Page 10-The Michigan Daily- Thursday, October 24, 1991
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THE HOLOCAUST CONTROVERSY:
The Case For Open Debate
01
By Bradley R. Smith
T HE CONTEMPORAIRY ISSUE
No subject enrages campus Thought
Police more than Holocaust Revisionism. We
debate every other great historical issue as a
matter of course, but influential pressure groups
with private agendas have made the Holocaust
an exception. Elitist dogma manipulated by
special interest groups corrupts everything in
academia. Students should be encouraged to
investigate the Holocaust story the same way
they are encouraged to investigate every other
historical event. This isn't a radical point of
view. The premises for it were worked out cen-
turies ago during a little something called the
Enlightenment.
THE HISTORICAL ISSUE
Revisionists agree with establishment his-
torians that the German National Socialist
State singled out the Jewish people for special
and cruel treatment. In addition to viewing
Jews in the framework of traditional anti-
Semitism, the Nazis also saw them as being an
influential force behind international commu-
nism. During the Second World War, Jews
were considered to be enemies of the State and
a potential danger to the war effort, much like
the Japanese were viewed in this country. Con-
sequently, Jews were stripped of their rights,
forced to live in ghettos, conscripted for labor,
deprived of their property, deported from the
countries of their birth and otherwise mis-
treated. Many tragically perished in the mael-
strom.
Revisionists part company with establish-
ment historians in that Revisionists deny that
the German State had a policy to exterminate
the Jewish people (or anyone else) by putting
them to death in gas chambers or by killing
them through abuse or neglect. Revisionists
also maintain that the figure of 6 million Jew-
ish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration,
and that no execution gas chambers existed in
any camp in Europe which was under German
control. Fumigation gas chambers did exist to
delouse clothing and equipment to prevent
disease at the camps. It is from this life-saving
procedure that the myth of extermination gas
chambers emerged.
Revisionists generally hold that the Allied
governments decided to carry their wartime
"black propaganda' of German monstrosity over
into the postwar period. This was done for
essentially three reasons. First, they felt it
necessary to continue to justify the great sacri-
fices that were made in fighting two world
wars. A second reason was that they wanted to
divert attention from and to justify their own
particularly brutal crimes against humanity
which, apart from Soviet atrocities, involved
massive incendiary bombings of the civilian
populations of German and Japanese cities.
The third and perhaps most important reason
was that they needed justification for the post-
war arrangements which, among other things,
involved the annexation of large parts of Ger-
many into Poland. These territories were not
disputed borderlands but included huge parts
of Germany proper. The millions of Germans
living in these regions were to be dispossessed
of their property and brutally expelled from
their homelands. Many hundreds of thousands
were to perish in the process. A similar fate was
to befall the Sudeten Germans.
During the war, and in the postwar era as
well, Zionist organizations were deeply involved
in creating and promulgating anti-German hate
propaganda. There is little doubt that their
purpose was to drum up world sympathy and
political and financial support for Jewish
causes, especially for the formation of the State
of Israel. Today, while the political benefits of
the I lolocaust story have largely dissipated,
the story still plays an important role in the
ambitions of Zionists and others in the Jewish
community. It is the leaders of these political
and propaganda organizations who continue to
work to sustain the Holocaust legend and the
myth of German monstrosity during the Sec-
ond World War.
For those who believe that the Nuremberg
Trials revealed the truth about German war
crimes, it is a bracing shock to discover that the
then Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
I Harlan Fiske Stone, described the Nuremberg
court as "a high-class lynching party for Ger-
mans.
THE OTIOGI(Yf APIIS
We've all seen "The Photographs." End-
lessly. Newsreel photos taken by U.S. and
British photographers at the liberation of the
German camps, and especially the awful scenes
at Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
These films are typically presented in a way in
every major city in Germany with saturation
bombing. Transportation, the food distribu-
tion system and medical and sanitation serv-
ices all broke down. That was the purpose of
the Allied bombing, which has been described
as the most barbarous form of warfare in Eu-
rope since the Mongol invasions.
Millions of refugees fleeing the Soviet ar-
mies were pouring into Germany. The camps
still under German control were overwhelmed
with internees from the east. By early 1945 the
inmate population was swept by malnutrition
and by epidemics of typhus, typhoid, dysentery
and chronic diarrhea. Even the mortuary sys-
tems broke down. When the press entered the
camps with British and U.S. soldiers, they
found the results of all that. They took "The
Photographs."
Still, at camps such as Buchenwald, Dachau
and Bergen-Belsen tens of thousands of rela-
tively healthy internees were liberated. They
were there in the camps when "The Photo-
graphs" were taken. There are newsreels of
these internees walking through the camp
streets laughing and talking. Others picture
exuberant internees throwing their caps in the
air and cheering their liberators. It is only
natural to ask why you haven't seen those
particular films and photos while you've seen
the others scores and even hundreds of times.
DOCUMENTS
Spokesmen for the Holocaust Lobby like to
assure us that there are "tons" of captured Ger-
man documents which prove the Jewish geno-
cide. When challenged on this, however, they
can produce only a handful of documents, the
authenticity or interpretation of which is al-
ways highly questionable. If pressed for reli-
able documentation, the Lobby will then re-
verse itself and claim that the Germans de-
stroyed all the relevant documents to hide their
evil deeds, or it will make the absurd claim that
the Germans used a simplistic code language or
whispered verbal orders for mass murder into
each others' ears.
The truth appears to be, with regard to the
alleged extermination of the European Jews,
that there was no order, no plan, no budget, no
weapon
(that is, no so-called execution gas chamber)
and no victim (that is, not a single autopsied
body at any camp has been shown to have been
gassed).
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
As documentary "proofs" for the mass-mur-
der of the European Jews fall by the wayside,
Holocaust historians depend increasingly on
"eyewitness" testimonies to support their theo-
ries. Many of these testimonies are ludicrously
unreliable. History is filled with stories of
masses of people claiming to be eyewitnesses to
everything from witchcraft to flying saucers.
During and after the war there were "eye-
witnesses" to mass murder in gas chambers at
Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and other
camps in Germany proper. Today, virtually all
recognized scholars dismiss this eyewitness
testimony as false, and agree that there were
no extermination gas chambers in any camp in
Germany proper.
Establishment historians, however, still
claim that extermination gas chambers existed
at Auschwitz and at other camps in Poland.
The eyewitness testimony and the evidence for
this claim is, in reality, qualitatively no differ-
ent than the false testimony and evidence for
the alleged gas chambers at the camps in Ger-
many proper.
During the war crimes trials many "eyewit-
nesses" testified that Germans made soap out
of human fat and lamp shades from human
skin. Allied prosecutors even produced evi-
dence to support those charges. Today, schol-
ars agree that that testimony was false and the
evidence fraudulent.
With regard to confessions by Germans at
the war crimes trials, it is now well documented
that many were obtained through coercion, in-
timidation and even physical torture.
AUSC IWITZ
British historian David Irving, perhaps the
most widely read historian writing in English,
has called the Auschwitz death-camp story a
"sinking ship" and states that there were "no
gas chambers at Auschwitz...."
The Auschwitz State Museum has recently
revised its half-century-old claim that 4 million
humans were murdered there. The Museum
now says maybe it was 1 million. But what
documentary proof does the Museum provide
to document the 1 million figure? None. Revi-
sionists want to know where those 3 million
souls have been the last 45 years. Were they
part of the fabled Six Million?
The Leuchter Report contains the results of
Auschwitz gas chamber rumor.
Those who promote the Holocaust story are
unable to explain why, during the war and
postwar periods, the most prominent and
powerful men of the time failed to mention gas
chambers and the genocide of the Jews. When
asked why this is so, the promoters reply with
the absurd answer that those people did not
realize the enormity of what had happened.
But it is certain that if there had been
"killing factories" in Poland murdering mil-
lions of civilians, then men such as Roosevelt,
Truman, Churchill, Eisenhower and many
others would have known about it and would
have often and unambiguously mentioned it.
They didn't! The promoters admit that only a
tiny group of individuals believed the story at
the time - many of whom worked for Jewish
propaganda agencies. The rise of the Holocaust
story reads more like the success story of a PR
campaign than anything else.
Winston Churchill wrote the six volumes of
his monumental work, The Second World War,
without mentioning a program of mass-murder
and genocide. Maybe it slipped his mind.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his memoir Crusade
in Europe, also failed to mention gas chambers.
Was the weapon used to murder millions of
Jews unworthy of a passing reference? Was our
future president being insensitive to Jews?
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
And
hOLOCAUST REVISIONISM
Many people, when they first hear Holo-
caust Revisionist arguments, find themselves
bewildered. The arguments appear to make
sense, but "How is it possible?" The whole
world believes the I lolocaust story. It's just not
plausible that so great a conspiracy to suppress
the truth could have functioned for half a cen-
tury.
To understand how it could very well have
happened, one needs only to reflect on the intel-
lectual and political orthodoxies of medieval
Europe, or those of Nazi Germany or the Com-
munist-bloc countries. In all of these societies
the great majority of scholars were caught up in
the existing political culture. Committed to a
prevailing ideology and its interpretation of
reality, these scholars and intellectuals felt it
was their right, and even their duty, to protect
every aspect of that ideology. They did so by
oppressing the evil dissidents who expressed
"offensive" or "dangerous" ideas. In every one
of those societies, scholars became Thought
Police.
In our own society, in the debate over the
question of political correctness, there are those
who deliberately attempt to trivialize the is-
sues. They claim that there is no real problem
with freedom of speech on our campuses, and
that all that is involved with PC are a few rules
which would defend minorities from those who
would hurt their feelings. There is, of course, a
deeper and more serious aspect to the problem.
On American campuses today there is a wide
range of ideas and viewpoints that are forbid-
den to be discussed openly. Even obvious facts
and realities, when they are politically unac-
ceptable, are denied and suppressed. One can
learn much about the psychology and method-
ology of Thought Police by watching how they
react when just one of their taboos is broken
and Holocaust Revisionism is given a public
forum.
First they express outrage that such offen-
sive and dangerous ideas were allowed to be ex-
pressed publicly. They avoid answering or de-
bating these ideas, claiming that to do so would
give them a forum and legitimacy. Then they
make vicious personal attacks against the
Revisionist heretic, calling him dirty political
names such as "anti-Semite," "racist" or "neo-
Nazi," and they even suggest that lie is a poten-
tial mass murderer. They publicly accuse the
Revisionist of lying, but they don't allow the
heretic to hear the specific charge or to face his
accusers so that he can answer this slander.
Moreover, the Holocausters accuse Revi-
sionists of being hate filled people who are
promoting a doctrine of hatred. But Revision-
ism is a scholarly process, not a doctrine or an
ideology. If the holocaust promoters really
want to expose hatred, they should take a
second look at their own doctrines, and a long
look at themselves in the mirror. Anyone
on campus who invites a Revisionist to speak is
h imself attacked as being insensitive. When a
Revisionist does speak on campus he is often-
times shouted dowL and threatened. If lie has
books or other printed materials with him they
might be "confiscated." All this goes on while
the majority of faculty and university adminis-
trators sit dunbly by, allowing.political activ-
ists to determine what can be said and what can
be read on their campus.
Finally, the Thought Police try to "straighaten
out" that segment of academia or the media
that allowed the Revisionists a forum in the
first place.
It can be an instructive intellectual exercise
to identify taboo subjects, other than lolocaust
Revisionism, which would evoke comparable
responses from Thought Police on our cam-
puses.
Recently, some administrators in academia
have held that university administrations
should take actions to rid the campus of ideas
which are disruptive to the university. This is
a very dangerous position for administrators to
take. It is an open invitation to tyranny. It
means that any militant group with "troops at
the ready" can rid the campus of ideas it op-
poses and then impose its own orthodoxy. Tllhae
cowardly administrator finds it much easier
and safer to rid the campus of controversial
ideas than to face down a group of scream ing
and snarling militants. But it is the duty of
university administrators to insure that the
university remains a free marketplace of ideas.
When ideas cause disruptions, it is the disrupt-
ers who must be subdued, not the ideas.
CONCLUSION
The influence of Holocaust Revisionism is
growing steadily both here and abroad. In the
United States, Revisionism was launched in
earnest in 1977 with the publication of the book
The hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur .
Butz. Professor Butz teaches electrical engi-
neering and computer sciences at Northwest-
ern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Those who take up the Revisionist cause
represent a wide spectrum of politickl and
philosophical positions. They are certainly not
the scoundrels, liars and demons the IHlolocaust
Lobby tries to make them out to be. The fact is,
there are no demons in the real world. People
are at their worst when they begin to see their
opponents as an embodiment of evil, and then
begin to demonize them. Such people are pre-
paring to do something simply awful to their
opponents. Their logic is that you can do any-
thing you want to a demon.
But whatever the demonizers attempt, they
are going to fail. Growing numbers of Revision-
ist sympathizers and supporters assure us that
the political forces that promote and defend the
Holocaust story as it stands today are going to
have to accept the role that Revisionist scholar-
ship is playing in revising Holocaust history
and freeing it of fraud and falsehood. That's
what scholars do. Scholars must not promote
the censorship of ideas, and they must not
attempt to oppress others who reach conclu-
sions which differ from their own.
CODOHI speakers are available to address
student organizations and other appropriate
groups about the Holocaust controversy. For
information contact:
Bradley I. Smith
Committee for Open Debate
on the holocaust
TeVFax: (209) 733 2653
1PO Box 3267 Visalia CA 93278
Copies of this ad as a leaflet (postpaid):
10 copies for $2.50 copies for $5.
100 or more copies: 8 cents each.
Your contribution to CODOH will be used to
disseminate the good news of holocaust Revi
sionism. Our overhead is minimal. Every dona-
tion is welcome. Contributors of $25.00 or more
will receive a packet of introductory informa-
tion about Revisionist scholarship and an over-
view of the work CD0OI is doing. Anyone who
makes a substantialcontribution will be offered
the opportunity to monitor the specifc use to
which the donation will be put.
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