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Chapter Six By Bradley R. Smith
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I KNEW THAT FIRST NIGHT after reading Faurisson and Bennett that I would
have to do something about what they had written, but I didn't do anything.
Week followed week and I didn't lift a finger to check out a single
assertion by either Bennett or Faurisson. I was keeping a daily journal
at that time and there isn't a whisper in it about one of the most stunning
milestones of my life. What did I think I was doing with so much evasion?
How long did I tell myself I was going to wait before I started to do
the work that now I was obligated to do? It's a mystery.  More
than three months passed that way. Then, on the afternoon of the last
day of 1979, I telephoned the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles
and asked the history department if it shelved a copy of Butz's The
Hoax of the Twentieth Century. I didn't think it would, but the
lady said she would hold it at the desk for me. I felt a little apprehension,
and a little excitement. I've tried to recall why I telephoned on that
particular day. I can't. As
I climbed the library steps I felt the body growing heavy and burdened.
It was comical. I felt an exhausting load accumulating on my shoulders.
I could see the whole thing operating. It was pathetic. I was afraid
that I was going to find out for certain that what I was half afraid
was true was in fact true. I wanted to find it out all right -- curiosity
killed the writer -- what I didn't want was to experience what I was
afraid I would experience if the gas chamber stories really did begin
to unravel before my eyes. As
I approached the middle-aged woman at the desk I felt the shame rise
up inside me. When I asked her for the Butz book she seemed to avert
her eyes. It was as if she had recognized the shameful act that I was
about to perform and did not want me to see in her eyes that she understood
-- that I wanted to read a book that no person with decent sensibilities
would want to read. At
a reading table I discovered that Arthur R. Butz was an Associate Professor
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Northwestern University.
Electrical Engineering, I thought? Computer Sciences? Butz tackled this
issue straightaway:
There will be those who will say that I am not qualified to undertake such a work, and there will even be those who will say that I have no right to publish such things. So be it. If a scholar, regardless of his specialty, perceives that scholarship is acquiescing, from whatever motivation, in a monstrous lie, then it is his duty to expose the lie, whatever his qualifications. It does not matter that he collides with all "established" scholarship in the field, although that is not the case here, for a critical examination of the "holocaust" has been avoided by academic historians in all respects and not merely in the respect it is treated in this book. That is while virtually all historians pay some sort of lip service to the lie, when it comes up in books and papers on other subjects, none has produced an academic study arguing, and presenting the evidence for either the thesis that the exterminations did take place or that they did not take place. If they did take place then they should be possible to produce a book showing how it started and why by whom it was organized and the lines of authority in the killing operations, what the technical means were and that those technical means did not have some sort of more mundane interpretation (e.g., crematoria), who were the technicians involved, the numbers of victims from the various lands and the time tables of their executions, presenting the evidence on which these claims are based together with reasons why one should be willing to accept the authenticity of all documents produced at illegal trials. No historians have undertaken anything resembling such a project; only non-historians have undertaken portions. "With
these preliminary remarks," Butz concluded, "I invite your study of
the hoax of your century." I
was struck by the self-confident and dispassionate tone of his voice.
This Butz, I thought, he's not real wishy-washy. He doesn't shilly-shally
around a lot. Who knows?, I thought, maybe he doesn't hate Jews either.
I suppose now that that was the issue around which so much of my apprehension
and evasiveness had gathered. Maybe, probably, while I understood that
reasonable men could not question the truth of the gas chamber stories,
in my heart I didn't believe it. I think that in my heart I felt that
only men with an ax to grind would question them. When
I turned to the text of The Hoax it took about half an hour for
me to decide that something I had believed for 35 years is probably
unprovable -- namely, that six million Jews were "missing" at the end
of World War II. What with the gigantic, brutal population Transfers
carried out by the Germans and Soviets, the tremendous chaos of the
war itself, the fact that the sources of "post-war primary data are
private Jewish or Communist sources (exclusively the latter in the all
important cases of Russia and Poland)...." there was no way to know
how many Jews were left in Europe in 1945 or to know with very much
accuracy how they were distributed around the planet. At the same time,
Butz wrote:
It
wasn't only that I had believed the "six million" figure with such certainty,
but that I had believed so deeply all the accusations and implications
that necessarily went along with it. I believed without reservation,
but in 35 years I had not made the slightest effort to substantiate
the accusations that were inherent in my belief. I had been willing
to live my life believing something that morally condemned an entire
people of complicity in the most horrible and inhuman behavior imaginable
without once bothering to investigate the evidence supporting a single
charge made against them. The
only way I can explain such immature and contemptible behavior over
the entirety of my adult life is to admit, simply, that it had been
easy to believe what everyone else believed and difficult not to. The
believing took no energy, no courage and no common sense. Trying to
find out the truth about such terrible accusations against others would
have taken that and more. Merely standing aside from opinion and not
participating in that of others -- that would have taken energy too.
I didn't have it. In my laziness I had allowed myself to be swamped
with belief. Early
on in The Hoax Butz addresses the events surrounding the Dachau
trials. Here the American military together with personnel from of the
American War Crimes Branch addressed the behavior of Germans who had
staffed Buchenwald, Flossenbuerg, Dachau itself and some other installations.
It was while reading Butz's brief account of those events that something
coalesced in me, and I understood consciously that I was going to look
into the poison gas chamber stories. Ironically, according to Butz,
the gas chamber story itself had hardly surfaced during the Dachau Trials.
Nevertheless:
The entire repertoire of third degree methods was enacted at Dachau: beating and brutal kicking to the point of ruining testicles in 137 cases, knocking out teeth, starvation, solitary confinement, torture with burning splinters, and impersonation of priests in order to encourage prisoners to "confess." Low ranking prisoners were assured that convictions were being sought only against higher ranking officers, and that they had absolutely nothing to lose by cooperating and making the desired statements. Such "evidence" was then used against them when they joined their superiors in the dock. The latter, on the other hand, had been told that by "confessing" they had taken all responsibility onto themselves, thereby shielding their men from trial. A favorite stratagem, when a prisoner refused to cooperate, was to arrange a mock trial. The prisoner was led into a room in which civilian investigators, dressed in U.S. Army uniforms, were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the center, with two candles providing the only light. This "court" then proceeded to hold a sham trial, at the conclusion of which a sham death sentence was passed. The "condemned" prisoner was later promised that, if he cooperated with the prosecutors in giving evidence, he would be reprieved. Sometimes interrogators threatened to turn prisoners over to the Russians. In many cases the prisoner's family was threatened with loss of ration cards or other hardships if cooperation was not obtained. Butz
had a lot more to say on the subject. He provided sources for most of
his claims and dozens of leads to follow up if I, or anyone, wanted
to flush out the story. It wasn't difficult for me to accept the possibility
that the United States Government had acted in the way Butz described.
U.S. military and civilian bureaucrats had expressed their loyalty to
their own state apparatus just as German bureaucrats had to theirs.
Loyalty to the State rather than to justice or decency, loyalty to the
point of addiction sickness is what corrupts bureaucrats everywhere.
It appeared to me that at the Dachau trials United states bureaucrats
had acted out of the same sensibilities, convictions and modus operandi
as bureaucrats traditionally use in nations around the earth. And that
a good number of them had had the additional privilege of being able
to indulge their desire for revenge. If
Germans accused of war crimes had fared as Butz described events at
Dachau -- under the enlightened, democratic Americans -- how had German
prisoners fared in the hands of totalitarian Stalinists? It must have
been terrible. As Butz remarked about how the German prisoners suffered,
it must have been "beyond the imagination of those of us who have not
suffered it ourselves." I
went to the desk and asked for help in running down some documents on
the book, reviews, historical papers, anything. The librarian tried
to help me but we couldn't turn up anything. Nothing. I returned to
The Hoax. I perused the acknowledgments, the final remarks. I went over
the appendices, notes, references, the index. The Hoax was extensively
documented, the established history of the Holocaut story was confronted
openly, and discounted in scores of places. And yet, so far as I could
find out by consulting the standard indexes and guides, not one periodical,
not one newspaper, not one historian, not a single journalist, critic,
or scholar had published one word to either affirm or deny one statement,
one shred of the evidence presented by Butz to the effect that the poison
gas chamber stories were falsehoods and even deliberate lies. I
walked through the library from one department to another, upstairs
and downstairs. My mind was racing and shooting around like crazy. Something
was wrong with the gas chamber stories. Something was wrong with the
story of the six million and what was wrong was being covered up. Something
was wrong about the silence that had buried Butz's book. Something was
wrong in the academic community in the United States, and not only among
the historians. Something tremendous was going on, or not going on as
it were, and the ramifications could prove to be endless. There was
an immense amount of work to do; the air in the library was thick with
complication. I felt as if I were swimming in a sea of suppression,
censorship and evasion. Out
on the street the crisp late afternoon air was electric. Men and men
and women spoke to one another with an animation that seemed extraordinary.
They stood on street corners laughing and making plans. I remembered
that it was New Year's Eve. While I had not spoken the words, while
I did know precisely what the words were, I understood that a resolution
had formed within me that would affect my life profoundly from that
moment on. My
legs carried me effortlessly toward the pickup. The body felt weightless.
If there had been a bar handy I would have gone in and lifted a few.
That's how I use the drinking sometimes. When the excitement become
too intense. I use it to calm down. I use it like a tool. At
Mother's the house I went straight to the kitchen cupboard and poured
out about six ounces of Kaluha. That's all there was. Alicia was going
to Tijuana for New Years Eve so I drove her back downtown to the bus
station. We missed the bus so we went to Coles where my father used
to drink back in the Twenties and even before I think. We sat at the
old bar on stools and I drank a couple rum and cokes and because Alicia
doesn't drink I lifted a couple more for her. I
was starting to get crocked. I don't think the very exciting part of
Butz's book was that he questioned the Holocaust but that the book he
questioned it with was suppressed by common consent by the entire press
and academic community in The United States. That's what was so exciting
to me, the cowardly, self-serving suppression of it. I saw Alicia off
on the bus then drove to West Hollywood to Barney's Beanery and drank
a bottle of burgundy. At eleven o'clock I drove back to the house and
helped Mother get from the wheelchair into her bed. Then I drove back
to Barney's again and got there just in time to welcome the New Year
in with an Irish coffee. The woman next to me raised her mouth to be
kissed but it wasn't for me somehow and I gave her a little nudge on
the side of the face. Later I was sorry I'd done that. Later, you're
always sorry. I drank Irish coffees for another hour then sensibly switched
to Guiness stout. When
Barney's closed I drove back to the house so Mother wouldn't be alone
any longer. The driving wasn't that easy. I got the foam rubber pad
from behind the living room couch and made my bed on the floor. It wasn't
easy. I undressed, knocked a few things off the card table and put on
my caftan. From
her bed Mother said: "Bradley, what the hell are you doing in there?"
"I'm
going to bed, Ma." "Do
you hear those people out on the street? They've been shooting off those
fireworks all night." "I
do hear them, Ma." "Well,
do you hear what they're saying? They're talking about how they could
set off a fire with that stuff. They sound like they're drunk to me."
"Drunk?,"
I said. I went outside barefoot wearing my caftan which at the time
I was very attached to because Jenny had given it to me. I felt I was
ready for anything. That my will would be done. There were six or eight
of them, attractive well dressed men and women laughing and talking
quietly and setting off their fireworks. The colors were very beautiful
and radiant in the black night air. I saw immediately that there wouldn't
be any trouble. There would be no adventure. A warmth filled my heart.
These were my neighbors. My people. Mine. I grabbed the first one I
came to and kissed him. He didn't much seem to care for it. I worked
my way through the lot, kissing each in turn until I embraced a small
blond woman who gasped: "Oh, for a moment you startled me." She smelled
wonderful. She was wearing a fur round her shoulders and it was very
soft. Then I noticed that she resembled closely the wife of the actor
who lives next door. At that instant the brain experienced a moment
of clarity. I went back in the house and got under my sheet. From
her bedroom Mother asked: "What did they say?" "They
said not to worry, Ma." "It
makes me nervous when people talk about setting the whole place on fire.
I feel so helpless," she said. "They
were just joking, Ma." The
room was moving clockwise and when I closed my eyelids the yellow light
went on and off, on and off. I thought it would never end. |
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Committee for Open Debate on the
Holocaust, Bradley R. Smith, Director - Post Office Box 439016,
San Ysidro, CA 92143 |