A Revisionist Challenge
to the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum
by Bradley R. Smith
Text last revised: 26 July 1997
This
article does not claim "the Holocaust never happened." Those who say
it does want to muddy the issue. This is what the ad does claim:
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
displays no convincing proof whatsoever of homicidal gas chambers, and
no proof that even one individual was "gassed" in a German program of
"genocide."
The question, then, is not "Did the Holocaust happen?"
The question is: "If there were no gas chambers, what was the Holocaust?"
This Museum promotes the charge that the Germans murdered the
Jews of Europe in homicidal gas chambers. It therefore has a moral obligation
to demonstrate that the charge is true. Those who contend it is more
important to be sensitive than truthful about whether or not the gas
chambers existed debase America's old civil virtues of free inquiry
and open debate, and they betray the ideal of the university itself.
For the benefit of whom?
What are the facts?
The Museum's "proof" for a gas chamber at Birkenau is a minature-sized
model imagined by a Polish artist. A replica of a standard
German air-raid shelter door is displayed
as "proof" of a homicidal gas chamber at Majdanek. And, incredibly,
the Museum has simply dropped the Auschwitz I gas chamber, the basement
room visited yearly by hundreds of thousands of tourists in Poland.
There is no mention of the alleged gas chambers at Buchenwald
or even at Dachau, where after World War II American GIs and German
civilians were assured that more than 200,000 victims were "gassed and
burned."
The notion that eyewitness testimony, given under highly
politicized and emotional circumstances, is prima facie true,
was refuted by the Israeli Supreme Court when it acquitted John Demjanjuk
of being "Ivan the Terrible." The Israeli Court found that eyewitnesses
who testified that Demjanjuk operated "gas chambers" could not be believed!
Deborah Lipstadt argues in her much-praised Denying the
Holocaust that Revisionists ("deniers") should not be debated
because there can not be another side to the gas chamber story. This
is where Revisionism displays its strength. Revisionist theory, resting
only on historical facts, can be proved or disproved. Exterminationist
theory, having fallen into the hands of "cultists," can only be "believed."
I'm not in disagreement with Ms. Lipstadt and her clique on
the gas chamber controversy because they may be Zionists or Jews. That's
disingenuous. I'm in disagreement with her over the fact that she argues
against "light of day," our understanding that in a free society all
ideas are best illuminated in the light shed by open debate.
The Museum is so confident no one will challenge its "gas chamber"
gimcrackery that it even claims to have found a new "death camp" gas
chamber. Proof? The uncorroborated fantasies of one man pandering to
the victim-of-Holocaust-survivor-syndrome. The Museum's historian doesn't
even know where the place was. It "may have been" near Giessen. "May
have been?" That's the best historical writing $200 Million can buy?
When I challenge such gas chamber vaporings I understand I am
going to be slandered as an antisemite by true believers representing
the Holocaust Lobby. These quasi-religious Holocaust zealots claim that
because of the purity of their own feelings about the Jewish experience
during World War II, mine must be soiled when I express doubt in what
they preach as "truth."
Yet not even Winston Churchill in his
six-volume history of World War II, or Dwight D. Eisenhower in his memoirs,
made reference to homicidal gassing chambers. How do the Holocaust Lobby
and its Museum explain that?
Intellectuals who do not believe
that intellectual freedom is worth the while on this historical issue
should ask themselves why they believe it's worth the while on any historical
issue. Then they should explain their answers to the rest of us.
The Operation and Technique of the Museum
The Museum's exhibit technique is a mixture of sinister suggestion and
dishonest omission. Example: the first display confronting visitors
beginning the Museum tour is a wall-sized photograph of American soldiers
looking at corpses smoldering on a pyre. The context in which you see
the photo suggests that the dead pictured on it are murdered Jews.
Were the prisoners killed or did they die of typhus or some
other disease during the last terrible weeks of the war? Autopsies made
by Allied medical personnel found inmates died of disease. No one was
found to have been "gassed." All such relevant information is omitted
from this exhibit. We don't even know that the dead pictured in the
photograph are Jews!
Unable to judge the significance of the
photograph, and not wanting to believe the Museum would want to mislead
you, you are moved to accept the false and manipulative suggestion that
it somehow represents the "genocide" of the European Jews.
Call the Museum! Find out for yourself!
I'm willing to be convinced I'm wrong about the gas chambers. Authentic
physical remains or wartime-generated documents would do the trick.
I say the Museum displays neither. Call the Museum! Find out for yourself!
The telephone number is (202) 488-0400. Ask which (specific) Museum
exhibits display proof gas chambers really existed. Have this (or any)
newspaper publish the result. Then we'll all see what's what.
Special pleaders imply that to investigate the gas chamber stories
in the light of day will be harmful to Jews. I challenge this bigoted
insinuation! Free inquiry will benefit Jews - for exactly the reasons
it benefits us all. In any case, why should it not?
At left: The door at the concentration camp Majdanek from which
the USHMM made the replica which is now on display in Washington D.C..
At right, the real function of the door
and thousands more like it is shown in a widely distributed German ad
for bomb-shelter doors and window covers, intended for military and
civilian use. Approximately 670,000 German civilians were killed in
the massive Allied terror-bombing campaign directed at population centers
throughout Germany.
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