Page 10-The Michigan Daily- Thursday, October 24, 1991 ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT 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. 1091 0-1 OI 4 #I 0 01 M I 01 i