A Call for Open Debate on the Holocaust

My presentation on Holocaust “Denial” was originally scheduled for Sunday, September 22, 2024, at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC. It had to be postponed, however, because the venue cancelled my room rental. It was then rescheduled for the following Sunday, Sept. 29, from 1 to 3 PM at the Arlington Central Library (Bluemont Room), 1015 North Quincy Street, Arlington Virginia. This venue was not cancelled. Hence, on that Sunday, as the head (and tail!) of the DC Area Branch of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), I gave a talk titled “A Call for Open Debate on the Holocaust” at the Arlington (VA) Public Library to a select group of interested parties. Besides myself and my wife, there was an oldish gentleman who happened to be in the library and saw the announcement on the door of the meeting room, and came in thinking it sounded interesting; an even older gentleman, an erudite, informed, anti-Zionist, lapsed Jew I’ve known for years; three of my fellow Holocaust “deniers”, one of whom had come all the way from Pennsylvania; two personable Generation Z-ers who displayed a keen, inquisitive and open-minded attitude in the Q & A; and a spy who strode into the room with a chip on his shoulder, declined to give his name (as did two others), and took a seat in the far back corner of the room. The audience of eight was disappointing, considering the library is in the heart of the Washington, DC, metroplex, and many people in this town will sit through some State or Defense Department apparatchik droning on ad nauseum – one platitude, evasion, obfuscation or lie after another – on some arcane topic, like “The Berlin Process Summit ten years on: Lessons learned and next steps for the WB6”, which you can catch at the Atlantic Council on Oct. 4th, if you have the stomach (and some No-Doz!).

The presentation went as well as can be expected, given that it was the first time I gave the talk, as well as the first time I had ever done a PowerPoint presentation. The discussion which followed was – to my surprise – civil, intelligent and to-the-point. I’d like to think this was, in part, because of the tone I had established in my talk, and maybe I can take credit for that. In any case, my friend and fellow octogenarian corrected me on my claim that Oscar Schindler was a fictional character; one of the Gen Z-ers asked if there was a book which goes into how the myth of gas chambers came to be so universally believed, and I directed him to Samuel Crowell’s The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes; and the other Gen Z-er borrowed my copy of the Holocaust Encyclopedia to peruse.

The spy questioned whether the stack of bodies being cremated in the street were really Germans killed in the firebombing of Dresden, as their bodies should have already been reduced to ashes. (No wonder we deniers are gaining so little traction, being up against opponents of such stunning mental acuity!) I suggested not all the dead would have been consumed in the flames – those who died of smoke inhalation or having a building collapse on them, for instance – but I could see he was not convinced. Afterwards, I wondered what he was getting at. In my talk, I had mentioned that one Jewish organization had assumed (or wanted others to assume) that any pile of smoldering corpses must be Jews, and had used the photo in their promotional materials. So, maybe whatever group the spy belonged to makes that claim. Knowing photos – especially ones related to the Holocaust – can be doctored or misinterpreted, and having been fooled myself any number of times, I thought I’d better confirm that the photo pictured Dresden, so I got on the Internet and found this:

The statue in the background confirms the macabre scene is in Dresden.

All in all, the event was a good start, which I plan on repeating in the weeks ahead. Here’s my schedule for October:

Hope you can join me if you are in the area.