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.
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- 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.