Denying the Holocaust
Page 36
I do not intend to enter the debate between the intentionalists and the functionalists. Both groups essentially agree that the war and especially the invasion of the Soviet Union made the annihilation process possible—irrespective of when and how the idea originated. Until 1939 the Nazis tried to get rid of the Jews by pressuring them into emigration. After that time they forcibly extruded them. For an excellent summary of this entire debate see Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History, (New York, 1989 [pbk.]), pp. 34–48.
3* Buber’s book contains a variety of historical flaws. I use her work not as a historical source but as an example of how deniers regularly falsify authors’ conclusions.
4* The American publication The Myth of the Six Million made the same claim about the ICRC report (p. 101).
5* Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (London, 1974).
Chapter Seven
1* The St. Louis was the German ship that was turned away from Cuba in May 1939 because the Cuban government had invalidated the landing certificates of the refugees on board. When the ship tried to land in Miami government officials denied permission.
2* In 1916 the Germans began to lose World War I. The National Socialists attributed this loss to a “stab in the back” administered by the Jews.
3* The most significant was its unprecedented nature.
Chapter Eight
1* In the spring of 1981 he left the IHR because of differences with the organization’s controlling power, Willis Carto. He spent most of the rest of his life until his death in 1991 engaged in a bitter and vitriolic fight with Carto and the IHR.
2* Various Jewish organizations with which Mermelstein consulted, including the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, suggested that he ignore the IHR’s challenge because participating would only give the deniers the attention they craved. He decided to proceed nonetheless.
3* In 1990 Mermelstein’s story was made into a television movie starring Leonard Nimoy.
4* Among the mailings distributed by his so-called Jewish Information Society is a grossly distorted sexually explicit cartoon depicting male and female elderly Jew. Both have large hooked noses. The woman, whose breasts droop down to her knees, has stubble on her chin and is smoking a cigarette. The man’s penis, which is erect, is supported by a splint, and his scrotum droops to his knees. The caption reads, “In spite of his feeble condition, Dr. Mengele was able to rejuvenate him and he is now proudly showing off his fine restoration to his beautiful, most anticipating, and sensuous looking sweetheart.”
5* In 1979 Carto turned control of the American Mercury over to Ned Touchstone, who had been on the Board of Policy of the Liberty Lobby at the same time as he served as editor of the journal published by the White Citizens Councils.
Chapter Nine
1* In bringing charges against Zundel the Canadian government joined what had begun as a private complaint. Sabrina Citron, a survivor of the Holocaust and a citizen of Canada, initiated the action against Zundel. Most Canadian Jewish organizations did not support her decision.
2* The jury found him guilty of spreading false information about the Holocaust but acquitted him on charges connected with “The West, War, and Islam.”
3* The London edition was entitled Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report—The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz. It contained a foreword by Irving.
4* Zundel was found guilty a second time and sentenced to nine months in jail. In 1992 the law under which Zundel had been charged was declared unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court.
5* They showed him documentation regarding the design and fabrication of sophisticated ventilation systems that had been installed in the gas chambers. What purpose, they asked, would such a system have served in a morgue or crematorium?
6* He did the same thing with Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father (see Appendix).
7* In the segment Leuchter took the film crew on a tour of the North Carolina chamber. The impression given viewers was that he had worked on this facility when, in fact, he had not. Prime Time Live (ABC-TV), May 10, 1990.
8* The Russian archives granted Irving permission to copy two microfiche plates, each of which held about forty-five pages of the diaries. Irving immediately violated his agreement, took many plates, transported them abroad, and had them copied without archival permission. There is serious concern in archival circles that he may have significantly damaged the plates when he did so, rendering them of limited use to subsequent researchers.
Irving believes Jews are “very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time.” He “foresees [a] new wave of antisemitism” due to Jews’ exploitation of the Holocaust “myth.” C. C. Aronsfeld, “Holocaust ‘Revisionists’ Are Busy in Britain,” Midstream, Jan. 1993, p. 29.
Chapter Ten
1* Among the papers that accepted it, either as an ad or an op-ed column, were the University of Arizona, Cornell, Duke, the University of Georgia, Howard, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Louisiana State, the University of Michigan, the University of Montana, Northwestern, Ohio State, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Washington University, and the University of Washington.
Among those colleges rejecting the ad were Berkeley, Brown, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, the University of Minnesota, the University of North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue, Rice, the University of Southern California, the University of Tennessee, the University of Texas (Austin), UCLA, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and Yale.
2* The memorial stone at Auschwitz lists the number of victims of the camp as 4 million. Research now indicates that the number of people who died in the Auschwitz/Birkenau gas chambers was between 1.5 and 2 million, of whom 85 to 90 percent were Jews.
3* The papers discussed in this chapter function as private newspapers. The courts have broadly defined their editorial discretion to accept or reject ads. In situations of “state action,” where a state university administration controls the newspaper’s content, the courts may prohibit content-based rejection of the ads. Discretion of Student Editors to Accept or Reject Holocaust Revisionist Advertisements (ADL Legal Affairs Dept., Feb. 1992).
4* In 1931, in Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court struck down a state attempt to gag a paper’s freedom to publish “malicious, scandalous or defamatory” material. Fred W. Friendly, Minnesota Rag (New York, 1981).
5* The Tufts Daily was the only paper that decided to run portions of the ad. Its editors voiced the opinion that it was necessary to run the ad so that readers could “fully comprehend” the deniers’ arguments and then make “informed judgments” and engage in “active dialogue” about “complex issues.” They reached that conclusion despite their conviction that Smith’s views had little if any “legitimacy” and were filled with “hateful sentiments and ideas that defile the memories” of the millions killed in World War II. To have rejected it would have “unilaterally censored” the campus community from the issue. Tufts joined other campuses in falling prey to the light-of-day argument: In search of a principled stand, they gave Smith exactly the exposure he sought.
6* At the meeting one of the editors of the paper, an African American, stood up and said that while he could not personally know what it felt like to lose so many of one’s coreligionists in the Holocaust, he “knew” the pain of slavery. He would fight anyone’s attempt to deny that. Consequently he felt obligated to fight this attempt at denial.
He also turned to Murphy and said that he understood that one of Murphy’s objections was that it was infantilizing to prevent the students from deciding on the contents of the ad themselves. He wondered if it was not equally infantilizing to tell an entire editorial board to publish something whose publication it uniformly opposed.
7* The deniers have cited these contentions, which have been subjected to serious historical and methodological critiques, to support their claims that wha
tever atrocities the Nazis committed, those committed by the Allies were worse.
8* The full text of the resolution read “As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the downfall of the Nazi regime in 1995, the American Historical Association calls attention to the need to initiate plans now to encourage study of the significance of the Holocaust. To that end the association will make available the names of experts on the history of the event.” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 1992.
Chapter Eleven
1* Countries such as the United States, where the degree of ignorance about historical matters is legendary, are particularly susceptible to this kind of rewriting of history. In 1990 only 45 percent of Alabama high school seniors knew that the Holocaust was the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. It is telling that many of those who gave the wrong answer thought that the United States had committed the Holocaust against the Japanese with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Birmingham, Alabama, News, Aug. 12, 1990).
2* The same kind of rehabilitation is evident in France among the highest reaches of the political and judicial establishment. President François Mitterrand recently had a wreath placed on the grave of the Vichy leader, Marshal Philippe Pétain, who collaborated with Nazi Germany and was directly responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews. Pétain, who in World War I was commander in chief of the French forces, was convicted of treason by a French court in 1945. Mitterrand insisted in a radio interview that present-day France should not be held responsible for the crimes of the Vichy regime. While the contemporary French government does not bear “guilt” for Vichy’s actions, honoring one of the perpetrators with a presidential wreath sends a revisionist message to the population at large. It revises the historical perception of France’s role in the Holocaust. It can, and already has, become part of a historical whitewash.
Another form of French historical revisionism has been the refusal of French courts to try Vichy war criminals for their actions. The courts have thrown out these indictments, though the Supreme Court recently reinstated one of them. Thus far no citizen of France has been tried for crimes against humanity (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 23, Dec. 2, 1992).
3* This tactic was evident in the 1992 attempt of the Cincinnati Ku Klux Klan to erect a cross on city property during the Christmas season. They claimed it was part of their campaign to remind Cincinnatians of the religious significance of the holiday. It was a way for the Klan to present itself as more than just a racist organization.
4* It will prove particularly true for those beset by what my colleague David Blumenthal has termed “alterphobia”—the fear of the other. The other may be homosexuals, women, foreigners, Jews, people of color, or all of the above.
5* Having written this book in the shadow of the “industry” that produces these shows, I recognize that of all my calls for action, this one has the least possibility of realization.
6* Charges may again be brought against Zundel on the basis of his having incited hatred against Jews.
Appendix
1* Because the dimensions of the “doors” were thirty by forty centimeters, Pressac hypothesizes that they were probably shutters rather than doors.
2* The traditional notation of who had actually done the drawing and who had signed off on it is chilling in both its ordinariness and extraordinariness. The drawing was completed by prisoner 63003 (whose name remains unknown) on March 23, 1944. We know that it was reviewed by a civilian worker named Techmann and approved the next day by SS Lieutenant Werner Jothan.
3* The Secret Annex was the name Anne gave to the family’s hiding place.
4* Even after the diary was published to wide acclaim in Europe, American publishers were wary. Ten rejected it before Doubleday published it in 1951. It was an immediate success.
5* In fact, in 1973 he wrote a book, The Obsession, about the entire episode.
INDEX
Adenauer, Konrad, 79
Adolf Hitler (Cross), 113–114
Afghanistan, 211, 213
Agee, James, 45
Allied bombing policy, 42, 50, 76, 96, 155
America First, 36n
American Historical Association (AHA), 204–205
American Mercury, 63–64, 95, 105, 138, 144, 149, 152, 153
American Revolution, 154
Andersonville, 154
Annals of Historical Revisionism, 10
Annihilation policy, 52, 61–62, 99, 107, 108n, 109, 114–116, 128–134
Anselm, Saint, 135
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 80, 81, 139n, 144–145, 148, 149, 181, 220–221
App, Austin J., 22, 41, 46, 52, 67, 85–102, 105, 120, 124, 129, 132, 186
Appleby, Joyce, 205, 206
Arab-Israeli War of 1973, 95, 96
Arcand, Adrien, 159
Arendt, Hannah, 56, 58–60
Armenian massacres, 211, 212
Armontrout, Bill, 162
Aschenauer, Rudolph, 147
Atlantic Monthly, 177
Auschwitz, 13, 23, 63, 77, 78, 99, 111, 133, 134, 139, 141, 151, 155, 162–169, 173–176, 188, 214, 224–227
Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report—The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz (Leuchter), 163n
Autant-Lara, Claude, 11
Back Door to War (Tansill), 40
Baker, Lillian, 23n
Barbie, Klaus, 10, 11
Bardèche, Maurice, 50–52, 64, 93
Barnes, Harry Elmer, 22, 28, 32, 34, 40, 52, 67–71, 73–83, 87, 88, 93, 98, 105, 120, 124, 132, 153
Baron, Salo, 56, 60, 61
Baseler Nachrichten, 112
Beard, Charles A., 32, 39, 44, 67, 88
Beauclair, Robin, 105
Bennett, John, 13
Bernstein, Philip S., 92
Berry, Mary Frances, 205
Bickenbach, Otto, 174
Biddle, Francis, 45
Birkenau, 78, 162, 163, 165, 166, 188, 227–229
Bischoff, Major, 226, 228
Bitburg, 111, 210, 211
Black, Hugo, 190, 191, 195
Blumenthal, David, 219n
Bone, Homer T., 35
Boniface Press, 67
books and bookmen, 119–121
Bork, Robert, 153
Brack, Victor, 109
Brady, Tom P., 146
Brandt, Willy, 210
Brodie, Keith, 17, 192
Broszat, Martin, 78
Brown, Jerry, 141
Brown University, 184n, 199
Brunner, Edward A., 172
Buber, Margaret, 112–114
Buchanan, Patrick, 5–6
Buchenwald, 51
Buckley, William F., 145, 149
Bureaucracy, power of, 94
Butz, Arthur, 22–23, 66, 118, 123–136, 140, 152, 206, 210, 214, 226–227, 232, 233
Campus newspapers, 16–17, 183–203, 206–208, 218
Carnes, Ed, 170
Carter, Jimmy, 150
Carto, Elisabeth, 152
Carto, Willis A., 105, 138n, 141, 144–149, 151, 153, 218
Casablanca Conference, 87
Chamberlain, Neville, 40, 121
Chambers Encyclopedia, 111–112
Chelmno, 78
Chomsky, Noam, 15–17
Christie, Douglas, 160, 161, 162, 170
Churchill, Winston, 70, 87, 97
Churchill’s War (Irving), 181
Citron, Sabrina, 157n
Civil War, 40, 46, 154–155
Committee for the Restoration of Historical Truth, 46
Committee on Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), 184–186, 189, 190, 193, 194, 197, 200, 208
Concentration camps: see Annihilation policy; Gaschamber controversy
“Concerned Parents of German Descent, ” 158–159
Connally, Matthew, 202
Cornell University, 184n, 189, 192, 195–196, 199, 207
Coughlin, Father Charles C., 36
Cox, Earnest Sevier, 146
Cross,
Colin, 113–114
Crusader, 5
Currie, Bob, 178
Curry, William, 184–185
Dachau, 78, 116
Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis, 11
Dartmouth University, 184n, 199
David, Elmer, 87
Dawidowicz, Lucy, 203–204
Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust, 27
Death marches, 91, 176
Death tolls, 55–61, 65–67, 75, 90–95, 98–101, 112, 119, 124
Debunking the Genocide Myth (Rassinier), 51
Deconstructionism, 18–19, 29
Degler, Carl, 203–204
Degrelle, Leon, 11
Demjanjuk, John, 6n De-Nazification program, 45
Destruction of the European Jews, The (Hilberg), 58, 59, 170
Deutsche National Zeitung, 126
Deutsche Volks Union, 8
Devin-Adair, 39
Diary of Anne Frank, 13, 118, 139, 151, 229–235
Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (Verrall), 104–107, 110–121, 124, 133, 138, 152, 157, 210, 232
Die Tat, 116–117
Diwald, Hellmut, 210
Dixon, Gary, 171
Doenecke, Justus, 43, 83
Dora (concentration camp), 51
Drama of European Jewry, The (Rassinier), 55, 58
Dreyfus affair, 10
Duderstadt, James, 190–191, 193–194
Duke, David, 4–5, 29, 187, 197–198, 215
Duke University, 17, 184n, 189, 191–192, 196
Du Pont Company, 166
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 97
Eichmann, Adolf, 56, 76, 100, 134
Einsatzgruppen, 9, 55, 78–79, 82, 124, 127, 163, 214
Eisenhower, Dwight, 204
“Elusive Six Million”, The” (Epp), 95, 105
Emory University, 184n
European Civil War, The, 1917–1945 (Nolte), 214
Evans, Richard, 212
Execution Protocol, The (Trombley), 180–181
“Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus . . . The ‘Human Soap’ Holocaust Myth” (Smith), 201–203
Farrakhan, Louis, 14, 126
Fascism, 23, 28, 49, 64, 103, 107
Faurisson, Robert, 9–10, 14, 16, 47, 64, 118, 140, 160–164, 167, 168, 170, 173–176, 210, 214, 220, 224–227, 233–234
Fay, Sidney B., 32