-->

Thursday, May 1, 2014

HOLOCAUST DENIAL


  • That the Final Solution was in fact not the genocide of the Jewish people, but rather the expulsion of Jews from Germany.
  • That 6,000,000 is a gross exaggeration of the Jewish death count.
  • That the Nuremberg testimonies from Germans were extracted by torture.
  • That the Jews just made everything up to gain the world's sympathy.
  • That the gas chambers used by the Nazis were actually delousing stations.
  • That death counts for other groups (such as Roma or homosexuals) are exaggerated, that they were not included in the Holocaust, or that they were among those who carried it out.
Particularly when it focuses on "how the Jews faked it all," Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism often embraced by bigots who are too cowardly to admit that they wished that Hitler finished the job.

Contents

 [hide] 

[edit] Starting off with a note from Ike

“”[On April 12, 1945] I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never been able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain however, that I have never at any time experienced an equal sense of shock.

 I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda." Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through with the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and the British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, 1948[1]

[edit] Definitions and terminology

The Holocaust was, according to Wikipedia:
“”The genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, throughout Nazi-occupied territory.

[edit] Functionalism and intentionalism versus Holocaust denial

Today, scholars of history are divided between two interpretations of the Holocaust: functionalism versus intentionalism.[wp] Both functionalists and intentionalists agree that the Holocaust occurred, but functionalists disagree with the claim that the Holocaust was Hitler's intention from the beginning, either from the time of Mein Kampf, or his ascension to power, or even the beginning of the war. By contrast, intentionalists see the Holocaust as being primarily Hitler's idea, something he had planned even for years before coming to power. Functionalists see the Holocaust evolving bottom-up rather than being ordered from the top-down. That Hitler did not plan or order the Holocaust does not mean he escapes moral responsibility for it — he created the climate of extreme anti-Semitism that made it possible, created many of the policies which immediately contributed to it, and provided the leadership that considered these measures both permissible and acceptable.
For example, both intentionalists and functionalists agree that Hitler ordered deportation of Jews to Nazi-occupied Poland — but intentionalists believe that "deportation" was from the very beginning a codeword for extermination (see explanation of Nazi euphemisms below), while functionalists see "deportation" at the beginning as being quite literally that — a plan to deport Jews, with little thought as to what would happen to them when they arrived in Poland. Functionalists see the Holocaust as a bureaucratic innovation among low-level Nazi officials in Poland, to solve the problem of what to do with all these incoming Jews, by killing most of them. Functionalists such as Ian Kershaw also point to the highly chaotic nature of the Nazi state, in which individuals vied with one another for power and Hitler's good favour (often the same thing). This process, referred to by historians (after Nazi civil servant Werner Willikins) as "working towards the Fuhrer," aimed at satisfying Hitler's ever-increasing calls for "radicalism" in all matters of policy, naturally led various officials to propose more and more extreme solutions to the "Jewish question" (that there were multiple proposed solutions is evidenced by the term "the Final Solution"). Functionalists still believe that, even if Hitler did not directly start the Holocaust, he became aware of it while it was in progress and in all probability signed off on the proposal - in no way does functionalism absolve Hitler of moral responsibility or downplay the atrocities themselves. Unlike Holocaust denial, functionalism is an academically respectable position in the field of history.

[edit] "Holocaust revisionism" versus Holocaust denial

Many Holocaust deniers describe themselves as "revisionists." Does that mean they are not deniers?
How do we define Holocaust denial?
Modern scholarship defines "The Holocaust" as:
  • The murder of five to seven million Jews - the number
  • with gas chambers, as well as other methods - the method
The Free Dictionary defines "denial" as:
  1. A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request.
  2. A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation; a contradiction.
  3. The act of disowning or disavowing; repudiation.[2]
From this follows:
  • The claim that significantly fewer than five to seven million Jews died is Holocaust denial, even while agreeing with modern scholarship upon the method.
  • The claim that gas chambers were not used for mass executions is Holocaust denial, even while agreeing with modern scholarship upon the number.
Most self-proclaimed "Holocaust revisionists" disagree with established scholarship upon the number and the method. As such, they are clearly Holocaust deniers. The term "Holocaust revisionism" does not carry any meaning separate from Holocaust denial.
However, it is very narrow minded thinking to argue that all who call themselves "revisionists" are denying the Holocaust. There exists within the fringes of revisionism, a group of persons who do not deny any of the established facts; but instead strive for more clarity in the history. These revisionists, alienated by their compatriots, instead argue not whether or not the gassing took place, nor whether the millions were killed; but instead that much of the history has been lost and the holocaust was far worse than the histories currently state. In that sense, they seek to revise the accounts to a more accurate manner.
Chief among these revisionists is Franciszek Piper, manager of the historical department at Auschwitz. Piper's research, now accepted by Jewish historians, revised the reported death toll of Auschwitz from the previous four million killed, to roughly 1.5 million.[3]

[edit] The Holocaust denial movement

Nearly all Holocaust deniers seem to belong, or be affiliated to, any of these four groups:

[edit] Aims and techniques of deniers

This is manifested in some of the aims of Holocaust denial:
  • Making National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again.[5]
  • Questioning the United Nations' decision to claim land for Israel in 1948, or any recognition of the state of Israel.
  • Using the story of a "staged" Holocaust as part of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Holocaust deniers almost never base their agenda on an alternate hypothesis. Finding "their story" can be very difficult. The bulk of their arguments contains many miscellaneous loose statements that question the credibility of the Holocaust. This article aims to provide universal proof, but mainly deals with replying to deniers' objections.

[edit] Famous deniers

Some famous Holocaust deniers described in brief. See each entry for a case study.
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Former President of Iran. Hosted a 2006 conference, the "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust," at which the panel of speakers included among others David Duke and Robert Faurisson. Ahmadinejad is proud of his achievement: “That was a taboo topic that no one in the West allowed to be heard,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech, according to the Iranian Fars news agency. “We put it forward at the global level. That broke the spine of the Western capitalist regime.”
  • Harry Elmer Barnes - Originally, a mainstream writer and historian. After World War II, a marginal crank who brought his marginalization on himself because he insisted that all accusations against Germany and Japan were fabricated wartime propaganda. Revered and frequently name-dropped by today's Holocaust denial movement but their politics are likely far from Barnes' which were more along the lines of "I didn't leave liberalism, liberalism left me."
  • David Brandt Berg ("Moses David") - Founder of the Children of God cult. He peppered many of his group's tracts with anti-Semitic rants and occasional denials of the Holocaust, such as, "You hear all about Hitler & how he was supposed to have killed 6 million Jews!--Well, they've never been able to prove yet that he even killed 60,000!"[6]
  • Arthur Butz - Professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University; author of the 1976 book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry.
  • Willis Carto - Founder of the Institute for Historical Review in 1979, the main Holocaust denial group in the United States. Founder of the Barnes Review, a "historical revisionist" magazine that mostly runs articles questioning the Holocaust but covers it up with other articles on serious historical topics. Previously founded the wingnut Liberty Lobby in 1955.
  • Francis E. Dec[7]- Disbarred lawyer[8] turned pamphleteer known for vehement and often incoherent screeds of a delusional and paranoid nature. In one of his pamphlets, dated Spring 1984, he insisted that during World War 2, the Jews lived in luxury while the concentration camps were run by both the Jews and the Nazis in order to exterminate Polish and Slavic people.[9]
  • David Duke - Neo-Nazi extremist well-known and despised in the United States. Notably came disturbingly close to being elected Governor of Louisiana in 1990.
  • Robert Faurisson - French writer, prosecuted for defamation in 1979 after writing letters to Le Monde claiming there were no gas chambers. Author of a 1991 booklet claiming the Diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.
  • David Irving - A "historian and a neutral observer." A "historian and a neutral observer" who believes that the Jews asked for it.
  • Fred Leuchter - Consultant to the lucrative capital punishment industry in the U.S. and manufacturer of electric chairs. In 1988 he was hired by Ernst Zündel to investigate whether the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps could have been used for mass extermination. Leuchter claims he concluded they could not have been and published The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland. Fred Leuchter has no scientific background to have made such a claim. He was the subject of the 1999 Errol Morris documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr..
  • Texe Marrs - Christian writer and conspiracy theorist. On his website he sells his own recordings entitled The Holocaust Controversy and the Falsification of History, and Holocaust Dogma Unmasked — A Grim Global Conspiracy Mocking Reality and Capitalizing on Death is Outed by Brave Truthtellers. He also peddles Victor Thorn's book The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie, and Brian Alois Clèrauba's book A Greater "Miracle" Than The Lost Ten Tribes Discovered...—The Dead "Six Million" Uncovered...!
  • Eustace Mullins - Anti-Semitic writer and (until his recent demise) contributing editor to Barnes Review.
  • Ahmed Rami - Moroccan-Swedish writer, and founder of Radio Islam. Sentenced by a Swedish court in 1990 to six months in prison for hate speech rising from material including, but not limited to, Holocaust denial. Has co-written a Holocaust denial book, Tabubelagda tankar (Tabooed Thoughts), with Swedish Neo-Nazi leader Björn Björkqvist.
  • George Lincoln Rockwell - US Navy veteran of both WW2 and the Korean war, and one-time commercial illustrator, advertising agent, magazine publisher, and sign painter, later founder of the American Nazi Party (later known as National Socialist White People's Party), which was one of the first US organizations to promote Holocaust revisionism and denial as part of its ideology. (It splintered off into numerous groups after his 1967 murder by a purged party member.) An outspoken white supremacist and anti-Semite, he was quoted in an April 1966 interview in Playboy: "I don't believe for one minute that any 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated by Hitler. It never happened."
  • Germar Rudolf - German student who released a poorly researched report while interning at the Max Planck institute claiming that samples taken from gas chamber walls showed no more cyanide evidence than random farmhouses. He ignored the basic chemistry of cyanide by not discriminating against iron-based cyanide compounds[10]. Study was subsequently falsified, and Rudolf was fired and imprisoned. Rudolf has since gone on to other impressive feats such as denying 9/11.
  • Bradley Smith - A crank who has spent the last 25 years trying to place advertisements in newspapers calling for an "open debate" on whether the Holocaust happened. He seems to crave the controversy that results, and chants the mantra of "free speech" a lot. He is especially fond of trying to place these ads in student newspapers on college campuses, which usually results in free publicity for him and his pet cause whether or not the ads are accepted for publication.
  • David Stein aka David Cole - Leader of Republican Party Animals, a Hollywood-based conservative political group. In 2013, he was exposed as being "David Cole," a Holocaust revisionist who made a splash in the media in the 1990's.[11]
  • Paul Topete - Lead vocalist of the "Patriot" rock band Poker Face. On the band's on-line fourm, Topete, using the handle "Pokerkid", has made a number of anti-Semitic statements, including the following (reproduced verbatim):
“”"I am always amazaed at how many roads lead back to one of the largest if not THEE largest scam ever played on humanity... Yes that right... the HOLOHAUX aka holocaust. 1985 and 1988 Ernst Zundel DESTROYED the Myth known as the cult of holohauzianity. In a canadien court of law, Ernst zundel took on the biggest frauds in the SHOAH Industry, and showed them to be the frauds that they were. Names like Raoul Hilberg and Vrba. And several other parasites known to infest this worldly sham. Wake up people, You are being played for fools for you LACK KNOWLEDGE."[12]
  • Hal Turner - White supremacist, former shortwave and internet talk show host and FBI informant, now convicted felon. Quoting him directly: "Jews love to complain about the 'Holocaust.' Let me tell you, there was no Holocaust in World War 2 -- but rest assured, there most certainly IS GOING TO BE a holocaust. I look forward to participating with zeal."[13]
  • Shaun Patrick Winkler - American White Supremacist and failed Sheriff candidate for Bonner County, Idaho who attempted to build an "Aryan compound" to replace the now defunct Aryan Nations Church.[15] In an interview, he was quoted as saying, "The bad, evil, rotten Jew is behind a lot of things. We look at the media, we look at society in general. We look at even our public school systems. They paint this pretty little portrait for Jews, how they were such victims of the Holocaust or, as I like to refer to it, the ‘Holo-Hoax.’ We … deny that 6 million died."[16]
  • Francis Parker Yockey - An American Hitler admirer who wrote an unreadable post-WWII tome called Imperium under the pen-name "Ulick Varange," a book which you can't make heads or tails of but vaguely has something to do with advocating European unification around a program of "total politics."
  • Ernst Zündel - German-born Canadian writer and neo-Nazi, prolific promoter of Holocaust denial through his website and publishing business, recently prosecuted in Germany and sentenced to five years in prison for violating Germany's law against inciting hatred.

[edit] Laws against Holocaust denial

Denial of crimes against humanity is outlawed in thirteen European countries and Israel. In the Netherlands, courts have ruled that genocide denial is hate speech, and therefore implicitly illegal. While these laws ARE an affront to free speech and a terrifying precedent, deniers who claim that these laws are part of the conspiracy ignore that:
  • These laws are much younger than Holocaust denial itself. Most of them were made in the late 1980s or 1990s, as a counter-measure against the rise of white supremacism in a European generation which had no experience of the war. During most of post-war history - more than 40 years - Holocaust denial has been legal in all countries of the world.
  • Most of these laws outlaw denial of all crimes against humanity, not limited to the ones committed by the Axis of World War II, but also explicitly (as in Poland, Slovakia, or the Czech Republic) or implicitly including crimes by Communist regimes, and other crimes often emphasized by Holocaust deniers. Only in Romania is the law limited to Holocaust denial. The Israeli law is the only one of these laws actually mentioning Jews.
  • Currently, there are 179 countries, and several autonomous territories, without any law or judicial precedent against Holocaust denial. This list includes all of North and South America, Africa, Oceania, Asia (except Israel, if any Holocaust denier would want to go there in the first place) and 37 of the 50 countries in Europe. The laws against Holocaust denial do not even cover the areas affected by the Holocaust; genocide denial is legal in the former Yugoslav states, Greece and several other countries where the Nazis abducted Jews during the war (see the extensive Appendix list).
  • The number of countries banning genocide denial has been largely constant since the 1990s. Spain repealed their law against genocide denial in 2007. Parliaments in United Kingdom and Sweden have rejected proposals for such laws. The European Parliament has also rejected a directive to criminalize genocide denial. Canada's Supreme Court sentenced James Keegstra in R. v. Keegstra in 1990 for hate speech not limited to Holocaust denial, but in R. v. Zundel in 1992 they acquitted Zündel, and declared Holocaust denial to be protected by the Canadian Constitution. The only recent law against genocide denial was made in Hungary in 2010. Previously, trivialization of the Holocaust was illegal. The new law prohibits "denial of genocide committed by Communist or Nazi system," with no special mentioning of the Holocaust or Jews.[17]
  • Deniers may claim that these laws are a product of Jewish influence. In that case, how come that Holocaust denial is legal in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Russia, which have significant Jewish populations, but is illegal in Poland, Romania and Lithuania, where hardly any Jews live today (and how come so few Jews live there)?[18]

[edit] Evidence for the Holocaust

Deniers might use the one single proof gambit to confuse the opponent, and request very specific evidence, such as
  • a written order by Hitler to exterminate the Jews
  • an autopsy record concluding that a Jewish prisoner died from gassing
or some other remnants. However, though the Nazi government tried massively to hide evidence for mass murder by tearing down buildings and burning documents, plenty of the remains have survived.

[edit] Nazi documents, speeches etc.

This is just a sample of the wealth of documentary evidence from the Nazi government itself.
(Caveat: Holocaust deniers reason that, since the Holocaust did not happen, any evidence to the contrary is a forgery created by the Jews as part of their International Jewish Conspiracy™. Indeed a few counterfeit Nazi documents - notably the Hitler Diaries - have been exposed since the war. However, several of the documents mentioned here have been authenticated by forensics, or are accepted as genuine by Holocaust deniers such as David Irving.)

[edit] Hitler (duh)

Hitler quote.gif
In 1922, Hitler told a journalist that:
“”Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.
— Adolf Hitler, 1922. (Josef Hell, "Aufzeichnung," 1922, ZS 640, p. 5, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zs/zs-0640.pdf Translation at Nizkor)
(Caveat #2: While some serious historians see this as evidence that Hitler had planned the Holocaust long before coming to power, other serious historians don't believe that any plan for the Holocaust existed so early, and see Hitler's words as simply an expression of his virulent anti-Semitism rather than a sign that he had any concrete plans at that date.)
In a speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, he made his intentions clear with this quote, which was even used in the 1940 Nazi propaganda film "Der ewige Jude" (The Eternal Jew)
“”...if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe![19][20]
Note that this is one of the best examples of how whacked-out Hitler had become, as he was conflating international capitalism and Soviet Bolshevism as the exact same thing.
Hitler also gave the Obersalzberg Speech[21] in August 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland, and expressed intentions of mass murdering the Polish population.

[edit] Goebbels' diaries

German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' extensive diary notes contains several references to the ongoing mass murder of the Jews. Considering David Irving had access to the entirety of Goebbels's diaries, using them as the basis for a book, he presumably accepts these accounts as true.[22]

[edit] Jäger report

A report written in December 1941 by SS commander Karl Jäger, describing the killing of 137,346 people in the Baltic states.[23] The literal descriptions in this document are unusual to the Nazis, who usually used euphemisms for mass killings (see below).

[edit] Wannsee Conference

A conference on 20 January 1942, documented by the Wannsee Protocol (Protokoll is the German word for "minutes"). As most official Nazi record, the protocol uses euphemisms instead on literal orders to kill all Jews, however Adolf Eichmann provided demographic data estimating Jewish population in Europe to 11 million; consistent with scholarship.
“”Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.
The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival
(see the experience of history.)[24]

[edit] Himmler's 1942 report

On 29 December 1942, Himmler presented Hitler with the "Report to the Führer on fighting against gangs," No. 51.1. This report, which covered the period from August to November, 1942, and which referred only to a part of the occupied Soviet area (southern Russia, Ukraine and the district of Bialystok); included the following numbers concerning persons imprisoned or executed:
1. Bandits
a) Established number of deaths after combat 1,337
b) Prisoners executed immediately 737
c) Prisoners executed after lengthy thorough interrogation 7,828
2. Gang helpers and suspects
a) Arrested 16,553
b) Executed 14,257
c) Jews executed 363,211[25]
This is yet one of the few Nazi records that explicitly mentioned killing of Jews, without euphemisms.

[edit] Heinrich Himmler's speech

In 1943 Himmler spoke openly about the extermination of the Jewish people, as well as the equivocation used to cover it up, during a speech to SS Officers. See Himmler on the execution of Jews for more information.

[edit] Odilo Globocnik's reports

The reports describe Aktion Reinhard, with special mentioning of confiscated immobile and mobile property.[26]

[edit] Korherr report

Written in March, 1943, by Dr. Richard Korherr of the SS. Describes that 2.5 million European Jews have been "evacuated" to "special treatment" (German: Evakuierung, Sonderbehandlung), and estimates that European Jewish population had declined by 1.5 million by emigration, uprisings and harsh living conditions in ghettos and camps, totalling a decline of 4 million European Jews (out of more than 10 million).[27]

The telegram

[edit] Höfle Telegram

Sent on January 11, 1943. Discovered in 2000. Describes Operation Reinhard.

[edit] Other wartime documents

There is an abundance of documents from the concentration camps by guards and leaders describing the details of the death camps and even "death vans".[28]

[edit] "Sonderbehandlung" and other euphemisms

As mentioned before, mass executions were rarely described literally (the Jäger Report being a notable exception). The Nazi documents used euphemisms instead; the most famous one being Sonderbehandlung ("Special treatment"). Revisionists might claim that Sonderbehandlung meant delousing and disinfection, introduced in the Nazi camps in Poland.
However, Sonderbehandlung was an established term for killing, confirmed by police documents from 1939, and reports from Action T4, a program for killing people with disabilities. Adolf Eichmann testified that Sonderbehandlung meant "killing."

[edit] Testimonies

The truth of the Holocaust has been supported by many thousands of testimonies by several groups, including but not limited to (a few references are given to provide a general picture):
  • Concentration camp prisoners (including but not limited to Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and political opponents).[29][30][31]
  • Sonderkommandos (prisoners recruited for corpse disposal).[29]
  • Kapos (prisoners recruited as camp officers).[citation needed]
  • Railroad crews, civil servants, commanders and other off-site soldiers and civilians.[citation needed]
  • Allied soldiers from various countries.[32]
  • Humanitarian expeditions from various countries.
  • Testimonies from German soldiers have been gathered by German historian Sönke Neitzel.[33]

[edit] Guards, officers etc

Many thousands of German officers and guards were stationed at the camps in Poland, and were suspected for carrying out or ordering the Holocaust (Franz Suchomel, Hans Stark). Many were sent to trial, and some of them confessed or testified about mass murder. Holocaust deniers might claim that these testimonies were given out of torture.
Indeed many Nazis were mistreated during the Allied occupation. But several German veterans have testified about mass murder decades after the occupation.[34]
Many lived west of the Iron Curtain (Münch, Suchomel, Stark etc), many east of it, many in exile outside Europe (Josef Mengele).[citation needed] Most of them lived in freedom for many years (Münch, Suchomel, Stark, Mengele, Suchomel etc). Very few are still alive. Why has not one of them testified in favour of the "revisionist" view?[citation needed] Not during the trials, not anonymously in an interview with any of these "revisionist scholars", not for any of the "revisionist" books, websites, or radio broadcasts, not on their deathbeds, not in their posthumously released wills - not at all. Those who were tried at court had the opportunity to cry out anything during trial, and those who were executed had the opportunity to say some last words. How come every one of these thousands of "innocent" guards has remained silent, or falsely confessed themselves guilty, for decades? And how come that deniers cannot produce one single testimony, supporting their idea?

[edit] Prisoners, Sonderkommandos and Kapos

As most prisoners at the eastern camps were killed on arrival, very few of them survived to witness the trials. Prisoners kept alive to do penal work were kept off the gas chambers. Among the prisoners, Sonderkommandos had the best insight.

[edit] Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of several written testimonies from Holocaust victims. Revisionists such as Robert Faurisson have claimed that the text was forged, but the Dutch government has conducted a forensic investigation confirming the book's authenticity.[35]

[edit] Claims to dissenting testimonies

Holocaust deniers have made some really lame efforts to find a "second opinion".
Paul Rassinier (1906-67) - a French journalist, called "the father of Holocaust revisionism." Rassinier participated in the French Resistance, and was therefore imprisoned at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora. He claimed that the Nazi government had no plan for extermination of Jews, and that the death toll was not more than roughly a million.[36]
Richard Baer (1911-63) - the commander of Auschwitz I. After the war, he lived under-cover in Hamburg, until he was seized in 1960 following the arrest of Adolf Eichmann. He refused to testify, and died in detention in 1963. Deniers might claim that the government killed Baer behind locked doors because his refusal to testify against Eichmann.[37] This is of course a hypothesis without support, and does not in any way qualify Baer as a dissenting witness. If Baer had something to tell the world, why didn't he make use of his 15 years as a fugitive?
Red Cross reports: The Red Cross famously visited Theresienstadt in present-day Czech Republic, and reported relatively good conditions among the inmates. After the war, they could show that the Nazis had deceived the observers. [38] Among the false evidence given to the Red Cross was the Nazi-staged propaganda film Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area, also known as The Führer Gives the Jews a City), supposedly showing the humane environment the Jews lived in.[39][40]

[edit] Death toll and census data

As mentioned before, Holocaust deniers claim that the Jewish death toll in the Holocaust is significantly less than the 5.7 million claimed by current scholarship. The exact number claimed varies - the IHR claims 300 000, while David Irving has raised his claim to 4 million, though he may have raised it to avoid a harsh prison sentence when on trial in Austria.[41]
According to censuses, there were about six million more Jews in Europe in early 1942 (as the Holocaust began) than there were at the German surrender in 1945. The Wannsee Protocol from 1942 said that there were 11 million Jews in Europe, of which roughly 6 million were living in German-controlled territories (as the Third Reich was at its peak by 1942).[42] Where did they go?
Revisionists, such as the IHR, have claimed that the Jewish population within the Nazi-occupied area was just four to six million. This contradicts the Wannsee Protocol, as well as other demographics.[43]

[edit] World Almanac gambit

Some deniers, such as the IHR, refer to World Almanac statistics which claim that there was no decline in the global number of Jews during the war. However, the Almanac data for Jews until 1948 were old estimates. The fresh estimate for 1948 shows a decline of 4.4 million. Updated estimates for 1939 show a total decline of 5.3 million.[44]

[edit] Again, where did the Jews go?

Holocaust deniers might agree that millions of Jews disappeared during the war, and suggest many different explanations, except gas chambers. Here are some:
  • Death by Allied attacks
There are some documented cases of allied attacks killing captives in Axis territory, the sinking of the S/S Cap Arcona being a particularly disastrous example. Let us hypothetize that the Allies would have bombed several concentration camps, trying to kill as many Jewish prisoners as possible. How many bombers would it take? Compare the death tolls of the most fatal Allied raids - 50,000 in Hamburg and 25-40,000 in Dresden. Each of these raids took several days, and required about 1,000 bombers. How many planes, and how many runs, would have been needed to cause a demographic effect on the Jewish prisoners? Are there any accounts for the USAAF or the RAF targeting more Nazi camps in Poland than German infrastructure?
  • Extermination by Soviets
Holocaust deniers might claim that Jews in Soviet-occupied territories were killed by Soviets before the German invasion in 1941. Even if that was true, it would not acquit the Nazis from murdering Jews in Germany itself, or German-occupied territories in Western and Southern Europe (France, Benelux, the Balkans etc). This possibility also seems to exclude the outlandish idea of Jewish migration into the Soviet Union during the war (see below). There is also a conflict with the anti-Semitic claim that the Soviet military would have been dominated by Jews.
  • Epidemics, starvation and other "accidents"
Scholars and Holocaust deniers agree that many Jews and other prisoners did die from epidemics (such as typhoid), as well as starvation, suicide, escape attempts, correctional executions and other causes besides mass execution. Holocaust deniers might claim these were the only, or major, causes of death in the Nazi camps in Poland. However, many of these camps had a death rate around 90%, which is unparalleled by other prison camps during the same period (Soviet Gulag, Allied POW camps, etc). How could so many people die without mass executions? And if they did, would not that be an atrocity?
  • Emigration: escape or further deportation
Holocaust deniers might claim that millions of Jews in the Nazi camps in Poland either were "deported to the east" or had survived captivity.[45] In the end, they would have moved to foreign countries, with Palestine (including the areas that would form Israel), the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union mentioned. Some of them might have disguised as non-Jews. Several Jews did indeed escape Axis territory during the war (such as 7,800 Danish Jews who fled to Sweden), but these are not included in scholarship's death toll.
The Korherr report provides statistics on Jewish emigration from Axis territories from 1933 until 1943, differing from "evacuation" (transport to Nazi camps in Poland). As much of this emigration took place before the war, the numbers are insufficient to explain the disappearance of the 11 million Jews mentioned in the 1942 Wannsee Protocol.
Israel had no more than 590,000 inhabitants at its foundation in 1947, including non-Jews (Arabs, Druze etc), Jews who arrived before 1939, and Jewish immigrants from non-Axis territories. The Jewish immigration to the United States around World War II was in a lesser order of magnitude.[46] The United States upheld a harsh immigration policy throughout the war, preventing Jewish refugees from arriving.[47] Soviet censuses are more uncertain, but could hardly hide millions of immigrants. Also, deniers have yet to suggest a Jewish migration path from the Nazi camps in Poland, across the Eastern Front (one of the deadliest fronts in history) into the Soviet Union.
Scholars are aware that a large number of Jews (together with several civilian non-Jews) from the western Soviet Union did migrate eastwards before the German troops invaded the land and started rounding up Jews and opponents. However, this does not help revisionists explain what happened to Jews outside of the Soviet Union.
There is a $4,000 reward for anyone who can provide names of Jews who were transited from death camps in Poland to the Soviet Union.[48]

[edit] Not quite six million Jews

According to current scholarship, around 5,700,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Revisionists may point out that this number is less than six million - either claiming a revisionist success, or criticizing the well-known number of six million killed Jews. However:
  • Six million is a correct approximation of 5.7 million, fully according to mathematical and statistical conventions. Since no exact number is available, the approximation must be at some level.
  • When Roma, non-Jewish Poles and other victims of mass murder are included, still not counting civilian deaths outside the Holocaust scheme, the death toll is well above six million.
  • In many jurisdictions, even six would be considered mass murder (not to say even the lowest death tolls estimated by Holocaust deniers), so what is the issue here exactly?

[edit] Discrepancies in per-camp death toll estimates

Western historians have different estimates for the exact death toll for each individual camp. Deniers might claim that this makes established history self-contradicting, which is untrue given that the commonly cited figures are derived primarily from demographical evidence (specifically pre-war and post-war population comparisons) and not from a sum of all of the individual camps.[49]

[edit] The Auschwitz gambit

Similarly, some Holocaust deniers have claimed that "revisionist" research has corrected the official death toll of Auschwitz from 4 million to 1.1 million. The number of 4 million originated with the first Soviet publications about the Holocaust. It has been used by the Auschwitz museum until the 1980s, in then-communist Poland, which exaggerated enemy atrocities for propaganda purposes. Western scholars have never claimed that 4 million people died at Auschwitz.[50] Compare this with the controversy on the bombing of Dresden.

Either these shoes were from the Holocaust victims or the Nazis were some serious foot fetishists. Take your pick.

[edit] Physical evidence

The preserved camps contain plenty of physical evidence for mass murder: remnants of human bodies (piles of ashes, bones, hair etc), belongings (clothes, prosthetics, bags etc) and equipment (gas chambers etc). Some of this material has undergone forensic examination.

[edit] It's the shoes, stupid!

The Red Army managed to recover 300,000 pairs of shoes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek.[51] 20,000 pairs were predicted to be collected each day, around the rate of gassings at Auschwitz II.[52]

[edit] Revisionist explanation to the deportations

Revisionists do not deny the deportation of Jews from all of Europe, and the detention in camps in Poland (which was semi-annexed by Greater Germany and abolished in name). They have several explanation models to motivate the Nazi deportation of Jews. None of them are bulletproof.

[edit] New homeland

The Nazis used several euphemisms for killing; one was "deportation", according to the Nazi policy to cleanse Germany from Jews. The Nazis indeed had ideas of a Jewish homeland on Madagascar, which was however never under Axis control. However, Auschwitz, Sobibor and other international concentration camps were located in Greater Germany. So - if the Nazis intend to expel the Jews out of Greater Germany, why did they take the effort to ship Jews into Greater Germany from distant occupied countries such as Norway, France and Greece (which were ruled by domestic puppet governments, with no intention of being annexed)?

[edit] Labor

Some revisionists claim that Jews were rounded up for forced labor. This does not explain why small children and elderly people were deported, parted from their families. Since Poles and other Slavic peoples were used for forced labor, abducting more of these people would have been more economic than transporting Jews from distant occupied countries, such as Norway, France and Greece.

[edit] Security

Some revisionists claim that the internment of Jews was motivated since they posed a security risk. However, while most Jews were deported to Poland, Nazis did not deport other resistance fighters. Neither did they deport civilians from resisting nations. In any case, this explanation is no good for the deportation of children and old people.

[edit] Details about the Holocaust


Leftover Zyklon B with cans (note skull and crossbones)
Experienced Holocaust deniers might bring up technical details, such as the chemical properties of Zyklon B, the size of cremation ovens, or soap recipes.
A novice skeptic might be deceived that all these details are true, and that they support the denier's arguments. Look closer and you'll see easily that they don't.
Among the public, there is some confusion about what happened, and what did not happen, during the Holocaust. Even academics argue about some details. Holocaust deniers try to use these spots of uncertainty to disprove the whole event.

[edit] The swimming pool in Auschwitz

Auschwitz I, a detention area within the enormous Auschwitz complex, contained a firefighting water reservoir, later rebuilt into a swimming pool. Revisionists might insinuate that the presence of a swimming pool is a sign of good living conditions for the prisoners. However, the pool, as most other recreational facilities, were restricted to guards, kapos and privileged prisoners. A vast majority of the prisoners arriving at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) never got close to the swimming pool.[53]

[edit] Difference between camps in Germany proper and Poland

Old Germany, within the borders of the Weimar Republic and annexed Austria, contained several detention camps (Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, etc.) set up before the war. Though some gassings and other executions took place there, for correctional and experimental purposes, they were not used for mass murder. Later, the Nazis built extermination camps; "camp" is however a misnomer, as the only residents were the guards, and prisoners were usually killed on arrival. Most extermination camps were built in the territory that used to be Poland; either in Ostgebiete (provinces which had been transferred from Germany to Poland in 1918, and re-annexed into Germany in 1939) or the eastern General Government, in essence a colony run by a German military junta, planned to be annexed and settled by Germany. For the occupation, the Nazis abolished the name Poland. In this article, the camps in present-day Poland are described as "Nazi camps in Poland" to emphasize this difference, and avoid the presupposition that many of these were extermination camps. Some camps were also set up in Czechoslovakia, and conquered parts of the Soviet Union.
It should be noted that none of the best known camps were extermination camps. This is because the well-known camps are the ones that people survived. The name Auschwitz is more known than Birkenau/Auschwitz II; the extermination department of the Auschwitz complex. Also, many parts of the Warsaw Pact (due to their own problems with collaboration and anti-Semitism) tried to erase the history of these extermination camps. However, this does not in any way disprove the existence of real extermination camps, such as Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór.

[edit] A few things once believed about the Holocaust are now known not to be true

The Holocaust gave birth to many rumors about atrocities. Some of these turned out to be true, while others were false. Examples include allegations that the Nazis manufactured soap and lampshades out of their victims' remains on an industrial scale. The fact that these allegations have been disproved is supposed to imply that revisionists have been successful changing the minds of historians, and that the main facts of the Holocaust are also in question. However, it has no relevance to the big picture of the Holocaust.

[edit] Soap manufacturing

Recipes of soap made from human corpses have been found in Holocaust documents, and possibly some experimental production was done. However, according to the Nizkor Project (an Internet project documenting and refuting Holocaust denial),[54] serious historians of the Holocaust never believed the Nazis mass-produced soap from the corpses of Jews, so it was never a case of historians changing their minds to begin with.[55]
In any event soap is manufactured from fats, and the emaciated victims of the Holocaust and the mistreatment of Soviet POWs (other 'candidates' for such treatment due to sheer numbers and frequently murdered) would rarely have had sufficient fats for processing into soap. Nazi Germany had copious sources of fats from livestock butchered for meat.

[edit] Gas chambers

In the eastern camps, gas chambers were the primary murder weapon. As said before, denial of gassing is a cornerstone of Holocaust denial, and deniers have many claims to disprove the use of gas chambers.
  • Lack of Nazi documents on gas chambers (see above)
  • Lack of testimonies about gassing (see above)
  • Lack of forensic examinations supporting the use of gas chambers (see below)
  • Hydrogen cyanide (in the form of Zyklon B) being useless for extermination (see below)
  • Hydrogen cyanide being dangerously explosive (see below)
  • The lack of Prussian Blue on gas chamber walls
  • Gas chambers being difficult to ventilate (see below)
  • Gas chambers not being useful for execution at all (contradicted by use in the United States)

[edit] Forensic examinations on gas chambers, crematoria etc.

Holocaust deniers might claim that there is no forensic proof of gassings. During R v. Zündel in 1985, Raul Hilberg, well-renowned Holocaust scholar, and author of The Destruction of the European Jews, was unable to mention any scientific report proving gassings. Though Hilberg mentioned that there were plenty of Nazi documents describing the Holocaust, this apparent absence of scientific proof has caught some revisionists' attention.[56]
However, since the trial, at least two scientific reports on the gas chambers have been published:
  • Jean-Claude Pressac (1944 - 2003) - a French pharmacist who used to be a Holocaust denier, who in 1979 undertook a forensic examination of the Auschwitz gas chambers. The result? He was shocked by the overwhelming evidence. In 1989 he published a book that confirmed the established view that the gas chambers were functional, killing between 631,000 and 711,000 prisoners.[57]
  • Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory won the UK libel case Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt. The case contained forensic examination for use of gas chambers.
One of the usual such claims involves the reconstructed gas chambers built by the Polish government after the Second World War at Auschwitz as a memorial to the victims. The Nazis destroyed the original gas chambers where mass murders were committed, and the simulated gas chambers at Auschwitz have never had Zyklon-B deployed in them. Holocaust deniers frequently exploit such confusion. At Majdanek, which the Nazis did not successfully destroy, evidence of the use of Zyklon-B appears in the bluing of the concrete. Hydrogen cyanide reacts with iron compounds to form the pigment Prussian blue, a strong and very stable dye.

[edit] The Leuchter Report

Holocaust denialists often point to the Leuchter Report as 'evidence' that the gas chambers were not gas chambers. The Leuchter report found that much less cyanide traces were found in the gas chambers than in the delousing chambers, and concluded that this somehow proves that the gas chambers never contained HCN. This conclusion is based on incorrect assumptions about the concentrations of HCN needed to kill lice and to kill humans. In delousing clothes, concentrations of up to 16,000 ppm are sometimes used, and exposure time can be up to 72 hours; while 300 ppm will kill people in 15 minutes or so. Not only were the concentrations themselves higher, but the length of contact was much greater. Thus, the walls of the delousing facility should have a much greater concentration of detectable cyanide today, which is what the original Leuchter report and the Polish report both confirm. [58] The main problem with Leuchter's original report is a flaw in the major premise: that cyanide traces should be found in the homocidal gas chambers at a comparable rate as found in the delousing chambers. This is completely backwards of reality, and it plays on a misunderstanding that people have about HCN. The average person would believe that it would take as much, if not more, HCN to kill a person than to kill a lice or flea. However, this is not the case. In fact, a much lower concentration of HCN is needed to kill any warmblooded animal as opposed to cold blooded. The institute's team found significant potassium cyanide residue in delousing facility samples, while next to none in alleged "gas chamber" samples. If the gas chambers were used for something other than murder, NO as in ZERO cyanide should have been found there. Not even the smallest trace amount. The fact that Leuchter did find trace amounts of cyanide in the gas chamber walls confirms, contrary to the Leuchter's report's conclusions, that they were, in fact, gas chambers.

[edit] Zyklon B

As deniers point out, Zyklon B was purposed as a delousing agent[59], and much of the Zyklon B sent to the camps was indeed used for delousing. This does still not disprove the fact that it was also used for killing people. The concrete in a gas chamber at the extermination camp at Majdanek that the Nazis did not successfully destroy shows evidence of the use of cyanide through a strong blue coloring of door from a reaction between iron and cyanide fumes.[60]

[edit] Corpse disposal and cremation

Deniers might have objections against the capacity of corpse disposal and cremation. This is, by part, a consequence of miscalculation. Considering Auschwitz-Birkenau, the first crematory ovens were indeed overburdened, and additional ovens were constructed. The officers had to resort to burning corpses in pits.[61]
Another objection deniers have put forth is that the amount of fuel necessary to cremate that many bodies would have been impractical. In 2000, David Irving sued an author in British high court for libel, for calling him a "Hitler partisan" who manipulated the historical record to deny the reality of the Holocaust. At the widely publicized trial, the prosecuting attorney claimed that it would take mountains of coke to burn all the bodies. An expert witness for the defense countered by showing German patents, issued before the war, for a mass crematorium that could be run almost entirely off the body fat of the corpses disposed in it.
One common objection revisionists hold, is due in part to two facets of the crematoria which were found in Auschwitz. The first of these facets is the curious structure of the crematorium smokestack. They will often argue that it is fake, because it is not directly connected to the ovens by any visible means. However, historical data from Topf and Sons (makers of the crematoria) proves that the design used in Auschwitz (and other camps) was one where the exhaust gasses from the retorts were fed down through the floor and outside to a free standing chimney.
The second objection in regards to the ovens themselves, is more arguing semantics. They often note that the designs used in the camps, in particular Auschwitz, were not crematoriums as might be defined by modern standards; but instead were based off of a large scale hospital incinerator design which Topf and Sons created prior to the war for industrial uses. In this, they are marginally correct that the crematoriums are in truth incinerators, but this does not remove from the discussion that the use of either would have the same results. Historians note that it is easier, both in explaining what Germany was doing during the Holocaust, as well as teaching younger people, to simply call the ovens crematoriums; as stating anything else would only confuse people.

[edit] Ash disposal

Deniers ask what happened to the ashes of the cremated corpses; the volume corresponds to a full shoebox for each body. The officers at Auschwitz and other camps had many opportunities to dump it - in rivers, on farm fields (as a good fertilizer, yummy.) and in marshes, so ash disposal was not a problem. Much of it rained from the smokestacks. It was also used to grit icy road and paths around Auschwitz II (Birkenau), recalled Yehuda Bacon at the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial, who had been 14 year old when sent to Auschwitz in December 1943.[62]

[edit] Methods except gassing

According to scholarship, the Axis powers killed more than a million of Jews through methods other than gassing. Many of them died in the Soviet Union and other Eastern territories, at the hands of Einsatzgruppen and other paramilitary forces. These events are less known to the public than the Nazi camps in Poland, and they are still subject to research.[63]
Deniers might point out that many laymen falsely claim that six million Jews were gassed, but that has never been claimed by scholars. Though the Jewish death toll of gas chambers is far below the total six million, it still does not contradict the mass gassings.

[edit] Red herrings in Holocaust denial

See the main article on this topic: Red herrings in Holocaust denial
Holocaust deniers might use red herrings; argument without relevance to the reality of the Holocaust. Here is a brief description of red herrings in Holocaust denial:

[edit] Holocaust compared to other atrocities

The Holocaust is not the largest mass murder in history.[64] Deniers might compare British and American atrocities (bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc) to Nazi atrocities, but the millions of Axis civilian victims are still an order of magnitude more than the civilians killed by the Western allies.
  • Holocaust deniers might claim that the Allied bombing of Dresden killed around 250,000 people, though the death toll was only 20,000-40,000 people.
  • The Allied bombings and detentions were never censored or denied.
  • Revisionists might point out that Allied leaders were never tried or sentenced for war crimes. However, no defendant in Nuremberg was tried or sentenced only for war crimes.
  • Though Japanese-American prison camps were shameful, this is a completely different case from the Holocaust, because prisoners did not suffer mass extermination, starvation, epidemics or forced labor.
  • The IHR compares the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws to the Jim Crow laws or other segregation laws in some states of the USA at the same time. This has no relevance, and the Nazis were much worse. Jews were bereaved of their citizenship, and violation usually led to death sentence.
  • Just as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union invaded neutral countries, used forced labor and murdered civilians. But that does not disprove the Holocaust.
  • Israel's armed forces have killed some tens of thousands of people since 1948. This number is dwarfed by the Holocaust's death toll. The IHR also compares the Nuremberg Laws to present-day laws of Israel. Most of these claims are lies, and they are all irrelevant.
  • Based on the aftermath of these and other atrocities (the Armenian genocide, Rwandan genocide etc) Holocaust deniers might claim that the Holocaust gets too much attention. Holocaust deniers are welcome to commemmorate these other atrocities, and be attentive to deniers.

[edit] Nuremberg trials

Holocaust deniers might claim that the Nuremberg trials were unfair. These claims do not disprove the Holocaust even if they were. The purpose of a trial is to evaluate the defendants' guilt, not to decide whether the crime has happened. They might complain that the judges came from Allied countries, and would therefore be biased. This request is absurd - if a defendant could refuse a judge belonging to an enemy country, no spy or terrorist could ever be brought to justice. Also, judges of the German Reich would of course be biased for them. West German courts (with German judges) have held subsequent trials, such as the Frankfurt trials.

[edit] Claimed bias against Holocaust denial

Holocaust deniers might claim that governments and (Jewish) mass media use the Holocaust as propaganda, and oppress "revisionist" views. First, this is irrelevant. Second, the Holocaust deniers also have had their endorsements. Iran held a conference dedicated to Holocaust denial, and deniers have spread their word in many countries through books, radio and the Internet.

[edit] Semantics

The term "The Holocaust" become popular around the 1970s, but that does not call the facts of the Nazis' deliberate murder of 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, into question.
Some Holocaust deniers use this fact in the reasoning "the Jews were not exterminated, therefore it was not a real genocide." However, the legal definition of genocide does not require the successful implementation of a plan.

[edit] A claimed agenda

A news article in 1919 requested aid to starving European Jews[65] in the wake of World War I and the Spanish flu. By coincidence, it mentioned "six million" European Jews, and used the word "holocaust." Besides the phrases six million and holocaust, the article has nothing in common with the Holocaust known from World War II.
Revisionists might claim that the global Jewish community "declared war" on Germany in 1933, according to a headline in the London Daily Express on March 24, 1933, saying "Judea Declares War on Germany," describing a proposed Jewish boycott of German goods. That was not a literal war.
Some revisionists claim that the Holocaust was made up to "blackmail" Western governments and German corporations for economic compensation. This is irrelevant, and can be proved wrong: Israel does not receive extraordinary aid from other countries. Reparations have been paid to survivors, not for people who were killed.
Deniers might also complain about survivors' profiteering on books and lectures. This is irrelevant, and many high-ranked Nazis earnt royalties from books after the war.

[edit] General conspiracy theory/pseudo-history components

Holocaust deniers might point out that many other people in history have falsely confessed crimes after torture or other pressure (such as witchcraft). However, the Holocaust is backed by technical evidence. Also, not a single one of the thousands of guards and officers has withdrawn their confessions, or provided a dissenting confession.
Holocaust deniers frequently repeat the cliché that victors write history. On a literal plane, this is false. Dönitz, Speer, and other high-ranked Nazis, wrote and published their memoirs. Re-telling the events of the war is a strong tradition in Germany.
Some history books might tell that Jews were deported to concentration camps, without mentioning the gas chambers or the death toll. Some do not use the term "Holocaust." However, a book is nothing more than the words of its author. If a textbook omits the Holocaust, we should go ask the author why. The most probable answer would be "lack of space."

[edit] Questions to ask a Holocaust denier

  • Did the Nazis exterminate Romani, gays and anti-fascists too?
    • If they did, the gas chambers and crematories were functional, despite Holocaust deniers' "proof" that they were useless.
    • If they did not, these groups of people were also part of the conspiracy. How large can a conspiracy become?
  • Very few Holocaust deniers/revisionists possess degrees in history.[66] Why not first pursue an academic career in 20th century history at any university in the Western world (without mentioning "revisionist" views), and then write a paper on the Holocaust? "Revisionists" would claim that such a paper would effectively end the scholar's promotion. But being the first Ph.D. in history to take this position would surely allow for a career as a "revisionist" writer and lecturer, wouldn't it?
  • Documents showing evidence of personal culpability of Nazi leaders and ranking subordinates were discovered in huge numbers after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Such documents included architectural plans for the camps, engineering drafts, test results, accounting ledgers, railroad timetables, payroll records, commendations, orders, deportation lists, and death counts. The victorious Allies could not have forged so many documents so quickly, and Nazis who may have claimed that their signatures on incriminating documents were forgeries they did not claim that the documents themselves were forgeries. If these incriminating documents were generated by the Nazis, then why would they create such evidence that would surely lead to their imprisonment or execution as war criminals?
  • If one can deny the Holocaust, then can one not equally deny other mass murder and enslavement -- including the mass killings of Communists, the decimation of native populations of the Americas, or the Atlantic Slave Trade? If one can deny the Holocaust, one of the best-documented deeds in history, can one not deny practically anything in history and make history itself meaningless?

[edit] Appendices

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes


  1. ↑ Eisenhower, Dwight D. Crusade in Europe. Doubleday, 1948
  2. ↑ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/denial
  3. ↑ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-05-07/news/9202100662_1_death-wall-auschwitz-memorials
  4. ↑ In the "iconoclasts and curmudgeons" category can be found some astonishing examples from either left-wing or libertarian politics: James J. Martin, Paul Rassinier, Harry Elmer Barnes, L.A. Rollins, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Laird Wilcox. Except for Rassinier and Barnes they are better known for other things and only incidentally linked to Holocaust denial, but neo-Nazis and anti-Semites like to use them as cover by promoting their names and work to show that denial spans the political spectrum. It doesn't; these are freak occurrences. This category could also include those like Norman Finkelstein who don't deny the Holocaust but rail against the "Holocaust industry," and Chomsky, who has made a point of defending deniers on free speech grounds.
  5. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/
  6. ↑ Xfamily.org; Berg: The Holocaust hoax
  7. ↑ Dec "fan" page includes copies of his pamphlets and a history of the man
  8. ↑ Copy of Dec's disbarrment in New York State
  9. ↑ No, seriously, he really wrote that.
  10. ↑ http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/not-the-science/
  11. ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/03/david-stein-cole-holocaust-revisionist
  12. ↑ http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/hutaree-militia-was-a-fan-of.html
  13. ↑ http://www.adl.org/main_extremism/turner_own_words.htm
  14. ↑ http://www.dw.de/british-bishop-fined-10000-euros-for-partial-holocaust-denial/a-5474764-1
  15. ↑ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/29/new-aryan-compound-in-idaho-to-be-sold-off-in-january/
  16. ↑ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/winter/aryan-nations-redux
  17. ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-criminalises-holocaust-denial-1907713.html
  18. ↑ There is a reasonable case against making all genocide denial a crime. The Holocaust is well researched and it can easily be argued that deniers are either wilfully ignorant or liars. Other genocides are less well known ie. it is much more difficult for historians to estimate the death toll in the massacres of Native Americans, as Native Americans left no record of births and deaths or of causes of death. What proportion of deaths were intentional killings and what proportions were the results of infectious diseases introduced unintentionally? When denying or trivializing a case of genocide is a criminal offense, people who want to keep within the law become reluctant to discuss it, and this can hinder an impartial analysis.
  19. ↑ http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/jewishquestion.html
  20. ↑ http://youtu.be/yNk_osZWScw
  21. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Obersalzberg_Speech
  22. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/g/goebbels-joseph/goebbels-1948-excerpts-01.html
  23. ↑ English translation
  24. ↑ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/wansee-transcript.html
  25. ↑ http://www.hdot.org/trial/defense/pl1/19
  26. ↑ http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/globocknik.html
  27. ↑ the report in question, translated to English
  28.  
  29. ↑ http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gasvan1.htm
  30. ↑ 29.0 29.1 http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/judgement/07.11
  31. ↑ http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/excerpts/annaw.html
  32. ↑ http://www.zchor.org/tuszdrea.htm
  33. ↑ http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131
  34. ↑ http://www.soenke-neitzel.de/de/aktuell/
  35. ↑ http://nizkor.org/features/qar/qar20.html
  36. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/08/books/an-authenticated-edition-of-anne-frank-s-diary.html
  37. ↑ Other Holocaust deniers may claim that a concentration camp prisoner denying the Holocaust would have special credibility. However, Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora were labor camps in Germany proper, and not used for mass extermination as the Nazi camps in Poland were, so Rassinier was not witness to the exterminations. Given that he was imprisoned far from where the bulk of the killings took place, Rassinier would have less first-hand information about what happened to the Jews than people who lived in freedom in German-controlled territory.
  38. ↑ http://www.cwporter.com/b1.htm
  39. ↑ http://www.scrapbookpages.com/czechrepublic/theresienstadt/theresienstadtghetto/history/redcrossvisit.html
  40. ↑ Wikipedia: Theresienstadt (film)
  41. ↑ A surviving fragment of the film can be seen on YouTube: http://youtu.be/PYvuJ4xhftI
  42. ↑ http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/essays&editorials/0809e5.html
  43. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/places/germany/wannsee/wannsee-english.html
  44. ↑ http://nizkor.org/features/qar/qar15.html
  45. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/denial-of-science/worldalmanac.html
  46. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar17.html
  47. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar16.html
  48. ↑ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX90.html
  49. ↑ http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.se/2011/07/challenge-to-supporters-of-revisionist.html
  50. ↑ http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/faq.asp
  51. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/denial-of-science/four-million-01.html
  52. ↑ http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/resource/pdf/artif6photo.pdf
  53. ↑ http://remember.org/jacobs/ShoeHeap.html
  54. ↑ http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/van/1
  55. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/
  56. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/soap-01.html
  57. ↑ http://winstonsmithministryoftruth.blogspot.com/2011/09/no-scientific-proof-jews-exterminated.html?zx=f29ade4f69d5e8f9
  58. ↑ http://www.phdn.org/negation/pressac-leuchter.html
  59. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/leuchter-faq-04.html
  60. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar28.html
  61. ↑ File:http://www.majdanek.eu/articles.php?aid=679&mref=65
  62. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar44.html
  63. ↑ Testimony of Yehuda Bacon (Bakon). Trial of Adolf Eichmann trial. 7 June 1961. Session 68. Nizkor.
  64. ↑ http://www.holocaustbybullets.com/en/roadmap/
  65. ↑ So let's ignore millions of people dying! Yay!
  66. ↑ http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/appendix-4-01.html
  67. ↑ Several of them are academics in other fields, but not in history.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)