During the past decade, though, more and more "revisionist"
historians, including respected scholars such as Dr. Arthur Butz of Northwestern
University, Prof. Robert Faurisson of the University of Lyon in France
and best-selling British historian David Irving, have been challenging
the widely-accepted extermination story.
They do not dispute the fact that large numbers of Jews were deported to
concentration camps and ghettos, or that many Jews died or were killed
during the Second World War. Revisionist scholars have, however, presented
considerable evidence to show that there was no German program to exterminate
Europe's Jews, that numerous claims of mass killings in "gas chambers"
are false, and that the estimate of six million Jewish wartime dead is
an irresponsible exaggeration.
Revisionists point out that the Holocaust story has changed quite a
lot over the years. Many extermination claims that were once widely accepted
have been quietly dropped in recent years.
At one time it was alleged that the Germans gassed Jews at Dachau, Buchenwald
and other concentration camps in Germany proper. That part of the extermination
story proved so untenable that it was abandoned more than 20 years ago.
No serious historian now supports the once supposedly proven story of "extermination
camps" in the territory of the old German Reich. Even famed "Nazi
hunter" Simon Wiesenthal has acknowledged that "there were no
extermination camps on German soil." (note 1)
Prominent Holocaust historians now claim that masses of Jews were gassed
at just six camps in what is now Poland: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka,
Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzec. However, the "evidence" presented
for "gassings" at these six camps is not qualitatively different
than the "evidence" for alleged "gassings" at the camps
in Germany proper.
At the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946 and during the decades following
the end of the Second World War, Auschwitz (especially Auschwitz-Birkenau)
and Majdanek (Lublin) were generally regarded as the most important "death
camps." For example, the Allies alleged at Nuremberg that the Germans
killed four million at Auschwitz and another 1.5 million at Majdanek. Today,
no reputable historian accepts these fantastic figures.
In addition, more and more striking evidence has been presented in recent
years that simply cannot be reconciled with the allegations of mass exterminations
at these camps. For example, detailed aerial reconnaissance photographs
taken of Auschwitz-Birkenau on several random days in 1944 (during the
height of the alleged extermination period there) were made public by the
CIA in 1979. They show no trace of the piles of corpses, smoking chimneys
and masses of Jews awaiting death, all of which have been alleged and would
have been clearly visible if Auschwitz had indeed been an extermination
center.
We now also know that the postwar "confession" of Auschwitz commandant
Rudolf Hoess, which is a crucial part of the Holocaust extermination story,
is a false statement that was obtained by torture. (note 2)
At one time it was also seriously claimed that the Germans exterminated
Jews with electricity and steam, and that they manufactured soap from Jewish
corpses. For example, at Nuremberg the United States charged that the Germans
killed Jews at Treblinka, not in gas chambers, as is now claimed, but by
steaming them to death in "steam chambers." (note 3)
Such bizarre stories have also been quietly abandoned in recent years.
The Holocaust extermination story is superficially plausible. Everyone
has seen the horrific photos of dead and dying inmates taken at Bergen-Belsen,
Nordhausen and other concentration camps when they were liberated by British
and American forces in the final weeks of the war in Europe. These unfortunate
people were victims, not of an extermination program, but of disease and
malnutrition brought on by the complete collapse of Germany in the final
months of the war. Indeed, if there had been an extermination program,
the Jews found by Allied forces at the end of the war would have long since
been killed.
In the face of the advancing Soviet forces, large numbers of Jews were
evacuated during the final months of the war from eastern camps and ghettos
to the remaining camps in western Germany. These camps quickly became terribly
overcrowded, which severely hampered efforts to prevent the spread of epidemics.
Furthermore, the breakdown of the German transportation system made it
impossible to supply adequate food and medicine to the camps.
At the end of the Second World War, the Allies confiscated a tremendous
quantity of German documents dealing with Germany's wartime Jewish policy,
which was sometimes officially referred to as the "final solution."
But not a single German document has ever been found which even refers
to an extermination program. To the contrary, the documents clearly show
that the German "final solution" policy was one of emigration
and deportation, not extermination.
Consider, for example, the confidential German Foreign Office memorandum
of August 21, 1942. (note 4) "The present war gives Germany the opportunity
and also the duty of solving the Jewish problem in Europe," the memorandum
notes. The policy "to promote the evacuation of the Jews [from Europe]
in closest cooperation with the agencies of the Reichsfuehrer SS [Himmler]
is still in force." The memo noted that "the number of Jews deported
in this way to the East did not suffice to cover the labor needs."
The document quotes German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop as saying that
"at the end of this war, all Jews would have to leave Europe. This
was an unalterable decision of the Fuehrer [Hitler] and also the only way
to master this problem, as only a global and comprehensive solution could
be applied and individual measures would not help very much."
The memorandum concludes by stating that the "deportations [of Jews
to the East] are a further step on the way of the total solution ... The
deportation to the [Polish] General Government is a temporary measure.
The Jews will be moved on further to the occupied [Soviet] eastern territories
as soon as the technical conditions for it are given."
This unambiguous document, and others like it, are routinely suppressed
or ignored by those who uphold the Holocaust extermination story.
Holocaust historians rely heavily on so-called "survivor testimony" to support the extermination story. But such "evidence" is notoriously unreliable. As one Jewish historian has pointed out, "most of the memoirs and reports [of "Holocaust survivors"] are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." (note 5)
There is no documentary evidence that Adolf Hitler ever gave an order
to exterminate the Jews, or that he knew of any extermination program.
Instead, the record shows that the German leader wanted the Jews to leave
Europe, by emigration if possible and by deportation if necessary.
A document found after the war in the files of the Reich Ministry of Justice
records his thinking on the Jews. In the spring of 1942, State Secretary
Schlegelberger noted in a memorandum that Hitler's Chief of Chancellery,
Dr. Hans Lammers, had informed him: "The Führer has repeatedly
declared to him [Lammers] that he wants to see the solution of the Jewish
problem postponed until after the war is over." (note 6)
And on July 24, 1942, Hitler emphasized his determination to remove all
Jews from Europe after the war: "The Jews are interested in Europe
for economic reasons, but Europe must reject them, if only out of self-interest,
because the Jews are racially tougher. After this war is over, I will rigorously
hold to the view ... that the Jews will have to leave and emigrate to Madagascar
or some other Jewish national state." (note 7)
Jews were an important part of Germany's wartime labor force, and it
was in Germany's interest to keep them alive.
The head of the SS camp administration office sent a directive dated Dec.
28, 1942, to every concentration camp, including Auschwitz. It sharply
criticized the high death rate of inmates due to disease, and ordered that
"camp physicians must use all means at their disposal to significantly
reduce the death rate in the various camps." Furthermore, it ordered:
"The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the past the nutrition
of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration, submit improvement
recommendations to the camp commandants ... The camp doctors are to see
to it that the working conditions at the various labor places are improved
as much as possible."
Finally, the directive stressed that "The Reichsführer SS [Himmler]
has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced." (note
8)
The head of the SS department that supervised the concentration camps,
Richard Gluecks, sent a circular letter to each camp commandant dated January
20, 1943. In it he ordered: "As I have already pointed out, every
means must be used to lower the death rate in the camp." (note 9)
There is no real evidence for the incessantly repeated claim that the
Germans exterminated six million Jews. It is clear, though, that millions
of Jews "survived" German rule during the Second World War, including
many who were interned in Auschwitz and other so-called "extermination
camps." This fact alone should raise serious doubts about the extermination
story.
A leading newspaper of neutral Switzerland, the daily Baseler Nachrichten,
carefully estimated in June 1946 that no more than 1.5 million European
Jews could have perished under German rule during the war. (note 10)
Even after more than 40 years, the stream of Holocaust films and books
shows no sign of diminishing.
This relentless media campaign, which Jewish historian Alfred Lilienthal
calls "Holocaustomania," portrays the fate of the Jews during
the Second World War as the central event of history. There is no end to
the heavy-handed motion pictures, the simplistic television specials, the
vindictive hunt for "Nazi war criminals," the one-sided "educational
courses," and the self-righteous appearances by politicians and celebrities
at Holocaust "memorial services."
Britain's chief rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, has accurately described the
Holocaust campaign as "an entire industry, with handsome profits for
writers, researchers, film-makers, monument builders, muse-um planners
and even politicians." He added that some rabbis and theologians are
"partners in this big business." (note 11)
Non-Jewish victims just don't merit the same concern. For example, there
are no American memorials, "study centers," or annual observances
for Stalin's victims, who vastly outnumber Hitler's.
The perpetual Holocaust media blitz is routinely used to justify enormous
American support for Israel and to excuse otherwise inexcusable Israeli
policies, even when they conflict with American interests.
The sophisticated and well-financed Holocaust media campaign is crucially
important to the interests of Israel, which owes its existence to massive
annual subsidies from American taxpayers. As Prof. W.D. Rubinstein of Australia
has candidly acknowledged: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a
`Zionist myth,' the strongest of all weapons in Israel's propaganda armory
collapses." (note 12)
Jewish history teacher Paula Hyman of Columbia University has observed:
"With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political
criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally
beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves.
The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often
takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters
of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy." (note 13)
One major reason that the Holocaust story has proven so durable is that
the governments of the major powers also have a vested interest in maintaining
it. The victorious powers of the Second World War -- the United States,
Soviet Russia and Britain -- have a stake in portraying the defeated Hitler
regime as negatively as possible. The more evil and satanic the Hitler
regime appears, the more noble and justified seems the Allied cause.
For many Jews, the Holocaust has become both a flourishing business and
a kind of new religion, as noted Jewish author and newspaper publisher
Jacobo Timerman points out in his book, The Longest War. He reports
that many Israelis, using the word Shoah, which is Hebrew for Holocaust,
joke that "There's no business like Shoah business." (note 14)
The Holocaust media campaign portrays Jews as totally innocent victims,
and non-Jews as morally retarded and unreliable beings who can easily turn
into murderous Nazis under the right circumstances. This self-serving but
distorted portrayal is meant to strengthen Jewish group solidarity and
self-awareness.
A key lesson of the Holocaust story for Jews is that non-Jews are never
completely trustworthy. If a people as cultured and as educated as the
Germans could turn against the Jews, so the thinking goes, than surely
no non-Jewish nation can ever be completely trusted. The Holocaust message
is thus one of contempt for humanity.
The Holocaust story is sometimes used to promote hatred and hostility,
particularly against the German people as a whole, eastern Europeans and
the leadership of the Roman Catholic church.
The well-known Jewish writer, Elie Wiesel, is a former Auschwitz inmate
who served as chairman of the official U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
He received the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. This dedicated Zionist wrote in
his book, Legends of Our Time: "Every Jew, somewhere in his
being, should set apart a zone of hate -- healthy, virile hate -- for what
the German personifies and for what persists in the German." (note
15)
As even defenders of the orthodox extermination story concede, skepticism
about the Holocaust story has grown dramatically in recent years.
Responding to this trend, officials in some countries -- including France
and Israel -- have made it a crime to challenge the Holocaust story. Revisionists
in France and Germany have been heavily fined for their views. Teachers
in the United States and elsewhere have been summarily dismissed from their
positions for daring to doubt the Holocaust story. Criminal thugs have
brutally attacked prominent Holocaust revisionists; one was even killed
for his views.
In spite of desperate restrictions on free speech, frantic media attacks
against those who "deny the Holocaust," a seemingly perpetual
Holocaust media campaign, and even physical attacks, considerable headway
is being made. More and more thoughtful people in the United States and
around the world are willing to express doubts about at least some of the
more sensational Holocaust claims.
The Holocaust extermination story is breaking down as suppressed evidence
becomes better known, and as more people become aware of the facts about
what is certainly the most hyped and politicized chapter of modern history.
Artificially maintaining the hatreds and passions of the past prevents
genuine reconciliation and lasting peace.
Revisionism promotes historical awareness and international understanding.
That's why the work of the Institute for Historical Review is so important
and deserves your support.