Observers of the debate about the Holocaust may come away with some grotesque
misimpressions about Holocaust Revisionism from the postings that appear
on the Internet, pro and con. Here is what Holocaust Revisionism is and
is not:
1 - Revisionists object to the terminology "THE Holocaust," which
by implication suggests it was unique, monumental, over-arching, perhaps
even the central historical event of our century if not epoch. In fact
there have been many holocausts over the centuries, a good portion of them
in our own Twentieth century. The Jewish Holocaust is merely one of them.
From the point of view of the world as a whole it is far from the greatest
or most terrible, Hollywood to the contrary notwithstanding. A marked improvement
in both accuracy and objectivity can be achieved if the term "Jewish
Holocaust" is substituted for the term "THE Holocaust."
2 - Having stated the previous, it is therefore obvious that Revisionists
do not "deny" the Jewish Holocaust as their critics claim. (Though
of course it is understandable why those critics assert this; if, in a
debate about the shape of the earth, you can successfully pin on someone
the label "flat-earther," you've scored big points even if what
they say is very far from the absurdity of such a posture.) Revisionists
are, in fact, Holocaust DIMINISHERS, not deniers. They are questioners
about what they believe are significant exaggerations in the Holocaust
tale, and they are critics of the view that somehow this historical event
is beyond discussion on pain of being placed in the category of child-molester
or worse, shunned by society, even fined and imprisoned by some so-called
free countries in the western world.
3 - Revisionists do not deny that there was much Jewish suffering during
WW II, that there were many Jews who had property confiscated wrongfully,
that many Jews died of disease or starvation in terrible conditions or
were killed, that there were terrible brutalities and atrocities committed
against Jews by Germans and others. None of this do Revisionists deny.
Revisionists do diminish the impact of these facts by pointing out that
WWII was the bloodiest, deadliest, most atrocity-ridden conflict in the
history of man and that there was criminal behavior on all sides. One need
merely mention Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the deadly carpet bombing
of German and Japanese working class living areas, the Soviet rape of Germany
in their 1945 advance, the treatment of German civilians and German POW's
after the war. One could go on almost ad infinitum in this recitation of
atrocities. Fifty million - some say sixty million - died as a result of
the war. Was there more criminal behavior on one side than the other? Perhaps.
Perhaps not. Many revisionists would probably tend to say no, because:
4 - Contrary to Holocaust Mythology there was no attempt by Nazis, or anyone
else, to exterminate the Jews. There was an attempt, largely successful
in the areas controlled by the Axis, to expel the Jews from Europe. In
the context of the 1990's it was a terrible undertaking. In a different
context, the context of European history over the last two millennia, the
expulsion of the Jews from this region or that region was not uncommon.
Historically there seems to be something about the Jews that brings forth
a plenitude of animosity on the part of people amongst whom they live.
5 - What is the basis for Revisionists asserting there was no attempted
genocide of the Jews? The linch-pin in this argument is simply that there
were no gas chambers. None. Zero. Nada. There is NO evidence of gas chambers
that an objective person can find credible. There is growing credible evidence
that what purport to be the remains of gas chambers at Auschwitz, and elsewhere,
are frauds - less believable than Potemkin villages. There are NO documents,
NO orders, NO planning, NO blueprints, NO photographs, NO autopsies - NOTHING
that is definitively or even reasonably credible to support gas chambers.
It is not believable that an enterprise as massive as the extermination
through gassing of six million people in two or three years in a chaotic
environment would not leave behind some physical evidence, some documentary
remains. And yet there isn't any. As Professor Arno Mayer, the Princeton
historian (who is Jewish), has said, "Sources for the study of the
gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." He wouldn't make such
an admission if any credible evidence existed. And he was writing in the
late 1980's.
6 - What does exist - as Revisionists are as aware as anyone - are, by
the tens or even hundreds of thousands, testimonies and confessions. Many,
if not most, of the testimonies are preposterous, preternatural, not in
keeping with the laws of the physical world. The confessions (were) typically
made by persons seeking desperately to curry favor with their captors or
their jailers, to save their lives and the lives of their families in the
prostrate world of utterly defeated Nazi Germany. Most are "coerced"
confessions, as in "sign this or we'll pull some more of your fingernails
out. Or we'll turn your wife and children over to the Russians."
7. Also existing are testimonies of survivors of the concentration camps,
of camp personnel, of nearby civilians who had some connection or other
with the camps, testimonies which completely contradict the notion that
massive extermination programs were ongoing. All of these testimonies are
of course discounted and denigrated because they do not further Holocaustery.
And then there are the aerial photographs made during the war by allied
fly-overs of Auschwitz and other camps which lend no support whatever to
the Holocaust story.
8 - Why would so many people lie? is the question invariably put to Revisionists.
Some lie because it is quite profitable. There is no business like Shoah
Business, said one Jewish observer some years ago in a candid moment. Others
lie because it is helpful to Israel, or for any of thousands of other perfectly
understandable reasons. Lying, or mythologizing, is a common human trait
according to Joseph Campbell. Many others among the testifiers are not
lying. They believe sincerely in what they proclaim about the gas chambers,
about having seen them, about having seen the victims, about having seen
the smoke rise from the stacks, etc. etc. They are "honest and true
believers" (as Elizabeth Loftus would put it) in the myth because
it is important to them and to the Jewish people that the myth survive.
The Holocaust has become the unifying myth of modern Jewry, as we all know.
Even Jews who believe in the Holocaust will admit this if they are honest.
Some people believe in Jesus, some in Mohammed, some in the efficacy of
crystals, some in the Jewish Holocaust Myth. Revisionists for the most
part are non-believers in mythology.
9 - There were no gas chambers but there were many Jews who died or were
killed. They were executed by the thousands for opposing German advances
toward the east, for partisan activities connected with that opposition,
for numerous other reasons. Jews by the tens of thousands died in the concentration
camps of deadly epidemics of disease, they died in the latter stages of
the war of starvation when Germany was collapsing. (Professor Mayer, a
rare historian, has admitted many more Jews died this way than were executed.)
How many died during the war? A lot. Most Revisionists would probably say
half a million, perhaps as many as a million. But not six million. Too
many survived the war for that number to be anything but part of the Jewish
Holocaust Myth. If a million did die it was but two per cent of the total
slaughter of World War II. That's the reality of the Jewish Holocaust.
Two per cent. 98% of the blood bath of World War II involved other than
Jews. Why, Revisionists ask, is almost the sole concentration today on
Jewish deaths? Why has the Jewish Holocaust become "the" event
of the 1930'S and 1940's around which all others revolve including even
World War II itself?
10 - The truth about what Revisionists claim, in summary, is this:
1) The Jewish Holocaust is but one of many Holocausts even in the twentieth century;
2) There were no gas chambers and no attempt by the Germans to exterminate Jewry, expulsion being very different from extermination;
3) The common figure of six million is too large by 500% at least;
4) World War II was a slaughterhouse of unprecedented proportions for everyone involved - not just Jews, who made up perhaps 2% of the total fatalities.
In 50 or 100 years, when the Holocaust Myth has met its proper demise,
what Revisionists believe today will be standard historical canon from
which only cranks and religious zealots will dissent.