Himmler summoned Jeckeln to East Prussian HQ by a second
code signal; Jeckeln presented himself at HQ on 4 December 1941, and was
reprimanded. The killings of German Jews immediately stopped for several
months. All the expert witnesses agreed that this was the documented
sequence.
76. It is accordingly the primary and most reasonable inference that there
was a very direct connection between Himmler's arrival at Hitler's HQ and
his sudden telephone call to Heydrich, ordering a halt to the liquidation of
the Berlin Jews.
77. As to 5.94, Irving was entitled heavily to discount Wisliceny's ex post
facto guess work. Wisliceny (a mass murderer, who was hanged after the war
for his crimes) is speculating when he expresses his conviction that in late
1941, Hitler had "ordered the biological annihilation of European Jewry".
78. 5.120: Here the mathematics are out. As Irving stated in evidence, and
Evans agreed, a pit of those dimension, would hold at most 1,500 corpses
(not 7,000). Bruns stated there were "two or three" such pits. A pit three
metres wide cannot be dug deeper than two metres, unless shored up, which
these pits were not.
79. At 13.24 Gray J says of Irving's treatment of Bruns' evidence:-
"An objective historian is obliged to be even-handed in his approach to
historical evidence: he cannot pick and choose without adequate reason."
80. Leaving aside the conduct of the Defendants' experts, who throughout
dismissed whatever they did not like as euphemism, falsehood, forgery,
self-serving or neo-Nazi, etc., the reason (which Gray J does not state) was
simply that for the first part of Bruns's statement (mass shootings are to
stop) there was contemporary corroborative evidence, for example the signal
from Himmler, and the fact that the shootings did stop for many months. For
the second part, the suggestion that: "the shootings are to continue more
surreptitiously", there was not a shred of corroborative evidence.
81. As to 5.126, Irving's translation is taken word for word from the
original Weidenfeld edition of Hitler's Table Talk (ed. Hugh Trevor Roper).
Irving pointed out to Gray J that the Trevor Roper edition was not a slavish
translation of the original German text, which only became available years
later. The last sentence of this paragraph should be read in this context.
82. At 5.148 Gray J observes:-
"But he accepted, with some reluctance, that it does establish that Hitler
authorised the liquidation of Jews in the East as if they were partisans."
83. This is a seriously inaccurate summary of Irving's evidence. Irving
adhered to the view that the correct rendering of the German wording was
that (certain unidentified) Jews were to be liquidated as partisans, not
like or as if they were partisans.
84. Re 5.185: Hitler's adjutants was interrogated in 1945/46 et seq. on
precisely this knowledge by the Allied interrogators, and their response was
the same.
85. Re 5.193: Gray J fails to take into account the compelling argument that
in his own private notes Himmler had no need to use euphemisms.
Goebbels' Diary entries for 27 March 1942
86. 5.150: Gray J's summary, viz. "Irving regarded Goebbels's diary entry
for 30 May 1942 as constituting 'acres of sludge' not worth including in his
book." is to be contrasted with what Irving actually said on Day 5 at page
54: "Acres of sludge, is it not? If I had to put all that into a book, the
book would sink under its own weight."
87. That sets out the position of any author; Irving had to produce a book
of economic size and readability. Gray J has omitted these overriding
economic and publishing reasons for shortening a text.
88. 13.37 Gray J says:-
"I have concluded without hesitation that the manner in which Irving deals
in Hitler's War (both editions) with Goebbels's diary entry of 27 March 1942
is misleading and unsupported by the circumstantial evidence."
89. These observations should be compared with Gray J's approach to the
Schlegelberger Memorandum, which was dictated or typed by a lawyer and
minister, Schlegelberger, at Lammers' (the head of the Civil Service's)
dictation: that is "hearsay" (13.33). The Goebbels diary is a private diary
note typed by junior civil servant Richard Otte at "Big Lie" propaganda
minister Goebbels' dictation of alleged remarks by Hitler. Yet it is
suggested that Irving ought to have quoted the diary at greater length, even
though Goebbels himself uses the word wohl (omitted by Evans, who castigates
Irving for selective quotation), stating that liquidation is probably
happening, i.e. it is not a statement of fact, but of belief.
Hitler's meeting with Admiral Horthy
90. 13.44 "Such an historian would ponder whether the language of the
minutes can be said to be consistent with a desire on the part of the Nazis
to secure the deportation of the Jews and nothing more."
91. Gray J overlooks the striking fact that there is no mention of killing
the Jews in the internal Magyar records taken by the Hungarian ministers at
this conference, accessible in Hungarian archives to-day. This was a point
that Irving made most powerfully.
92. 113.44 "He would also have in mind the subsequent history of the
Romanian and Hungarian Jews."
93. As a matter of historical methodology, it would be wrong to construe the
minutes of an April 1943 meeting with the benefit of hindsight about what
allegedly happened to Hungarian Jews in May/June 1944 under totally
different circumstances, namely the German invasion of Hungary and the
deposition of Horthy, who was himself imprisoned in a concentration camp.
94. 13.44: "Irving was constrained to accept that the pretext which he put
forward for the meeting with Horthy (the Warsaw ghetto uprising which
happened afterwards) was false, as was his explanation for the harsh
attitude evinced by Hitler at the meeting (recent Allied bombing raids)."
95. The Warsaw ghetto was a seething cauldron for weeks before the uprising.
Hitler himself referred to the bombing of civilians in his talk with Horthy,
which Irving put to Gray J by translating the relevant passage after Evans
had denied it. The transcript of the conference shows that Hitler told
Admiral Horthy on 16 April 1943:-
"If one did not drive out the Jews now, then they would again just as then
destroy the economy, the currency, and morale... Anyway, why should the Jews
be handled with kid gloves?... They were responsible particularly for the
bombing of the civilian population and the countless victims among women and
children."
96. Later Horthy answered. "He had done, he said, everything one decently
could against the Jews, but one couldn't very well murder them or bump them
off somehow." The Führer replied that:-
"There was no need for that either. Hungary could accommodate the Jews in
concentration camps just like Slovakia.... If there was talk of murdering
the Jews, then he (the Führer) must point out that only one person murdered,
namely the Jew who started wars, and who by his influence gave the wars
their anti-civilian, anti-women and anti-children character. With regard for
the Jews, there was always the possibility of having them work down the
mines. But at all costs they must be cut off from any kind of influence on
their host country." (Prof. Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten
bei Hitler, vol. ii, pp. 239 to 245)
97. 13.44: "I was not persuaded that Irving had any satisfactory explanation
for his transposition from 16 to 17 April [1943] of Hitler's comforting
remark, made on 16 April, that there was no need for the murder or
elimination of the Hungarian Jews." Given the actual content of the remark,
the accidental misdating of the reference by one day makes no difference.
Himmler's note for a meeting with Hitler on 10 December 1942
98. Re: 13.40 "I therefore accept the contention of the Defendants that
Irving's treatment of this minute is unjustifiably favourable to Hitler."
99. Irving included the whole note in his book, so readers could make up
their own minds.
100. Re: 13.41: the same holds for this passage. The Defendants' experts
made no attempt to include Irving's alternative and often more likely
interpretation of the document in their own works, but they are not
perverse.
The Liquidation of the Jews of Rome
101. As to the allegation at 5.220 that Irving suppressed the fact that the
Jews of Rome were murdered, he wrote at page 575 of the first edition of
Hitler's War:-
"Himmler also considered the eight thousand Jews a potential threat to
public order; Ribbentrop brought to Hitler an urgent telegram from his
consul in Rome reporting that the SS had orders from Berlin that 'the eight
thousand Jews resident in Rome are to be liquidated.' Again Hitler took a
marginally 'moderate' line. On the ninth Ribbentrop informed Rome that the
Führer had directed that the eight thousand Jews were to be transported to
Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria instead, where they were to be held
as 'hostages.' It was, Ribbentrop defined, purely a matter for the SS. (The
SS liquidated them anyway, regardless of Hitler's order.)"
Himmler's speeches of 6 October 1943 and 5 and 24 May 1944
102. At 13.46 Gray J finds that:-
"Two of the speeches provide powerful evidence that Hitler ordered that the
extermination of the Jews should take place. Yet in the 1977 edition of
Hitler's War Irving suggests that the existence of a Hitler order was an
invention on the part of Himmler. It does not appear to me that the evidence
supports that suggestion. I consider that Irving's deduction that the
transcript of the speech of 5 May was either altered after Himmler delivered
the speech or sanitised before it was shown to Hitler is fanciful. The
absence of any mention of that speech in the 1991 edition of Hitler's War
was in my judgment another culpable omission."
103. Irving dealt with these speeches at length in Hitler's War and (though
he is said to be a Holocaust denier) drew the obvious conclusions from the
fact that Himmler said that he had not felt it right to order the killing of
the Jews without ordering the killing of their womenfolk and children too:
he made no mention of Hitler as giving that order.
Ribbentrop's Evidence in his Nuremberg Prison Cell
104. At 13.48 Gray J finds that Irving "fails to quote his [Ribbentrop's]
immediately following comment that he at least knew about it [the
Holocaust]".
105. The contentious passage is an endnote to Hitler's War:-
"Writing on Hitler in his Nuremberg prison cell, Ribbentrop also exonerated
him wholly. 'How things came to the destruction of the Jews, I just don't
know. As to whether Himmler began it, or Hitler put up with it, I don't
know. But that he ordered it I refuse to believe, because such an act would
be wholly incompatible with the picture I always had of him'" (Bavarian
State Archives, Rep, 502 AXA 131).
106. As the Defendants' experts and Gray J pointed out, Irving omitted the
following words:-
"On the other hand, judging from his Last Will, one must suppose that he at
least knew about it, if, in his fanaticism against the Jews, he didn't also
order [it]."
107. These words are the merest speculation.
What Documents had Hitler actually read?
108. At 13.57, Gray J finds that:-
"The evidence which prompted Irving to make these concessions consisted in
the regular reports made by the Einsatzgruppen to Berlin; the preparation by
the RSHA in Berlin of Ereignismeldungen (event announcements)..."
109. There was no evidence before the Court that even one of these
Ereignismeldungen was shown to Hitler.
"...and a report numbered 51 dated 29 December 1942 which recorded the
"execution" of 363,112 Jews and which (as Irving accepted) was probably
shown to Hitler."
110. Irving did not so accept, but on the contrary, demonstrated that there
was no evidence whatever that it had been read by Hitler. Merely vorgelegt
(submitted) was not good enough, as he demonstrated by reference to a
document which had been vorgelegt twice, proving that it had not been read
when merely vorgelegt once" . There was no "paper trail," no replies,
action, comments, handwritten marginalia, etc.
Auschwitz
111. All parties treated Auschwitz as the most important issue of all.
Irving did not argue at any length what happened in the other camps,
treating Auschwitz as a test case, not least because Gray J was most
insistent that he should deal with the evidence expeditiously; see, for
example, day 20:-
"Gray J: Mr Irving, I am conscious we are still on page 152. We have about
600 pages to go. It is not a race, but we have to keep an eye on what
matters and what does not."
112. See also at 4.12: "Both sides have agreed that I should confine myself
to the issues which have been ventilated by one side or the other in
cross-examination."
113. See further note 129 in Irving's closing speech, which records an
exchange with Van Pelt:-
"Irving: So if I am to concentrate a large part of my investigation in this
cross-examination on that one building and, in fact, on Leichenkeller 1, the
one arm of the crematorium, this is not entirely unjustified if I am trying
to establish that the factories of death did not exist as such?"
"Prof. van Pelt: No. I think that that the obvious building to challenge
would be Krematorium II."
114. It is in the circumstances most unfair of Gray J to say at 13.63 that
Irving was disingenuous in suggesting that his reason for not arguing what
happened in the other camps was to save the Court's time. All parties
effectively agreed that if Irving had established that Auschwitz was not a
"factory of death", debate about the lesser camps would have been pointless
and time wasting.
The orthodox historical consensus
115. Somewhere something has plainly gone seriously wrong in the treatment
of Auschwitz by orthodox historians. Irving showed the Court the official
German newsreel Welt im Film issued on 8 January 1948 at the height of
post-war denazification. It records the Polish Communist Court's final
judgment on Hoess, the camp commandant of Auschwitz and his staff at Krakow
in December 1947.
116. The Polish Court, in whose district the camp is situated, which tried
the case shortly after the events in question took place, and had no cause
to love Germans in general or Nazis in particular, stated that "nearly
300,000" people of all nations had "died" at the camp. This figure, it
should be noted, does not differentiate between deaths (1) from wholly
natural causes, (2) accidents, (3) disease, (4) malnutrition, (5) Allied air
raids (6) the consequences of mistreatment of inmates by the SS, and (7)
deliberate killing of inmates by the SS.
117. As Gray J observes at 8.25 "that figure gradually increased to four
million, which was the number mentioned until 1990 on the monument erected
by the Communists in memory of the dead. The figure then came down again."
118. At 8.22 Gray J states:
"Research carried out more recently, notably by Raul Hilberg and by Dr.
[Franciszek] Piper of the Auschwitz Museum, has concluded that the true
figure for the number of deaths at Auschwitz is in the region of 1.1
million, of which the vast majority perished in the gas chambers. This
figure has, according to the evidence of Van Pelt and Longerich, been
endorsed by the majority of serious, professional historians concerned in
this field."
119. Dr. Piper was responsible for the figure of four million on the
Auschwitz memorial, now reduced by a factor of 75% even by him, so his
reliability is not beyond question.
120. Longerich was clear under cross examination that the one million figure
was from all causes, and he confirmed this even when challenged by Gray J.
Under cross-examination on 28 February, 2000 (Day 26, pages 56 et seq.)
Longerich stated that he believed that one million had died from all causes.
He added that in his opinion, anybody who was transported to Auschwitz and
"died there because of exhaustion, hunger and of other causes was murdered."
121. Asked by Irving: "You include in that figure [1 million] the numbers
who died from typhus and the other epidemics?" the witness confirmed this.
122. Gray J then asked:-
"Mr. Irving's question was; are you actually including in your 1 million
figure those who died as a result of forced labour?"
" Yes."
"And," pressed Irving, "the starvation, pestilence, plague, epidemics, all
the other ancillary causes?"
" Yes."
123. Gray J only partially recognises the effect of these exchanges at 8.23.
In that paragraph he appears to accept Longerich's absurd claim that the
Nazis deliberate encouraged epidemics and plague in their camps as part of
their genocide, as though epidemics are respecters of persons, calling a
halt according to uniform and race.
The eye witnesses
124. Gray J poses the question at 6.80:-
"What is the evidence for mass extermination of Jews at those camps? The
consequence of the absence of any overt documentary evidence of gas chambers
at these camps, coupled with the lack of archeological evidence means that
reliance has to be placed on eye witness and circumstantial evidence..."
125. Yet even the Defendants had some reservations about the testimony of
the handful of eye witnesses. Irving for his part explains the evidence of
the former camp officials as extracted under torture or given in a desperate
attempt to ingratiate themselves with their captors by confessing in the
terms expected of them. The six or so inmates who have come forward with
their accounts are an infinitesimal percentage of the survivors, and Irving
dismisses their evidence as invented, exaggerated, or the product of what is
now called false memory syndrome. The question is not whether he is right in
that view, but rather, whether he came to it honestly and reasonably.
126. By way of examples of the value (or lack of it) of the eye witness
testimony, at 13.77 Gray J is impressed with Tauber, though (contrary to
Gray J's slip of the pen at 7.110, when he wrongly attributes this tale to
Olaere), it was Tauber who made the absurd claim that the SS manufactured
sausages out of human flesh in the crematoria.
127. As to Gray J's observation at 7.40 that: "Van Pelt considered that
Tauber's testimony is almost wholly corroborated by the German blueprints of
the buildings," that is scarcely surprising, as it is said that Tauber was
questioned by the Polish prosecutors on the basis of the blueprints which
were before them and him. Sometimes he described things which existed only
on the blueprints, and which were never actually installed. All this
material was put to the Defendants' experts in cross-examination.
128. As to 7.31, Pery Broad, whom Gray J generously describes as "an officer
in the Auschwitz Political Department" was in fact a Pole who was formerly a
Gestapo agent operating at Auschwitz, and later became a paid agent of the
British occupation government in Germany. He was thus a man of dubious
antecedents and flexible allegiances, whose evidence is plainly open to
question on these grounds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was not produced for
cross-examination at any of the war crimes trials, e.g. at the Tesch trial
his affidavit alone was produced. He is one of the witnesses to the critical
"holes" in the roof of Krematorium II, which Van Pelt conceded did not
exist; see para. 7.92.
129. At 13.49, Gray J praises "Vaillant-Couturier's vivid, detailed and
credible evidence about the women's camp at Auschwitz". Marie-Claude
Vaillant-Couturier was a demonstrably political woman. Much of this
Communist agitator's past is still shrouded in mystery. In her essay Women
in the French Resistance Rebecca G. Halbreich concedes: "It is not clear
from any source what her exact role was in the Resistance."
130. The evidence of her heroism is her own uncorroborated testimony at
Nuremberg: she was (she said) arrested by Pétain's French police on 9
February 1942, questioned by the Germans on 9 June 1942, and arrived with
230 other French women at Auschwitz on 27 January 1943; of these, 49
survived, the rest dying of disease (though her testimony is vague on this
point); she herself caught typhus and was in quarantine from 15 July 1943 to
May 1944, returned to the main camp for two months, then being transferred
to the women's camp at Ravensbruck.
131. For her IMT testimony, see Trial of the Major War Criminals before the
International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 28 January 1946 (Nuremberg,
1947), p. 219.
132. It seems likely that Judge Biddle wrote "this I doubt" of her testimony
generally, for example:-
(i) her preposterous account of the SS flagellation machine, which requires
Freudian rather than legal analysis; and
(ii) her lurid suggestion that Tauber (see above) had encouraged his SS dog
to kill prisoners for fun.
133. It scarcely seems likely that Judge Biddle was referring to her account
of women being selected for SS brothels. That part of her testimony was
unquestionably true. Such brothels were a feature of most concentration
camps.
The Physical Evidence of the Camps At Auschwitz and Birkenau
134. How unreliable this evidence is appears from what Pelt himself has
written in his book Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, Robert Jan van Pelt and
Deborah Dwork, Yale University Press, London 1996, p. 364:-
"When Auschwitz was transformed into a museum after the war, the decision
was taken to concentrate the history of the whole complex into one of its
component parts. The infamous crematoria where the mass murders had taken
place lay in ruins in Birkenau, two miles away. The committee felt that a
crematorium was required at the end of the memorial journey, and Crematorium
I was reconstructed to speak for the history of the incinerators at
Birkenau.
"This program of usurpation was rather detailed. A chimney, the ultimate
symbol of Birkenau, was re-created; four hatched openings in the roof, as if
for pouring Zyklon B into the gas chamber below, were installed, and two of
the three furnaces were rebuilt using original parts. There are no signs to
explain these restitutions, they were not marked at the time, and the guides
remain silent about it when they take visitors through this building that is
presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened."
The Documents:
1. The Bischoff document
135. Gray J says at 7.106 that:-
"Irving dismissed several of the allegedly incriminating documents as
unauthentic if not downright forgeries."
136. Gray J is, however, wrong. Irving challenged the authenticity of only
one document, the Bischoff document.
137. Gray J is also seriously in error when he says that the grounds for
Irving's challenge to the authenticity of the Bischoff document rested:-
"on the inaccurate designation of the rank of the addressee of the letter,
General Kammler, which omitted the distinctive symbol used by the Nazis for
members of the SS."
138. This was not even a ground, let alone the ground, upon which Irving
relied. The grounds were listed clearly in Irving's written submissions to
Gray J of 21March, 2000 (submitted at the Court's request):-
"(i) Bischoff letter, 28 June, 1943, on crematorium capacity at Auschwitz.
The integrity of this document is challenged on the following grounds:-
(a) Letter register number ("31550/Je./Ne.-") lacks the year ("/43/")
(b) Letter register number has a secretary or typist working for the man who
dictated the letter (Jenisch) whose initials ("/Ne.") are not found on any
of the other 58,000 documents surviving in the Auschwitz Construction Office
archives.
(c) The rank of Dr. Kammler is given wrongly: SS-BrigadeFuehrer und
Generalmajor instead of: SS-BrigadeFuehrer und Generalmajor der Waffen SS.
Such an error is not found on any other genuine document whatever.
(d) The reference number "31550" appears to have been typed in at a later
date, possibly after somebody ascertained a suitable in sequence number to
give to the fake document.
(e) The handling figures which this document gives for Crematorium II do not
tally with the specifications provided by the manufacturers, Topf & Co. A
letter cited by Jean-Claude Pressac from the Topf archives gives a top rate
of 800 per day for Crematorium II and III.
(f) Furthermore, the document refers to some crematoria which were at that
time shut down, and to others that were due to be taken out of commission.
Crematorium II was in service from March 15 to 24 and July 18 to December
31, in 1943; Crematorium III from June 25 to December 31; Crematorium IV
from March 22 to May 10. Crematorium II and IV were apparently 'down' at the
date of the alleged document; and Crematorium I was taken right out of
service soon after for conversion to an air raid shelter."
The Cavendish-Bentinck Memorandum
139. Cavendish-Bentinck (later Duke of Portland) was chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee of the War Cabinet, and thus head of British
Intelligence. He had automatic access to all Intelligence materials,
including the highest grades such as Ultra intercepts and CSDIC
interrogations. He stated in writing in August 1943 that the British had no
evidence of the existence of gas chambers. The document dated 27 August,
1943, is authentic, signed in his handwriting, and preserved in British
files (PRO file FO.371/15252). It reads:-
"As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that
there is any evidence that this has been done. There have been many stories
to this effect, and we have played them up in P.W.E. rumours without
believing that they had any foundation. At any rate there is far less
evidence than exists for the mass murder of Polish officers by the Russians
at Katyn. [...] I think that we weaken our case against the Germans by
publicly giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence.
These mass executions in gas chambers remind me of the story of employment
of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture of fat [...]."
Camp Commandant Hoess's Ciphers to Berlin
140. In Volume II of his book British Intelligence in the Second World War,
Sir F. Hinsley notes that British Intelligence was decoding the secret
messages from Hoess, Camp Commandant of Auschwitz, to Berlin, which included
his daily returns, and goes on to say:-
"The returns from Auschwitz, the largest of the camps with 20,000 prisoners,
mentioned illness as the main cause of death, but included references to
shootings and hangings. There were no references in the decrypts to
gassing."
141. Gray J deals with this striking omission by observing at 8.21 that:-
"Records were kept... of the number of deaths amongst those who were
registered as inmates of the camp. But, for reasons which are perhaps
obvious, none of those deaths is recorded as having been due to gassing."
142. That observation, it is submitted, invites three rejoinders. The first
is that Hoess's reports to Berlin were in top secret cipher. No-one on the
German side had the slightest inkling that we had broken it. It is
accordingly anything but obvious why Hoess, who dispassionately recorded the
statistics for inmates whom he had ordered should be hanged or shot, did not
record any deaths by gassings.
143. The second is that Gray J appears to consider the very absence of
evidence for a particular proposition as an "obvious" proof of its
correctness.
144. The third is that at 13.27, Gray J observes:-
"I was unconvinced by the strenuous efforts made by Irving to refute the
sinister interpretation placed by the Defendants on Hitler's pronouncements
on the Jewish question from late 1941 onwards."
145. These were mostly public pronouncements, yet Gray J is suggesting that
the whole genocide operation was top secret. Gray J's findings at 8.21
cannot stand with his findings at 13.27.
Sonderaktion (sing.), Sonderaktionen (pl.)
146. The Defendants invariably attribute a sinister meaning to this word. It
is treated as an euphemism for killing, an approach to construction much
favoured by the Defendants when a literal translation of documents in the
German language did not assist them. It is, however, far from apparent that
it should generally bear this sense. For example, a telex to Berlin from
Bischoff of the Auschwitz camp administration dated 18th December 1942
refers to a Sonderaktion der Gestapo bei s?mtlichen Zivilarbeitern, which
means, if the translation of Sonderaktion advocated by the Defendants and
adopted by Gray J is correct, that the Gestapo killed all the civilian
workers in the camp. No-one has ever suggested that such a massacre took
place.
Gray J's observations at 7.118, 13.73 and 13.74
147. At 7.118 Gray J observes that:-
"The Defendants accept that the physical evidence remaining at the site of
Auschwitz provides little evidence to support the claim that gas chambers
were operated there for genocidal purposes."
148. Irving adopts that observation, and all that Gray J says at 13.73
e.g.:-
"The contemporaneous documents, such as drawings, plans, correspondence with
contractors and the like, yield little clear evidence of the existence of
gas chambers designed to kill humans."
149. Para. 13.74, is also generally adopted, especially "the possibility
exists that some of these witnesses invented some or even all of the
experiences which they describe." Gray J is however wrong to attribute the
Bischoff incineration document (see above) to Mueller; Gray J repeats this
error at 13.76.
The Scientific Evidence
1. Morgue 1 at Crematorium II
150. The Defendants' case is that mass gassings were carried out at this
site. The alleged modus operandi of the SS was to insert Zyklon B pellets
through four holes in the roof to poison the unfortunates locked in the gas
chamber below. Irving's principal objective in relation to the Auschwitz
aspect of the trial was to discredit this theory, by showing that there
never were any holes in the roof.
151. At 13.81 Gray J says:-
"as the trial progressed, the emphasis of Irving's case on Auschwitz
appeared to shift from the absence of cyanide in the brick and plaster to
the roof of Morgue 1 at Crematorium II."
152. This statement is totally wrong. On the very first day Irving insisted
on showing the court a video of Van Pelt on the roof of Morgue I, and drew
the Court's attention to Van Pelt's statement that beneath that slab the
worst atrocities ever committed against man had been done by the Nazis. That
this was the epicentre of atrocity, a factory of death, etc.
153. Re: 13.83: "It is unclear how much of the roof can be seen in the
photograph on which Irving relies. The roof is in a bad state, so that it is
hard to tell if there were holes in it."
154. The fact remains that Van Pelt in his own report says that the holes
are not in that roof now, and postulates that they were filled in by the
Nazis.
155. Re: 13.84: "The apparent absence of evidence of holes in the roof of
morgue at Crematorium II falls far short of being a good reason for
rejecting the cumulative effect of the evidence."
156. This is an astonishing finding. The roof is still there and has no
holes in it, but because the cumulative convergent evidence presented by the
Defendants' experts in London suggests that there are holes, the evidence of
the concrete roof is ignored.
2. The Cyanide Stains
157. Van Pelt is a professor of cultural history and completely ignorant of
chemistry, so was in no position to testify on this subject.
158. Roth did not give evidence at the trial. Roth had originally analysed
Leuchter's samples, supporting Leuchter's conclusions. Later he said:-
"If I had known the samples came from Auschwitz I would have come to a
different conclusion..."
159. The evidence of a man who will change his conclusions to suit the
premises is of little value
160. When giving a summary at 7.115 of Roth's views (received at second
hand, and not tested by cross-examination) Gray J does not mention that
Irving produced to the Court colour photos of the fumigation chamber at
Auschwitz, showing that the blue cyanide stains had permeated right through
the brickwork.
161. Even if the concentration of cyanide required to kill human beings is
less than the concentration required for delousing, Roth's suggestion that
cyanide produces a surface reaction which will penetrate no further than one
tenth of the breadth of a human hair appears to be irreconcilable with the
evidence of the colour photos of the fumigation chamber.
162. It is, moreover, a matter of common knowledge, which can easily be
proved by the production of real evidence if the Court of Appeal declines to
take judicial notice of it, that plaster is a very rough, porous and coarse
material. It defies common sense to accept that a gas such as hydrogen
cyanide will not penetrate into such material deeper than a few fractions of
a millimetre.
3. Coke consumption in the crematoria
163. An important part of Irving's thesis that the scale of the atrocities
perpetrated at Auschwitz has been materially exaggerated is that it would
have been quite impossible to cremate the alleged numbers of gas chamber
victims with the supplies of coke delivered to Auschwitz-Birkenau. See e.g.
his cross-examination (Transcript of day 9, pp. 149 et seq.) of Van Pelt,
who, being neither an engineer nor a chemist, but a professor of cultural
history with some knowledge of architecture, should not have been heard on
this issue anyway.
164. Summarizing Van Pelt's evidence on this issue at 7.124, Gray J observes
that:-
"basing himself on a contemporaneous calculation and assuming bodies were
burned together at the rate contemplated in Bischoff's letter of 28 June
1943, he maintained that the quantity of coke required per corpse would have
been no more than 3.5kg."
165. No crematorium, anywhere, ever has achieved a figure in the region of
3.5 kg of coke per corpse. The best figure achieved anywhere in Nazi Germany
for mass cremations was 35 kg, at Gusen camp. But Van Pelt was (in part)
extrapolating backwards from the Bischoff document, which is probably a
forgery.
166. It is also enlightening to compare both Evans's comments on the Dresden
death toll and their treatment by Gray J at 11.18 with Gray J's acceptance
of Van Pelt's Auschwitz evidence:-
"How, asked Evans, would it have been possible to have removed 200,000
bodies within a month? Moreover the claim in TB47 that 68,650 were
incinerated in the Altmarkt defies belief, according to Evans, since it
would have taken weeks and many gallons of gasoline to burn so many corpses
in the available space."
167. Every one of Evans's arguments about Dresden mirrors those marshalled
by Irving to refute key documents and allegations about Auschwitz, Birkenau,
and the gas chambers. Irving's arguments, which are the product of forty
years' investigation, were not accepted by Gray J, but when deployed by
Evans, who has come to them only recently, they were accepted without a
murmur.
Reichskristallnacht
168. Re 5.38: It is obvious that the Kristallnacht excesses were committed
by the Nazis not because Grynzspan was a young Pole, but because he was a
Jew. He was undoubtedly crazed.
169. Re 5.39: No evidence at all was before the Court that the 20,000 were
"severely mistreated." Many were brutally mishandled and unjustly
imprisoned, but most were released almost at once.
170. Re: 5.49: Gray J appears to take no account of Irving's rebuttal in his
written submission of 21 March 2000 of the Defendants' submission that the
acts of arson which were to be halted were limited on Hitler's orders solely
to German property and shops [Geschäfte].
171. At 3:45 a.m. that same night the following telegram was issued by the
Gestapo Section II, signed "p.p. Bartz":
"The following orders of the chief of security police [Heydrich] are to be
executed urgently and immediately:
(1) according to the latest orders in accord with the Political Leaders all
kinds of arson are to hindered;
(2) all orders issued and yet to be issued in this affair are to be stamped
secret,
(3) without exception every Gestapo head office and office is to submit two
reports on the execution of the Aktionen and their effects, particularly
about egregious episodes, to the Gestapo section II. The first report must
be submitted by this morning November 10 at 5 a.m. at the latest, the second
report by seven a.m. this morning at the latest to the Gestapo HQ.
(4) receipt of confirmation of this message is awaited urgently via the
Blitz teleprinter Munich No. 47.767 [i.e. Heydrich's telex number]."
172. In other words Heydrich, who is said in paragraph 5.3 to be acting at
all material times on Hitler's direct orders, is seen clearly ordering a
halt to all acts of arson, not just acts against German property and shops.
173. As Gray J states at paragraph 5.53: "The contemporaneous documents
created during the night of violence are likely to prove a far more reliable
guide than the self-serving and untested accounts of Hitler's staff."
174. Yet Evans and his experts did not breath a word to the court about the
existence of the 3.45 a.m. telegram, in breach of Evans's clear duty to the
Court; see the third of Cresswell J's observations in The Ikarian Reefer
[1993] 2 Lloyd's Rep. 68 at 81 to 82.
175. Re: 5.52: This description of Hitler's reaction is important. It is not
borne out by the Goebbels diaries. It is however borne out by the testimony
of Hitler's adjutants. The diary cannot be slavishly followed. It is the
diary of a liar, a propagandist. The fact that it was evidently written up
not one, but two or even three days later, after the Kristallnacht episode,
calls for additional caution in relying on it for chronology and content. It
was furthermore in Goebbels' interest to maintain that he had been acting at
all material times on Hitler's orders, although Rosenberg (writing in 1938),
Von Hassell (1938), Groscurth (1938) , Himmler (March 1939), Ribbentrop
(1945), and Hitler's adjutants Wolff (1952), Brueckner (1945, 1947), Below
(1947), Wiedemann (March 1939), all say that this was untrue.
176. Re: 5.53: Gray J refers to the fact that Hitler's adjutants were
testifying years after the war, and thus recalling events long ago. His
Adjutant Fritz Wiedemann wrote his recollections in February 1939 on a
steamship bound for San Francisco, after he had been dismissed Hitler's
personal staff (and was thus not likely to be biassed in Hitler's favour).
Himmler, Heydrich, Groscurth and many others referred to Hitler's fury at
Goebbels in contemporaneous documents, as most of the dates above indicate.
177. Re: 5.75 the phrase "next" is based on the German word nunmehr. Nunmehr
is the element of "apprehension", as in "What now!?" not as in "Let's go
home now." Evans, whose grasp of vernacular German was shown to be deficient
in the course of his cross-examination, did not know this. Gray J failed to
appreciate the point.
178. Re: 5.78 The Goebbels "stop order" was broadcast all morning, well
before mid-day. Gray J's suggestion at paragraph 5.85 that Evans stated that
the "only record of the content of the broadcast gives the time of
transmission as the afternoon" is not supported by Evans's evidence.
Hitler's Trial in 1924
179. Re 5.18: Irving was writing a book on Hitler's War, not the so-called
struggle period of the Nazi party before 1933. In a book on Hitler's War one
does not expect a more than passing reference to an unimportant episode that
occurred in 1923.
180. Re 5.22: Mr. Justice Gray makes no reference to Irving's position on
this issue, as stated in Irving's written submission of 21 March, namely
that, while Hitler was at that time an obscure agitator on his way to
prison, "Hoffmann was a police sergeant, testifying on oath and therefore
seemed credible to me."
181. Re: 5.24, "requisitioning of funds". In Irving's written submission of
21 March he pointed out that:-
"In writing books for the general reader and a wider public than is attained
by e.g. the expert witnesses in this case, I agree that I used vocabulary
like 'requisitioning' in the way that GIs would talk about 'liberating'
wristwatches from Nazi prisoners of war. My readers will have got the
point."
The Berlin Crime Statistics for 1932
182. Contrary to what is suggested at 5.32 Interpol did exist in 1932.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica:-
"Interpol began in Europe, which is not surprising since many countries of
Europe have common frontiers and a criminal can, for example, be in one of
four other countries within an hour of having committed a crime in Belgium.
After World War I there was a great increase in crime; one of the countries
most affected was Austria, and the Viennese police president, Johann
Schober, obtained his government's support in 1923 for calling together
representatives of the criminal police of other countries. The
representatives of 20 nations met to discuss the problems facing them, and
the International Criminal Police commission was formed that year. Vienna
was the home of its first headquarters, and Schober became its first
president. From 1923 until 1938 the commission flourished."
183. Para. 5.35 is a grossly inaccurate rendition of Irving's evidence on
this matter. Irving admitted no error in citing wrong sources. More
importantly, Evans did not (paragraph 5.33, last sentence) state that the
other two references which Irving cited did not bear out his claim; Evans
stated that he had not been able to locate Kiaulehn and Wieglin, the sources
whom Irving used. (Day 29, 2 March, 2000, commencing at page 96).
Dresden
184. This peripheral issue (it has nothing to do with Hitler's policy
towards the Jews) was introduced by the Defendants in November 1999, at a
time when the Claimant was struggling under the weight of preparing as a
litigant in person for a heavy trial. It arises out of the first of Irving's
books, which he began writing in 1960, and published as long ago as 1963,
and which was not substantially revised until the 1996 edition. During the
intervening thirty-three years, Irving had little control over the text,
which was in the hands of sub-licensees. Some of the figures which Gray J
cites in his chronologies are from jacket blurbs, over which the author had
no control whatsoever.
185. In November 1999, the Defendants must have known that there was no
possibility of Irving going back in any detail to his 1963 material in time
for a trial fixed for 11 January 2000. Lipstadt later explained the
Defendants' thinking in the Jerusalem Post of 6 June 2000:-
"There was always the possibility that Irving would drop out, and some of
the pre-trial strategy was designed to keep pressure on him, in the hope
that he would give up."
186. Irving is said to have falsified the death toll in Dresden. See e.g. at
13.124:-
"He [Irving] also testified that his claims had been based on estimates as
high as 250,000 which he had received from a great many individuals. Irving
neither identified the individuals nor disclosed the letters."
187. Irving had donated his records to the Dresden city archives in 1965.
Microfilm copies were disclosed to the Defendants. Among evidence thus
disclosed and produced to the Court were letters from Hans Voigt, a wartime
Dresden city official in charge of maintaining death lists, who gave his
best estimate of the death roll at 135,000, the figure used by Irving; and a
letter from Dr Max Fünfack, stating that General Mehnert, the city
commandant and Professor Fetscher, chief of the city's civil defence, had at
that time given him death roll figures of around 140,000. Mr Irving also
produced a book with a foreword by Dr Konrad Adenauer, Germany's post-war
Chancellor, with this footnote: "The attack on the city on Dresden, which
was filled with refugees on 13 February 1945 alone cost about 250,000 dead,"
and a report by US Air Force medical officers Desaga and Hurd, in the
records of the US Strategic Bombing Survey, giving a similar figure. "The
most badly damaged town, in their opinion, is Dresden with an estimated
casualty list of 250,000." Prof. Evans was cross-examined on these two
sources on Day 23, 21 February 2000, pages 197 et seq.
188. It is submitted that Irving fairly used the material available to him
between 1960 and 1963 on this side issue.
Extremist Associations
189. It is inevitable that a researcher into the history of the Third Reich
will meet and associate with many Nazis: they are bound to be amongst his
sources. Irving's submissions on the law in this regard are to be found at
para. [ ] above.
190. The video to which Gray J refers at 13.113, saying that: "Irving can be
seen watching assorted groups, many of them in uniform, march towards the
meeting place," shows nothing of the sort. All forms of political uniform
are banned in Germany. None was worn.
Racism and Anti-Semitism
191. These much publicized allegations go to alleged motive only, and if it
is found on appeal that Irving did not falsify, pervert etc. the historical
record, the citation of regrettable observations made under gross
provocation in the course of meetings under attack from violent opponents,
let alone one nineteen word "racist" ditty amongst the twenty million or so
words of his private diaries are of no materiality whatsoever to the case.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
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B'enjamin C'ramer
Index
Lipstadt's March 2005 attempt to silence C-Span (dossier)
Jerusalem Post reports (Feb 2007): Deborah Lipstadt orates in London to
Zionist rally: "Holocaust scholar warns of new 'soft-core' denial" -
Lipstadt interviewed on Feb.4 in luxury London hotel by Spiked: 'Genocide
denial laws will shut down debate" | Uh, Lipstadt favours debate? She
refused to enter the witness box in London in 2002, and silenced her own
C-Span appearance in 2005 (see above)
. The usual slur: Lipstadt attacks Jimmy Carter, says his Jan 2007 book on
Palestine relies on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense - Finkelstein
demolishes Lipstadt
. Answering the Lipstadt Liars: Free Download of David Irving's own Diary of
his three-month 2000 Legal Action against Deborah Lipstadt - originally
posted in 2000, but repeated here for new readers
A fair and revealing illustrated interview of Prof Lipstadt by Robert
Birnbaum
. Mar 15, 2005: Deborah Lipstadt cuts off nose, spites face: Richard Cohen's
fury in Washington Post that C-SPAN grants equal air time: to silence David
Irving, Lipstadt cancels her consent | The Irving-CSpan correspondence, with
a prediction | The self-important David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies cackles its approval | Our complete dossier on Lipstadt's C-Span
fiasco
. Still dining out on the Holocaust Mar 10, 2005: Deborah Lipstadt visits
Berlin (but can't speak German): defends WW2 massacre at Dresden; is asked
why she never took the stand during the Lipstadt Libel Trial
. In 2002 Lipstadt published in Nova Law Review a revealing survey of the
months before the Lipstadt trial. With full commentary by David Irving, and
hyperlinks
. Feb 25, 2005 reviews of Lipstadt's new book: Emory University ("The
British press was nasty, seeing it as a battle of class -- an English
gentleman against an American Jewish woman upstart") | Jewish Journal of Los
Angeles
. Jan 27, 2008 Still dining out on the Holocaust: Deborah Lipstadt writes on
The future of Holocaust denial in that obejctive daily, The Jerusalem Post,
and worries about the Arabs who have taken up the cry |and sells the same
article to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. Jan 27, 2005: Kirkus reviews Lipstadt's turgid new book on the trial ("it
has dry patches" - like the Sahara): and, abandoning My Struggle, she has
stolen Don Guttenplan's title, History on Trial
. Jan 26, 2005: Still dining out on the Holocaust: Lipstadt reminisces in
the International Herald Tribune about her famous victory in the London High
Court (she took the Fifth) and mentions her new book - it was going to be
called My Struggle (no kiddin').
. Index to Legal Situation caused by Lipstadt's illegal postings of
documents on her university website
. Ward Churchill pours scorn on Lipstadt in No.33 of Socialism and
Democracy: An American Holocaust? The Structure of Denial
. Lipstadt's praise for Binjamin Wilkomirski, the (ASSHOL) fraudster and
liar:
"Deborah Lipstadt has assigned Fragments in her Emory University class on
Holocaust memoirs. When confronted with evidence that it is a fraud, she
commented that the new revelations 'might complicate matters somewhat, but
[the work] is still powerful.' Daniel Ganzfried reports that Jews have
complained to him that even if Fragments is a fraud, his exposé is
dangerously aiding 'those who deny the Holocaust.'"
.
. Lipstadt hits Oregon trail again: speaks at Portland | The racist record
of Deborah Lipstadt
. Tom Stoneburner asks for material to refute the orchestrated attacks on Mr
Irving
. Lipstadt latest: had surgery October 2002 | invitation to meet her
. Lipstadt latest: receives Eternal Light award from Catholic-Jews in
Florida
. Lipstadt "heralds personal victory over Holocaust revisionists"
. Twelve questions on Auschwitz to put to Prof. Lipstadt the next time you
see her...
. Controversy April 2001 over Emory's choice of Deborah Lipstadt as
graduation speaker; won't get honorary degree
. Update on Lipstadt's Book About the Trial: Irving v. Lipstadt
. Great debating opportunity: Lipstadt lectures Sept 10, 2003 at US
Holocaust Museum, Washington
. Atyn Boersma, writes from the Netherlands with questions about the basis
of the Lipstadt trial
. Reviews of Lipstadt's latest book on the Amazon website. Newspaper
reviewers are, like the publishing industry, preponderantly Jewish, and
therefore partisan. What do non-partisan readers think of Lipstadt's book on
her trial for libel?
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B'enjamin C'ramer
blonde, I decide she is stupid. I see a Black, I decide he's shiftless [sic]
and lazy. I see an Italian, I decide he is Mafioso. I see a Jew, I decide
they [sic] are evil, greedy, conniving, etc." -- Deborah Lipstadt on
prejudice
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
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B'enjamin C'ramer
In her blog today ("Holocaust deniers attack me: lies, more lies, and damn
lies") Deborah Lipstadt is backing away from her call for the firing of
Prof. Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, which we reported here
yesterday ("Deception Watch: Forward Newspaper 2/10/06 Edition").
Today she says never made the call: "O'Reilly started the conversation by
acknowledging that since Butz has tenure he can't be fired. What then, he
asked, can be done? I said don't let him teach. Don't assign any classes to
him. Assigning classes to him is giving him the University's passive
imprimatur. Rather than calling for his firing, essentially I was suggesting
that the guy should get paid for doing nothing."
But here's what she wrote on her blog Feb. 8:
I made a brief appearance last night on the O'Reilly Factor regarding Arthur
Butz, the Northwestern professor who is a great fan of the Iranian
President. O'Reilly, recognizing that since Butz has tenure he can't be
fired, asked what could be done. I suggested that even though Butz does not
mention the Holocaust in his electrical engineering classes, he should not
be allowed to teach. O'Reilly asked if this would be a violation of his
academic freedom. I said no, he still can say whatever he wants to say but
he just won't be allowed in the courtroom which is a form of endorsement
[possibly passive but endorsement nonetheless] by the university. O'Reilly
liked the idea [?!!] and said he would take it up with the Northwestern
president....".
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
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truth and memory
prey to these falsehoods. But some have succumbed in another fashion,
supporting Holocaust denial in the name of free speech, free inquiry, or
intellectual freedom. An absolutist commitment to the liberal idea of
dialogue may cause its proponents to fail to recognize that there is a
significant difference between reasoned dialogue and anti-intellectual
pseudoscientific arguments. They have failed to make the critical
distinction between a conclusion, however outrageous it may be, that has
been reached through reasonable inquiry and the use of standards of
evidence, on the one hand, and ideological extremism that rejects anything
that contradicts its preset conclusions, on the other. Thomas Jefferson
long ago argued that in a setting committed to the pursuit of truth all
ideas and opinions must be tolerated. But he added a caveat that is
particularly applicable to this investigation: Reason must be left free to
combat error. (84) One of the ways of combating errors is by making the
distinctions between scholarship and myth. In the case of Holocaust denial,
we are dealing with people who consciously confuse these categories. As a
result reason becomes hostage to a particularly odious ideology.
Reasoned dialogue, particularly as it applies to the understanding of
history, is rooted in the notion that there exists a historical reality
that - though it may be subjected by the historian to a multiplicity of
interpretations - is ultimately found and not made. (85) The historian does
not create, the historian uncovers. The validity of a historical
interpretation is determined by how well it accounts for the facts. Though
the historian's role is to act as a neutral observer trying to follow the
facts, there is increasing recognition that the historian brings to this
enterprise his or her own values and biases. Consequently there is no such
thing as value-free history. However, even the historian with a particular
bias is dramatically different from the proponents of these pseudo reasoned
ideologies. The latter freely shape or create information to buttress their
convictions and reject as implausible any evidence that counters them. They
use the language of scientific inquiry, but theirs is a purely ideological
enterprise.
This absolutist commitment to free inquiry and the power of irrational
mythical thinking at least partially explain how the deniers have managed
to find defenders among various establishment figures and institutions.
Even the supposed protectors of Western liberal ideals of reasoned dialogue
can fall prey to the absolutist notion that all arguments are equally
legitimate arenas of debate. By arguing that the deniers' views, however
ugly, must be given a fair hearing, they take a positive Western value to
an extremist end. They fail to recognize that the deniers' contentions are
a composite of claims founded on racism, extremism, and virulent
anti-semitism. The issue is not interpretation: The challenge presented by
the deniers is whether disinformation should be granted the same status and
intellectual privileges as real history.
I reiterate that I am not advocating the muzzling of the deniers. They have
the right to free speech, however abhorrent. However, they are using that
right not as a shield, as it was intended by the Constitution, but as a
sword. There is a qualitative difference between barring someone's right to
speech and providing him or her with a platform from which to deliver a
message. Quick to exploit this situation, the deniers have engaged in a
calculated manipulation of two principles dear to Americans: free speech
and the search for historical truth.
In the pages that follow I shall examine both the modus operandi of
Holocaust denial and the impact it has had on contemporary culture. I
undertake this task with some hesitation, since readers might wonder how
marginal the deniers can be if historians do not simply dismiss them. Does
scholars' attention suggest that they are not merely falsifiers? Does
research on them give them the publicity they crave? [Robert Lifton
expressed similar ambivalences about the potential impact of his research
on doctors who participated in the Nazi killing system. He feared that his
explanation would sound as if he were condoning or rationalizing their
actions (Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing, and the Psychology of
Genocide [New York, 1986], pp. xi-xii).] Indeed, deniers are quick to
pounce joyfully on any discussion of their work as evidence of the serious
consideration their views are receiving.
In 1981 President Reagan, speaking at the official commemoration of the
Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust, related how "horrified" he was to
learn that there were people who claimed that the Holocaust was an
invention. In its newsletter the Institute for Historical Review, the
leading disseminator of Holocaust denial material, cited the president's
comments to demonstrate Holocaust denial's "vibrancy" and "just how far
Revisionism has come since our founding" (86) - a response reminiscent of
the witticism: I don't care what they say about me as long as they say
something.
The deniers understand how to gain respectability for outrageous and
absolutely false ideas. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has described
how this process operates in the academic arena. Professor X publishes a
theory despite the fact that reams of documented information contradict his
conclusions. In the "highest moral tones" he expresses his disregard for
all evidence that sheds doubt on his findings. He engages in ad hominem
attacks on those who have authored the critical works in this field and on
the people silly enough to believe them. The scholars who have come under
attack by this professor are provoked to respond. Before long he has become
"the controversial Prof. X" and his theory is discussed seriously by
non-professionals, that is, journalists. He soon becomes a familiar figure
on television and radio, where he "explains" his ideas to interviewers who
cannot challenge him or demonstrate the fallaciousness of his argument.
(87)
While we have not yet descended to the point at which respectful reviews of
denial literature appear in Time, Newsweek, or The New Yorker, virtually
all else has evolved as Sahlins described. Normal and accepted standards of
scholarship, including the proper use of evidence, are discarded. What
remains, in the word of this eminent anthropologist, is a "scandal."
The danger that my research might inadvertently give the deniers a certain
stature is not my only cause for trepidation. Another more serious problem
is inherent in the process of refuting the deniers. It is possible, as the
French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet has observed, that in the course of
answering the deniers an "exterminationist" school will be created in
opposition to the "revisionist" one. (88) Such was the case when radio and
television producers wondered why I wouldn't talk to the "other side."
Deniers have, in fact, already taken to calling those who do research on
the Holocaust "exterminationists."
Despite these dangers I have undertaken this work for a number of reasons.
First, denial of an individual's or a group's persecution, degradation, and
suffering is the ultimate cruelty - on some level worse than the
persecution itself. Those who have not experienced the Holocaust or the
sting of anti-semitism may find it difficult to understand the
vulnerability it endangers in the victim. So, too, those who have never
experienced racism cannot fully grasp the pain and anger it causes. This
book is, in part, an attempt to convey the pain the deniers inflict. In
writing it I have often found myself angry with them despite the facts that
they live in a strange mental wonderland and that neither they nor the
nonsense they spread are worthy of my anger. Although we do not take their
conclusions seriously, contradictory as it may sound, we must make their
method the subject of study. We must do so not because of the inherent
value of their ideas but because of the fragility of reason and society's
susceptibility to such farfetched notions. Many powerful movements have
been founded by people living in similar irrational wonderlands, national
socialism foremost among them.
I have also delved into this distasteful topic because of my conviction
that only when society - particularly that portion of society committed to
intellectual inquiry - comprehends the full import of this group's
intentions will there be any hope that history will not be reshaped to fit
a variety of pernicious motives. Time need not be wasted in answering each
and every one of the deniers' contentions. It would be a never-ending
effort to respond to arguments posed by those who falsify findings, quote
out of context, and dismiss reams of testimony because it counters their
arguments. It is the speciousness of their arguments, not the arguments
themselves, that demands a response. The way they confuse and distort is
what I wish to demonstrate; above all, it is essential to expose the
illusion of reasoned inquiry that conceals their extremist views.
It is also crucial to understand that this is not an arcane controversy.
The past and, more important, our perception of it have a powerful impact
on the way we respond to contemporary problems. Deniers are well aware of
history's significance. Not by chance did Harry Elmer Barnes believe that
history could serve as a "means for a deliberate and conscious instrument
of social transformation." (89) History matters. Whether the focus be the
Middle East, Vietnam, the Balkans, the Cold War, or slavery in this
country, the public's perception of past events and their meaning has a
tremendous influence on how it views and responds to the present. Adolf
Hitler's rise to power was facilitated by the artful way in which he
advanced views of recent German history that appealed to the masses. It did
not matter if his was a distorted version, it appealed to the German people
because it laid the blame for their current problems elsewhere. Although
history will always be at a disadvantage when contending with the mythic
power of irrational prejudices, it must contend nonetheless.
I was reminded of the potency of history when, on the eve of the Louisiana
gubernatorial election in 1991, one of David Duke's followers remarked in a
television interview that there was all this talk about Duke's past views
on Jews and blacks and his Ku Klux Klan activities. That, the follower
observed, was the past; what relevance he wondered, did it have for this
election? The answer was obvious: His past had everything to do with his
quest for election; it shaped who he was and who he remained. It has never
been more clearly illustrated that history matters. (Neither was it pure
happenstance that the late Paul de Man, one of the founders of
deconstructionism, also falsified his past and reworked his personal
history.) (90) And if history matters, its practitioners matter even more.
The historian's role has been compared to that of the canary in the coal
mine whose death warned the miners that dangerous fumes were in the air -
"any poisonous nonsense and the canary expires." (91) There is much
poisonous nonsense in the atmosphere these days. The deniers hope to
achieve their goals by winning recognition as a legitimate scholarly cadre
and by planting seeds of doubt in the younger generation. Only by
recognizing the threat denial poses to both the past and the future will we
ultimately thwart their efforts.
NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1. Dumas Malone, The Sage of Monticello: Jefferson and His Time, vol. 6
(Boston, 1981), pp. 417-18.
2. Marvin Perry, "Denying the Holocaust History as Myth and Delusion,"
Encore American and Worldwide News, Sept. 1981, pp. 28-33.
3. For an example of this see how the deniers have treated Anne Frank's
diary. David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom, eds., The Diary of Anne
Frank: The Critical Edition (New York, 1989), pp. 91-101.
4. The incident occurred at Indiana University-Purdue University at
Indianapolis on February 9, 1990. It was subsequently revealed that the
teacher had been arrested for stealing war memorabilia from a local museum
(Indianapolis News, Feb. 16, 1990).
5. Indianapolis Star, Feb. 22 and 23, 1990.
6. The Sagamore, Feb. 26, 1990.
7. "Like your uncle from Peoria," was how actress Whoopi Goldberg described
the neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, whom she hosted on her television show in
September 1992. Metzger, an ardent racist and anti-semite, advocates the
forced racial segregation of blacks. Goldberg acknowledged that he was
particularly dangerous because he appeared so civil. Howard Rosenberg, the
television critic of the Los Angeles Times, wondered why, if Goldberg
recognized this, it was necessary for her to host him on her show.
Obviously she had fallen prey to the same syndrome afflicting those who
invite the deniers to appear (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 21, 1992).
8. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Aug. 26, 1990.
9. From a letter signed by David Duke accompanying the Crusader, February
1980, as cited in David Duke: In His Own Words (New York, n.d.).
10. Interview with David Duke conducted by Hustler magazine, reprinted in
the National Association for the Advancement of White People News, Aug.
1982.
11. Jason Berry, "Duke's Disguise," New York Times, Oct. 16, 1991. See also
Letters to the Editor, New York Times, Oct. 19, 1991.
12. Jason Berry, "The Hazards of Duke," Washington Post, May 14, 1989. He
also tried to appear as if he had modulated his views on other topics. No
longer did he speak of sterilizing welfare mothers; now it was "birth
control incentives" (Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1990). See also Lawrence
N. Powell, "Read my Liposuction: The Makeover of David Duke," New Republic,
Oct. 15, 1990.
13. Jacob Weisberg, "The Heresies of Pat Buchanan," New Republic, Oct. 22,
1990, pp. 26-27.
14. Ibid., p. 26.
15. Report of the Anti-Defamation League on Pat Buchanan, Los Angeles
Jewish Journal, Sept. 28, 1991.
16. New York Times, Feb. 14, 1992.
17. David Warshofsky (pseud., a regular participant in the Institute's
meetings), interview with author, December 1992.
18. Robert D. Kaplan, "Croatianism: The Latest Balkan Ugliness," New
Republic, Nov. 25, 1991, p. 16.
19. "Croatia," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), Israel
Gutman, ed., p. 326.
20. Some of the key Slovakian separatists have engaged in actual denial.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Mar. 17, 1992.
21. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 6, 1992; The Times, Mar. 6, 1988.
22. Daily Telegraph, July 10, 1992.
23. Sunday Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1992.
24. Daily Telegraph, July 10, 1992.
25. Independent on Sunday, May 10, 1992.
26. Frederick Brown, "French Amnesia," Harpers, Dec. 1981, p. 70.
27. Nadine Fresco, "The Denial of the Dead: On the Faurisson Affair,"
Dissent, Fall 1981, p. 467.
28. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the
Holocaust (New York, 1993), pp. 40-41; Serge Thion, ed., Verite historique
or verite politique? (Paris, 1980), pp. 187, 190, 211.
29. Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, p. 115.
30. Ibid.
31. Guardian, July 3, 1986; Le Monde, July 4, 1986.
32. New Statesman, Apr. 10, 1981, p. 4.
33. Annales d'Histoire Revisionniste, vol. 1, Spring 1987; Judith Miller,
One by One by One: Facing the Holocaust (New York, 1990), p. 134.
34. Miller, One by One by One, p. 137; Jewish Telegraph Agency, Oct. 23,
1987.
35. Time, May 28, 1990; U.S. News & World Report, May 28, 1990, p. 42; Los
Angeles Times, May 29, 1990, pp. H1, H7. In the following parliamentary
election Le Pen's party was routed but this resulted from a change in the
voting system and not a loss of support. Miller, One by One by One, p. 138.
36. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Oct. 23, 1987; Alain Finkielkraut
Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity
(New York, 1989), pp. 35-44.
37. L'Express, Oct. 28-Nov. 4, 1978; Gill Seidel, The Holocaust Denial
(Leeds, England, 1986).
38. New Statesman, Sept. 7, 1979, p. 332.
39. The Times, May 11, 1990; Jewish Week, Sept. 15, 1989.
40. Dokumentationszentrum, 1988 Annual Report, Vienna, Austria.
41. Austrian News, Embassy of Austria, Press and Information Dept.,
Washington, Oct., 1989.
42. Spotlight, June 1, 1992.
43. In 1991, the Gallup organization conducted a poll of Austrian attitudes
toward Jews commissioned by the American Jewish Committee. 53% of the
people surveyed thought it was time to "put the memory of the Holocaust
behind us" and 39% believed that "Jews have caused much harm in the course
of history." An almost identical proportion believed that Jews had "too
much influence" over world affairs; close to 20% wanted them out of the
country. These statistics indicate a country "ripe" for an anti-semitic
ideology such as Holocaust denial. Fritz Karmasin, Austrian Attitudes
Towards Jews, Israel and the Holocaust (New York, 1992).
44. Jewish Telegraph Agency, Aug. 18, 1992, p. 4; Nov. 11, 1992.
45. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 2, 4, 1992.
46. Arab News, May 8, 1988.
47. New York Times, Dec. 10, 1989.
48. New Statesman, Sept. 7, 1979; Searchlight, Nov. 1988, p. 15.
49. Jewish Telegraph Agency, Dec. 22, 1992. Outside of the Union, some
Australians have been able to voice Holocaust denial charges with impunity.
Dr. Anice Morsey, a prominent member of the Australian Arab community, has
accused Zionists of fabricating the story of the Holocaust. He maintained
that the Jews who were killed were fifth columnists or spies. Morsey
asserted that Israel was the financial beneficiary of this hoax and Germany
the victim. Morsey's views did not seem to have hampered his career.
Subsequent to making that statement he was appointed ethnic affairs
commissioner by the Victorian government. An Nahar, Nov. 8, 1982, quoted in
Jeremy Jones, "Holocaust revisionism in Australia," in Without Prejudice
(Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs), Dec. 4, 1991, p. 53. Kenneth
Stern's Holocaust Denial contains a useful survey of recent Holocaust
denial activities throughout the world (New York: American Jewish
Committee, 1993), chap. 2.
50. New York Times, Mar. 12, 1987; Jennifer Golub, Japanese Attitudes
Toward Jews (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1992), p. 6.
51. The Weekend Australian, Aug. 19-20, 1989; New York Times, Dec. 25,
1988; Time, Oct. 7, 1991.
52. Yehuda Bauer, "'Revisionism' - The Repudiation of the Holocaust and Its
Historical Significance," in The Historiography of the Holocaust Period,
Yisrael Gutman and Gideon Grief, eds. (Jerusalem, 1988), p. 702.
53. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18, 1990.
54. Near East Report, Apr. 16, 1990, p. 72.
55. Interview with Robert Faurisson, Vichy, France, June 1989.
56. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 26, 1992.
57. Esquire, Feb. 1983.
58. The Progressive, Apr. 1986, p. 4.
59. Peter Hayes, "A Historian Confronts Denial," in The Netherlands and
Nazi Genocide, G. Jan Colijn and Marcia S. Littell, eds. (Lewiston, 1992),
p. 522.
60. Safet M. Sarich to Winnetka educators, May 1991.
61. New York Times, Jan. 1, 1981.
62. Gitta Sereny, "The Judgment of History," New Statesman, July 17, 1981,
p. 16; Noam Chomsky, "The Commissars of Literature," New Statesman, Aug.
14, 1981, p. 13.
63. Noam Chomsky, "Chomsky: Freedom of Expression? Absolutely," Village
Voice, July 1-7, 1981, p. 12. See also Noam Chomsky, "The Faurisson Affair:
His Right to Say It," Nation, Feb. 28, 1981, p. 231. Gitta Sereny, "Let
History Judge," New Statesman, Sept. 11, 1981, p. 12.
64. Alfred Kazin, "Americans Right, Left and Indifferent: Responses to the
Holocaust," Dimensions, vol. 4, no. 1 (1988), p. 12.
65. He was particularly distressed by the University of Lyons's decision
not to let Faurisson teach because it could not guarantee his safety.
66. Statement by President H. Keith H. Brodie, Duke University, Nov. 6,
1991.
67. Fish argued that he was not in the business of "recovering" texts but
"in the business of making texts and of teaching others to make them." He
found this a liberating approach because it relieved him of "the obligation
to be right.. and demands only that I be interesting." Peter Novick, That
Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical
Profession (Cambridge, 1988), p. 544.
68. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, 1978), cited in
Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 539.
69. Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism,"
Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, 1982), p. 166. See also Novick,
That Noble Dream, p. 540.
70. Hilary Putnam, Truth and History (Cambridge, 1981), p. 54.
71. Time, Aug. 26, 1991, p. 19.
72. Newsweek, Sept. 18, 1991, p. 47.
73. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German
National Identity (Cambridge, 1988), p. 64.
74. Novick, That Noble Dream, pp. 448ff.
75. Mark Lane, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Nov. 13,
1991.
76. Conversations with Robert Faurisson, Vichy, France, June 1989.
77. Harry Elmer Barnes, "Revisionism: A Key to Peace," Rampart Journal
(Spring 1966), p. 3.
78. Austin J. App, History's Most Terrifying Peace, p. 106, cited in
"Prevent World War III," n.d., p. 7.
79. Harry Elmer Barnes, Revisionism and Brainwashing: A Survey of the
War-Guilt Question in Germany After Two World Wars (n.p., 1962), p. 33
(hereafter referred to as Brainwashing).
80. Canadian papers covering the trial regularly carried headlines such as:
"Nazi Camp had Pool, Ballroom" (Toronto Sun, Feb. 13, 1985); "Prisoners at
Auschwitz dined, danced to band, Zuendel Witness Testifies" (Toronto Star,
Feb. 13, 1985).
81. Conversations with Robert Faurisson, Vichy, France, June 1989.
82. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p. 64.
83. Colin Holmes, "Historical Revisionism in Britain, The Politics of
History," in Trends in Historical Revisionism: History as a Political
Device (London, 1985), p. 8.
84. Dumas Malone, The Sage of Monticello, pp. 417-418.
85. Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 2.
86. Institute for Historical Review, Newsletter (Apr. 1987), p. 1.
87. New York Review of Books, Mar. 22, 1979, p. 47. See also Pierre
Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, pp. 3-7.
88. Democracy, vol. 1-2 (Apr. 1981), pp. 73ff.
89. Justus D. Doenecke, "Harry Elmer Barnes: Prophet of a Usable Past,"
History Teacher (Feb. 1975), p. 273.
90. Geoffrey Hartman, "Blindness and Insight," New Republic, Mar. 7, 1988,
pp. 26-31.
91. Donald Cameron Watt, "The Political Misuse of History," in Trends in
Historical Revisionism: History as a Political Device (London, 1985), p.
11.
truth and memory
History, Conspiracy and Fantasy
Modern Holocaust denial draws inspiration from a variety of sources. Among
them are a legitimate historical tradition that was highly critical of
government policies and believed that history was being used to justify
those policies; an age-old nexus of conspiratorial scenarios that place a
neat coherence on widely diverse developments; and hyperbolic critiques of
government policies which, despite an initial connection to reality? became
so extreme as to assume a quality of fantasy. The aforementioned historical
tradition was taken over and co-opted by the Holocaust deniers. In the
other two cases, denial was their logical successor.
The deniers consider themselves heirs of a group of influential American
historians who were deeply disturbed by American involvement in World War
I. These respected scholars, who called themselves revisionists, would have
been appalled to learn of the purposes to which their arguments were put.
In contrast to the Holocaust deniers, who make no distinction between fact
and fiction, the World War I revisionists engaged in serious research and
relied upon established canons of evidence. Despite these differences,
deniers have tried to link the two traditions, arguing that each has sought
to create an alternative history for major events of the twentieth century.
However, one of these schools used traditional historiographic methodology
to do so, whereas denial relies on pseudoscience.
The opening salvo in this fight was fired in 1920, when Sidney B. Fay, a
professor at Smith College, published a series of articles in the American
Historical Review on the origins of World War I. In these articles and in
his subsequent book, Fay used archival material released after the war to
argue that, contrary to prevailing American opinion, the Germans had not
sought to go to war. Americans, Fay protested, had been fed a great deal of
"silly propaganda" about who was really responsible for the war. (1) He
insisted that Germany had neither plotted nor wanted a war and had made
real efforts to avoid one. On the eve of World War I, according to Fay,
German statesmen were the last leaders in Europe to abandon the quest for
peace and mobilize their army, doing so only when all other options had
been closed. (2)
Thus was born American World War I revisionism. One of Fay's earliest
associates in this effort was Harry Elmer Barnes, who in 1923 became his
colleague at Smith College. Barnes, a prolific writer and a full professor
by the age of thirty, quickly joined the battle. Soon he surpassed Fay and
virtually every other revisionist in his vehement criticism of American
foreign policy. His relentless attacks on the "orthodox" presentation of
the war made him a hero in Germany. In American historical circles, he was
infamous for his ad hominem assaults on those whom he believed advocated
the traditional historiography of World War I. (3) While Barnes played a
seminal role in the post-World War I revisionist debate, his importance for
us is as the "father" of American Holocaust denial: He became one of
Holocaust denial's earliest proponents and wrote some of the first attacks
on the history of the destruction of European Jewry. As we shall see in
chapter 5, his method in both contexts was remarkably similar.
Prominent among the other academics who joined Fay and Barnes was Charles
A. Beard. (4) Beard derisively dismissed the "Sunday-school theory" of the
war: namely that Russia, France, and England, "three pure and innocent
boys," were assailed by two villains, Germany and Austria, who had been
conspiring to commit "cruel deeds in the dark." (5) Not only did they
reject the idea of German responsibility, but they were distressed by the
Versailles treaty's use of the notion of war guilt in order to impose
severely punitive conditions on Germany. The revisionists considered
Article 231 of the treaty, which held German aggression responsible for
imposing a war on the Allies, "historically incorrect and morally
unjustifiable." (6)
But these revisionists did not just exonerate Germany; they excoriated the
Allies, accusing them of behaving duplicitously before and after the war.
In their view, the British and French, anxious to lure the United States
into the war, prevented it from learning about the very real German desire
for peace and the "reasonable and statesmanlike" proposals offered by the
Germans in order to avert war.' France's aggressive and combative policy
repeatedly closed off options for peace. Britain falsely accused Germany of
committing horrible atrocities. According to the revisionists, even when
World War I ended the Allies continued to behave in a deceptive fashion and
refused to consider evidence that contradicted the notion of sole German
war guilt. (8) The British, French, and American acts of postwar deception
were particularly odious to the revisionists because as victors, the Allies
knew that Germany was not really guilty. Using their power to keep the
truth from emerging, the Allies engaged in a calculated refashioning of
fact and forced the dregs of defeat down German throats even though the
Germans did not deserve it.
Some of the more extreme revisionists, Barnes prominent among them,
specifically castigated President Woodrow Wilson as responsible for the
expense, losses, and miseries of the war and for the "arrogant and
atrocious policies of France and England." (9) They claimed that Wilson's
initial support of American neutrality was disingenuous. According to their
account, Wilson had long been convinced that England could not defeat
Germany without American aid. Consequently he decided to enter the war on
England's side as soon as possible and simply waited for the proper
provocation to do so. (10) World War II revisionists would voice virtually
the same arguments about President Roosevelt. They contended that, just
like his predecessor Wilson, Roosevelt had long intended for the United
States to enter the European fray and was only waiting for the right
opportunity to make it happen. According to these critics, both men were
less than honest with the American people and both led the United States
down a disastrous foreign policy path.
In fact, much of the revisionist argument was historically quite sound.
Germany was not solely culpable for the war. The Versailles treaty
contained harsh and vindictive elements that placed so onerous a financial
burden on Germany as to virtually guarantee the collapse of the Weimar
regime. The French did have ulterior motives. The American munitions
industry and bankers did benefit greatly from the war. The war did not
bring peace to Europe or resolve any of its long simmering disputes.
The revisionist cause was strengthened by the fact that during the war the
British propagated all sorts of false horror stories about German
atrocities against civilians, including that the Germans used homicidal gas
to kill non-combatants, employed babies for target practice, and mutilated
Belgian women. The American public, unaware that a hoax was being
perpetrated, proved particularly susceptible to these stories. (11) (This
effort was so successful that an entire industry was born as a result: The
field of public relations traces its origins directly to British and, to a
lesser degree, American propaganda regarding the war.) Twenty years later,
when reports reached Americans about Nazi Germany's use of gas to kill
Jews, the lingering impact of these false atrocity tales was evident.
Americans dismissed the second spate of stories as yet another set of tall
tales about the Germans. The problem, of course, was that this time the
stories were true.
One of the reasons many Americans were intrigued by revisionism and
supported the non-interventionism of the interwar period was that although
the war had ended in victory, the outcome was far less than had been
anticipated. During the war politicians such as Wilson nourished the notion
that this was a crusade for democracy, when in fact it was more often a
matter of distasteful national interest. (12) For many people, including
World War I revisionists, these efforts to cast the war in grandiose,
hyperbolic terms backfired. They were bitterly disappointed that the war
had been neither the democratic crusade nor the war to end all wars Wilson
had promised. Neither did it establish peace among the war-weary peoples of
the earth. As the situation in Europe became increasingly volatile in the
interwar years, growing numbers of Americans, the revisionists and
isolationists foremost among them, became embittered and disillusioned.
(13) They were convinced that an unsuspecting American public had been
duped and that American intervention in the war had been an unmitigated
disaster not only for the United States but for the world. (14) Their ex
post-facto attacks were bitter and unwavering. During the interwar period
the debate over World War I's origins provided a framework for the
passionate discussion of American foreign policy. The revisionists' aim was
to alter public opinion. (15) Revisionism became the prism through which
future policies were refracted. (16) Harry Elmer Barnes is the only link
between these revisionists and Holocaust denial. But the revisionists'
arguments were nonetheless a perfect foil for the deniers. Their
contentions about government chicanery, mistreatment of Germany, and
atrocity reports and their desire to change public attitudes were too
tempting to be ignored. The deniers would hijack this movement and use it
for their own purposes.
On both the home and international fronts the interwar period was a
turbulent time. Critics of American foreign policy were to be found at all
points of the political spectrum. (17) On Capitol Hill, liberals,
conservatives, and progressives faulted Roosevelt and the direction of his
overseas policies. (18) In certain quarters there was a conviction that
there existed a conspiracy or a series of conspiracies to do America harm.
Red scares took on the character of a witch-hunt. A deep-seated xenophobia
tinged with significant anti-semitism emerged in the United States. As the
impact of the depression intensified, there was also a growing sentiment in
various quarters that someone - a group, ideology, financial interest - was
to blame. The ramifications of these fears could be seen in a variety of
arenas.
The passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 was motivated by a desire to
limit the number of people not of Anglo-Saxon Protestant background who
could enter the country. Opponents of the new type of immigrants charged
that they were changing the face of America. Passed when Americans felt
financially secure, the act won even stronger support as the economic and
international situation deteriorated. The depression fostered a deep
distrust of business and banking interests. For many people the culprits
responsible for this steadily deteriorating situation were easily
identifiable.
In 1935, Sen. Gerald P. Nye (R-ND) convened hearings on the role of
shipbuilders, munitions manufacturers, and international bankers in World
War I. The premise of the hearings was that it was not only political
leaders who bore the blame for getting the country into this war. "Wicked"
Wall Street bankers aided and abetted by "sinister" arms merchants were
part of an insidious self-enriching effort to lure the United States into
the conflagration. (19) The Nye committee hearings aroused intense
isolationist sentiment in the United States and had profound implications
for American foreign policy. (20) Though they found no evidence to prove
Wall Street responsible for precipitating American involvement, some
senators believed the hearings the most effective medium for fostering
American isolationism during this period. [We presume this is the place for
(21) but the printed text omits this footnote] When Sen. Homer T. Bone
(D-WA), a vehement isolationist, observed in 1935 that the war had been
"utter social insanity," and that America had "no business" being in it,
his view resonated with millions of people. (22)
In certain quarters there was little doubt as to the identity of those
responsible for the dire situation facing the United States. Roosevelt was
accused of pandering to "Jewish interests" with his foreign policy. Sen.
Hiram W. Johnson (R-CA), echoing a view harbored by a growing number of
anti-semites, complained in February 1939 that all the Jews were "on one
side, wildly enthusiastic for the President and willing to fight to the
last American." He charged that Jews' loyalties were to their group and not
to their nation. Arrayed against this powerful entity, Johnson continued,
were "those of us - a very considerable number who are thinking in terms of
our own country, and that alone." Johnson argued that though Germany's
treatment of its Jewish population was at the heart of the struggle over
American policy in Europe, no one was brave enough to say so because they
were afraid of "offending the Jews." He accused Roosevelt, whom he believed
had a "dictator complex," of having found the Jews powerful supporters who
vociferously demanded that he provide aid for "their people, who neither
live here, nor have anything in common with our country." (23)
Father Charles C. Coughlin's anti-semitic diatribes on CBS radio had a
nationwide listening audience in the millions, and his journal, Social
Justice, reprinted anti-semitica that came directly from the propaganda
machine of Joseph Goebbels (without, of course, identifying the source). In
1941 Democratic congressman John E. Rankin of Mississippi, a known
anti-semite, accused "Wall Street and a little group of our international
Jewish brethren" of trying to precipitate a war and complained that "white
Gentiles" were being persecuted in the United States. (24) In 1941
isolationist senators investigated the movie industry's use of propaganda
to "influence public sentiment in the direction of participation by the
United States in the present European war." (25) The hearings took on an
anti-semitic tone because virtually all those named by the investigation
were Jewish. Charles A. Lindbergh believed that Jews constituted a
separate, distinct, and cohesive unit committed to a policy of
interventionism and possessed of the political power to realize their goal.
[Lindbergh's best-known and most controversial statement during this period
was made in September 1941 at an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa.
In a speech entitled "Who Are the War Agitators?" he told 8,000 people that
the "three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward
war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration.. If any
one of these groups - the British, the Jewish, or the Administration -
stops agitating for war.. [there would] be little danger of our
involvement."] His public expression of these views attracted tremendous
controversy. (26)
In the wake of Germany's absorption of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, even
such a respected scholar as Charles Beard attacked two "major pressure
groups" for thwarting a realistic American "foreign policy based on
geographical position and its democratic ideals." The two groups were the
idealistic internationalists and the "boarders," ethnic groups and
communists whose "hopes and passion are linked with the fate of foreign
governments and nationalities." (27)
The age-old inclination to find a Jewish conspirator behind a country's
problems was deeply ingrained. Jews had been blamed for poisoning wells,
killing Christian children, spreading the Black Plague, and causing
famines, earthquakes, and droughts. In twentieth-century America this kind
of conspiratorial delusion was given a major boost when Henry Ford, whose
name was synonymous with American ingenuity and industriousness, blamed a
Jewish conspiracy for social and economic upheavals. Between 1920 and 1927,
Ford's Dearborn Independent, which had a circulation of 600,000, published
the Protocols in English and ran a series of articles accusing Jews of
utilizing communism, banking, labor unions, alcohol, gambling, jazz music,
newspapers, and the movies to attack and weaken America, its culture and
people. The Jews' objective was to absorb the country into the "All-Judan,"
a putative world government. Published in book form, The International Jew:
The Worlds Foremost Problem sold over 500,000 copies in the United States
and was translated into 16 foreign languages. (28)
The Protocols were often cited as "evidence" of a Jewish conspiracy. An
article in the Chicago Tribune contended that communism was intimately
linked to the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. On the same day that
this article appeared, the Christian Science Monitor's lead editorial,
entitled "The Jewish Peril," argued that the Protocols bore a striking
similarity to the conspiracy of the Order of the Illuminati. (29)
Conspiracy theorists had long identified the Illuminati as Lucifer's modern
successors. They supposedly used reason to undermine religion and the
political order and establish world government. Not only were they said to
be the force behind the French revolution but they were also held
responsible for Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto and facilitated the rise of
communism. According to this nexus of conspiratorial delusions, which the
Dearborn Independent repeated, Jews, and Jewish bankers in particular, were
responsible for the Illuminati's nefarious deeds. Those who unearthed this
conspiracy were able to impose a logical coherence on the seemingly
irrational nature of their charges - bankers aiding communists - by arguing
that the bankers anticipated that the communists would create a world
government that they would then appropriate and control. (30)
Ford, facing a lawsuit, eventually apologized for fostering this fantasy.
But the damage had already been done. The image of a Jewish conspiracy that
connected communist and capitalist forces in an attempt to dominate the
world had taken root in the minds of many Americans, particularly those
from the extremist right.
Many of these Jewish-conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial, share
common features. Behind each conspiracy is a collective that has targeted
another group. Though the victims are more numerous than the conspirators,
because they remain unaware of the conspiracy they are highly vulnerable.
It is the responsibility of those who have uncovered the scheme to bring it
to the victims' attention. The conspirators are thought to pursue their
goals with a diabolical skill that far exceeds that of their enemies.
Endowed with almost mystical powers, they control the stock exchange, world
banks, and the media. Having successfully carried out such conspiracies in
the past, these conspirators are so adept that, unless they are stopped,
they will surely triumph in the future. (31)
These delusions impose orderly consistency on situations that seem
inexplicable - worldwide depressions, famines, and the death of millions -
and draw on familiar stereotypes. The Holocaust deniers have built on this
tradition. Some among them may actually be convinced of the truth of their
charges. The conviction that they are right does not, of course, make their
claims any more rational or true than the earlier claims of those who
accused the Jews of poisoning wells, killing Christian children for ritual
purposes, and fomenting world revolution.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II a number of isolationists again
took up the cudgels on behalf of Germany. Among the post-World War II
revisionists were extremists who shared a belief that a military and
political conspiracy of major proportions had again been perpetrated to
drag the United States into war. According to them, Roosevelt had been
intent on U.S. participation from the outbreak of the war in 1939. With a
select cadre of advisers and the support of certain ethnic and interest
groups, he sought a "back door" into World War II. In order to achieve his
objective he concealed information indicating that an attack on Pearl
Harbor was forthcoming. Convinced of Roosevelt's complicity in allowing the
attack to occur, the Chicago Tribune accused him of deliberately
sacrificing the lives of thousands of American soldiers. Led by
journalists, pacifists, and politicians, critics argued further that Pearl
Harbor was part of a bigger and more complex picture. They believed that
the Roosevelt administration needed a war to divert public attention from
the failures of the New Deal.
Criticism came from those who were bitterly disappointed that the war had
taken place and unhappy with its outcome. Bitterness was reflected in their
rhetoric. In his book The Roosevelt Myth, America First leader John T.
Flynn accused Roosevelt of finding war a "glorious, magnificent escape from
all the insoluble problems of America." Flynn argued that nothing had been
accomplished by the war except to "put into Stalin's hands the means of
seizing a great slab of the continent of Europe." Flynn's book, which was
rejected by all major publishers because of its inflammatory rhetoric, was
eventually released by Devin-Adair, which would in turn become one of the
leading publishers of Holocaust denial material. Its rhetoric
notwithstanding it reached the number two position on the New York Times
best-seller list. (32)
Charles Beard also argued that the defeat of one totalitarian entity
resulted in the rise of an equally despotic regime. Nazism had been
replaced by another despotism, consequently there was no justifiable reason
for going to war. Juxtaposing the outrages committed by the Nazis with
those committed by the Soviets, Beard wondered how it could be argued "that
the 'end' justified the means employed to involve the United States in the
war?" (33) Citing Beard for a purpose that would have appalled him,
Holocaust deniers' journals and publications argue that the war against
Hitler was not just folly but counterproductive to American interests.
Consequently, the deniers contend, there must have been some interest group
that wanted the war to occur.
These critics had various objectives. Some, possibly prompted by their
German American heritage, wished to win more lenient economic and political
terms for a defeated Germany. Others may have been motivated by their
conservative midwestern roots and were wary of foreign entanglements. Many
among them were anticommunists who believed that a strong postwar Germany
provided the best defense against the spread of Communism. Others, such as
Barnes, were World War I revisionists who did not distinguish between one
conflagration and the other. While the idea of a strong Germany became the
linchpin of American postwar policy, some of the more extreme post-World
War II revisionists took it a step further and, echoing a prewar argument,
contended that Nazi Germany had also been an excellent defense against
Communism but that the Allies had been blind - or blinded - to this fact.
The most extreme revisionist account of America's entry into World War II,
Back Door to War, by Charles C. Tansill, a professor of American diplomatic
history at Georgetown University, was published in 1952.
truth and memory
American history when he accused Lincoln, whom he called a "do-nothing"
soldier, invincible in peace and invisible in war," of having tricked the
South into attacking Fort Sumter and thereby precipitating the Civil War.
(34) His book made a strong impression on Holocaust deniers who
energetically promote it and use his arguments as a foundation for their
own. He declared that the "main objective" of American foreign policy
during the first half of the twentieth century was "the preservation of the
British Empire." He linked U.S. entry into World War I with the rise of
Nazism in Europe, the former having resulted in the latter: "Our
intervention completely shattered the old balance of power and sowed the
seeds of inevitable future conflict." According to him this sordid set of
affairs did not end with World War I, and in his view America's entry into
World War II was thus an attempt to preserve, irrespective of the cost, the
"bungling handiwork of 1919." (35)
Tansill set out a number of arguments that would become essential elements
of Holocaust denial. Most have no basis in fact; for example, revisionists
contended that Hitler did not want to go to war with Poland but planned for
Germany and Poland to dominate Europe together. If Poland had agreed to
Hitler's scheme that it become the chief satellite in the Nazi orbit, its
security would have been guaranteed. (36) It was the Poles' refusal -
prompted by promises they had received from the British and made at
America's urging - to accede to the Nazi plan that was responsible for the
outbreak of the war. Therefore it was American machinations that were
ultimately responsible for pushing Poland into war and precipitating World
War II. (37) Roosevelt, according to this extreme revisionist point of
view, played a "grotesque role" in the entire episode by pressing British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to make promises to the Poles that could
not be fulfilled. (38) These extreme arguments, which are rejected by
virtually all historians, ignore the fact that Hitler did not intend to
make Poland a satellite but to decimate it and that he regarded the Poles
as Untermenschen, less than complete human beings. These arguments also
exaggerate Roosevelt's role in convincing the British and the Poles to go
to war. Stretching existing historical evidence to distorted limits, these
arguments exonerated Nazi Germany and placed responsibility for the war on
the Allies. Not surprisingly, deniers would make them a critical component
of the nexus of arguments that together constitute their world view.
Among the extremists who, within months of the end of the war, were engaged
in an attempt to lessen Germany's burden of responsibility were the
vanguard of the deniers. They generally agreed that the United States
should not have allowed itself to be drawn into the war. But their primary
objective was to help Germany regain moral standing in the world. They
believed that a strong, revived Germany was the key to the future of
Western Europe. They recognized that the Allies in general and Americans in
particular were likely to balk at aiding a country that was perceived as
vicious, if not genocidal. It was necessary, therefore, to mitigate, if not
totally dissipate, the uniqueness of Germany's wartime behavior. They did
so in a number of ways: by portraying Nazi Germany in a positive light, by
minimizing the severity of its hostile actions, and by engaging in immoral
equivalencies - that is, by citing what they claimed were comparable Allied
wrongs.
Some of them were quite sympathetic to Hitler and portrayed him as a leader
whose only motivation was the good of his own country. In addition to
demonstrating a conciliatory attitude toward Poland, he had sought to avoid
war. He was, according to Austin App, a "man of architecture and art, not
of armaments and war." He did not want to go to war and was reluctant to
mobilize the German people. (39) Hitler's Germany had been a society with
many positive features that were overlooked because of disproportionate
focus on some of its less appealing domestic policies. (40) The war could
not be defined as a moral struggle: All sides had been equally devious and,
consequently, were equally guilty. In order to free Germany of its
particular burden of guilt those engaged in this effort had to address
directly the issue of the atrocities committed under the Nazis. The most
extreme among them tried to neutralize German actions by directly comparing
the Nazis' annihilation of the Jews and murder of millions of others with
Allied actions They contended that the United States had committed
wrongdoings of the same magnitude. The ardent isolationist Freda Utley made
the same point in The High Cost of Vengeance:
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery no one ever paid a higher
compliment to the Nazis than their conquerors.. We reaffirmed the Nazi
doctrine that "might makes right." Instead of showing the Germans that
Hitler's racial theories were both wrong and ridiculous, we ourselves
assumed the role of a master race. (41)
The argument that the United States committed atrocities at least as great
as those committed by Germany has become a fulcrum of contemporary
Holocaust denial and a theme repeated continually in their literature. But
the deniers do not stop with this. In order to achieve their goals, one of
which is the historical rehabilitation of Germany, they must "eliminate"
the Holocaust. Once they do so, this equation - everyone is equally guilty
- becomes even easier to make. If there was no Holocaust and the Allies
committed terrible atrocities, then what was so bad about Nazi Germany?
It is also a central argument for those who relativize the Holocaust - that
is, those who say the Nazis were no worse than anyone else. For the
relativizer, these charges serve as immoral equivalents that mitigate the
uniqueness of German wrongs. George Morgenstern, an editor of the Chicago
Tribune, offered a mild example of American postwar equalizing, or
relativizing, wrongdoings when he argued that none of the Allies had "clean
hands" or were real "exemplar[s] of justice." While the fascist "slave
states" were abhorrent to decent people, the British Empire, whose
existence was dependent on the "exploitation" of millions of natives, was
equally abhorrent. (42) William Neumann, who had been one of the first to
attack prewar U.S. foreign policy, believed that Allied atrocities were the
"point by point" equivalent of the Nazis'. (43) Stalin had invaded Poland
in 1939, England and France had declared war on Germany, and the United
States had committed acts of aggression against Germany before Pearl Harbor
in the form of lend-lease. Frederick Libby of the National Council for the
Prevention of War tried to lessen Germany's burden by stating that "no
nation has a monopoly on atrocities. War itself is the supreme atrocity."
(44)
There were also those who, not satisfied with attacking Roosevelt or
equating German and American wrongdoing, went a step further and portrayed
Germany as the much maligned victim of Allied aggression. Such arguments
served as the model for those who would eventually seek not just to
exculpate Germany for the Holocaust but to deny its existence altogether.
According to these postwar revisionists, the bombing of Dresden and Cologne
as well as Allied postwar policy toward Germany were equivalent to Nazi
atrocities. They assailed Allied acquiescence in allowing the bifurcation
of Germany and Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, ignoring the fact that
the West had no alternative short of armed conflict with the Soviets. They
demanded, and succeeded in getting, special American immigration permits
for Germans. (45) Ignoring similar conditions in other parts of Europe,
they accused the United States of allowing the German people to starve and
insisted that special relief plans be instituted to help Germany.
Isolationist forces in the Senate persuaded a total of 34 senators to
inform the president jointly that Germany and Austria were "facing
starvation on a scale never before experienced in Western Civilization."
(46) Utley and other revisionists falsely claimed that, for 3 years after
their unconditional surrender, the Allies had kept the Germans on rations
that were less than or, at best, the same as those in a concentration camp.
Many of these isolationists seemed - according to Justus Doenecke, who has
written a sympathetic portrait of them - to draw righteous justification
from the fact that they had found a way to portray Germany as the victim
and the United States as the victimizer and "malicious power." (47) Some
World War II revisionists found it hard to exonerate the German political
and military leaders who led the nation in war. Instead they attempted to
distinguish between the behavior of the "people" as opposed to their
"leaders," depicting the Germans as a people who had themselves been
persecuted and victimized. While there may have been elements of truth in
their charges, these extremists carried them to a point where fantasy
subsumed reality. (48)
Relativists and German apologists cited the Allies' mass transfer of German
citizens from Czechoslovakia and Poland in the immediate aftermath of the
war as the ultimate example of Allied brutality. Sen. William Langer
(R-ND), who had vigorously opposed Roosevelt's foreign policy, spoke of a
"savage and fanatical plot" to destroy 15,000,000 German women and
children. (49) Senator Langer claimed that 3,000,000 of the German refugees
had died en route. (50) Freda Utley described these population transfers as
"crimes against humanity." Her choice of this particular phrase, which had
already gained wide currency as a result of the Nuremberg indictments, was
telling. (Eventually Utley would become one of the most vocal of Sen.
Joseph McCarthy's supporters, branding one of those he accused of being a
Communist spy as a "Judas cow," an animal who led others to be
slaughtered). (51) Using a tactic that typified the actions of those who,
in their quest to defend Nazi Germany, stopped short of denying the
atrocities, she compared these transfers with what had been done to the
Jews. According to her the expulsion of millions of people from their homes
for the sole "crime" of being part of the German "race" was an "atrocity"
equivalent to "the extermination of the Jews and the massacres of the Poles
and Russians by the Nazis." Utley continued: "The women and children who
died of hunger and cold on the long trek from Silesia and the Sudetenland
to what remained of the German Reich, may have thought that a quick death
in a gas chamber would have been comparatively merciful." (52)
She exonerated the German war criminals who were tried at Nuremberg because
what they did was "minor in extent if not in degree" compared with the
postwar behavior of the Russian armies and the "genocide" committed by
Poles and Czechs against Germans. (53) Taking the tactic of immoral
equivalencies to its ultimate extreme, she argued that "there was no crime
the Nazis had committed which we or our allies had not also committed."
(54) Although Utley was an extremist who did not abandon her political
beliefs even after the war, such charges were not only made by extremists.
The Chicago Tribune accused the French of not permitting more than 500,000
German prisoners of war to return home. According to the paper they were
being kept as "slaves," denied food sufficient to allow them to work, and
beaten by "Moroccan savages." (55)
Many of the critics focused on a plan proposed toward the end of the war by
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, which would have prevented the
economic rehabilitation of Germany. Though the plan was never put into
effect, World War II revisionists and Holocaust deniers claim it was and
cite it as an example of the Allies' diabolical attitude toward Germany and
of the way Germany was to be made the victim of Allied postwar retribution.
Henry Regnery, who published much of the World War II revisionist material,
issued a pamphlet comparing Morgenthau's proposal with the Nazi plan to
destroy millions of Jews through starvation. (56) The fact that Morgenthau
was not only a member of Roosevelt's cabinet but an identifying Jew was
something these critics were quick to exploit. [In 1977, denier James
Martin described Morgenthau's plan as an example of running postwar Germany
"according to the Old Testament instead of the New." He claimed the plan
had been implemented and resulted in the German population transfers, which
he called the "most barbarous event of the history of Europe.. It is rare
that one ever sees an animal forced to endure under such degraded and
forlorn circumstances." Martin, a member of the Journal of Historical
Review's editorial board, is listed as a contributor to the 1970
Encyclopedia Britannica. James J. Martin, The Saga Of Hog Island and Other
Essays in Inconvenient History (Colorado Springs, 1977), p. 193.]
These postwar isolationists and World War II revisionists also cast Germany
as the victim by stressing the "inhumanity" and "injustice" of the Allied
war crimes trials and de-Nazification programs. (Lindbergh accused the
Allies of imposing an "eye for an eye" punishment.) They questioned the
legality of the Nuremberg trials and accused the Allies of hypocrisy in
holding them, arguing that had the outcome of the war been reversed the
Allied leaders would have found themselves in the docket. Beard also
attacked the trials. (57) Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) argued that the trials
were marked by a "spirit of vengeance," and the Chicago Tribune declared
that Russia's participation transformed them into a "kangaroo court." (58)
Congressman Rankin accused the court at Nuremberg of having "perpetrated
more outrages than any other organization of its kind." He found it
particularly appalling that Soviet Communist Jews, who he argued, bore
responsibility for the murder of tens of millions of Christians, should be
able to sit in judgment of "German soldiers, civilians and doctors, five or
six years after the war closed." (59) Robert McCormick, probably America's
most influential isolationist, refused to have dinner with former Attorney
General Francis Biddle because, as a result of his role in the Nuremberg
trials, McCormick considered him a "murderer." (60) The New York Daily News
declared that the defendants' "real crime was that they did not win." (61)
Allied behavior in the immediate aftermath of the war was not without
fault. There had been insufficient planning for this period, and there were
many shortcomings in Allied policies. The de-Nazification program was
applied unequally, and inequities in punishment resulted from it. But the
critics ignored the circumstances that had produced this situation.
Furthermore there was no starvation program in Germany, and the rations
Germans received far surpassed anything concentration camp inmates were
ever given by the Nazis. The vigor of the isolationists' attacks on the
de-Nazification program did not abate even when it became clear that
Washington wished to change, if not totally abandon it.
(The degree to which Germans could be singled out for having committed
atrocities was a matter of debate from the moment the war ended. The
concentration camps had barely been liberated when some critics and
commentators began to argue that the reports, official photographs, and
films of the camps were being released in order to implant in American
minds a feeling of vengeance. James Agee, writing in the Nation of May 19,
1945, attacked the Signal Corps films of concentration camp victims even
though he had not seen them. He did not believe it "necessary" to show
them: "Such propaganda" - even if true - was designed to make Americans
equate all Germans with the few who had perpetrated these crimes. (62)
Milton Mayer, in an article in the Progressive, went a step further than
Agee. He not only argued against vengeance but questioned whether the films
and reports could really be true. "There are, to be sure, fantastic
discrepancies in the reports." (63) Despite overwhelming evidence, doubts
persisted.) (64)
Respected Americans voiced concern about a spirit of vengeance. They
sometimes did so by casting doubt on the veracity of the stories and by
defending the perpetrators. Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the
University of Chicago, a vigorous isolationist who had been an advisor to
America First, wrote in 1945 that "the wildest atrocity stories" could not
change the "simple truth" that "no men are beasts." (The implicit message
in Hutchins's juxtaposition of the terms "wild atrocity story" with "simple
truth" may have been unintended, but it must have had an impact on his
readers.) An article in the Progressive by William B. Hesseltine, a
historian at the University of Wisconsin, compared the false atrocity
stories that had been circulated in the aftermath of the Civil War with
those that emerged from Germany after the end of hostilities there. (65)
Years later, in an example of how deniers pervert historical arguments, a
virtually identical argument was made by Austin App:
The top U.S. media, possibly because they are dominated by Jews .. have no
tradition of fairness to anyone they hate.. They have also in wartime
subverted much of the public to a frenzy of prejudice. Even in our Civil
War, where Americans fought against Americans, Americans of the North were
told and came to believe that Choctaw County stunk with dead bodies of
murdered slaves and that Southern belles had worn necklaces strung of
Yankee eyeballs!.. If Yankees could believe that Southern girls wore
necklaces of Yankee eyeballs, would they not even more readily believe that
Germans made lampshades out of the skins of prisoners, or that they boiled
Jews into soap? (66)
Two decades later this argument would be reiterated in an essay in the
Holocaust revisionist publication the Journal of Historical Review. (67)
(See chapter 9 for a discussion of the Civil War analogy.) By finding what
they deemed to be historical parallels, deniers hoped to demonstrate that
the Holocaust was not the only time the public had been tricked by
historical orthodoxies.
During the early years after the war, Germans also tried to minimize Nazi
wrongdoings and place the blame elsewhere. Some German neo-Nazis maintained
that German crimes were not as immense as the Allies had charged. (68)
Others sought to clear Hitler of any responsibility. In 1952 the Institute
for German Post-War History was organized in Tuebingen by Dr. Herbert
Grabert, who had known connections to extreme-right-wing and neo-Nazi
groups. Grabert denounced those who claimed that Hitler had any ambitions
to dominate the world, (69) despite the fact that in order to do so he had
to ignore the clear statements to the contrary in Mein Kampf (see chapter
5). In 1960 the Committee for the Restoration of Historical Truth - which
argued that World War II had been caused by the Versailles treaty, that
Britain had long sought a war against Germany, and that Roosevelt had
helped push Britain into the war - was founded in Hanover. The committee's
organizers denounced the Jews as a "cancerous growth" on the body politic.
When dealing with such an adversary, "human considerations do not enter."
(70) In 1962 Nation Europa, Germany's foremost neo-Nazi paper, claimed
there was no "evidence that Hitler knew of the mad doings of a small clique
of criminals." And in 1963 the Deutsche Hochschullehrer Zeitung, a
newspaper for German teachers of higher education, argued that the
Holocaust had been a legitimate "retaliatory action" against Jews, in
response to Jewish "business methods" and the murder by Jewish Bolsheviks
of German patriots. (71)
By 1950 the foundation had been laid for those who would not simply seek to
relativize or mitigate Germany's actions - the arguments they needed to
buttress their charges of a Holocaust "hoax" had been made, some voiced by
legitimate historians and others expressed by extremist politicians and
journalists. Virtually all the revisionists' charges were adopted by the
deniers, including Germany's lack of culpability, chicanery by both
Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, suppression of the truth after both wars,
and use of propaganda - falsified atrocity stories in particular - to whip
up public support. These arguments would become crucial elements in the
deniers' attempt to prove that the Holocaust "hoax" is not a unique
phenomenon but a link in a chain of tradition whose hallmarks were
chicanery, conspiracy, and deception. The French writer Nadine Fresco noted
in her analysis of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, "One cannot establish
a science whose only ethic is suspicion." (72) Yet that is what the more
extreme World War II revisionists were attempting to do.
Nonetheless, there was one thing these defenders of Nazi Germany and
critics of American involvement and postwar Allied policy never suggested:
namely that the atrocities in question had not happened. Irrespective of
which side of the ocean they were on, they stopped short of this denial.
They may have claimed that they were not as bad as had been reported. They
may have argued that the Soviets or the Allies had committed similar acts
or that Hitler knew nothing about them They may have also ignored the moral
implications of such behavior in order to argue that Allied and Axis
behavior were virtually equal. But they did not deny that they were
factual. Accusations to that effect were not long in coming, however,
gaining currency within a few years after the war.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
1. Sidney B. Fay, "New Light on the Origins of the World War, American
Historical Review, vol. 25 (1920), pp. 616-39; vol. 26, (1920), pp. 37-53;
vol. 26 (1921), pp. 225-54.
2. Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol. 2 (New York, 1966),
pp. 552-54.
3. Novick, That Noble Dream, pp. 210ff.
4. Ibid., p. 212.
5. Charles Beard, "Heroes and Villains of the World War," Current History,
vol. 24 (1926), p. 733.
6. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. 1, p. 8.
7. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the
Problem of War Guilt (New York, 1929), p. 641.
8. For analysis of the evidence placed before the Commission on
Responsibility for the War at the Paris Peace Conference and the
conclusions based on it see A. von Wegerer, "Die Widerlegung der Versailles
Kriegsschuldthese" (Refutation of the Versailles war guilt theory), in Die
Kriegsschuldfrage (The war guilt question), vol. 6 (Jan. 1928), pp. 1-77;
see also his article and the replies to it in Current History (Aug. 1928),
pp. 810-28, cited in Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. 2, p. 549.
9. Barnes, Genesis, pp. 641-42.
10. Ibid., p. 647.
11. For a discussion of British propaganda, see C. Hartley Grattan, Why We
Fought (1929), and Walter Millis, Road to War (1935), cited in John E.
Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, 1931-1941 (New York, 1968), p. 8.
12. Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, p. 7.
RJ11
B'enjamin C'ramer <onlyt...@alltimes.yo> wrote:
("Holocaust revisionism" drivel snipped)
Just deal with the evidence, "Cramer".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1673471.stm
Mass graves found at Nazi camp
Researchers have discovered seven mass graves at the Sobibor Nazi
death camp in north-eastern Poland.
The research team, which began its government-sponsored investigation
in the summer, said the graves -- the largest of which is about half
the size of a football pitch -- contain charred remains.
</quote>
A very elaborate study of the mass graves in the Belzec death camp was
conducted a few years ago by a team of Polish archaeologists, headed by
Prof. Andrzej Kola from the University of Torun in Poland, who is the
author of more than 130 papers on archaeology. The team studied the site
of the death camp, drilling 1,700 bore holes and investigating the core
samples. The results are summarized in an 84 page report (ANDRZEJ KOLA:
"BELZEC. THE NAZI CAMP FOR JEWS IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES.
Excavations 1997-1999". ISBN 83-905590-6-4). The study has recovered
human remains over a very large area, to a depth of up to six meters.
The minimal estimate to the volume of the graves is 21,000 cubic meters.
RJ.
ZULU
> In France, Holocaust denial activities have centered around Robert
> Faurisson, a former professor of literature at the University of Lyons-2
> whose work is often reprinted verbatim, both with and without attribution,
> by deniers worldwide. According to Faurisson the "so-called gassings" of
> Jews were a "gigantic politicofinancial swindle whose beneficiaries are the
> state of Israel and international Zionism." Its chief victims were the
> German people and the Palestinians. (26)
In France, the pioneer of revisionism was Paul Rassinier.
Paul Rassinier's main appointment was as professor of history and geography in
the College d'enseignement general at Belfort, Academie de Besancon, 1933-1943.
In the Second World War Rassinier engaged in pacifist work until arrested by the
Gestapo on October 30, 1943. Rassinier was a member of the French Resistance
from the moment of German occupation, which was the reason for his arrest and
subsequent deportation and confinement in the German concentration camps at
Buchenwald and Dora, 1943-f945 which so ruined his health that he could not
resume teaching. After the war's end Rassinier was given the Medaille de la
Resistance, and Reconnaissance Française. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies,
Rassinier was defeated in November, 1946 largely through the machinations of the
Communists.
It is interesting to know how he started to observe that something was wrong
with the stories told by some survivors like him. He wrote his feeling about his
observations on his books "The Lie of Ulysses" and "Ulysses Betrayed by his
Fellows" who are forbidden in France.
Letter to 'The Nation'
PAUL RASSINIER
Dear Editor:
I would like to make a few comments about the book review by Ernest Zaugg (The
Nation, 14 July 1962) dealing with my three books about the German concentration
camps, the responsibility for World War II and the Eichmann trial (The Lie of
Ulysses, Ulysses Betrayed by his Fellows, and The Real Eichmann Trial).
to follow
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p305_Rassinier.html
Faurisson is still expecting for a material proof of the existence of "homicidal
gas chambers" and of an "extermination plan to kill all European Jews".
The Faurisson Archive (in English)
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/FaurisArch.html
A must see
Ten Years Ago, Jean-Claude Pressac's Capitulation
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF050615.html
The Revisionist Method Applied To The History Of World War III
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF030511.html
While to doubt about the existence of such specific rooms is punished by law,
French scholars admit that there is any proof to sustain they have existed.
Le débat sur les chambres à gaz (I et II)
par Jacques Baynac,historien et romancier
truth and memory
13. Charles A. Beard, "President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War" (New
Haven, 1948), p. 5.
14. Barnes, Genesis, p. 648.
15. Fay, Origins of the World War, p. 558.
16. Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, p. 17.
17. Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-1945 (Lincoln,
Nebr., 1983), p. 6.
18. For background on the isolationists-revisionists and a fairly
sympathetic portrayal of their efforts, see Justus D. Doenecke, Not to the
Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (London, 1982); see also
Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American
Intervention in World War II (New York, 1974), pp. 379-81.
19. Tom Connally, My Name Is Tom Connally (New York, 1954), pp. 211-14,
cited in Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, p. 161.
20. Cordell Hull, Memoirs of Cordell Hull, vol. 1 (New York, 1948), p. 404.
21. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, p. 161; Dexter Perkins, The New
Age of Franklin Roosevelt, cited in Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, p. 50.
22. Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, p. 7.
23. Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson, Jr., Feb. 11 and 19, 1939, Johnson to
Frank P. Doherty, Feb. 11, 1939; Johnson Papers, cited in Cole, Roosevelt
and the Isolationists, pp. 308, 607.
24. Edward S. Shapiro, "Anti-semitism Mississippi Style," Anti-semitism in
American History, ed. David Gerber (Urbana/Chicago, 1986), pp. 129-47.
Rankin also opposed the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act because "Japs"
would flood America in the postwar period (Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p.
21).
25. Congressional Record, 77th Congress, 1st sess., 1941, 87:6565; Cole,
pp. 475-6.
26. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, p. 465. On Anti-semitism in
America First - see James C. Schneider, Should America Go to War? The
Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939-1941 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989),
p. 210.
27. Charles Beard, "We're Blundering Into War, American Mercury, (Apr.
1939), pp. 388-90.
28. The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (Hawthorne, Calif.,
n.d.). For an analysis of anti-semitic conspiracy theories in the United
States see Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason:
Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1977, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1978), chaps.
4-6. For the impact of the belief in the Protocols see Norman Cohn, Warrant
for Genocide (New York, 1966), pp. 156-64. For a compelling overview of the
role of conspiracy theories in America see George Johnson, Architects of
Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics (Boston, 1983).
For a discussion of Henry Ford see ibid., pp. 111-14. For information on
contemporary uses of the Protocols see Patterns of Prejudice, Nov./Dec.
1977.
29. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, p. 135.
30. Johnson, Architects of Fear, pp. 78-80.
31. Henri Zukier, "The Conspiratorial Imperative: Medieval Jewry in Western
Europe," Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, Carl F. Graumann and Serge
Moscovici, eds. (New York, 1987), pp. 93-101.
32. Chicago Tribune, editorial, Nov. 9, 1945. John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt
Myth (New York, 1948). Other books that made similar arguments included
William Henry Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade (Chicago, 1950) and
Frederic R. Sanborn, Design for War (New York, 1951).
33. Beard, President Roosevelt, p. 577.
34. Time, June 16, 1947, p. 29, quoted in Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p.
101.
35. Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy,
1933-1941 (Chicago, 1952), p. 9.
36. Tansill, "Back Door to War", p. 510.
37. For Tansill's views on Hitler see Charles C. Tansill to Harry Elmer
Barnes, November 10, 1950, Barnes Papers, Univ. of Wyoming. For background
on Tansill's conservative and segregationist views see Doenecke, Not to the
Swift, pp. 101-2, 112.
38. Tansill, Back Door to War, pp. 554-55.
39. Austin App, A Straight Look at the Third Reich: Hitler and National
Socialism, How Right? How Wrong? (Tacoma Park, Md., 1974), p. 40.
40. William Henry Chamberlin, "Shifting American Alignments," Human Events
(May 22, 1946).
41. Freda Utley, "The High Cost of Vengeance" (Chicago, 1949), p. 14.
42. George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (New
York, 1947), pp. 4, 7, 283, cited in Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p. 97.
43. William Neumann to H. E. Barnes, Jan. 30, 1946, Barnes Papers, cited in
Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p. 141.
44. Frederick Libby, Peace Action, vol. 9 (July 1945), pp. 3-4.
45. Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New
York, 1982), pp. 162-83.
46. Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p. 133.
47. Ibid., p. 145.
48. In a far milder and more rational defense of the German people, Philip
La Follette, former governor of Wisconsin, described the German people as
the first victims of Nazi brutalities.
49. Congressional Record, Mar. 29, 1946, p. 2801 and Apr. 18, 1946, p.
3962.
50. Extreme concern about the conditions of the German population did not
always ipso facto indicate a lack of concern about what Jews experienced.
Langer was an outspoken supporter in the Senate of the activist Jewish
leader Peter Bergson, who had called for a strong American rescue program
for European Jewry. In 1943 on the floor of the Senate, Langer had publicly
criticized the Bermuda Conference as a ploy sponsored by the British and
U.S. governments to give the illusion that plans for rescue were under
serious consideration. He warned that "2,000,000 Jews in Europe have been
killed off already and another 5,000,000 Jews are awaiting the same fate
unless they are saved immediately. Every day, every hour, every minute that
passes thousands of them are being exterminated." Langer's positions both
during and after the war are attributable in great measure to his
opposition to the Democrats' foreign policy (David Wyman, The Abandonment
of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York, 1984), p. 143.
51. Doenecke, Not to the Swift, p. 215.
52. Utley, High Cost of Vengeance, p. 14.
53. Ibid., pp. 14, 15.
54. She included in these crimes "the obliteration bombing; the mass
expropriation and expulsion from their homes of 12 million Germans on
account of their race; the starving of the Germans during the first years
of the occupation; the use of prisoners as slave laborers; the Russian
concentration camps and the looting perpetrated by Americans as well as
Russians (Utley, High Cost of Vengeance, p. 183).
55. "Slaveholders Always Defend Slavery," Chicago Tribune, December 10,
1946.
56. Karl Brandt, "Germany Is Our Problem," pamphlet (Hinsdale, Ill., 1946).
57. Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1945; Charles A. Beard to Oswald Garrison
Villard, November 8, 1946, Villard Papers, cited in Doenecke, Not to the
Swift, pp. 140, 141, 149 n. 43.
58. "The Nazi Trials," editorial, Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1945.
59. Congressional Record, 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., Mar. 11, 1952, pp. 2106,
2110, cited in Shapiro, "Anti-Semitism Mississippi Style," p. 136.
60. Frank C. Waldrop, McCormick of Chicago (Englewood, N.J., 1966), p. 263.
For additional background information on the foreign policy of the Chicago
Tribune in the interwar period see Jerome Edwards, The Foreign Policy of
Colonel McCormick's Tribune, 1921-1941 (Reno, 1971).
61. New York Daily News, October 6, 1945.
62. Nation, May 19, 1945, p. 579.
63. Progressive, May 14, 1945, cited in Robert Abzug, Inside the Vicious
Heart (New York, 1985), pp. 136-7.
64. General doubts about the reports of mass murder and other atrocities
committed by the Germans had persisted as late as the liberation of the
camps. In April 1945 the BBC had chosen not to broadcast its own reporter's
account of the liberation of Buchenwald because it feared the public would
not believe him. It waited until it received Edward R. Murrow's account.
Because Murrow was held in such high esteem in the UK, the BBC was
convinced that his description of the horrors perpetrated by the Germans
would be more likely to be accepted as accurate. Even Murrow worried that
his report would be dismissed as exaggerated and in his famous broadcast he
asked listeners, "I pray you to believe what I have said."
65. William Hesseltine, "Atrocities Then and Now," Progressive, May 9, 1945
p. 4.
66. App, A Straight Look, p. 5.
67. Mark Weber, "Civil War Concentration Camps," Journal of Historical
Review (Summer 1981), pp. 144, 150-2.
68. C.C. Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust (Marblehead, Mass., 1985), p.
52.
69. Ibid., p. 55. Grabert published David Hoggan's The Forced War, which
would play a seminal role in the evolution of Holocaust denial in the
United States and Germany.
70. Welt der Arbeit, May 26, 1961, cited in Aronsfeld, Text of the
Holocaust, p. 56.
71. Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (Tuebingen), no. 4 (1963), quoted in
Aronsfeld, Text of the Holocaust, p. 56.
72. Nadine Fresco, "The Denial of the Dead: On the Faurisson Affair,"
Dissent (Fall 1981), pp. 473-4.
CHAPTER THREE In the Shadow of World War II
Denial's Initial Steps
The end of World War II meant the defeat of Adolf Hitler's dream of a Third
Reich. Most rational people assumed it also meant the end of fascism as an
ideology. As long as fascism could be linked with Nazism and Nazism, in
turn, could be linked with the horrors of the Final Solution, then both
would remain thoroughly discredited. There were those, however, who were
not willing to abandon these political systems. They knew that the only
means of trying to revive them would be to separate them from the Holocaust
and the multitude of atrocities that accompanied it. Nowhere would this
effort be more evident in the immediate aftermath of the war than in
France, where Holocaust denial found some of its earliest proponents.
Within a few years of the liberation of Europe the effort to minimize the
scope and intensity of the Nazi atrocities was overtaken by claims that the
death of 6,000,000 Jews was not only greatly exaggerated but a fabrication.
Though the earliest deniers did not become part of a larger group, their
tactics and arguments have since become integral elements of contemporary
Holocaust denial. They made little, if any efforts, to disguise their
anti-semitism.
In 1947 Maurice Bardeche, a prominent French fascist, began a concerted
attack on Allied war propaganda. He also engaged in a vigorous defense of
the Nazis. In his first book, Letter to François Mauriac, Bardeche strongly
defended the politics of collaboration. In his second, Nuremberg or the
Promised Land, he contended that at least a portion of the evidence
regarding the concentration camps had been falsified and that the deaths
that had occurred there were primarily the result of war-related
privations, including starvation and illness. Bardeche claimed that since
the end of the war the world had been "duped by history." (1) According to
Bardeche, Nazi documents that spoke of the "final solution of the Jewish
problem" were really referring to the proposed transfer of Jews to ghettos
in the east.
His fundamental argument was not only that the Nazis were not guilty of
atrocities, but that the true culprits were the Jews themselves. Jews, both
those who died and those who survived, deserved no sympathy because they
had helped to instigate the war by supporting the Treaty of Versailles. He
argued that it was morally wrong to hold German soldiers or officers of any
rank culpable for following orders. Nazi Germany had to defeat the
Communists in order to survive. A strong state with a strong and loyal army
were absolute necessities for it to do so. The Nuremberg trials were both
morally and legally wrong because they punished Germany for having done
what was needed in order to defeat Stalin. For Bardeche, the Allies'
bombing policy constituted a war crime.
While some of these notions, particularly those regarding the Versailles
treaty and the Allied bombing policy, were being articulated by others,
including isolationists in the United States, Bardeche was the first to
contend that the pictorial and documentary evidence of the murder process
in the camps had actually been falsified. He was also the first to argue
that the gas chambers were used for disinfection - not annihilation.
Bardeche's dubious credentials - he remained a committed fascist all his
life - made him a controversial figure in denial circles. Despite his
contentions that the Holocaust was a myth and that the Nazis were wrongly
implicated, Bardeche has never been openly embraced by contemporary
deniers. That has not kept them from adopting his ideas. Though they use
his arguments, they rarely mention him by name because of his political
views, about which he was always quite explicit. Indeed, he began his book
What Is Fascism? with the unequivocal declaration: "I am a fascist writer."
In Bardeche's second book he laid out his objectives, which remain, almost
verbatim, the credo of contemporary deniers: "I am not defending Germany. I
am defending the truth.. I know a lie has been put about, I know a
systematic distortion of facts exists.. We have been living with a
falsification: it captures the imagination." (2) Today deniers protest that
they are neither for Germany nor against Jews. They are not out to defend
Hitler or castigate the Allies. They are interested only in revising
history so that it will convey the truth. But such claims notwithstanding,
examination of their methods and arguments reveals that since Bardeche's
work, truth has been the antithesis of their enterprise.
The next assault on the history of the war also emanated from France. In
1948 Paul Rassinier, a former Communist and a Socialist who had been
interned in the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dora, published Le
Passage de la Ligne (Crossing the line). This was the first in a series of
books he would write during the next two decades intended to show that
survivors' claims about the behavior of the Nazis, particularly in relation
to the atrocities, could not be trusted. Rassinier, who became a member of
the Communist party in 1922 when he was 16, left the Communists in the
mid-1930s and joined the Socialists. When the war broke out he became part
of the resistance. Eventually he was captured and sent to Buchenwald. On
liberation in 1945, he returned to France and was elected a Socialist
member of the National Assembly, where he served for a year. Shortly
thereafter he began a prolific publishing career, the bulk of which was
devoted to vindicating the Nazis by proving that the atrocity accusations
against them were inflated and unfair. Given his earlier role in the French
resistance, his arguments have the flavor of the utterances of a repentant
sinner.
His books are a mixture of blatant falsehoods, half-truths, quotations out
of context and attacks on the "Zionist establishment." In 1977 Rassinier's
major books concerning the Holocaust were reissued in one volume, Debunking
the Genocide Myth, by the Noontide Press, which publishes neo-Nazi material
and is connected with the California-based headquarters of the contemporary
deniers, the Institute for Historical Review. The first part of this
composite volume is made up of his first two works, Crossing the Line and
The Lie of Ulysses, in which he focused on the concentration camps and the
behavior of both inmates and Nazis administrators. He set out two
propositions: Survivors exaggerate what happened to them and it was not the
SS that was responsible for the terrors of the camps but the inmates to
whom they entrusted the running of the camps. He dismissed as gossip the
testimony of survivors who claimed they had witnessed atrocities and
denigrated the credibility of their assertions regarding the number of Jews
who had been killed. "Concerning figures the 'witnesses' have said and
written the most improbable things. Concerning the implementation of the
means of killing, also." (3) He described concentration camp literature as
"a collection of contradictory pieces of ill-natured gossip." (4)
Rassinier initially limited his argument regarding the killing process to
denying that there was a policy of annihilation. People may have been
killed, he declared, but those who conducted such "exterminations" were
acting on their own and not in the name of "a state order in the name of a
political doctrine." (5) Rassinier sought to absolve the National Socialist
leadership from responsibility for the gas chambers, claiming there
appeared to have been no official Nazi policy of gas exterminations. Though
Rassinier would eventually deny the existence of gas chambers altogether,
in these early works he stopped short of doing so and posited that there
probably had been exterminations by gas, but not as many as had been
claimed.
At this time even the most extreme neo-Nazi groups were not denying that
gas chambers had been used to murder Jews. Instead of denying Nazi
atrocities, however, they defended them - one of the major distinctions
between the earliest deniers and more recent ones. Bardeche, Rassinier,
Barnes, App and others among the first generation of deniers differ from
those who followed them. The first group sought to vindicate the Nazis by
justifying their anti-semitism. While they argued that the atrocities were
exaggerated or even falsified, they also contended that whatever was done
to the Jews had been deserved because the Jews were Germany's enemy.
Distorting the truth, they blamed Jews for Germany's financial and
political plight and made the wildly exaggerated claim that Jews had been
the prime beneficiaries of the chaos of Weimar. Jews were disloyal
citizens, likely to be subversives and spies.
Only in the 1970s, when they finally began to recognize the futility of
trying to justify Nazi anti-semitism, did deniers change their methods.
They saw that, from a tactical perspective, the proof of Nazi anti-semitism
was so clear that trying to deny or justify it undermined their efforts to
appear credible. As deniers became more sophisticated in the subtleties of
spreading their argument, they began to "concede" that the Nazis were
anti-semitic. They even claimed to deplore anti-semitism, all the while
engaging in it themselves. They acknowledged that some Jews may have died
as a result of Nazi mistreatment but continued to argue that there was no
Holocaust.
In Crossing the Line, Rassinier chose an interesting tactic to express his
most radical contentions regarding the inmates' experiences. Instead of
arguing in his own voice, he quoted a fellow inmate, a lawyer who had been
the assistant mayor of Prague before the war. (6) It is not clear whether
Rassinier created him as a foil for his own controversial notions. What is
clear is that the Czech voiced ideas that became part of Rassinier's litany
of claims. Rassinier may have put this argument in the Czech's voice for a
practical reason. In the early 1950s, when he was arguing that the Nazi
leadership bore little, if any, responsibility for atrocities, war wounds
were still fresh. This was particularly so in France, which had been
occupied by the Nazis. Rassinier may have been reluctant to express his
views about the innocence of the Nazi leadership, the inmates' culpability
in their own suffering and the trustworthiness, or lack thereof, of
survivors' testimony. Such views would have then been particularly odious.
In truth, whether this Czech really existed is immaterial, since Rassinier
not only articulated no reservations about his views but in fact
acknowledged that he was convinced that this Czech was right. Even when
Rassinier challenged the Czech's views, in the end he always conceded that
his friend's ideas vanquished his own.
In these early works Rassinier set out to do three things: First he had to
demolish the credibility of his fellow prisoners' testimony. As long as one
could trust what they said, any attempt to absolve the Nazis would be
futile. But given the sympathy toward the inmates that existed immediately
after the war, he could not ascribe to them diabolical or even devious
motives. Instead he explained their supposed behavior in psychological
terms:
Human beings need to exaggerate the bad as well as the good and the ugly as
well as the beautiful. Everyone hopes and wants to come out of this
business with the halo of a saint, a hero, or a martyr and each one
embroiders his own Odyssey without realizing that the reality is quite
enough in itself. (7)
Had Rassinier or his Czech argued that some concentration camp inmates were
wont to exaggerate certain aspects of their treatment, few would have
questioned their conclusions. Some inmates did and still do embellish their
experiences. Others sometimes adopt the experiences of fellow survivors as
their own. Historians of the Holocaust recognize this and do not build a
historical case on the oral history of an individual survivor, engaging
instead in what anthropologists call triangulation, matching a survivor's
testimony with other forms of proof, including documents and additional
historical data. But Rassinier blatantly dismissed all survivors'
testimony. Nor did he stop there in his attack on the survivors. He not
only cast doubt on the testimony of victims but he exonerated the
perpetrators - the Nazi leadership in general and the SS in particular.
According to Rassinier, the "SS never meddled with the camp life." If there
were any excesses in the camps it was the responsibility of the inmates.
Outrages in the camps were always made "still worse" by the prisoners
themselves. (8)
In response to those who argued that the camps constituted a peculiarly
Nazi form of punishment and incarceration, Rassinier asserted that the
camps were not uniquely German. Incarceration in concentration camps was a
"classic method of coercion" practiced by all countries, including France
and Britain. Again we see a harbinger of what would become a familiar
method for absolving the Nazis: Whatever they did was not as severe as that
of which they were accused. Moreover, all nations did the same.
truth and memory
truth and memory
transform the Nazis from perpetrators into benefactors. He claimed that
they had benign, if not positive, motives when they put people in
concentration camps. Initially the National Socialists' incarceration of
people in concentration camps was a "gesture of compassion." Their
objective was to protect their adversaries by putting them "where they
could not hurt the new regime and where they could be protected from the
public anger." Not only did they want to shield them, they also wanted to
"rehabilitate the strayed sheep and to bring them back to a healthier
concept of the German community, [and] .. its destiny." (9) This latter
claim evoked memories of some of the explanations and justifications
offered by Goebbels's propaganda bureau during the early years of the
regime. When people were placed in camps or in ghettos, the Nazis claimed
they were doing so for educational or rehabilitative purposes. They were
"helping" them become more productive members of society by incarcerating
them. Rassinier ignored two essential elements: This "rehabilitation" was
conducted in the harshest of fashions and, according to Nazi philosophy,
there was no way Jews could be "rehabilitated."
Given his own experiences and those of a myriad of others in the camps,
Rassinier could not very well argue that they had been character-building
institutions. He had to acknowledge that the Nazis' supposedly benign
intentions notwithstanding, life in the camps was quite difficult. Intent
on rendering the Nazi leadership blameless, he shifted responsibility from
their shoulders by explaining that the escalating severity was not the
intention of those at the helm but of those in the lower echelons of the SS
who disobeyed their orders. According to Rassinier, when the authorities in
Berlin discovered something "awry in the way the camps were being
administered, the SS staffs were called to account." (10) Even the SS
decision to select criminals, murderers, and rapists to serve as
Lagerältester (camp elder) and Kapos was justifiable, despite the fact that
these people were particularly ruthless to other inmates. The SS did not
select such individuals to run the camps out of "sadism" but to "economize
personnel." The Kapos were brutal but that was not the fault of the SS. In
fact, Rassinier preferred dealing with the SS because they were "in
principle .. better and .. more humane." (11)
In the 1960s Rassinier began to change the focus of his attacks. No longer
did he devote his primary energies to defending the SS or casting doubt on
the stories told by concentration camp survivors. His preoccupation became
the "genocide myth." In The Drama of European Jewry (1964) he argued that
the accusation that the Nazis committed mass murder through the use of gas
chambers was an invention of the "Zionist establishment." Moreover, he
contended, the charge about gas chambers was a fabrication, as was the
claim that 6,000,000 Jews died. In his attempt to explain who was
responsible for the hoax, Rassinier did not blame the survivors. Though
they may have "exaggerated" their experiences, Rassinier forgave them that:
"They are victims who are fired by a resentment in proportion to what they
suffered." As did other deniers, he had to explain away the perpetrators'
confessions. Those who falsely admitted that they had committed atrocities
had little choice but to tell Allied officials the story they wanted to
hear. "In order to get into the good graces of his captors, some poor SS
private attached to an Einsatzgruppe reports that his unit exterminated..
tens of thousands of Jews." (12) [The Einsatzgruppen were the special
mobile killing units that conducted the massacres of Soviet Jewry
immediately after the Germans declared war on the USSR.] The testimonies of
Nazi leaders who were tried at the war crimes trials also had to be
discounted because they were "testifying under threat of death" and they
confessed what they thought would "be most likely to save [their] .. life."
For Rassinier such behavior was "easily understood," and consequently the
credibility of such testimony could be summarily dismissed. (13)
But if the survivors and the perpetrators were not responsible, who then
perpetrated the hoax? For Rassinier the culprits in the dissemination of
this fraud were easily identifiable. The "Zionists," abetted in their
conspiracy by a select number of Jewish historians and institutions that
conduct research on the Holocaust, were the responsible parties. Rassinier
unleashed his most acerbic comments and unrelenting attacks on them. Unlike
the survivors who lied because of all they had suffered, and the Nazis, who
fabricated confessions to please their captors and protect their lives, the
perpetrators of this hoax did not have motives that were either
psychologically understandable or morally justifiable. The only reason
these historians and the institutions that backed them spread this calumny
about Germany was to reap institutional, communal, and personal gain.
Regarding the prominent historian of the Holocaust Raul Hilberg, Rassinier
wrote that only "dishonesty" could "excuse" his actions. Rassinier informed
readers that Hilberg was associated with a Jewish publication: "As I ..
read his biographical note, I find that he is a collaborator in the Jewish
Encyclopedia Handbooks." This, in Rassinier's opinion, explained
"everything." But Hilberg was not alone in his culpability for spreading
this myth on behalf of a Jewish institution. Hannah Arendt's "intellectual
outlook" and writings on the Holocaust were not trustworthy, according to
Rassinier, because of her position as research director with the Conference
on Jewish Relations. (14) The testimony at the Eichmann trial by the
renowned historian Salo Baron, the first occupant of the chair in Jewish
history at Columbia University, was clearly open to question because of
Baron's Jewish identity. Lest readers be unaware of Baron's background,
Rassinier made a practice of referring to him throughout his book as "Mr.
Shalom Baron." (15)
Their dishonesty and that of the Jewish institutions with which they were
formally or informally associated was motivated by what Rassinier
considered a traditional Jewish vice: the love of money. Their motive for
concocting the genocide myth, Rassinier bluntly stated, "is purely and very
basely, a material problem." (16) They wished to "make Germany an
ever-lasting milk cow for Israel." (17) They devised the hoax and then
demanded that "Germany pay to Israel sums calculated on the basis of about
6,000,000 dead." Rassinier contended that the amount of reparations Germany
paid to Israel was calculated on the basis of the number of dead; the
higher the death toll, the greater the financial reward. (18) Israel, with
the aid of cooperative Jewish historians and the "Zionist establishment,"
had inflated the number of dead in order to "swindle" the Germans out of
millions of marks. They claimed that 6,000,000 died, but, in truth at least
four-fifths of those 6,000,000 "were very much alive at the end of the
war." (19) Rassinier offers no evidence to prove this or most of his other
claims. Their existence had been kept a secret in order to inflate the
amount of money Israel was able to extract from the Germans.
Rassinier based his argument on a completely false premise. One must assume
that he did so knowingly, given the documents he cites. The reparations
Germany paid to Israel were not based on the death toll but on the cost to
Israel of absorbing and resettling both Jews who fled Germany and
German-controlled countries during the prewar period and survivors of the
Holocaust who came to Israel during the postwar years.
Israeli officials detailed their claims against Germany in their communique
of March 1951 to the Four Powers, and this document became the official
basis for the reparations agreement. It contained an explanation of
Israel's means of calculating the size of the reparations claim. In the
communique Israeli officials explained that Nazi persecution had stimulated
a "second Jewish exodus" of close to 500,000. Based on the size of this
exodus, Israel determined the amount of the reparations it would request:
The government of Israel is not in a position to obtain and present a
complete statement of all Jewish property taken or looted by the Germans,
and said to total more than $6 billion. It can only compute its claim on
the basis of total expenditures already made and the expenditure still
needed for the integration of Jewish immigrants from Nazi-dominated
countries. The number of these immigrants is estimated at some 500,000,
which means a total expenditure of $1.5 billion. (20)
It seems hardly necessary to point out that since the money the state
received was based on the cost of resettling survivors, had Israel wanted
to increase the amount of reparations it obtained from Germany it would
have been in its interest to argue that fewer than 6,000,000 had been
killed and that more had managed to flee to Israel. The contention that
Israel is the main financial beneficiary of the "genocide myth" has become
a critical element of Holocaust denial for a number of reasons. This
explanation is particularly important for the deniers because it provides a
rationale for the "hoax." Moreover, it harks back to traditional
anti-semitic imagery: Jews' association with money, particularly ill-gotten
gains. For those with an inclination to believe anti-semitic charges and to
accept the stereotypes associated with them as true, this is a charge that
feels familiar and makes sense. This is but one of many instances in which
the deniers have woven a web that deftly combines pseudo historical
research with traditional anti-semitism. The depiction of Israel as the
beneficiary of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy also plays on pre-existing
hostilities toward the Jewish state. Those who are opposed to its existence
and believe it came into being through nefarious means find this myth
compelling. In fact, the vast majority of reparations went to individual
survivors, not to Israel.
But it was for Raul Hilberg that Rassinier reserved his greatest contempt.
Hilberg's internationally acclaimed study of the German death machine in
The Destruction of the European Jews, which was first published in 1961,
made him an obvious target for Rassinier and subsequent generations of
deniers. Because of his extensive research on the German bureaucracy during
the Third Reich, specifically as it was used in the killing process,
deniers have long felt obligated to try to destroy his credibility. In The
Drama of European Jewry Rassinier branded Hilberg "dishonest" and accused
him of being a falsifier of information particularly in regard to the
number of Jews killed by the Nazis. Revealingly, on the same page that
Rassinier made those accusations, he engaged in the very same tactics of
which he had accused Hilberg.
One of the methods Rassinier used to convince his readers that the
Holocaust was a fraud was his use of the numbers game. Among the first to
engage in this practice, he established a pattern followed by all deniers
who try to prove that the death tolls are not valid. Rassinier argued that
Jewish historians have fraudulent intentions and manipulate the data
accordingly. For Rassinier the proof of this dishonesty is that they each
interpret the data in a dramatically different fashion. Consequently their
findings cannot be relied on, and they cannot be personally trusted.
In trying to make his case, Rassinier fabricated data, misquoted, and used
quotations out of context. He first tried to demonstrate that Arendt and
Hilberg were in disagreement about the number of Jews who were killed in
Poland. According to Rassinier, in her February 23, 1963, New Yorker
article Arendt "coolly inform[ed] us that 'three million Polish Jews were
massacred during the first day of the war'" He then wrote: "Mr. Raul
Hilberg found that 'about 2,000,000 Polish Jews .. were transported to
their deaths in 1942 and 1943'" Rassinier complained about this apparent
contradiction between the findings of these two historians and added: "It
would be a good thing to come to an understanding: were there in Poland 3
to 3.3 million Jews during the war, as all statisticians unanimously claim,
including those who are Jewish, or were there 5.7 million as Mme. Hannah
Arendt is obliged to claim, since here are 5 million exterminated." (21)
Rassinier simply falsified Arendt's statement. In addition, he made minor
but strategically important changes in Hilberg's quote and then quoted it
out of context in order to make it appear as if there were some
contradiction between the two scholars. In The Destruction of the European
Jews, Hilberg analyzed the role of the railways in the annihilation
process. He observed that the "railway network managed to carry about
2,000,000 Polish Jews to their deaths in 1942 and 1943" Rassinier ignored
the references to the railway network. He makes it appear as if Hilberg is
citing the total number of Polish Jews who were annihilated and not just
those transported by rail. (Hilberg does not include in this total Jews
deported by other means and those who were killed in ghettoes or in areas
immediately adjacent to their homes. (22) When those Polish victims are
included, Hilberg's total comes to 3,000,000 Polish Jews.) But Rassinier
committed an even more egregious falsehood in connection with Arendt's
quote. Arendt did not write that three million Polish Jews were killed in
the first day. Discussing German estimates of the number of Jews left in
Europe in 1940, Arendt observed that one particular estimate "did not
include 3,000,000 Polish Jews, who, as everybody knew, had been in the
process of being massacred even since the first days of the war." (23) By
changing Arendt's quote to say 3,000,000 had been killed on the first day,
Rassinier manages to make Arendt sound not only in total contradiction to
other historians but quite out of touch with reality. Deniers would
repeatedly rely on this tactic to try to make the findings of Holocaust
historians seem particularly fantastic.
While Rassinier wished to cast doubt on the findings and motives of as many
Jewish scholars as possible, he was particularly intent - as we have seen -
on destroying Hilberg's status. Ironically, after attacking Hilberg's
credibility, he used Hilberg's standing as the premier historian in this
field to cast doubt on the finding of other Jewish historians and
institutions. In an obvious attempt to throw into question the findings of
the World Jewish Congress, he wrote that while the congress "gives the
figure of 1, 000,000 (dead in the USSR) Mr. Raul Hilberg finds only
420,000." (24) Once again Rassinier misrepresented Hilberg's findings. In
one of his tables delineating the number of victims according to their
countries of origin, Hilberg lists the prewar and postwar populations of
the USSR. The difference between the two figures is 420,000. But the two
figures represent dramatically different categories, as Hilberg clearly
acknowledges at the bottom of the table, where he notes that the first
column was based on prewar and the second on postwar boundaries. The
postwar boundaries of the USSR were significantly larger than those of the
prewar period, and Hilberg's list reflects this. Since the Baltic republics
were independent when the war began they are listed as separate countries
in the prewar table. Because they became part of the USSR as a result of an
agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1941, in postwar totals
Hilberg treats their Jewish victims as part of the toll for the entire
USSR. Moreover, Hilberg's postwar total must also be adjusted because it
includes, as again he clearly notes, 300,000 refugees, deportees, and
survivors from other regions. [The section on the USSR appears as follows:
Jewish Population: USSR 3,020,000 (1939) 2,600,000 (1945); Estonia 4,500
(1939) 0 (1945); Latvia 96,000 (1939) 0 (1945); Lithuania 145,000 (1939) 0
(1945); Total 3,264,500 (1939) 2,600,000 (1945). Note: The postwar USSR
total includes 300,000 deportees, refugees, and survivors from other
territories. When the 300,000 deportees, refugees, and survivors are
deducted from the 2.6 million the total corresponds to a loss of 1 million
Jews in the USSR.] With these adjustments Hilberg's total was one million,
precisely that of the World Jewish Congress. By ignoring these critical and
obvious pieces of information, Rassinier makes it sound as if Hilberg is
not only contradicting other historians but himself as well, since
elsewhere in the book he cites the total dead in the USSR as approximately
one million. (25)
Rassinier devised this alleged contradiction in order to depict these
historians as wilfully creating farfetched facts and figures. "One would
like to invite all of these people - [Arendt, Baron, and Hilberg] and the
multitude of others in the same boat - to please get together and agree on
their figures before undertaking to explain us to ourselves." (26) The fact
is that while there are differences in totals, there are no fundamental
contradictions between the findings of these or any other major historians.
Virtually all agree that of the total killed approximately 3,000,000 were
Polish Jews. There is some variation of opinion on the number of Soviet
Jews killed. The estimates range between l million and 1.3 million. The
total death toll is somewhere between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000. (27)
Rassinier's thesis, built on falsified data, is that the discrepancies
between these historians invalidate their findings. Rassinier is correct in
one regard, however: There are variances in each of their findings. Few
agree on precisely the same number. But rather than invalidating their
credibility, these discrepancies support it. According to Rassinier, if
Hilberg has one toll for the victims and Baron another, it is proof that
both are creating fictionalized accounts. Since both use official documents
and testimonies to reach their conclusions, the contradictions in their
findings supposedly illustrate that neither they nor the documents can be
trusted. But in making this argument Rassinier ignores a critically
important historical fact. Complete unanimity among historians regarding an
event of such magnitude would itself be highly suspicious. A death toll on
which all historians unequivocally agreed would raise legitimate suspicions
about the independent nature of their historical research. It is precisely
these differences that show that these are not "court-appointed" historians
but independent researchers, each trying to assemble a myriad of details
regarding one of the most brutal and chaotic chapters in recent history.
Despite having "discovered" the ones who are responsible for generating
this myth, Rassinier still faced, as do all deniers, a fundamental obstacle
- one he could not manipulate as easily as he had the misinformation
regarding the reparations. Hitler and those around him had explicitly
stated many times the Nazi intention to destroy the Jews. Hitler's
best-known diatribe in this regard was made on January 30, 1939:
Today I want to be a prophet once more: If international finance Jewry
inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations
into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of
the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the
Jewish race in Europe. (28)
This was not his only public threat to annihilate the Jews. In September
1942, 6 months after the gas chambers began to operate, he recalled his
speech of 1939 and reiterated his predictions about the Jews' fate. This
time he was even more specific about the outcome:
In my Reichstag speech of September 1, 1939, [Hitler changed the date of
his original speech threatening the Jews with annihilation from January 30,
1939, to September 1, 1939.] I have spoken of two things first, that now
that the war has been forced upon us, no array of weapons and no passage of
time will bring us to defeat, and second, that if Jewry should plot another
world war in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples in Europe, it would not
be the Aryan peoples which would be exterminated but Jewry..
At one time, the Jews of Germany laughed about my prophecies. I do not know
whether they are still laughing or whether they have already lost all
desire to laugh. But right now I can only repeat they will stop laughing
everywhere and I shall be right also in that prophecy. (29)
Rassinier had to explain away such statements - which had to be interpreted
as meaning something other than what they clearly say - in order to
maintain that genocide was a myth. Rassinier dismissed the 1939 statement
as irrelevant hyperbole, typical of the "kind of defiance that was hurled
by the ancient heroes" and consequently of "little significance." (30) Here
too - as in the case of the total number of victims - Rassinier positioned
himself on both sides of the argument. He repeatedly demanded explicit
proof specifically indicating that it was the Nazis' objective to murder
the Jews. The absence of such proof, he argued, invalidated all conclusions
regarding mass murder. But when a document or statement explicitly
indicating an intention to annihilate was cited as proof, Rassinier
dismissed it as euphemistic, hyperbolic, or irrelevant. These tactics were
later adopted by deniers in their treatment of historical documents that,
they argued, proved that the genocide of the Jews was not a myth. (If the
documents are specific they are dismissed as euphemistic. If they are
euphemistic they are interpreted at face value.)
Rassinier used a slightly different approach for the 1942 speech. Rather
than simply dismissing this as hyperbole, Rassinier contended that the fact
that this threat against European Jewry was not cited at the Nuremberg war
crimes trials proved that it was not considered to be serious evidence. Had
the Allies considered it a serious document, they would have introduced it
as evidence. But Rassinier failed to note that Hitler was not on trial at
Nuremberg and that, consequently many of his statements and speeches,
including those with specific anti-semitic themes, were not cited.
Moreover, it is both ironic and revealing that Rassinier, who had such
contempt for all that went on at Nuremberg, should have used the trial as a
standard for determining what does and does not constitute serious
evidence.
Rassinier's attempt to explain how the Holocaust hoax has been perpetrated
and spread worldwide is even more clumsy, and it revealed the true
objective of his Holocaust denial. His explanation relied on traditional
anti-semitic imagery in order to explain the Jews' intentions. It can be
briefly summarized:
The Jews have been able to dupe the world by relying on their mythic powers
and conspiratorial abilities. As they have so often done in the past, world
Jewry has once again employed its inordinate powers to harness the world's
financial resources, media and political interests for their own purposes.
In isolating the source of this huge conspiracy against Germany, Rassinier
rooted it in the actions of one Polish Jew:
After some 15 years of historical research, I have come to the following
conclusion it was in 1943 that National Socialist Germany was accused for
the first time of the systematic mass extermination of the Jews in the gas
chambers. The author of this first, horrible and infamous accusation was a
Polish Jew .. Rafael Lemkin. (31)
truth and memory
truth and memory
international law, served as counsel to Supreme Court Justice Robert
Jackson when Jackson was the United States chief counsel for the
prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. (32) Rassinier was wrong about this,
as he was on so many other things. Nazi Germany was first accused of mass
murder of Jews in 1942, not 1943. Lemkin had nothing to do with this
accusation. Rassinier attributed Lemkin's success in making such an
accusation take hold and stick to the fact that he was supposedly aided and
abetted in his efforts by falsified documents and an amenable world press,
which took its marching orders from Jews:
With the release of this information by a Polish Jew and the "discovery"
during the Nuremberg trials of documents detailing the existence of gas
chambers at Auschwitz, in the world press, the gas chambers mythology began
its dance to every tune and diabolical rhythm, that unrestrained Sara band
full of missteps has not stopped since. (33)
The media were one of the primary instruments the Jews used to spread this
calumny. Here again Rassinier relied on traditional anti-semitic imagery.
The media had to help Jews because they were dominated by them.
Consequently the media "publicize[d], with remarkable consistency," the
thesis that 6,000,000 Jews had been victims of the Nazis. (34)
According to Rassinier the real culprits behind Lemkin, the historians,
Jewish institutions, and all others who participated in the hoax were the
"Zionists," who used their remarkable powers to prevent the truth from
emerging, including thwarting a census of world Jewry from being taken so
that they could subject the Holocaust death toll "to all kinds of
manipulation." (35) (His source for this claim was the American Mercury,
which from 1952 until its demise in the 1970s was a publication whose most
distinguishing feature was its anti-semitism.) (36) Their ultimate
objective was financial: Once they had rendered Germany a "cash cow" for
Israel and its supporters, they could turn to their larger and more
monstrous objective: control of world finances. Rassinier, who had already
relied on an almost unbroken chain of traditional anti-semitic images -
Jews' nefarious use of their inordinate international political powers,
control of the press, and financial chicanery - now slipped into a purely
anti-semitic diatribe in his description of what would happen when the Jews
consolidated their power:
Today speaking metaphorically, the aim [of the Zionists] is the gold of
Fort Knox. If the plan should succeed - and all that is needed is for the
American branch of international Zionism to get its hand on Wall street -
the Israeli home-port of the Diaspora would become .. the command post of
all the world's industry. "You will earn bread by the sweat of your brow,
the Eternal One said to Adam and to Eve, "You will give birth in pain, as
he chased the couple from the earthly Paradise he had created for them..
The women of Israel would, to be sure, continue to bear their children in
pain, but their men would earn their bread and that of their children by
the sweat of other's [sic] brows. Then at the very least, it could be said
that the designation "Chosen People," which the Jews claim for themselves,
would assume it [sic] full significance. (37)
Ultimately it was arguments such as these that conclusively demonstrated
that Rassinier's Holocaust denial was no more than a guise for the
expression of a classic form of anti-semitism. Though Rassinier's work may
be "distinguished" by its Holocaust denial, it is in fact no different from
the myriad of anti-semitic tirades that have been published over the
centuries. His invective about Jewish power and influence and his
conviction that Jews have the most sinister intentions qualify him for the
company of a host of anti-semites.
His are the observations of a man whose work is cited by all subsequent
deniers as the formative influence in their thinking. Rassinier's and
Bardeche's contributions to the evolution of Holocaust denial in France
would eventually be magnified by the work of their protege Robert
Faurisson, a former professor at the University of Lyons, who today is one
of the leading Holocaust deniers. But shades of French fascism and
Holocaust denial would also be found in the political arena, as exemplified
by the policies and statements of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his political
party, the National Front. They constitute Bardeche's and Rassinier's most
important legacies and demonstrate that both fascism and Holocaust denial
have found a sympathetic environment in contemporary France.
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
1. Maurice Bardeche, Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise (Paris, 1948) cited in
Gill Seidel, The Holocaust Denial: Anti-semitism, Racism and the New Right
(Leeds, England, 1986), p. 95.
2. Ian Barnes, "Revisionism and the Right," A Contemporary Affairs Briefing
of the Centre for Contemporary Studies (reprinted in the Glasgow Jewish
Echo, Jan. 8, 1982, p. 6).
3. Pierre Hofstetter, Introduction to Paul Rassinier, Debunking the
Genocide Myth: A Study of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Alleged
Extermination of European Jewry (Torrance, Calif., 1978), p. x. (hereafter
cited as Debunking).
4. Ibid., p. x.
5. Ibid., p. 164.
6. Ibid., p. 35.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 37.
9. Ibid., p. 36.
10. Ibid., p. 185.
11. Ibid., pp. 53, 55.
12. Ibid., p. 216.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., pp. 218-19.
15. Ibid., p. 219.
16. Ibid., p. 214.
17. Paul Rassinier, The Real Eichmann Trial, or The Incorrigible Victors
(Silver Spring, Md., n.d.), p. 47.
18. Debunking, p. 214.
19. Ibid.
20. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel, Documents Relating to the
Agreement Between the Government of Israel and the Government of the
Federal Republic of Germany (Jerusalem: 1953), pp. 9-91. On March 14, 1951,
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett declared in a statement to the Knesset that
"the demand for reparation has been calculated according to the burden that
the people in Israel and Jewish organizations throughout the world have
taken upon themselves in financing the rehabilitation and the absorption of
a half a million survivors of the Holocaust who have settled or will settle
in Israel." Nana Sagi, German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations
(Jerusalem, 1980), p. 55.
21. Debunking, p. 219.
22. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York, 1967), p.
311, Debunking, p. 219.
23. Hannah Arendt, "A Reporter at Large: Eichmann in Jerusalem - II," The
New Yorker, Feb. 23, 1963, p. 66.
24. Debunking, p. 220.
25. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 670.
26. Debunking, p. 219.
27. Archival collections in the former USSR, which had previously been
unavailable to historians, were recently opened for inspection. It is
likely that the information they contain may result in a change in the
estimate of the number of victims.
28. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 257.
29. Ibid., p. 266.
30. Debunking, p. 224.
31. Ibid., p. 288.
32. "Raphael Lemkin," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), p.
860.
33. Debunking, p. 289.
34. Ibid., p. 309.
35. Ibid., p. 306.
36. The American Mercury was founded and edited for many years by H. L.
Mencken. Under Mencken it was recognized as one of the literary lights of
the American scene, publishing the works of Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill,
Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost. Mencken sold it in 1935. It then became an
increasingly conservative publication. In 1955 Time magazine reported that
most of its top editors had quit because they were convinced that "attempts
were being made to introduce anti-semitic material" into the magazine.
37. Debunking, p. 309.
CHAPTER FOUR The First Stirrings of Denial in America
Holocaust denial found a receptive welcome in the United States during the
1950s and 1960s - particularly among individuals known to have strong
connections with anti-semitic publications and extremist groups. Their
Holocaust denial was preceded by their anti-semitism. (1) Until the
beginning of the 1970s Holocaust denial in the United States was primarily
the province of these fringe, extremist, and racist groups, though they
found unexpected support in a number of seemingly respectable circles. The
earliest deniers in the United States were extremely receptive to Paul
Rassinier's arguments that the Holocaust had been created by Jewish leaders
in order to control the world's finances and increase support for Israel.
Like Rassinier they tried to demonstrate that it was statistically
impossible for millions of Jews to have died. Their arguments were
unsophisticated, crude, and often lacking in any attempt to prove their
point. In 1952 W. D. Herrstrom, an American anti-semite, declared in Bible
News Flashes that there were 5,000,000 illegal aliens in the United States,
most of whom were Jews. These were the Jews who were supposed to have died
in the Holocaust. "No use looking in Shickelgruber's [Hitler's] ovens for
them. Walk down the streets of any American city. There they are." (2) In
1959 James Madole, who published the racist National Renaissance Bulletin,
wrote: "Although the World Almanac attests to the fact that fewer than
600,000 Jews ever lived in Germany the Jews persisted in their monstrous
lie that Nazi Germany had cremated six million of their co-racials." (3)
Madole's chicanery is easily exposed. While it is true that Germany's
Jewish population was less than 600,000 in 1933, most of the Jewish victims
of the Holocaust were not German Jews. Benjamin H. Freedman, who provided
the financial support for the anti-semitic publication Common Sense, argued
in 1959 that there were many million more Jews in the United States than
Jews were willing to admit. These were the 6,000,000 "allegedly put to
death in furnaces and in gas chambers between 1939 and 1945." (4) Offering
an argument that would be echoed in the 1970s by a number of Holocaust
deniers, including Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, Freedman
contended that the American Jewish community was opposed to a question
about religious affiliation on the census because it would reveal that the
Jews who had "allegedly" died were actually in the United States. [American
Jewish organizations have traditionally opposed such a question because
they believe it would violate the constitutional guarantee of the
separation of church and state.] The well-known American Nazi leader George
Lincoln Rockwell called the Holocaust "a monstrous and profitable fraud."
He echoed Freedman's notion that the 6,000,000 "later died happily and
richly in the Bronx, New York." In June 1959, in an article entitled "Into
the Valley of Death Rode the Six Million. Or Did They?" American
anti-semite Gerald L.K. Smith's Cross and the Flag informed its readers
that the 6,000,000 Jews were in the United States. (5)
Such blatant attempts to confuse readers were typical of deniers' behavior
during the first two decades after the war. Ultimately most of these people
had little impact because they could so easily be dismissed as extremists
and right-wingers.
Nonetheless their arguments eventually worked their way into the mainstream
of Holocaust denial. In subsequent years their statistical claims would
become if not more sophisticated then certainly more complicated. (6)
Flagrant falsehoods would be entwined in complex arguments, confusing those
who did not know the facts.
Not all the early deniers had overt associations with extremist groups.
Consequently they were able to make some of their accusations in more
mainstream publications. In the June 14, 1959, issue of the widely
circulated Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor a letter writer claimed: "I
was able to determine during six post-war years in Germany and Austria,
there were a number of Jews killed, but the figure of a million was
certainly never reached." (7) Newspaper editors who received denial
material from Boniface Press, the publishing outlet run by App turned to
the Anti-Defamation League to ask for clarification. One editor requested
documentation demonstrating that Jews had really died. (8)
Harry Elmer Barnes was the most direct link between the two generations of
American revisionists and the Holocaust deniers. (9) Some of his numerous
books and articles, particularly those on Western civilization, were used
as required texts through the 1960s at prestigious American universities,
including Harvard and Columbia. Barnes also lectured widely at other
universities throughout the United States, his arguments about needless
American participation in World War I winning the admiration of many people
in the United States and abroad including the publisher of the Nation,
Oswald Garrison Villard, the Socialist leader Norman Thomas; the journalist
H. L. Mencken; and the historian Charles Beard. At one time he served as
bibliographic editor of Foreign Affairs. (10)
But from the outset Barnes's career was not without controversy. During
World War I he had been an ardent advocate of the Allied cause. The
material he submitted to the National Board for Historical Service, the
principal vehicle for dissemination of pro-Allied propaganda by historians,
was deemed "too violent to be acceptable," and those involved in the effort
described him as "one of the most violent sort of shoot-them-at-sunrise
Chauvinists." (11) But his views changed dramatically after the war. With
the zeal of a convert, he moved to the isolationist, pro-German end of the
political spectrum and stayed there for the rest of his life. Much of his
work relied on polemics and flamboyant tactics. He so savaged advocates of
the "orthodox" view of the war that even those who agreed with him recoiled
from his reliance on ad hominem attacks. (12) When he publicly accused
Bernadotte Schmitt, a prominent and well respected historian at the
University of Chicago, of adjusting his historical conclusions in order to
advance his academic career, he evoked the ire of numerous academics,
including revisionists. According to Barnes, Schmitt concluded that Germany
was responsible for precipitating the war in order to obtain his
prestigious university post. This kind of attack typified Barnes's
subsequent attacks on those who disagreed with him. He was convinced that
his beliefs constituted objective truth; consequently anyone who took a
different view was neither objective nor honest.
Barnes's work won a broad popular audience in the United States and abroad.
In 1926 he visited Germany to deliver a series of lectures that argued that
Germany was not guilty for World War I. Barnes waxed euphoric about his
reception there, which he described as a "fairy tale." He was particularly
impressed by the "great interest and energy" shown by Weimar scholars and
officials in "seeking to clear Germany of the dishonor and fraud of the
war-guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles." (13) While in Europe he even
met with the exiled Kaiser, Wilhelm II, a considerable honor for a
relatively young scholar. According to Barnes the Kaiser "was happy to know
that I did not blame him for starting the war in 1914." But, Barnes
recalled, they were not in complete accord: "He disagreed with my view that
Russia and France were chiefly responsible. He held that the villains of
1914 were the international Jews and Free Masons, who, he alleged, desired
to destroy national states and the Christian religion." (14) Barnes did not
fully agree with the Kaiser on this point, preferring to point at England
and France as the primary perpetrators.
During the interwar years Barnes used his World War I revisionism to
propound the isolationist cause. Even before World War II had ended he was
challenging the official version of its history. He was part of a small
group of isolationists who tried to resurrect the movement's reputation and
to sully Roosevelt's. They were funded by prewar isolationists, including
Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Barnes repeated his World War I arguments
and attacked politicians, journalists, and historians who failed to
acknowledge Allied responsibility for the war. He assaulted Roosevelt's
policies and defended Hitler's, contending that virtually all Hitler's
political and military moves, including the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
were necessary to "rectify" the injustices of the Versailles treaty. (15)
But it was not just the Versailles treaty that was at fault; the real
problem was the Allies' fundamental failure to understand Hitler himself.
In a 1950 letter to fellow revisionist Charles Tansill, Barnes described
Hitler's demands in 1939 as the "most reasonable of all," and in his
articles and essays he continuously sought to exonerate Hitler. (16) Barnes
did not perceive Hitler as a megalomaniac leader who was defeated because
he was intent on controlling Europe. It was not the German Fuehrer's
ferocity but his humanity that caused his military demise. According to
Barnes Hitler's downfall resulted from his "unwillingness to use his full
military power" against innocent English civilians. (17) Contrary to the
prevailing consensus, Hitler did not "precipitously launch" an aggressive
attack on Poland. In fact, Barnes argued, Hitler made a greater effort to
avoid war in 1939 than the Kaiser had in 1914. Barnes not only vindicated
Hitler but held the British "almost solely responsible" for the outbreak of
war on both the Eastern and Western fronts. Hitler did not wantonly stick
"a dagger in the back of France" in June 1940 but was "forced" into war by
British "acts of economic strangulation." (18)
In 1952 in a letter to Harvard historian William Langer, who had authored a
two volume defense of America's prewar policies, Barnes wrote that he
considered Roosevelt's foreign policy "the greatest public crime in human
history." (19) Barnes pursued this argument throughout his career, arguing
in 1958 that Roosevelt "lied the United States into war," and, had he not
been able "to incite the Japanese" to attack Pearl Harbor, the tragedies of
the war and the even "greater calamities" that resulted from it could well
have been avoided. (20) (Barnes had made precisely the same arguments about
Wilson and World War I.) Barnes not only believed Hitler "reasonable" and
Britain, France, and the United States responsible for the war, he also
argued that a pervasive historical "blackout" silenced anyone who might
question the notion of German guilt. The blackout was the keystone of a
plan to prevent the truth about World War II from emerging. Barnes's
initial assault on this "conspiracy" was contained in a lengthy pamphlet,
The Struggle Against Historical Blackout, which appeared in 1947 and which
had gone through 9 printings by 1952.
According to Barnes Western liberals allowed their hatred of Hitler. and
Mussolini to blind them to France's aggressiveness, Britain's duplicity,
and Roosevelt's deception.
"Court historians" kept the truth from emerging by quashing any information
that might tarnish Roosevelt's image and silencing critics who questioned
American "intervention" in World War II. Scholars suspected of revisionist
views were denied access to public documents. Publishers who wished to
issue books or periodicals dealing with the topic were intimidated.
Material that embodied revisionist facts or arguments was ignored or
obscured. Revisionist authors were smeared. (21) This was not simply a case
of obtuseness; this was wilful deceit. The "court historians" were not just
blind or unaware of the facts; they lied, ignored contradictory
information, and created new truths. In subsequent years Holocaust deniers
would claim that they faced precisely the same situation. (22) According to
Barnes, politicians', diplomats', and historians' vindictiveness toward
Germany was completely out of proportion to reality, and they knew it.
Consequently they needed a rationale to justify their enmity. Thus they
accused Germany of starting the war and of unparalleled atrocities.
Barnes claimed that only ten years after the war had he concluded that
Germany was not responsible for the outbreak of war or for the atrocities
of which it was accused. He wrote in 1962: "For a decade following 1945 I
was convinced that the best thing which could have happened to Germany and
the world in pre-war days would have been the assassination of Hitler, say
around 1938 or early 1939, if not much earlier." (23) He claimed that it
was only with great reluctance that he was weaned from this view of an evil
Nazi Germany and forced by the evidence to accept a new truth. This
assertion is disingenuous in light of what he wrote in 1947, in The
Struggle Against the Historical Blackout, as well as the opinions he
expressed in private correspondence. Indeed, the war had barely ended when
Barnes began to blame the Allies and exonerate Hitler.
More significantly his protestations that he reluctantly revised his notion
of the truth when he came into contact with revisionist literature are
reminiscent of the tactics adopted by many conspiracy theorists and by
Holocaust deniers in particular.
Virtually all of them claim to have been enlightened by the evidence to
abandon their previously mistaken beliefs. On being confronted with a
preponderance of "information" contradicting their original conclusion that
there was a Holocaust, they ashamedly acknowledge that they have been
victims of a hoax. They apparently think that this contention adds
plausibility to their new beliefs. It also prevents them from being accused
of having harbored hostile attitudes toward Jews or having had fascist
sympathies.
The fact is, however, that Barnes did not have to be convinced to adopt
this view, nor did he wait ten years to espouse it. In a letter to Villard
dated June 1948, Barnes said that Roosevelt and Churchill, "backed by
certain pressure groups," were more responsible than Hitler for the war.
That same year he argued that throughout history France had repeatedly
invaded Germany without provocation. "Offhand," he wrote in a private
communique, "I cannot recall a really unprovoked German invasion of France
in modern times." (24) To buttress his point he prepared a list of all the
French invasions of Germany, beginning in 1552 and concluding his list with
two twentieth-century entries:
l918 - French invade Germany with American aid
1944-5 - French again ride into Germany on backs of Americans (25)
He failed to acknowledge that both of these "invasions" were in response to
massive German attacks.
truth and memory
was only in 1955, when he came upon a dissertation completed at Harvard by
David Leslie Hoggan, that he realized that "Hitler had not desired war" and
that Britain was almost "exclusively responsible." (26) Hoggan, then
teaching in the History Department of the University of California at
Berkeley, convinced Barnes that Hitler had not desired war in 1939. Hoggan
argued that Hitler "had made more moderate demands on Poland than many
leading American and British publicists had recommended in the years after
Versailles. Moreover, Hitler had offered in return an amazing concession to
Poland that the Weimar Republic would never even remotely countenance."
(27) Barnes helped Hoggan publish his book - The Forced War (Der erzwungene
Krieg) - which is based on, but quite different from, the dissertation.
According to one of Hoggan's advisers at Harvard, his dissertation had been
"a solid, conscientious piece of work, critical of Polish and British
policies in 1939, but not beyond what the evidence would tolerate." But
when it was published in Germany in 1961 by Herbert Grabert, it was a very
different book. (28) Hoggan portrayed England and Poland as having wilfully
provoked the war and Germany as an innocent victim who tried every means to
avert a confrontation. This was a war that had been imposed on Hitler.
Additionally, Hoggan addressed the question of Germany's treatment of Jews.
In an attempt to rehabilitate Germany's reputation and relieve Hitler and
the Nazis of any particular onus, he argued that Poland's treatment of its
Jewish population was far more brutal than Germany's. In fact, he asserted,
most of Germany's anti-semitic measures were taken in order to pre-empt
Poland from expelling its Jewish population into the Reich. (29) Hoggan
represented Nazi Germany's Jewish policies as benign or, at the least, as
better than Poland's. Hoggan suggested that the fine levied on German Jews
in the wake of Kristallnacht was simply an equitable way to keep Jews from
getting rich from the destruction by "pocket[ing] vast amounts of money
from the German insurance companies." (30) He failed to note that the
moneys were payments reimbursing Jews for destroyed property. In fact the
fine was designed not to keep Jews from obtaining insurance payments but to
confiscate virtually all of their remaining liquid assets. (3l) Hoggan also
claimed that no Jews had been killed during the pogrom or in its immediate
aftermath.
In an attempt to demonstrate that the Jews had not really been
discriminated against and were in a secure position as late as 1938, Hoggan
noted that in early 1938 Jewish doctors and dentists still participated in
the German national compulsory insurance program. This "guaranteed them a
sufficient number of patients." (32) Hoggan failed to cite the many
obstacles that were put in the way of Jewish medical personnel, including
that by 1938 it had become a radical if not illegal act for a German to use
a Jewish doctor. Furthermore, in July 1938 a decree was enacted withdrawing
licenses from Jewish physicians. Again, ignoring the host of laws and
regulations that severely limited Jews' ability to function in German
society, he argued that Jewish lawyers had been free to practice as late as
1938. Citing information contained in a letter to the State Department from
the American ambassador in Germany, Hoggan noted that, as of 1938, 10% of
German attorneys were Jews. If this was indeed correct, how could it be
argued that they were being persecuted? The ambassador did mention that 10%
of the lawyers were Jews, but in a context quite different from the one in
which Hoggan presented it. The ambassador had written to Washington to
report that the situation of Jewish lawyers, which had been deplorable for
a long time, was growing worse. "As early as 1933 pressure was exerted to
oust Jews from the legal profession," the ambassador told the State
Department. Jews faced exceptional obstacles in seeking admission to the
bar, and Jewish attorneys were prevented from serving as notaries - a
measure, according to the ambassador, which, "in view of the wide
requirements and high charges for notarial services in Germany, constituted
a considerable handicap to the Jewish legal profession." (33) Thus,
although as late as 1938, 10% of all lawyers may well have been Jews, since
they were barely able to function they were lawyers in name only. They were
barred from court and prevented from performing an array of tasks
fundamental to their profession. Moreover, Hoggan neglected to say why the
ambassador was reporting on the situation of Jewish lawyers. On September
27, 1938, Nazi Germany completely banned Jews from the practice of law.
Hoggan also totally distorted the implications of the Nazi decision to end
the Jewish community's status as an officially sanctioned religious body.
For many years the German government had collected a religion tax, which
was turned over to the individual's designated religious community, from
every German resident. Essentially the government served as a transfer
agency, collecting funds from German citizens and transmitting them to
their religious community. The American ambassador reported that because
the Jewish community was no longer an officially sanctioned entity, it
would no longer receive the "taxes levied upon [its] members by the State
for the meeting of community expenses." In other words, Jews would continue
to pay the tax, but the government would not give it to their community.
Hoggan gave an entirely different - and dishonest - slant to this decision.
Making it sound as though the Jewish community was supported by the state,
he wrote that the new law "meant that German public tax receipts would go
no longer to the Jewish church." Then, in an effort to diminish further the
impact of the decree, Hoggan falsely claimed that it had simply brought
German practice into "conformity with current English practice." (34) He
failed to note that the same was not done to other religious communities
and ignored the ambassador's comment that the new law constituted
"discriminatory" legislation that would greatly hamper "the social and
welfare world of the already seriously harassed Jewish Gemeinde
[community]." (35)
Hoggan's book, on which Barnes heaped accolades, is full of such
misrepresentations in relation to British and Polish foreign policy and
concerning Germany's treatment of the Jews. His dissertation contains few
such observations. Barnes read the dissertation before it was turned into a
book and was in contact with Hoggan for a full 6 years before the book was
published. Barnes helped get it published and provided a blurb for its
jacket, obviously playing a significant role in turning this "solid
conscientious piece of work" into a Nazi apologia. One German historian
observed that "rarely have so many inane and unwarranted theses,
allegations and 'conclusions'.. been crammed into a volume written under
the guise of history." (36) Gerhard Weinberg, in his review of the book in
the American Historical Review, described it as full of fabrications,
twisted evidence, and transpositions of the sequence of events. All public
statements by Hitler that substantiated Hoggan's thesis were taken at face
value, as when Hitler professed that he only wanted peace. All statements,
public or private, which did not agree, were ignored. (37) Hoggan's
contribution to Holocaust denial is significant. He buttressed the bogus
notion that Germany was the victim, the Allies the victimizers, and the war
easily preventable. In addition his Harvard credentials and his association
with Berkeley, however tenuous, provided a measure of credibility to a
movement that had thus far been relegated to the scholarly fringes.
Beginning in the 1960s Barnes began to pay increasing attention to the
issue of German atrocities. He did not explicitly state that the atrocity
stories were fabricated. Instead, he suggested that they were inaccurate
and politically motivated. In a 1962 publication, Revisionism and
Brainwashing, he condemned the "lack of any serious opposition or concerted
challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German
national character and conduct." Attempting to deflect the charges of
German atrocities, Barnes relied on immoral equivalencies, arguing that
there was a "failure to point out that the atrocities of the Allies were
more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations
made against the Germans." (38) This form of relativism was becoming a
fundamental component of Holocaust denial.
During this period Barnes was exposed to Paul Rassinier's claims that the
Holocaust was a hoax. Apparently it was Rassinier's work that prompted
Barnes to contend that the atrocity stories were fabrications. Barnes
called Rassinier a "distinguished French historian" and applauded him for
questioning the existence of gas chambers in concentration camps in Germany
and for exposing the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories." (39) (See
chapter 8.) In an essay entitled "Zionist Fraud," which originally appeared
in the American Mercury, Barnes heaped lavish praise on Rassinier and
expressed support for many of the Frenchman's accusations:
The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for
misrepresentation on those whom we must call the swindlers of the
crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from
nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been
reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner. (40)
Still engaged in fighting both world wars, Barnes found that Rassinier's
defense of Germany and his attempt to remove from its shoulders the blame
for atrocities validated his most precious historical conviction: the
Allies were the real culprits. For Barnes, Rassinier's denial constituted
important historical ammunition and intellectual proof that World War II
was just like World War I. Germany was the wonderful nation it had always
been, and America had once again needlessly entered the conflagration. Why
was this fact not generally known by most Americans? Barnes had a simple
answer. There was a conspiracy to blame Germany for terrible atrocities and
wildly exaggerate the wrongs it had committed.
These "allegations" and "exaggerations" against Germany were not just
capricious, Barnes argued, but served an important purpose for historians
and political leaders from the Allied nations. They were essential to
protect the reputation of prominent American, English, and French leaders
who had supported appeasement during the 1930s. The leaders displayed a
benign attitude to Hitler and other Nazi leaders even after the "worst
aspects of the Hitler regime had been in operation for some years,"
including the persecution of the Jews under the Nuremberg Laws. (41) In
light of their positive assessments of Hitler and National Socialism during
the prewar period, it was difficult for them to justify their subsequent
condemnations of Hitler as a "pathological demon." How could he have been a
reasonable leader in the 1930s and the epitome of evil ten years later?
Something "different and dramatic" was needed to "make the thesis of
diabolism sink in and stick." Without it these "eminent [prewar] eulogists"
would appear to be "silly dupes." The allegations regarding the atrocities
committed by the Nazis during the war were thus part of the plan to protect
the reputations of Allied leaders who had previously sought to appease
Hitler. Now they could portray him as a "madman," whose potential for evil
was not known until the war itself.
But it was not only the prewar "eulogists" who needed to justify their war
with Hitler. The postwar legacy of the "attempt to check 'the Nazi madman'"
was "even more ominous than the war." From Barnes's isolationist
perspective, the war had been a disaster for the Allies. Germany was
divided. Stalin was stronger than before. The Soviet Union controlled much
of Eastern Europe, including portions of Germany, and the United States had
to spend billions to rebuild and arm Western Europe. All this resulted from
an attempt to stop Hitler, who, Barnes contended, had no interest in going
to war against the Allies. In order to justify the "horrors and evil
results of the Second World War," those who had led the Allies into war
also needed to justify their efforts. (42) There were two false dogmas that
"met the need perfectly": Germany's diabolism in provoking the war and
committing massive atrocities. Hitler and national socialism became the
Allies' "scapegoat." (43) According to Barnes these two accusations were
linked in a pernicious fashion:
Hitler's setting off the war was also deemed responsible for the wholesale
extermination of Jews, for it was admitted that this did not begin until a
considerable time after war broke out.
Though not yet willing to deny the Holocaust, he did cast doubt on it by
declaring it at best a theory:
The size of the German reparations to Israel has been based on the theory
that vast numbers of Jews were exterminated at the express order of Hitler,
some six million being the most usually accepted number. (44)
A few years later Barnes again raised questions about the veracity of the
Holocaust in his article, "Revisionism: A Key to Peace." Apparently
reluctant explicitly to deny the Holocaust, Barnes relativized the
"alleged" atrocities of the Germans as he had previously done.
Even if one were to accept the most extreme and exaggerated indictment of
Hitler and the National Socialists for their activities after 1939 made by
anybody fit to remain outside a mental hospital, it is almost alarmingly
easy to demonstrate that the atrocities of the Allies in the same period
were more numerous as to victims and were carried out for the most part by
methods more brutal and painful than alleged extermination in gas ovens.
(45)
In 1967, in "The Public Stake in Revisionism," Barnes charged that what had
begun as a "blackout" had now become a "smotherout" as a result of the
Eichmann trial. It provided an "unexpected but remarkably opportune moment
and an effective springboard for stopping World War II revisionism dead in
its track." Moving close to explicit denial, Barnes argued that the trial
revealed an almost adolescent gullibility and excitability on the part of
Americans relative to German wartime crimes, real or alleged. (46)
The charges against Eichmann and Nazi Germany were based on fundamental but
unproved assumptions that what Hitler and the National Socialists did in
the years after Britain and the United States entered the war revealed that
they were.. vile, debased, brutal and bloodthirsty gangsters. (47)
Barnes attacked popular American weekly and monthly journals for their
"sensational articles" about "exaggerated National Socialist savagery."
(48) He repeated what had become a consistent refrain in his articles:
Allied atrocities surpassed those of the Germans. The Allied atrocities, to
which Barnes made repeated reference, included the bombing of Hamburg,
Tokyo, and Dresden and the postwar expulsion of the Sudeten Germans during
which, he charged, "at least four millions of them perish[ed] in the
process from butchery, starvation and disease." Using language that was
purposely chosen to evoke a comparison to what the Jews "claimed" was done
to them, Barnes described the population transfer as "the final solution"
for defeated Germans.
In "The Public Stake in Revisionism," Barnes again stopped short of
explicitly denying the existence of gas chambers:
The number of civilians exterminated by the Allies, before, during and
after the Second World War, equaled, if it did not far exceed those
liquidated by the Germans and the Allied liquidation program was often
carried out by methods which were far more brutal and painful than whatever
extermination actually took place in German gas ovens. (49) [The editor of
the Journal of Historical Review was clearly distressed by the ambiguity of
this statement, which could be interpreted to suggest that Barnes believed
that there might have actually been "gas ovens" in Auschwitz. When the
Journal reprinted the article in 1980 the editor added a footnote to
Barnes's comment about the gas ovens: "Of course Barnes is confused here by
the difference between a 'gas chamber' and a 'gas oven.' Shortly after
writing this article, he came to reject the entire holocaust myth, not just
part of it."]
Once again coming close to, but not quite crossing the boundary into
denial, he complained in the same article that Allied atrocities are never
"cogently and frankly placed over against the doings, real or alleged, at
Auschwitz." (50)
Barnes tried to argue that the gas chambers were postwar inventions.
Ignoring the fact that data on gas chambers in various death camps had been
publicized long before the war ended, he falsely claimed that the charges
had only been made afterward, when it was necessary to justify the war and
its outcome. According to Barnes, when the "court historians" were forced
by "revisionists" to admit reluctantly that there were only concentration
camps and not death camps in Germany, they needed something else to
maintain the evil image of the Nazi empire. It was then, he argued, that
they contrived the existence of gas chambers at other camps. Once this
allegation was placed in the public domain, the "smotherout" historians
changed the focus of their attacks on Nazi Germany. No longer did they
emphasize the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or Hitler's precipitation of
the war. They found something far more potent:
What is deemed important today is not whether Hitler started war in 1939 or
whether Roosevelt was responsible for Pearl Harbor but the number of
prisoners who were allegedly done to death in the concentration camps
operated by Germany during the war. These camps were first presented as
those in Germany, such as Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and
Dora, but it was demonstrated that there had been no systematic
extermination in those camps. Attention was then moved on to Auschwitz,
Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Jonowska [sic], Tarnow, Ravensbrueck,
Mauthausen, Brezeznia [sic] and Birkenau, which does not exhaust the list
that appears to have been extended as needed. (51)
These new charges kept the public from becoming "bored" by hearing the same
stories. To ensure public interest the details were "made more unceasing,
exaggerated and inflammatory." (52) Once again Barnes totally distorted the
truth and reshaped the historical record. Information about Chelmno,
Auschwitz, Birkenau and other camps was well known long before the war
ended; details about them had been repeatedly published in the Western
press.
Moreover it was precisely those whom Barnes accused of being "court
historians" who, in fact, were responsible for demonstrating that there had
been no homicidal gas chambers in German concentration camps. After the war
there had been persistent confusion about the difference between
concentration camps and death camps. The latter, located outside Germany,
had facilities for the express purpose of murdering people, primarily Jews.
While there were no death camps in Germany, there were many concentration
camps, in which multitudes died from overwork, disease, starvation,
beatings, and severe mistreatment. Much of the confusion centered around
the idea that there was a functioning homicidal gas chamber in Dachau. This
was what historians were trying to clarify in 1962, when Professor Martin
Broszat, who served for many years as the director of Munich's Institute
for Contemporary History, wrote to the newspaper Die Zeit to "hammer home,
once more, the persistently ignored or denied difference between
concentration and extermination camps." Contrary to deniers' claims, he
said, his letter did not constitute an "admission" on his part but an
effort to "set the record straight." (53) This remains a consistent tactic
of the deniers. Every time historians who study the Holocaust correct a
mistake in the record, deniers immediately claim that they do so because
their previous lies were about to be exposed. [This is what they have done
in relation to the charge that Nazis used Jewish cadavers for the
production of soap. When scholars of the Holocaust corrected this notion,
the deniers were quick to charge they did so in order to avoid being
exposed as wilful liars. (See chapter 10.)]
Barnes also tried to recast history by changing the nature of the
assignment of the Einsatzgruppen that functioned as the mobile killing
units. The Einsatzgruppen entered Soviet territory in July 1941. Between
that date and the beginning of the retreat of German forces in the spring
of 1943, it is estimated that they murdered well over 1,000,000 Jews and
hundreds of thousands of other Soviet nationals. Their brutal methods were
eventually replaced by the more "efficient" gas chambers. Barnes
transformed them from groups whose express task was to murder Jews in
Soviet territory into units that were "battling guerrilla warfare behind
the lines." This profile is totally contradicted by reams of documents and
the testimony of Einsatzgruppen leaders and members, as well as that of
those who saw them massacre Jews. Barnes's transformation of their role was
his means of trying to work around the truth. He did not have to deny that
they may in fact have killed some Jews, but, according to his explanation,
their actions were justified because their victims were anti-German
guerrillas.
But even with all these attempts to twist information and misrepresent
established historical fact, Barnes and others faced a fundamental
challenge in their effort to exculpate Nazi Germany. It was difficult to
argue that Germany had not committed these outrages when the postwar West
German government accepted responsibility for the war and the atrocities.
(54) Barnes castigated both the government and the academic community of
the Federal Republic of Germany for failing to challenge this "unfair"
verdict and the "false dogma[s]" propagated by the Allies and accepted by
the Bonn government. (55) The government's approach to history prevented
"the restoration of Germany to its proper position of unity, power and
respect among the nations of the world." (56)
Barnes's ire at the Adenauer government for its "masochistic" behavior was
heightened by his comparison of it with the Weimar government's attitude
toward World War I. Barnes complained that none of the open-mindedness he
had discovered during his trip to Germany in the Weimar period was evident
in the Federal Republic. The Bonn government had "brainwashed" or
"indoctrinated" the German people into accepting an "indictment of German
responsibility for the war. According to Barnes the postwar German
leadership did more than acquiesce in the charges brought against it. It
furthered the "smotherout" by "oppos[ing] the discovery and publication of
the truth." (57) Barnes claimed to be "deeply puzzled" about the Adenauer
government's acceptance of responsibility for German precipitation of the
war and its "downright disinclination to seek to refute the most outrageous
charges of cruelty and barbarism leveled against Germany by conscienceless
atrocity mongers [and] the continuation to this very day of not-so-little
Nuremberg trials." (58) Barnes did not mention the possibility that West
Germany did not contest the accusations because they were true and West
Germans, from Chancellor Konrad Adenauer on down, knew it. Instead he
condemned German leaders for "smearing" people like Rassinier and for the
"sheer lunacy" of paying reparations "based on atrocity stories." (59) This
was a precise repetition of Barnes's behavior in relation to World War I
revisionism.
truth and memory
information that challenged his conclusion, treating it as the work of
perverted minds. Barnes found West Germany's relationship with the State of
Israel particularly galling. He was nonplussed by a speech given by the
president of the West German Bundestag in Israel in 1962 in which he
acknowledged Germany's wrongdoings and asked for forgiveness for the
Holocaust. Barnes characterized the speech as "subserviency" and "almost
incredible groveling." (60) He was appalled by the German decision to send
a group of volunteers to work in Israel as a form of penance. Barnes's
disgust, as a non-German, at the German leader's request from Israel for
forgiveness and at German citizens' desire to work on Israeli kibbutzim, is
noteworthy. Barnes and Rassinier helped set the tone for subsequent
Holocaust denial with their particular contempt for the Jewish state, its
supporters, and Jews in general.
The roots of Barnes's views about the Holocaust and his attitudes toward
Israel go beyond his deep-seated Germanophilia and revisionist approach to
history: They can be found in his anti-semitism. While this animus did not
generally pervade his articles until the late 1960s, privately he had given
voice to it as early as the 1940s. In an article published immediately
after the war he suggested that Lord Vansittart (Robert Gilbert
Vansittart), who served as Britain's permanent under-secretary of the
British Foreign Office until the beginning of 1938 and after that as chief
diplomatic adviser to His Majesty's Government, should be tried along with
the Nazis for having helped precipitate the war. Vansittart, who was an
anti-Nazi, is often singled out by revisionists and deniers as one of those
chiefly responsible for pushing England to adopt anti-German policies. In
response to Barnes's attacks, Vansittart decided to sue for libel and asked
the prominent American lawyer, Louis Nizer, to represent him. When the suit
was announced in the Washington Post, Barnes complained to Oswald Garrison
Villard. Both staunch isolationists, Villard and Barnes had regularly
exchanged letters regarding America's "misguided" foreign policy. (However,
despite his ardent conviction that American policy had been wrong, Villard
did not share Barnes's views regarding atrocities or the victimization of
Germany.) Barnes described the suit as a "plot of the Jews and the
Anti-Defamation League to intimidate any American historians who propose to
tell the truth about the causes of the war." He attacked Louis Nizer as an
"Anti-Defamation League stooge," who had "needled [Vansittart] into
action," and bemoaned his inability to counter the inordinate power and
financial resources of the other side: [The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
was a favorite target of the revisionists. In a confidential report written
in 1944 John Flynn cited the ADL as one of the groups responsible for a
program to silence isolationists and "destroy the[ir] reputations" by
intimidating them and anyone who might be influenced by them. In 1947 the
Chicago Tribune ran a series of 5 articles by Flynn making these
allegations (Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-1945
[Lincoln, Nebr.]).]
If I could raise money enough for a real defense we could make this an
international cause celebre, but I cannot fight the thirty million dollars
now in the coffers of the Anti-Defamation League to be used for character
assassination on empty pockets. If we let them get away with this, we are
licked from the start. [Villard admonished Barnes about making these
claims: "I do not think for a moment that you need lay this to the Jews.
[Vansittart] is a hard, aggressive fighter as his books have shown and when
he chose Nizer as his counsel he picked the man who got a $100,000 verdict
against Victor Ridder, which the judge cut to $50,000. Englishmen are very
sensitive about libels.. I don't believe he needed the slightest prodding
from anybody."]
Barnes's blaming his problems on a Jewish lawyer and a Jewish
organization's success in needling a prominent British official into action
is another indication of his antipathy toward Jews and the degree to which
he subscribed to anti-semitic stereotypes. It is also an example of
Barnes's pattern of accusing others of conspiring against him. Peter Novick
of the University of Chicago, who has closely examined Barnes's
correspondence, describes it as constituting a "full clinical record" of
his abusiveness toward those who disagreed with him and his conviction that
he was the target of innumerable conspirators. When the New York
World-Telegram dropped his column in 1940, he blamed British intelligence,
the Morgan bank, and Jewish department store owners in New York City, who,
Barnes claimed, threatened the publisher with "loss of all advertising if
he kept me on any longer." (62)
Yet Barnes apparently also understood that, like all deniers, he faced a
fundamental obstacle. As long as they could be dismissed as anti-semitic
extremists, they would never make headway with the general public. If their
work was perceived as simply a reworked expression of an age-old animus, it
would have no credibility. Barnes tried to pre-empt this accusation by
turning it back on those who made it: He accused those who charged that the
deniers were anti-semites of using this label as a means of silencing
anyone who questioned the "official" version of history. According to
Barnes, the keystone of this effort was the claim that Jews had been
subjected to unique persecution and atrocities. This aspect of the hoax was
ingenious in that it enabled its architects to muzzle critics. Anyone who
dared to question the official version of history was labeled an
anti-semite. Employing tactics that again reflected his personal hostility
towards Jews, Barnes charged those behind the "smotherout" with believing
that "it [was] far worse to exterminate Jews, even at the ratio of two
Gentiles to one Jew, than to liquidate Gentiles." (63) When Barnes or
like-minded people challenged this assertion in the name of "non-racial
humanitarianism," they were accused of being anti-semitic, which was
considered "worse than parricide or necrophilia." (64)
Barnes's standing as a historian is a matter of some dispute. His early
works on World War I won positive reviews, and for many years his was
considered to be a serious though extreme historical voice. His personal
attacks on those who disagreed with him and his writings about World War II
alienated many of his earlier followers but did not totally cost him his
credibility as a historian. In his later years, while he was writing
pamphlets about a "smotherout" and a "theory" of the Holocaust, his books
were being used as required texts in university level Western Civilization
courses. [Students at Harvard and Columbia have told me that they had no
idea he was writing in this fashion when they were using his books.] When
"The Public Stake in Revisionism" - in which he referred to the "doings
real or alleged at Auschwitz" and described the Einsatzgruppen as "battling
guerrillas" - appeared in the journal of Rampart College, Robert LeFevre,
the college dean, writing in the journal, demonstrated the academic
community's willingness to regard Barnes's behavior as excusable excesses:
"There are places where Dr. Barnes' understandable frustration is indicated
by the use of emotive words and that may be unfortunate although it can be
forgiven." (65)
Today Barnes's work is generally dismissed by scholars because of his
obsession with a conspiracy theory related to America's entry into World
War II. However, he remains something of a cult historian for members of
the Libertarian party, who subscribe to Barnes's style of revisionist
scholarship. They have kept his works in print and made his books widely
available in their bookstores. While the Libertarians can still be
considered a fringe group, more disturbing was the 1975 edition of History
Teacher, a publication of the Society for History Education, which at the
time was housed at California State University at Long Beach. History
Teacher is designed to aid teachers in finding interesting ways to present
historical information to their students. This edition, entitled "Harry
Elmer Barnes: Prophet of a 'Usable' Past," identified Barnes as someone who
practiced the "scholarship of commitment." Thus, notwithstanding his
notions regarding the Holocaust and other aspects of World War II, Barnes's
legacy was still at least somewhat intact. According to Justus Doenecke,
author of the profile on Barnes, the causes Barnes "heralded resemble our
own and the dilemmas he faced are hauntingly familiar." Barnes's views
regarding Hitler, the power of the Jews, atrocities committed by the
Allies, or the Holocaust were never mentioned in this lengthy essay.
Instead Barnes was portrayed as a useful model for those who believed in
the relevance of history. His conviction that Allied atrocities
overshadowed those of the Germans was also ignored, although there is a
passing reference to his tendency to present views that are only "partially
digested." Having chosen to rely on Barnes's work, any teacher who came
upon his views about the Holocaust might take them seriously. After all,
would History Teacher have suggested Barnes as a role model if they were
not valid? (66)
NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR
1. Arnold Forster, "The Ultimate Cruelty," ADL Bulletin (June 1959), pp.
1ff.
2. Ibid., p. 2.
3. Ibid.
4. Benjamin H. Freedman, "Six Million Jew Hoax," Common Sense (May 1,
1959).
5. Forster, "The Ultimate Cruelty," p. 2.
6. Arthur Butz, "The International 'Holocaust' Controversy," Journal of
Historical Review (Spring 1980), p. 6.
7. Our Sunday Visitor, June 14, 1959; Forster, "The Ultimate Cruelty," p.
7.
8. Forster, "The Ultimate Cruelty," p. 7.
9. Peter Baldwin, "The Historikerstreit in Context," in Reworking the Past:
Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historians' Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin
(Boston, 1990), p. 24.
10. Paul L. Berman, "Gas Chamber Games: Crackpot History and the Right to
Lie," Village Voice, June 10-16, 1981, p. 40; Harry Elmer Barnes, The Court
Historians Versus Revisionism, n.p., n.d., p. 3.
11. Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 208.
12. Charles A. Beard to Harry Elmer Barnes, June 28, 1924, Barnes Papers,
Box 79, cited in Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 212.
13. His trip to Germany to expound on the Versailles treaty had a major
impact on his subsequent historical views, Brainwashing, p. 24.
14. Brainwashing, pp. 13, 18.
15. Harry Elmer Barnes, "Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace," Journal
of Historical Review (Spring 1982), p. 61. This article originally appeared
in Liberation (Summer 1958) and was subsequently republished as a pamphlet.
16. H. E. Barnes to C. C. Tansill, Nov. 7, 1950, cited in Doenecke, Not to
the Swift, p. 105.
17. Barnes, "Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace," p. 65.
18. Ibid., pp. 67-68.
19. H. E. Barnes to W. L. Neumann, Feb. 8, 1952, cited in Doenecke, Not to
the Swift, p. 104.
20. Barnes, "Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace," p. 68.
21. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout (n.p.,
1952), p. 11.
22. Barnes, "Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace," p. 72.
23. Brainwashing, p. 3.
24. Harry Elmer Barnes to Oswald Garrison Villard, October 28, 1948,
Harvard University.
25. Harry Elmer Barnes to Oswald Garrison Villard, March 5, 1949, Harvard
University.
26. Brainwashing, p. 5.
27. Ibid.
28. Lucy Dawidowicz, "Lies about the Holocaust," Commentary, Dec. 1980, p.
32.
29. David Leslie Hoggan, The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed
(Torrance, Calif., 1989).
30. Hoggan, The Forced War, p. 156.
31. Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, p. 92.
32. Hoggan, The Forced War, p. 101.
33. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1938,
vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1938), pp. 391-92.
34. Hoggan, The Forced War, p. 101.
35. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1938,
vol. 2, p. 361.
36. Helmut Krausnick, then director of the Institute for Contemporary
History in Munich, charged that Hoggan had actually engaged in forgery in
the preparation of the book. See Krausnick's foreword to Hermann Graml's
critique of Hoggan, Geschichte in Wissenschaft and Unterricht, August 1963,
cited in Dawidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust," p. 32.
37. See Gerhard L. Weinberg's review in American Historical Review, vol.
68, no. 1 (October 1962), pp. 104-5.
38. Brainwashing, p. 42.
39. Ibid. Barnes translated some of Rassinier's works into English. See
Lewis Brandon, "Introduction," The Barnes Trilogy: Three Revisionist
Booklets by Harry Elmer Barnes, Historian, Criminologist, Sociologist,
Economist (Torrance, Calif., 1979). Brandon was the alias used by David
McCalden, the first director of the Institute for Historical Review.
40. Harry Elmer Barnes, "Zionist Fraud", American Mercury, Fall 1968,
reprinted in an appendix to The Myth of the Six Million (Los Angeles,
1969), p. 117.
41. Brainwashing, p. 32.
42. Ibid., p. 33.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., p. 37.
45. Harry Elmer Barnes, "Revisionism: A Key to Peace," Rampart Journal
(Spring 1966), quoted in Dawidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust," p. 33.
46. Harry Elmer Barnes, "The Public Stake in Revisionism," Rampart Journal
(Summer 1967), pp. 19-41, republished in Journal of Historical Review (Fall
1980), p. 217 (hereafter referred to as "The Public Stake").
47. "The Public Stake," p. 218.
48. He specifically referred to Look, Mar. 21, 1967; Saturday Evening Post
Oct. 22, 1965, and Feb. 25, 1967. "The Public Stake," pp. 205-30.
49. "The Public Stake," p. 219.
50. Ibid., p. 225.
51. Ibid., p. 223. Barnes apparently thought Brzezinka and Birkenau were
two separate camps. Birkenau is the German translation of Brzezinka.
Jonowska is Janowska.
52. Ibid., p. 222.
53. Gitta Sereny, "The Men Who Whitewash Hitler," New Statesman, Nov. 1979,
p. 670.
54. Even the former East Germany, which until 1990 did not accept
responsibility for the Holocaust, acknowledged that it had occurred. It
blamed the fascists, who persecuted the Communists.
55. "The Public Stake," p. 228; Brainwashing, p. 2.
56. Brainwashing, p. 34.
57. Ibid., pp. 2, 25.
58. Ibid., p. 39.
59. Ibid., p. 42.
60. Ibid., p. 43.
61. Harry Elmer Barnes to Oswald Garrison Villard, November 11, 1945;
Oswald Garrison Villard to Harry Elmer Barnes, November 14, 1945, in the
collection of Harvard University. Barnes originally met Villard in 1926
when Villard had come to lecture in Barnes's classes at Smith College. They
both shared revisionist views regarding World War I and World War II,
though Barnes was far more extreme about the latter.
62. Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 218.
63. "The Public Stake," p. 219.
64. Ibid.
65. Memo from Barry Youngerman to Jerry Bakst, June 27, 1967, archives of
the Anti-Defamation League, New York.
66. Justus Doenecke, "Harry Elmer Barnes: Prophet of a 'Usable' Past,"
History Teacher, vol. 8 (Feb. 1975).
CHAPTER FIVE Austin J. App
The World of Immoral Equivalencies
Harry Elmer Barnes was not the only American academic who attempted to
exonerate Germany by denying the Holocaust. Austin J. App, a professor of
English at the University of Scranton and LaSalle College, also played a
central role in the development of Holocaust denial, especially in the
United States. Though not as prominent as Barnes, he was far more virulent
and began explicitly denying the Holocaust within a few years after the
war. By the late 1950s he was not only writing to the Catholic Brooklyn
Tablet offering "proof" that the figure of 6,000,000 was "a bloated libel,"
but was appearing before varied audiences accusing Jews of perpetrating a
massive hoax. (1)
Like Barnes, App was mainly concerned to lift the moral burden of the
atrocities charge from the shoulders of a defeated and divided Germany. In
contrast to Barnes, App had no independent standing in the academic world.
An active member of various German American groups, App was an ardent
defender of Germans and Nazi Germany. He served for several years as
president of the 5,000-member Federation of American Citizens of German
Descent, founded in 1945. Though it never reached its membership goal of
3,000,000, it was part of a successful postwar congressional lobbying
effort to allocate a substantial number of the immigration slots that had
been intended for Holocaust survivors to Germans and Austrians. (2)
Born in Milwaukee in 1902 to German immigrant parents, App attended
Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he obtained his M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees in English literature. At the University of Scranton, where
he taught from 1934 to 1942, he received its faculty medal as an
outstanding educator. He served for a brief period in the army in 1942 but
for unknown reasons was released within a short time after his induction.
He subsequently joined the faculty of LaSalle College, where he remained
throughout the rest of his teaching career. At LaSalle, where he taught
medieval English literature and was known for pronouncing Beowulf, The
Canterbury Tales, and other Old and Middle English works in the original,
some of his students regarded him as a sort of "dry arrangement" the
college kept on its staff to achieve accreditation. They had no idea of his
other activities. (3)
But, completely unknown to his students, App had a far more dubious side.
He inundated newspapers, magazines, politicians, and journalists with
letters attacking U.S. intervention in World War II, Allied demands for
unconditional surrender, and the imposition of "Morgenthauism" on Germany.
The latter was App's way of placing responsibility for all of Germany's
postwar problems on President Roosevelt's secretary of the treasury, Henry
Morgenthau. Of course, Morgenthau's plan was never put into effect. In
fact, Allied treatment of Germany was the exact opposite of the plan. The
letters were also App's self-described attempt to explode the "lies and
calumnies" that had been spread about Germany since the war and to prevent
Roosevelt and Morgenthau from selling out "Christian Europe to the Red
barbarians." The letters bristled with overt anti-semitism and racism.
Talmudists, Bolsheviks, and Zionists, all of whom were intimately connected
in App's mind with one another, were blamed for the evils that beset the
world after the end of the war. (4) Though few of his letters were actually
published by the newspapers or magazines that received them, App kept up a
steady stream of communiques.
Though much of what App wrote can be relegated to traditional, almost
gutter-level anti-semitism, he is nonetheless an important figure in the
development and evolution of Holocaust denial. His major contribution was
to formulate 8 axioms that have come to serve as the founding principles of
the California-based Institute for Historical Review and as the basic
postulates of Holocaust denial. Since App posited them in 1973, virtually
all deniers have built their arguments on them. The deniers' tactics may
have changed over time, but their arguments have remained the same.
Though App echoed many of Barnes's views - he stated, for example, that
"Hitler was a man of architecture and art, not of armaments and war" (5)
and that Germany was the victim, not the victimizer - App was a more
extreme figure than Barnes. Barnes was avidly pro-German but was not a
fascist. He wished to defend Germany against all claims of wrongdoing but
did not look for a resurrection of a totalitarian regime, a notion to which
App was attracted. His Holocaust denial was more fully developed and
explicit far earlier than Barnes's. As we have seen, Barnes had initially
been reluctant to assert openly that the Holocaust was a fraud. Instead he
found various ways to suggest it was "theory," a "doing, real or imagined,"
or only an "alleged atrocity." During the war itself Barnes refrained from
overt criticisms of Allied policies. In contrast, Austin App showed no such
reluctance. He did not wait for the war to be over to begin building a case
in defense of German actions. In 1942, while the Allies were being defeated
on all fronts, App sent a steady stream of letters to newspapers,
periodicals, and individual journalists expressing a strong sympathy for
Germany and its political objectives. Echoing World War I revisionists, he
vigorously contested the notion that Germany could be held responsible for
starting the war and sought to justify Germany's prewar behavior.
In May 1942, barely 6 months after Pearl Harbor, in a letter to CBS radio
commentator Elmer Davis, App challenged the notion that Germany desired to
"dominate" Europe. According to App, Germany's territorial conquests did
not represent naked aggression but rather the Reich's aspiration to secure
the raw materials and power it needed and, in his view, deserved. At a time
when the Allies were being pushed back by the Axis in both Europe and the
Pacific, App proclaimed that the "Anglo-Saxon block" would have to give
Germany both raw materials and power "commensurate with its talents" or
inevitably the Allies would be "terribly mangled and defeated." App
maintained that Germany had gone to war because this was the only way she
could obtain what justifiably belonged to her. He argued that the means to
end the war and win the peace was to give Germany "precisely the things,
which, if we had given them in 1939, would have prevented the war." (6) But
App did not stop there. His defense of Germany and his critique of Allied
policy continued unabated through the war. In 1943, in the wake of the
Casablanca Conference, at which Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that peace
could only come to the world by the "total elimination" of Germany and
Japan as war powers, he complained to the Columbus Evening Dispatch that to
demand unconditional surrender from Germany was "grossly unethical." In
1944, as it became increasingly clear that Germany would be defeated and
speculation had begun as to what a postwar Germany would look like, App
argued that the Allies perpetrated a war on Germany because of the latter's
legitimate desire to reunite with Danzig (now Gdansk). According to App,
the prospect of a reunited Germany had frightened the Allies, and that is
why they started the war. In this and numerous other letters App reiterated
his central arguments. On the eve of World War II, Germany was emerging as
a stronger nation than Britain. This the British and their ally the United
States could not abide. According to App the only reason the United States
was at war with Germany was that it did not want "anybody in Europe so
civilized and so efficient that our kith and kin, Britain, can't kick them
around and tell them what they may or may not do." (8)
truth and memory
guilty of starting the war - throughout the conflict. Once the war ended,
App expanded the parameters of his defense of Germany's political demands
and wartime behaviors. Taking his cue from the World War I revisionists
like Beard and Barnes, he argued that Germany had not been responsible for
the outbreak of the war. But he did not limit himself to vindicating
Germany's territorial aspirations or attacking supposed Allied political
machinations. He now commenced a far more serious endeavor: defending and
justifying German atrocities. In May 1945, a week after the end of the war
in Europe and while news of the liberation of the concentration camps
filled the pages of American newspapers, App argued that what Germany had
done was legally justified in the context of the rules of warfare.
Initially he focused on a few limited atrocities, such as the German
massacre of the inhabitants of the Czechoslovakian town of Lidice. When
Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in May 1942, the Germans
claimed that the villagers of Lidice had helped his assassin. They killed
all the men in the village, 192 in all, as well as 71 women. The remaining
198 women were incarcerated in Ravensbrueck, where many of them died. Of
the 98 children who were "put into educational institutions," no more than
16 survived. Lidice was razed to the ground. (9) The annihilation of this
town elicited an intense reaction from the American public. But, App
contended, according to international law the killings were justified
because the Germans had executed everybody who aided political murders,
(10) and American law would have supported such action. He offered no
evidence of how he concluded that the entire village had aided the
assassins. Nor did he explain how murdering all the males and one third of
the women, incarcerating the rest, including the children, and razing the
entire town could be regarded as applications of international or American
law.
Two weeks after vindicating German actions in Lidice, App addressed the
killing of the Jews. Having not yet reached the point of overt denial, he
simply exonerated the Germans' actions, basing his argument on two
premises. Acknowledging that the Germans had committed "crimes and
mistakes," he insisted that whatever they did any other nation would have
done under similar circumstances. In fact, he argued, the United States had
acted similarly during the war: Just as Germany had imprisoned Jews,
America had arbitrarily imprisoned Japanese Americans.
But that was not App's only means of exculpating Germany for its
persecution of Jews. The truculent behavior of Germany's victims justified
their annihilation. Had the Japanese been as "obstinate" as the German
Jews, he argued, "we conceivably would have killed them the same way." (11)
App's exoneration of Germany's annihilation of the Jews is particularly
striking because at this point he was not yet denying that millions had
been murdered. Obstinacy was just cause for the killing of millions.
Five months later App changed tactics and moved closer to denial. In an
attempt to downplay the severity of Nazi atrocities, he began to obfuscate
the existence of gas chambers. In 1945, in a letter to the author of an
article on the war crimes trials, App insisted that the German "so-called
offenders" be quickly tried. It was, App noted, "in the interest of
impartiality and justice" that "all war criminals of both sides be so
tried." He then proceeded to define what constituted a war criminal:
Just as the Germans who put Germans of Jewish descent into concentration
camps because of their race should be tried so Americans who put Americans
of Japanese descent into concentration (relocation) camps because of their
race must be tried; just as Hitler was to have been tried for attacking
Poland (to rectify the self-determination principle violated at Versailles
regarding Danzig) so Stalin must be tried for invading Finland (without any
justification at all); just as Germans who raped and looted must be tried
so the troops under General Eisenhower who raped 2000 Stuttgart girls in
one weekend and hundreds of others since and the Russians, who .. raped ..
looted and pillaged .. must be tried and if found guilty treated just as
you say, according to the Golden Rule and impartial justice, Germans must
be treated. (12)
For obvious reasons App avoided any mention of the German use of gas
chambers to murder Jews and other victims. In order to engage in these
immoral equivalences e everybody did something wrong and all should be
equally punished - App had to eliminate the Holocaust and the murder of
multitudes of others in death and concentration camps from the list of
atrocities. Some of the atrocities listed by App have never been proven,
for example, the Stuttgart rapes. Including the Holocaust and the gas
chambers would have spoiled his equation. The Holocaust made it impossible
to relativize the behavior of the warring parties, since nothing the Allies
had done could compare to the number of people killed by the Germans or the
primary method used to kill them. App had to turn the Allies and the Nazis
into traditional adversaries embroiled in the horrors of war. Reducing the
numbers and deleting this unique technological means from the equation were
thus a sine qua non for deniers - one of the reasonable facades behind
which they hide: War is an unmitigated evil, all sides are equally
responsible, and there is no moral distinction between combatants.
Initially App simply omitted the mass murders and the gas chambers from his
account of the war. He shortly recognized, however, that in order to
achieve his objective he could no longer just ignore them and commenced an
effort to convince the public that they were being fooled. It was an effort
he would not abandon for more than three and a half decades.
In 1946, intensifying his campaign to justify German behavior, App began to
play the "numbers game," something all deniers engage in with great fervor.
They attempt to demonstrate that it is statistically impossible for
6,000,000 to have died. Along with their questioning the scientific
plausibility of the gas chambers, it is the most critical component of
their enterprise. The deniers consciously fix on those aspects of the
Holocaust that are the hardest to believe precisely because they demand the
greatest leap of the imagination. The use of advanced technology for the
purposes of mass murder, and the sheer scope of the endeavor - particularly
the number of its victims - help to render this event beyond belief.
App, who engaged in this numerical chicanery even before Paul Rassinier,
began in quite a clumsy fashion. First he tried to disprove the Jewish
"claim" about the Holocaust by demonstrating that most of Germany's Jews
had survived the war. In a letter to Time magazine in 1946, he declared
that Germany never had a Jewish population greater than 700,000 and that
when Germany surrendered "there still seemed to be about a half million
there." (13)
Here App indulged in some of the tactical maneuvers that have come to
typify Holocaust denial. First, in his attempt to prove that the numbers
were inflated, he more than doubled the actual number of Jewish survivors
without offering any proof of how he reached that figure. (14) In addition
to exaggerating the number of Jewish survivors in Germany after the war, he
also gave them a new identity as German Jews. In fact these survivors were
not from Germany but came instead from many occupied countries. Many of
them had been in concentration camps in the East and, in the latter months
of the war, as the Soviet army advanced, had been transferred to Germany on
brutal death marches that were part of the Nazis' effort to prevent camp
inmates from falling into Soviet hands. Many died en route, and those who
survived found themselves in Germany at the end of the war. Their numbers
were augmented by Jews who immediately on liberation began to head west to
avoid falling into Soviet hands.
By official Allied policy, all displaced persons (DPs) were to be returned
to their homes as rapidly as possible. But a significant number adamantly
refused to be repatriated to Poland, the Soviet Union, and other Communist
bloc countries and petitioned to be allowed to enter Palestine or the
United States. The British were firmly opposed to their entry into
Palestine, and the Americans would only allow a very limited number to
immigrate into the United States. As a result of the controversy over these
DPs, the fact that practically all the Jews then in Germany were not
actually German Jews was widely publicized and would have been well known
to someone like App, who followed events so closely.
In the same letter, App suggested that among the putative Jewish victims of
Nazi atrocities were many who had died of "legitimate" causes and many who
were not really dead at all but were living in comfort in the Western
Hemisphere. He wrote to Time magazine demanding that it investigate:
just how many Jews were executed and for what; how many died of abuse in
concentration camps and for what; how many were said to have been killed
when they simply died of old age. And how many were in one way or another
brought into the United States, Mexico and Canada. An AP dispatch .. states
that the United States had rescued 3,000,000 refugees. Most of them appear
to have been Jews, yet Judge Simon F. [sic] Rifkind recently stated that
the Nazis slew 6,000,000 Jews. What are the facts? (15)
The facts were quite simple: The United States had rescued many European
refugees. But it had not allowed 3,000,000 refugees, Jewish displaced
persons, survivors, or refugees of any ethnic group to immigrate. In fact,
App was using a crafty but obvious ploy. The AP dispatch he cited was based
on the report of the military governor of the American Zone on the
repatriation - not the immigration into America - of the approximately
3,000,000 DPs who were in the American zones in Germany and Austria at the
end of the war. The report and the dispatch clearly indicated that the vast
majority of the DPs had been returned to their homes by December 1945.
Moreover, nowhere in the governor's report was there any indication that
the refugees in question were Jews. (16) Most of the Jews who were allowed
into the United States after the war did not begin arriving until the early
1950s.
But App was not just trying to cast doubt on the number of Jews that had
been killed. He was also suggesting, none too subtly, that a major
deception was being perpetrated by Jewish leaders who claimed that millions
had been killed despite the fact that many of those millions were still
alive. App would repeatedly return to this theme - supposedly dead Jews
were really hiding in America - and in the future he would do so more
directly. Indeed, in 1973 he cited a 1947 statement by Rabbi Philip S.
Bernstein, an adviser on Jewish affairs to the U.S. army commanders in
Germany and Austria. Bernstein believed that the "only realistic solution"
for the DP problem in Germany was resettlement in either the United States
or Palestine. As App put it, "That may explain why since 1945 New York [has
been] a Jewish Sodom and Gomorrah and Washington, D.C., a half Jewish and
half Negro employment agency!" falsely implying that sending DPs to the
United States was exactly how the issue had been resolved. (17)
In 1949 App sent another of his periodic letters to Time, again urging it
to investigate the matter of the number of Jewish dead "thoroughly." He
also made one of the most radical calculations to date of the actual number
of victims involved in the Holocaust "hoax.":
When I came to Europe in June I had calculated from the best sources then
available to me that about 1,500,000 Jews had lost their lives through the
Nazis, some because they were partisans and spies, killed as America did or
would have killed persons guilty of similar offenses. After being here a
month, evidences are accumulating that even that estimate is too high. (18)
App provided no evidence to substantiate his claim. App's efforts resonated
with those who were interested in resurrecting the Nazis' image. (In 1952 a
former member of the German Foreign Office under the Nazis pared the figure
down to 1,277,212.) (19) But at this point App was breaking new ground.
None of the other deniers, including Bardeche, Rassinier, or Barnes, had
made such extreme suggestions.
Years later App described this visit to Europe. His account reveals the
tremendous antipathy he felt toward the Jews he found there. "When I
visited Germany and Austria in 1949 I found them deluged with
uncouth-looking Eastern Jews." These Jews were "arrogant to all Germans,"
App wrote. "They all seemed to engage in black marketeering, and the German
police seemed forbidden to touch them. They lied, cheated and stole from
Germans, almost at will." (20) (App obviously knew that the Jews remaining
in Germany at the end of the war were not German Jews.) App's description
relies on all the traditional stereotypes used by anti-semites - financial
knavery, the power of the Jewish minority over the innocent majority,
arrogance, and deception - a mendacious refrain that would be a constant
theme in his work. In addition, he continued to dispute the number of dead
and urged other deniers to do likewise throughout his career.
In 1965 App escalated his attack on the Holocaust by denouncing the figure
of 6,000,000 as a "smear terrorizing myth," and, despite the mass of
evidence to the contrary, claiming that there was not a "single document,
order, blue-print" that proved that the Nazis intended to annihilate the
Jews. He offered a strange argument to prove his point: The fact that some
survived now constituted proof that none were killed. App tautologically
maintained it was "obvious" that the accusation was false "from the fact
that they did not exterminate them. Every Jew who survived the German
occupation is proof of this." He argued that Nazi Germany was so efficient
that "not a calf was born without their record nor a pig slaughtered." Had
the Nazis decided to kill all Jews, "They would have done so - they had
five years to do it in." (21)
The notions that the Third Reich was too efficient for any Jews to have
escaped, and that it could have killed them all if it wanted to, became
standard components of deniers' arguments. (22) The fallacious logic of
App's argument was obvious, however. Nazi Germany was a relatively
efficient society, but this efficiency was not unlimited nor was every goal
the regime set for itself realized: Nazi Germany lost the war. Neither was
it realized with regard to the Jews: Denmark and Bulgaria saved their Jews.
And many Jews fought in partisan units, and thousands were held in
concentration camps throughout the war.
But there is something even more disturbing about App's argument than its
sublime illogic and cruelty. The horrific implications of his claim become
evident when we locate the assumptions of his argument. Scholars often
focus on the scientific and technological aspects of the horror and on its
unimagined and unimaginable scale. These, as we have seen, are the things
that strain credibility and so require the largest leap of faith. But, as
the theologian Richard Rubenstein has observed, the greatest horror of Nazi
Germany was its breaching of a moral barrier of social organization. It was
this inhuman social organization that enabled the Nazis to realize their
goal of annihilating masses of Jews with such technologically advanced
instruments. (23) Thus, because they made the latter possible the
bureaucratic achievements of the Nazis were more frightening than the
technological ones.
Max Weber, writing long before the evolution of Nazism, understood the
potential power of bureaucracy in social organization. According to Weber
bureaucracy is valued the more it is absolutely dehumanized. The more
successfully it eliminated emotions from its official business the more
"perfect" it became. The absolute bureaucratic organization demanded
optimum precision, unity, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, and strict
subordination. (24) Weber also understood that bureaucracies rarely, if
ever, achieve this level of efficiency although that is their aim. The
Nazis were keenly aware of the critical role the bureaucratic mechanism
could play in allowing them to realize their plans. They knew that just as
Weber taught, they had to demand complete "dehumanization" from their
system if they were to realize their goals. They may not have achieved an
ideally operating bureaucratic system but not for lack of trying.
Consequently some Jews may have survived. Ironically, then, in App's
attempt to defend Nazi Germany from the standpoint of its bureaucratic
efficiency, he pinpointed its essential horror.
By 1973 App's fully evolved Holocaust denial was laid out in his pamphlet,
The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks with
Fabricated Corpses. His use of the term swindle in the title is another of
his not so subtle attempts to link his Holocaust hoax arguments to
traditional anti-semitic imagery. In the pamphlet App explained that the
Holocaust hoax was a plot jointly inspired and nurtured by Communists and
Jews. In the late 1950s he had argued that the "utterly unsubstantiated"
claims of 6,000,000 dead worked only to benefit the Reds. (25) According to
App the Soviets had a very good motive for participating in this hoax: They
wished to hide the grim fact that more Jews had come to "grief" in
Stalin-controlled territory than in Nazi-occupied lands. Whatever
atrocities had occurred were committed by the Soviets themselves, not the
Nazis. The Holocaust hoax conveniently allowed them to shift the blame onto
the Germans.
But the Soviets were not in this alone. App charged that "Talmudic" leaders
were well aware of the "horrid truth" that the atrocity charges had been
fabricated and the Germans innocent. But if the Jews knew this why did (and
do) they go along with it? What was (and is) their motive for blaming
Germany if they know the USSR was really responsible? App offered a simple
and, for those inclined toward anti-semitism, completely logical answer.
These Jews knew the truth but did not publicize it for a practical reason:
The Bolsheviks could not be successfully blackmailed for reparations for
"either real or fabricated corpses." (26) As long as money was their
ultimate objective, blaming the USSR served no purpose. Germany, on the
other hand, had both the financial ability and the political inclination to
pay in order to remove the stain from its reputation. In an article in
American Mercury entitled "The Elusive Six Million," App elaborated on this
point and accused Zionists, of wanting to "use the figure of six million
vindictively as an eternal club for pressuring indemnities out of West
Germany and for wringing financial contributions out of American Jews."
(27) The Zionists - who were, according to App, identical with the
Bolsheviks in terms of their propensity for evil - thus emerge as the main
force behind the Holocaust myth. [This argument was used by the deniers
until the Soviets adopted a sharp anti-Zionist policy. It then became
difficult to claim the existence of a Zionist-Soviet plot, and the deniers
stopped repeating this argument.] In The Six Million Swindle, written
shortly after the Yom Kippur War, App left no doubt as to the Jews'
rationale. "The Talmudists have from the beginning used the six million
swindle to blackmail West Germany into 'atoning' with the twenty billion
dollars of indemnities to Israel." (28) (App exaggerated wildly. The actual
sum Germany paid to Israel was $735 million. Far larger sums were paid to
individuals.) (29) Moreover, he claimed, Israel and its supporters
continued to use the "fraudulent six million casualty" to achieve their
political and military objectives. It was "secret unacknowleged [sic]
guilt" that caused the United States to side with Israel in the
Arab-Israeli War of 1973. Here too is another basic flaw in App's
reasoning. According to him the U.S. government played a pivotal role in
fostering the notion of the hoax. Why would the government be motivated to
act by unacknowledged guilt when it knew the charges were a hoax? For App
all claims of Israel's importance to American security were nothing but
"hogwash and hypocrisy." For him Israel was a "millstone about America's
neck and we and Germany are its feedtrough." (30) Israel manipulated public
opinion in America and Germany by exploiting the myth of the Nazi
Holocaust. In 1974 App returned to this theme, tying together its essential
elements. He argued that at least 500,000 of the Jews who were supposedly
gassed in German concentration camps were actually in Israel, where they
received "huge" reparations from Germany. Other putative victims were
really in New York, where they had helped precipitate the 1973 energy
crisis by "blackmailing" Nixon into rushing several billion dollars' worth
of weaponry to Israel so it could "clobber" the Arabs. The "Talmudists" had
a secret ally in their efforts to manipulate foreign policy: the media.
Jews used "their media," which for App included, among others, the New York
Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek, to cry themselves "hoarse" because
the Arabs refused to sell oil to the West. (31) App was not the first to
link Jewish control of the media to the Holocaust hoax - Rassinier had done
so previously - but App made it a central element of his argument. He
repeatedly returned to the theme of Jewish domination of the media. (32) It
was through their domination of the press that Jews had been able not only
to perpetrate this hoax but subsequently to control the foreign and
domestic policies of nations around the world. This theme of Jewish control
of the media was a traditional component of modern anti-semitism. At the
core of anti-semitism from the far-right end of the political spectrum was
the image of the Jews as a permanent source of unrest and revolutionary
zeal in society. (33) According to these anti-semites the media was one of
the primary tools Jews used to foster that unrest. They ignored the paradox
inherent in this accusation. If Jews controlled the media why did it treat
Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews in such a lackadaisical fashion
during the 1930s and 1940s.
Though App identified the main force behind the Holocaust hoax as the
"Talmudists and Bolsheviks," he believed there was another participant in
the spread of this slander. At the end of the war, when the Americans and
British "invaded" Germany, they saw the results of their indiscriminate
bombing. The Allies knew, App wrote, that they had been responsible for
more destruction than any "vandals of history except the Bolsheviks."
Recognizing that their people would not understand or condone the
"unnecessary barbarism," Allied leaders needed something that would save
them from the condemnation that was sure to come.
truth and memory
"salvation" was to "manufacture" and "harp on a mountain of atrocities,"
particularly those against the Jews. Harping on Jews as victims was
particularly efficacious for the Allied leaders because, App explained,
Jews controlled the media and the media would play a critically important
role in disseminating the hoax. And their plan worked. They exaggerated
real and phoney Third Reich atrocities to such monstrous proportions that
Allied crimes were totally ignored. They then took matters a step further
by instilling such a guilt complex in Germany that the Germans felt
compelled to pay unprecedented sums of reparations to Jews and Israel. (34)
But even when he linked the Holocaust hoax to the Allies' need for a
camouflage in which to hide their own outrages, App did not absolve the
"Talmudist leaders." In fact, he maintained that the Jews were ultimately
responsible for Allied actions and actually controlled Allied policy. This
leap enabled him to argue that Soviet and American atrocities against the
German people were the result of Jewish influence. App focused on the two
people he considered responsible for these atrocities. Not surprisingly,
both of them were Jews. American Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau
and Ilya Ehrenburg, a member of the Soviet Antifascist Committee, were to
blame for the Soviet soldiers' rape of German women and plunder of German
property. App argued, without offering a shred of proof, that Ehrenburg
personally urged Soviet soldiers to commit rape, against the German people.
(Ehrenburg did call for vengeance but not for rape.) This vindictive Jewish
Communist supposedly gave the most "beastly directive in history: Rape the
German women as booty!" Similarly, App blamed virtually every American
action against the Germans on Henry Morgenthau. It is true that Morgenthau,
after learning of the horrors of the German annihilation of the Jews,
proposed that in the postwar period Germany be converted into a country
that was primarily agricultural and pastoral in character. (35) As we have
seen, the plan was never seriously considered and was subsequently
completely abandoned by President Truman. But App claimed that the plan had
been put into effect, at least in part. He contended that Morgenthau not
only bribed Churchill to stiffen the treatment of German prisoners of war
but also inspired the Allies to starve and "abuse-unto-death" several
million of these prisoners. This was obviously a Jewish plot, App argued,
because "Christians at their worst are not as barbarous as Communists and
Jews at their average." (36) Thus, when the Jews saw that the Allies were
going to deal leniently with the Germans in the postwar period, they went
into action. According to App the American army was planning to allow the
German prisoners to be repatriated as soon as possible after the war. But
this did not happen despite the fact that it was what the army leadership
and "our Christian citizens" wanted. App had a simple explanation as to how
the "tribalists" were able to prevent it. They kept "screeching the lie
that the Germans 'gassed' 6,000,000 of them. It was the Jews who kept
screaming for abusing German prisoners of war, for keeping them from home,
for slave-laboring them.. This is the voice of the Talmudists, the
barbarians of the Morgenthau Plan!" (37)
As his rhetoric about the Jewish role in directing Allied policy escalated,
the two became fused in his mind. No longer did he even speak of the Jews'
ability to direct Allied policy. For App, Allied tactics and the Jews'
objectives became one: Allied policy, at its worst, was Jewish policy. This
is most evident at the end of A Straight Look at the Third Reich.
Immediately after discussing Allied atrocities, without any indication that
the subject of his diatribe had changed, App wrote:
Not finding the Nazis guilty of real war crimes at all commensurate with
the monstrous ones of the victors, they resorted to the only alternative
open to hypocrites and liars namely to fabricate a mass atrocity. This they
did with the legend of the six million Jews "gassed." .. This is a
fabrication and swindle. (38)
Allied policymakers and Jewish leaders had become one and the same to App.
He then fell back on the same approach that Harry Elmer Barnes had
utilized, accusing those behind the hoax of "smear terroriz[ing]" and
branding as an anti-semite anyone who tried to investigate this myth in a
scholarly fashion. (39)
It was not by chance that App relied on the New Testament phrase
"hypocrites and liars" to describe Jews. In fact it served two purposes for
him: It was a means of drawing on anti-semitic imagery that would resonate
with many non-Jews. Moreover, for him the Jews of the twentieth century who
perpetrated this hoax were essentially the same as the New Testament Jews
who were depicted as crucifiers of Jesus. In the foreword to the 1975
edition of his collected letters, App noted that just as his letters failed
to ease Germany's fate and prevent the atrocity stories from gaining
currency, so too Jesus of Nazareth was unable to prevent his crucifixion.
But that did not mean that either Jesus' or App's struggle was wrong. Both
these martyrs were defeated by the same adversaries. App implied that the
ancestors of the "World War Talmudists" had crucified Jesus, and now their
descendants thwarted those who wished to tell the truth. [This was not the
only time App relied on biblical themes to depict Jews. In 1948 he called
for the re-education of Jews "away from their eye for an eyeism." (App,
Morgenthau Era Letters, p. 73.)]
By the end of The Six Million Swindle App had fully formulated his
Holocaust denial, offering readers what he described as eight
"incontrovertible assertions" that demonstrate the fallaciousness of the
figure of 6,000,000, which the media kept repeating "ad nauseam without any
evidence." These basic assertions - which were eventually adopted by the
Institute for Historical Review as well as other revisionist groups as the
fundamental tenets of Holocaust denial - fall into 3 distinct categories.
First they absolve the Nazis by arguing that they never had any plan for
annihilating Jews and that the means supposedly used for annihilation were
technologically impossible. They only wanted Jews to emigrate, and if any
Jews did die it was the USSR that was ultimately responsible. Second, they
legitimate the killing of those Jews who died by contending that they were
killed for justifiable reasons. Third, they blame the perpetuation of this
hoax on Israel and Jewish leaders and scholars, all of whom have material
and political interests in its dissemination. The eight assertions were:
1. Emigration, never annihilation, was the Reich's plan for solving
Germany's Jewish problem. Had Germany intended to annihilate all the Jews,
a half million concentration camp inmates would not have survived and
managed to come to Israel, where they collect "fancy indemnities from West
Germany."
2. "Absolutely no Jews were gassed in any concentration camps in Germany,
and evidence is piling up that none were gassed in Auschwitz." The Hitler
gas chambers never existed. The gassing installations found in Auschwitz
were really crematoria for cremating corpses of those who had died from a
variety of causes, including the "genocidic" Anglo-American bombing raids.
3. The majority of Jews who disappeared and remain unaccounted for did so
in territories under Soviet, not German control.
4. The majority of Jews who supposedly died while in German hands were, in
fact, subversives, partisans, spies, saboteurs, and criminals or victims of
unfortunate but internationally legal reprisals.
5. If there existed the slightest likelihood that the Nazis had really
murdered 6,000,000 Jews, "World Jewry" would demand subsidies to conduct
research on the topic and Israel would open its archives to historians.
They have not done so. Instead they have persecuted and branded as an
anti-semite anyone who wished to publicize the hoax. This persecution
constitutes the most conclusive evidence that the 6,000,000 figure is a
"swindle." [All these assertions are absolutely false. Israel has opened
its archives to all credible scholars and students working in this field.]
6. The Jews and the media who exploit this figure have failed to offer even
a shred of evidence to prove it. The Jews misquote Eichmann and other Nazis
in order to try to substantiate their claims.
7. It is the accusers, not the accused, who must provide the burden of
proof to substantiate the 6,000,000 figure. The Talmudists and Bolsheviks
have so browbeaten the Germans that they pay billions and do not dare to
demand proof.
8. The fact that Jewish scholars themselves have "ridiculous" discrepancies
in their calculations of the number of victims constitutes firm evidence
that there is no scientific proof to this accusation. (40)
While all these assertions are easily controverted by evidence and
documentation, some are based on such faulty reasoning that their
fallaciousness can be exposed without even turning to the evidence. As was
the case with Rassinier, App ignored a fundamental flaw in his eighth
assertion. If the Holocaust was truly a fraud perpetrated by the Jews, one
could legitimately expect a powerful force like "World Jewry" to have seen
to it that no discrepancies were allowed to creep into research by Jewish
scholars. All their findings should neatly dovetail with and confirm one
another. And if the "Talmudists" were crafty enough to recognize that
precise conformity might arouse suspicion, they would have ensured that
there was only the slightest variation among scholars' findings.
But this, of course, is not the only inconsistency in App's arguments. At
the same time that he described Israeli archives as playing a pivotal role
in the "swindle," he also used their findings to validate his own. In an
attempt to prove that even Israeli institutions have been unable to
document the number of dead, App cited a statement by Yad Vashem, the
national memorial to the victims in Israel, that it has been able to gather
only 2.5 million pages of testimony. [A "page of testimony' at Yad Vashem
consists of the name and birth date of the victim as well as additional
biographical information. It is usually filled out by a surviving relative,
friend, or neighbor, Obviously many people died and did not leave behind
any relatives or neighbors who could perform this task of memorializing
their name.] App argued that if in the years since the end of the war Yad
Vashem had been unable to document even 4 million, it was because there had
not been that many.
Even the 2.5 million figures they supplied were nothing but "a lie and a
swindle." (41) But if Yad Vashem was as App depicted it - an Israeli
institution at the heart of the hoax - it should have had no difficulty
forging the additional documentation needed to fill the quotient of
6,000,000. (42)
More recently the Institute for Historical Review published a report from
the Jerusalem Post in which the director of Yad Vashem's archives reported
that more than half of its testimonies from Holocaust survivors are
"unreliable." According to Yad Vashem officials, these testimonies have
never been used as evidence in Nazi war crimes trials because survivors who
wanted to be "part of history" may, in fact, have allowed their
imaginations to "run away with them." (43) For the deniers this was further
evidence of a "hoax." What the Institute for Historical Review could not
ask, given its ideological predilections, was the question of why Yad
Vashem would acknowledge that some of its archival holdings are incorrect
if its objective was to perpetuate the Holocaust "myth." Why did it not
simply replace these testimonies with "correct" ones? Why did it not have
its researchers further "falsify" the data? If Jews were able to forge
documents sufficient to convict Nazi war criminals within a few months
after the war, they should certainly have been able to deposit reliable and
historically accurate testimonies in Yad Vashem in the decades since then.
This simplistic and yet deceptive claim is but another example of the
deniers' use of tactics that conveniently either ignore proof of the
Holocaust or twist it in a way that substantiates their conspiracy theory.
App's faulty arguments regarding the scholarly dispute about the number of
victims and his use of statements and figures from Yad Vashem to prove his
point were not the only occasions when he became ensnared in his own
attempts to manipulate the evidence. In The Six Million Swindle he also
attacked a journalist who had written that the Nazis wished to kill "as
many Jews as possible" before the end of the war. In order to substantiate
his charge that this journalist was lying, App cited Himmler's fall 1944
order prohibiting any further execution of Jews. (44) This evidence, he
argued, proved two things: First the Nazis did not wish to kill as many
Jews as possible, for if so Himmler would not have halted the killings.
Second, he argued, it showed that Himmler, not Hitler, was in charge of
Jewish policy. (45) In his attempt to exonerate both the Nazis in general
and Hitler in particular by laying the blame for this policy at Himmler's
doorstep, App ignores a basic contradiction in his argument: If there was
not a policy to kill the Jews, what then was Himmler ordering stopped?
Here and elsewhere App's approach to evidence is reminiscent of Rassinier's
arguments regarding eyewitness accounts. It is the standard method by which
deniers dismiss evidence which contradicts their conclusions. All
affidavits by Nazis admitting the existence of a Final Solution are
declared "outright frauds," and all testimony by Jews regarding mass murder
is "in part or whole perjured, often well rewarded and altogether
unreliable." (46) This blanket denial of the validity of any evidence
attesting to the Holocaust, including that of eyewitnesses, has become a
centerpiece of the deniers' methodology. Simply put, anything that
disagrees with their foregone conclusion is dismissed. Because of the sheer
number of affidavits by survivors, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses, unless
the deniers categorically dismiss this mass of evidence they cannot
perpetrate their own hoax.
Ultimately App's arguments are a composite of faulty assertions,
manipulation of data, and above all, outright anti-semitism. He has done
more than just draw on pre-existing anti-semitic imagery. He has made a
significant contribution to contemporary anti-Jewish propaganda in the
United States and abroad. His distillation of Holocaust denial into these
eight assertions, each of which plays on an anti-semitic theme, has proven
extremely useful to individuals and groups which not only deny the
Holocaust but wish to portray the Jews as able to control American foreign
policy for their own diabolical ends. It has also proved extremely
efficacious for those who would delegitimize the existence of Israel.
Together App, Barnes, Rassinier, Bardeche, and Hoggan constitute the most
significant figures in the evolution of the denial hoax. Those who followed
them discarded some of their more blatant and vulgar arguments, learning
how to render them in a slightly more oblique fashion. But with the
fundamental text established, virtually all the rest would be commentary.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE
1. Arnold Forster, "The Ultimate Cruelty," ADL Bulletin (June 1959), pp.
7-8.
2. New Yorker Staats - Zeitung und Herold, September 7, 1948; Leonard
Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982),
p. 222.
3. Thomas R. O'Donnell to Deborah E. Lipstadt, April 18, 1991; Thomas R.
O'Donnell, telephone interview with author, Oct. 1992.
4. Austin App, "Foreword," Morgenthau Era Letters, 2nd printing (Tacoma
Park, Md., 1975).
5. App, A Straight Look, p. 40.
6. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, pp. 13-14.
7. Ibid., p. 21.
8. Ibid., p. 33.
9. S.F. Berton, "Das Attentat auf Reinhard Heydrich vom 27 Mai 1942: Ein
Bericht des Kriminalrats Heinz Pannwitz," Vierteljahrshefte fur
Zeitgeschichte (July 1985), pp. 668-706. See also J. Bradley, Lidice:
Sacrificial Village (New York, 1972); T. Wittlin, Time Stopped at 6:30
(Indianapolis, 1965); and "Lidice," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.
10. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, p. 49.
11. Ibid., p. 51.
12. Ibid., p. 59.
13. Ibid., p. 66.
14. At the end of 1946 the official American total of Jewish survivors in
the western zones of Germany, Austria, and Italy was 207,788. The Joint
Distribution Committee, which assisted the survivors, estimated that there
were 231,500. Many of these were refugees who had spent the war years in
Central Asia. Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors, p. 278. See also
Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939-1952 (Evanston, Ill, 1956), pp.
339, 341.
15. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, pp. 66-67. Judge Simon H. Rifkind was the
army's adviser on Jewish affairs in Germany in 1945-46.
16. "Repatriation of Displaced Persons, March 1946" (U.S. Zone), Monthly
Report of Military Governor, U.S. Zone, April 20, 1946, cited in
Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors, p. 275.
17. Austin App, The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for
Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses (Tacoma Park, Md., 1973), p. 8.
18. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, p. 79.
19. Peter Kleist, Auch Du Warst Dabei! (You too were involved!),
(Heidelberg, 1952), cited in Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust, p. 53.
20. App, The Six Million Swindle, pp. 7-8.
21. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, p. 101. He reiterated this argument in The
Six Million Swindle, pp. 7-8.
22. App, The Six Million Swindle, p. 8.
23. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the
American Future (New York, 1975), p. 22.
24. Max Weber, "Bureaucracy," in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds From
Max Weber, pp. 215-16. See also Talcott Parsons, "Introduction to Max
Weber," The Sociology of Religion (Boston, 1963) cited in Rubenstein, The
Cunning of History, pp. 22-23.
25. App, Morgenthau Era Letters, p. 95.
26. App, The Six Million Swindle, p. 4.
27. App, "The Elusive 'Six Million,'" American Mercury, Summer 1966
reprinted in The Myth of the Six Million (Torrance, Calif., 1978), p. 112.
28. App, The Six Million Swindle, p. 2.
29. "Reparations and Restitution," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, pp.
1255-59.
30. App, The Six Million Swindle, p. 29.
31. App, A Straight Look, p. 18.
32. Ibid., pp. 5, 19, 39.
33. Robert Wistrich, Anti-semitism: The Longest Hatred (New York, 1991), p.
53.
34. App, A Straight Look, pp. 19-20.
35. Henry Morgenthau, Germany Is Our Problem (New York, 1945).
36. App, A Straight Look, pp. 28-29.
37. Ibid., p. 30.
38. Ibid., p. 48.
39. Ibid.
40. App, The Six Million Swindle, pp. 18-19.
41. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
42. Yisrael Gutman makes a similar argument in response to Arthur Butz's
claim that Yad Vashem's inability to gather 6,000,000 names is proof that
such a number is a hoax. Yisrael Gutman, Denying the Holocaust (Jerusalem,
1985), p. 20.
43. Jerusalem Post, Aug. 17, 1986; IHR Newsletter (Oct.-Nov. 1987), p. 4.
44. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 631.
45. App, The Six Million Swindle, p. 9.
46. Ibid., p. 16.
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right
In the late 1960s and 1970s, neo-fascist organizations and political
parties in Western Europe, especially in England, grew in number and
strength. These groups - which vehemently opposed the presence in their
countries of blacks, Asians, Arabs, Jews, and all non-Caucasian immigrants
- were responsible for launching a series of violent attacks on immigrants,
minority groups, and Jewish institutions. In England the neo-fascist
National Front built its political agenda on opposition to the immigration
of Africans and East Asians from Commonwealth countries. By 1977 it was
polling close to a quarter of a million votes in national elections.
These groups, whose ideology embraced racism, ethnocentrism, and
nationalism, faced a dilemma. Since World War II, Nazism in general and the
Holocaust in particular had given fascism a bad name. Those who continued
to argue after the war that Hitler was a hero and national socialism a
viable political system, as these groups tended to do, were looked upon
with revulsion. Consequently Holocaust denial became an important element
in the fabric of their ideology. If the public could be convinced that the
Holocaust was a myth, then the revival of national socialism could be a
feasible option.
This effort to deny the Holocaust was materially assisted by the
publication in 1974 of a 28-page booklet, Did Six Million Really Die? The
Truth at Last, by Richard Harwood. Sent to all members of Parliament, a
broad spectrum of journalists and academics, leading members of the Jewish
community, and a wide array of public figures, for close to ten years it
was the pre-eminent British work on Holocaust denial. (1) Within less than
a decade, more than a million copies had been distributed in more than
forty countries. (2) Because at first glance it seemed to be a sober
scholarly effort, many outside the circle of deniers were confused by the
claims it made. Deniers continually cite it as an authoritative source.
Given the pamphlet's wide distribution, there was significant public
curiosity about the identity of both the author and publisher. Richard E.
Harwood was described as a writer who specialized in the political and
diplomatic aspects of World War II and who was "at present with the
University of London." It did not take the British press long to discover
that this was false. The University of London told the Sunday Times that
Harwood was neither a staff member nor a student and was totally unknown to
it; it returned all mail to Harwood marked "Addressee Unknown." (3) In fact
Richard Harwood was a pseudonym for Richard Verrall, the editor of
Spearhead, the publication of the British right-wing neo-fascist
organization the National Front. Did Six Million Really Die? is identical
in format, layout, and printing with Spearhead. (4) Neither the National
Front nor Verrall denied that he was the editor of the pamphlet. (5) In
1979 in a letter to the New Statesman, Verrall, who had a degree in history
from the University of London, responding to articles on the Holocaust,
reiterated the pamphlet's basic arguments and defended its conclusions
against attacks that had appeared in the British press. He did so despite
the fact that most of his conclusions had already been shown to be false.
(6) He made no attempt to challenge the assertion that he was the author,
even though the article in the New Statesman specifically identified him as
such. His letter to the magazine was described by the editors as one of
"numerous mock-scholarly letters" it regularly received from Verrall and
his cohorts.
truth and memory
attempted to camouflage their identity. Though the booklet listed the
address of its publisher, Historical Review Press, the address was that of
a vacant building whose landlord, the British press discovered was Robin
Beauclair, a farmer with established connections to the National Front and
various other organizations all of which were dedicated to defending
"racial purity." (7) Asked by the press about the publication, he declared
the Holocaust part of a network of "Jewish propaganda" and revealed his own
deep-rooted anti-semitism. "Don't you know that we live under Jewish
domination? The entire mass media is Jewish controlled. It is time that we
as British people dictated our own destiny." (8)
Not an original creation, this work was largely based on a small American
book, The Myth of the Six Million, published in 1969 by Noontide Press, a
subsidiary of the anti-semitic Liberty Lobby. The American publication
contained both an unsigned publisher's foreword and an introduction by an
E. L. Anderson, identified as a contributing editor to American Mercury,
which by that time had become unabashedly anti-semitic. The anonymous
publisher was apparently Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby,
Noontide Press, and the Institute for Historical Review. Carto had, as we
shall see in a subsequent chapter, long-standing ties to a melange of
extremist right-wing political groups in the United States. (According to
Carto's former associates, E.L. Anderson was a pseudonym of his.) (9) The
Myth of the Six Million also contained an appendix consisting of 5 articles
that had originally appeared in the Carto-controlled American Mercury in
1967-68. They included App's "The Elusive 'Six Million,'" Barnes's "Zionist
Fraud," Teressa Hendry's 'Was Anne Frank's Diary a Hoax?", "The Jews That
Aren't," by Leo Heiman, "Paul Rassinier: Historical Revisionist," by
Herbert C. Roseman, and a review of Rassinier's book by Harry Elmer Barnes.
The American publication was apparently written by David Hoggan, the
Harvard Ph.D. whose work had influenced Harry Elmer Barnes. In 1969 he sued
Noontide Press for damages, claiming authorship of The Myth of the Six
Million. (10) (The book's introduction described the author as a college
professor who had written this booklet in 1960 but had been unable to
obtain a publisher daring enough to take the risks involved. It claimed
that he could not reveal his identity because he wanted "one day [to]
retire on a well-earned pension.) (11)
Both these publications consistently mixed truth with fiction, accurate
with fabricated quotes, and outright lies with partially correct
information. The manner in which the British work liberally paraphrased the
American publication indicates that in many instances Harwood may not have
gone back to the original sources but simply repeated what the Americans
had already said. [For example, both the American and the British authors
describe Eichmann's assistant as "a nervous wreck and addicted to
uncontrollable fits of sobbing for hours" (pp. 46, 11). In addition, Dr. M.
Nyiszli, the author of Doctor at Auschwitz, is described in the American
and the British versions as "apparently a mythical and invented figure"
(pp. 118, 20). Nyiszli was a Jewish doctor who worked under the infamous
Dr. Josef Mengele as a pathologist. H is role is well established in
documents and testimonies. There are numerous other examples of "shared"
citations and paraphrasing. See, for example, the section on the
International Committee of the Red Cross, "Letters of thanks which came
pouring in from Jewish internees." (pp. 99, 25). Compare also p. 98 with p.
24 and p. 101 with p. 25.] The Americans, in turn, had done their own
borrowing from other deniers. This liberal borrowing was not something out
of the ordinary for deniers, who make it a practice to draw on other
deniers not only for their sources but for verification. They have long
engaged in what has been described as an "incestuous merry-go-round [of]
cross-fertilizing and compounding [of] falsehood." (12) The basic arguments
cited in both works are based on material gleaned from Rassinier, though in
certain instances they go even further in their extremism. (13)
These publications constitute vivid examples of the relationship between
Holocaust denial, racist nationalism, and anti-semitism. Harwood complained
that the "big lie" of the Holocaust stymied the growth of nationalism, and
that whenever Britain or any other European nation attempted to preserve
its "national integrity," it was immediately branded as neo-Nazi. (14)
Preservation of a nation's national integrity had a specific meaning for
both publications. The Holocaust myth threatened the "survival of the Race
itself." Harwood echoed the familiar extremist charge that the Anglo-Saxon
world faced the gravest danger in its history: the presence of "alien
races" in its midst. Linking Holocaust denial and the defense of the
"race," he argued that unless something was done to halt the immigration
and assimilation of non-Caucasians, Anglo-Saxons were certain to experience
not only "biological alteration" but the "destruction" of their Europe and
culture and racial heritage. (15)
This argument - a standard element in National Front ideology - blamed Jews
for engineering the racial and national degeneration of England as well as
Europe as a whole. Shortly after the publication of Harwood's pamphlet, a
National Front leader accused Jews of pouring "billions" into promoting
"race mixing" in order to weaken nationalist identity throughout the world,
thereby enhancing the possibility of their own world domination. (16)
According to Harwood, Jews have used the Holocaust myth to preserve their
heritage and, at the same time, render other peoples "impotent" in their
attempts at self-preservation. (17) In his view, Jews, who have relied on
their formidable powers of manipulation, have reaped personal and communal
gains at a substantial cost to the well-being and security of other
nations. (There was no doubt, of course, that the nations Harwood was
referring to were white ones.) Harwood complained that any time a person
dared to speak of the race problem, he or she was branded a racist, a code
word for Nazi, and that Nazi was, of course, synonymous with a perpetrator
of the Holocaust. (18)
The introduction to the American book made the same connection, arguing
that the Holocaust myth made it impossible for America to deal with its
"overwhelming race problem." The Holocaust had caused Nazism to fall into
disrepute, consequently the problems that emanated from "Negro-White
contact" in the same society could not be addressed for what they really
were: biological and political. Anyone who dared to do so was accused of
advocating "racism, the very hall mark of the Nazi!" (19) Since the 1960s
and the increased immigration of non-Caucasians into Europe, particularly
to Britain and France, the extreme right in each of these countries has
articulated this strange melange of arguments that knit together racism,
the revival of fascism, and Holocaust denial. In North America they have
been espoused by an array of right-wing extremist groups. Given the
connection between these two ideologies, it is logical to expect the
Holocaust "hoax" to remain a fixed component of the litany of arguments
posed by these extremist fringes of society.
In order to rehabilitate the reputation of National Socialism, these two
publications tried to prove that the Nazis' intention was emigration, not
annihilation. First they argued that the Final Solution was nothing but a
plan to evacuate all Jews from the Reich. Then they tried to give this
evacuation plan historical legitimacy by linking it with the name of the
founder of the modern Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl. They claimed that
the Nazis were simply trying to realize Herzl's original goal of
transferring all the Jews to Madagascar. In fact Herzl never addressed the
issue of Madagascar. At one point he briefly considered Uganda as an
alternative to the land of Israel but dropped the idea when it met with
furious opposition from other Zionists. This is not the only way Harwood
used revised history to transform the Nazis into supporters of emigration.
Attempting to prove that the Nazis were primarily interested in a benign
population transfer, he wrote that a main plank of the National Socialist
party platform before 1933 was Jewish emigration to Madagascar. In fact
emigration of the Jews was never included by the Nazis in their party
platform prior to 1933, let alone used as a main plank. (20) The Madagascar
Plan was never mentioned as a possibility until the late 1930s. The Nazi
slogan was Juda Verrecke, "perish Judah," not "emigrate Judah." The full
meaning of Juda Verrecke is lost in English translation. It is akin to
perishing like a "lice-ridden cur." (21) Nazi leaders, among them Josef
Goebbels, Julius Streicher, and Hans Frank, frequently described Jews as
vermin in need of extermination. In 1929 Goebbels wrote: "Certainly the Jew
is a human being. But then the flea is a living thing too - only not a
pleasant one. Since the flea is not a pleasant thing, we are not obliged to
keep it and let it prosper .. but our duty is rather to exterminate it.
Likewise with the Jews." (22) In an article in the Völkischer Beobachter in
1921 Hitler described the Jews as "lice and bugs sucking the German
people's blood out of its veins." (23)
The claim that the Nazis were interested in Jewish emigration exemplifies
how deniers draw falsehoods from truth. Emigration was indeed employed by
the Nazis in the thirties as a means of ridding the Reich of Jews. From
1933 until 1939 the Nazis vigorously pushed the Jews to emigrate, and more
than 300,000, or approximately 50% of the German Jewish population, did so.
While deniers use this data to portray the Nazis as benignly engaged in a
population transfer, the Nazis' true intentions during the 1930s were to
brutally destroy the German Jewish community and simultaneously sow seeds
of anti-semitism abroad. During the prewar period this was their means of
creating a Germany that was Judenrein. The chaos of the war allowed them
or, some would argue, forced them to move from emigration to annihilation.
[Scholars debate at what point in 1941 the Nazis decided to murder all the
Jews in their sphere of influence. The prospect of having many millions of
Jews, including those in the Soviet Union, under their rule when they
overran that country led them to conclude that murder was the only
"efficient" means of dealing with the Jewish "problem." Intentionalists
argue that the Nazis intended from the outset to eventually murder the Jews
and that there was a high degree of consistency and orderly sequence in the
Final Solution. Functionalists believe that there was no blueprint for the
murder of the Jews but that the annihilation program was initially a means
for the Nazis to emerge from a blind alley into which they had maneuvered
themselves. Functionalists argue that in its first stages the murder
program was improvised, and it proceeded in a haphazard fashion. I do not
intend to enter the debate between the intentionalists and the
functionalists. Both groups essentially agree that the war and especially
the invasion of the Soviet Union made the annihilation process possible -
irrespective of when and how the idea originated. Until 1939 the Nazis
tried to get rid of the Jews by pressuring them into emigration. After that
time they forcibly extruded them. For an excellent summary of this entire
debate see Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History, (New York, 1989
[pbk.]), pp. 34-48.] But even emigration - when employed by the Nazis as a
solution to the Reich's Jewish "problem" - had diabolical intentions. A
Foreign Office memorandum of January 25, 1939, delineated the more cynical
aspects of the emigration plan: "The poorer and therefore more burdensome
the immigrant Jews to the country absorbing them, the stronger the country
will react and the more favorable will the effect be in the interest of
German propaganda." (24) As the Nazis exported penniless and desperate
Jews, they also exported anti-semitism. This was, in part, the reason why
they stripped Jews of their possessions through an increasingly onerous
emigration tax. By January 1939 they had been totally excised from the
German economy. On occasion Reich leaders simply took groups of Jews and
placed them outside Germany's borders, forcing their neighbors to have to
accommodate a large group of destitute immigrants. The best known of these
incidents took place on the Polish border at the end of October 1938 on the
eve of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish Nazi pogrom of November 1938 during
which hundreds of synagogues were destroyed and 26,000 Jews were put into
concentration camps.
The emigration myth - the idea that the Nazis stuck to their original aim
of getting rid of Jews by emigration - is easily refuted by Nazi documents,
newspapers, and journals themselves, which are replete with statements by
high-ranking officials and party leaders, attesting to their ultimate
objective. The Nazi leader, Dr. Robert Ley, articulated these intentions in
1942 when he said that it was not enough to "isolate the Jewish enemy of
mankind. The Jews have got to be exterminated." (25) In his testimony at
Nuremberg, Victor Brack, who was in charge of the gassing of 50,000
mentally deficient and chronically ill Germans and Jews under the
euthanasia program from 1939 to 1941, acknowledged that by March 1941, it
was no secret among higher party circles that the "Jews were to be
exterminated." (26) In a May 1943 article in the Berlin weekly Das Reich,
Goebbels announced: "No prophetic utterance by the Fuhrer is being
fulfilled with so gaunt an assurance and inescapable force as that another
world war would cause the extinction of the Jewish race." (27) In October
1943 Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, told high-ranking officers in
Posen that "we had a moral duty towards our people, the duty to exterminate
this people [the Jews]." (28)
Based on these and a multitude of other statements by Nazi leaders,
including Hitler's own January 1939 promise to exterminate the Jews and his
wartime repetition of that promise, there is no doubt that while emigration
was employed to rid Germany of its Jewish population during the 1930s, once
Poland came under Nazi control and portions of the Soviet Union, with its
large Jewish populations, were targeted to be conquered, annihilation
became German policy.
Anti-semitism was such a fundamental aspect of national socialism that even
the most creative denier cannot claim it did not exist. Thus what they
cannot deny or distort, they rationalize. We have already seen this in the
attempts to portray German Jews as spies and partisans who deserved
whatever the Nazis meted out. Harwood widened that scope. He interpreted
Nazi anti-semitism as Germany's legitimate response to attacks on it by
"international Jewry." He argued that Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann's
statement in 1939, on the outbreak of the war, that the Jews would stand by
Great Britain and fight on the side of the democracies, constituted the
Jews' declaration of war on Nazi Germany and transformed them into a threat
to Germany's security. (29) Actually Weizmann never mentioned Great Britain
in his statement but spoke of the democracies in general. Harwood added the
reference to Great Britain. Harwood insisted that under the tenets of
international law Hitler had the right to declare Jews enemy agents intent
on prosecuting a war against the Reich. They could therefore be
legitimately subjected to a policy of internment.
Harwood ignored the fact that Nazi anti-semitic policies antedated
Weizmann's pronouncement by almost seven years. Weizmann's statement was a
response to those policies, not the reverse. Since 1933 Germany had
excluded Jews from most professions and subjected them to economic
boycotts, incarceration, physical violence, and horrendous degradation.
This process was followed by the disenfranchisement of German Jews under
the 1935 Nuremberg laws and the destruction and brutality of Kristallnacht
in 1938. Weizmann was speaking as a leader of a stateless people who were
in no position to wage a war of any kind against an independent, well-armed
nation. (30) He was, after all, a citizen of Great Britain and Palestine
was a British-mandated territory. A declaration of loyalty to the
democracies in their war against Germany was the least - and, on some
level, the most - he could do.
This ploy to cast Nazi anti-semitism as a legitimate response to a threat
to Germany's security could be dismissed were it not for the way it has
been adopted by prominent historians. The German historian Ernst Nolte,
whose books on fascism have become historical classics espoused the same
argument regarding Weizmann's statement in his attempt to lessen Nazi
responsibility for the outrages of World War II. Nolte was the historian
most prominently associated in the 1980s with what has become known in
Germany as the Historikerstreit, an effort by some historians, particularly
those with conservative political tendencies, to normalize and relativize
the history of the Nazi period by arguing that many Nazi policies,
including persecution of the Jews, were defensive reactions to foreign
threats and were no different from what other countries have done in the
past. Chancellor Helmut Kohl's invitation to President Ronald Reagan to
join him in a wreath-laying ceremony at Bitburg was a political
manifestation of this historical tendency to try to normalize the German
past, particularly its National Socialist past. By asking the American
president to accompany him to a German military cemetery that included
fallen SS soldiers in an act of reconciliation, Kohl was attempting to
lessen the historical blot on German nationalism and patriotism. He was not
trying to rewrite or deny the past but to cast it in a different light.
(31) One of the dangers of Holocaust denial is that it so stretches the
parameters of the argument regarding Germany's wartime behavior that it
renders Nolte's kind of relativism increasingly respectable. (For a fuller
discussion of the relationship between relativism and denial see chapter
11.)
Echoing Harwood, Nolte contended that Weizmann's official declaration at
the outbreak of hostilities gave Hitler good reason "to be convinced of his
enemies' determination to annihilate him much earlier than when the first
information about Auschwitz came to the knowledge of the world." (32) What
power the Jews had to effect Hitler's annihilation Nolte did not specify.
When Nolte was criticized on this point in light of prewar Nazi persecution
of Jews, he said that he was only quoting David Irving, the right-wing
writer of historical works. How quoting Irving justified using such a
historically invalid point remains unexplained, unless one wishes to see it
as a reflection of Nolte's personal predilections. (33) As we shall see in
subsequent chapters, Irving, who had frequently proposed extremely
controversial theories about the Holocaust, including the claim that Hitler
had no knowledge of it, has become a Holocaust denier.
These works demonstrate how deniers misstate, misquote, falsify statistics,
and falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources. They rely on books
that directly contradict their arguments, quoting in a manner that
completely distorts the authors' objectives. Deniers count on the fact that
the vast majority of readers will not have access to the documentation or
make the effort to determine how they have falsified or misconstrued
information.
Harwood attempted to prove that it was statistically impossible for
6,000,000 Jews to have perished at the hands of the Nazis. The most cursory
examination of his sources reveals his spurious methodology. He cited
Chambers Encyclopedia, which according to Harwood concluded that the total
Jewish population of prewar Europe was 6,500,000. "This would mean that
almost the entire number were exterminated." How then, Harwood asks, was it
possible for so many Jews to emigrate to other countries or to receive
reparations if almost all had been annihilated? (34)
Chambers does in fact cite a figure of 6,500,000, but not as the size of
the Jewish population of prewar Europe:
On the continent of Europe apart from Russia, whose western provinces also
suffered terribly, only a handful of numerically unimportant communities in
neutral countries escaped and of the 6,500,000 Jews who lived in the
Nazi-dominated lands in 1939, barely 1,500,000 remained alive when the war
ended 6 years later. (35)
Chambers specifically excluded from its figure of 6,500,000 the Jewish
population in the Soviet Union and those countries that were not dominated
by the Nazis in 1939. Harwood also argued that the majority of German Jews
left Germany prior to the outbreak of the war. Consequently they were not
within reach of the Nazis and were safe from any form of persecution. (36)
They could not therefore be counted among the 6,000,000. It is correct that
more than 50% of German Jews emigrated. Though many went to places that in
the mid-1930s seemed perfectly safe for example, the Netherlands, France,
and Belgium, they were eventually caught up in the Nazi maelstrom. Given
that 6,000,000 is cited as the death toll of all European Jewry, the
percentage of Jews who emigrated is a meaningless statistic unless one
notes their destination.
Whatever sources deniers cannot twist they ignore, particularly when they
contradict their most basic contentions. Such was the case with the
Chambers Encyclopedia. After citing the population figures the encyclopedia
discussed the "systematic campaign of annihilation in a series of death
camps" as a result of which one-third of the Jewish population was killed.
(37)
Harwood repeatedly used partial information to distort trustworthy sources.
He wrote that the Baseler Nachrichten, a Swiss newspaper, reported in June
1946 that "a maximum of only one and a half million Jews could be numbered
as casualties." (38) Harwood neglected to mention a subsequent article in
the same paper that acknowledged that the previous figure was incorrect and
that the accurate number of victims was 5,800,000. (39)
Kurt Knoll
Kurt Knoll.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:7f47a3266f7ccca0...@pseudo.borked.net...
I'll Always Be Here
news:o0m%j.173425$rd2.81057@pd7urf3no:
> Now this is what I call a political orient statement from your site.
> Kurt Knoll.
Who's site?
Kenneth McVay OBC
The Poster Boy of Holocaust Revisionism, Kurt Knoll,
the reigning Village Idiot of Kitimat, straightened
his Pikelhaube, fluffed his Black SS Dress Tutu, and
<kkn...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Now this is what I call a political orient statement from your site.
China, Japan, Thailand? Which "orient state" are you referring to, Herr
Pikelhaube?
75 Statements Demonstrating Leading Revisionist Scholar Kurt Knoll's
strict adherence to the high intellectual standards of Holocaust denial:
(See http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/k/knoll-kurt/ for the first 70)
71. "One the other hand I would say wee shall we trust you at all."
<F3qWj.266201$pM4.55304@pd7urf1no>, May 14, 2008
72. "In a war it is quite common for both enemies to cut of
their supply lines. You do admit alls that the births did
the same but came late." <mPWWj.268756$pM4.113343@pd7urf1no>,
May 15, 2008
73. "There you go sucker. If anyone of my involved would be like. I would
be ashamed of it." <dMrXj.145672$Cj7.35547@pd7urf2no>, May 17, 2008
74. "How can this be. You holocaust is not an open or shot case since
there never was an open investigation allowed to search out the truth."
<DboYj.150964$rd2.145275@pd7urf3no>, May 20, 2008
75. "Hey Fuckhead stay of your Jewish garlic it is fogging up my computer
screen." <_gb_j.162816$rd2.70023@pd7urf3no>, May 26, 2008
--
"By refinishion you i mean you on their side definetly you
opinons are." (Kurt Knoll, Kitimat, B.C.'s Leading Revisionist
Scholar)
The Nizkor Project: http://www.nizkor.org/
truth and memory
Two Dictators. According to Harwood she proved that the concentration camps
were comfortable institutions with sufficient food and facilities to allow
inmates to live in relatively acceptable conditions. He identified the
author as a German Jewish woman, who was the only Jew in her group of
deportees from Russia who was not immediately allowed by the Gestapo to
return to Russia. (40) There is nothing in the book to indicate that Buber
was Jewish. More significant is the manner in which Harwood misconstrued
her description of Ravensbrueck. According to Harwood she found it "clean,
civilized and well-administered." When she first arrived in 1940 she ate a
meal of "white bread, sausage, leek porridge and dried fruit." (41) She
lived in these comfortable circumstances until 1945, when "she experienced
the progressive decline of camp conditions." In making this claim, Harwood
was voicing a familiar argument. According to the deniers the terrible
conditions of the camps were caused by the Allied destruction of the German
civilian communication, transportation, and supply systems. The Allies, who
wrought havoc on Germany's civilian infrastructure during the latter stages
of the war, prevented the Germans from feeding camp inmates. That is why
the survivors in the camps were in such an emaciated condition when the
camps were opened. Harwood absolved the victimizers and blamed the victors,
transforming the Allies into perpetrators responsible for much of the
suffering that occurred in Germany. More to the purpose, something that
could not be denied - the inmates' skeletal condition - was explained away.
But this version of Buber's account is totally at variance with what she
actually says. Buber explicitly describes conditions that had broken down
long before 1945. She made specific reference to executions, starvation,
and terrible conditions that existed prior to the Allied raids of 1945. In
addition to relating how inmates died as a result of being "beaten,
starved, or frozen to death in the punishment cells," she made specific
references to gas chambers and executions. Referring to the crematorium in
the camp, she wrote the "SS men were fond of telling us that the only way
we should ever leave Ravensbrueck would be 'up the chimney.'" (42) Harwood
ignored these references in Buber's work, transforming a book that
explicitly depicted the horror of the camps into one that renders them
benign. [Buber's book contains a variety of historical flaws. I use her
work not as a historical source but as an example of how deniers regularly
falsify authors' conclusions.]
Harwood also used selective quotations to turn Colin Cross's Adolf Hitler
inside out. He claimed Cross concluded that moving millions of Jews around
Europe and "murdering them in a time of desperate war emergency was useless
from any rational point of view." (43) Harwood implied that Cross, in
dismissing the annihilation program as totally irrational, believed it did
not exist. Such is not the case, virtually all Holocaust scholars call
attention to the fact that the Nazi annihilation of the Jews was
irrational. Skilled workers were killed even if their tasks were
unfinished. Precious freight cars needed to transport materiel to the front
were used to carry Jews to their deaths. The Holocaust must be understood
as something inherently lacking in functional reason. Therefore Cross's
description of it as irrational cannot be interpreted as indicative of
denial tendencies. As he had with Buber's book, Harwood ignored an array of
passages that attested to Cross's firm belief that there had been a plan
for the annihilation of the Jews: "It was with the attack on the Soviet
Union in 1941 that Hitler's policy switched decisively to mass murder."
(44) Neither was there doubt in Cross's mind about Hitler's role in the
Final Solution: Even the most cursory examination of the facts points to
the extreme possibility that Hitler was not only aware of the policy but
was its active instigator .. Moreover, Himmler repeatedly and definitely
told his officials according to the minutes of meetings, that the
extermination program was based upon the leader's orders. Finally there are
statements in Hitler's 'Testament' of 1945 in which are recounted the
destruction of European Jewry as his achievement. (45)
Moreover, Cross stressed that the Holocaust was a "fundamental" aspect of
Hitler's policy. "The number of men, women and children who were herded
into gas chambers and murdered simply for being Jews did run into
millions." (46)
Harwood employed this tactic of trying to make a book say what it does not
in an even more systematic fashion in his treatment of the 3-volume 1948
report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on its
attempts to assist those interned in camps. Blatantly misrepresenting the
information contained in the report Harwood tried to make it appear to lend
credibility to the deniers' proclamations. He described it as the only
survey regarding the Jewish question in Europe during World War II and the
conditions of Germany's concentration camps that was not only "unique in
its honesty and objectivity" but strictly politically neutral. According to
him it demonstrated that the International Red Cross had found no evidence
"whatever" in camps in Axis-occupied Europe of a "deliberate policy to
exterminate the Jews." (47) Harwood contended that in all its 1,600 pages
the report failed to make any mention of "such a thing as a gas chamber."
[The American publication The Myth of the Six Million made the same claim
about the ICRC report (p. 101).] Though the ICRC admitted that Jews had
suffered rigors and privations, as had many other wartime nationalities,
"its complete silence on the subject of planned extermination is ample
refutation of the Six Million legend." (48)
Harwood could make this claim only by ignoring key sections of the ICRC
report. The Red Cross was absolutely specific about the Jews' fate. It made
reference to the Nazi attempt to annihilate them, observing that under Nazi
rule Jews had been transformed into "outcasts condemned by rigid racial
legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution and systematic extermination."
(49) The ICRC, which was empowered to exercise supervision over other
prisoners and POWs, admitted it could not do this for the Jews. "No kind of
protection shielded them; being neither POW nor civilian internees, they
formed a separate category without the benefit of any Convention." Most
important, the ICRC specifically delineated how systematic annihilation was
carried out: "They were penned into concentration camps and ghettos,
recruited for forced labor, subjected to grave brutalities and sent to
death camps without anyone being allowed to intervene in those matters."
(50) These were not the ICRC's only references to death camps or systematic
annihilation. Among the other references were the following:
During the period in September 1940, when the "Iron Guard" [Romania]
supported by the Gestapo and the German SS had seized power, the Jews had
been subjected to persecution and deportation to death camps. (51) In
Germany and her satellite countries, the lot of the civilians belonging to
this group was by far the worst. Subjected as they were to a discriminatory
regime, which aimed more or less openly at their extermination, they were
unable to procure the necessities of life. (52)
Harwood contended that the report made "nonsense" of the allegation that
there were "gas chambers cunningly disguised as shower facilities." He
substantiated this assertion by quoting a passage from the report that
depicted how ICRC officials inspected baths and showers in the camps. When
they found problems they acted swiftly "to have fixtures made less
primitive and to have them repaired or enlarged." (53) This, Harwood
argued, demonstrated conclusively that showers functioned as showers,
however primitive, and not as killing apparatus. The problem with Harwood's
choice of this citation, which he quoted correctly, is that the passage had
nothing to do with German concentration camps: It referred to Allied camps
for civilian internees in Egypt. (54)
Harwood repeatedly asserted that from August 1942 the ICRC was allowed to
visit and distribute food parcels to major concentration camps in Germany,
and that from February 1943 this privilege was extended to all other camps
and prisons. (55) Harwood claimed that this information was to be found on
page 78 of the report's third volume. The page did refer to "major
concentration camps" in Germany but indicated that they included only
Dachau and Oranienburg. The concession that was extended in 1943 included
all other camps and prisons in Germany. (56) This meant that numerous camps
outside Germany were not included. Moreover, the Red Cross acknowledged
that it was limited to giving parcels only to deported aliens for whom it
had addresses, and that many inmates, among them the vast majority of Jews,
were not allowed to receive food parcels at all.
In yet another attempt to misrepresent the ICRC's findings Harwood
contended that the relief organization had documented the fact that a
significant proportion of European Jews had not been interned in camps "but
remained, subject to certain restrictions, as part of the free civilian
population." This, he declared, conflicted directly with Jewish claims that
the "extermination program" was conducted with great "thoroughness." In
this instance Harwood neglected to quote the opening paragraph of the
chapter on which he based these assertions. It completely contradicted his
claims regarding the Jews' fate:
No other section of the population endured such humiliation, privation and
suffering. Deprived of all treaty protection, persecuted in accordance with
National Socialist doctrine and threatened with extermination, the Jews
were .. generally deported in the most inhuman manner, shut up in
concentration camps, subjected to forced labor or put to death. (57)
Harwood's misuse of the ICRC report is a reflection of how deniers fairly
certain that few people will be able to check the original material twist
information and findings. Rather than misquote, as with other sources,
Harwood simply omits those numerous sections of the report which contradict
his claims.
Harwood even used other sources to try to misrepresent the ICRC's findings.
He claimed that a Swiss paper, Die Tat, had surveyed all World War II
casualties and concluded, based on ICRC statistics, that the number of
victims of political, racial, or religious persecution who died in prisons
and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945 amounted to "300,000, not all
of whom were Jews." Harwood argued that this figure was the most accurate
assessment of the number of victims. (58) The Swiss paper did cite the
300,000 figure, but only in reference to "Germans and German Jews," not
nationals of other countries. (59) It did not conduct a survey of all World
War II causalities and made no reference to Red Cross figures.
The ICRC, inundated with correspondence about these assertions, has
repeatedly attempted to refute the deniers' claims. In 1978 the official
ICRC Bulletin protested that the rescue agency "has never published or even
compiled statistics" of the kind that were being attributed to it. The work
of the ICRC was to "help war victims not to count them." Even if it had
wished to count victims, it could not have done so because its
representatives were permitted to enter only a few concentration camps and
"only in the final days of the war." (60) This was not the first time the
ICRC tried to refute Harwood's charges. In 1975, after Harwood's pamphlet
appeared in England and increasing numbers of right-wing groups began to
reiterate the claims about the record of the humanitarian organization, the
central office of the ICRC wrote to the Board of Deputies of British Jews
in London regarding Harwood's citations: "The figures cited by the author
of the booklet are based upon statistics falsely attributed to us,
evidently for the purpose of giving them credibility, despite the fact that
we never publish information of this kind." (61)
Despite the various attempts by the ICRC to set the historical record
straight, the deniers have continued to rely on this disinformation. In
1985 at the trial of Ernst Zuendel, a German immigrant who was accused by
the Canadian government of publishing and distributing Holocaust denial
materials, including Did Six Million Really Die?, these false claims
regarding the ICRC were introduced by the defense as a means of
demonstrating that the relief agency thought the Holocaust was a myth. (62)
In a fashion that has become typical of all deniers, Harwood relied on
traditional anti-semitic stereotypes to make his case. He asserted that
Germany's persecution of the Jews was the major reason the Allies went to
war. (63) This claim was intended to buttress the anti-semitic stereotype
of the power of the Jews to compel the Allies to accede to their wishes.
Harwood conveniently ignored the fact that Germany began the war by
attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. The United States, which was well
aware of the extent of the suffering of the Jews, did not enter the war in
Europe until after Pearl Harbor, when Germany declared war on the United
States. All the Allies had carefully tracked Germany's treatment of the
Jews since 1933. They had not declared war on Nazi Germany after the
Nuremberg laws, Kristallnacht, or any of the numerous indignities meted out
to the Jews in the prewar period. The United States, which knew of the
massacres of Jews on the Russian front in 1941, did not act to help.
Clearly, had it been mistreatment of the Jews that prompted the Allies to
act, they should have gone to war long before they did.
Harwood also misconstrued the Nuremberg trials. He claimed that the court
accepted 300,000 "written affidavits" containing charges against those
accused of war crimes. Harwood insisted that the large number of affidavits
was indicative of the extent of the hoax. At the Zuendel trial Raul
Hilberg, who was called as an expert witness, estimated that in the
aggregate approximately 40,000 documents had been submitted by the
prosecution. Included in these were copies of German correspondence and
Third Reich documentation. Notwithstanding the fact that the assertions
regarding 300,000 affidavits has no basis in truth, it has become a
standard part of Holocaust denial. Harwood's most outlandish assertion
regarding the trial was that defense lawyers at Nuremberg were prevented
from cross-examining prosecution witnesses. (64) The most cursory
examination of the records of the Nuremberg trials indicates that attorneys
had the opportunity to conduct cross-examinations.
Harwood also attempted to convince readers that the Diary of Anne Frank was
a fraud. In a section entitled "Best-Seller a Hoax," he asserted that the
Diary was part of the "fabrication of a propaganda legend." (65) Harwood
was not the first to try to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Diary. He
was building on attacks on the Diary's credibility that had begun as early
as 1957. (For a more complete discussion of the deniers' campaign against
the Diary see appendix.) This theme would be more fully developed by French
denier Robert Faurisson and would be at least partially responsible for the
1989 decision of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation to
issue a critical edition of the Diary firmly verifying its authenticity.
(66)
Given the vast array of misstatements, misquotes and outright
falsifications in Harwood's pamphlet, questions regarding its impact
remain. Until the publication of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by
Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, it remained the most frequently
cited work on Holocaust denial. Because it is shorter and more cheaply
reproduced than Butz's, it remains in circulation today. It is, of course,
impossible to assess the precise degree to which it has entered mainstream
literature. But on at least one occasion its arguments were cited virtually
verbatim in a major British publication - not as examples of distortions
and fallacious findings by a right-wing extremist, but as legitimate
historical research. In 1974 a lengthy two-part review of Joachim Fest's
biography of Hitler appeared in the English magazine books and bookmen.
[Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (London, 1974).] The review was written by Colin
Wilson, a well-known British novelist and critic, who periodically reviewed
books for the magazine. At the end of the second part of his review of
Fest's book, the reviewer added what he himself described as "a curious -
but highly relevant - postscript. (67) Wilson related that a number of
years earlier he had received an advertisement from a Dublin publisher for
The Myth of the Six Million. "Curious" about this, he sent off for it, only
to discover that the publisher had sold out. While he was writing the Fest
review he received the pamphlet by Richard Harwood of the University of
London. Wilson summarized Harwood's argument:
What Harwood says, briefly, is that Hitler had no reason to murder Jews
when he needed them for forced labor. He goes on to point out that the
total number of Jews in Europe before the war was six and a half millions
[sic], and that one and a half million emigrated abroad. Harwood cites
figures from international organizations - all quoted - to demonstrate that
there were not more than 3,000,000 Jews in Nazi Germany. (68)
Wilson was impressed by Harwood's denial of the existence of extermination
camps and accepted as fact his allegation that most of the memoirs about
the camps were "journalistic forgeries, churned out like pornography for an
audience that revels in horrors." He also believed Harwood accurately cited
figures from international organizations such as the ICRC. Wilson
acknowledged that when he checked Raul Hilberg's "gigantic, half-million
word" book and the fifty-plus other books he had in his library on the
topic he found it hard to believe that the Holocaust was "all an
invention." He conceded that there was plenty of evidence to prove that the
Third Reich detested Jews and that Hitler would have "thought nothing of
exterminating" them. Nonetheless, after reading Harwood's volume he found
it pertinent to ask whether the Nazis had really exterminated 6,000,000
Jews or whether claims that they had were just another "emotional
historical distortion."
Finally, in his most provocative musing thus far - others would follow - he
wondered, if the Final Solution had indeed been a hoax, "would it not be
better to be prepared to face the whole truth, no matter how unpleasant?"
(69) Wilson left no doubt that Harwood had convinced him of the unpleasant
truth: The Holocaust was a myth.
As was to be expected, Wilson's ruminations launched an avalanche of
letters to the magazine, including two from Harwood. Many of the letters
cited evidence contradicting Harwood's conclusions. In the face of such
information Wilson became even more passionate in his defense of Harwood's
views. In response to this barrage of letters he offered a strange
prediction that, it could be argued, reflected his own personal biases:
"Some time over the next ten years or so, an Israeli historian is going to
write a book called The Myth of the Six Million. It will cause a tremendous
scandal; he will be violently attacked - and will become a rich man. And no
one will be able to accuse him of being anti Jewish." (70) Wilson was
trying to bolster his case by relying on the same argument made by both
Barnes and App: Jews accuse those who question the existence of the
Holocaust of being anti-semites in order to silence them. Regarding the
books he had collected on the topic, he wrote, "I would like to know how
many of my fifty books on the death camps are forgeries." (71) His
willingness tacitly to accept Harwood's contention that the books were
forgeries or "communist propaganda," and to ignore the possibility that
Harwood might be the forger, is particularly telling. In response to still
more letters, he described Harwood's tone as "reasonable and logical" and
"devoid of hysteria or emotional anti-semitism." He explained that Harwood
made sense to him because he quoted figures and listed his sources and his
tone was "generally rather pedantic." This evaluation by Wilson is further
evidence of why the new pseudo-academic style adopted by deniers in recent
years is so dangerous. Their packaging, which mimics legitimate scholarly
research, confuses consumers. Readers are more susceptible to being
influenced by an academic style than by poorly printed extremist and racist
publications. (72) In response to attacks for espousing Harwood's views,
Wilson protested almost reflexively that he was not anti-Nazi or
anti-Jewish but "deeply pro 'objectivity.'"
Such protestations are reminiscent of deniers' claims that they are only
interested in the truth and harbor no sympathies toward Nazis or
antipathies toward Jews. (73) The controversy continued until June 1975.
Eventually even the editors of books and bookmen felt compelled to respond
to readers who criticized the magazine for assigning Harwood's work for
review. The editors assured readers that the pamphlet was "never sent to
Colin Wilson for review by b & b nor has it ever been the subject of a
review in b & b." (74) Wilson had included it on his own. The penultimate
letter the editors published on this controversy was from Harwood himself.
In it he reiterated his false claims regarding the Chambers Encyclopedia's
estimates of the prewar Jewish population of Europe. It was followed by a
letter that can be interpreted as the magazine's final editorial comment on
the entire matter. The letter writer wondered if the deniers could explain:
"What happened to my German Jewish parents, grandparents and cousins, since
I find it hard to attribute their deaths, attested to by the International
Red Cross, either to Nazi benevolence or Russian propaganda." (75)
In the face of this query there was only silence.
NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX
1. Sunday Times, Feb. 23, 1975; it was also published under the title Six
Million Lost and Found.
2. New Statesman, Nov. 2, 1979, p. 670.
3. Sunday Times, Feb. 23, 1975.
4. Books and bookmen (May 1975), p. 5. For background on the ideology of
the National Front see Richard C. Thurlow, "The Witches' Brew," in Patterns
of Prejudice, vol. 5-6 (1978), pp. 1-9.
5. Seidel, The Holocaust Denial, p. 113.
6. New Statesman, Nov. 2, 1979, p. 670.
7. Holmes, "Historical Revisionism in Britain," p. 6.
8. Daily Express, June 17, 1974.
9. C.H. Simonds, "The Strange Story of Willis Carto," National Review,
Sept. 10, 1971, p. 981.
10. After a number of years of continued litigation he withdrew his
complaint; Davidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust," p. 33.
11. The Myth of the Six Million, pp. 1-3.
12. Holmes, "Historical Revisionism in Britain," p. 6.
13. Richard Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (London,
n.d.), p. 28.
14. Ibid., p. 2.
15. Ibid., pp. 2, 3.
16. Martin Webster, "Why Zionism Opposes British Nationalism," Spearhead
(February 1977), p. 12.
17. Ibid., p. 3.
18. Ibid.
19. The Myth of the Six Million, pp. 2-3.
truth and memory
20. For background on the Madagascar Plan see Leni Yahil, The Holocaust:
The Fate of European Jewry (New York, 1990), pp. 253-55; Philip Friedman,
"The Lublin Reservation and the Madagascar Plan: Two Aspects of Nazi Jewish
Policy during the Second World War," YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Studies
(1953), pp. 151-77; Christopher R. Browning, The Final Solution and the
German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D3 of Abteilung Deutschland,
1940-1943 (New York, 1978).
21. Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust, p. 1.
22. Joseph Goebbels, Der Nazi - Sozi (Munich, 1929), p. 8, cited in
Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust, p. 12.
23. Eberhard Jackel and Axel Kuhn, eds., Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen
1905-1924 (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 368; Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust,
p. 12.
24. Nuremberg Document PS 3358, cited in Aronsfeld, The Text of the
Holocaust, p. 13.
25. In a speech at Karlsruhe as reported in the Strassburger Neueste
Nachrichten, May 2, 1942, cited in Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust, p.
13.
26. Robert Wistrich, "Letters," books and bookmen, Apr. 1975, p. 7.
27. Das Reich, May 9, 1943, cited in Aronsfeld, The Text of the Holocaust,
p. 14.
28. International Military Tribunal, Trials of the Major War Criminals
Before the International Military Tribunal: (Official Text, vol. 29, pp.
110-73. See also Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (New York, 1976), pp.
130-40.
29. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 4.
30. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, pp. 67-68.
31. Ilya Levkov, "Introduction," Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in
American, German and Jewish History (New York, 1987), p. 27.
32. Ernst Nolte, "Between Myth and Revisionism? The Third Reich in the
Perspective of the 1980s," in Aspects of the Third Reich, ed. H. W. Koch
(London, 1985), pp. 36-37. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p. 29.
33. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p. 179, n. 34.
34. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 5.
35. "Jewish History," Chambers Encyclopedia, p. 99.
36. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 5.
37. "Jewish History," Chambers Encyclopedia, p. 99.
38. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 14.
39. Baseler Nachrichten, October 7, 1952; Aronsfeld, The Text of the
Holocaust, p. 14.
40. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 20.
41. Ibid.
42. Margarete Buber, Under Two Dictators (London, 1950), pp. 208, 242-43,
304.
43. Colin Cross, Adolf Hitler (London, 1973), p. 307, cited in Harwood, Did
Six Million Really Die?, p. 20.
44. Ibid., p. 365.
45. Ibid., p. 366.
46. Ibid., p. 369.
47. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 24. For analysis of his use of
the ICRC report, see Arthur Suzman and Denis Diamond, Six Million Did Die:
The Truth Shall Prevail (Johannesburg, 1977), pp. 10-13.
48. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 25.
49. The Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on
its Activities during the Second World War (Geneva, 1948), vol. 1, p. 641.
The report is replete with numerous quotes that demonstrate that Harwood
totally misconstrued its findings. For additional examples see Suzman and
Diamond, Six Million Did Die, p. 12.
50. Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 641.
51. Ibid..
52. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 514.
53. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 25.
54. Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 594. Harwood incorrectly cited this
passage as coming from vol. 3.
55. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 25.
56. Report of the ICRC, vol. 3, p. 77.
57. Report of the ICRC, vol. 3, chap. 3, cit ed in "Harwood's Distortions
of Holocaust Facts," Patterns of Prejudice (May-June, 1975), p. 26.
58. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 28.
59. Die Tat, Jan. 19, 1955.
60. ICRC Bulletin No. 25, Feb. 1, 1978, cited in Patterns of Prejudice
(March-April 1978), p. 11.
61. Françoise Perret, Comite International de la Croix-Rouge, to Jacob
Gewirtz, Board of Deputies of British Jews, August 22, 1975.
62. Her Majesty the Queen vs. Ernst Zuendel, District Court of Ontario,
1988 (hereafter referred to as Zuendel), vol. 9, pp. 1970ff.
63. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 12.
64. Ibid., p. 10.
65. Ibid., p. 19.
66. David Barnouw and Gerrold Van Der Stroom, eds., The Diary of Anne
Frank.
67. Colin Wilson, "The Fuehrer in Perspective: 2," books and bookmen (Nov.
1974), p. 31.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid. (Jan. 1975), p. 5.
71. Ibid., p. 6.
72. Ibid. (Feb. 1975), p. 6.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid. (Apr. 1975), p. 10.
75. Ibid. (June 1975), p. 6.
CHAPTER SEVEN Entering the Mainstream
The Case of Arthur Butz
In 1976 a previously unknown professor of electrical engineering at
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, initiated a concerted effort
to win Holocaust denial scholarly and historical legitimacy. Arthur R.
Butz, author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, garnered considerable
attention, and his book was the subject of news stories in some of the
nation's major papers. Butz's position as a professor at one of the more
prestigious universities in the country enhanced the sense of controversy.
It was hard for the public to reconcile Holocaust denial with the pursuit
of truth to which universities and their faculty are supposedly dedicated.
But there was another draw as well: Taking a different tack than his
predecessors, Butz not only revealed a more subtle, sophisticated and,
ultimately, devious approach to this material, but he also significantly
changed the nature of Holocaust denial.
Relatively little is known of Butz. (1) Born in the mid-1940s in New York
of German and Italian ancestry, he graduated from MIT and received his
Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. What distinguishes Butz from
virtually all the deniers who preceded him was the veneer of scholarship
and the impression of seriousness and objectivity he is able to convey.
Tenured at Northwestern University since 1974, he is well versed in
academic etiquette. His book's format indicated that he understood the
structure and nuances of scholarly debate and would use them to his
advantage. In contrast to many of the previous publications, particularly
the poorly printed pamphlets that had typified much of denial writing,
Butz's book contained the requisite myriad notes and large bibliography
that were the hallmarks of scholarly works, quoting many of the prominent
historians who worked in this field and thanking a number of legitimate
research centers and archives. At first glance there were few reasons to
question the book's true import or intent but readers who were aware of the
identity of the publishers would have had little trouble discerning either.
In England the book was brought out by the Historical Review Press, which
had published Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? In the United
States the book was released by Noontide Press. (2)
But it was not just the form of Butz's publication that distinguished it
from its predecessors. His putative willingness to confront a host of
issues most deniers had previously ignored gave the book a different tone -
one that was clearly designed to disarm innocent readers and enhance Butz's
aura of scholarly objectivity. He criticized contemporary deniers,
describing The Myth of the Six Million, the American denial publication on
which Richard Harwood based much of his work, as full of "errors of fact."
(3) Nor did he try to whitewash German wartime behavior. Of equal
importance in establishing his scholarly veneer was his willingness to
concede that as many as a million Jews may have actually died at the hands
of the Nazis. Moreover, he acknowledged that the Einsatzgruppen may have
actually murdered civilians and that Jews were singled out for special
persecution by the Germans and suffered in concentration camps.
In contrast to Barnes, App, Rassinier, and others, Butz did not justify the
German persecution of the Jews by claiming that Jews were disloyal,
untrustworthy, or intent on causing Germany's downfall. He gave the
impression of being a serious scholar who was critical of Nazi
anti-semitism. (4) Closer examination revealed that he harbored precisely
the same attitudes and used the same methodology that had characterized all
Holocaust denial literature up to this point. The packaging had changed but
the contents remained the same. Anything that disagreed with Butz's
foregone conclusion and the thesis of his book - that the story of Jewish
extermination in World War II was a propaganda hoax and that the Jews of
Europe had not been exterminated (5) - was dismissed as "obvious lies,"
"ludicrous," "breathtakingly absurd," "absolutely insane," "fishy,"
"obviously spurious," and "nonsense." (6) "Survivor literature - the term
is always placed in quotes - is dismissed as full of "endless raving about
extermination." Despite his attempt to project a scholarly aura, however,
Butz allows his rhetoric to fall into a very different category: American
diplomats engaged in "hysterical yapping about the six million," (7) and
stories of "gas chambers" were "wartime propaganda fantasies," "garbage,"
and "tall tales." (8)
Evincing the same sympathies as previous generations of deniers, Butz
declared that the greatest tragedy was that the Germans and Austrians had
been the real victims. (9) He also showed the same antipathies as those who
had preceded him. Describing Jews as among "the most powerful groups on
earth," he argued that they possessed formidable powers to manipulate
governments, control war crimes trials, govern the media, and determine
other nations' foreign policy, all in the name of perpetrating the hoax of
the twentieth century. (10) According to Butz, Jews invented this hoax in
order to further "Zionist ends." (11) Thus one could extrapolate from
Butz's argument that whatever anti-semitism the Nazis displayed was well
justified. This demonology, common to virtually every denier, is an
affirmation of Nazi ideology. The Nazis depicted Aryans as the "master
race" - strong and invincible. Jews, in contrast, were not human. Despite
their superiority Aryans were considered highly vulnerable to Jewish
conspiracies. The Jews' ability to create the hoax had proven the Nazi
thesis correct: They were a threat to the world.
In the book and in subsequent articles published in the Journal of
Historical Review, Butz acknowledged the validity of a number of the
criticisms commonly directed at deniers, including that their ranks
numbered no historians with any scholarly academic standing. Bemoaning
this, Butz attributed it to the fact that respected scholars had been
frightened away from questioning something as "established as the Great
Pyramid." It was because of the "default" by professional historians that
non-historians such as himself were left with the responsibility for
exposing the "idiotic nonsense" of the Holocaust. (12)
In order to mainstream Holocaust denial and attain for it scholarly
respectability, Butz also had to acknowledge that denial books, articles,
and journals are published by neo-Nazi, extremist, and racist groups, side
by side with intensely nationalist or white-supremacist racial diatribes.
Attempting to deflect this criticism, Butz agreed that in an optimal
situation deniers' work would appear in scholarly journals, but the normal
channels of scholarly research had been blocked to those who would reveal
the "truth." In the interest of exposing the hoax, those who worked in this
field had no option but to turn to these ideological publications. When he
depicted the deniers as martyrs willing to risk their reputations by
appearing in these publications because they had no other option, he
ignored the intensive, symbiotic relationship - far more than a marriage of
inconvenience - that existed between these groups.
Since the publication of the book, Butz, who has assiduously tried to
maintain his image as a disinterested scholar, has been associated with a
variety of extremist and neo-Nazi groups. His books are promoted and
distributed by the Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazi organizations. When his
book first appeared it was serialized in the neo-Nazi German weekly
Deutsche National Zeitung. In 1985 he presented his hoax ideas at the
Savior's Day meeting of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. (13) Despite its
veneer of impartial scholarship, Butz's book is replete with the same
expressions of traditional anti-semitism, philo-Germanism and conspiracy
theory as the Holocaust denial pamphlets printed by the most scurrilous
neo-Nazi groups. This is particularly evident when he turns to the hoax
itself and the "culprits" responsible for it. Although Jews were the
instigators, they engineered this effort with the assistance of other
forces. Together they formed a vast conspiratorial network that, despite
the broad assortment of groups involved, managed to keep its existence a
secret. According to Butz all these vastly different forces were
coordinated by Zionists, who nurtured the legend until it achieved the
stature of an international, historical hoax. (14) A complex and convoluted
process that involved multitudinous forces, it remained undetected,
amazingly, until a professor of electrical engineering conducted his own
brand of historical research.
Butz's list of culpable parties is all-encompassing. He blames the "Zionist
International" and the Communists as well as the U.S. government's War
Refugee Board and Office of Strategic Services. (15) In addition the New
York-based research institute YIVO; U.S. government officials; the
prosecutors and judges at the war crimes trials; Polish-Jewish
"propagandists"; and Soviet officials all helped perpetrate this fraud,
aided and abetted by the media and such international welfare organizations
as the Red Cross. (16)
Butz vacillated between holding Jews solely responsible for this "Jewish
hoax" - which was also a "Zionist hoax" (17) - and presenting it as the
result of a cooperative effort in which Washington, London, Moscow,
Jerusalem, and Jews everywhere had participated. Using their political
power, Jews had amassed a broad array of allies, "official Washington"
among them. (18) It is noteworthy that those Jews who pressured Washington
to cooperate in the hoax were the same ones who were unable to convince it
during the prewar and war years to liberalize the immigration system, open
its doors to the 900 Jews on the St. Louis, admit German Jewish refugee
children, transport refugees on empty transport ships returning from
Europe, or permit any more than a token number of Jews to enter the United
States during the war itself. (19) [The St. Louis was the German ship that
was turned away from Cuba in May 1939 because the Cuban government had
invalidated the landing certificates of the refugees on board. When the
ship tri ed to land in Miami government officials denied permission.] Butz
would have us believe that the same Jews whose rescue record was a dismal
failure were somehow able to manipulate Washington into participating in
this massive hoax.
According to Butz the key to perpetrating the hoax was the forging of
massive numbers of documents, an act committed with the complicity of
Allied governments. There was no shortage of people to assist in this
endeavor: Hundreds of trained staff members were sent to Europe in the
immediate aftermath of the war. They were responsible for "a fabrication
constructed of perjury, forgery, distortion of fact and misrepresentation
of documents." (20) Without being discovered by anyone, they created
reports by Einsatzgruppen commanders listing the precise cities in which
massacres had been conducted and the exact numbers of men, women, and
children who had been killed. They prepared documents purporting to be
official communiques from the highest-ranking offices of the Third Reich.
Not only were they able to falsify and fabricate at will, but they even
succeeded in planting the documents in the correct places so that those who
were not part of the hoax would happen upon them. So complete was their
control that they were able to determine whether the war crimes courts
received genuine documents, forged documents, or no documents at all. (21)
They even created false recordings of speeches by Nazi leaders and inserted
them into the materials collected by the liberating forces. (22) Without
their scheme being discovered and exposed by anyone, these hundreds of
forgers - working in both Western and Eastern zones, and with the
acquiescence of American, British, French, and Soviet officials - somehow
managed, in an incredibly short space of time, to produce thousands of
documents, all of which were designed to prove that the Nazis intended to
annihilate the Jews.
The most important question was never addressed by either Butz or any of
his compatriots: Why, if the "propagandists" responsible for the hoax were
so successful at producing such a vast array of documents, did they not
produce the one piece of paper deniers claim would convince them there had
been a Final Solution - that is, an order from Hitler authorizing the
destruction of the Jews?
Butz attempted to explain away Nazi references to extermination, including
Hitler's repeated use of the phrase "Vernichtung des Judentums," the
destruction of Jewry. He acknowledged that while it could be interpreted to
mean "the killing of all Jews," Hitler had used it to mean the "destruction
of Jewish influence and power." Recognizing that this stretched the
parameters of rational explanation, Butz reluctantly conceded that Hitler
"could have chosen his words more carefully." (23) But it was not only
Hitler's references to extermination that were problematic. Himmler, in his
famous October 1943 Posen speech to the SS, spoke of the "annihilation" of
the Jews:
I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the annihilation of the
Jewish people. This is one of those 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 each
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 seen it happen, 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 it for 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 were still
ensconced in the body of the German nation, we probably would have reached
the 1916-17 stage by now. [In 1916 the Germans began to lose World War I.
The National Socialists attributed this loss to a "stab in the back"
administered by the Jews.]
It was critically important for Butz to destroy the credibility of this
speech because of its explicit references to the annihilation program.
For those unwilling to dismiss the speech as a forgery, Butz suggested
that-the corpses to which Himmler referred were actually corpses of Germans
killed by Allied air raids (24) - a suggestion rendered preposterous by
even the most cursory examination of that portion of Himmler's speech. (25)
Butz even tried to cast doubt on Hitler's last will and testament. In it
the Nazi leader, well aware that his entire Reich had crumbled around him,
identified the Jews as "the race that is the real guilty party in this
murderous struggle" and observed that he had kept his promise that the real
culprits would pay for their guilt. Butz, aware that since the document
bore Hitler's signature it would be difficult to dismiss it as a forgery,
suggested that it might have been "tampered with." (26) However, he offered
no evidence to support his contention. Apparently cognizant of the fact
that this was not a very convincing argument, he assured readers that even
if the will were genuine, it should not be taken seriously because it
simply typified the tendency of all politicians, before terminating their
public careers, "to exaggerate the significance of their work." (27)
Butz seemed oblivious to the disturbing implications of his attempt to
explain away the true meaning of Hitler's statements by casting the will as
an exaggeration. Exaggeration has a number of functions: It can serve to
amplify one's own merits and positive accomplishments, compensate for one's
failings, or consciously agitate one's followers to take certain actions.
What function did Butz think Hitler's "exaggerations" served in this
regard? Was he exaggerating in order to compensate for his failure to see
this "murderous" struggle through to the end? Was he exaggerating in order
to amplify his own merits, which in this case included the persecution of
the Jews? Or was he exaggerating as a form of triumphalism to celebrate
acts of oppression terrible enough, according to Butz's estimate, to have
resulted in the death of a million Jews? Whatever the particular function
Butz had in mind, his suggestion that Hitler would want "to exaggerate the
significance" of this particular aspect of his "work" bespeaks a very
strange notion of National Socialism's "triumphs;" in fact, his reasoning
is reminiscent of App's argument that the fact that some Jews survived is
proof that no Jews were killed.
In order to convince his readers that the Holocaust is the propaganda hoax
of the century, if not of recorded history, Butz had to demonstrate that
the testimony of numerous war crimes defendants confirming the existence of
an annihilation program was false. First he tried to shed doubt on the
credibility of witnesses in general by declaring all testimony inferior to
documents. His reasons for making this pronouncement were evident. (28)
truth and memory
perpetrators, bystanders, or neutral parties, all confirms the existence of
an annihilation program. Documents could be discounted as forgeries,
declared to have been "tampered with," or interpreted in a tangled fashion
to satisfy a particular ideological bent. It would have been more difficult
- though Butz, like all deniers, tried to do so - to dismiss everyone who
spoke of an extermination program as either a liar, dupe, propagandist, or
self-incriminator.
Butz's preference for documents notwithstanding, he still had to explain
away those defendants who said, "I was there," "I saw the killings," or "I
heard Hitler and Himmler speak of the extermination of the Jews." Indeed,
Butz's resourcefulness in this regard constitutes the most "creative"
aspect of his book. Breaking ranks with previous deniers, he dismissed the
explanation that the only reason Nuremberg defendants confessed was because
they had been tortured into admitting their guilt. He argued that they
recognized that since the world was convinced that a Holocaust had taken
place, they could not possibly deny it and hope to be believed. Though they
had done no wrong, the world was intent on finding them guilty. Since
protesting their innocence would have been counterproductive, the
defendants and their lawyers decided that the best tactic was to plead
guilty. This approach provided Butz with a reply to one of the most
oft-heard criticisms directed at deniers: If the Holocaust is a hoax why
did the Nazi defendants themselves acknowledge that it happened? For Butz
it was all quite simple: It was better to admit to the crime of the century
and risk losing one's life than to protest against a monstrous fraud.
However, in pursuing this theory, Butz ignored a basic problem: If the end
result promised to be the same - a death sentence - what purpose was served
by falsely pleading guilty to such a vicious act?
Butz still had to try to discredit defendants who not only testified that
the annihilation happened but admitted their complicity in it. Why would
defendants confess to personal involvement in such a horrendous crime when
they knew that they were innocent and the charges a hoax? Their objective,
Butz explained, was to do whatever was necessary to survive while a
temporary wave of "post-war hysteria" swept Germany. Thus they deferred
setting the record straight to a future time when the truth could emerge.
(29)
Because not all the defendants behaved in the same fashion, Butz had to
find different ways to demonstrate that their confessions had been
duplicitous. Those who admitted that it had occurred even though they knew
it had not - but argued that they had had nothing to do with it, did so in
order to shift the blame onto someone else. This made "it politically
possible for the court to be lenient." (30) Oswald Pohl, the high-ranking
SS officer in charge of the concentration camp system who oversaw the
transfer back to Germany of all the personal possessions of Jews who had
been killed, fell into this category. Essentially responsible for running
the camps and for the economic aspect of the Final Solution, Pohl was
condemned to death for his role. He testified at the 1947 war crimes trial
that he had heard Himmler deliver his famous 1943 speech to the SS leaders
in Posen. (31) Butz declared this to have been part of Pohl's legal
strategy to exploit the culpability of the SS leadership by engaging in a
"self-serving" attempt to blame those who could not defend themselves. (32)
Butz offered yet another explanation for the defendants' confessions: They
had made a mistake. They had not meant to confess to the existence of an
annihilation program. They had not comprehended the questions posed to them
by their captors. Though their answers made it sound as if they were
acknowledging the existence of a death plan, in reality they were not. For
example, when Hermann Goring explicitly accepted that there had been mass
murders, he was confused. Asked about the mounds of corpses or the high
number of deaths, he misunderstood the question. He thought he was being
asked about German concentration camps, where many corpses had been found.
Had he grasped the question, he would have told the Allies that those
corpses were the result of the difficult circumstances that existed toward
the end of the war - circumstances that resulted from Allied actions. (33)
How men who had reached positions of incredible power in the German Reich
could have misunderstood such serious questions that would determine their
own fate remains a mystery, as does why they did not clarify their answers
when they saw how they were being interpreted. Butz also claimed that
defendants' confessions about the Holocaust were the result of their having
been subjected since the end of the war to a barrage of "familiar
propaganda": These former leaders of Nazi Germany had themselves become
victims of the hoax. One must marvel at the power of those responsible for
the hoax. Not only had they won the cooperation of the world's greatest
military and political powers, forged thousands of pages of documents in
record time without being detected, and created physical evidence attesting
to an annihilation program, but among their most impressive achievements
was success at convincing the very people they accused of perpetrating the
hoax that it had actually happened. According to Butz even this did not
exhaust the full extent of Jewish powers. Their most impressive
accomplishment was winning the defendants' cooperation in their own
incrimination! They persuaded Nazi leaders not only to testify to the
veracity of the myth but to sign their own names to the forged documents.
"Jewish propagandists" convinced the defendants that this would win them
clemency from the prosecutors and the court. (34) That is why some
documents have signatures that cannot be dismissed as forgeries. Butz never
explained why, long after the war crimes tribunals were concluded,
defendants did not come forward and say they had lied in order to win
lenient treatment. In fact, many of them continued to acknowledge that the
annihilation had happened and that they had played a role in it.
Butz declared that the conspirators not only concocted the proofs to
establish the hoax as fact but had won the cooperation of the mass media in
disseminating the story. Motivated by both gullibility and culpability, the
mass media in Western democracies constituted "a lie machine of vaster
extent than even many of the more independent minded have perceived." (35)
These charges hark back to the work of Rassinier, App, and Barnes and evoke
what has become a standard litany of anti-semitic charges regarding Jews'
control of the banks and the media.
Butz dismissed the media as a "lie machine" for disseminating the Holocaust
legend. At the same time, however, he used the media's wartime failure to
highlight news of the annihilation as proof that the story was false (36)
(if it were true, the media would have stressed it). This "explanation"
ignored an array of other factors that governed the media's and much of the
rest of the world's response to this story. (37) [The most significant was
its unprecedented nature.] It also failed to address the fact that all the
Allied governments publicly condemned it in December 1942 and a number of
papers did consistently feature the story, among them the New Republic,
Nation, PM, the Hearst papers, and the Catholic journal Commonweal. Butz's
"explanation" had its own internal contradiction: How could the Jews have
had such control over the media after the war but virtually none during it?
Butz favorably contrasted the record of the Nazi press with that of the
American media. The refusal of newspapers in the Third Reich to even
mention the "Jewish extermination claim" was evidence that it was on a
higher level than the Allied press. Butz credited the German press for
ignoring the propaganda about death camps and focusing its attention on
"legitimate" questions such as the "extent and means of Jewish influence in
the Allied press." (38) Butz's citation of the Nazi press as an example of
high-level journalism, when all forms of public information in the Third
Reich were under absolute government control, is itself significant. So,
too, is his description of the question of Jewish control of the media as a
"legitimate" one. These are reliable indicators of his own worldview.
But references to the annihilation of the Jews were contained not only in
German documents and the testimony of war crimes defendants. As we have
seen in the discussion of Richard Harwood's work, the ICRC's report
specifically mentioned the "extermination" programs. It is in his treatment
of the report that Butz parts company with deniers such as Harwood and his
anonymous American counterpart. He did not deny that the ICRC made specific
reference to extermination, but he offered a series of explanations as to
why these references to "extermination" did not mean just that. Butz
insisted that the ICRC capitulated to external political pressures to
inject into the report an "anti-German bias." (39) The references to
extermination placated the Allies in general and the Russians in
particular. (40) Readers who rejected the notion that the ICRC was willing
to acquiesce in such tactics were offered another explanation. The ICRC,
just like some of the war crimes defendants, was a victim of the hoax.
Despite the humanitarian agency's experiences in Europe during the war, its
postwar thinking was contorted by the war crimes trials, with their forged
documents and spurious testimony. (41)
Finally the reader was warned that the ICRC report which described the aid
the relief agency had provided European Jewry was "self-serving." Butz
argued that it was typical of a charitable organization's publications to
exaggerate the efficacy of the help it rendered and that the ICRC may have
done less than the report claimed. In probably one of the more revealing
observations in the book, he consoled his readers: "We should not be
crushed if it were found that the Hungarian Jewish children or the Jews who
walked to Vienna, both of whom were aided by the Red Cross, actually
suffered a little bit more than might seem suggested by the Report." (42)
His contention that readers might be "crushed" to learn that Jewish
children suffered more than the report suggested they did offers a
frightening insight into Butz's sentiments.
Butz's treatment of the report reflected the flaws in his methodology. He
diminished its trustworthiness, accusing the authors of being political
pawns, duped by the hoax. However, when it served his purposes, this same
report became an authoritative source for determining that the Holocaust
had been a hoax. At one point the report mentioned that many of the
inhabitants of Theresienstadt had been "transfer[red] to Auschwitz." Given
the report's repeated references to extermination, there was little doubt
as to what that statement meant. But Butz postulated that because there
were no "sinister interpretations" placed on that remark, the Red Cross did
not think it meant anything notorious. For everyone but Butz and his cadre
of deniers, the words "transferred to Auschwitz" were sinister enough; no
further comment was necessary.
This attempt to give meaning to the absence of a specific statement is
reminiscent of an incident that occurred during the trial of Adolf Eichmann
when Pastor Heinrich Gruber, a Protestant minister, appeared as a witness.
During the war he had repeatedly attempted to persuade Eichmann to
ameliorate the treatment of the Jews. He had asked that unleavened bread be
sent to Hungarian Jews for Passover and had traveled to Switzerland to urge
his Christian friends to obtain immigration visas and entry permits for
Jews. He even tried to visit the concentration camp at Gurs in southern
France, where Jews were living in horrendous conditions. He was
incarcerated in a concentration camp for his efforts. At his trial Eichmann
tried to prove that his behavior during the war had been acceptable to the
German public, arguing that no one had "reproached" him for anything in the
performance of his duties. "Not even Pastor Gruber claims to have done so."
Eichmann acknowledged that Gruber had sought alleviation of Jewish
suffering but had "not actually object[ed] to the very performance of my
duties as such." (43)
Eichmann and Butz used the same tangled kind of thinking to try to make a
situation appear to be other than it was. Eichmann argued that because the
pastor had not specifically said "Stop the extermination," he approved of
it. So, too, Butz contended that because the ICRC report did not explicitly
mention extermination in relation to "transfer to Auschwitz," those words
meant nothing sinister.
Butz's treatment of the ICRC report was a prime example of how he tried to
play both ends against the middle, claiming that the ICRC officials had
been duped while at the same time citing their statement to prove that
nothing sinister happened at Auschwitz. As with his treatment of the media,
such internal contradictions are standard elements of his methodology. In
fact, it is possible for a portion of an individual's testimony or a
particular document to contain errors while other portions are correct.
Witnesses in a court of law often differ on the details surrounding an
event but agree on the essential element. It is axiomatic among attorneys,
prosecutors, and judges that human memory is notoriously bad on issues of
dimensions and precise numbers but very reliable on the central event.
Nevertheless, one of the deniers' favorite tactics is to charge that if a
defendant errs in one portion of his testimony, then all of it must be
dismissed as false.
But Butz engaged in a different tactic in relation to both the media and
the ICRC. He was not declaring that they had made occasional errors but
that they had to be rejected in their entirety as factual sources because
they themselves constituted "vast lie machine[s]" and political pawns. And
then he tried to use both these institutions as reliable judges of what
happened. Butz cannot have it both ways: Either they were telling the truth
about the essential elements or they were not. It cannot be logically
argued that when the ICRC spoke of "extermination" it was speaking as a
political pawn or a victim of the hoax, but when it spoke of "transfer to
Auschwitz" it was indicating that there was no Holocaust.
Butz advanced no independent source of evidence to corroborate his
conclusions. Scholars in any field (including electrical engineering), look
for data to verify their conclusions. Deniers consistently ignore existing
evidence that contradicts their claims. Many years ago Saint Anselm, a
prominent figure in the medieval church, spoke of "faith in search of
reason." Such is the work of the deniers. Their faith that the Holocaust
did not happen leads them to shape reason, facts, and history for their own
purposes.
Butz could not conclude his attempt to create his hoax theory without
addressing the question of the "missing" Jews. What happened to the Jews
whose immediate family say they were killed? He proposed various
explanations but offered no proof to support them. First, he scattered
these Jews in different places - most, he claimed, throughout the Soviet
Union. (44) In addition, at least 50,000 entered the United States. These
phantom Jews settled in New York City, where they were able to avoid
detection because there were already millions of Jews. Who "would have
noticed a hundred thousand more?" (45)
What, then, about all the "survivors" who claimed that their immediate
families had been killed? Butz suggested that they may have well been lying
and that others may not have been lying but mistaken in thinking their
families had been murdered when in fact they were really alive. (46) Where
then had they gone? They survived the war but did "not re-establish contact
with [their] prewar relatives." (47) While some survivors may have been
forbidden by the Soviet Union from contacting their families, Butz offered
"a more plausible motivation": Many of these survivors were in marriages
that were "held together by purely social and economic constraints." (48)
Those constraints were dissolved by the war. In the postwar period these
"lonely wives and husbands" found other partners and established
relationships that were "more valuable" than their previous ones. (49)
Abandoning their spouses, children, and other relatives, they started a new
life, becoming part of the hoax in order to justify their decision. (This
casual explanation of why these people deserted their families could be
dismissed as amusing were the topic not so serious.)
Obviously aware that this could not account for even a fraction of the
people who are missing, Butz expanded on how this part of the hoax
operated. One person was reported missing by a spouse, children, parents,
siblings, and in - laws. Consequently one Jew was repeatedly counted as a
victim. "The possibilities for accounting for missing Jews in this way are
practically boundless." (50) Assuring readers of the credibility of this
thesis, Butz observed that he too had "lost contact with a great many
former friends and acquaintances but I assume that nearly all are still
alive." (51) Even by Butz's own standards of what happened to the Jews -
they were forcibly moved from their homes, placed in ghettos, incarcerated
in work camps, separated from their families, and forced to live under such
difficult circumstances that one million died - such a statement was casual
and callous. Given the reality of what did happen, it was far more than
that.
Every author aspires to some form of immortality. Butz has achieved that.
His conclusions are posted on numerous computer bulletin boards, including
both mainstream ones as well as those associated with the Klan and
neo-Nazis. Armed vigilante groups cite Butz's conclusions to legitimate
their anti-semitism. (52) Fascists, racists, and radical extremists all
weave his conclusions into their worldview. Together with such other
infamous works as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it will serve as a
standard against which other implausible and prejudicial theories will be
measured.
NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Butz refused my request for an interview, Oct. 1992.
2. For additional information on the Liberty Lobby, see chapter 8.
3. Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, Calif.,
1976) (hereafter referred to as Hoax), p. 12.
4. Arthur Butz, "The International Holocaust Controversy," Journal of
Historical Review, vol. 1:1 (Spring 1980), pp. 5-22; "Holocaust
'Revisionism': A Denial of History," ADL Facts, vol. 26:2 (June 1980);
"Revisionism and the Right," reprinted in Jewish Echo of Glasgow, January
8, 1982, p. 6; Aronsfeld, "Hoax of the Century," Patterns of Prejudice,
Nov.-Dec. 1976, pp. 13ff.
5. Hoax, pp. 68, 239.
6. Ibid., pp. 107, 131, 171, 195, 223.
7. Ibid., p. 249.
8. Ibid., pp. 240, 287.
9. Ibid., p. 240.
10. Ibid., pp. 33, 89.
11. Ibid., p. 87.
12. Ibid., pp. 247-48.
13. At the same meeting Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi addressed the
group via television hook-up. In addition to announcing a $5,000,000 gift
to the group, he urged the "destruction of white America" and the formation
of a black army in America that would create a separate state. David
Moberg, "The Naysayer," North Shore, Sept. 1985, pp. 38ff. Youngstown
Jewish Times, Mar. 29, 1985.
14. Hoax, pp. 239, 287.
15. Ibid., pp. 93, 94, 00.
16. Ibid., pp. 29, 30, 45, 199, 287.
17. Ibid., p. 87.
18. Ibid.
19. The Jews were taken to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York.
20. Ibid., p. 173.
21. Ibid., p. 215.
22. Ibid., pp. 128, 150, 158, 195, 200.
23. Ibid., p. 73.
24. Ibid., p. 195.
25. The section immediately before this section of the speech reads as
follows: "I also want to make reference before you here, in complete
frankness, to a really grave matter. Among ourselves, this one it shall be
uttered quite frankly; but in public we will never speak of it. Just as we
did not hesitate on June 30,1934, to do our duty as ordered, to stand up
against the wall comrades who had transgressed and shoot them, so we have
never talked about this and never will. It was the tact which I am glad to
say is a matter of course to us that made us never discuss it among
ourselves, never talk about it. Each of us shuddered, and yet each one knew
that he would do it again if it were ordered and if it were necessary."
Davidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, pp. 132-33.
26. Hoax, p. 193.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., p. 19.
29. Ibid., p. 179.
30. Ibid., p. 181.
31. Ibid., p. 195.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 177.
34. Ibid., p. 158.
35. Ibid., p. 249.
36. Ibid., p. 87.
37. See Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming
of the Holocaust, 1933-1945 (New York, 1986).
38. Hoax, p. 89.
39. Hoax, p. 145.
40. Ibid., p. 142.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., p. 145.
43. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, 1963), p. 116.
44. Hoax, p. 217.
45. Ibid., p. 237.
46. Ibid., p. 242.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., pp. 242-43.
50. Ibid., p. 243.
51. Ibid.
52. Moberg, "The Naysayer," p. 43.
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review
Late in the summer of 1979 on the campus of a private technical school near
Los Angeles Airport, a relatively obscure organization, the Institute for
Historical Review (IHR), convened the first Revisionist Convention. At that
time the IHR, which had been founded the previous year, had garnered little
publicity. Most people who were aware of its existence dismissed it as a
conglomeration of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, philo-Germans, right-wing
extremists, anti-semites, racists, and conspiracy theorists. At the meeting
the director of the institute, a man known to those gathered there as Lewis
Brandon, announced that the IHR would pay a reward of $50,000 to anyone who
"could prove that the Nazis operated gas-chambers to exterminate Jews
during World War II." Brandon, whose real name (it would soon be learned)
was William David McCalden, subsequently admitted that the offer was never
a serious endeavor but was designed as the linchpin of the institute's
publicity seeking campaign: "The reward was a gimmick to attract
publicity." McCalden boasted to readers of the IHR's journal, the Journal
of Historical Review, that the plan was a great success. It generated
newspaper clippings that could be measured in "vertical inches." McCalden's
enthusiasm notwithstanding, the stunt actually ended up costing the IHR
dearly. (1)
McCalden, who in addition to Lewis Brandon used a series of other
pseudonyms, including Sondra Ross, David Berg, Julius Finkelstein, and
David Stanford, was born in 1951 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he
attended grade school and high school. (2) He then received a teaching
certificate from the University of London. He was known in England for his
neo-fascist and extremist involvements.
truth and memory
Front, McCalden edited anti-semitic and racist publications in England
prior to coming to the United States. An admitted racist, McCalden was
denied membership in the English National Union of Journalists because of
what was termed his "racist politics." When he appealed the union's
decision, McCalden acknowledged that he believed in writing that encouraged
"race discrimination" and called himself a "racialist." (3) He claimed to
have been converted to Holocaust denial by Richard Harwood's Did Six
Million Really Die? In 1978 he moved to California, where he initially
worked for the anti-semitic journal the American Mercury. According to
McCalden, when he saw that the magazine and every thing associated with it
were moribund, he helped found the IHR to spread the gospel of Holocaust
denial. (4) He served as IHR director from 1978 until 1981. [In the spring
of 1981 he left the IHR because of differences with the organization's
controller, Willis Carto. He spent most of the rest of his life until his
death in 1991 engaged in a vitriolic fight with Carto and the IHR.]
For the first year after the reward was announced the media ignored it and
virtually everything else associated with the IHR. McCalden decided that in
order to generate publicity, which was the real aim of the "contest,"
letters should be sent to a number of well-known survivors challenging them
to prove that Jews had been gassed in Auschwitz and offering them a reward
of $50,000 if they could do so. (5) The survivors received an application
form for the contest and a list of the rules, (6) which stipulated that
claimants were to attend the second Revisionist Convention at their own
expense to present their evidence. The decision of a tribunal of experts -
to be named by the IHR to determine the validity of the testimony and
evaluate the evidence presented - would be final. Claimants were asked for
their ethnic origins, the dates of their internment in any concentration
camp, and the exact date and location of any gassing operations they
witnessed. In addition they were to describe fully all the mechanics
involved in the gassing process they witnessed, and to provide any
"forensic evidence" that would support their claim, including diaries they
kept or photographs they took. (7)
One of the challenges was sent to Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz
whose mother and sisters had been gassed there and whose father and brother
were killed at a subcamp of Auschwitz called Jaworzno. Mermelstein, a
resident of Long Beach, California, had come to the IHR's attention because
he had written letters to various newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post,
decrying the institute and its activities. In its bulletin the IHR
published an open letter to Mermelstein, accusing him of "peddling the
extermination hoax."
McCalden also sent him a letter challenging him to participate in the
contest. The IHR director demanded a speedy response and warned Mermelstein
that if none was received the IHR would draw its "own conclusions" and
publicize his refusal to participate in the contest in the media. (8) The
implication was clear: Refusal to participate would be interpreted by the
IHR as an inability to substantiate the Holocaust as fact.
Various Jewish organizations with which Mermelstein consulted, including
the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, suggested that he ignore the IHR's
challenge as participating would only give the deniers the attention they
craved. He decided to proceed nonetheless and accepted the challenge.
Within the month he sent the IHR a notarized declaration of his experiences
at Auschwitz, along with additional names of other eyewitnesses and
scientific witnesses who could be made available to the tribunal judging
the matter. In his letter Mermelstein warned that if he received no
response by January 20, 1981, he would institute civil proceedings to
enforce the contract. On January 26, 1981, Mermelstein's lawyer again asked
the IHR for a "speedy resolution" of the matter. The ultimate resolution of
what would become known as the Mermelstein case was anything but speedy.
[In 1990 Mermelstein's story was made into a television movie starring
Leonard Nimoy.]
McCalden informed Mermelstein that Simon Wiesenthal had also filed a claim
and that the IHR would deal with his application first. (9) According to
Wiesenthal he had been offered $50,000 if he could prove that at least one
Jew had been gassed in a concentration camp and $25,000 if he could prove
that the Diary of Anne Frank was authentic. Wiesenthal agreed to
participate, which for the IHR constituted a publicity coup. In April 1981,
in a letter to subscribers of the Journal of Historical Review, McCalden
acknowledged that the contest was a trap into which they had hoped some
"naive zealot" would walk. He joyfully proclaimed that, in Wiesenthal, they
had attracted the "most eminently suitable mouse." (10) What McCalden did
not tell subscribers was that the "mouse" had already extricated himself
from the trap.
Wiesenthal had proposed that a judge of the California Supreme Court
preside over the case. The IHR rejected this proposal and insisted on its
right to designate its own tribunal to judge the proof. On March 4, 1981,
Wiesenthal informed "Brandon" that he was withdrawing because he believed
the IHR judges would be biased. In a signed statement Wiesenthal explained
that he was declining because he would not participate in an effort in
which one party served as both prosecutor and judge. (11)
Wiesenthal's suspicions were proved valid when Tom Marcellus, McCalden's
successor as IHR director, was deposed by Mermelstein's lawyer. The lawyer
asked Marcellus who would be selected to sit on the tribunal the IHR had
promised to convene to hear the evidence. He suggested that appropriate
members would be Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz and Ditlieb Felderer. All 3
were members of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Historical
Review. Butz had already made his mark with his The Hoax of the Twentieth
Century. At the time of the Mermelstein case, Faurisson had already been
convicted, put on probation, fined, and ordered to pay damages by a French
court for the libel of denying the fact of the Holocaust. Ditlieb Felderer,
an Austrian-born resident of Sweden who claims to be a Jew, published a
vitriolic anti-semitic publication, Jewish Information Bulletin, which, in
contrast to the Journal of Historical Review, did not even try to
camouflage its anti-semitic diatribes under a respectable veneer. [Among
the mailings distributed by his so-called Jewish Information Society is a
grossly distorted sexually explicit cartoon depicting male and female
elderly Jews. Both have large hooked noses. The woman, whose breasts droop
down to her knees, has stubble on her chin and is smoking a cigarette. The
man's penis, which is erect, is supported by a splint, and his scrotum
droops to his knees. The caption reads, "In spite of his feeble condition,
Dr. Mengele was able to rejuvenate him and he is now proudly showing off
his fine restoration to his beautiful, most anticipating and sensuous
looking sweetheart."] In 1983 he was sentenced to ten months in prison for
disseminating hate material. According to the prosecutor in the case,
Felderer had sent leaders of the European Jewish community mailings that
contained pieces of fat and locks of hair with a letter asking them if they
could identify the contents as Hungarian Jews gassed at Auschwitz. (12)
Undeterred by such considerations about the "judges" on February 19, 1981,
Mermelstein filed a lawsuit against the IHR, Carto, and Brandon/McCalden.
During pre-trial hearings the presiding judge, Thomas T. Johnson, took
judicial notice of the fact that Jews had been gassed to death in
Auschwitz, ruling that it was not "subject to dispute" but was "simply a
fact." After many lengthy delays Mermelstein won his case. In July 1985 the
Los Angeles Superior Court ordered the IHR to pay Mermelstein $90,000,
which included the $50,000 reward plus $40,000 for pain and suffering. The
defendants also agreed to sign a letter of apology to Mermelstein for the
emotional distress they had caused him and all other Auschwitz survivors.
The apology contained a verbatim repetition of the judicial notice
regarding Auschwitz. (13) (The Mermelstein case did not end there. On
August 7, 1985, in the course of a radio interview, Mermelstein said that
the IHR defendants had signed the judicial notice. On August 6, 1986, one
day before the statute of limitations expired, Willis Carto and the IHR
filed suit against Mermelstein, claiming that he had defamed them in the
interview. A year and a half later the defendants voluntarily dismissed the
suit. Mermelstein has subsequently filed action against the IHR and Carto
for malicious prosecution. That case remains in litigation.) (14) Despite
the financial loss and public ridicule the Mermelstein case caused the IHR,
there were those in the organization's leadership who continued to maintain
that, given the press coverage generated by the contest, it succeeded.
But the Mermelstein case was not the IHR's only public imbroglio during its
early years. It rented the University of California's Lake Arrowhead
Conference Center for its 1981 meeting. Apparently, when the IHR applied
for use of the facility, the university official in charge of renting the
conference center assumed that the IHR was a legitimate scholarly group.
Despite vigorous protests by faculty and students about the inappropriate
nature of the use of a University of California building, the
administration - with the support of Gov. Jerry Brown - claimed it could
not legally break the contract. When the university learned that McCalden
had used his Brandon pseudonym to sign the contract, it charged that
"deception was involved" and that this constituted legitimate grounds for
cancellation of its agreement with the IHR. At about the same time that the
university was trying to find a way to break its contract, McCalden wrote a
letter to IHR supporters admitting that the contest was a P.R. maneuver.
The university also justified its decision to cancel by citing McCalden's
admission that the contest was a "publicity gimmick." (15)
In many respects this case represented a detour from the IHR's primary
objective. The creation of the IHR had the same objective as Arthur Butz's
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: to move denial from the lunatic fringe
of racial and anti-semitic extremism to the realm of academic
respectability. The IHR was designed to win scholarly acceptance for
deniers, which is why it was so anxious to use the University of California
facility. Although the IHR and its followers proclaim that Holocaust denial
is heir to a genuine intellectual legacy, (16) analysis of the institute,
its publications and activities, and the people most closely associated
with it throws into stark relief the fact that, notwithstanding its claims
to intellectual legitimacy, the IHR is part of a continuum of extreme
anti-semitism and racism. Were its publications and activities not
enveloped in the aura of research, they would be dismissed out of hand for
what they truly are: fanatical expressions of neo-Nazism. The institute's
anti-Israel, racist, and anti-semitic attitude is reflected in virtually
all its activities. The organizational form the IHR adopted - a research
institute - and its outward trappings may have been innovative but its
agenda was not: to rehabilitate national socialism, inculcate anti-semitism
and racism, and oppose democracy.
>From the outset the IHR has camouflaged its actual goal by engaging in
activities that typify a scholarly institution. It sponsors annual
gatherings that are structured as academic convocations and publishes the
Journal of Historical Review, which imitates the serious and high brow
language of academia. Though virtually all its activities are concerned
with Holocaust denial, the institute depicts itself as engaged in a far
broader and loftier quest. It claims that its goals are to align
twentieth-century history with the facts and expose the historical totems
that are manipulated by secret vested interests. Primary among them are
myths about previous wars. Like virtually every denier before it, the IHR
professed that it was motivated by no animus toward any other group but
only by a "deep dedication to the cause of truth in history." (17)
In response to the accusation that Holocaust deniers are intent on
reclaiming national socialism's reputation, the IHR protested that it was
not interested in resurrecting any regime. Its interest was "rehabilitating
the truth" because, unlike establishment historians, it was willing to
confront the "shadowy suppressors" of historical truth. (18) Only through
the exposure of historical myths that have been imposed on the United
States could the country be prevented from being "railroaded" into one
conflagration after another, particularly in the Middle East. (19) These
remain the IHR's claims; however, the reality is quite different.
Despite its claims to a total revision of all history, the IHR focuses
almost exclusively on World War II and the Holocaust. It is, they claim the
"most distorted period" in history and the event most often used as a
"historical club to bully public opinion." David McCalden was explicit
about precisely what it was public opinion was being bullied into
believing. In a letter urging people to subscribe to the Journal of
Historical Review, McCalden described it as a step that could not only save
every American family hundreds of dollars in taxes but deliver the United
States from the threat of a disastrous nuclear war. McCalden spelled out
how a simple act of subscribing to a journal could accomplish these lofty
goals:
Each year a foreign government literally steals millions of dollars from
you and other U.S. taxpayers. This thief is the corrupt, bankrupt
government of Israel and its army of paid and unpaid agents in the United
States - particularly in Washington. And the theft is perpetrated primarily
through the clever use of the Greatest Lie in all history - the lie of the
"Holocaust." (20) [The Israel connection is a constant refrain in IHR
material.]
For the IHR debunking the "so-called 'Holocaust'" was far more than an act
of rewriting the historical record - it had critical policy implications.
Until the Holocaust was revealed to be a hoax, the future of the United
States would not be secure. According to the IHR, exposing the truth about
the Holocaust also exposes the secret group that controls much of America's
military and foreign policy. Relying on traditional anti-semitic motifs,
the IHR accused this "superwealthy" and "tiny segment" of the population of
being unconcerned about the "damage and distortion" it caused the culture
at large. This group - a thinly veiled reference to Jews - control the
media and use it to flaunt the Holocaust as the main rationale for
"America's doglike devotion to the illegal state of Israel." (21)
Tom Marcellus, McCalden's successor as IHR director, broadened this line of
argument. The Holocaust lie not only served as a "justification for the
commission of genocide by Israel but also affected the rights of American
citizens in their own country. Americans' constitutional guarantee of
freedom of speech was suppressed in order to protect the interests of
"Israel-firsters." But it was not just the United States that was
threatened. The "very existence of Germany and the Western Culture" were
also in the balance. (22)
Marcellus revealed another of the IHR's true agenda items with his warning
that acceptance of the Holocaust myth resulted in a radical degeneration of
accepted standards of human behavior and a lowering of the "self-image of
White people." These racist tendencies, which the IHR has increasingly kept
away from the public spotlight, are part of the extremist tradition to
which it is heir. (23)
The IHR's ideology can be directly linked to its founder and primary
supporter, Willis A. Carto, who was also the founder and treasurer of the
Liberty Lobby, a well-established ultra-right organization that has a
direct connection with other anti-semitic publications, including the
American Mercury, Washington Observer Newsletter, and Noontide Press. Only
the most superficial attempt has been made by either the IHR or any of
these publications to camouflage the connection between them. In fact, at
one point the IHR, Noontide Press, and the American Mercury all shared the
same post-office box. (24) This anti-semitic network is known for its
anti-Israel publications, many of which contain details of a "World Zionist
conspiracy." In some of them Israel is referred to as a "bastard state."
(25)
Carto was born in 1926 in Indiana. After serving in the army he attended
college and moved to San Francisco to work for a finance company as a debt
collector. For a short while he was associated with the radical, right-wing
John Birch Society, until he had a falling out with its founder, Robert
Welch. According to a former editor at the Liberty Lobby, Carto's
anti-semitic activities were too extreme even for Welch, a known
anti-semite, who personally fired him. (26) In 1958 he organized a
"pressure group for patriotism," which eventually emerged as the Liberty
Lobby. A former chairman of the Liberty Lobby's Board of Policy
acknowledged that by the 1980s its annual income was close to $4,000,000.
The lobby's anti-semitic, anti-Zionist newspaper, Spotlight, claims a
circulation of more than 330,000. When it reached this goal in 1981 it
celebrated by holding a gala reception at the National Press Club in
Washington.
The Liberty Lobby has been described as so extreme that it is "estranged
from even the fringes of the far right." (27) The investigative columnist
Drew Pearson described Carto as a Hitler "fan" and the Liberty Lobby as
"infiltrated by Nazis who revere the memory of Hitler." The Wall Street
Journal is also among those who have identified Carto and the Liberty Lobby
as anti-semitic. (28)
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) believes Carto to be the most important
and powerful professional anti-semite in the United States. According to
the ADL, the Liberty Lobby stands at the helm of a major publishing and
organizational complex that for more than two decades has propagated
anti-semitism and racism in the United States. (29) The Wall Street Journal
and the ADL are not alone in their assessment. When Carto and the Liberty
Lobby sued the Wall Street Journal for calling them anti-semites, the
District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against them and
concluded that it would be difficult to imagine a case in which the
evidence of anti-semitism was "more compelling." (30)
Some of the strongest condemnations of Carto and the Liberty Lobby have
come from conservative and right-wing political groups in the United
States. Scott Stanley, the managing editor of American Opinion, the
publication of the John Birch Society, believes Willis Carto responsible
for preserving anti-semitism as a movement in the United States. In 1981
William F. Buckley described the Liberty Lobby as "a hotbed of
anti-semitism" centered around the "mysterious" Carto, who "regularly
poisons the wells of political discourse." (31) The conservative weekly
Human Events condemned the Liberty Lobby as an organization that exploited
racist and anti-semitic sentiments and Carto as someone who has long
maintained sympathy for Hitler's Germany.
Buckley's National Review, which accused Carto of always having "his eyes
on Jewry," warned that it was not only Carto's anti-semitism that was
dangerous but his philosophy of pure power, which was alien and
fundamentally hostile to the American tradition. (32) The conservative
columnist R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr., editor in chief of the American Spectator,
condemned the lobby as an organization that always attracted a "colorful
collection of bigots and simpletons" who make an art of applying conspiracy
theories to every problem that vexed the public. (33) Not surprisingly
Carto denied these charges. Examination of what he has written, said, and
done, however, reveals otherwise.
Willis Carto's political vision is encapsulated by 3 things: contempt and
revulsion for Jews, a belief in the need for an absolutist government that
would protect the "racial heritage" of the United States, and a conviction
that there exists a conspiracy designed to bring dire harm to the Western
world. The articles, journals, and books brought out by the Carto nexus of
publications consistently focus on predictable themes: the ignoble Allied
treatment of Nazi Germany; Jewish responsibility for the ills of the
Western world; the grotesque misdeeds of the "bastard" state of Israel; and
the existence of a conspiracy perpetrated by a "high elite," consisting
mainly of people with Jewish names, to control American foreign and
financial policy. Jews besmirch Germany's good name and support the
Communists' attempt to impose their system on the Western world. At the
heart of every serious problem facing the United States - civil rights,
energy, defense, racial integration - are Jews manipulating matters for
their own benefit.
Nevertheless, the Jews are not Carto's sole target. Carto believes that at
the root of civilization's problems are the "Jews and Negroes." (34) In
1955, in a letter to the racist author Earnest Sevier Cox, Carto bemoaned
the fact that so few Americans were concerned about the "inevitable
niggerfication of America." (35) Racial purity is the lens through which
much of Carto's view of the world is viewed. In 1962 he advocated a racial
view of history and argued that racial equality would be easier to accept
if there were "no Negroes around to destroy the concept." (36) Carto's
sentiments are reminiscent of the German right wing's fear of
"foreignization," (Uberfrendung). In an attempt to protect the United
States from what Carto considered the danger posed to it by African
Americans, he organized the Joint Council for Repatriation which was
designed to return all blacks to Africa. Shortly before the creation of the
Liberty Lobby in 1957 Carto predicted to Judge Tom P. Brady, a member of
the Mississippi Supreme Court and founder of the anti-civil-rights White
Citizens Council, that the lobby would be a tremendous asset to the
repatriation scheme. In a fashion that would become typical of his
organizational methodology, Carto was intent on keeping the link between
the two secret: "You can see that there must never be an obvious connection
between the two, for if there is, either would kill the other off." (37)
But the Joint Council for Repatriation did not envision just the
repatriation of African Americans. It also aimed to deliver the strongest
imaginable blow to the power of organized Jewry. (38) During World War II,
Carto argued, it had been the Jews' influence on American policy that was
responsible for blinding the West to the benefits of an alliance with
Hitler. Treacherous Jewish "propaganda and lies" had led to Hitler's
defeat, which for Carto constituted the "defeat of Europe. And of America."
But for Carto the danger had not been limited to World War II: "If Satan
himself had tried to create a permanent disintegration and force for the
destruction of nations, he could have done no better than to invent the
Jews." (39) In a memo Carto expressed it even more succinctly: The Jews
were "Public Enemy No. 1." (40)
truth and memory
Holocaust denial can be traced to Imperium - The Philosophy of History and
Politics, by Francis Parker Yockey. The book, dedicated to Adolf Hitler,
preached that the future greatness of the West would be modeled on the
German "revolution" of 1933. Yockey, who has been described by some
researchers as "America's Hitler," was born in 1917 in Chicago. After
attending 5 different colleges, he graduated from Notre Dame Law School.
(4l) He enlisted in the army in 1942 and went AWOL for an extended period
shortly thereafter. He was eventually given a medical discharge from the
army in 1943 on the grounds that he suffered from "dementia praecox,
paranoid type." According to the army report, he revealed marked delusions
of persecution, had auditory hallucinations, and involved prominent people
in his delusional system. (42) In 1945, after the war, he took a job as a
legal researcher for the War Crimes Tribunal in Germany. He left that post
in less than a year because of what he claimed was the tribunal's unfair
treatment of the Nazi leaders awaiting trial. He subsequently went to
Ireland, where he wrote Imperium. In 1952 his passport was revoked in
absentia by the State Department, and by 1954 he was identified as a U.S.
agent for a neo-Nazi, Rudolph Aschenauer. (43) After writing Imperium he
traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Egypt spreading
its message. He was arrested in 1960 when he was discovered to be holding 3
different passports with 3 different names. (His suit case had been lost by
an airline company. When it was retrieved, airport officials opened it to
discover the identity of its owner. Instead they found the passports.)
While in prison awaiting trial, Yockey took a cyanide pill and committed
suicide. His last visitor, less than a week earlier, was Carto.
In Imperium Yockey called for an absolute imperial system, an imperium of
Western Aryan nations united by the principles of Hitlerian national
socialism. Yockey envisaged a time when power would no longer be held by
individuals and all enterprises would be under public control and
ownership. The regime Yockey proposed envisioned the death knell of
democracy. He called for an age of absolute politics in which elections
would become old-fashioned until they ceased altogether.
It is the book's anti-semitic ideology that harks back most directly to
national socialism. "The Jew is spiritually worn out," according to Yockey.
"He can no longer develop. He can produce nothing in the sphere of thought
or research. He lives solely with the idea of revenge on the nations of the
white European-American race." (45) Obsessed with the power of the Jews,
Yockey warned that they were bound to destroy the West. Imperium is filled
with descriptions of conspiracies against both the West and the United
States. It christened those orchestrating these conspiracies as the
"Culture-Distorters." Included in their ranks were racial and cultural
misceganists, egalitarians, believers in human rights and participatory
democracy, and "the rearguard in the West of the fulfilled Arabian Culture,
the Church-State-Nation-People-Race of the Jew." (46) In 1949 Yockey wrote
the "Proclamation of London," which, in addition to calling for the
reinstatement of national socialism, advocated the expulsion of the Jews by
the nations of Europe. (In a sworn deposition in 1979, in a Liberty Lobby
lawsuit against the ADL, Carto acknowledged under oath that he agreed with
the tenets of Yockey's proclamation. (47)
But Yockey went beyond even this most extreme anti-semitic rhetoric. Twenty
years prior to the formation of the IHR, Yockey laid out the essential
elements of Holocaust denial. He attributed the myth of the Holocaust to
the culture-distorters' claim that 6,000,000 Jews had been killed in
European camps. Not only had they made this claim, Yockey charged, but they
had woven a web of propaganda that was technically quite complete:
"Photographs" were supplied in millions of copies. Thousands of the people
who had been killed published accounts of their experiences in these camps.
Hundreds of thousands more made fortunes in post-war black markets.
"Gaschambers" that did not exist were photographed and a "gasmobile" was
invented to titillate the mechanically minded. (48)
Yockey's book might have had little if any impact if not for the fact that
in 1962 Noontide Press reissued it with a 35-page introduction by Carto in
which he expressed profound support for Yockey's plans for world rule and
contended that in order to obtain the necessary political power "all else
must be temporarily sacrificed." (49) Noontide has kept the book in
circulation since then.
During the late 1960s Carto participated in the creation of a number of
political groups to advance his agenda of winning control of America's
right wing. The United Republicans for America, which was designed to win
control of the Republican party, conducted a direct mail campaign for G.
Gordon Liddy's congressional race in New York. (Liddy would shortly
thereafter become infamous for his role in the Watergate break-in.) He also
helped found Youth for Wallace, which, after supporting George Wallace's
presidential aspirations, became the National Youth Alliance (NYA).
Officially the goals of the NYA were to oppose drugs, black power, the
left-wing Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and American involvement
in foreign wars. But another item was on the organization's agenda.
According to former officials of the organization, who were drummed out by
Carto when they protested, the NYA advocated Francis Yockey's philosophy.
Paperback copies of Imperium were printed for NYA members to sell. An NYA
in formational letter acknowledged that the organization's political
approach was based on the philosophy of Yockey's "monumental Imperium."
(50) At a 1968 meeting of the NYA in Pittsburgh at which Nazi paraphernalia
were evident and Nazi songs sung, Carto praised Yockey's ideas and
described his own plan to amass as much political power as possible within
an array of institutions. Anticipating a national swing to the right, he
aimed to capture the leadership of as many conservative groups as possible.
A former Liberty Lobby staffer who hosted its radio show testified in court
that Carto often indicated that what this country needed was a "right-wing
dictatorship." (51) Because leaders of the "legitimate right," such as
William F. Buckley, constituted an obstacle to his plan to win control of
the conservative right Carto labeled them with the most extreme term of
opprobrium he could conjure up: "ADL agents." (52) The publications linked
to Carto and his organizational orbit disseminated plans for this
right-wing dictatorship and called for active suppression of those who
would conspire against it.
Among the publications under Carto's direct control was the American
Mercury. [In 1979 Carto turned control of the American Mercury over to Ned
Touchstone, who had been on the Board of Policy of the Liberty Lobby at the
same time as he served as editor of the journal published by the White
Citizens Councils.] Though the journal had begun its descent into
anti-semitica under its previous owners, under Carto's tutelage, which
began in 1966, the pace of that descent quickened. By the time of the
creation of the IHR in 1978 the American Mercury, which had been under the
Carto aegis for thirteen years, was considered one of the leading
anti-semitic publications in the United States. (53) It functioned as a
cheerleader for Holocaust deniers. An editorial in the American Mercury
lauded the IHR because it would function as an antidote to "the
Anti-Defamation League's campaign to prod public discussion of the
'Holocaust.'" (54)
But American Mercury was not the only publication in the Carto orbit to
disseminate these views. The Liberty Lobby's newsletter, Liberty Letter,
echoed the same themes. It praised Imperium as a major work of philosophy
and ranted about the "aggressive minority" that tightly controlled the
so-called free press. This "alien-minded and America-last group," was the
"ruthless Zionist pressure machine." The Liberty Letter claimed to have
uncovered thousands of undercover "Zionist 'fixers,' lobbyists and
Leftists" prowling the corridors of Congress and converging on the White
House. (55) In 1975 the lobby's Liberty Letter, whose circulation was more
than 100,000, was subsumed by the Spotlight, a tabloid news paper that
regularly featured articles on Bible analysis and the putative efforts of
the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission to dominate
the nation. It offered its readers tips on avoiding taxes and fighting the
IRS. The paper attacked Martin Luther King, Jr., as a Communist and praised
members of the Ku Klux Klan. It has memorialized Gordon Kahl, the leader of
the right-wing-extremist group Posse Comitatus, who killed 3 federal
marshals and wounded a number of others before he was killed in 1983 in a
shootout with federal agents.
These publications find conspiracies everywhere. In 1976, shortly before
the presidential election, the paper charged that Jimmy Carter was directly
linked with the international cocaine trade. (56) (The Federal Election
Commission fined the Liberty Lobby for publishing this unsubstantiated
story so close to the election.) In 1979 Spotlight's lead article described
how a global elite planned to topple world governments. The paper claimed
that its reporter had attended an international conference in Austria at
which such plans were discussed. In truth, no one from the Spotlight
attended this legitimate conference, and the re porter who wrote the story
admitted to falsifying it. (57)
But the main focus of Spotlight's attention has been exposing what it calls
the "Jew-Zionist" international bankers' conspiracy designed to cause pain
and suffering for dedicated, honest, and hardworking Americans. Though the
tabloid finds conspiracies in many places, generally they are linked to
Israel and its supporters' successful efforts to control Congress and
dictate American policy. (58) During the 1979 gas shortage the paper
informed readers that as a result of a secret deal between President Carter
and Prime Minister Begin "your gas [was going] to Israel." (59) According
to Spotlight, these Zionists do not work alone; cliques of bankers, Red
Chinese, and American politicians, including Sen. Jesse Helms and the late
Congressman Larry McDonald, were all part of the pro-Israel conspiracy
against the United States. (60) Since a major aspect of that conspiracy was
the Holocaust hoax Holocaust denial has also become a regular staple of
Spotlight. The paper, which has identified Carto as the force behind the
IHR, has devoted entire issues to Holocaust denial. (61) The paper has
frequently reported on the IHR's annual meetings and on their retrieval of
history from the "memory hole." (62) A 15-page supplement in the December
24, 1979, issue was completely dedicated to denial articles. Reiterating
familiar denial themes, Spotlight has claimed that the bodies at Auschwitz
were cremated as a hygienic measure to control typhoid, that the so-called
gas chambers were actually life-saving delousing showers, that the Diary of
Anne Frank was a propaganda hoax, that the six million number was used to
entice the United Nations to support the creation of the "illegal state of
Israel," and that professional Zionist "survivors" planned to extort
$5,000,000 from America. It also touted the IHR's contest. The front page
of the "Holocaust Supplement" carried the following headlines:
WERE SIX MILLION JEWS EXTERMINATED? FAMOUS GAS CHAMBER VICTIMS LIVING WELL.
NEED $50,000? FIND A HOLOCAUST VICTIM. TORTURE USED TO MAKE GERMANS
"CONFESS". CHASING THE "WAR CRIMINALS" FOR PROFIT. (63)
In 1981 a two-page article bore the following headline:
GATHERING OF LIBERATORS MAY EXPOSE ALLIED WAR ATROCITIES; BELIEVERS IN THE
HOLOCAUST HAVE INVITED THE LIBERATORS OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS TO GATHER
FOR A CONVENTION. BUT TO SHOW UP WOULD BE TANTAMOUNT TO ADMITTING HAVING
MURDERED INNOCENT GERMAN GUARDS. (64)
The nature of Spotlight's readership can be gauged to some degree by the
contents of its classified advertising section. There are ads for poetry,
laetrile prescriptions, dating services for patriotic Christians, and
devices for dramatically increasing a car's gasoline mileage (these devices
have supposedly been kept off the market in a conspiracy against the
American consumer). In addition, its classified section regularly offers
Nazi paraphernalia, gun silencer parts, bullet-proof vests, clandestine
mail drops, and instructions for manufacturing false identification. (65)
The Noontide Press has also participated in spreading the message espoused
by Yockey, Carto, the Liberty Lobby, and the IHR. Among the books listed in
the 1992 Noontide Press catalog was Yockey's Imperium. The catalog
described Yockey as a brilliant young American who "saw through the
Holocaust propaganda as early as 1948." Also offered for sale were the
standard works on Holocaust denial, many of which were published by
Noontide, among them the Journal of Historical Review, Butz's The Hoax of
the Twentieth Century, and Harwood's Six Million Lost and Found. The
catalog also featured the anti-semitic standards - Henry Ford's The
International Jew and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Included
as well was a listing of books on "Race and Culture," many of them
described by the catalog as focusing on the inherent dangers of racial
integration. The Testing of Negro Intelligence, by Travis Osborne and Frank
C. J. McCurk, was described as a searching evaluation of black performance
on intelligence tests from 1966 to 1980 whose findings "give little comfort
to egalitarians." Race and Reason: A Yankee View, by Carleton Putnam, was
touted as the "intelligent reader's guide to the pitfalls of Black-White
integration from the White standpoint." The sequel, Race and Reality,
demonstrated how "egalitarians" have used botched science and faulty
scholarship to obscure "biological facts about racial differences." (66)
Noontide not only offered these racist publications in its catalog, but it
also tried to win subscribers for a tabloid newspaper, the White Student.
According to Noontide the paper was designed to help students on campus
"fight back." It was an antidote to being brainwashed by Marxist teachers
and debilitated "by the rigors of survival in our integrated schools." (67)
In their espousal of anti-semitism, racism, and extremism, these
publications are no different from a variety of similar offerings
worldwide. In fact, the articles in all of them are mind-numbingly similar.
However, what is particularly disturbing about this group of publications
is their interlocking network and growing source of funds. (68)
In 1989 the director of the IHR protested that neither he nor any other
member of the staff could offer advice as to the merits of other "patriotic
movements" or right-wing groups. The IHR, he claimed, "pleads agnosticism"
concerning the goals or methods of any group whose objective was not the
"revision of history." (69) This was an attempt by the IHR to maintain its
facade as an independent research entity dedicated to the exposure of
historical falsehoods. Despite its pronouncement, the connection between
the Institute for Historical Review, the American Mercury, and Noontide
Press had already been officially established. In 1980 Carto's wife,
Elisabeth, acting on behalf of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom,
filed an application in Torrance, California, for a business license for
the IHR. The institute, according to the papers filed, was to operate as
the Noontide Press / Institute for Historical Review. The mailing address
listed on the application for the IHR was identical with those of the
American Mercury and Noontide Press. Some of the members of the management
of the American Mercury were also officers of the Noontide Press /
Institute for Historical Review. Former staffers, including David McCalden,
have testified under oath that Carto had "ultimate authority" over all
decisions made by the IHR. (70)
The courts have also found the IHR, Noontide Press, Spotlight, the Liberty
Lobby, and Willis Carto intimately connected. In 1988 the United States
Court of Appeals rejected the attempt of the IHR, Noontide Press, and the
Legion for Survival of Freedom to present themselves as unrelated entities.
Justice Robert Bork, in his decision dismissing Carto's attempt to sue the
Wall Street Journal for labeling him an anti-semite, stated that Carto had
"specifically designed the Liberty Lobby/Legion/Noontide/IHR network so as
to divorce Liberty Lobby's name from those of its less reputable
affiliates." (71) One of the main tactics the Carto network uses to keep
critics at bay has been the lawsuit. It has filed numerous lawsuits
throughout the United States charging defamation. The Court of Appeals
noted that Carto and his nexus of organizations have consistently used the
libel complaint as a "weapon to harass." (72)
The IHR's early loss in the Mermelstein case did not stop it from
proceeding with its objectives of spreading denial, anti-semitism, and
racism. One of the ways it has tried to give credence to its claim that it
is a research institute with a broad historical agenda is by publishing
articles in the Journal of Historical Review on topics that have no
connection with World War II or the Final Solution. David McCalden, in a
letter sent to students on various campuses, argued that history had long
been orchestrated by those who were "willing to parrot.. just what the
establishment wants them to," and that the IHR was dedicated to ending
this. (73) The spring 1982 edition of the Journal of Historical Review
contained an article by Harry Elmer Barnes entitled "Revisionism and the
Promotion of Peace," in which Barnes argued that revisionism was dedicated
to the "honest search for historical truth and the discrediting of
misleading myths that are a barrier to peace and goodwill among nations."
Revisionists, as Barnes described them, were engaged in an effort to
correct the historical record through the collection of more complete
historical facts in "a more calm political atmosphere and [with] a more
objective attitude." (74)
The Journal enumerated a series of instances other than the Holocaust in
which the historical record had also been manipulated. In need of a
"revisionist" analysis were the American Revolution (the policies of the
British had not been that harsh), the War of 1812 (Madison was not pushed
into war but made the decision based on his own convictions), the German
invasion of Belgium in World War I (the British would have done the same
thing if Germany had not done it first), and Theodore Roosevelt's role in
the Spanish-American war (he ordered an attack on the Spanish fleet as part
of his American imperialist and expansionist philosophy). (75) As was often
the case with revisionist arguments, the issues raised had a kernel of
truth to them. But the deniers proceeded not only to distort that kernel
but ascribed to it a conspiratorial nature - premeditated distortions
introduced for political ends. By offering alternative conclusions in each
of these cases the Journal apparently believed it could lull its readers
into accepting that revisions were also needed in relation to the
Holocaust. This was the objective of an article on Civil War
prisoner-of-war camps. The author, Mark Weber, claimed that false reports
about Union prisoners' suffering in Southern camps prompted the North to
order similar abuse for prisoners in its "concentration camps." Weber's
reliance on Sonderbehandlung (special treatment), the euphemistic term the
Nazis used for what was to happen to the Jews once they were taken to the
death camps in the East, was designed to make a link in the reader's mind
with the Holocaust. Exaggerations about conditions in the South multiplied
with the passage of time, as former prisoners wrote books they claimed
documented their experiences.
Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville, the most notorious camp in the
South, was executed by the United States because the inmates imagined him
"the cruel and inhuman author of all their sufferings." Weber described a
proposal that Andersonville be maintained as a permanent reminder of the
war as "shades of Dachau" and maintained (correctly) that many prisoners on
both sides had died but prisoners had not been deliberately killed. It was
"bad management," particularly in the South, which caused such extensive
death and misery. In the main, Weber's article followed fairly
well-established historical grounds; only his conclusion revealed his true
agenda. He drew a direct parallel between the Civil War and World War II -
in both wars the victors "hysterically distorted" the conditions in the
camps and branded the defeated adversary as "intrinsically evil." In
Weber's view: "All the suffering and death in the camps of the side that
lost the war was ascribed to a deliberate policy on the part of an
inherently atrocious power. The victorious powers demanded 'unconditional
surrender' and arrested the defeated government leaders as 'criminals.'"
(76)
There was one major difference, Weber insisted: "The Civil War rendition of
'Sonderbehandlung' never achieved the sinister notoriety of its Second
World War counterpart." Nonetheless, Weber continued, in both wars the
political system of the vanquished was considered to be not "merely
different but morally depraved," and the ethics of the side that lost the
war were judged "in terms of [the losers'] readiness to atone for past sins
and embrace the social system of the conquerors." (77) This argument harked
back to a basic tenet of Holocaust denial: War is evil; no side can claim
the moral upper hand, and defeated parties are regularly accused by the
victors of having committed terrible misdeeds. Weber's immoral equivalency
in terms of treatment of the defeated enemy was part of the deniers' effort
to cast the "myth of the Holocaust" as part of a long-established pattern
of the distortion of history for political ends.
truth and memory
World War II. Another issue of prime importance to them is the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. Continuing the battle that had been begun by the
revisionists after World War II ended, an entire issue of the Journal of
Historical Review was devoted to this topic. (78) Its explicit objective
was to portray Roosevelt as having known that the attack was imminent and
having allowed it to take place unhindered so that America would be forced
to enter the war.
The deniers' obsession with Pearl Harbor has a dual objective: to
demonstrate Roosevelt's and, by association, the American government's
duplicity. It is also designed to dispel the Allied and "court historians'"
claim that World War II was a moral as opposed to a power struggle. The
revisionists believe that if they can demonstrate that this war was at its
heart a conflagration like all others, they can argue that any unique
accusations of guilt or special war crimes trials are invalid. In this case
the revisionists established a straw man in order to knock him down. The
United States entered the war because it was attacked by Japan. Japan's
ally, Germany, then declared war on the United States. But proving that the
Allies were motivated by the age-old quest for "power and advantage" is far
subtler and less distasteful than creating an immoral equivalence of the
gulag versus the death camps or Auschwitz versus the bombing of Dresden.
(79)
Despite its attempts to portray itself as a respectable organization, the
Institute for Historical Review and its subsidiary publications and
associated organizations are in essence nothing but part of a larger effort
to further goals remarkably similar to those articulated by national
socialism. Just as Holocaust denial must be regarded as not just an attack
on a portion of history that is of particular importance to Jews but as a
threat to all of history and to reasoned discourse, so too the IHR must not
be seen as an entity whose only interest is attacking the historicity of
the Holocaust. The tradition to which it is heir and the activities of
those who are part of its amorphous orbit indicate that it poses a far
greater danger.
NOTES TO CHAPTER EIGHT
1. Lewis Brandon to Subscribers, Supplement to Journal of Historical
Review, Apr. 16, 1981.
2. Deposition of William David McCalden, aka Lewis Brandon, Mel Mermelstein
v. Institute for Historical Review, et al., Superior Court of the State of
California, No. C356542 (hereafter cited as McCalden Deposition), vol. 1,
Jan. 16, 1984, pp. 8, 37.
3. Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1981, part I, p. 3.
4. David McCalden, "A Few Facts About the Institute for Historical Review
[which they'd rather you didn't know]." (Manhattan Beach, Calif., n.d.).
5. McCalden Deposition, vol. II, Feb. 8, 1984, pp. 272ff.
6. Letter of IHR to All Interested Parties Intending to Claim $50,000
Reward, Institute of Historical Review, Torrance, Calif., n.d.
7. Questionnaire and Claim for $50,000 Reward, Institute for Historical
Review, Torrance, Calif., n.d.
8. Lewis Brandon to Mel Mermelstein, November 20, 1980, cited in
Declaration of William Cox regarding the Urgency of Proceedings in Mel
Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review, et al., Superior Court of
California, Case No. C 356542 (hereafter cited as Declaration of William
Cox), Aug. 10, 1981, p. 16.
9. Declaration of William Cox, p. 18.
10. Brandon to Subscribers; Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1981.
11. Signed statement by Simon Wiesenthal, May 4, 1981.
12. Jewish Telegraphic Agency Weekly News Digest, May 13, 1983.
13. Statement of Record and Letter of Apology to Mel Mermelstein, signed by
G. G. Baumen, Attorney for Legion for Survival of Freedom, Institute for
Historical Review, Noontide Press, and Elisabeth Carto, and Mark F. Von
Esch, Attorney for Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto, July 24, 1985.
14. Appellant's Opening Brief, Mel Mermelstein v. Legion for the Survival
of Freedom, etc., et al., May 4, 1992 (hereafter cited as Appellant's
Opening Brief, Mel Mermelstein v. Legion), pp. 6ff.
15. Declaration of William Cox, p. 20.
16. Paul L. Berman, "Gas Chamber Games: Crackpot History and the Right to
Lie," Village Voice, June 10-16, 1981, pp. 1, 37-43.
17. IHR Newsletter (Oct. 1988), p. 7.
18. IHR Newsletter (Apr. 1989), p. 1.
19. Letter to students from Lewis Brandon on IHR letterhead, n.d.
20. Lewis Brandon, Director of I H R, to Friends of IHR, n. d. (apparently
from winter 1980). "Brandon" was so obsessed with the power of the
"Zionists" that he claimed that the symbols on grocery products denoting
that they were kosher indicated that the company had "paid a Zionist to
'bless' the product." IHR Newsletter (Feb. 15, 1981), p. 3.
21. Declaration of William Cox, p. 3; IHR Newsletter (Feb. 1989), p. 7.
22. IHR Newsletter (Feb. 1989), p. 7.
23. Tom Marcellus, Director IHR, to Revisionist Friends, July 1982, n.p.
24. "Holocaust 'Revisionism': A Denial of History," ADL Facts, vol. 26:2
(June 1980), p. 4.
25. For background on Spotlight and the way certain members of Congress
have chosen to cooperate with it, see Mark Hosenball, "Spotlight on the
Hill," New Republic, Sept. 9, 1981, pp. 13 14.
26. Joseph Trento and Joseph Spear, "How Nazi Nut Power Has Invaded Capitol
Hill," True, Nov. 1969, p. 39.
27. Hosenball, "Spotlight on the Hill," p. 13.
28. Jason Berry, "Carto's Day in Court," Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 14,
1991, pp. 1-D, 4-D.
29. "Liberty Lobby and the Carto Network of Hate," ADL Facts, vol. 27:2
(Winter 1982), p. 7.
30. Liberty Lobby, Inc., v. Dow Jones 6 Co., Inc., 638 F. Supp. 1149, 1152
n. 5 (D.D.C. 1986), aff'd., 838 F.2d 1287 (D.C. Cir 1988) cert. denied, 488
U.S. 825 (1988), cited in Appellant's Opening Brief, Mel Mermelstein v.
Legion, p. 5.
31. William F. Buckley, April 30, 1981, cited in "Liberty Lobby and the
Carto Network of Hate," p. 18.
32. C.H. Simonds, "The Strange Story of Willis Carto," National Review,
Sept. 10, 1971, pp. 984-85.
33. "Liberty Lobby and the Carto Network of Hate," p. 19.
34. Trento and Spear, "How Nazi Nut Power," p. 36.
35. Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 979.
36. The Monitor, Nov. 1986, p. 6.
37. Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 979.
38. Ibid.
39. Drew Pearson, April 17, 1969, cited in Charles Bermant, "The Private
World of Willis Carto," The Investigator, Oct. 1981, p. 25. This memo by
Carto was found by a Liberty Lobby staffer who turned it over to the
investigative journalist, Drew Pearson. Carto's associates claim that the
memoir was a fraud and the boxes in which it and other material was found
were broken into by a thief paid by Pearson. What this argument fails to
address is why, if the memo was a forgery, Carto was keeping it in his
personal files.
40. Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 979.
41. John C. Obert, "Yockey: Profile of an American Hitler," The
Investigator, Oct. 1981, p. 24.
42. Ibid., p. 24.
43. Ibid., p. 26.
44. Ibid., p. 22.
45. Ibid., p. 20.
46. Ibid., pp. 20, 22; Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 980.
47. "Liberty Lobby and the Carto Network of Hate," p. 8.
48. Obert, "Yockey: Profile," p. 22.
49. Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 981.
50. Obert, "Yockey: Profile," p. 73.
51. Berry, "Carto's Day in Court," p. 4-D.
52. Simonds, "The Strange Story," p. 986; Berry, "Carto's Day in Court," p.
4-D.
53. "Holocaust 'Revisionism,'" p. 4.
54. American Mercury, Summer 1979.
55. Liberty Letter, May 1969, July 1970, Sept. 1970; Simonds, "The Strange
Story," p. 988.
56. Spotlight, Sept. 6, 1976.
57. Ibid., May 21, 1979; Bermant, "The Private World," p. 41.
58. Ibid., Jan. 19, Jan. 26, Aug. 9, 1976.
59. Ibid., May 28, 1979.
60. Ibid., Feb. 5, 1979; Hosenball, "Spotlight on the Hill," p. 13.
61. Ibid., Sept. 24, 1979, as cited in ADL Facts, vol. 26:2 (June 1980).
See also "The Spotlight: Liberty Lobby's Voice of Hate," ADL Facts, vol.
26:1 (June 1980), and "Liberty Lobby and the Carto Network of Hate."
62. Ibid., Mar. 11, 1985; Hosenball, "Spotlight on the Hill," p. 13.
63. Ibid., Dec. 24, 1979.
64. Ibid., Mar. 23, 1981.
65. Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood (New York, 1989),
p. 85.
66. Noontide Press 1992 Catalog of Books, Audiotapes, Videotapes (Costa
Mesa, Calif., 1992).
67. Plaintiff's Exhibit 22 (A-B), Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for
Historical Review, et al., Defendants, Feb. 8, 1984, Case No. C 356542.
68. The Liberty Lobby was recently left a bequest of $75,000,000 by the
granddaughter of Thomas Alva Edison.
69. IHR Newsletter (Jan. 1989), p. 6.
70. McCalden Deposition, vol. 2, Feb. 8, 1984, p. 210.
71. Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Dow Jones & Co., Inc., 838 F. 2d 1287, 1296
(D.C. Cir. 1988), cited in Appellant's Opening Brief, Mel Mermelstein v.
Legion, p. 5.
72. Ibid.
73. Letter to students by Lewis Brandon.
74. Barnes, "Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace," p. 52.
75. Ibid., pp. 53-56.
76. Mark Weber, "Civil War Concentration Camps," Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1981), p. 152.
77. Ibid., pp. 144, 152.
78. Journal of Historical Review, vol. 4, no. 4 (Winter 1983-84).
79. This was one of the unspoken objectives of the contemporary German
historians' debate. Ernst Nolte has written that all the great powers have
had "their own Hitler periods." Josef Joffe, "The Battle of the
Historians," Encounter (June 1987), p. 73. For further information on
Nolte's and other German historians' relativism and its connection with
denial see chapter 11.
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy
In 1984 the Canadian government charged Ernst Zuendel, a 46-year old German
citizen who had immigrant status in Canada, with stimulating anti-semitism
through the publication and distribution of material he knew to be false.
[In bringing charges against Zuendel the Canadian government joined what
had begun as a private complaint. Sabrina Citron, a survivor of the
Holocaust and a citizen of Canada, initiated the action against Zuendel.
Most Canadian Jewish organizations did not support her decision.] The case
against Zuendel, who was the country's most prolific distributor of
Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi publications, resulted in two trials,
numerous appeals, and extensive media coverage. The Crown Counsel charged
that Zuendel instigated social and racial intolerance through the
publication of two works, The West, War and Islam, which argued that there
existed a Zionist banker-Communist-Freemason-sponsored conspiracy to
control the world, and Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? Though
much of the material he distributed was written by other neo-Nazis,
Holocaust deniers, and right-wing extremists, Zuendel himself contributed
two books to this melange. The Hitler We Loved and Why, which was published
by White Power Publications in West Virginia, portrayed Hitler as a saintly
man, a messianic figure whose white supremacist ideology had brought
salvation to Germany. It concluded with the proclamation that Hitler's
spirit "soars beyond the shores of the White Man's home in Europe. Where we
are, he is with us. WE LOVE YOU, ADOLF HITLER!" (l) His book, UFOs: Nazi
Secret Weapons?, argued that UFOs were Hitler's secret weapon and are
actually still in use at bases in the Antarctic beneath the earth's
surface. In addition Zuendel wrote and distributed scores of fliers and
pamphlets praising Nazism, advocating fascism, and denying the Holocaust.
Zuendel created a publishing house, Samisdat Publications, to reprint and
distribute the usual array of anti-semitic, racist, and Holocaust denial
material. It also sold tapes of Hitler's speeches, copies of Nazi-sponsored
films, and cassettes of music from the Third Reich, including a selection
of Hitler's "favorites" and storm trooper songs and marches. Zuendel did
not just wait for customers to order his wares. He sent Canadian members of
Parliament a steady stream of Holocaust denial publications. Nor did his
reach end at Canada's border. Thousands of Americans received his
publications, as did U.S. radio and television stations. (He claims his
American mailing list numbers above 29,000.) But it was West Germany that
was his main target. In December 1980 government officials informed the
Bundestag that during the preceding two years 200 shipments of neo-Nazi
extremist books, periodicals, symbols, films, records, and cassettes had
been shipped to the country by Samisdat Publishers in Toronto. In 1981,
during a German crackdown on neo-Nazis, West German police discovered in
the hundreds of homes they raided weapons, ammunition, and explosives as
well as thousands of copies of Zuendel-produced material. The German
Ministry of the Interior identified Zuendel as one of the country's most
important suppliers of radical right and neo-Nazi propaganda material.
Zuendel has also sent his publications to Australia, the Middle East, and a
variety of other countries. (He claims to have subscribers in more than 45
countries.)
But Zuendel is not just a prolific disseminator of extremist, denial, and
neo-Nazi publications. A showman who is extremely adept at winning media
attention - he has been dubbed by Manuel Prutschi the P. T. Barnum of
Holocaust denial (2) - Zuendel has honed his public antics over many years.
When NBC's Holocaust was screened in Canada in April 1978 he created an
organization, "Concerned Parents of German Descent," to protest the
screenings. He declared the West German government to be the "West German
Occupation Regime." In September 1981 he placed an ad in the classified
section of the Toronto Star wishing a "Happy New Year to all our Jewish
Friends," signed by himself and Samisdat Publishers. (3) He has written
rabbis and synagogues throughout Canada offering to lecture on topics of
common interest to Germans and Jews. When the Canadian Jewish Congress
advertised for a director of its Holocaust Documentation Bank Project,
Zuendel applied for the job. (His application arrived after the official
deadline.) He created a German Jewish Historical Commission and announced
that it would organize symposia on topics of Jewish interest.
His publicity stunts received the most attention at his trial. Each day he
appeared at the courthouse wearing a bullet-proof vest and a hard hat
bearing the words "Freedom of Speech." (His followers sported similar
headgear.) On the day of his sentencing he arrived at court in a
Rent-A-Wreck vehicle, emerging with a blackened face to demonstrate that
"whites could not receive justice in Canada," hefted an 11-foot cross
labeled "Freedom of Speech" on his shoulders, and carried it up the steps
to the courthouse door. (4)
Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel's childhood memories were of "hunger, cold,
sickness," and life under occupation. He came to Canada in 1958 to learn to
be a photo retoucher. While in Canada he was greatly influenced by the
country's leading anti-semite and neo-Nazi, Adrien Arcand, who introduced
him to a group of ardent anti-semites including Paul Rassinier. Zuendel
recalled that Arcand "made a German out of me." Zuendel built a
professional reputation as an accomplished photo retoucher. Most of his
clients, which included Canada's leading magazines, did not know that he
was one of the country's most active distributors of neo-Nazi material. One
customer who inadvertently came into his shop discovered a huge swastika on
the wall surrounded by pictures of Hitler and other Nazis. (5)
During his trial the prosecution stressed Zundel's ardent devotion to
Hitler, allegiance to the Nazis, advocacy of revolution in the Federal
Republic of Germany, and his belief that the white race's position in the
world had deteriorated because of the success of an international Zionist
conspiracy. Israel was a "terrorist state," which was "financially and
morally bankrupt," and Zionists controlled the "moguls" in Bonn. (6) Found
guilty in 1985 and sentenced to 15 months in prison, Zuendel was given a
temporary reprieve when the ruling was overturned on appeal because of
procedural errors. [The jury found him guilty of spreading false
information about the Holocaust but acquitted him on charges connected with
"The West, War, and Islam."] The second trial, which began in 1988, was
memorable because it served to set off the deniers' most important salvo -
fired by a newcomer to the movement who was guided into Holocaust denial by
Zundel's team of advisers - in their assault on the truth since the
publication of Arthur Butz's book. Zundel's lawyer, Douglas Christie, the
main legal defender of Holocaust deniers, anti-semites, Nazi war criminals,
and neo-Nazis in Canada, came to Zundel's attention when he defended Jim
Keegstra, a schoolteacher in Red Deer, Alberta. Keegstra, who denied the
Holocaust, taught his students that a group of Jews called the "Illuminati"
was behind all the revolutions and debts in the world since the 1700s and
that Judaism was an evil religion. He believed it his Christian duty to
fight the evil conspiracy controlled by Jews (John D. Rockefeller was
declared to be a Jew) through their money system. (7) The worst Jews were
Talmudic Jews, though such "atheistical" Jews as Leon Trotsky were also a
danger. (8) Zionism was a Jewish fraud, and the Holocaust was a hoax. (9)
(The most disturbing aspect of the Keegstra case was that he taught this
array of material for 14 years before anyone complained.)
Christie's tactics during the first Zuendel trial were the subject of great
controversy. He tried to have all potential jurors who were Jewish or who
had Jewish friends or relatives screened out. Treating Holocaust survivors
in a brutal fashion, calling one a liar and insisting that another give him
the full names of at least twenty family members who had been killed in the
camps, (10) he exhibited what Ontario Lawyers Weekly described as "sheer
nastiness." In the midst of cross-examining Raul Hilberg, Christie asked
him if he recognized a certain historical tract and then declared, "I
thought you might - you're a historian of sorts." (11) He managed to
structure his defense so that it seemed to some observers that the
Holocaust, not Zuendel, was on trial. (12) For Christie the chief issue in
the trial was the Zionist "power" to curtail freedom of speech. He declared
the belief that the Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews during the Holocaust to be
the result of brainwashing, and told the jury that they were being
prevented from asking questions about the Holocaust. (13)
In addition, Robert Faurisson came to Canada to advise Zuendel and his
lawyers. One of the world's leading deniers, he was a proponent of the
notion that it was technically and physically impossible for the gas
chambers at Auschwitz to have functioned as extermination facilities.
Faurisson argued that compared to American execution chambers the German
facilities were too small and primitive to have been killing chambers. (14)
Faurisson, who testified as an expert witness for the defense during the
first trial, was asked by the Crown to explain the missing 6,000,000 Jewish
victims of the Holocaust. Faurisson acknowledged that he did not know what
happened to them but urged surviving Jews to give him the names of family
members they had lost so he could try to locate them. (15)
At the second trial Christie and Faurisson were joined by David Irving, who
flew to Toronto in January 1988 to assist in the preparation of Zundel's
second defense and to testify on his behalf. Scholars have described Irving
as a "Hitler partisan wearing blinkers" and have accused him of distorting
evidence and manipulating documents to serve his own purposes. (16) He is
best known for his thesis that Hitler did not know about the Final
Solution, an idea that scholars have dismissed. (17) The prominent British
historian Hugh Trevor-Roper depicted Irving as a man who "seizes on a small
and dubious particle of 'evidence,'" using it to dismiss far more
substantial evidence that may not support his thesis. His work has been
described as "closer to theology or mythology than to history," and he has
been accused of skewing documents and misrepresenting data in order to
reach historically untenable conclusions, particularly those that exonerate
Hitler. (18) An ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Irving described his
visit to Hitler's mountaintop retreat as a spiritual experience, (19) and
declared that Hitler repeatedly reached out to help the Jews. (20) In 1981
Irving, a self-described "moderate fascist," established his own right-wing
political party, founded on his belief that he was meant to be a future
leader of Britain. (21) He is an ultranationalist who believes that Britain
has been on a steady path of decline accelerated by its misguided decision
to launch a war against Nazi Germany. He has advocated that Rudolf Hess
should have received the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to try to stop
war between Britain and Germany. (22) On some level Irving seems to
conceive of himself as carrying on Hitler's legacy. In an interview with
the Daily Telegraph in June 1992, he related that his one mistake in life
was getting married: "Marriage is a detour." This was, Irving observed,
something Hitler understood. Irving related that Hitler's naval adjutant
once told him how Hitler decided he could not marry because Germany "was
his pride." Irving asked when the German leader had informed the naval
adjutant of this decision. When told the date was March 24, 1938, Irving
responded, "Herr Admiral, at that moment I was being born." (23)
Irving had long equated the actions of Hitler and Allied leaders, an
equivalence that was made easier by his claims that the Final Solution took
place without Hitler's knowledge. Prior to participating in Zundel's trial,
Irving had appeared at IHR conferences - at one he declared Hitler the
"biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich" - but he had never denied
the annihilation of the Jews. (24) That changed in 1988 as a result of the
events in Toronto.
Both Irving and Faurisson advocated inviting an American prison warden who
had performed gas executions to testify in Zundel's defense, arguing that
this would be the best tactic for proving that the gas chambers were a
fraud and too primitive to operate safely. They solicited help from Bill
Armontrout, warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, who agreed to
testify and suggested they also contact Fred A. Leuchter, an "engineer"
residing in Boston who specialized in constructing and installing execution
apparatus. Irving and Faurisson immediately flew off to meet Leuchter.
Irving, who had long hovered at the edge of Holocaust denial, believed that
Leuchter's testimony could provide the documentation he needed to prove the
Holocaust a myth. (25)
Kurt Knoll
here there would not be any discussions here. You definition about you're
holocaust is definitely not kosher. Why is it the you do not want any
meaningful discussion if you had nothing to hide. We can discus all events
in histories here and everywhere. But when it is about the holocaust we all
are forced to believe your versions only. After all the whole word did never
know you for sincerity.
Kurt Knoll.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:0e6f114612bcd56e...@pseudo.borked.net...
truth and memory
the "standard notion of the 'Holocaust.'" (26) After spending two days with
him, Faurisson declared that Leuchter was convinced that it was chemically
and physically impossible for the Germans to have conducted gassings. (27)
Having agreed to serve as an expert witness for the defense, Leuchter then
went to Toronto to meet with Zuendel and Christie and to examine the
materials they had gathered for the trial.
Within a few days Leuchter left for a week in Poland. Accompanied by his
wife, a cinematographer supplied by Zuendel, a draftsman, and an
interpreter, the group toured Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. In light of
the fact that Zuendel paid Leuchter approximately $35,000 to make the trip,
(28) one cannot help but wonder what would have been the reaction if
Leuchter had returned to confirm the existence of gas chambers. However,
Leuchter's leanings were revealed by his observation that although Zuendel
and Faurisson could not accompany the group, they were ex-officio members
of the team, whose spirit was with them "every step of the way." (29)
The group spent 3 days in Auschwitz-Birkenau and one in Majdanek
surreptitiously and illegally collecting bricks and cement fragments -
Leuchter called them "forensic samples" - from a number of buildings,
including those associated with the killing process. On returning to
Massachusetts, Leuchter had the samples chemically analyzed. (He told the
laboratory that the samples had to do with a workmen's compensation case.)
He summarized his findings in The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on
the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek,
Poland, which was published by Zundel's Samisdat Publications and David
Irving's publishing house, Focal Point Publications in London. [The London
edition was entitled Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report -
The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz. It contained a foreword by
Irving.] In it he concluded that there had never been homicidal gassings at
any of these sites. Leuchter claimed that his findings were based on his
"expert knowledge" of the design criteria for gas chamber operation, and
his visual inspections of both the remains of the chambers and of "original
drawings and blueprints of some of the facilities." The latter, he
asserted, had been given to him by officials of the Auschwitz museum. (30)
According to Leuchter the design and fabrication of these facilities made
it impossible for them to have served as execution chambers. (3l) Moreover,
Leuchter argued, given the size and usage rate of the alleged facilities at
Auschwitz and Majdanek, it would have required 68 years to execute the
"alleged number of six millions of persons." (32) (This typifies the
deniers' methods of obfuscation: No one had claimed that the gas chambers
at Auschwitz or Majdanek were used to kill 6,000,000 people. Millions of
people died at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen and at other death camps.)
Deniers consider Leuchter's testimony at the trial a "historical event." It
marked, Faurisson claimed expansively, the end of the "myth of the gas
chambers." (33) Emotions were intense as Leuchter tore away the "veil of
the great swindle." Faurisson described his own feelings as a mixture of
"relief and melancholy: relief because a thesis that I had defended for so
many years was at last fully confirmed, and melancholy because I had
fathered the idea in the first place." (34) The record reveals that
something quite different occurred. If any veil was lifted it was that of
Leuchter's expertise. On the stand Leuchter was shown to have little
technical training to equip him to reach his conclusions. The judge derided
aspects of his methodology as "gross speculation" and dismissed his opinion
as being of no greater value than that of an ordinary tourist. (35)
Perhaps Faurisson's relief was also rooted in the fact that he knew that
despite the revelations about Leuchter's lack of credentials and his
fallacious scientific and historical methodology, the Leuchter Report would
have a life of its own, as has been the case with the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, which has repeatedly been demonstrated to be a forgery. In
fact, when it was originally published in France in the mid-19th century,
Jews did not appear in the book at all. Only at the beginning of this
century was it rewritten with Jews as the primary culprits. This easily
documented information has not stopped the Protocols from being accepted by
people in different parts of the world as a factual rendition of
"international Jewry's" nefarious goal to rule the world. So, too,
Faurisson may have recognized that Leuchter's so-called scientific report
would make Holocaust denial plausible despite its having been shown to be
rooted in spurious scientific principles.
With the jury out of the room, the court began to determine Leuchter's
qualifications as an expert witness. When the Crown Counsel questioned him
about his training in math, chemistry, physics, and toxicology, he
acknowledged that his only training in chemistry was "basic .. on the
college level." The only physics he had studied likewise consisted of two
courses taken when he was studying for a bachelor of arts (not sciences)
degree at Boston University. Admitting that he was not a toxicologist and
had no degree in engineering, he rather cavalierly dismissed the need for
it. (38) To this the judge responded sharply:
THE COURT: How do you function as an engineer if you don't have an
engineering degree?
THE WITNESS: Well, I would question, Your Honour, what an engineering
degree is. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree and I have the required
background training both on the college level and in the field to perform
my function as an engineer.
THE COURT: Who determines that? You? (37)
Throughout the trial Judge Ronald Thomas made it clear that he was appalled
by Leuchter's lack of training as an engineer as well as his deprecation of
the need for such training. The judge was particularly taken aback by
Leuchter's repeated assertions that anyone who went to college had "the
necessary math and science" to be an electrical engineer and to conduct the
tests he conducted at Auschwitz. (33) The judge ruled that Leuchter could
not serve as an expert witness on the construction and functioning of the
gas chambers. The judge's findings as to Leuchter's suitability to comment
on questions of engineering was unequivocal:
THE COURT: I'm not going to have him get into the question of what's in a
brick, what's in iron, what is in - he has no expertise in this area. He is
an engineer because he has made himself an engineer in a very limited area.
(39)
Unknown to the court, Leuchter, who admitted under oath that he had only a
bachelor of arts degree, was not being entirely candid regarding his
education. Implying that an engineering degree had been unavailable to him,
he told the court that when he was a student at Boston University, the
school did not offer a degree in engineering. In fact it did, 3 different
kinds. (40) Later in the trial, when the jury returned to the room,
Zundel's lawyer and Leuchter obfuscated the paucity of his training:
Q. And you are, I understand, a graduate of Boston university, with a B.A.
in a field that entitles you to function as an engineer. Is that right?
A. Yes, sir. (41)
That field was history.
Leuchter was also less than candid about his methodology. He repeatedly
asserted that he obtained the "bulk" of his research material on the camps
- including maps, floor plans and "original blueprints" for the crematoria
- from the official archives at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. He
testified that these drawings and blueprints played a far more important
role in shaping his conclusions than the samples he collected at the camp.
(42) After the trial Kazimierz Smolen, the director of the Auschwitz
museum, unequivocally denied that Leuchter had received any plans or
blueprints from the museum. (43) He may have procured tourist materials
sold in the official souvenir kiosks in the camps. (It may have been the
same material thousands of visitors, myself included, have bough t during
visits to these sites.)
Irrespective of who gave him the materials, he acknowledged that he "didn't
see any necessity" to reveal to camp officials that he was asking questions
in order to gather material for a scientific report or legal action. (44)
Anyone who had visited a heavily frequented tourist site, which - for
better or for worse - Auschwitz-Birkenau has become, knows that the caliber
of t he answers one receives from officials varies markedly. If they
believe that they are speaking to someone who has a professional expertise
pertaining to the site they tend to be more precise. Nor, for that matter,
did he see any necessity to ask permission to violate the Polish law
against defacing national monuments and memorials. (45)
As citations from Leuchter's report were read, the judge's impatience
intensified. He characterized Leuchter's methodology as "ridiculous" and
"preposterous." (46) Ruling that "this report is not going to be filed,"
the judge dismissed many of his conclusions as based on "second-hand
information." He refused to allow Leuchter to testify about the impact of
Zyklon-B on humans because he was neither a toxicologist nor a chemist and
had never worked with the gas. (47) Again and again the judge kept coming
back to Leuchter's capabilities and credibility:
THE COURT: His opinion on this report is that there were never any gassings
or there was never any exterminations carried on in this facility. As far
as I am concerned, from what I've heard, he is not capable of giving that
opinion.. He is not in a position to say, as he said so sweepingly in this
report, what could not have been carried on in these facilities. (48)
On the question of the functioning of the crematoria, despite the defense
attorney's opposition, the judge's decision was unequivocal. He could not
testify on this topic for a simple reason.
THE COURT: He hasn't any expertise. (49)
The judge might have been even more irritated had he known that Leuchter
misrepresented the extent of his familiarity with the operation of hydrogen
cyanide. He told the court that he had discussed matters relating to the
gas with the largest U.S. manufacturer of sodium cyanide and hydrogen
cyanide, Du Pont, and that such consultation was "an on-going thing."
Leuchter was again being less than accurate. He may have obtained Du Pont's
published guidelines about the care needed in using hydrogen cyanide or any
other of the myriad of substances the company manufactured. But Du Pont,
denying Leuchter's claims of ongoing consultations, stated that it had
"never provided any information on cyanides to persons representing
themselves as Holocaust deniers, including Fred Leuchter. Specifically, Du
Pont has never provided any information regarding the use of cyanide at
Auschwitz, Birkenau, or Majdanek." (50)
But it was not only Leuchter's scientific expertise, or lack thereof, which
was questioned by the court. The judge also expressed serious doubts about
Leuchter's historical knowledge, which, as it emerged at the trial, was
limited and often flawed. Leuchter was unaware of a host of documents
pertaining to the installation and construction of the gas chambers and
crematoria. He did not know of a report filed in June 1943 by the Waffen-SS
commandant of construction at Auschwitz on the completion of the
crematoria. The report indicated that the 5 crematoria had a total 24-hour
capacity of 4,756 bodies. (51) Leuchter had stated that the crematoria had
a total capacity of 156 bodies in the same period of time. (52) Even if the
SS's calculation was overly "optimistic," the difference between it and
Leuchter's was staggering. He also had to admit that he did not know that
there existed correspondence and documentation regarding powerful
ventilators installed in the gas chambers to extract the gas that remained
after the killings. After hearing these and other admissions by Leuchter,
Judge Thomas expressed his dismay that Leuchter had reached his conclusions
despite the fact that he had only a "nodding acquaintance" with the history
of the gas chambers. To suggest that he had any more than that, the judge
declared, would be an insult. (53)
Leuchter told the court that his findings regarding Auschwitz were based on
the supposition that the physical plant at the camps was the same today as
it had been throughout the war. (54) He did not seem to know or take into
account the fact that certain areas at Auschwitz had been rebuilt after the
war. At Majdanek, Leuchter reached his conclusions knowing that he was
looking at something that had been completely reconstructed. Hearing this,
the judge dismissed the credibility of Leuchter's analysis of the Majdanek
facility.
THE COURT: We have no plans; we have a reconstruction. This witness is in
no better position than I will be to give evidence on this point. He went
to Majdanek; he has seen something and it is really just speculation. This
is creating a tourist attraction. I'm not going to have evidence in this
court about tourist attractions. (55)
Leuchter claimed that his scientific conclusions were based, in great
measure, on the residue left by Zyklon-B. In addition to being used by the
Nazis to murder people, the gas was used to delouse clothing and combat
insects and rodents. (56) The samples Leuchter took from the delousing
chambers contained a far higher residue of hydrogen cyanide than those from
the homicidal gas chambers. The bricks of the delousing chambers generally
showed far more of the blue coloration often left by hydrocyanic acid than
did those in the homicidal gas chambers. Leuchter argued that this
lower-level residue and stain were conclusive proof that the structures
presented to visitors as homicidal facilities could not have been used for
that purpose. But both Faurisson and Leuchter either ignored or did not
know a number of critically important facts. Lice, which were destroyed in
the delousing chambers, have a far higher resistance to hydrogen cyanide
than do humans. It takes a more concentrated exposure to cyanide gas over a
longer period of time to kill lice than to kill humans, hence the more
intense blue stain. When the Crown Counsel asked Leuchter about this, he
declined to answer because it was an area about which he was not qualified
to testify. (57) Yet he used the delousing chamber as a "control" for his
findings.
Furthermore, the amount of hydrogen cyanide used in the homicidal gas
chambers was lethal to humans forty to seventy times over. Because of the
intensity of the gas, only a limited amount of it was inhaled by the
victims. The remainder was quickly extracted from the chamber by the
powerful ventilation system. Consequently the gas was in contact with the
walls of the gas chamber for a very brief time each day it was in
operation.
In the delousing chambers the situation was quite different. According to
both technical manuals and the accounts of former prisoners, the cyanide
gas was in contact with the walls for between 12 to 18 hours a day. One
would, therefore, logically expect a higher residue of cyanide in the
delousing chambers, and the blue stain that indicated presence of the
cyanide was more likely to be found on the bricks of a delousing chamber
than those of a homicidal gas chamber.
Both Leuchter and Faurisson argued that "it would be insanity" to operate a
gas chamber in close proximity to crematoriums because of the danger of
explosion. But records show that the amount of gas used by the SS was well
below the threshold of explosion. (58) The Crown Counsel also pointed out
that the manufacturer's manual stated that 3 times as much of the substance
was required to kill rats than to kill humans, and twenty times as much to
kill beetles as to kill rats. (59) The Crown argued that if it had been
safe to use these much larger amounts for beetles without the threat of
explosion then it would certainly have been safe to use the far smaller
amount for humans. (60)
There was also a basic contradiction inherent in Faurisson and Leuchter's
argument that the crude construction of the gas chambers proved that they
could not have served as homidicial units without causing serious harm to
the SS personnel operating them. The delousing chambers were constructed in
the same fashion as the homicidal gas chambers. Irrespective of whether
people or clothing would be contained therein, if one facility posed a
threat of leakage the other would as well. Theoretically the delousing
chamber would have been even more dangerous because it needed a higher
concentration of hydrogen cyanide for a longer period of time.
In a certain gas chamber no cyanide traces were found. (61) Leuchter cited
this as proof that this facility was never used as a gas chamber. But this
particular gas chamber had been dynamited in January 1945. Its ruins were
inundated with thirty centimeters of water in the summer and up to one
meter of water in spring. The exposure to the elements lessened the
presence of hydrogen cyanide. (62) Moreover, documents in the archives
indicate that tests done on the grilles of the crematorium by Polish
authorities shortly after the war showed residue of hydrocyanide compounds.
Three of these grilles are in the Auschwitz museum. Had Leuchter asked
museum officials, with whom he claimed to have consulted, they might have
shown him the test results. (63)
This was not the only time that Leuchter was tripped up by history. In one
crematorium some samples were negative and some were positive. Logically
all should have been either positive or negative. (In fact, they should
probably have been negative, since this gas chamber had hardly been used.)
Had he asked the authorities in the Auschwitz museum, they could have told
him that this crematorium, which had been destroyed in the wake of the
abortive inmate uprising of October 1944, had been rebuilt with both
original bricks as well as bricks from other buildings. Consequently,
Leuchter's test was conducted on some bricks that did not even come from
that particular crematorium. Nor did Leuchter seem to consider that the
building had been exposed to the elements for more than forty years so that
cyanide gas residue could have been obliterated. (64) He also took samples
from a floor that had been washed regularly by the museum staff. (65)
In a move apparently calculated to enhance the drama of Leuchter's
escapade, a cameraman had videotaped the collection of samples. On the tape
Leuchter stressed that he had used protective gloves in order to collect
his samples. Since the tests he was conducting were chemical and not
bacteriological the gloves served relatively little purpose other than a
theatrical one. He and his associates also wore protective masks. But the
masks were dust masks, which do not prevent chemical contamination (a
closed-respirator system would be needed for that). Moreover, Leuchter and
his associate were not consistent. The videotape of this sample-collecting
enterprise reveals that sometimes they had the masks on and sometimes they
did not. This haphazard approach suggests that the masks were primarily for
show, not protective purposes. (66)
By the end of his testimony in the Toronto courtroom on April 20 and 21,
1988, [Zuendel was found guilty a second time and sentenced to 9 months in
jail. In 1992 the law under which Zuendel had been charged was declared
unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court] Leuchter had been exposed
as having virtually no educational training as an engineer, and his
historical knowledge had been shown to be even more limited. His historical
knowledge was based on 200 pages of Raul Hilberg's book, The Destruction of
the European Jews; articles by deniers; conversations with Faurisson,
Irving, Zuendel, and Christie; and documents Leuchter claimed, but the
director of the Auschwitz museum categorically denied, had been given to
him at the site by museum authorities. Judge Thomas ruled that Leuchter
could testify before the jury about what he saw on his trip and compare it
"within his area of expertise" to what he "normally worked with." (67)
Although it did not emerge until after the trial, what Leuchter "normally
worked with" was not only far more limited than what the court assumed but
likewise the subject of significant controversy.
On July 20, 1990, Alabama Assistant Attorney General Ed Carnes sent a memo
to all capital-punishment states questioning Leuchter's credentials and
credibility. Carnes stated not only that Leuchter's views on the
gas-chamber process were "unorthodox" but that he was running a death-row
shakedown scheme. If a state refused to use his services, Leuchter would
testify at the last minute on behalf of the inmate, claiming that the
state's death chamber might malfunction. (68) According to Carnes, Leuchter
made "money on both sides of the fence." (69) Describing Leuchter's
behavior in Virginia, Florida, and Alabama, Carnes observed that in less
than thirty days Leuchter had testified in 3 states that their
electric-chair execution technology was too old and unreliable to be used.
In Florida and Virginia the federal courts had rejected Leuchter's
testimony because it was unreliable. In Florida the court had found that
Leuchter had "misquoted the statements" contained in an important affidavit
and had "inaccurately surmised" a crucial premise of his conclusion. (70)
In Virginia, Leuchter provided a death-row inmate's attorney with an
affidavit claiming that the electric chair would fail. The Virginia court
decided that the credibility of Leuchter's affidavit was limited because
Leuchter was "the refused contractor who bid to replace the electrodes in
the Virginia chair." (71)
After the dissemination of Leuchter's report, yet another blow was
delivered to his reputation as America's leading expert on gas execution
chambers. Despite his claims to the contrary, it appears that he had no
actual experience with their building or installation. His claims to have
advised states on this execution methodology were denied by officials from
the very states with which he said he had worked. According to Leuchter's
testimony at the Zuendel trial, the Department of Correction in North
Carolina, a state that permits gas chamber executions, consulted with him
regarding the functioning of its gas chamber. In the Leuchter Report he
reiterated his claim to have been a consultant to North Carolina. (72) Gary
Dixon, the warden of the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, where
the gas chamber is located, contradicted Leuchter's claims. According to
Dixon the former warden "vaguely recalled" that he had received a telephone
call from Leuchter trying to sell the prison a lethal injection machine.
Dixon denied Leuchter's contention that he had consulted with North
Carolina prison officials on gas-chamber matters: "Our records do not
support that Mr. Leuchter performed either consultation or any service
during the installation of our execution chamber." (73)
There were, in fact, 6 states in the United States at the time of the
publication of Leuchter's report that permitted executions by gas chambers:
Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Missouri
used to permit executions by gas, but recently switched to lethal
injection. Representatives of each of these states provided crucial
information on Leuchter's connections with them. Despite Leuchter's claim
to the contrary, according to these officials, he had not advised them on
executions. A spokesman for Mississippi, Ken Jones, stated that while
Leuchter had visited Mississippi's execution facility and commented on it,
the visit had been initiated at Leuchter's request. Moreover, the state had
not entered into "any financial agreement" with him. According to Shelly Z.
Shapiro, the head of a Holocaust education center in Albany, New York, who
coordinated an investigation into Leuchter's background, he has not worked
for either Arizona or Maryland. Maryland used Eaton Ironworks to check its
chamber prior to an execution. State officials reported that Leuchter had
"never worked or consulted" with the Maryland Penitentiary. (74) An
official of the Arizona Corrections Office also stated that they had "never
used" Fred Leuchter's services. (75) In fact, the official observed,
Arizona does not even maintain its gas chamber in working order, and any
maintenance done in the past was performed by the state's service
personnel.
Kurt Knoll
only logical to assume the money Zundel gave to leuchter in compensation for
his expenses and not influence peddling.
Kurt Knoll.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:6e5e77f48d21c806...@pseudo.borked.net...
I'll Always Be Here
> If your deceptive society would not always come out with more new
> inventions here there would not be any discussions here.
You'd like it if there were no more discussions, wouldn't you? That would
be the best way for your "search for the truth" to continue.
> You definition about you're holocaust is definitely not kosher.
Your definition of the truth is definately not kosher.
Why is it the you do
> not want any meaningful discussion if you had nothing to hide.
Why is it you don't want any meaningful discussion of how many people
really died in a single air raid on Nuremberg if you have nothing to hide?
> We can discus all events in histories here and everywhere.
We can, but you won't.
But when it is about
> the holocaust we all are forced to believe your versions only.
No, we are forced by you to believe what the german tourists told you. But
every time we try for a meaningful discussion about this you don't answer
questions. Is this how you have meaningful discussions?
> After all the whole word did never know you for sincerity.
That's true. The whole world knows that "truth and memory" is not known
for his sincerity. Thank you for that.
I'll Always Be Here
> Get of the dope fellow. Leuchter did have expenses to make the drip so
> it only logical to assume the money Zundel gave to leuchter in
> compensation for his expenses and not influence peddling.
Start taking the dope old fella. Leuchter was paid by Zundel to support
Zundel. Leuchter was hardly interesting in a meaningful discussion about
knoll.
Kenneth McVay OBC
The Poster Boy of Holocaust Revisionism, Kurt Knoll,
the reigning Village Idiot of Kitimat, straightened
his Pikelhaube, fluffed his Black SS Dress Tutu, and
<kkn...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Get of the dope fellow. Leuchter did have expenses to make the drip so it
>only logical to assume the money Zundel gave to leuchter in compensation for
>his expenses and not influence peddling.
What kind of drip did Leuchter make, Herr Pikelhaube?
77 Statements Demonstrating Leading Revisionist Scholar Kurt Knoll's
strict adherence to the high intellectual standards of Holocaust denial:
(See http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/k/knoll-kurt/ for the first 70)
71. "One the other hand I would say wee shall we trust you at all."
<F3qWj.266201$pM4.55304@pd7urf1no>, May 14, 2008
72. "In a war it is quite common for both enemies to cut of
their supply lines. You do admit alls that the births did
the same but came late." <mPWWj.268756$pM4.113343@pd7urf1no>,
May 15, 2008
73. "There you go sucker. If anyone of my involved would be like. I would
be ashamed of it." <dMrXj.145672$Cj7.35547@pd7urf2no>, May 17, 2008
74. "How can this be. You holocaust is not an open or shot case since
there never was an open investigation allowed to search out the truth."
<DboYj.150964$rd2.145275@pd7urf3no>, May 20, 2008
75. "Hey Fuckhead stay of your Jewish garlic it is fogging up my computer
screen." <_gb_j.162816$rd2.70023@pd7urf3no>, May 26, 2008
76. "The first thing the holocaust industry has in mind is discrediting.
So you must distort all the normal facts in order to make others
Mouth death. Only by playing a poker game in your Jewish way is
meant do eliminated all others that could pose a danger to you
holowsaga." <yOF%j.174532$rd2.79022@pd7urf3no>, May 29, 2008
77. "Get of the dope fellow. Leuchter did have expenses to make the drip
so it only logical to assume the money Zundel gave to leuchter in
compensation for his expenses and not influence peddling."
<xPV%j.177545$Cj7.138502@pd7urf2no>, May 30, 2008
--
"Streicher commit suicide while in the Nuremberg Jail But you
people did hang him after that"
(Kurt Knoll, Kitimat, B.C.'s Leading Revisionist Moron)
Kurt Knoll
or better said a two faced Jew.
Kurt Knoll.
"Kenneth McVay OBC" <kmc...@shell.vex.net> wrote in message
news:LpednQxl7pd1x93V...@vex.net...
Kenneth McVay OBC
The Poster Boy of Holocaust Revisionism, Kurt Knoll,
the reigning Village Idiot of Kitimat, straightened
his Pikelhaube, fluffed his Black SS Dress Tutu, and
<kkn...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>No need to explain it to you. We all know you will act like a twisted snake
>or better said a two faced Jew.
Evasion noted, Herr Pikelhaube. What kind of drip did Leuchter make?
http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/
--
"this mite hold with the uneducated fools but any man
with brains will see it full of holes" ("Irving Supporter,"
a Leading Revisionist Scholar)
http://www.nizkor.org
Gord McFee
> According to Faurisson, when he first met Leuchter, the Bostonian
> accepted the "standard notion of the 'Holocaust.'" (26) After
> spending two days with him, Faurisson declared that Leuchter was
> convinced that it was chemically and physically impossible for the
> Germans to have conducted gassings. (27)
Ah, so he was brainwashed by the mighty Faurisson. Not that it would be
a challenge to wash a brain that small.
[...]
--
Gord McFee
I'll write no line before its time
Visit the Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org
truth and memory
than gas chambers. At the Zuendel trial he claimed to have consulted with
Warden Daniel B. Vasquez of California's San Quentin prison about a
heart-monitoring system that would replace the older type mechanical
stethoscope then being used.
Subsequently Vasquez denied that San Quentin had ever contracted with
Leuchter for either the "installation of a heart monitoring system or for
any other work." (76) The credibility of Leuchter's report was founded on
his expertise in building gas chambers. Missouri was the only state
Leuchter actually advised on gas execution chambers. The closest his
company had apparently come to building one was a proposed blueprint it
prepared for refurbishing the state penitentiary. He submitted a plan that
was never used because the state switched to lethal injection for
executions. (77)
But it was not only his educational record, historical knowledge, business
integrity, and professional experience that were subjects of controversy.
According to an affidavit by Dr. Edward A. Brunner, chair of the Department
of Anesthesia at Northwestern University Medical School, Leuchter's lethal
injection system caused excruciating pain but rendered victims incapable of
screaming to communicate their distress. (78) Based on Brunner's findings,
some death penalty opponents argue that Leuchter's lethal-injection system
constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Others, particularly those who
support capital punishment, dismiss this point as moot because pain and
suffering are part of capital punishment. Ironically, Leuchter is not one
of the latter. He believes that no execution system should be a cause of
pain and says he slept well at night because his work resulted in fewer
people being "tortured." (79)
In 1989 Leuchter formed an engineering firm and incorporated in the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The firm's purpose was to "engage in the
practice of engineering" and consult in all areas of engineering. (80) The
company provided electrocution hardware, charging $35,000 for an
electrocution system, $30,000 for a lethal injection system, and $85,000
for a gallows. (The gallows is disproportionately expensive because it is
infrequently requested.) Gas chambers were listed at $200,000. For states
without an existing execution facility, Leuchter designed a self-contained
"execution trailer" that cost $100,000 and came complete with a
lethal-injection machine, a steel holding cell for the inmate, and areas
for the witnesses, medical personnel, and prison officials. (81)
In April 1990 Shelly Shapiro, director of a Holocaust education center -
Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice - and Beate Klarsfeld
filed a letter of complaint with the Massachusetts Board of Registration of
Engineers in Boston about Leuchter's erroneous claim to be an engineer and
his use of this designation to "mislead the public" about gas chambers.
(82) The commonwealth investigated and found sufficient grounds to charge
him with "illegally" practicing or "offer[ing]" to practice engineering.
(83) In June 1991, two weeks before he was to go on trial for practicing
without a license, Leuchter signed a consent agreement with the
commonwealth admitting that he was "not and never had been" a professional
engineer and had fraudulently presented himself to Massachusetts, New
Jersey, Alabama, and other states as an engineer with the ability to
consult on matters concerning "execution technology." In addition he
acknowledged that although he was not an engineer and had never taken an
engineering licensing test, he had produced reports, including the
"'Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek,'
containing my engineering opinions." He agreed to "cease and desist"
presenting himself as an engineer and issuing any reports, including the
one on Auschwitz, in which he provided engineering opinions. (84)
While this constituted a major blow to Leuchter's credibility, an even
greater one was delivered from a completely different source. A Frenchman
who at one time had been intrigued by Faurisson's contentions regarding gas
chambers rendered a devastating assault on the deniers' claims. Born in
1944 in France, Jean-Claude Pressac, a trained pharmacist, first visited
the remains of the death camps in 1966.
Sometime thereafter he decided to write a novel depicting life as it would
have been had the Germans won. His research for this proposed book included
another visit to Auschwitz in October 1979. This marked the beginning of an
incredible personal and scientific journey that would have dire
consequences for the claim that the homicidal gas chambers were a hoax. It
was a journey that entailed years of study, more than 15 trips to
Auschwitz, and groundbreaking research in archives in the former Soviet
Union.
During his research trip to Auschwitz in 1979 he examined photographs,
documents, and work orders pertaining to the design and construction of the
gas chambers. Perplexed by what appeared as contradictions in the plans,
Pressac questioned museum officials and archivists about the construction
of the gas chambers. Officials allayed some of his doubts by showing him an
array of plans and documents relating to the camps and the execution
chambers. [They showed him documentation regarding the design and
fabrication of sophisticated ventilation systems that had been installed in
the gas chambers. What purpose, they asked, would such a system have served
in a morgue or crematorium?] Though Pressac acknowledged the power of their
arguments, he remained troubled by the fact that he could not find on the
drawings the specific designation "gas chamber." Pressac's confusion was,
in fact, justified because, as he learned, a number of the gas chambers
were not originally built as homicidal units but were transformed to serve
that purpose. (85) When he subsequently examined the documentation on this
transformation, he found an abundance of evidence attesting to the specific
purposes of the gas chamber. But before he reached that point he engaged in
a potentially dangerous but illuminating detour.
During his visit to the Auschwitz archives, Pressac learned of a French
professor who had made a visit there in 1976 but after two days took ill
and left. Shortly thereafter this professor published a series of articles
asserting that hydrocyanic-acid homicidal gas chambers were an
impossibility and that therefore the annihilation of the Jews at such
places as Auschwitz was only a legend, the result of historical fakery if
not purposeful deceit. (86) On his return to France, Pressac sought out
Robert Faurisson. Impressed by Faurisson's seemingly vast array of
knowledge and "serious and unimpeachable references," Pressac began to meet
with him on a regular basis. (87) The meetings lasted for approximately 9
months, during which time, Faurisson, anxious to co-opt the pharmacist into
the ranks of Holocaust deniers, opened his files to him. (88) Initially
Pressac found himself greatly attracted to Faurisson's arguments. After a
number of months of intensive contact, the meetings became less frequent.
Pressac broke off all contact in April 1981, when he discovered that for
Faurisson "dogma [was] paramount" to truth. Pressac's own reading of the
documents convinced him that Faurisson's arguments were fatally flawed.
After Pressac broke with Faurisson he recognized that it was not
Faurisson's theories that attracted him but the professor's seeming ability
to explain away something that was inherently unbelievable. This is the
deniers' ultimate trump card. They have the only rational explanation for
something that remains, despite massive research, essentially irrational:
It could not happen. When Pressac subjected deniers' theories to
documentary analysis he understood that they were not just scientifically
flawed. They ignored reams of evidence that proved precisely what Faurisson
and his cohorts wished to deny.
Pressac's doubts about Faurisson's methodology first surfaced when together
they reviewed weekly reports on the prisoners killed at the concentration
camp near Strasbourg, Natzweiler-Struthof. In August 1943 a gas chamber was
put into operation there in order to provide August Hirt, a professor at
the Strasbourg University Institute of Anatomy, with skeletons for his
collection. Another professor, Otto Bickenbach, availed himself of the gas
chambers to conduct medical experiments on prisoners. Approximately 130
people, primarily Jews and Gypsies, were killed in it. When Pressac and
Faurisson reviewed the documents from the camps, Pressac saw the "honest
and meticulous professor in a more worrying light." (89)
The camp administrators had prepared weekly reports on the number of
prisoners in the camp. Two reports from August 1943, the month the gas
chamber started operating, contained important evidence. The report of
August 14 indicated that there had been 90 Jews present at the outset of
the week of whom 30 had "left" the camp deceased. The report for the next
week indicated that of the 60 remaining at the beginning of that week, 57
had died. This extremely high death rate, two weeks in a row at precisely
the time the gas chamber commenced working, aroused Pressac's suspicions.
He soon discovered additional evidence. On all the other reports some cause
of death was entered on the reverse side. In these two cases the reports
were left blank. All other deaths were recorded in the Natzweiler town
hall. In the case of these deaths no record was kept. (90) Pressac
considered the two reports "damming evidence" that these Jews had been
killed en masse. However, Faurisson had a ready "explanation." The forms
used for the week of the 14th and 21st of August differed slightly from
previous ones. (They were printed in Gothic script while previous ones had
been printed in Roman script.) Faurisson explained to his doubting disciple
that the change in script confused the SS. Instead of listing the Jews on
the line for "liberation," the SS mistakenly listed them on the line for
"deaths." And somehow the SS made precisely the same mistake two weeks in a
row. This convenient explanation, which ignored an array of contradictory
evidence, constituted a "warning bell" for Pressac. Faurisson's
explanations no longer seemed as precise and logical as they had; they
certainly bore little relationship to the evidence. (It is ironic that
Pressac's doubts should have been aroused by Faurisson's treatment of the
Natzweiler reports. Apparently at the time Pressac did not know that the
Waffen-SS unit that supervised the building of the gas chamber left behind
a document that explicitly described the facility's purpose. They submitted
a bill to Strasbourg University's Institute of Anatomy for the
"construction of a gas chamber." (91) Faurisson's description of his
meeting with Auschwitz museum officials sounded yet another alarm for
Pressac:
I made one of the Auschwitz Museum officials, Mr. Jan Machlek, come to the
place (crematorium 1). I showed him the furnaces. I asked him "Are they
authentic?" He replied "Of course!" I then passed my finger across the
mouth of one of the furnaces. I showed him there was no soot. with an
embarrassed air, he told me that these furnaces were a "reconstitution."
(92)
Faurisson made it appear as if he had caught this official in a lie and
forced him to tell the truth. [He did the same thing with Otto Frank, Anne
Frank's father (see Appendix).] But it was Faurisson, not the museum
representative, who engaged in obfuscation. Faurisson's contention that, if
the furnaces were authentic, soot should have been present, more than 35
years after they had been used made as much sense as his claim that SS
officers could not decipher a form printed in Gothic script. Equally
manipulative was his claim that it was his revelation that there was no
soot present that forced the "embarrassed" official reluctantly to admit
that the facility was a "reconstruction." Why should the official have been
embarrassed? The museum's own photographs demonstrate that the structure
was rebuilt after the war. (93) This kind of tactic is typical of deniers,
Faurisson in particular. In 1987 he appeared on a radio interview show in
France. Another guest on the show was a Holocaust survivor who - the host
told Faurisson prior to the show - had been interned in Auschwitz from
April 11, 1943, until April 11, 1945. Faurisson immediately told the host
that this was impossible because most prisoners at Auschwitz were evacuated
in January 1945. According to Faurisson, when the host reported these
objections to the survivor, "the latter, not without some embarrassment,
then had to confess that he had been transferred from Auschwitz to
Buchenwald in the last months of the war." (94) Relying on what has become
a mainstay of deniers' reasoning, Faurisson contended that if one item was
false much if not all else was false. The survivor, Faurisson wrote to the
host of the show, "lied to you on this point. I fear he lied to you and to
the listeners on many other points." (95)
Once again, as in the case of the Auschwitz museum official, one wonders
why the man should have been embarrassed. It is common knowledge that
Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945 and that the Soviet Army entered
the camp shortly thereafter. (By April they had reached Berlin.) Why would
this former prisoner have lied about something so widely known? His "lie"
did not make his experience sound more severe. If anything, his "admission"
that he was evacuated in the final months of the war intensified his saga
of suffering. This was a time when the Nazis marched survivors of the death
camps west to Germany to keep them from falling into the liberators' hands.
Thousands died as a result. The host may have assumed that when the
survivor said he was interned for two years, the entire time was spent in
Auschwitz. Faurisson transformed what in all likelihood was a
misunderstanding into a deliberate lie that was part of a nexus of
conspiratorial falsehoods.
Given the exposure of Leuchter's historical and technical deficiencies at
the Zuendel trial, the publication of Pressac's findings, and his encounter
with the Massachusetts legal system one might assume that his report would
have been totally discredited. But, in an amazing display of incompetence
and culpability, a number of powerful and respected media outlets have
enhanced Leuchter's credibility and enabled deniers to use his
pseudoscientific work to assault the truth. In February 1990 an article
appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, "Justice: A Matter of Engineering,
Capital Punishment as a Technical Problem," intended - according to the
editorial staff of the magazine - to depict Fred Leuchter as the eccentric
but legitimate headsman of the execution industry. (95) The author, Susan
Lehman, described Leuchter as a "trained and accomplished engineer" who was
more conversant with electric chair technology than anyone else: He keeps a
chair in his basement. Despite the article's contempt for Leuchter's
specialization - killing people - it cast him as an expert who was
"distressed" to find that much of this nation's execution equipment was
defective.
Leuchter's apparatus, Lehman wrote, was designed not to torture its
victims. (97) While the story was apparently intended to present Leuchter
as a ghoulish grim reaper who "likes what he does," deniers began to cite
it as validation of Leuchter's expertise. (98) The IHR Newsletter
identified Leuchter as the man "certified by the Atlantic as America's
leading expert on gas chambers and other execution systems." As soon as the
article appeared the Atlantic, one of America's most prestigious magazines,
was deluged with phone calls. (99) The editors acknowledged that they had
not known about Leuchter's lack of training, false claims to be an
engineer, involvement in Holocaust denial, appearance as an expert witness
for Zuendel, or his denier-sponsored investigative trip to Poland. The
editors defended themselves by claiming that his participation in the
deniers' efforts had "no direct bearing" on the subject of the article. The
publisher of the magazine protested that neither he nor his staff could be
expected to know about Leuchter's "hobby."
As an expression of its contrition - a simple computer search in a media
data base would have revealed Leuchter's involvement in the Zuendel trial -
the magazine agreed to publish one letter on Leuchter's background.
If the Atlantic was guilty of incompetence, the same cannot be said of
"Prime Time Live," the ABC television show starring Diane Sawyer and Sam
Donaldson, which aired a segment on Leuchter in May 1990. Entitled "Dr.
Death," the piece profiled Leuchter as "the country's foremost expert at
creating, designing and maintaining execution equipment. His business .. is
death." Weeks before this segment aired, Beate Klarsfeld and Shelly Shapiro
found out about it. They alerted ABC executives to the fact that Leuchter
had been a witness at the Zuendel trial, where the presiding judge had
ruled that his report could not be used as evidence because he was not a
toxicologist, chemist, or engineer. They told the television executives
that Leuchter had become a regular participant in IHR and other extremist
gatherings and that the Leuchter Report, which had been condemned by the
British House of Commons as a "fascist publication" and "pernicious"
effort, is distributed by white supremacist and extremist groups. (100)
They also screened Leuchter's video of his trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The "Prime Time" producers were cautioned that airing the segment would
enhance both Holocaust denial and the reputation of a thoroughly
discredited man. Bob Currie, the ABC "Prime Time" producer in charge of the
segment on Leuchter, informed Shapiro and Klarsfeld that Leuchter's
reputation and activities, which were already known to him, were not
germane. (101) "Prime Time" ignored letters from scholars in this field
urging them not to proceed with this segment. (A personal letter I sent to
the executive producer of the show explaining why this was a dangerous move
was never acknowledged.) After the segment aired Currie justified his
failure to include any reference to Leuchter's activities as a Holocaust
denier by arguing that it simply "wasn't relevant to what the story was
about." [In the segment Leuchter took the film crew on a tour of the North
Carolina chamber. The impression given viewers was that he had worked on
this facility when, in fact, he had not. Prime Time Live (ABC-TV), May 10,
1990.] He blamed the "sanitization" of Leuchter's background - that is, the
elimination of references to his Holocaust denial activity - on decisions
by "high-ups" including Ira Rosen, senior producer, and Rick Kaplan,
executive producer. (102)
In October 1990 the New York Times entered the fray. A front-page news
story on the methodology of capital punishment left no doubt that Leuchter
had become a controversial if not discredited figure in the execution
business. It identified him as someone whom opponents of capital punishment
consider a "metaphor for much that is wrong with the death penalty." The
article made a passing reference to his involvement in denial activities.
(103) An editorial the following week again referred to Leuchter,
condemning capital punishment and observing that Leuchter had become
persona non grata in the execution business because of his unorthodox and
controversial methods. While it acknowledged that Leuchter "once told a
Canadian court that he regarded the killing of Jews in Hitler's gas
chambers as a myth," it dismissed this as of little significance to "the
culture of executioners," in which such views do not "disqualify" him.
"Leuchter, after all, only designs death machines; others create the market
for them." Portraying Leuchter as an innocent cog in a perverse system, the
editorial declared that the problem was not "with the headsman [but] with
the system." Despite its shortcomings, the editorial together with the
previous article destroyed whatever remained of Leuchter's "technical
credibility." (104)
But it was another major media institution, London's Sunday Times, that
eventually gave the Leuchter Report and its proponents another lease on
life. David Irving, who during the Zuendel trial declared himself converted
by Leuchter's work to Holocaust denial and to the idea that the gas
chambers were a myth, described himself as conducting a "one-man intifada"
against the official history of the Holocaust. (105) In his foreword to his
publication of the Leuchter Report, Irving wrote that there was no doubt as
to Leuchter's "integrity" and "scrupulous methods." He made no mention of
Leuchter's lack of technical expertise or of the many holes that had been
poked in his findings. Most important, Irving wrote, "Nobody likes to be
swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved." Irving
identified Israel as the swindler, claiming that West Germany had given it
more than 90,000,000,000 deutschemarks in voluntary reparations,
"essentially in atonement for the 'gas chambers of Auschwitz.'" According
to Irving the problem was that the latter was a myth that would "not die
easily." (106) He subsequently set off to promulgate Holocaust denial
notions in various countries. Fined for doing so in Germany, in his
courtroom appeal against the fine he called on the court to "fight a battle
for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust
which has been told against this country for fifty years." He dismissed the
memorial to the dead at Auschwitz as a "tourist attraction." (107) He
traced the origins of the myth to an "ingenious plan" of the British
Psychological Warfare Executive, which decided in 1942 to spread the
propaganda story that Germans were "using 'gas chambers' to kill millions
of Jews and other 'undesirables.'" (108)
Branding Irving and Leuchter "Hitler's heirs," the British House of Commons
denounced the former as a "Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler
apologist" and the latter's report as a "fascist publication." One might
have assumed that would have marked the end of Irving's reputation in
England, but it did not. Condemned in the Times of London in 1989 as a "man
for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent
and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception," Irving may have had his
reputation revived in 1992 by the London Sunday Times. (110) The paper
hired Irving to translate the Goebbels diaries, which had been discovered
in a Russian archive and, it was assumed, would shed light on the conduct
of the Final Solution. The paper paid Irving a significant sum plus a
percentage of the syndication fees. [The Russian archives granted Irving
permission to copy two microfiche plates, each of which held about 45 pages
of the diaries. Irving immediately violated his agreement, took many
plates, transported them abroad, and had them copied without archival
permission. There is serious concern in archival circles that he may have
significantly damaged the plates when he did so, rendering them of limited
use to subsequent researchers. Irving believes Jews are "very foolish not
to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time." He "foresees
[a] new wave of anti-semitism" due to Jews' exploitation of the Holocaust
myth." C. C. Aronsfeld, "Holocaust 'Revisionists' Are Busy in Britain,"
Midstream, Jan. 1993, p. 29.]
Kurt Knoll
prisoners. How much of what you say is really true.
Kurt Knoll.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:b084a6c5098ff2f0...@pseudo.borked.net...
I'll Always Be Here
> So you say. He did work on execution equipment for some of the state
> prisoners. How much of what you say is really true.
In fact he didn't. If you think he did, please post the link that proves
which equipment and which state he worked on. No lies, just the truth.
truth and memory
discredited figure to do this work. Showered with criticism, the editor of
the Sunday Times, Andrew Neil, denounced Irving's views as "reprehensible"
but defended engaging Irving because he was only being used as a
"transcribing technician." Peter Pulzer, a professor of politics at Oxford
and an expert on the Third Reich, observed that it was ludicrous for Neil
to refer to Irving as a "mere technician," arguing that when you hired
someone to edit a "set of documents others had not seen, you took on the
whole man." (111)
However the matter is ultimately resolved, the Sunday Times has rescued
Irving's reputation from the ignominy to which it had been consigned by the
House of Commons. In the interest of a journalistic scoop, this British
paper was willing to throw its task as a gatekeeper of the truth and of
journalistic ethics to the winds. By resuscitating Irving's reputation, it
also gave new life to the Leuchter Report. Leuchter has also had his
reputation resurrected by a recent book and documentary film about
America's capital punishment industry. The Execution Protocol, by Stephen
Trombley, examines the steps between the imposition of the death sentence
and the actual execution. (112) A major focus of both Trombley's book and
film is Leuchter.
Trombley draws a sympathetic portrait of Leuchter, depicting him as a
slightly bizarre and unconventional, myopic craftsman and entrepreneur who
filled a need in the execution industry in a creative fashion. Trombley
does address Leuchter's denial activities but represents them as simply
another aspect of this iconoclast. In contrast to his portrayal of
Leuchter, he presents the ADL, Shapiro, Klarsfeld, and others who protested
Leuchter's denial activities as unfairly harassing a committed craftsman
who may harbor some bizarre notions but, in truth, only wants to make
killing more humane.
As a result of Trombley's book and film Leuchter has once again been
invited to appear on various talk shows as an expert on gas chambers. He
has been interviewed on German, French, and British television. Most of
these segments fail to mention his association with the Holocaust deniers.
A similar attitude is evident in the media reviews of Irving's books: Most
rarely address his neo-fascist or denial connections. (113)
Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.
Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his
ideological leanings and political agenda. A man who is convinced that
Britain's great decline was accelerated by its decision to go to war with
Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to
confirm his conclusions. A review of his recent book, Churchill's War,
which appeared in New York Review of Books, accurately analyzed his
practice of applying a double standard to evidence. He demands "absolute
documentary proof" when it comes to proving the Germans guilty, but he
relies on highly circumstantial evidence to condemn the Allies. (114) This
is an accurate description not only of Irving's tactics, but of those of
deniers in general.
The impact of Leuchter's work is difficult to assess. Rationally one would
like to assume that, since Leuchter has been exposed as a man without the
qualifications necessary to perform this analysis, and since his work has
been demonstrated to be scientifically and methodologically fallacious, the
destiny of the Leuchter Report would be the dustbin of history. But the
Holocaust and, to only a slightly lesser degree, Holocaust denial itself
remind us that the irrational has a fatal attraction even to people of
goodwill. It can overwhelm masses of evidence and persuade people to regard
the most outrageous and untenable notions as fact. This is easier to
accomplish when the public does not have the historical and technical
knowledge necessary to refute these irrational and inherently fantastic
claims. Ultimately the deniers' ability to keep repeating Leuchter's
conclusions even though they have been discredited is another indication
that truth is far more fragile than fiction and that reason alone cannot
protect it.
NOTES TO CHAPTER NINE
1. Christof Friedrich and Eric Thomson, The Hitler We Loved and Why (Reedy,
W.V., 1977), pp. 72, 78, 116.
2. Manuel Prutschi, "The Zuendel Affair," in Anti-semitism in Canada, ed.
Alan Davies (Ontario, 1992), p. 264.
3. Zuendel flyer addressed to "Comrades," cited in Prutschi, "The Zuendel
Affair," p. 258.
4. Alan Davies, "A Tale of Two Trials: Anti-semitism in Canada," Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, vol. 4 (1989), p. 77; Toronto Globe, Mar. 26, 1985;
Prutschi, "The Zuendel Affair," p. 267.
5. Mark Bonokoski, "Neo Nazi Leads Protest," Toronto Sun, April 19, 1978,
cited in Prutschi, "The Zuendel Affair," p. 273.
6. Leonidas E. Hill, "The Trial of Ernst Zuendel: Revisionism and the Law
in Canada," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, 1989, pp. 179, 192, 200.
7. Calgary Herald, Apr. 10, 1985, p. 1; Toronto Globe and Mail, Apr. 12,
1985, p. 3.
8. Alan T. Davies, "The Queen Versus James Keegstra: Reflections on
Christian Anti-semitism in Canada," American Journal of Theology and
Philosophy, vol. 9, nos. 1, 2 (January-May 1988), p. 112.
9. Red Deer Advocate, June 4, 1984; Toronto Globe and Mail, Apr. 8, 11, and
12, 1985.
10. Claude Adams, "Through the Fingers," Canadian Lawyer (Apr. 1985), p.
18.
11. Kirk Makin, "Douglas Christie, Counsel for the Defence," Ontario
Lawyers Weekly, Mar. 29, 1985, pp. 12, 13.
12. Stanley R. Barrett, Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada (Toronto,
1988), p. 161. For analysis of how the trial was covered by the Canadian
press see Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, Hate on Trial: The Zuendel
Affair, the Media, and Public Opinion in Canada (New York, 1986).
13. Calgary Herald, March 24, 1985, p. E8.
14. Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers," Journal of
Historical Review (Summer 1980), reprinted by the Institute for Historical
Review in leaflet form.
15. Adams, "Through the Fingers," p. 18.
16. Martin Broszat, Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte (October 1977),
pp. 742, 769, cited in Patterns of Prejudice, no. 3-4 (1978), p. 8.
17. Sunday Times, July 10, 1977.
18. Ibid., June 12, 1977; July 10, 1977.
19. Robert Harris, Selling Hitler (New York, 1986), p. 189.
20. Canadian Jewish News, Mar. 16, 1989.
21. Ibid., London Jewish Chronicle, May 27, 1983.
22. Spotlight, June 1989.
23. Daily Telegraph, July 10, 1992.
24. "David Irving," Clipping Collection, Calgary Jewish Community Council,
Alberta, Canada.
25. Toronto Star, April 20, 1988; Stephen Trombley, The Execution Protocol:
Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry (New York, 1992), p. 85.
26. Robert Faurisson, "Foreword," The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth:
An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz,
Birkenau, and Majdanek, Poland (U.S.A., 1988), p. 1, (hereafter cited as
Leuchter Report).
27. Robert Faurisson, "The Zuendel Trials [1985 and 1988]," Journal of
Historical Review (Winter 1988-89), p. 429.
28. Her Majesty the Queen vs. Ernst Zuendel, District Court of Ontario 1988
(hereafter referred to as Zuendel), p. 9037.
29. Fred Leuchter, "Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers'," a paper published
by the Institute for Historical Review (reprinted from Journal of
Historical Review, Summer 1989), p. 3.
30. Zuendel, pp. 8984, 9223. Shelly Z. Shapiro, transcripts of conversation
between Fred Leuchter and Shelly Z. Shapiro, February 2, 1990.
31. Leuchter Report, p. 4.
32. Fred Leuchter, "Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers'," p. 6.
33. Leuchter Report, p. 1.
34. Faurisson, "The Zundel Trials," p. 429.
35. Zuendel, p. 9075.
36. Ibid., pp. 8962, 8969, 8972, 8978.
37. Ibid., p. 8973.
38. See testimony of Raul Hilberg at the first Zuendel trial. Her Majesty
the Queen vs. Ernst Zuendel, District Court of Ontario, 1985, p. 1112;
Zuendel, 1988, pp. 9010, 9011, 9013.
39. Zuendel, p. 9048.
40. Shelly Shapiro, "An Investigation," in Truth Prevails: Demolishing
Holocaust Denial: The End of "The Leuchter Report" ed. Shelly Shapiro (New
York, 1990), p.
14; Arthur Goodman, "Leuchter: Exposed and Discredited by the Court," in
Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 78.
41. Zuendel, p. 9056.
42. Ibid., pp. 8984, 9017, 9061, 9097, 9125, 9154, 9210, 9223.
43. Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 56.
44. Zuendel, pp. 8894-95.
45. Ibid. 8983.
46. Ibid., pp. 9052-53.
47. Ibid., pp. 9034, 9038.
48. Ibid., pp. 9049-50.
49. Ibid., pp. 8976, 9052.
50. Ibid., p. 8951; Statement by E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company, Oct. 2,
1990, cited in Shapiro, p. 28.
51. Zuendel, p. 9009.
52. Leuchter Report, p. 10.
53. Zuendel, pp. 9028, 9034.
54. Q. And that is all based on the assumption that the physical plan
presently at that location in Poland is what was there in 1942, '43, '44
and '45? Is that right?
A. That is correct.
Zuendel, p. 9018.
55. Zuendel, p. 9107. Under further cross-examination Leuchter backed down
from some of the conclusions he had drawn in the report. Echoing Faurisson
he originally argued that the chambers could not have functioned as
execution sites because those whose job it was to throw the Zyklon-B down
the roof vents and verify that the prisoners inside had died would
themselves have died from exposure to the cyanide gas. Under
cross-examination the Crown Counsel easily got Leuchter to agree to the
fallacy of this conclusion:
Q. So this stuff you told us about people on the roof who dropped the gas
down and how they would be committing suicide, it would take a matter of
minutes before the gas got to them, wouldn't it?
A. Unquestionably.
Q. So if they closed the vent and got off the roof, there would be nothing
to concern them, would there?
A. If they got off the roof. But at some point they have to do an
inspection to determine whether the parties are deceased.
Q. They send in the Sonderkommandos to do that, sir, and they don't care
what happens to them.
A. Right, all right.
Q. So if someone's on the roof with a gas mask, you agree that they've got
all kinds of time to get off the roof after they've closed the vent?
A. Perhaps.
Zuendel, p. 9254.
56. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers (New York, 1989), p. 15 (hereafter cited as Technique).
57. Zuendel, pp. 8991ff.
58. Jean-Claude Pressac, "The Deficiencies and Inconsistencies of 'The
Leuchter Report,'" in Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 45.
59. Zuendel, pp. 9245ff.
60. Zuendel, pp. 9251-52.
61. There were a total of 5 crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
62. "Deficiencies," p. 40.
63. Ibid., p. 41.
64. Ibid., p. 49.
65. Ibid., p. 46.
66. Jean-Claude Pressac, "Additional Notes: Leuchter's Videotape: A Witness
to Fraud," in Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 62.
67. Zuendel, pp. 9044, 9063.
68. Memorandum from Ed Carnes, Alabama Assistant Attorney General, to all
Capital Punishment States July 20, 1990 (hereafter cited as Carnes);
Shapiro, Truth Prevails, pp. 17, 21; Newsweek, Oct. 22, 1990, p. 64;
Swampscott Journal, Nov. 1, 1990.
69. Associated Press, Oct. 24, 1990.
70. Carnes, p. 2.
71. Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 22.
72. Leuchter Report, p. 7; Zundel, p. 9058.
73. Gary T. Dixon to Shelly Z. Shapiro, Sept. 24, 1990, reprinted in
Shapiro, Truth Prevails, p. 19.
74. Ibid., p. 20.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid., p. 10.
77. Ibid., pp. 18-20. It was Missouri State Penitentiary Warden Bill
Armontrout who, in response to Robert Faurisson's request for an expert on
executions, suggested that Leuchter be contacted. Bill Armontrout to
Barbara Kulaszka, Jan. 13, 1988, Leuchter Report, app. 7.
78. New York Times, Oct. 13, 1990, pp. 1, 7; Trombley, The Execution
Protocol, p. 157.
79. Susan Lehman, "Justice: A Matter of Engineering: Capital Punishment as
a Technical Problem," Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1990, p. 28.
80. Shapiro, Truth Prevails, pp. 14-15.
81. Lehman, "Justice: A Matter of Engineering," p. 28.
82. Shelly Z. Shapiro to Daniel Kelley, Apr. 16, 1990; Fred A. Leuchter to
Ernst Zuendel, May 14, 1988, Leuchter Report, app. 6. See also Leuchter
Report, p. 15.
83. Washington Post, June 18, 1991.
84. Consent Agreement, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Fred A. Leuchter,
Jr., June 11, 1991; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 13, 1991. Since the
agreement Leuchter signed was with Massachusetts, its provisions applied
only to that state.
85. Technique, p. 545.
86. Le Matin, Nov. 16, 1978; Le Monde, Dec. 29, 1978, Jan. 16, 1979;
Technique, p. 546.
87. Technique, p. 546.
88. Ibid., p. 548.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. "Natzweiler-Struthof," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1039.
92. Serge Thion, Verite Historique, quoted in Technique, p. 548.
93. Ibid.
94. Robert Faurisson, "Talking About Holocaust Revisionism on French
Radio," Revisionist Letters, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989), p. 11.
95. Ibid.
96. Phone conversation with Editorial Offices, Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1990.
97. Lehman, "Justice: A Matter of Engineering," pp. 26ff.
98. Bradley R. Smith, "Commentary," Visalia Times - Delta, Sept. 13, 1990.
99. Phone conversation with Editorial Offices, Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1990.
100. Phone interviews with Shelly Shapiro, Feb. 1990, Apr. 1990.
101. Charles R. Allen, Jr., "The Role of the Media in the Leuchter Matter:
Hyping a Holocaust Denier," in Shapiro, Truth Prevails, pp. 112-13.
102. Village Voice, May 22, 30, 1990; Allen, "The Role of the Media," in
Shapiro, Truth Prevails, pp. 118-19.
103. New York Times, Oct. 13, 1990, pp. 1, 7.
104. Allen, "The Role of the Media," p. 121; New York Times, Oct. 18, 1990,
reprinted in International Herald Tribune, Oct. 19, 1990.
105. Searchlight, Aug. 1989.
106. David Irving, "Foreword," Auschwitz the End of the Line: The Leuchter
Report (London, 1989), p. 6.
107. Times (London), May 11, 1992.
108. Irving, "Foreword," Auschwitz the End of the Line, p. 6.
109. Early Day Motion no. 99, "David Irving and Holocaust Denial," House of
Commons, June 20, 1989, Session 1988-1989.
110. Times (London), May 14, 1992.
111. Independent, July 11, 1992.
112. Trombley, The Execution Protocol, pp. 23-43.
113. Ibid., pp. 87-94; New York Times Book Review, Nov. 22, 1992, p. 33.
114. New York Review of Books, June 15, 1989.
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus
"This is not a public stagecoach that has to take everyone who buys a
ticket." -Benjamin Franklin (1)
In the early 1990s American college campuses became loci of intensive
activity by a small group of Holocaust deniers. Relying on creative tactics
and assisted by a fuzzy kind of reasoning often evident in academic
circles, the deniers achieved millions of dollars of free publicity and
significantly furthered their cause. Their strategy was profoundly simple.
Bradley Smith, a Californian who has been involved in a variety of
Holocaust denial activities since the early 1980s, attempted to place a
full-page ad claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax in college newspapers
throughout the United States. The ad was published by papers at some of the
more prestigious institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Entitled "The Holocaust Story: How Much Is False? The Case for Open
Debate," the ad provoked a fierce debate on many of the campuses approached
by Smith. His strategy was quite straightforward: He generally called a
paper's advertising department to ascertain the charge for publication of a
full-page ad and then submitted camera-ready copy and a certified cheek in
the proper amount. On occasion he inquired in advance whether a paper would
be willing to run this particular ad. [Among the papers that accepted it,
either as an ad or an op-ed column, were those of the University of
Arizona, Cornell, Duke, the University of Georgia, Howard, the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Louisiana State, the University of
Michigan, the University of Montana, Northwestern, Ohio State, Rutgers,
Vanderbilt, Washington University, and the University of Washington. Among
those colleges rejecting the ad were Berkeley, Brown, the University of
California at Santa Barbara, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Emory,
Georgetown, Harvard, the University of Minnesota, the University of North
Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue, Rice, the University of
Southern California, the University of Tennessee, the University of Texas
(Austin), UCLA, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin
(Madison), and Yale.] Even when he was rejected, the attempt to place the
ad won him significant media attention. (2) Campus newspapers began to use
his name in headlines without identifying him, assuming readers would know
who he was.
Articles, letters, and op-ed pieces defended Holocaust denial's right to
make its "views" known. But not all the results were necessarily what Smith
would have wanted. On some campuses there was a backlash against him and
Holocaust denial. Courses on the Holocaust that had languished on the back
burner for an extended period materialized in the next semester's
offerings. Campus administrators admitted that the ad constituted the final
push necessary to move these courses from the planning stage to the
schedule books. (3) Professors from a wide variety of disciplines included
discussion of the Holocaust in their courses. Movies, speakers,
photographic exhibits, and other presentations relating to the Holocaust
were brought to campus. Students participated in rallies, teach-ins and
protests.
This response prompted some observers to argue that the controversy had a
positive impact. Students had become increasingly aware not only of the
Holocaust but of the contemporary attempt to subvert history and spread
anti-semitism. While this may be a relatively accurate analysis of the
immediate outcome of Smith's endeavor, there is another more sobering and
pessimistic aspect to the matter. Analysis of the students', faculty's, and
administration's responses reveals both a susceptibility to the worst form
of historical revisionism and a failure to fully understand the
implications of Holocaust denial, even among those who vigorously condemned
it.
This was not Smith's first use of college newspapers to spread Holocaust
denial. For a number of years Smith, along with other deniers, had been
placing small ads containing the phone number and address of the Committee
on Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), an organization Smith had created
with fellow denier Mark Weber in 1987. According to the ADL, CODOH was
initially funded by the late William Curry, a Nebraska businessman known
for his anti-semitic activities. In 1986, he first attempted to place an ad
denying the Holocaust in a campus newspaper. He sent $1,000 to the Daily
Nebraskan for a full-page ad claiming the Holocaust was a hoax. (4) The
paper rejected the ad. Shortly thereafter Curry died, and Smith continued
his work.
Smith claims that he has no connection to any other denial group and his
only association is with CODOH. He has had a long-standing association with
the IHR, serving as a contributing editor of its newsletter since June
1985. At the time he was placing the ads he still maintained a relationship
with it. (5) In 1986 he launched the IHR radio project, writing a regular
column on the project for the IHR's newsletter, in which he touted his
success in getting Holocaust denial onto the radio. Under the auspices of
the IHR he planned to tour colleges and universities to speak about
"Holocaust fraud and falsehood." (6) Smith's objective was not to "plant
seeds" for coming gene rations but to "take revisionist scholarship
directly into our universities NOW!" In a letter to his followers he
announced that the IHR had guaranteed to pay a portion of both his
"start-up costs" and his "on-going expenses." (7)
Before becoming involved with the IHR's radio project, Smith published
Prima Facie, which he dedicated to "monitoring Holocaust Cultism,
Censorship and Suppression of Free Inquiry." In it he attacked Mel
Mermelstein, who had successfully challenged the IHR's demand for "proof"
that the Holocaust happened. Smith's description of Mermelstein - as a
"yokel" who had sued the institute because it refused to believe that "a
hank of hair and a jar full of ashes proves" that Jews were "exterminated"
in gas chambers - typified the tone of the newsletter. Mermelstein had
developed a "tongue so twisted he could drill his own teeth." (8)
Articles from Prima Facie have been reprinted in Spearhead, the publication
of the right-wing extremist British National party. One such article
referred to a wire service report of how a Gestapo officer watched with a
smile as his German shepherd dog killed an elderly Jew in Poland in 1942.
Smith's use of sarcasm in his attempt to cast doubt on the story was a
hallmark of his style.
Let's say the dog was an 80-pounder - hell let's say it was a 100-pounder!
Now let' s say the elderly Jew was frail and small, perhaps only a
100-pounder himself. Hell, let's say he was an 80-pounder! I do want to be
fair about this. So one question to get straight about the German dog and
the elderly Jew is this: How much of the one could the other really eat?
(9)
Smith's accomplice was Mark Weber, co-director of CODOH, (10) one of the
more active spokesmen for Holocaust denial, and a former member of the
National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization. Spotlight described Weber as
the "shining star" of defense witnesses at the Zuendel trial. (11) At the
trial and in denial publications Weber has argued that the Jews who died
were the "unfortunate victims" not of an extermination program but of
"disease and malnutrition brought on by the complete collapse of Germany in
the final months of the war." Repeating a denial argument that had first
been voiced by Austin App, Weber contended that if the extermination
program had actually existed, the Jews found alive by the Allied forces at
the war's end "would have long since been killed." (12)
truth and memory
In an interview in November 1989 with the University of Nebraska Sower he
expressed his concern about the future of the white "race" in the United
States and about the future of the country. Weber contended that the
country was heading in one of two possible directions. Either it would
become "a sort of Mexicanized, Puerto Ricanized country," a result of the
failure of "white Americans" to reproduce themselves or it would break up
because of long-standing racial problems. He rejected the possibility of a
unified American heritage or culture based on a multiplicity of races and
groups. He did not think it desirable or feasible for "black Americans to
be assimilated into white society."
Weber seemed to yearn for a time when the United States was defined as a
"white country" and nonwhites were "second-class citizens." This gave the
country a "mooring, an anchor." He bemoaned the fact that "today we don't
even have that." (13) As the newspaper controversy became more public and
Weber became more publicly involved in denial activities, his ideas on race
were increasingly left unarticulated.
One of the first papers approached by CODOH, which for all intents and
purposes consisted of Smith and Weber, was Pennsylvania State University's
Daily Collegian. After running the small ad that contained CODOH's number
for a few weeks it dropped it in response to campus criticism. Smith
immediately sent a series of letters to local newspapers accusing the Daily
Collegian of trying to "suppress and even censor radical scholarship." (14)
It may have been the "Sturm und Drang" he created with this small ad that
persuaded him to expand his efforts.
Shortly after his failed attempt at Penn State he experienced the same
problem with the Stanford Daily, which had been running a similar ad for a
period of seven weeks. The editor cancelled it due to student protests.
Smith, implying that Hillel, the Jewish student organization, controlled
the Daily's coverage of other issues, including American politics in the
Middle East, urged the editor to take a stand for "free inquiry and open
debate" by running the ad. (15) He told Hillel students that it was in
Jews' best interests to know the truth about the Holocaust. (16)
In his publication Revisionist Letters, Smith tried to differentiate
between anti-semites who used Holocaust denial to attack Jews and his
putative objective of uncovering the truth. He asserted that his editorial
policy objective was to encourage "exposes of bigotry and anti-semitism" in
Holocaust "revisionism." An article in the magazine argued that the
participation of "Nazi apologists" in Holocaust denial circles precluded
the participation of other supporters, particularly the radical left. (17)
The author, Laird Wilcox, wondered how "revisionists" could argue that
their speech was suppressed when there was a "substantial element in
[their] own ranks that doesn't believe in it [free speech], except for
themselves." (18) Smith reiterated this idea in a column in his local
newspaper, admitting that although the "search for truth" about the
Holocaust was not anti-semitic, there were "bigots" in the movement who
were "self-avowedly anti-Jewish and who used revisionist scholarship as an
attack on Jews." (19) Smith seemed to be aware that any linkage of his
efforts with extremist and racist groups would be a liability, particularly
on campus.
His effort to distance himself from these overtly anti-semitic groups was
reflective of a shift by deniers to sever their overt ties to an array of
neo-Nazi and extremist groups. Leonard Zeskind, the research director of
the Center for Democratic Renewal in Kansas City, Missouri, and a respected
specialist on extremism in America, categorized Smith's efforts as
reflective of a general shift among "white supremacists" and extremists
away from the political margins into the mainstream by avoiding any overt
association with swastika-bedecked or white-sheeted fascist groups. David
Duke's re-creation of his past during the presidential campaign was an
example of this strategy, (20) which confuses many people who can easily
identify the objectives of the Klan, White Aryan Nation, and Posse
Comitatus but who find it more difficult to recognize extremism when it is
cloaked in a seemingly rational and familiar garb.
The ad Smith began to circulate in the spring of 1991 contained the
deniers' familiar litany of claims. It declared the gas chambers a fraud,
photographs doctored, eyewitness reports "ludicrously unreliable," the
Nuremberg trials a sham, and camp internees well fed until Allied bombings
destroyed the German infrastructure in the most "barbarous form of warfare
in Europe since the Mongol invasions," preventing food from being delivered
and causing the inmates to starve. According to Smith the notion of a Nazi
attempt to destroy the Jews was the product of Allied efforts to produce
"anti-German hate propaganda." Today that same propaganda was used by
powerful forces to "scapegoat old enemies," "seek vengeance rather than
reconciliation," and pursue a "not-so-secret political agenda." (21)
He repeated the familiar protest that his sole objective was to uncover the
truth through an open debate on the Holocaust - debate that had been
suppressed by a powerful but secret group on campus as part of their larger
political agenda. "Let's ask these people - what makes such behavior a
social good? Who benefits?"
The ad contended that denial was forcing "mainline Holocaust historians" to
admit the "more blatant examples" of Holocaust falsehoods. It was the
deniers who had forced them to revise the "orthodox" Holocaust story. They
had had to admit that the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz was far
smaller than originally claimed, and had been made to confess that the
Nazis did not use Jewish cadavers for the production of soap. It is correct
that in recent years newly revealed documentation has allowed scholars to
assess more precisely the number of Jews thought to have been murdered at
Auschwitz. (22) [The memorial stone at Auschwitz lists the number of
victims of the camp as 4 million. Research now indicates that the number of
people who died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers was between 1.5 and
2 million, of whom 85% to 90% were Jews.] It is also accurate that scholars
have long written that despite wartime rumors to the contrary, the Nazis
apparently did not use Jewish cadavers for soap. There has been a wide
array of other "revelations" by Holocaust historians, all part of the
attempt to uncover the full details of one of the most horrifying acts of
human destruction. Smith suggested to his readers that scholars and others
who work in this field, all of whom vigorously repudiate Holocaust denial,
have been compelled to admit the truth of deniers' claims: "We are told
that it is 'anti-Jewish' to question orthodox assertions about German
criminality. Yet we find that it is Jews themselves like Mayer, Bauer,
Hier, Hilberg, Lipstadt and others who beginning [sic] to challenge the
establishment Holocaust story." 23) This notion - that deniers have exposed
the truth and mainline historians are scrambling to admit it - remains a
linchpin of the deniers' strategy.
It has two objectives: to make it appear that Jewish scholars are
responding to the pressure of the deniers' findings and to create the
impression that Holocaust deniers' "questions" are themselves part of a
continuum of respectable scholarship. If establishment scholars,
particularly those who are Jews, can question previously accepted truths,
why is it wrong when Bradley Smith does the same?
Though much of the ad consisted of familiar rhetoric, Smith added a new
twist that had a particular resonance on American college campuses. Since
the 1980s the concept of "political correctness" has been a source of
academic conflict. Conservative political groups have accused the "liberal
establishment" of labeling certain topics politically incorrect and
therefore ineligible for inclusion in the curriculum. Smith framed his
well-worn denial arguments within this rhetoric, arguing that Holocaust
revisionism could not be addressed on campus because "America's thought
police" had declared it out of bounds. "The politically correct line on the
Holocaust story is, simply, it happened. You don't debate it." Unlike all
other topics students were free to explore, the Holocaust story was off
limits. The consequences, he charged, were antithetical to everything for
which the university stood. "Ideology replaces free inquiry, intimidation
represses open debate, and .. the ideals of the university itself are
exchanged for intellectual taboos." (24) While most students who had to
decide whether the ad should be published did not overtly succumb to
CODOH's use of the political correctness argument, many proved prone to it,
sometimes less than consciously - a susceptibility evident in their
justifications for running the ad. Among the first universities to accept
the ad were Northwestern, the University of Michigan, Duke, Cornell, Ohio
State, and Washington University. (25) [The papers discussed in this
chapter function as private newspapers. The courts have broadly defined
their editorial discretion to accept or reject ads. In situations of "state
action," where a state university administration controls the newspaper's
content, the courts may prohibit content-based rejection of the ads.
Discretion of Student Editors to Accept or Reject Holocaust Revisionist
Advertisements (ADL Legal Affairs Dept., Feb. 1992).] At the University of
Michigan the saga of the ad had a strange twist. Smith mailed camera-ready
copy directly to the Michigan Daily. According to the paper's business
manager, the ad "slipped through without being read." When it appeared the
business staff was appalled to learn what they had allowed to happen. On
the following day they placed a 6-column ad in the paper apologizing for
running Smith's ad and acknowledging that its publication had been a
mistake. They declared it a "sorrowful learning experience for the staff."
(26) The manager told the Detroit Free Press, "We make mistakes like any
organization." (27)
The story might well have ended here - an example of faulty monitoring by a
segment of the staff of the Michigan Daily - but the issue became more
complicated when, despite the fact that those responsible for running the
ad acknowledged doing so as a mistake, the editorial board attempted to
transform a blunder into a matter of principle. They recast a snafu as an
expression of freedom of speech. On the same day that the advertising staff
published its apology, the front page carried an editorial explaining that,
though the editors found the ad "offensive and inaccurate," they could not
condone the censorship of "unpopular views from our pages merely because
they are offensive or because we disagree with them." (28) Editor in chief
Andrew Gottesman acknowledged that had the decision been in his hands, he
would have printed the ad. He argued that rejecting it constituted
censorship, which the editorial board found unacceptable. (29)
The following day a campus rally attacked both Holocaust denial and the
paper's editorial policies. Stung by student and faculty condemnations and
afraid that its editorial was being interpreted as an endorsement of CODOH,
the editorial board devoted the next issue's lead editorial to the topic.
Condemning Holocaust denial as "absurd" and "founded on historical fiction
and anti-Jewish bigotry," they dismissed it as irrational, illogical, and
ahistorical propaganda. The editors accurately assessed the ad as lacking
intellectual merit. Nonetheless, they continued to support its publication.
Their powerful condemnation of Holocaust denial in general and Smith's ad
in particular appeared under a banner quoting Supreme Court Justice Hugo
Black's opinion on free speech: "My view is, without deviation, without
exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, that freedom of speech
means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they
have or the views they express or the words they speak or write." (30)
The strange set of circumstances at Michigan - snatching a constitutional
principle from the jaws of a mistake - was further complicated by the entry
of the university's president, James Duderstadt, into the debate. In a
letter to the Daily he declared the ad the work of "a warped crank" and
proclaimed that denying the Holocaust was to "deny our human potential for
evil and to invite its resurgence." But he, too, defended the paper's
decision, which was more of a non-decision, to run the ad. The president
asserted that the Daily had a long history of editorial freedom that had to
be protected even when "we disagree either with particular opinions,
decisions, or actions." Most disturbing was Duderstadt's elevation of
Smith's prejudices to the level of opinions.
There was no doubt about the message the editors and the president were
trying to convey: As absurd, illogical, and bigoted as the ad may be, First
Amendment guarantees were paramount. The dictates of the American
Constitution compelled the Daily to publish. None of those involved seemed
to have considered precisely what the First Amendment said: "Congress shall
make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." Those who
argued that free speech guarantees acceptance of the ad ignored the fact
that the First Amendment prevents government from interfering in any
fashion with an individual's or group's right to publish the most
outlandish argument. (31) The New York Times made this point in an
editorial when it adamantly repudiated the notion that this was a First
Amendment question: "Government may not censor Mr. Smith and his fellow
'Holocaust revisionists,' no matter how intellectually barren their
claims." (32)
To call rejection of the ad censorship was to ignore the fact that, unlike
the government, whose actions are limited by the First Amendment, these
papers do not have a monopoly of force. (33) If the government denies
someone the right to publish, they have no other option to publish in this
country. But if a paper rejects someone's column, ad, or letter, there are
always other publications. The First Amendment does not guarantee access to
a private publication. It is designed to serve as a shield to protect
individuals and institutions from government interference in their affairs.
It is not a sword by which every person who makes an outlandish statement
or notorious claim can invoke a Constitutional right to be published. [In
1931, in Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court struck down a state attempt
to gag a paper's freedom to publish "malicious, scandalous or defamatory"
material. Fred W. Friendly, Minnesota Rag (New York, 1981).] Nor did the
Michigan Daily seem to notice how Justice Black, whom they quoted, framed
it: "you shall not do something to people.." No one was advocating "doing"
anything to Smith.
One of the most ardent advocates of the free-speech argument was the Duke
Chronicle. In an editorial column the editor in chief, Ann Heimberger,
justified the paper's decision by acknowledging that while the paper knew
it could reject the ad, it "chose" to accept it as an expression of the
paper's desire to "support the advertiser's rights." The editorial board
believed that it was not the paper's responsibility to protect "readers
from disturbing ideas," but to "disseminate them." (34) Echoing his
Michigan colleague, Duke University president Keith Brodie repeated the
free-speech defense in a statement that, though it contained a strong
refutation of the ad, was more vigorous in its support of the Chronicle's
publication of the ad. To have "suppressed" the ad, he argued, would have
violated the university's commitment to free speech and contradicted its
"long tradition of supporting First Amendment rights." (35)
When the Cornell Daily Sun ran the ad, the editors justified the decision
in an editorial statement warning that "page twenty will shock most
readers" but proclaimed that it was not the paper's role to "unjustly
censor advertisers' viewpoints." Echoing their colleagues on many of the
other campuses that printed the ad, the editors declared that they decided
to print it because the "First Amendment right to free expression must be
extended to those with unpopular or offensive ideas." (36) Neeraj Khemlani,
the editor in chief of the Daily Sun, said his role was not to "protect"
readers. (37) Cornell president Frank H. T. Rhodes joined his colleagues at
Duke and Michigan in defending the paper's decision. (38)
The University of Montana's paper, the Montana Kaimin, also used the First
Amendment to defend its publication of the ad. The editor contended that it
was not the paper's place to "decide for the campus community what they
should see." (39) The University of Georgia's paper the Red and Black,
expressed the hope that publishing the ad would affirm America's unique
commitment to "allowing every opinion to be heard, no matter how
objectionable, how outright offensive, how clearly wrong that opinion may
be." After the ad appeared the paper's editor defended the decision by
describing it as "a business decision," arguing that "if the business
department is set up to take ads, they darn well better take ads." Given
the juxtaposition of these two explanations, there was, as Mark Silk, an
editorial writer for the Atlanta Constitution pointed out, something
dubious about "this high-minded claim." (40)
After an extensive debate Washington University's Student Life decided to
run the ad. When the ad appeared in the paper, Sam Moyn, the opinion
editor, was responsible for conveying to the university community the
reasoning behind the staff's "controversial action." The editors, he wrote,
conceived of this as a free-speech issue: "The abridgement of Mr. Smith's
rights endangers our own." (41) The St. Louis Post Dispatch defended the
students' actions. Declaring the ad "offensive, provocative and wrong," it
praised the student newspaper' s courage to print it and stated that its
actions strengthened the cause of freedom of speech. (42) The University of
Arizona also depicted its actions as protecting the First Amendment. The
editor in chief, Beth Silver, proclaimed that the mission of student
newspapers is "to uphold the First Amendment and run things that are
obviously going to be controversial and take the heat for it." (43) This
attitude - we have to do what is right irrespective of the costs - was
voiced by a number of papers. Ironically, it echoed a theme frequently
voiced by the deniers themselves: We will tell the truth, the consequences
notwithstanding.
At Ohio State University the decision-making process was complex. The
Lantern's advertising policy is in the hands of a publications committee
comprising faculty, students, editorial board members, and the paper's
business manager. (44) University policy requires committee approval before
acceptance of an ad designating a religious group. The committee voiced 5
to 4 to reject CODOH's submission. (45) But the story did not end there.
Enjoined by the committee's decision from running the ad, the Lantern's
editor, Samantha G. Haney, used her editorial powers to run it as an op-ed
piece, explaining that the paper had an "obligation" to do so. (46) This
decision gave Smith added legitimacy and saved him the $1,134 it would have
cost to place a full-page ad in the paper. (47)
A lengthy editorial explaining the Lantern's decision condemned Bradley
Smith and his cohorts as "racists, pure and simple" and the ad as "little
more than a commercial for hatred." Nonetheless the newspaper had to
publish it because it could not only "run things that were harmless to
everyone." (48) Haney and her staff rejected the suggestion that they turn
to the Ohio State History Department to "pick apart" the ad fact by fact.
That, they explained, might suggest that the ad had some "relevancy" and
some "substance," which they were convinced it did not. Given that one of
the rationales the Lantern offered for publishing the article was that
"truth will always outshine any lie," its refusal to ask professional
historians to elucidate how the ad convoluted historical fact seemed
self-defeating. (49) It seemed to reflect an understandable reluctance to
accord denial legitimacy. There is no better example of the fragility of
reason than the conclusion by these editorial boards that it was their
obligation to run an ad or an op-ed column that, according to their own
evaluation, was totally lacking in relevance or substance.
In contrast to the position adopted by James Duderstadt at the University
of Michigan, Ohio State's president, Gordon Gee, attacked the decision to
give Smith space in the newspaper, declaring the deniers' arguments
"pernicious" and "cleverly disguised" propaganda that enhanced prejudice
and distorted history. (50) When this issue was being debated at Ohio
State, a CBS reporter came to that campus to film a segment on Holocaust
denial for a network show on hatred and extremism in the United States.
Alerted in advance to the pending controversy, the cameras were
conveniently present when the editor received a call from Smith
congratulating her for running the ad and standing up for the principles of
free speech and free press. When Haney hung up, the television reporter,
who was standing nearby, asked how she felt. She turned and somewhat
plaintively observed that she thought she had been had.
Not all the papers subscribed to the First Amendment argument; indeed, some
explicitly rejected it. The University of Tennessee's Daily Beacon
dismissed the idea that not running the ad harmed the deniers' interests:
It was not "censorship or even damaging." (51) Pennsylvania State
University's Daily Collegian, which had been one of the first to receive an
ad from Smith, denied that the issue was one of free speech. After seeing
student leaders and numerous individuals on campus inundated with material
by deniers, the paper reasoned that those behind the ad had sufficient
funds to propagate their conspiracy theory of Jewish control without being
granted space in the paper. (52)
In an eloquent editorial the Harvard Crimson repudiated Smith's claim to a
free-speech right to publish his ad. To give CODOH a forum so that it could
"promulgate malicious falsehoods" under the guise of open debate
constituted an "abdication" of the paper's editorial responsibility. (53)
The University of Chicago Maroon agreed that while the deniers "may express
their views," it had "no obligation at anytime to print their offensive
hatred." (54)
The argument that not publishing the ad constituted censorship was not only
a misinterpretation of the First Amendment but disingenuous. The editorial
boards that reached this decision ignored the fact that they all had
policies that prevented them from running racist, sexist, prejudicial, or
religiously offensive ads. (Some of the papers in question even refuse
cigarette ads.) How could they square their "principled" stand for absolute
freedom of speech with policies that prevented them from publishing a range
of ads and articles? Why was Bradley Smith entitled to constitutional
protection while an ad for an X-rated movie, Playboy, the KKK, or Marlboros
was not?
truth and memory
two seemingly contradictory positions by adopting a stance that drew them
even further into the deniers' trap. They argued that Holocaust denial was
not anti-semitic and therefore not offensive. The Cornell Daily Sun
editorial board determined that the "ad does not directly contain racist
statements about Jewish people." (55) Valerie Nicolette, the Sun's managing
editor, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the editors had
evaluated the ad based on their standards of "obscenity and racism" and
decided that it passed. (56) When a group of Jewish students at Duke met
with the editorial board of the Duke Chronicle to protest the running of
the ad, they were told that the paper's policy was not to run any ad that
was "racist or contained ethnic slurs" but that this ad did not fall into
that category. (57)
Andrew Gottesman, who vigorously argued that he could not condone
"censorship" of Smith's advertisement and whose Michigan Daily published
its ringing denunciation of Holocaust denial under Justice Hugo Black's
interpretation of the First Amendment, admitted that there were ads he
would not run in the paper. This ad, however, did not deserve to be "banned
from the marketplace of ideas, like others might be." Among those he would
ban were a Ku Klux Klan announcement of lynching or a beer ad with a woman
holding a beer bottle between her breasts. (58) For Gottesman keeping such
sexist and racist ads out of the paper would not constitute censorship;
keeping Smith's out would. When Washington University's Student Life
published the ad, an editorial explained that it did so in the interest of
preventing "freedom of ideas from disappearing from its newspapers." (59)
Yet the same paper includes the following policy statement on its
advertising rate card: "Student Life reserves the right to edit or reject
any advertisement which does not comply with the policies or judgment of
the newspaper." (60)
The claim that the rejection of the ad constituted censorship also revealed
the failure of editorial staffs and, in certain cases, university
presidents to think carefully about what their papers did regularly: pick
and choose between subjects they covered and those they did not, columns
they ran and those they rejected, and ads that met their standards and
those that did not. The Daily Tar Heel, the paper of the University of
North Carolina, proclaimed that as soon as an editor "takes the first
dangerous step and decides that an ad should not run because of its
content, that editor begins the plunge down a slippery slope toward the
abolition of free speech." (61) What the Tar Heel failed to note was that
newspapers continuously make such choices. As Tom Teepen, the editor of the
Atlanta Constitution's editorial page, observed, "Running a newspaper is
mainly about making decisions, not about ducking them." (62) In fact the
Duke Chronicle, whose editor had wondered how newspapers founded on the
principles of free speech and free press could "deny those rights to
anyone," had earlier rejected an insert for Playboy and an ad attacking a
fraternity. (63) While some papers justified their decision by arguing that
the ad was not anti-semitic and others leaned on the censorship argument,
an even more disconcerting rationale was offered by many papers. They
argued that however ugly or repellent Smith's "ideas," they had a certain
intellectual legitimacy. Consequently it was the papers' responsibility to
present these views to readers for their consideration. Those editors who
made this argument fell prey to denial's attempt to present itself as part
of the normal range of historical interpretation. (64) That they had been
deceived was evident in the way they described the contents of the ad. The
editor in chief of the Cornell Daily Sun described the ad as containing
"offensive ideas." (65) The Sun argued that it was not the paper's role to
"unjustly censor advertisers' viewpoints" however "unpopular or offensive."
(66) In a similar vein the University of Washington Daily defended giving
Smith op-ed space because the paper must constitute a "forum for diverse
opinions and ideas." (67) Ironically, 6 weeks earlier, when it rejected the
ad, it had described Smith's assertions as "so obviously false as to be
unworthy of serious debate." (68) The paper insisted that the op-ed column
it eventually published was different because it was Smith's "opinion" and
did not contain the "blatant falsehoods" of the ad. In the column Smith
asserted that for more than 12 years he has been unable to find "one bit of
hard evidence" to prove that there was a plan to "exterminate" the Jews,
and that the gas chamber "stories" were "allegations" unsupported by
"documentation or physical evidence." (69)
The Michigan Daily engaged in the same reasoning. It would not censor
"unpopular views" simply because readers might disagree with them. (70) In
a show of consistency, two weeks after Smith's ad appeared the Daily
supported the decision by Prodigy, the computer bulletin board, to allow
subscribers to post Holocaust denial material. Prodigy they contended, was
similar to a newspaper, and like a newspaper it must be a "forum for
ideas." (71) In another suggestion that Smith's views were worthy of
debate, the editor in chief of the Montana Kaimin argued that "this man's
opinions, no matter how ridiculous they may be need to be heard out there."
(72) According to the editor in chief of Washington University's Student
Life, the board voted to run the ad because "we didn't feel comfortable
censoring offensive ideas." (73)
The Ohio State Lantern's explanation of why it let Smith have his "public
say" despite the fact that it condemned Smith and CODOH as "racist, pure
and simple," was more disturbing than the decision itself. The Lantern
argued that it was "repulsive to think that the quality, or total lack
thereof, of any idea or opinion has any bearing on whether it should be
heard." (74) It is breathtaking that students at a major university could
declare repulsive the making of a decision based on the "quality" of ideas.
One assumes that their entire education is geared toward the exploration of
ideas with a certain lasting quality. This kind of reasoning essentially
contravenes all that an institution of higher learning is supposed to
profess.
The editors of Washington University's Student Life demonstrated a similar
disturbing inconsistency. They dismissed Smith's claim to be engaged in a
quest for the truth, describing him as someone who "cloaks hate in the garb
of intellectual detachment." They believed that Smith was posing as a
"truth seeker crushed by a conspiratorial society." (75) Given their
evaluation of Smith, his tactics, and the way conspiracy theorists have
captured the imagination of much of American society, what followed was
particularly disconcerting. Notwithstanding all their misgivings, the
editors decided that they must give "Mr. Smith the benefit of the doubt if
we mean to preserve our own rights." In an assertion typical of the
confused reasoning that student papers nationwide displayed on this issue,
the Student Life editors acknowledged that they could have suppressed
Smith's views "if we attributed motives to him that contradict his
statements. But we cannot in good conscience tell Mr. Smith that we 'know'
him and his true intentions." Was not the fact that he was denying a
historical fact about whose existence there is no debate among any
reputable scholars indicative of something significant? The editorial board
had concluded that "if we refused Mr. Smith's advertisement, we could
censor anyone based on ulterior motives that we perceive them to harbor."
(76) At what point would the board feel it was appropriate to make a
decision based on the objective merits of the information contained in the
ad?
In this instance what the paper considered to be ulterior motives is what
scholars call coming to a conclusion based on a wide variety of facts,
including historical data. In giving Smith the "benefit of the doubt," the
editors fell prey to the notion that this was a rational debate. They
ignored the fact that the ad contained claims that completely contravened a
massive body of fact. They transformed what the Harvard Crimson described
as "vicious propaganda" into iconoclasm.
The most controversial interpretation about precisely what this ad
represented was expressed by the Duke Chronicle. In a column justifying the
paper's decision to run the ad, Ann Heimberger contended that "Revisionists
are .. reinterpreting history, a practice that occurs constantly,
especially on a college campus." (77) In a private meeting with Jewish
student leaders on the Duke campus, the editors reiterated this argument.
The students were told that the ad was neither racist nor anti-semitic but
was part of an ongoing "scholarly debate." (78) The Duke editorial board
viewed the advertisement more as "a political argument than as an ethnic
attack." (79) In editorials, articles, and interviews, those at helm of the
Duke Chronicle repeatedly referred to Holocaust denial as "radical,
unpopular views," and "disturbing ideas" and argued that the ad was not a
"slur" but an "opinion." (80) By doing so they not only clung to their
First Amendment defense, they gave the ad historical and intellectual
legitimacy.
The Chronicle's acceptance of the ad and the editor's defense of having
done so elicited two reactions. Bradley Smith, quite predictably, praised
Heimberger's column as "fantastic" and an example of sound reasoning. (81)
A less laudatory response came from the Duke History Department, which, in
a unanimously adopted statement, asserted that the ad aimed to "hurt Jews
and to demean and demonize them." It was particularly vehement about
Heimberger's contention that the ad was nothing more than a
reinterpretation of history. The department observed that the "scholarly
pretensions" of the ad were effective enough to deceive Heimberger so that
she believed the ad's claims were part of the "range of normal historical
inquiry." The statement continued:
That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly
correct; however, what historians do is very different from this
advertisement. Historical revision of major events is not concerned with
the actuality of these events; rather it concerns their historical
interpretation - their causes and consequences generally. (82)
If the ad convinced Heimberger, one can only imagine its impact on
individuals who have had less exposure to history and critical thinking.
There were, of course, those college newspapers that had no problem
evaluating the ad's intellectual value. The Harvard Crimson repudiated the
idea that the ad was a "controversial argument based on questionable
facts." In one of the most unequivocal evaluations of the ad, the Crimson
declared it "vicious propaganda based on utter bullshit that has been
discredited time and time again." More than "moronic and false," it tried
to "propagate hatred against Jews." (83) The editorial board of the
University of Pennsylvania's Daily Pennsylvanian argued that "running an ad
with factual errors that fostered hate" was not in the best interests of
the paper. (84) The MIT Tech simply decided that it would not accept an ad
that it knew "did not tell the truth." (85) For the Brown Daily Herald the
ad was "a pack of vicious, anti-semitic lies" parading as "history and
scholarship." (86) The Daily Nexus, the publication of the University of
California at Santa Barbara, refused the ad because of its "blatant
distortions of truth and its offensive nature." The paper described
receiving the ad itself and the more than $1,000 to print it as "chilling."
(87) The Dartmouth Review, no stranger to controversy, also rejected the
ad. It acknowledged that by so doing it was denying "someone a forum
through which to speak to the paper's readership" but explained that it had
a "bond of trust" with the public, which expected it to abide by "standards
of accuracy and decency." Accepting an ad "motivated by hatred and informed
by total disregard to the truth" would be to violate that trust. (88) The
Chicago Maroon saw no reason why it should run an ad whose "only objective
is to offend and incite hatred." (89) The Yale Daily News "simply" let
Smith know that it found the ad "offensive." (90)
Some of the papers that ran the ad did so on the basis of what may be
called the light-of-day, defense, a corollary of the free-speech argument:
In the light of day, truth always prevails over lies. Neeraj Khemlani of
the Cornell Sun believed that by running the ad he had done the Jewish
people a favor - reminding them that there were a "lot of people out to get
[them]," which they needed to know. (91) This attitude is reminiscent of
the concept of "saving the Jews (or women, African Americans, or any other
potentially vulnerable group) despite themselves. Michael Gaviser, business
manager of the Daily Pennsylvanian, decided to run the ad because of his
belief that Smith was a "dangerous neo-Nazi" of whom the public had to be
aware. (His decision was reversed by the editorial board.) (92)
A number of the nation's most prominent national papers echoed the
light-of-day position. A Washington Post editorial rejected the
freedom-of-the-press argument but accepted the light-of-day rationale.
Acknowledging that college newspapers had no obligation to accept the ads,
it argued that it was "bad strategy" automatically to "suppress" them. What
the ad needed was the "bracing blast of refutation." The Post did not seem
to consider the possibility that an article fully analyzing the ad would
have served the same purpose. (93) In an archetypal deniers move Smith
cited the Post's editorial as proof that the paper believed it both
"ethical and permissible" to debate the "Holocaust story. (94) He made the
same claim about a New York Times editorial that left it up to each
newspaper to decide whether to publish Smith's "pseudo-scholarly" and
"intellectually barren" tract. (95)
The Rutgers Daily Targum contended that publication of the ad constituted a
means of defeating Smith. The editors argued that "you cannot fight the
devil you cannot see." (96) Exposing Smith's views through publication of
his ad could thwart his objectives. (97) The Targum correctly understood
that the First Amendment did not apply - ("CODOH was wrapped itself so
tightly in the First Amendment it borders on suffocation.") - and the claim
to be engaged in historical investigation was dismissed as "a sham."
Nonetheless it chose to reprint Smith's ad in full on the editorial page,
surrounding it with 3 op-ed pieces and an editorial, all of which attacked
the ad's contents. In addition, an editors' note introducing the column
noted that the ad had first been rejected by the business section because
of "its false content and anti-semitic nature." The editorial board argued
that despite this it was necessary to print the advertisement in full
because, "more than anything else, [it] makes it painfully obvious that a
clear and present danger exists." (98) Reiterating this point in a letter
to the New York Times, Targum editor Joshua Rolnick argued that publishing
the ad in its entirety was the best way of "mobilizing the community in
opposition to its hateful ideas." (99)
The Targum's decision to print the ad as a column and surround it with
dissenting opinion won it editorial praise in the New York Times: "The
editors thus transformed revulsion into education." (100) There is reason
to question that decision. It saved Smith about $500 it would have cost to
purvey his extremist arguments. The paper proclaimed that it had "not
accepted any payment" from him, as if the acceptance of money made them
accomplices. In fact it was Smith, Rolnick acknowledged, who had
"encouraged" him to run it as an op-ed piece. Smith may well have
recognized that, the dissenting articles notwithstanding the full text of
his ad was likely to win converts to his cause even as it mobilized some
people against him. Given the space the Daily Targum devoted to the topic,
a lengthy analytical piece quoting heavily from the ad and demolishing it
point by point would have served the same purpose and given Smith less of a
chance to lay out his "argument." Some wonder what was the danger of
allowing Smith his say, particularly when surrounded by articles that
firmly and swiftly refuted him. But the Daily Targum had given Smith just
what he wanted: They made him the other side of a debate. Although it may
not have been evenly balanced, although more room may have been given to
the articles that surrounded his, and although editorials may have
condemned him, he had nonetheless been rendered a point of view. (101)
Smith seems to be acutely cognizant of the efficacy of even bad publicity.
That may well be why, when a rally at Rutgers denounced Holocaust
revisionism and his ad, he declared himself "grateful and delighted" that
the rally was held. (102)
In the spring of 1992 Smith circulated a second ad that was essentially a
reprint of an article from the Journal of Historical Review by Mark Weber.
The article, entitled "Jewish Soap," wrongly blamed the postwar spread of
the rumor that the Nazis made Jews into soap on Simon Wiesenthal and
Stephen Wise. Echoing the first ad, it charged that historians of the
Holocaust have "officially abandon[ed] the soap story" in order to "save
what's left of the sinking Holocaust ship by throwing overboard the most
obvious falsehoods." (103) The point of this second effort, Smith
acknowledged, was to submit a piece that was thoroughly "referenced." (104)
The ad was submitted with a cover letter that claimed that the original ad
had been rejected by a number of papers because it was not "sourced." In
contrast, every "significant claim" in the second ad was backed up by
sources. (105) Entitled "Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus [False in one
thing, false in all] .. The 'Human Soap' Holocaust Myth," the essay on soap
was preceded by a statement citing Roman law: If a witness could not be
"believed in one thing, he should not be believed in anything." (106)
Most universities that received the second ad, including those who had
accepted the first, rejected it out of hand. When it was submitted to the
Ohio State Lantern, the editor immediately refused it, observing that "the
only news value in this is that Bradley Smith is approaching schools
again." Having been burned once, the editor seemed far more cognizant of
Smith's motives. "The fact that it is Holocaust Remembrance Week indicates
that he's in to ruffle some feathers and stir up trouble again." (107) The
arguments about the First Amendment and censorship no longer seemed to
apply. [The Tufts Daily was the only paper that decided to run portions of
the ad. Its editors voiced the opinion that it was necessary to run the ad
so that readers could "fully comprehend" the deniers arguments and then
make "informed judgments" and engage in "active dialogue" about "complex
issues." They reached that conclusion despite their conviction that Smith's
views had little if any "legitimacy" and were filled with "hateful
sentiments and ideas that defile the memories of the millions killed in
World War II. To have rejected it would have "unilaterally censored" the
campus community from the issue. Tufts joined other campuses in falling
prey to the light-of-day argument: In search of a principled stand, they
gave Smith exactly the exposure he sought.]
At the University of Texas the deliberations about the second ad were
directly linked to what had occurred with the first ad. The editor of the
Daily Texan, Matthew Connally, had wanted to run the first. (108) However,
after familiarizing himself with the "group behind the ad," he reversed his
decision. "They were not only showing a disregard for the truth but they
were doing it with malicious intent." (109) The Texas Student Publication
Board (TSPB), which has ultimate authority over the paper's advertising and
financial affairs, supported Connally and voted to reject the ad. After
hearing Connally's arguments, TSPB member Professor John Murphy, who
initially voted in favor of running the ad, decided to oppose it.
But that was not the end of the story at Texas. In April the paper received
Smith's second ad. Though the Daily Texan's editorial board was firmly
against running it, they quickly discovered that the decision was not in
their hands: They were told by the TSPB that they must run it. "We do not
want to do this. But we're being told we must follow orders," a member of
the editorial board told me sadly. (110) This time Professor Murphy emerged
as the ad's most vociferous supporter. According to the Houston Chronicle,
Murphy, supported by a number of other UT faculty members, argued that the
paper needed to publish "divergent and unpopular opinion." (111) Facing a
situation in which it would be forced to publish something it "detested,"
the editorial board considered leaving all the pages blank except for the
ad. (They were told that since this would affect advertising revenues, they
did not have the authority to do so.)
The ad was scheduled to run on Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom HaShoah, 1992.
Students opposed to the ad discovered that the internal regulations of the
TSPB prohibited the newspaper from printing opinion ads unless all persons
cited in those ads had granted permission to be quoted. I was among the
scholars quoted in the ad. Fortuitously, I was scheduled to visit the
campus to deliver a lecture on Holocaust denial the day before the ad's
scheduled publication. When I indicated my opposition to being cited in the
ad, an emergency meeting of the TSPB board was called to discuss the
matter. I informed the board that I had not given my permission to be
quoted in the ad and was opposed to being associated with it. I pointed out
that the ad specifically violated their own regulations. [At the meeting
one of the editors of the paper, an African American, stood up and said
that while he could not personally know what it felt like to lose so many
of one's coreligionists in the Holocaust, he "knew" the pain of slavery. He
would fight anyone's attempt to deny that. Consequently he felt obligated
to fight this attempt at denial. He also turned to Murphy and said that he
understood that one of Murphy's objections was that it was infantilizing to
prevent the students from deciding on the contents of the ad themselves. He
wondered if it was not equally infantilizing to tell an entire editorial
board to publish something whose publication it uniformly opposed.] Despite
my objections and my announcement that I would explore the possibility of
legal remedies should the ad be published, the TSPB voted to run it,
postponing publication for a few days so that my name could be dropped and
a rebuttal prepared. Two days later the university's legal counsel
suggested that because individuals quoted in the ad had protested - by this
time other professors mentioned in the ad had joined the protest - the ad
should be dropped. (112) The TSPB then voted to reject the ad. But the
story did not end here. In February 1993 the TSPB compelled the paper to
accept an ad promoting a video expose of the gas chambers by a CODOH member
claiming to be a Jew. Based on ads and articles by this young man, the
video apparently contains the same recycled arguments deniers have been
making for years. Though the editorial board and the university president
opposed the ad because it was "deceptively rigged," the TSPB ran it. Five
of the six students on the TSPB and one of its faculty members voted for
the ad. Both working professionals voted against it.
truth and memory
more than two years - not for the first time - deniers had tried to
insinuate themselves into the scholarly arena by finding ways to place
Holocaust denial on the agenda of organizations of professional historians.
They sought to force these groups to treat denial as a legitimate
enterprise. In the spring of 1980 all members of the Organization of
American Historians (OAH) received a complimentary copy of the first issue
of the Journal of Historical Review. It was quickly revealed that the IHR
had purchased the OAH's 12,000 member mailing list. Some OAH members
protested the sale of the list to this neo-Nazi group. Others argued that
to deny anyone the right to purchase the list would be to abridge
intellectual freedom.
The executive secretary of the OAH proposed to resolve the issue by
inviting a panel of "well-qualified historians" to analyze the Journal and
evaluate it based on the "credentials of the contributors and the use of
evidence." He would then transmit this evaluation to the OAH executive
board so it could decide how to treat the matter. Lucy Dawidowicz, a fierce
critic of the OAH response, wondered what those historians would evaluate:
"Perhaps that the neo-Nazis did not have proper academic credentials or
that they failed to use primary sources?" (113) Carl Degler, a past
president of the OAH, defended the suggestion that the OAH should sponsor
an analysis of the Journal. He argued that once historians begin to
consider the "motives" behind historical research and writing, "we endanger
the whole enterprise in which the historians are engaged." Following the
same pattern as the student editors who described the contents of the
denial ad as opinions views, and ideas, he described the articles contained
in the Journal as "bad historical writing." Given the Journal's contents
and its publisher's identity, Degler's categorization of it as bad history
was described by Dawidowicz as a "travesty." (114)
A far less ambiguous position was adopted by the editors of the Journal of
Modern History, when the Liberty Lobby bought its subscription list and
sent out anti-semitic material. The journal's editors sent a letter of
apology to its subscribers acknowledging that an "anti-semitic hate
organization" had obtained its mailing list. It "repudiate[d] and
condemn[ed] the propaganda" that readers had received and apologized that
both the readers and the academic discipline had been "abused in this
thoroughly scurrilous manner." (115)
Another attempt to force professional historians to treat Holocaust denial
as a legitimate enterprise began in 1990, when members of various
university history departments began to receive letters soliciting support
for "Holocaust revisionism." That same year the American Historical
Association's (AHA) annual meeting was disrupted by pickets calling for
recognition of a book charging Gen. Dwight Eisenhower with consciously
causing the death of a million German POWs at the end of the war. [The
deniers have cited these contentions, which have been subjected to serious
historical and methodological critiques, to support their claims that
whatever atrocities the Nazis committed, those committed by the Allies were
worse.] The AHA issued a statement noting that 1995 marked the fiftieth
anniversary of the defeat of Nazism and calling on scholars to "initiate
plans now to encourage study of the significance of the Holocaust." (116)
The AHA statement referred to the Holocaust but did not explicitly say that
the Holocaust was a fact of history. According to the then - president of
the AHA, William Leuchtenburg, it did not want to "get into the business of
certifying what is and is not history." [The full text of the resolution
read "As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the downfall of the Nazi
regime in 1995, the American Historical Association calls attention to the
need to initiate plans now to encourage study of the significance of the
Holocaust. To that end the association will make available the names of
experts on the history of the event." Chronicle of Higher Education,
January 8, 1992.] Moreover, he believed that for a group of historians to
say there had been a Holocaust was tantamount to "an organization of
astronomers saying there is a moon." (117)
The press, he believed, would simply ignore such a statement. In December
1991 the AHA unanimously adopted a statement deploring the "attempts to
deny the fact of the Holocaust" and noting that "no serious historian
questions t hat the Holocaust took place." (118) Leuchtenburg opposed
allowing deniers a table at the convention because the AHA was a
professional organization and they were not professionals. It would be the
equivalent of the AMA allowing quacks to hawk miracle cures at its
meetings.
The OAH was also a target of the deniers. In November 1991 the OAH's
executive committee agreed to allow its newsletter to publish a call by the
IHR's Journal of Historical Review for "revisionist" papers. This action
was taken after David Thelen, the editor of the OAH's scholarly journal,
the Journal of American History, refused to list articles by deniers
because it was the responsibility of an academic publication to "make
judgments on the quality of scholarship." (119) He felt it was harder to
refuse them space in the association's newsletter because it contained both
scholarly and non-scholarly information. Joyce Appleby, OAH president,
protested the executive committee's decision to accept the announcement in
the OAH Newsletter. "This is not a question of respecting different points
of view but rather of recognizing a group which repudiates the very values
which bring us together," Appleby wrote. It was the responsibility of a
professional organization to make "professional judgments" and, Appleby
asserted, "these people are not professionals and to allow them to
advertise is to legitimate them." (120)
Mary Frances Berry, a former president of the OAH and a history professor
at the University of Pennsylvania, disagreed with Appleby. She compared the
debate within the OAH to campus codes against "hate speech," to which she
objected. Her primary concern was "guaranteeing civil liberties for
everyone." She argued that since the OAH did not have a general policy
regarding advertisements it would accept or reject, it was obligated to
accept everything it received. (121) The next issue of the OAH Newsletter
contained a series of letters regarding the decision to include the ad and
Appleby's dissent. A group of prominent historians, including Thelen and
Berry, wrote in support of the inclusion of denial announcements. (122)
They argued that however "abhorrent the goals of the Journal of Historical
Review, the constitutional principle of free speech as well as the OAH's
commitments to freedom of expression and the search for historical truth
demanded that the ad be printed. In an apparent attempt to "balance" their
support of the ad, they suggested a variety of strategies for dealing with
the future efforts by the Journal of Historical Review and other deniers to
place ads in OAH publications. One idea was that the OAH "pressure" the
deniers' journal to abide by international standards of scholarship,
including that experts in appropriate fields evaluate articles submitted to
the journal. Given the way they handle documents and data, it is clear that
deniers have no interest in scholarship or reason. Most are anti-semites
and bigots. Engaging them in reasoned discussion would be the same as
engaging a wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a balanced and reasoned discussion
of African Americans' place in society. But on some level Carl Degler was
right: Their motives are irrelevant. Some may truly believe the Holocaust a
hoax - just as hundreds of anti-semites believed the Protocols genuine.
This does not give the contents of their pronouncements any more validity
or intellectual standing. No matter how sincerely one believes it, two plus
two will never equal five.
Among the historians' other suggestions was that a "truth-in-advertising"
group be created to unmask the misleading claims in denial notices and
announcements and that this group insist that their exposure be published
along with the deniers' claims. But such a suggestion would imply that a
debate was being conducted by mainline historians and "revisionists." (123)
The historians' ideas, offered in the name of an attempt to resolve a
situation that confounds many academics, played directly into the deniers'
hands. Given the response of such eminent teachers of history, it is not
surprising that the Daily Northwestern, Northwestern University's student
newspaper, writing in support of inviting Arthur Butz to debate his
"unorthodox view" of the Holocaust, declared that "even outrageous and
repugnant theories sometimes deserve a forum." (124) Students emulated
exactly what these professors had done. They had elevated what the Harvard
Crimson had properly characterized as "utter bullshit" to the level of a
theory deserving of a forum. After the IHR's announcement appeared, the
executive board voted to establish a policy henceforth to exclude such
advertisements and announcements from the newsletter. There was significant
debate within the OAH's leadership on this matter, and the decision to
exclude denial ads in the future passed by one vote. (125)
Writing in support of Appleby, the Los Angeles Times provided an
interesting slant to the argument. It pointed out that the First Amendment
guaranteed freedom of association as well as freedom of speech. As a result
the OAH had the right to "exclude fake historians from its ranks." (126) It
was probably the most appropriate and possibly the most creative citation
of the First Amendment during this entire debate.
The responses to Holocaust denial by both students and faculty graphically
demonstrate the susceptibility of an educated and privileged segment of the
American population to the kind of reasoning that creates a hospitable
climate for the rewriting of history. There were a variety of failures
here. All of them are sobering indicators of the ability of Holocaust
denial to gain legitimacy. There was a failure to understand the true
implications of the First Amendment. There was also a failure by student
editors to recognize that their high-minded claims about censorship were
duplicitous, given their papers' policies of rejecting a broad range of ads
and articles. In fact, campus policies are often more restrictive than
those of the commercial press. There was a failure to look at the deniers'
own history and to understand what they represented. The observation of the
Ohio State Lantern rings hauntingly in my ears: "It is repulsive to think
that the quality, or total lack thereof, of any idea or opinion has any
bearing on whether it should be heard." (127) It is a response likely to
make professors nationwide cringe. But, as we have seen, professors also
showed their confusion on this matter.
Most disturbing was the contention voiced by students, faculty members, and
university presidents that however ugly, the ad constituted an idea,
opinion, or viewpoint - part of the broad range of scholarly ideas. However
much they disassociated themselves from the content of the ad, the minute
they categorized it as a "view," they advanced the cause of Holocaust
denial. That students failed to grasp that the ad contravened all canons of
evidence and scholarship was distressing. But those at the helm sometimes
also failed to grasp that the ad was not advocating a radical moral
position but a patent untruth. Writing in the Cornell Daily Sun, President
Frank Rhodes couched the discussion in terms of freedom of the press,
arguing, "Free and open debate on a wide range of ideas, however outrageous
or offensive some of them may be, lies at the heart of a university
community." Rhodes was positing that Holocaust denial should be considered
an idea worthy of inclusion in the arena of open debate. (128)
This assault on the ivory tower of academe illustrated how Holocaust denial
can permeate that segment of the population that should be most immune to
it. It was naive to believe that the "light of day" can dispel lies,
especially when they play on familiar stereotypes. Victims of racism,
sexism, anti-semitism, and a host of other prejudices know of light's
limited ability to discredit falsehood. Light is barely an antidote when
people are unable, as was often the case in this investigation, to
differentiate between reasoned arguments and blatant falsehoods.
Most sobering was the failure of many of these student leaders and opinion
makers to recognize Holocaust denial for what it was. This was particularly
evident among those who argued that the ad contained ideas, however odious,
worth of discussion. This failure suggests that correctly cast and properly
camouflaged, Holocaust denial has a good chance of finding a foothold among
coming generations. This chapter ends where it began. Given the fact that
even the papers that printed the ad dismissed Smith's claims in the most
derogatory of terms - absurd, irrational, racist, and a commercial for
hatred - one might argue that the entire affair had a positive outcome.
Rarely did the ad appear without an editorial or article castigating
Holocaust denial. Students were alerted to a clear and present danger that
can easily take root in their midst. Courses on the Holocaust increased in
number. One could argue that all this is proof that CODOH's attempt to make
Holocaust denial credible backfired.
My assessment is far more pessimistic. It is probably the one issue about
which I find myself in agreement with Bradley Smith. Many students read
both the ad and the editorials condemning it. Some, including those who
read neither but knew of the issue, may have walked away from the
controversy convinced that there are two sides to this debate: the
"revisionists" and the "establishment historians." They may know that there
is tremendous controversy about the former. They may not be convinced that
the two sides are of equal validity. They may even know that the deniers
keep questionable company. But nonetheless they assume there is an "other
side." That is the most frightening aspect of this entire matter.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TEN
1. Cited in Nat Hentoff, "An Ad that Offends: Who's On First?" Progressive,
May 12, 1992, p. 12.
2. Smith was featured on a variety of national television shows and in
major newspapers, including the New York Times, Dec. 23, 1991.
3. Louisiana State Daily Reveille, Apr. 7, 1992.
4. Holocaust Revisionism: Reinventing the Big Lie (ADL Research Report), p.
9.
5. ADL memorandum, Feb. 26, 1987.
6. IHR Newsletter, Jan., Mar., and Sept. 1987; Jan. and Nov. 1988; Feb.
1989.
7. Undated letter, Bradley Smith to Friends, 5 pp (1988?).
8. Prima Facie (Feb. 1985), p. 1.
9. Spearhead (Mar. 1985), p. 20.
10. Christian News, Apr. 25, 1987.
11. Spotlight, Apr. 11, 1988.
12. Christian News, Sept. 14, 1987.
13. University of Nebraska Sower, Nov. 17, 1989, p. 10.
14. Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.) Apr. 1, 1989.
15. Bradley Smith to Kathy Lachenauer, editor in chief, Stanford Daily,
June 16, 1989.
16. Bradley Smith to Rabbi Ari Cartun, June 19, 1989.
17. Laird Wilcox, "The Spectre Haunting Holocaust Revisionism," Revisionist
Letters (Spring 1989), p. 10.
18. Ibid.
19. Visalia Times - Delta, Sept. 13, 1990; Daily Illini, June 16, 1992.
20. New York Times, Dec. 23, 1991.
21. Bradley R. Smith, "The Holocaust Story: How Much is False? The Case for
Open Debate," Daily Northwestern, Apr. 4, 1991.
22. New York Times, Nov. 12, 1989.
23. Arno Mayer (Princeton University), Yehuda Bauer (Hebrew University),
Marvin Hier (Simon Wiesenthal Center), Raul Hilberg (University of
Vermont), and myself (Emory University).
24. Smith, "The Holocaust Story."
25. The first paper to run the lengthy ad was the Daily Northwestern, April
4, 1991.
26. Michigan Daily, Oct. 24, 1991.
27. Detroit Free Press, Oct. 25, 1991.
28. Michigan Daily, Oct. 25, 1991.
29. Detroit Free Press, Oct. 25, 1991.
30. Michigan Daily, Oct. 28, 1992.
31. In recent years a series of First Amendment controversies have captured
the attention of the American public. The most highly publicized was the
debate over the funding by the National Endowment for the Arts of an
exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe photography. Edward de Grazia, Girls Lean
Back Everywhere: The Laws of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (New York,
1992); Natalie Robins, Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom of Expression
(New York, 1992); Rodney A. Smolla, Free Speech in an Open Society (New
York, 1992).
32. New York Times, Jan. 15, 1992.
33. Kathleen M. Sullivan, "The First Amendment Wars," New Republic, Sept.
28, 1991, p. 39.
34. Duke Chronicle, Nov. 5, 1991.
35. Ibid, Nov. 7, 1991.
36. Cornell Daily Sun, Nov. 18, 1991; Associated Press newswire, Nov. 19,
1991.
37. Rutgers Daily Targum, Nov. 26, 1991, p. 6.
38. Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 27, 1991.
39. Havre, Mont., Daily News, Apr. 29, 1992. One of the defenders of the
Kaimin's publication of the ad was the programming adviser of the
university's student organization. He had also been instrumental in
arranging for a visit by David Duke to the Missoula campus. He argued that
ads such as Smith's and visits such as Duke's challenge "people to not
react emotionally and react rationally." Montana Kaimin, May 5, 1992.
40. Atlanta Constitution, Mar. 23, 1992.
41. Student Life, Feb. 18, 1992.
42. St. Lou is Post D is patch, Feb. 23, 1992.
43. University of Washington Daily, Apr. 27, 1992.
44. Columbus D is patch, Jan. 22, 1992.
45. Ohio Jew is h Chronicle, Jan. 30, 1992, p. 1.
46. Ibid., Jan. 30, 1992.
47. Columbus D is patch, Jan. 22, 1992.
48. Ohio State Lantern, Jan. 24, 1992, p. 8.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid. Tufts's dean of students also strongly dissented from the idea
that Smith was protected by the First Amendment: "Individuals have a right
to their own ideas but not to be published on another individual's or
group's printing press." Tufts Daily, Apr. 8, 1992.
51. University of Tennessee Daily Beacon, Apr. 27, 1992.
52. Penn State Daily Collegian, Mar. 31, 1989.
53. Harvard Crimson, Dec. 10, 1991, p. 2.
54. University of Chicago Maroon, Feb. 28, 1992.
55. Cornell Daily Sun, Nov. 20, 1991.
56. Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 27, 1991.
57. Mark Livingston to Sam Cramer, Nov. 6, 1991.
58. Michigan Daily, Oct. 28, 1991.
59. Student Life, Feb. 21, 1992.
60. Ibid., Feb. 25, 1992.
61. Daily Tar Heel, cited in Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 28, 1991, p. H1.
62. Ibid.
63. Duke Chronicle, Nov. 5, 1991, p. 9, and Nov. 7, 1991, pp. 1, 3.
64. Resolution adopted by the Duke University History Department, Nov. 8,
1991, and reprinted in Duke Chronicle, Nov. 13, 1991.
65. Rutgers Daily Targum, Nov. 6, 1991, pp. 1, 6.
66. Cornell Daily Sun, Nov. 18, 1991.
67. University of Washington Daily, Apr. 27, 1992.
68. Ibid., Mar. 4, 1992.
69. Ibid., Apr. 27, 1992.
70. Ibid., Oct. 18 and 28, 1991.
71. Michigan Daily, Nov. 11, 1991.
72. Havre, Mont., Daily News, Apr. 29, 1992.
73. St. Louis Post Dispatch, Feb. 22, 1992.
74. Ohio State Lantern, Jan. 24, 1992.
75. Student Life, Feb. 18, 1992.
76. Ibid.
77. Duke Chronicle, Nov. 5, 1991, p. 9.
78. Livingston to Cramer, Nov. 6, 1991.
79. Duke Chronicle, Nov. 7, 1991, p. 3.
80. Ibid., Nov. 5, 1991, p. 9, and Nov. 7, 1991, pp. 1, 3.
81. Ibid., Nov. 21, 1991, p. 3.
82. Ibid., Nov. 13, 1991, p. 7.
83. Harvard Crimson, Dec. 10, 1991, p. 2.
84. Ibid.
85. Boston Jewish Advocate, Mar. 6, 1992.
86. Brown Daily Herald, Dec. 11, 1991.
87. University of California at Santa Barbara Daily Nexus, Apr. 29, 1992.
88. Dartmouth Review, Nov. 6, 1991, p. 9.
89. University of Chicago Maroon, Feb. 28, 1992.
90. Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 27, 1991.
91. Jewish Voice (Dec. 1991).
92. Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 27, 1991.
93. Washington Post, Dec. 21, 1991.
94. Smith, "Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus .. The 'Human Soap' Holocaust
Myth," addendum to Smith, undated letter sent to campus papers.
95. New York Times, Jan. 15, 1992.
96. Rutgers Daily Targum, Dec. 3, 1991, p. 10.
97. Michigan Daily, Dec. 3, 1991, p. 3.
98. Rutgers Daily Targum, Dec. 3, 1991, p. 10.
99. New York Times, Dec. 30, 1991.
100. Ibid., Jan. 15, 1992.
101. Rutgers Daily Targum, Dec. 3, 1991, pp. 10-11.
102. Ibid., Dec. 6, 1991, p. 5.
103. Tufts Daily, April 2 1, 1992.
104. Ibid.
105. Smith, undated letter sent to campus papers with text of second ad.
106. Smith, "Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus."
107. Ohio State Lantern, Apr. 29, 1992.
108. Michigan Daily, Nov. 26, 1991.
109. Houston Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1991.
110. Meeting with members of Daily Texan editorial board, Apr. 28, 1992.
111. Houston Chronicle, Apr. 24, 1992, pp. 25A, 31A; Daily Texan, Apr. 24,
1992, p. 5.
112. Bay City, Tex., Daily Tribune, Apr. 30, 1992.
113. "Journal of Historical Review," OAH Newsletter (July 1980), pp. 14-15;
Dawidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust," p. 37.
114. Carl N. Degler, "Bad History," Commentary, June 1981, p. 17.
115. Ibid.
116. Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 11, 1991.
117. Duke Chronicle, Apr. 27, 1992.
118. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 8, 1992.
119. Ibid., Dec. 11, 1991.
120. OAH Newsletter (Nov. 1991); Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 11,
1991, pp. 9-10.
121. Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 11, 1991, p. 10.
122. Other signatories included Dan Carter, Cullom Davis, Sara Evans, Linda
Gordon, Lawrence Levine, and Mary Ryan. OAH Newsletter (Feb. 1992), p. 5.
123. Ibid.
124. Daily Northwestern, Mar. 5, 1991, p. 6.
125. OAH Newsletter (Feb. 1992), p. 4. Conversation wit h Joyce Appleby,
December 1992.
126. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23, 1991.
127. Ohio State Lantern, Jan. 24, 1992, p. 8.
128. Carlos C. Huerta, "Revisionism, Free Speech and the Campus,"
Midstream, Apr. 1992, p. 10.
CHAPTER ELEVEN Watching on the Rhine
The Future Course of Holocaust Denial
Although the instances of outright denial explored in this book are a cause
for concern, the deniers may have an impact on truth and memory in another,
less tangible but potentially more insidious way. Extremists of any kind
pull the center of a debate to a more radical position. They can create -
and, in the case of the Holocaust, have already created - a situation
whereby added latitude may be given to ideas that would once have been
summarily dismissed as historically fallacious. The recent "historians'
debate" in Germany, in which conservative German historians attempted to
restructure German history, offers evidence of this phenomenon. Though
these historians are not deniers, they helped to create a gray area where
their highly questionable interpretations of history became enmeshed with
the pseudo history of the deniers; and they do indeed share some of the
same objectives. Intent on rewriting the annals of Germany's recent past,
both groups wish to lift the burden of guilt they claim has been imposed on
Germans. Both believe that the Allies should bear a greater share of
responsibility for the wrongs committed during the war. Both argue that the
Holocaust has been unjustifiably singled out as a unique atrocity.
This debate was foreshadowed in the late 1970s by the publication of
Hellmut Diwald's History of the Germans. Diwald, a prominent German
historian, believed that since 1945 Germany's past had been "devalued,
destroyed and taken away" from the German people. He sought to rectify this
by demonstrating how Germans themselves had been victimized: His book
devoted significant space to the expulsion of the German population from
Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, but only two pages to Nazi
crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust. (1) Although Diwald's
book was vigorously criticized by German historians of all political
persuasions - one called it "confused and stupid" - it was a harbinger of
things to come. (Not surprisingly, the deniers were quick to adopt Diwald's
work as an extension of their own.
truth and memory
Spearhead and the author of Did Six Million Really Die?, grouped Diwald's
research with that of Butz and Faurisson, arguing that together they were
all "carrying on the work initiated by Rassinier." (2) Diwald had
unwittingly given the deniers the scholarly respectability they so craved.
His successors in the debate would inadvertently do the same.)
Germany's intensive rewriting of its past from a politico-historical
perspective continued in earnest in the mid-1980s, when Chancellor Kohl,
initiating what would become the Bitburg debacle, invited President Reagan
to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at a German military cemetery,
in a "spirit of reconciliation."
Reagan agreed and, with a remark that can be described as thoughtless at
best, informed the press that he would not go to a concentration camp
because the Germans "have a guilt feeling that's been imposed on them and I
just think it's unnecessary." In many ways Reagan was an innocent pawn in a
debate whose nuances he may not fully have grasped. (3) Kohl's invitation
to Reagan, issued in the wake of Germany's exclusion from the fortieth
anniversary commemoration of D-Day, was designed to blur Germany's
historical image as the aggressor. Conservative politicians and journalists
had already begun to urge Germans, in the words of Bavarian
Minister-President Franz Josef Strauss, to get off their knees and once
again learn to "walk tall." (4) (The juxtaposition of this image with that
of the late former Chancellor Willy Brandt falling to his knees at the
Warsaw Ghetto monument is telling.)
Kohl, Strauss, and other politicians on the right were joined in this
struggle by a group of historians. In 1986 Andreas Hillgruber, an
internationally respected specialist in German diplomatic, military, and
political history, published Two Kinds of Downfall: The Shattering of the
German Reich and the End of European Jewry. It consisted of two essays, one
on the postwar Soviet expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe, and the
other on the genocide of the Jews. (5) According to Hillgruber these two
catastrophes "belong[ed] together." He argued that the Allies, who had long
intended to cripple Germany so that it could never again subjugate Europe,
emasculated Germany by usurping its territories for Poland and in stalling
the Russian army as an occupying force. By claiming that they emanated from
the same policies of population transfer and extermination, Hillgruber
essentially equated Allied treatment of Germany and the Nazi genocide. (6)
He responded to historians who had criticized the Wehrmacht's decisions to
continue fighting the Soviets well after their colleagues in Berlin had
attempted to end the war by assassinating Hitler. This, Hillgruber
asserted, was an honorable decision even though it greatly prolonged the
horrors of the death camps. (7) It was basically an act of self-defense,
preventing the Russian forces from laying waste Germany and its people.
Other historians in this struggle would take a far more extreme stand than
Hillgruber, but his insistence that the reader see the latter stages of the
war from the perspective of the German soldier, and his grouping together
of these two different "downfalls," opened the door to much of the apologia
and distortion that followed. (8)
The conservative historian Michael Sturmer, Chancellor Kohl's historical
adviser, believed that the Germans' "obsession with their guilt" had
deleteriously affected their national pride. (9) Contending that too much
emphasis had been placed on the Third Reich, Sturmer, who advised Kohl on
the Bitburg affair, called for a rewriting of history that would help
Germans develop a greater sense of nationalism.
The most prominent member of this effort was Ernst Nolte, the German
historian renowned for his study of fascism. (10) Along with Hillgruber and
other conservative historians, he compared the Holocaust to a variety of
twentieth-century outrages, including the Armenian massacres that began in
1915, Stalin's gulags, U.S. policies in Vietnam, the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan, and the Pol Pot atrocities in the former Kampuchea. According
to them the Holocaust was simply one among many evils. Therefore it was
historically and morally incorrect to single out the Germans for doing
precisely what had been done by an array of other nations. Joachim Fest,
the editor in chief of the prestigious Germany daily, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, published a detailed defense of Nolte, illustrated with
a photo of a mound of skulls of Pol Pot's victims. (11) As Oxford historian
Peter Pulzer observed, the message was clear: Germans may have sinned but
they did so "in good company." (12) Fest had already engaged in his own
form of revisionism when he directed a documentary film, Hitler: A Career.
Intended to show the fascination that Hitler had aroused among most
Germans, the film relied on clips from Nazi propaganda films, synchronizing
them with such stereo sound effects as clicking boot heels and exploding
bombs. The commentator argued from Hitler's perspective. Nazi suppression
of human rights, oppression, and war crimes were ignored. (Since these had
not been filmed by the Nazis, the filmmakers treated them as nonexistent.)
The film presents Nazi-produced propaganda as an authentic documentation of
the period, showing Hitler as he wanted to be seen. (13)
The historians' attempt to create such immoral equivalencies ignored the
dramatic differences between these events and the Holocaust. The brutal
Armenian tragedy, which t he perpetrators still re fuse to acknowledge
adequately, was conducted within the context of a ruthless Turkish policy
of expulsion and resettlement. It was terrible and caused horrendous
suffering but it was not part of a process of total annihilation of an
entire people. The Khmer Rouge's massacre of a million of their fellow
Cambodians, to which the Western world turned a blind eye, was carried out,
as Richard Evans observes, as a means of subduing and eliminating those
whom Pol Pot imagined had collaborated with the Americans during the
previous hostilities. T he ruthless polity was conducted as part of a
brutalizing war that had destroyed much of Cambodia's moral, social, and
physical infrastructure. This is not intended in any way as a justification
of what happened in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge's treatment of their
countrymen was barbaric. But what they did was quite different from the
Nazis' annihilation of the Jews, which was "a gratuitous act carried out by
a prosperous, advanced, industrial nation at the height of its power." (14)
These historians also seem intent on obscuring the crucial contrasts
between Stalinism and Nazism. (15) Whereas Stalin's terror was arbitrary,
Hitler's was targeted at a particular group. As t he German historian
Eberhard Jäckel observed in an attack on Nolte and his compatriots, never
before in history was a particular human group - its men, women, children,
old, young, healthy, and infirm - singled out to be killed as rapidly as
possible using "every possible means of state power" to do so. (16) The
fate of every Jew who came under German rule was essentially sealed. In
contrast, no citizen of the Soviet Union assumed that deportation and death
were inevitable consequences of his or her ethnic origins. (17) People in
the USSR did not know who might be next on Stalin's list. This uncertainty
terrorized them. By contrast, during the Nazi assault on the Jews "every
single one of millions of targeted Jews was to be murdered. Eradication was
to be total." (18) The Nazis did not borrow these methods from the Soviets.
They were sui generis, and the refusal of these historians to acknowledge
that fact reflects the same triumph of ideology over truth that we have
seen throughout this study.
This is not a matter of comparative pain or competitive suffering. It is
misguided to attempt to gauge which group endured more. For the victims in
all these tragedies the oppressors' motives were and remain irrelevant. Nor
is this a matter of a head count of victims or a question of whose loss was
larger. In fact, Stalin killed more people than did the Nazis. (19) But
that is not the issue. The equivalences offered by these historians are not
analogous to the Holocaust. To attempt to say that all are the same is to
engage in historical distortion. To suggest that the disastrous U.S.
policies in Vietnam or the former Soviet Union's illegal occupation of
Afghanistan were the equivalent of genocide barely demands a response.
These invalid historical comparisons are designed to help Germans embrace
their past by telling them that their country's actions were no different
than those of countless others - an effort that at times disturbingly
parallels much of what we have seen in this book.
But this is not the only way these historians tried to reshape the past.
Unlike the deniers, who seek to exonerate Hitler, some of these German
historians tend to blame the worst excesses of Nazis, including the
Holocaust, on him alone. Thus Nazism becomes "Hitlerism," and the German
populace is absolved. They also depict the Holocaust as a German response
to external threats. As we have seen above, Nolte, echoing David Irving,
argues that the Nazi "internment" of Jews was justified because of Chaim
Weizmann's September 1939 declaration that the Jews of the world would
fight Nazism. This, Nolte argues, convinced Hitler of his "enemies'
determination to annihilate him." Klaus Hildebrand, a Nolte defender,
praised Nolte's essay as "trailblazing." (20) As I noted in chapter 6, this
comparison lacks all internal logic.
First of all Weizmann had no army, government, or allies with which to wage
this war. World Jewry was not a national entity capable of mounting an
offensive against the Nazis. Moreover, Hitler did not initiate his
oppression of the Jews in September 1939 when Weizmann made his statement.
Weizmann's statement was a reaction to 6 years of brutal Nazi oppression.
In another attempt at immoral equivalence, Nolte contends that just as the
American internment of Japanese Americans w as justified by the attack on
Pearl Harbor, so too was the Nazi "internment" of European Jews. In making
this comparison Nolte ignores the fact that, however wrong, racist, and
unconstitutional the U.S. internment of the Japanese, the Jews had not
bombed Nazi cities or attacked German forces in 1939. Even his use of the
term internment to describe what the Germans did to the Jews whitewashes
historical reality.
In his most recent work, The European Civil War, 1917-1945, Ernst Nolte
comes dangerously close to validating the deniers. Without offering any
proof, he claims that more "Aryans" than Jews were murdered at Auschwitz.
According to Nolte this fact has been ignored because the research on the
Final Solution comes to an "overwhelming degree from Jewish authors." He
described the deniers' arguments as not "without foundation" and their
motives as "often honorable." The fact that among the core deniers were
non-Germans and some former inmates of concentration camps was evidence,
according to Nolte, of their honorable intentions. Nolte even advanced the
untenable notion that the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which Heydrich and a
group of prominent Nazis worked out the implementation of the Final
Solution, may never have happened. He disregards the fact that participants
in that meeting have subsequently attested to it and that a full set of
minutes survived. This suggestion implies that if Wannsee was a hoax, many
other Holocaust-related events that we have been led to believe actually
happened may also be hoaxes. He suggests, in an argument evocative of
Butz's analysis, that the Einsatzgruppen killed numerous Jews on the
Eastern Front because "preventive security" demanded it since a significant
number of the partisans were Jews. While he acknowledges that the action
may have been carried to an extreme, it remains essentially justified. (21)
Another of his unsubstantiated charges was that the documentary film Shoah
demonstrates that the SS units in the death camps "were victims in their
way too." (22)
Coming from a denier these arguments would have been utterly predictable.
Coming from Nolte they are especially disturbing and revealing. Nolte
cannot be ignorant of the vast body of research on this topic that has been
conducted by scholars of every religious persuasion and nationality,
including his fellow German non-Jews. Nor, since he tries to defend them,
can he be ignorant of the deniers' explicit anti-semitism. In his writings
he has too often referred to the reality of the Final Solution to be
accused of espousing Holocaust denial. Yet his recent writings make him so
palatable to the deniers that the IHR is seriously attempting to convince
Nolte to participate in its meetings and address its conventions. Whether
he will do so is not known. (Even if he came and told them that the
Holocaust is a fact, he would be welcomed as David Irving was during his
pre-denial days, and as the author of popular, demi-historical works, John
Toland, is today. They offer a legitimacy the deniers can currently find
nowhere else.)
This attempt to resurrect German history was intensely criticized both
within Germany and abroad. The historians' debate harmed the reputations of
the scholars most prominently involved in it, and even the president of
Germany eventually spoke out against this trend. Why, then, should it be a
matter of concern? Despite widespread criticism, the debate gave the German
media and general public the imprimatur to conduct the kind of discussion
about contemporary Germany's relationship to its past that would never have
been heard before. Calls for a "sanitized version of German history
appeared in Germany's most prominent newspapers. (23) Those involved in the
current antiforeigner campaign in Germany find this perspective on history
particularly inviting. If Germany was also a victim of a "downfall," and if
the Holocaust was no different from a melange of other tragedies, Germany's
moral obligation to welcome all who seek refuge within its borders is
lessened.
These historians are not crypto-deniers, but the results of their work are
the same: the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction and between
persecuted and persecutor. Ultimately the relativists contribute to the
fostering of what I call the "yes, but" syndrome. (24) Yes, there was a
Holocaust, but the Nazis were only trying to defend themselves against
their enemies. Yes, there was a Holocaust, but most Jews died of starvation
and disease (as is the case in every war) or were killed as partisans and
spies. Yes, there was a Holocaust, but the Jews' behavior brought it on
them. Yes, there was a Holocaust, but it was essentially no different than
an array of other conflagrations in which innocents were massacred. The
question that logically follows from this is, Why, then, do we "only" hear
about the Holocaust? For the deniers and many others who are "not yet"
deniers, the answer to this final question is obvious: because of the power
of the Jews. "Yes, but" is a response that falls into the gray area between
outright denial and relativism. In certain respects it is more insidious
than outright denial because it nurtures a form of pseudo-history whose
motives are difficult to identify. It is the equivalent of David Duke
without his robes. Relativism, however convoluted, sounds far more
legitimate than outright denial. These German historians have created a
prototype that may prove useful for the deniers. In the future, deniers may
adopt and adapt a form of relativism as they attempt to move from well
outside the parameters of rational discourse to the fringes of historical
legitimacy. Rather than engage in outright denial they will espouse more
opaque quasi-historical arguments that confuse well-meaning and
historically ignorant people about their motives. [Countries such as the
United States, where the degree of ignorance about historical matters is
legendary, are particularly susceptible to this kind of rewriting of
history. In 1990 only 45% of Alabama high school seniors knew that the
Holocaust was the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. It is telling that
many of those who gave the wrong answer thought that the United States had
committed the Holocaust against the Japanese with the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki (Birmingham, Alabama, News, Aug. 12,1990).]
Denial aims to reshape history in order to rehabilitate the persecutors and
demonize the victims. What relativism seeks to do is not that different.
It, too, attempts to rehabilitate the perpetrators, and if in the course of
that rehabilitation a certain re-evaluation of the victims occurs, so be
it. In the years to come, as relativism increasingly becomes the deniers'
protective veneer, distinguishing between these two groups may grow more
difficult.
If Holocaust denial has demonstrated anything, it is the fragility of
memory, truth, reason, and history. The deniers' campaign has been
carefully designed to take advantage of those vulnerabilities. While there
is no precise means of gauging their success, there are enough signs on the
horizon - many of which I have examined in the previous pages - to offer
some assessment. Right-wing nationalist groups in Germany, Italy, Austria,
France, Norway, Hungary, Brazil, Slovakia, and a broad array of other
countries, including the United States, have adopted Holocaust denial as a
standard facet of their propaganda. (25) Whereas these groups once
justified Nazi murder of the Jews, now they deny it. Once they argued that
something quite beneficial to the world happened at Auschwitz. Now they
insist that nothing did.
Their anti-semitism is often so virulent that the logical conclusion of
their argument is that though Hitler did not murder the Jews, he should
have. Since they are intent on weakening liberal democratic institutions
Holocaust denial constitutes a seminal weapon in their arsenal. Though they
have fomented social upheaval and in certain instances caused significant
physical harm, the threat posed by these groups is limited because they are
so easily identified. Their dress, behavior, and tactics leave no doubt as
to who they are. We know them by their shaved heads, leather jackets,
tattoos, terror tactics (including murder), swastikas, cries of sieg Heil,
and Nazi paraphernalia-laden rallies. They are as identifiable as a group
of Ku Klux Klan members fully bedecked in white-sheeted regalia, chanting
racist slogans, and carrying a fiery cross through a black neighborhood.
They cause havoc and strike justifiable fear into the hearts of their
potential victims. But their outward demeanor is like a flashing yellow
light warning the innocent passerby of the danger. No one can mistake them
for anything but exactly what they are: neo-fascists, racists,
anti-semites, and opponents of all the values a democratic society holds
dear. The chance of their attracting a wide following from the general
public is slim.
The deniers also sport an outward veneer, but rather than expose who they
are, it camouflages them. The stripping away of the deniers' cloak of
respectability - which was one of the main objectives of this book -
reveals that at their core they are no different from these neo-fascist
groups. They hate the same things - Jews, racial minorities, and democracy
- and have the same objectives, the destruction of truth and memory. But
the deniers have adopted the demeanor of the rationalist and increasingly
avoided the easily identifiable one of the extremist. They attempt to
project the appearance of being committed to the very values that they in
truth adamantly oppose: reason, critical rules of evidence, and historical
distinction. It is this that makes Holocaust denial such a threat. The
average person who is uninformed will find it difficult to discern their
true objectives. (That may be one of the reasons Canadian high school
teacher James Keegstra was able to espouse Holocaust denial and virulent
anti-semitic theories f or more than a decade without any protest being
mounted against him. He made them sound like rational history.)
The deniers will, to be sure, cultivate this external guise of a reasoned
approach all the more forcefully in years to come. They will refine this
image in an attempt to confuse the public about who they really are. Any
public contact with white-power and radical right-wing groups will be
curtailed. People without identifiable racist or extremist pasts will be
drafted for leadership positions. The Willis Cartos, who have spoken of the
need to prevent the "niggerfication" of America, will increasingly recede
into the background as their public roles are diminished. Young men and
possibly even women (at the moment there are no prominent women deniers)
with pseudo-training in history will be sought out to become the symbolic
vanguard of the movement. Overt expressions of anti-semitism will be
restrained so that those who fail to understand that Holocaust denial is
nothing but anti-semitism may be fooled into thinking it is not.
We have already seen frightening manifestations of the success of this
approach on the various campuses where students, faculty, and
administrators declared Bradley Smith's ad not to be anti-semitic. If Smith
succeeded so easily on campus, imagine the success he might have among
groups who are even less accomplished at critical reasoning! This tactic
has been particularly successful in Australia and New Zealand, where, under
the guise of defending free speech, the Leagues for Rights - which in
essence are nothing but Holocaust-denial organizations - have successfully
attracted individuals who would normally have eschewed anti-semitic
activities.
truth and memory
methodology. They argue that it should place less emphasis on the Holocaust
and instead make it only one among the many "hoaxes" they address. This
call does not stem from a genuine broadening of their interests or a
lessening of their obsession with Jews. It is rooted in their desire to
achieve some academic legitimacy. As long as they appear to be consumed
with this single issue, that respectability and acceptance will elude them.
What they project as a widening of their interests is merely a tactic
designed to gain access to the mainstream.
The same kind of rehabilitation is evident in France among the highest
reaches of the political and judicial establishment. President Francois
Mitterrand recently had a wreath placed on the grave of the Vichy leader,
Marshal Philippe Petain, who collaborated with Nazi Germany and was
directly responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews.
Petain, who in World War I was commander in chief of the French forces, was
convicted of treason by a French court in 1945. Mitterrand insisted in a
radio interview that present-day France should not be held responsible for
the crimes of the Vichy regime. While the contemporary French government
does not bear "guilt" for Vichy's actions, honoring one of the perpetrators
with a presidential wreath sends a revisionist message to the population at
large. It revises the historical perception of France's role in the
Holocaust. It can, and already has, become part of a historical whitewash.
Another form of French historical revisionism has been the refusal of
French courts to try Vichy war criminals for their actions. The courts have
thrown out these indictments, though the Supreme Court recently reinstated
one of them. Thus far no citizen of France has been tried for crimes
against humanity (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 23, Dec. 2, 1992).
A strategic change will also mark the activities of the racist, neo-Nazi,
ultranationalist groups. So easily identifiable by their outer trappings,
they will adopt the deniers' tactics, cast off the external attributes that
mark them as extremists, and eschew whatever pigeonholes them as
neo-fascists. They will cloak themselves and their arguments in a veneer of
reason and in arguments that sound rational to the American people. [This
tactic was evident in the 1992 attempt of the Cincinnati Ku Klux Klan to
erect a cross on city property during the Christmas season. They claimed it
was part of their campaign to remind Cincinnatians of the religious
significance of the holiday. It was a way for the Klan to present itself as
more than just a racist organization.] The physical terror they perpetrate
may cease, but the number of people beguiled by their arguments will grow.
They will begin to espouse a form of denial that hovers between the
relativism of the German historians' debate and the outright lies seen so
often in these pages - a metamorphosis that will make it easier for them to
attract new adherents. This pseudo-respectability will render them more
appealing to a younger, economically disenfranchised segment of the lower
middle class, who see themselves living on the brink of failure in the
midst of a prosperous society whose benefits are not available to them.
This is as true for the United States as it is for Germany, France, and
Austria. [It will prove particularly true for those beset by what my
colleague David Blumenthal has termed "alterphobia" - the fear of the
other. The other may be homosexuals, women, foreigners, Jews, people of
color, or all of the above.]
What, then, are the most efficacious strategies for countering these
attacks? Much of the onus is on academe, portions of which have already
miserably failed the test. Educators, historians, sociologists, and
political scientists hold one of the keys to a defense of the truth. What
those who cannot be beguiled by diversionary arguments and soft reasoning
know to be fact must be made accessible to the general public. The
establishment of Holocaust museums may play an important role in this
effort. These institutions, and all who teach about the Holocaust, must be
scrupulously careful about the information they impart so as not
inadvertently to provide the deniers with room to maneuver. They must also
be careful about "invoking" the Holocaust as a means of justifying certain
policies and actions.
This is particularly true for the Jewish community. The purveyors of
popular culture - television and radio talk-show hosts prominent among them
- must understand that by giving denial a forum they become pawns in a
dangerous war. [Having written this book in the shadow of the "industry"
that produces these shows, I recognize that of all my calls for action,
this one has the least possibility of realization.] As individuals who help
shape public opinion, they must recognize that this struggle is not about
ignorance but about hate.
There are those who believe that the courtroom is the place to fight the
deniers. This is where Austria, Germany, France, and Canada have mounted
their efforts. The legislation that has been adopted takes different forms.
Some bills criminalize incitement to hatred; discrimination; or violence on
racial, ethnic, or religious grounds. Others ban the dissemination of views
based on racial superiority for one sector of the population and expression
of contempt toward a group implying its racial inferiority. (26)
The problem with such legal maneuvers is that they are often difficult to
sustain or carry through. In August 1992 the Canadian Supreme Court threw
out Zundel's conviction when they ruled that the prohibition against
spreading false news likely to harm a recognizable group was too vague and
possibly restricted legitimate forms of speech. (27) [Charges may again be
brought against Zuendel on the basis of his having incited hatred against
Jews.] An even greater difficulty arises when the court is asked to render
a decision not on a point of law, as happened in the Mermelstein case, but
on a point of history, as happened in the Zuendel trial, in which the judge
took historical notice of the Holocaust. It transforms the legal arena into
a historical forum, something the courtroom was never designed to be. When
historical disputes become lawsuits, the outcome is unpredictable.
The main shortcoming of legal restraints is that they transform the deniers
into martyrs on the altar of freedom of speech. This, to some measure, has
happened to Faurisson, who in March 1991 was convicted of proclaiming the
Holocaust a "lie of history." The same court that found him guilty
denounced the law under which he was tried and convicted. (28) The
free-speech controversy can obscure the deniers' anti-semitism and turn the
hate monger into a victim. (29) A recent National Public Radio report on
controlling neo-fascist activities in Europe took exactly this approach
toward Faurisson's conviction. Rather than dwell on what he has said and
done, it focused on his loss of freedom of speech. (30) When the publisher
of the Austrian magazine Halt was convicted of "neo-Nazi activities" for
his Holocaust-denial statements, Spotlight published the news under a
headline that read, NO FREE SPEECH. (3l) A disturbing reversal of the
free-speech argument has recently been used by deniers to penalize those
who oppose them. In 1984 David McCalden, the former director of the IHR,
contracted to rent exhibit space at the California Library Association's
annual conference. The subject of his exhibit was the Holocaust "hoax." The
Simon Wiesenthal Center and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) protested
to both city and association officials. The Wiesenthal Center rented a room
near McCalden's exhibit space to set up its own exhibit, and the AJC
threatened to conduct demonstrations outside the hotel in which the meeting
was to be held. When the association cancelled McCalden's contract he sued
the Wiesenthal Center and the AJC, arguing that they had conspired to
deprive him of his constitutional rights to free speech. Though the court
dismissed his complaint, the U S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that
decision in 1992. The case constitutes the first time that the First
Amendment has been used to attempt to still the voices of those who oppose
Nazi bigotry. (32)
Another legal maneuver has been adopted by a growing number of countries.
They have barred entry rights to known deniers. David Irving, for example,
has been barred from Germany, Austria, Italy, and Canada. Australia is
apparently also considering barring him. (33)
Others have argued that the best tactic is just to ignore the deniers
because what they crave is publicity, and attacks on them provide it. I
have encountered this view repeatedly while writing this book. I have been
asked if I am giving them what they want and enhancing their credibility by
deigning to respond to them. Deny them what they so desperately desire and
need, and, critics claim, they will wither on the vine. It is true that
publicity is what the deniers need to survive, hence their media-sensitive
tactics - such as ads in college papers, challenges to debate
"exterminationists," pseudoscientific reports, and truth tours of
death-camp sites. I once was an ardent advocate of ignoring them. In fact,
when I first began this book I was beset by the fear that I would
inadvertently enhance their credibility by responding to their fantasies.
But having immersed myself in their activities for too long a time, I am
now convinced that ignoring them is no longer an option. The time to hope
that of their own accord they will blow away like the dust is gone. Too
many of my students have come to me and asked, "How do we know there really
were gas chambers?" "Was the Diary of Anne Frank a hoax?" "Are there actual
documents attesting to a Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews?" Some of these
students are aware that their questions have been informed by deniers.
Others are not; they just know that they have heard these charges and are
troubled by them.
Not ignoring the deniers does not mean engaging them in discussion or
debate. In fact, it means not doing that. We cannot debate them for two
reasons, one strategic and the other tactical. As we have repeatedly seen,
the deniers long to be considered the "other" side. Engaging them in
discussion makes them exactly that. Second, they are contemptuous of the
very tools that shape any honest debate: truth and reason. Debating them
would be like trying to nail a glob of jelly to the wall.
Though we cannot directly engage them, there is something we can do. Those
who care not just about Jewish history or the history of the Holocaust but
about truth in all its forms, must function as canaries in the mine once
did, to guard against the spread of noxious fumes. We must vigilantly stand
watch against an increasingly nimble enemy. But unlike the canary, we must
not sit silently by waiting to expire so that others will be warned of the
danger. When we witness assaults on truth, our response must be strong,
though neither polemical nor emotional. We must educate the broader public
and academe about this threat and its historical and ideological roots. We
must expose these people for what they are.
The effort will not be pleasant. Those who take on this task will sometimes
feel - as I often did in the course of writing this work - as if they are
being forced to prove what they know to be fact. Those of us who make
scholarship our vocation and avocation dream of spending our time charting
new paths, opening new vistas, and offering new perspectives on some aspect
of the truth. We seek to discover, not to defend. We did not train in our
respective fields in order to stand like watchmen and women on the Rhine.
Yet this is what we must do. We do so in order to expose falsehood and
hate. We will remain ever vigilant so that the most precious tools of our
trade and our society - truth and reason - can prevail. The still, small
voices of millions cry out to us from the ground demanding that we do no
less.
NOTES TO CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. Hellmut Diwald, Geschichte der Deutschen (Frankfurt, 1978), pp. 15-16.
2. New Statesman, Sept. 21, 1979.
3. Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective
(Bloomington, Ind., 1986); Ilya Levkov, ed., Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters
in American, German, and Jewish History (New York, 1987); Deborah E.
Lipstadt, "The Bitburg Controversy," in David Singer, ed., American Jewish
Year Book, 1987, (New York, 1987), pp. 21-38.
4. Die Welt, Jan. 19, 1987; Frankfurter Rundschau, Jan. 14, 1987, cited in
Richard Evans, In Hitler's Shadow (New York, 1989), p. 19. See Evans, In
Hitler's Shadow, p. 147, n. 46, for additional references to Strauss's
remarks on this topic.
5. Andreas Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des deutschen
Reiches und das Ende des europäischen Judentums (Berlin, 1986). For an
evaluation of Hillgruber's contribution to the field see Holger Herwig,
"Andreas Hillgruber, Historian of 'Grossmachtpolitik,' 1871-1945," Central
European History, vol. 15 (1982), pp. 186-98.
6. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, pp. 49-54.
7. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p. 20.
8. For various perspectives on Hillgruber's contribution to this imbroglio
see Maier, The Unmasterable Past, pp. 21-25; Martin Broszat, Die Zeit, Oct.
3, 1986; Gordon Craig, "The War of the German Historians," New York Review
of Books, Jan. 15,
1987. One of Hillgruber's most virulent critics was Juergen Habermas,
Germany's most prominent philosopher on the left. He was the one who first
called attention to this debate, describing Hillgruber's work as
"scandalous." Die Zeit, July 11, 1986; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(hereafter referred to as FAZ), July 8, 1986. For a summary and analysis of
Habermas's response see Maier, The Unmasterable Past, pp. 39-42.
9. Michael Sturmer, Dissonanzen des Fortschritts, pp. 267, 269-70 as cited
in Evans, p. 21. See also Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, pp. 103, 173, n. 14.
10. Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism,
National Socialism (New York, 1965).
11. Joachim Fest, FAZ, Aug. 29, 1986.
12. Peter Pulzer, "The Nazi Legacy," The Listener, June 25, 1987.
13. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film
(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 5-6.
14. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, p. 87.
15. Ernst Nolte, "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will," (the past that
refuses to pass away) FAZ, June 6, 1986; Ernst Nolte, Der europäische
Buergerkrieg, 1917-1945 (The European Civil War), 1917-1945 (Berlin, 1987),
pp. 502-4.
16. Eberhard Jackel, "Die elende Praxis der Untersteller," Die Zeit, Sept.
12, 1986; Craig, "The War of the German Historians," p. 17; Maier, The
Unmasterable Past, pp. 76-77.
17. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p. 76.
18. Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Hanover, N.H., 1987), p. 24.
For a more complete discussion of this point see Maier, The Unmasterable
Past, pp. 66-99, and Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, pp. 66-91.
19. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, pp. 74-75.
20. Ernst Nolte, "Between Myth and Revisionism," in Aspects of the Third
Reich, ed. H. W. Koch (London, 1985), p. 27; Maier, The Unmasterable Past,
p. 29.
21. Nolte, Buergerkrieg, pp. 500, 509-13, 592-93, n. 26, 29; Evans, In
Hitler's Shadow, p. 168, n. 28.
22. Nolte, Buergerkrieg, pp. 317-18; also Nolte, "Vergangenheit"; Evans, In
Hitler's Shadow, p. 152, n. 20.
23. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, p. 123.
24. For discussion of another way the "yes, but" syndrome manifested itself
during the war and prevented many Americans, particularly publishers,
editors, and reporters, from grasping the implications of the reports they
were receiving, see Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, p. 270.
25. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Mar. 17, 1992.
26. According to Stephen J. Roth, only two of the laws, the French and
Romanian, make specific reference to anti-semitism. Stephen J. Roth,
"Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" (to be published in Israel
Yearbook of Human Rights).
27. U.S. Newswire, Aug. 27, 1992; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Aug. 28, 1992.
28. It also offered a critique of the Nuremberg trials which "astounded"
those present in the courtroom (Jew is h Telegraphic Agency, Apr. 19,
1991).
29. Wall Street Journal, Apr. 9, 1985.
30. "Morning Edition," National Public Radio, December 1992.
31. Spotlight, June 1, 1992.
32. Ronald K. L. Collins, "Tort Case as Gag Device," National Law Journal,
June 15, 1992, p. 15.
33. Toronto Sun, Oct. 15, 1992; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 16, 1992.
APPENDIX Twisting the Truth
Zyklon B, the Gas Chambers, and the Diary of Anne Frank
Some may find that I have already accorded anti-semitic slander parading as
a scientific theory far too much space - that I have taken people like
Butz, Faurisson, Leuchter, and their associates too seriously. Nonetheless,
after a number of years of working in this field I am aware of how these
pseudoscientific attacks on history obfuscate and obscure the truth. Most
people do not believe the deniers' claims but are at a loss as to how to
address their charges. Some, fearful that the deniers' findings have a
measure of legitimacy, respond by seeking alternative explanations.
Consequently I devote this section to 3 of the charges most frequently made
by Holocaust deniers, citing a variety of documentary and technical proofs
that demolish any semblance of credibility they might be accorded. I do so
with some reluctance, lest it appear that I believe that serious
consideration must be given these people's claims. I do, however, believe
that even a cursory perusal of the relevant sections of these documents
will demonstrate the deceitful quality of the deniers claims. I hope it
will also demonstrate, as much of this book is intended to do, that it is
Goebbels's theory of the "big lie" that the deniers are emulating.
Zyklon-B: A Fire-Breathing Dragon
Deniers, led by Faurisson, argue that Zyklon-B (prussic acid) was totally
inappropriate for use as a homicidal agent. As proof they cite a document
prepared for the war crimes trials summarizing the manufacturer's
instructions for the safe use of Zyklon-B as a fumigant. (1) The guidelines
stipulated that a room in which prussic acid had been used to destroy
vermin had to be ventilated for twenty hours before re-entry. Deniers argue
that this demolishes all the "testimonies" on the use of Zyklon-B to kill
human beings, asking how bodies could have been removed from the gas
chambers shortly after execution if the room could not be safely entered
for twenty hours? Not surprisingly the deniers ignored significant and
well-known facts that demonstrate the fallacy of their claims.
The instructions cited were for use in a room or a private home - not gas -
tight areas such as those in the death camps - full of furniture, household
goods, bedding, carpeting, and the like. They stipulated how windows were
to be sealed, keyholes taped, and chimneys covered. After fumigation, gas
would be trapped in all sorts of nooks and crannies. Consequently
mattresses, pillows, upholstered furniture, and similar items had to be
shaken or beaten for at least an hour in the open air. The homicidal gas
chambers were of an entirely different nature. They were empty of any items
except a small number of phoney shower heads and dead bodies. The floors
and ceilings were made of bare concrete. A powerful ventilation system
especially designed for the gas chambers had been installed. In this open
and unencumbered setting it served as an extremely efficient means of
extracting the gas. Each of the crematoria was equipped with such a system,
something the normal home or business area would never have. (2) Moreover,
according to both former prisoners and SS personnel, the Sonderkommandos,
the inmates who carried out the bodies, wore gas masks. (3)
This argument about the extreme toxicity of Zyklon-B is designed to foster
the conclusion that the gas posed too great a danger to SS personnel to be
safely used. However, Faurisson and Leuchter also assert that it was used
in the delousing chambers on clothes. (It is unclear how they could have
concluded that it could be safely used in the delousing chambers but was
too toxic to be used in homicidal gas chambers.)
Leuchter found traces of cyanide in rooms that Auschwitz officials
described as killing chambers but that deniers claim were morgues. In an
attempt to explain why residues of the gas would have been found in a room
that supposedly served as a morgue, Faurisson and Leuchter explained that
the morgues were disinfected with Zyklon-B, hence the residue. (4) This
thesis is illogical: Disinfection is carried out with a bactericide, not an
insecticide, particularly one so powerful as Zyklon-B.
truth and memory
They have asserted that Zyklon-B could be safely used under only the
strictest of conditions and that twenty hours had to elapse before a
facility in which it had been used could be entered. Yet they would have us
believe that in order to clean a morgue, something that needed to be done
on a regular basis, the SS would, instead of employing something as common
and effective as bleach, choose this highly toxic substance that needed, ac
cording to the deniers' own calculations, stringent arrangements for safe
use. (5)
Pressac observed that Faurisson presented prussic acid as "dragon breathing
fire, scarcely to be approached and with clawed feet clinging strongly to
the ground even when dead." The apocalyptic picture bore little
relationship to actual practice. If hydrogen cyanide were as Faurisson
would have us believe it was, the staff of Degesch, the German company that
produced it, "would long have been unemployed." (6)
The Gas Chambers: "One Proof - Just One Proof"
Deniers, led by Faurisson, repeatedly call for "one proof .. one single
proof" of the existence of homicidal gas chambers. (7) They dismiss the
reliability of all human testimony, whether it came from the SS, surviving
inmates, or Sonderkommando members. They do so despite the fact that
regarding the general details of gassings, the testimony of all the parties
tends to corroborate each other. (8) Pressac's monumental study of the gas
chambers is, in essence, a response to this demand for documentary proof.
Pressac's sensitivity to Faurisson's demand for documents may be rooted in
the fact that he almost was lured into denial and it was his own archival
investigation which proved to him that Faurisson was consciously ignoring
unequivocal evidence of homicidal gas chambers. On a trip to Auschwitz
shortly after he met Faurisson, he was shown a series of documents that
constituted far more than "the one single proof" upon which deniers
insisted. On subsequent visits he discovered additional documents, some of
which were previously unpublished. Since the publication of his book in
1989, he has spent time in former Soviet archives and has uncovered
additional documents that demonstrate the absolute falsehood of the
deniers' claims that there is no material or documentary proof of gas
chambers.
The next few pages contain a brief summary of Pressac's extensive findings.
Those who have found the deniers' claims about gas chambers the least bit
troubling should have their doubts set aside. Those who have never been
persuaded in the least by this assault on the truth will find the documents
overwhelming proof of the degree to which the deniers distort history and
lie about the evidence. These documents include work orders, supply
requisitions, time sheets, engineering instructions, invoices, and
completion reports. All clearly indicate that the gas chambers were to be
used for nothing but homicidal gassings. The company contracted to design
and install the execution chambers was Topf and Sons. Much of the
documentation comes from reports they, their subcontractors, and civilian
employees submitted to the SS. They generally made it appear as if they
were building morgues. But they slipped up often enough to provide us with
detailed documentation of the construction and installation of homicidal
killing units.
An inventory of equipment installed in Crematorium III called for the
installation of one gas door and 14 showers. These two items were
absolutely incompatible one with the other. A gas-tight door could only be
used for a gas chamber. Why would a room that functioned as a shower room
need a gas-tight door? (9)
Pressac, not content with this simple proof that this was not a shower
room, calculated the area covered by a single shower head. He used the
genuine shower installations in the reception building as a guideline. On
the basis of this calculation, Crematorium III, which had a floor space of
210 square meters, should have had at least 115 shower heads, not 14. (10)
On the inventory drawings, the water pipes are not connected to the showers
themselves. Were these genuine showers the water pipes would have been
connected.
In certain gas chambers the wooden bases to which the shower heads were
attached are still visible in the ruins of the building. (11) A functioning
shower head would not have been connected to a wooden base.
In a letter of January 29, 1943, SS Captain Bischoff, head of the Auschwitz
Waffen-SS and Police Central Construction Management, wrote to an SS major
general in Berlin regarding the progress of work on Crematorium II. In his
letter he referred to Vergasungskeller (gassing cellar). (12) Butz and
Faurisson tried to reinterpret the term Vergasung. (13) Butz's explanation
was that it meant gas generation. Faurisson argued that it meant
carburetion and that Vergasungskeller designated the room in the basement
"where the 'gaseous' mixture to fuel the crematorium furnace was prepared."
(14) There are fundamental problems with this explanation. Not only is
there a significant amount of documentation which refers to gassing but,
more importantly, the cremation furnaces were coke fired and did not use
gas generation. (15)
Pressac found a time sheet in which a civilian worker had written that a
room in the western part of Crematorium IV was a "Gaskammer" (gas chamber).
Faurisson, in need of proof that this was something other than what it
said, suggested that these were "disinfection gas chambers." How he reached
this conclusion, especially when he had determined that Vergasungskeller
meant "gas generation," was left unexplained. (16)
On February 13, 1943, an order was placed by the Waffen-SS and Police
Central Construction Management for 12 gasdichten Tueren (gas-tight doors)
for Crematoria IV and V. [Because the dimensions of the "doors were thirty
by forty centimeters, Pressac hypothesizes that they were probably shutters
rather than doors.] According to the files in the Auschwitz Museum the work
on this order was completed on the 25th of February. On February 28,
according to the daily time sheets submitted by the civilian contractors,
the gastight shutters were fitted (Gasdichtefenster versetzten) and
installed. (18) A time sheet of March 2, 1943, submitted by the same firm
for work conducted on Crematorium IV, contained the following entry:
"concrete floor in gas chamber." The information on this work order and
these two time sheets, when analyzed as a whole, indicate that on March 2,
1943, civilian employees of a German firm officially designated a room in
Crematorium IV as a "gas chamber." (19) It made absolute sense for them to
do so because two days earlier they had installed "gastight shutters" in
the same room. (20)
A telegram of February 26, 1943, sent by an SS second lieutenant to one of
the firms involved in the construction of the gas chambers, requested the
immediate dispatch of "ten gas detectors." The detectors were to be used to
cheek the efficiency of the ventilation system in the gas chamber. (21)
In a book containing the record of work carried out by the metal workshops
for the construction and the maintenance of Birkenau Crematorium II, there
is an order dated March 5, 1943, requesting the making of "one handle for a
gas[tight] door. (22)
In a letter of March 6, 1943, a civilian employee working on the
construction of Crematorium II referred to modifying the air extraction
system of "Auskleidekeller [undressing cellar] II". A normal morgue would
have no use for such a facility. (23) During March 1943 there were at least
4 additional references to 'Auskleidekeller.' It is telling that civilians
who, according to the deniers, had been brought to Birkenau in January 1943
to work on "underground morgues repeatedly referred not to morgues but to
the ventilation of the "undressing cellars." (24)
In the same letter the employee asked about the possibility of preheating
the areas that would be used as the gas chamber. But a morgue should not be
preheated. It should be kept cool. However, if the room were to function as
a gas chamber, then the warmer the temperature the faster the Zyklon-B
pellets would vaporize. (25)
A letter dated March 31, 1943, signed by SS Major Bischoff, contained a
reference to an order of March 6, 1943, for a "gas [tight] door" for
Crematorium II. It was to be fitted with a rubberized sealing strip and a
peephole for inspection. Why would a morgue or a disinfection chamber need
a peephole? It certainly was not necessary in order to watch cadavers or
lice. There were also references in the Crematorium III work orders for
gastight doors and for iron bars and fittings for gastight doors. The
deniers, still clinging to their "morgue" theory, claimed that morgues
needed gastight doors to prevent odors and infectious germs from spreading.
They also claimed the doors were necessary because the morgues were
disinfected with Zyklon-B. This is a charge that, as indicated above,
contradicts basic science, since Zyklon-B is an insecticide and not a
disinfectant. This argument still leaves them scrambling for an explanation
of why 14 shower heads, none of which were connected to a plumbing system,
were necessary for a morgue. (26)
The inventory of Crematorium II, prepared when the civil firm had completed
the conversions on it, contained references to it being fitted with a
Gastuer and a Gasdichtetuer (gastight door).
A letter of March 31, 1943, regarding Crematorium III spoke of it having a
Gastuer, a gas door. Deniers are quick to argue that this could mean many
things. But the inventory attached to the handover documents for the
crematorium makes short shrift of this argument. The list states that it
had a Gasdichtetuer, a "gastight door." One could possibly argue about the
meaning of Gastuer, but it is hard to squabble over a gastight door. (27)
The deniers also contended that Birkenau was designed to serve as a
quarantine and hospital camp, not a death camp. They based their argument
on architectural drawings of April 1943, which contained plans for a
barracks for sick prisoners, a prisoners hospital, and a quarantine
section. Why, they ask, would the Nazis build a health camp but a few
hundred yards from gas chambers where people were being annihilated on a
massive scale? All this, they assert, indicates that Birkenau was not built
as a place of homicide and annihilation. (28) [The tradition al notation of
who had actually done the drawing and who had signed off on it is chilling
in both its ordinariness and extraordinariness. T he drawing was completed
by prisoner 63003 (whose name remains unknown) on March 23, 1944. We know
that it was reviewed by a civilian worker named Techmann and approved the
next day by SS Lieutenant Werner Jothan.] But there exists another official
drawing of an overall plan of Birkenau, completed approximately a year
later. It reveals that Birkenau was anything but a benign hospital unit.
The first set of plans, completed in April 1943, described a camp that
would house 16,600 prisoners. The drawings a year later show a camp that
housed 60,000 prisoners and contained less than half of the planned
barracks from the preceding year's plans. The existing barracks housed 4
times as many people as indicated by the original drawings. Any suggestion
of this being a place of healing is contradicted by these conditions. (29)
These references to gas chambers and this plan of the camp constitute the
kind of proof the deniers claim to be seeking. There is, of course, a
myriad of additional documentation regarding deportations, murders,
supplies of Zyklon-B, and other aspects of the Final Solution. I mention
them not as proof of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews but as proof of the
degree to which the deniers distort and deceive.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Anne Frank's diary has become one of the deniers' most popular targets. For
more than thirty years they have tried to prove that it was written after
the war. It would seem to be a dubious allocation of the deniers' energies
that they try to prove that a small book by a young girl full of musings
about her life, relationship with her parents, emerging sexuality, and
movie stars was not really written by her. But they have chosen their
target purposefully.
Since its publication shortly after the war, the diary has sold more than
twenty million copies in more than forty countries. For many readers it is
their introduction to the Holocaust. Countless grade school and high school
classes use it as a required text. The diary's popularity and impact,
particularly on the young, make discrediting it as important a goal for the
deniers as their attack on the gas chambers. By instilling doubts in the
minds of young people about this powerful book, they hope also to instil
doubts about the Holocaust itself.
On what do these deniers and neo-Nazis build their case? A brief history of
the publication of the diary, and of some of the subsequent events
surrounding its production as a play and film, demonstrates how the deniers
twist the truth to fit their ideological agenda.
Anne Frank began her diary on June 12, 1942. In the subsequent 26 months
she filled a series of albums, loose sheets of paper, and exercise and
account books. In addition she wrote a set of stories called Tales From the
Secret Annex. [The Secret Annex was the name Anne gave to the family's
hiding place.] Anne, who frequently referred to her desire to be a writer,
took her diary very seriously. Approximately 5 months before the family's
arrest, listening to a clandestine radio she heard the Dutch minister of
education request in a broadcast from London that people save "ordinary
documents - a diary, letters from a Dutch forced laborer in Germany, a
collection of sermons given by a parson or a priest." This would help
future generations understand what the nation had endured during those
terrible years. The next day Anne noted, "Of course they all made a rush at
my diary immediately." (30) Anxious to publish her recollections in book
form after the war she rewrote the first volumes of the diary on loose copy
paper. In it she changed some of the names of the principal characters,
including her own (Anne Frank became Anne Robin.) (3l)
When Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz and returned from the war, he
learned that his daughters were dead. He prepared a typed edition of the
diary for relatives and friends, making certain grammatical corrections,
incorporating items from the different versions, and omitting details that
might offend living people or that concerned private family matters, such
as Anne's stormy relationship with her mother. He gave his typed manuscript
to a friend and asked him to edit it. (32) (Other people apparently also
made editorial alterations to it.) The friend's wife prepared a typed
version of the edited manuscript. Frank approached a number of publishers
with this version, which was repeatedly rejected. [Even after the diary was
published to wide acclaim in Europe, American publishers were wary. Ten
rejected it before Doubleday published it in 1951. It was an immediate
success.] When it was accepted the publishers suggested that references to
sex, menstruation, and two girls touching each others breasts be deleted
because they lacked the proper degree of "propriety" for a Dutch audience.
When the diary was published in England, Germany, France, and the United
States, additional changes were made. The deniers cite these different
versions and different copies of the typescript to buttress their claim
that it is all a fabrication and that there was no original diary. They
also point to the fact that two different types of handwriting - printing
and cursive writing - were used in the diary. They claim that the paper and
the ink used were not produced until the 1950s and would have been
unavailable to a girl hiding in an attic in Amsterdam in 1942.
But it is the Meyer Levin affair on which the deniers have most often
relied to make their spurious charges. Levin, who had first read the diary
while he was living in France, wrote a laudatory review of it when
Doubleday published it. Levin's review, which appeared in the New York
Times Book Review, was followed by other articles by him on the diary in
which he urged that it be made into a play and film. (33) In 1952 Otto
Frank appointed Levin his literary agent in the United States to explore
the possibility of producing a play. Levin wrote a script that was turned
down by a series of producers. Frustrated by Levin's failures and convinced
that this script would not be accepted, Frank awarded the production rights
to Kermit Bloomgarden, who turned, at the suggestion of American author
Lillian Hellman, to two accomplished MGM screenwriters. Their version of
the play was a success and won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize.
Levin, deeply embittered, sued, charging that the playwrights had
plagiarized his material and ideas. In January 1958 a jury ruled that Levin
should be awarded $50,000 in damages. However, the New York State Supreme
Court set aside the jury's verdict, explaining that since Levin and the MGM
playwrights had both relied on the same original source - Anne's diary -
there were bound to be similarities between the two. (34)
Since it appeared that another lawsuit would be filed, the court refused to
lift the freeze that Levin had placed on the royalties. After two years of
an impasse, Frank and Levin reached an out-of-court settlement. Frank
agreed to pay $15,000 to Levin, who dropped all his claims to royalties and
rights to the dramatization of the play. Levin remained obsessed by his
desire to dramatize the diary. [In fact, in 1973 he wrote a book, The
Obsession, about the entire episode.] In 1966 he attempted to stage a
production in Israel, though he did not have the right to do so, and
Frank's lawyers insisted that it be terminated. (35)
It is against this background that the deniers built their assault on the
diary. The first documented attack appeared in Sweden in 1957. A Danish
literary critic claimed that the diary had actually been produced by Levin,
citing as one of his "proofs" that names such as Peter and Anne were not
Jewish names. (36) His charges were repeated in Norway, Austria, and West
Germany. In 1958 a German high school teacher who had been a member of the
SA and a Hitler Youth leader charged that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery
that had earned "millions for the profiteers from Germany's defeat." (37)
His allegations were reiterated by the chairman of a rightwing German
political party. Otto Frank and the diary's publishers sued them for libel,
slander, defamation of the memory of a dead person, and anti-semitic
utterances. The case was settled out of court when the defendants declared
that they were convinced the diary was not a forgery and apologized for
unverified statements they had made. (38) In 1967 American Mercury
published an article by Teressa Hendry, entitled "Was Anne Frank's Diary a
Hoax?" in which she suggested that the diary might be the work of Meyer
Levin and that if it was, a massive fraud had been perpetrated. (39) In a
fashion that will by now have become familiar to readers of this book,
Hendry's allegations were repeated by other deniers as established fact.
This is their typical pattern of cross-fertilization as they create a
merry-go-round of allegations. In Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at
Last, Harwood repeated these charges, unequivocally declaring the diary to
be a hoax. (40) In one short paragraph in his book, Arthur Butz likewise
stated that he had "looked it over" and determined that the diary was a
hoax. (41)
In his 1975 attack on the diary, David Irving relied on the familiar charge
that an American court had "proved" that a New York scriptwriter had
written it "in collaboration with the girl's father." In 1978 Ditlieb
Felderer, publisher of the sexually explicit cartoons of Holocaust
survivors, produced a book devoted to certifying the diary as a hoax. He
repeated the Levin charge but then went on to label Anne a sex fiend and
the book "the first child porno." 42 (Some of his chapter titles are
indicative of his approach: "Sexual Extravaganza" and "Anne's Character -
Not Even a Nice Girl." Felderer's charges are designed to build on what is
often part of the inventory of anti-semitic stereotypes: Jews, unnaturally
concerned about sex, are also producers of pornography designed to corrupt
young children.)
In 1975 Heinz Roth, a West German publisher of neo-Nazi brochures, began to
circulate pamphlets calling the diary a forgery actually written by a New
York playwright. He cited Irving's and Harwood's findings as "proof" of his
charges. When asked to desist by Otto Frank, he refused, claiming, in the
familiar defense used by deniers, that he was only interested in "pure
historical truth." At this point Frank took him to court in West Germany.
Roth defended himself by citing statements by Harwood and Butz declaring
the diary to be fraudulent. In addition, Roth's lawyers produced an "expert
opinion" by Robert Faurisson, among whose charges to prove the diary
fictitious was that the annex's inhabitants had made too much noise. Anne
wrote of vacuum cleaners being used, "resounding" laughter, and noise that
was "enough to wake the dead." (43) How, Faurisson asked, could people in
hiding, knowing that the slightest noise would be their undoing, have
behaved in this fashion and not been discovered? (44) But Faurisson quoted
the diary selectively, distorting its contents to build his case. When Anne
wrote of the use of the vacuum cleaner, she preceded it by noting that the
"warehouse men have gone home now." (45) The scene in which she described
resounding laughter among the inhabitants of the annex took place the
preceding evening - a Sunday night - when the warehouse would have been
empty. (46) When she wrote that a sack of beans broke open and the noise
was enough to "wake the dead," Faurisson neglected to quote the next
sentence in the diary: "Thank God there were no strangers in the house."
(47)
In his description of his visit to Otto Frank, Faurisson engaged in the
same tactics he used in relation to his encounter with the official from
the Auschwitz museum. He tried to make it appear as if he had caught Frank
in a monstrous lie: "The interview turned out to be grueling for Anne
Frank's father." (48) Not surprisingly Frank's description of the
interchange differs markedly, and he challenged the veracity of much of
what Faurisson claimed he said. Faurisson also claimed to have found a
witness who was "well informed and of good faith" but who refused to allow
his name to be made public. Faurisson assured readers that the name and
address of this secret witness had been placed in a "sealed envelope." As
proof of this evidence he included a photograph of the sealed envelope as
an appendix to his "investigation." (49) In 1980 the court, unconvinced by
Faurisson's claims, found that Roth had not proved the diary false.
truth and memory
courts for distributing pamphlets charging that the diary was a hoax. The
Bundeskriminalamt (The BKA, or Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau) was
asked to prepare a report as to whether the paper and writing material used
in the diary were available between 1941 and 1944. The BKA report, which
ran just 4 pages in length, did not deal with the authenticity of the diary
itself. It found that the materials had all been manufactured prior to
1950-51 and consequently could have been used by Anne. It also observed,
almost parenthetically, that emendations had been made in ballpoint pen on
loose pages found with the diary. The ink used to make them had only been
on the market since 1951. (50) (The BKA did not address itself to the
substance of the emendations, nor did it publish any data explaining how it
had reached this conclusion. When the editors of the critical edition of
the diary asked for the data they were told by the BKA that they had none.)
(51)
Given the history of the editing of the diary it is not surprising that
these kinds of corrections were made. This did not prevent Der Spiegel from
publishing a sensationalist article on the diary which began with the
following boldface paragraph: "'The Diary of Anne Frank' was edited at a
later date. Further doubt is therefore cast on the authenticity of that
document." The author of the article did not question whether these
corrections had been substantive or grammatical, whether they had been
incorporated into the printed text, or when they had been made. Nor did he
refer to them as corrections as the BKA had. He referred to the possibility
of an imposter at work and charged that the diary had been subjected to
countless "manipulations." These sensationalist observations
notwithstanding, Der Spiegel dismissed the charge made by David Irving and
other deniers that Levin wrote the diary as an "oft-repeated legend." It
also stressed that those who wished to shed doubt on the diary were the
same types who wished to end "gas chamber fraud." (52)
On Otto Frank's death in 1980, the diary was given to the Netherlands State
Institute for War Documentation. By that time the attacks on it had become
so frequent and vehement - though the charges that were made were all
essentially the same - that the institute felt obliged to subject the
diary, as well as the paper on which it was written, glue that bound it
together, and ink to a myriad of scientific tests in order to determine
whether they were authentic. They also tested postage stamps, postmarks,
and censorship stamps on postcards, letters, and greeting cards sent by
Anne and her family during this period (in addition to the diary the
institute examined twenty-two different documents containing writings by
Anne and her family). Forensic science experts analyzed Anne's handwriting,
paying particular attention to the two different scripts, and produced a
250-page highly technical report of their findings.
The reports found that the paper, glue, fibers in the binding, and ink were
all in use in the 1940s. The ink contained iron, which was standard for
inks used prior to 1950. (After that date ink with no, or a much lower,
iron content was used.) The conclusions of the forensic experts were
unequivocal: The diaries were written by one person during the period in
question. The emendations were of a limited nature and varied from a single
letter to 3 words. They did not in any way alter the meaning of the text
when compared to the earlier version. (53) The institute determined that
the different handwriting styles were indicative of normal development in a
child and left no doubt that it was convinced that it had all been written
in the same hand that wrote the letters and cards Anne had sent to
classmates in previous years.
The final result of the institute's investigation was a 712 page critical
edition of the diary containing the original version, Anne's edited copy,
and the published version as well as the experts' findings. While some may
argue that the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation used an
elephant to swat a fly, once again it becomes clear that the deniers'
claims have no relationship to the most basic rules of truth and evidence.
NOTES TO APPENDIX
1. Document No. NI-9912, cited in Technique, p. 18.
2. Ibid., p. 19.
3. Ibid., pp. 16, 165.
4. Robert Faurisson, Reply to Pierre Vidal-Naquet, quoted in Technique, p.
505.
5. "Deficiencies," p. 38; Technique, p. 16.
6. Technique, p. 18.
7. Le Monde, Jan 16, 1979, p. 13; Technique, p. 429.
8. Technique, p. 165.
9. Ibid., p. 429.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Auschwitz State Museum (Panstwowe Muzeum Oswiecim [PMO], file BW 30/40,
p. 100; Technique, pp. 430-32.
13. Technique, p. 503.
14. Ibid., p. 548.
15. Faurisson, Statement for the Defense, cited in Technique, p. 505.
16. Faurisson, "Reply to Pierre Vidal-Naquet", p. 78.
17. Technique, p. 554.
18. PMO file BW 30/28, p. 73, cited in Technique, p. 553.
19. PMO file BW 30/28, p. 68, cited in ibid., p. 555.
20. Technique, p. 554. When he discovered this document Pressac confronted
Faurisson and told him that because of the many references to gas in the
museum archives he no longer believe d Faurisson's thesis was valid.
21. Technique, p. 367.
22. Ibid., p. 432.
23. PMO file BW 30/25, p. 7, cited in Technique, p. 432.
24. Ibid., pp. 434, 438.
25. PMO file BW 30/25, p. 7, cited in Technique, pp. 367, 432.
26. BW 30/34, pp. 49, 50, cited in Technique, pp. 434, 438-39.
27. Technique, pp. 434, 436, 438-39.
28. Bauleitung drawing 252, PMO neg. no. 20943/181, reproduced in
Technique, p. 512.
29. Bauleitung drawing 3764, PMO file BW 2/38, reproduced in Technique, p.
514.
30. March 29, 1944, Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition (New York,
1989), p. 578 (hereafter cited as Diary of Anne Frank).
31. Gerrold van der Stroom, "The Diaries, Het Achterhuis and the
Translations," Diary of Anne Frank, pp. 59-61.
32. Ibid., p. 63.
33. New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1952; Congress Weekly, Nov. 13,
1950; National Jewish Post, June 30, 1952; David Barnouw, "The Play," Diary
of Anne Frank, p. 78.
34. New York Law Journal, Feb. 27, 1959 cited in Barnouw, "The Play," p.
80.
35. New York Times, Nov. 27, 1966; Meyer Levin, The Obsession (New York,
1973), p. 262.
36. David Barnouw, "Attacks on the Authenticity of the Diary," Diary of
Anne Frank, p. 84.
37. Ibid., p. 84.
38. Ibid., pp. 84-89.
39. Teressa Hendry, "Was Anne Frank's Diary a Hoax?" American Mercury
(Summer 1967), reprinted in Myth of the Six Million, pp. 109-111.
40. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 19.
41. Hoax, p. 37.
42. Ditlieb Felderer, Anne Frank's Diary - A Hoax? (Taby, Sweden, 1978).
When the book was reprinted by the IHR the question mark was omitted from
the title.
43. Dec. 6, 1943, Diary, pp. 424, 425.
44. Robert Faurisson, Le Journal d'Anne Frank est-il authentique? in Serge
Thion, Verite historique or verite politique? (Paris, 1980), Barnouw,
"Attacks on the Authenticity," pp. 94-95.
45. Aug. 5, 1943, Diary of Anne Frank, p. 385.
46. Dec. 6, 1943, Ibid., p. 424.
47. Nov. 9, 1943, Ibid., p. 301.
48. Robert Faurisson, Het Dagboek van Anne Frank - een vervalsing (The
diary of Anne Frank - a forgery) (Antwerp, 1985), p. 18, cited in Barnouw,
p. 95.
49. Barnouw, "Attacks on the Authenticity," p. 96.
50. Opinion of Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau, May 28, 1980;
Hamburg, Landgericht, Romer/Geiss dossier, cited in Barnouw, "Attacks on
the Authenticity," pp. 97-98.
51. Barnouw, "Attacks on the Authenticity," p. 99.
52. Der Spiegel, Oct. 6, 1980, cited in ibid., p. 98.
53. H.J.J. Hardy, "Document Examination and Handwriting Identification of
the Text Known as the Diary of Anne Frank: Summary of Findings," Diary of
Anne Frank, p. 164.
END PIECE - An Overview
It never happened
Holocaust deniers are people who contend that the Holocaust - the attempt
by Nazi Germany to annihilate European Jewry during World War II - never
happened. According to the deniers, the Nazis did not murder six million
Jews, the notion of homicidal gas chambers is a myth, and any deaths of
Jews that did occur under the Nazis were the result of wartime privations,
not of systematic persecution and state-organised mass murder.
Deniers dismiss all assertions that the Holocaust took place as conscious
fabrications, or as psychotic delusions. Some even claim that Hitler was
the best friend the Jews had in Germany, and that he actively worked to
protect them. According to deniers, Jews have perpetrated this hoax about
the Holocaust on the world in order to gain political and financial
advantage, and it was in fact Germany that was the true victim in World War
II.
Documented genocide
For example, approximately a million Jews on the Eastern Front were shot
during 1941-42, and buried in large pits. This is known partly because the
Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units that coordinated these massacres,
prepared detailed reports on the murders - reports that contained precise
death tolls, broken down into men, women and children.
These reports were sent to high ranking officials in Berlin, and to army,
police and SS officers, as well as diplomats and even prominent
industrialists. This wide distribution suggests that the perpetrators felt
no shame at what they did. Had these killings not been part of Berlin's
policy, the reports would never have been so widely distributed.
Deniers argue that evidence such as this was forged, after the end of World
War II, by people working for world Jewry. They claim that forgers created
these and other documents - complete with complex internal reference
markings, on typewriters that perfectly matched those used by the various
German units said to have written the documents - and then planted
thousands of these perfect forgeries in numerous different archival
collections (in exactly the right file and in precisely the right sequence)
all over Europe.
Not only is such a scenario fantastically improbable, it fails to explain
why these supposedly incredibly talented forgers did not succeed in
producing the one piece of paper that deniers demand as 'proof' that
genocide took place under the Third Reich - an order from Hitler
authorising the destruction of the Jews.
Confessions
Many perpetrators confessed to what they had done during the war, after it
was over. For example, Otto Ohlendorf, commander of one of the
Einsatzgruppen units, testified quite openly that between June 1941 and
1942 his Einsatzgruppe murdered 90,000 people.
Deniers dismiss confessions by German perpetrators that a 'Final Solution'
to the 'Jewish question' was indeed a part of the Nazi programme - by
saying the confessions were produced under torture. They say that those who
confessed knew their admissions would result in a death sentence, so would
not have confessed except under duress - and that their accounts of their
wartime activities should thus be disregarded.
This, however, ignores the fact that some of the more detailed confessions
were written after the perpetrators had been sentenced to death. It also
ignores the fact that many of the perpetrators described - sometimes in
great detail - what happened, but insisted that they either had nothing to
do with it or were forced by their superiors to participate.
Thus this argument fails to take into account the statements of Nazis such
as the Commandant of Birkenau concentration camp, Rudolf H"ss, who
described the mass murders that took place in his camp in a document
written after he had been sentenced to death. It also fails to account for
Adolf Eichmann who, in the memoir he wrote during his trial, spoke of the
gassing of the Jews.
Some deniers explain away the confessions by positing that after the war
these Germans were subjected to a barrage of propaganda, and themselves
become victims of the hoax. One must marvel at the power of those supposed
to be responsible for this hoax. Not only did they win the cooperation of
the world's greatest military and political powers, forge thousands of
documents in record time without being detected, and create physical
evidence attesting to an annihilation programme, but they even convinced
the very people said to be a part of the hoax that it had actually
happened.
Disappearances
Some deniers posit that the Jews said to have been killed under the Nazi
regime actually survived the war, and succeeded in avoiding detection by
going to places such as the Soviet Union or the United States. In these
countries, the deniers claim, there were already so many Jews that no one
noticed a couple of million more.
Deniers such as Arthur Butz offer other equally fantastic explanations as
to the supposed 'disappearance' of millions of Jews. Many of those who were
reported killed in the war, he suggests, actually survived - but did not
re-establish contact with their pre-war relatives because they were in bad
marriages. After the war they found other partners, established better
relationships, started a new life and failed to correct the record. This
improbable explanation of why these people deserted their families would be
hilarious, were the topic not so serious.
The real facts are much better documented. For example, it is known that
Nazis used gas buses at one point to murder Jews (eventually they abandoned
this system because it was not efficient enough). This is known partly
because SS-Major General Dr Harald Turner, chief of the German
Administration in Serbia, wrote to Karl Wolff, chief of Heinrich Himmler's
personal staff, on 11 April 1942.
In the note Turner describes a 'delousing van' - the quotation marks around
the word already suggest that it is a euphemism - then makes it quite clear
what this means:
"Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on
this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and
with the help of the SD got my hands on a 'delousing van', that in about 14
days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the
camp"
Additional details about these buses are to be found in a letter from Willy
Just to SS Lieutenant Colonel Walter Rauff on 5 June 1942. In the letter,
Just describes how a load of '97,000 have been processed'. He leaves little
doubt about the nature of the load, when he writes about it pushing against
the door as a result of 'fear aroused by the darkness'.
Just also offers Rauff a series of suggestions on how the vans might be
improved. Since there was a problem of 'off-road manoeuvrability', he
suggests that the cargo area be reduced. This would make the operation more
efficient, because 'were the cargo area smaller, but fully occupied, the
operation would take considerably less time, because there would be no
empty space.'
Deniers find it impossible to 'explain away' these kinds of documents so
they generally ignore them.
Denying Auschwitz
Most of all, deniers focus on the extermination camp run by the Nazis at
Auschwitz. They claim - despite overwhelming documentary and physical
evidence as well as eye-witness accounts by both perpetrators and victims -
that it was not an extermination camp. They ignore or try to explain away
evidence that leaves no doubt as to Auschwitz's nefarious purposes. A small
sample of the many pieces of documentary evidence demonstrates the
far-fetched nature of their claims.
Though the Germans made concerted attempts to avoid direct references to
the gassings that took place in the camp, sometimes even those in the upper
echelons slipped up. On 29 January 1943, for example, SS Captain Bischoff,
head of the Auschwitz Central Construction Management, wrote to officials
in Berlin regarding Crematorium 2, and in this letter he referred to a
Vergasungskeller (gassing cellar).
In the Auschwitz archives one can inspect the architectural drawings for
Crematoria 4 and 5. These call for 30 x 40cm windows, through which Zyklon
B was to be thrown. In February 1943 the Auschwitz Construction Office
issued a work order for the 'production of 12 gas-tight doors (window
shutters) approximately 30-40cm'. In Auschwitz there remain a number of
decrepit 30 x 40cm window shutters. The remnants of a gas-tight seal are
still visible around their edges. The handle for closing the windows is on
the outside, a decidedly impractical arrangement for any room, unless one
wanted to ensure that those inside could not open them.
On 28 February, according to the civilian contractors' daily time-sheets,
the gas-tight shutters were installed. A time-sheet dated 2 March 1943, and
submitted by the contractor for work on Crematorium 4, mentions a 'concrete
floor in gas chamber'. These documents indicate that by March 1943 workers
officially designated a room in Crematorium 4 a 'gas chamber'.' The
drawings, work order, time-sheets, and remaining windows constitute a
simple but stunning example of the confluence of evidence concerning the
gassing of prisoners at the camp.
Deniers also claim that the gas chambers were actually delousing chambers
or morgues. But the documentary evidence proves this a bogus claim. In a
letter dated 31 March, Bischoff refers to a 'gas [tight] door' for
Crematorium 2, which was to be fitted with a rubberised sealing strip and a
peephole for inspection. The deniers fail to explain why a door for a
delousing chamber or morgue would need a peephole.
Another claim is that the gas chambers were air-raid shelters. This
argument ignores the fact that these supposed shelters were too small to
house the camp inmates, and were over a kilometer away from where the
guards were quartered - a decidedly silly arrangement if these shelters
were meant to protect them. Furthermore, the doors had a metal grille over
the peephole on the inside of the door - to protect the glass from being
broken from within - exactly the opposite of where it would be were it the
door for an air-raid shelter. And indeed there were proper one- or
two-person air-raid shelters for guards around the camp. They are still
visible at the perimeter of Birkenau.
Most importantly, to support their position, deniers also have to ignore
testimony given by perpetrators such as Hans Stark, a member of the
Auschwitz 'Gestapo.' At his trial Stark described the killing process:
"As early as autumn 1941 gassings were carried out in a room [which] held
200 to 250 people, had a higher than average ceiling, no windows, only a
specially insulated door with bolts like those of an airtight door
[Luftschutzer]. The room had a flat roof, which allowed daylight in through
the openings. It was through these openings that Zyklon B in granular form
would be poured."
Stark told the court that, because the Zyklon B 'was in granular form, it
trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started
to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them.'
Evidence
In February 1943 Auschwitz camp building authorities complained to Topf,
the company that built the crematoria equipment, that they needed
ventilation blowers 'most urgently'. Why the urgency, if this was an
air-raid shelter, morgue, or delousing chamber?
Deniers hypothesise that the urgency was a result of official fears that
the camp would be hit with a typhus epidemic, which would cause a
tremendous spike in the death toll. Without the proper ventilation system,
the crematoria would not be able to operate.
Deniers try to bolster their argument about the typhus by pointing to
documents which show that at this point in time the planned monthly
incineration rate of Auschwitz had been boosted to 120,000 bodies. Deniers
claim this was because of the typhus epidemic. However, the camp's
projected population was 150,000. For the deniers' explanation to make
sense, in one month an epidemic would have to kill four-fifths of
Auschwitz's population and the Germans would have to repopulate the camp
with 120,000 people. This claim exceeded the absolute worst case
epidemiological scenario.
On 6 March 1943, one of the civilian employees working on the construction
of Crematorium 2 referred to the air extraction system of 'Auskleidekeller
[undressing cellar] 2'. No normal morgue could require an undressing room,
particularly one that was 50 yards long. In that same month, there were at
least four additional references to Auskleidekeller. It is telling that
civilians who, according to the deniers, were in Birkenau to work on
underground morgues, repeatedly referred not to morgues but to the
ventilation of the 'undressing cellars'.
In the same letter the employee asked about preheating the areas that would
be used as the gas chamber. If these were morgues they should be cooled,
not preheated. Heating a gas chamber, on the other hand, would speed the
gassing process by more quickly vaporising the gas from the Zyklon B.
A letter dated 31 March 1943, regarding Crematorium 3, spoke of it as
having a Gastur, a gas door. Deniers argue that this could mean many
things. But the inventory attached to the handover documents for the
crematorium states that it had a Gasdichteter, a 'gas-tight door'. One
might argue about the meaning of Gaster, but it is hard to squabble over a
gas-tight door.
Deniers have said for years that physical evidence is lacking because they
have seen no holes in the roof of the Birkenau gas chamber where the Zyklon
was poured in. (In some of the gas chambers the Zyklon B was poured in
through the roof, while in others it was thrown in through the windows.)
The roof was dynamited at war's end, and today lies broken in pieces, but
three of the four original holes were positively identified in a recent
paper. Their location in the concrete matches with eyewitness testimony,
aerial photos from 1944, and a ground photo from 1943. The physical
evidence shows unmistakably that the Zyklon holes were cast into the
concrete when the building was constructed.
There is much additional evidence affirming Auschwitz-Birkenau's role as a
killing centre. There is no reputable evidence that affirms the deniers'
claims.
Kurt Knoll
story building. And how did ss get up to the roof.
Kurt Knoll
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:452164e6df694178...@pseudo.borked.net...
truth and memory
Deniers have repeatedly attacked the authenticity of the famous Diary of
Anne Frank, which tells of the young Jewish author's experiences as she and
her family hid from Nazi persecution in Holland. It seems they believe that
by creating doubts about this popular book, which is often a young person's
first encounter with the literature of the Holocaust, they can generate
broader doubts about the Holocaust itself. Their attacks on the diary
became so widespread, that eventually the Netherlands State Institute for
War Documentation, the archives to which Anne's father left the work,
subjected the glue, paper and ink of the diary to extensive forensic tests.
They found them all to be from the 1940s.
The investigators compared Anne's handwriting in the diary to other samples
of her writing, including letters she wrote before going into hiding, and
traditional student autograph books she signed before the war. The tests
found the handwriting to be that of the same person. In fact, every test to
which the diary was subjected proved that this was a genuine World War II
era work by a teenager.
Deniers also argue that there are multiple versions of the Diary of Anne
Frank. This, they claim, proves it is a fraud. Actually, there are multiple
versions of the diary, and Anne herself explains why this is so. In 1944, a
Dutch government official, broadcasting from London, urged the population
to save eyewitness accounts of their wartime experience, including
memorabilia and diaries. Hearing this, Anne, decided to rewrite some of the
entries. She also used her diary as a basis for a novel, The Annexe. Hence
the different versions.
Deniers also make the claim that the diary is in green ballpoint pen,
something that was not readily available during the war. And there are, in
fact, some minor stylistic marginal notes in green ink. However, as the
Dutch investigation demonstrated, the only ballpoint writing is on two
scraps of paper included among the loose leaves, and these have no
significance whatsoever in terms of content. Moreover, the handwriting on
the scraps of paper differs markedly from those in the diary, indicating
that they were written by someone else, an editor perhaps.
The final result of the Dutch investigation was a critical 712-page edition
of the diary containing the original version, Anne's edited copy, and the
published version as well as the experts' findings. While some may argue
that the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation used an elephant
to swat a fly, once again it becomes clear that the deniers glibly make
claims that have no relationship to the most basic rules of truth and
evidence.
All this evidence, and much else, demonstrates the nature of the deniers'
claims. Much of this information was entered into the High Court of Justice
in London as evidence when the author of this article was sued for libel by
David Irving, a man who has written many books on World War II, a number of
which deny the Holocaust.
Irving sued for libel because he had been described as a Holocaust denier
in one of the present author's books. He contended this was not true,
because his claims about the Holocaust were correct. The judge in the case,
Judge Gray, however, found Irving, who introduced virtually all of the
standard denial arguments into his submission, to be indeed a Holocaust
denier.
Dismissing Irving's claims that the gas chambers were an impossibility, the
judge noted that that the 'cumulative effect of the documentary evidence
for the genocidal operation of the gas chambers' was not only
'considerable' but 'mutually corroborative'.
Judge Gray, who found the eyewitness and documentary evidence to be
'striking[ly] .. consistent', concluded that 'no objective, fair-minded
historian would have serious cause to doubt' the existence of gas chambers
at Auschwitz, which were used on a substantial scale to kill Jews. He found
Irving's arguments - and by extension the claims of deniers in general - to
be 'perverse and egregious'.
Furthermore, the judge said that Irving had 'significantly misrepresented
what the evidence, objectively examined, reveals'. (For the complete
judgement, the daily transcripts, and the expert witness reports see
www.hdot.org)
Holocaust denial is a form of virulent anti-Semitism. But it is not only
that. It is also an attack on reasoned inquiry and inconvenient history. If
this history can be denied any history can be denied.
Holocaust deniers have, thus far, been decidedly unsuccessful in convincing
the broader public of their claims - although many people worry that after
the last of the Holocaust survivors has died (most are now in their 80s)
deniers will achieve greater success. However, historians, carefully
relying on a broad array of documentary and material evidence, a small
sample of which is mentioned in this article, can and already have
demonstrated that Holocaust denial is a tissue of lies.
Books
Lying About Hitler by Richard Evans (Basic Books, 2001)
History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving by Deborah E Lipstadt
(to be published in 2005)
The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial by Robert Jan van
Pelt (Indiana University Press, 2002)
Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers by Jean-Claude
Pressac (Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, c.1989)
Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' by Laurence Rees (BBC Books,
2005)
Denying History: Who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say
it? by Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (University of California Press,
2000)
www.holocaust-history.org: This site is an extensive archive of documents,
photographs, recordings and essays regarding the Holocaust, including
direct refutation of Holocaust-denial.
Deborah Lipstadt is director of the Rabbi Donald A Tam Institute for Jewish
Studies, and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, at
Emory University, Atlanta.
INDEX OF PARTS (with URLs)
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 01
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
PREFACE
http://tinyurl.com/6lruvh
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 02
PREFACE (concluded)
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine
http://tinyurl.com/625nt3
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 03
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/69mobs
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 04
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/4u2apt
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 05
CHAPTER ONE Canaries in the Mine (concluded)
http://tinyurl.com/6dgzpm
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 06
CHAPTER TWO The Antecedents
http://tinyurl.com/5yykoh
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 07
CHAPTER TWO The Antecedents (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/55bspq
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 08
CHAPTER TWO The Antecedents (concluded)
CHAPTER THREE In the Shadow of World War II
http://tinyurl.com/5c7x39
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 09
CHAPTER THREE In the Shadow of World War II (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/5333d9
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 10
CHAPTER THREE In the Shadow of World War II (concluded)
CHAPTER FOUR The First Stirrings of Denial in America
http://tinyurl.com/5l78ed
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 11
CHAPTER FOUR The First Stirrings of Denial in America (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/5hf86h
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 12
CHAPTER FOUR The First Stirrings of Denial in America (concluded)
CHAPTER FIVE Austin J. App
http://tinyurl.com/5sgw6d
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 13
CHAPTER FIVE Austin J. App (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/57kl5a
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 14
CHAPTER FIVE Austin J. App (concluded)
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right
http://tinyurl.com/5msvrj
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 15
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/3kcb7f
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 16
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/3jnf26
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 17
CHAPTER SIX Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right (concluded)
CHAPTER SEVEN Entering the Mainstream
http://tinyurl.com/3nmpxr
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 18
CHAPTER SEVEN Entering the Mainstream (concluded)
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 19
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/5sovft
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 20
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/3omj8o
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 21
CHAPTER EIGHT The Institute for Historical Review (concluded)
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 22
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/6zuytg
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 23
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/3r99nt
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 24
CHAPTER NINE The Gas Chamber Controversy (concluded)
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 25
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/4dd8wu
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 26
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/5hwbcn
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 27
CHAPTER TEN The Battle for the Campus (concluded)
CHAPTER ELEVEN Watching on the Rhine
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 28
CHAPTER ELEVEN Watching on the Rhine (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/3jvlsu
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 29
CHAPTER ELEVEN Watching on the Rhine (concluded)
APPENDIX Twisting the Truth
http://tinyurl.com/622p2v
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 30
APPENDIX Twisting the Truth (continued)
http://tinyurl.com/5hrpus
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 31
APPENDIX Twisting the Truth (concluded)
END PIECE - An Overview
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST (Lipstadt) - Part 32 + INDEX
END PIECE - An Overview (concluded)
INDEX OF PARTS
( ( you are here ) )
[ THE END ]
Kurt Knoll
Kurt Knoll.
"truth and memory" <please.f...@preserver-redistribution.org> wrote in
message news:d3e63f1aa7f0b690...@pseudo.borked.net...
I'll Always Be Here
> Really and how much of what you say is really true ????.
Reply and all of what you say is false, don't you read what you post?
I'll Always Be Here
Kenneth McVay OBC
the reigning Village Idiot of Kitimat, straightened
his Pikelhaube, fluffed his Black SS Dress Tutu, and
<kkn...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Really and how much of what you say is really true ????.
All of it, Herr Pikelhaube.
--
"What did you say. Did the burry the train with the show wen
can you show us the buried train Sara. As you know seeing is beliving."
(Kurt Knoll, Kitimat, B.C.'s Leading Revisionist Scholar)