‘No Gas Chambers’ Says Influential Japanese Magazine

Under the provocative headline, “The Greatest Taboo of Postwar World History: There were no Nazi ‘Gas Chambers’,” a ten-page revisionist article appeared in the February 1995 issue of Marco Polo, an influential and reputable Japanese magazine.

Packed with advertising for luxury goods by major international firms, and sprinkled with photographs of pretty young women, Marco Polo is a slick, 250,000-circulation monthly aimed at men in their 20s and 30s. Founded in 1991, the current affairs feature magazine is issued by the Bungei Shunju company, one of Japan’s most prestigious publishing firms.

Besides Marco Polo, the company publishes nine weekly and monthly magazines, which are among the most influential in Japan. It is also the Japanese publisher of the Anne Frank Diary, which has sold nearly five million copies in that country.

But this is a “good news, bad news” story. It wasn’t long before the publisher capitulated to an international Jewish-Zionist boycott and pressure campaign, and shut down the magazine for good.

The article, written by 38-year-old neurology physician Dr. Masanori Nishioka, was published only after Marco Polo staff members spent five months checking the author’s sources, conducting additional research, and carefully editing the text.

It appeared with an introductory endorsement by Marco Polo:

On January 27th, the Auschwitz concentration camp celebrates the 50th anniversary of its ‘liberation.’ However, here the greatest taboo of postwar history is hiding. In fact the ‘Holocaust’ – the idea that Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis – has begun to be the subject of serious doubt. There is no doubt that many Jews died tragically. Since the war, it has been shown that none of the concentration camps in the west had gas chambers. Only those in the East are now said to have had them. However, these gas chambers are not sealed properly. From a scientific point of view, the gas used could hardly have been adequate for large-scale killing. In fact, in Europe and the United States questions of this kind have generated considerable journalistic activity. Even a number of Jewish scholars themselves have doubts. Why is it that only Japan’s mass media does not write about this problem? Astonishing history investigated single-handedly by a young physician!

Calling the Holocaust a “fabrication,” Nishioka wrote that “the story of ‘gas chambers’ was used as propaganda for the purposes of psychological warfare,” and is “nothing more than a transformation, without verification, of wartime ‘gas chamber’ stories into ‘history’.” He also wrote:

The “gas chambers” currently open to the public at the remains of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland are a postwar fabrication built either by the Polish Communist regime or by the Soviet Union, which controlled the country. Neither at Auschwitz nor anywhere else in the territory controlled by the Germans during the Second World War was there even one “mass extermination of Jews” in “gas chambers.”

Hundreds of thousands of Jews, affirms Nishioka, perished in the camps as a result of disease due to unhygienic conditions, but not as a consequence of an extermination policy. “Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leadership ever planned the ‘extermination’ of the Jews,” he wrote.

Nishioka points out that a chamber at the Dachau concentration camp, which American propagandists portrayed as a “gas chamber” used to kill prisoners, was actually a non-homicidal delousing chamber. He also presents considerable evidence to show that the “gas chamber” shown to tourists at Auschwitz was built by Communists after the war.

In support of his arguments, Nishioka cites a number of historians and various scholarly books and articles. Among them are several published by the IHR, including Dr. Arthur Butz’ classic, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, and Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich’s Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence.

Nishioka also mentions American revisionist writers Mark Weber and Ted O’Keefe.

In addition, last August Nishioka visited Poland to inspect the former concentration camps of Auschwitz (including Birkenau) and Majdanek. Among the photographs accompanying the article are five taken by him during that visit. Two show the “crematory chimney” at the Auschwitz I camp. As these photos make clear, the free-standing chimney is an obvious dummy, not connected to a crematory or even a building.

Comparing the wartime fate of Europe’s Jews with that of Chinese killed by Japanese troops, and the victims of American atomic bombings of Japanese cities, Nishioka concludes his article with an expression of sympathy for the “tragic deaths” of many European Jews.

Initial Resistance

Jewish-Zionist groups responded to the article with characteristic speed and ruthlessness. Through its embassy in Tokyo, the Israeli government formally protested to the Japanese government, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles mounted a boycott campaign against the Bungei Shunju company.

The magazine’s initial response was a statement defending the provocative article. In explaining his decision to publish it, Marco Polo editor Kazuyoshi Hanada – one of Japan’s most prominent journalists – said that Dr. Nishioka had found evidence to show that standard views about gassings of Jews are not accurate. “We would not run an article we thought was wrong,” Hanada said on Jan. 24.

“It’s not good for everything about a certain subject to be taboo,” he added. “Maybe Israelis and Japanese have different ways of thinking about that.” Hanada even asked Nishioka to contribute additional articles to future issues of his magazine.

Hanada become editor of Marco Polo in April 1994, after having served as editor of Shukan Bunshun, another Bungei Shunju magazine. Under his editorship, Shukan Bunshun attained the highest circulation of any weekly magazine in Japan. In recent months, Hanada has appeared on television as a commentator.

Marco Polo also generously announced that it would welcome a rebuttal of Nishioka’s article, offering both the Wiesenthal Center and the Israeli embassy an opportunity to respond with a ten-page article of its own. The offer was promptly and predictably rejected.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, deputy chief of the Wiesenthal Center, said: “Their [revisionists’] goal is to get debate going. They’re seeking to give legitimacy to their view.” In a Jan. 25 letter, the Israeli embassy wrote to the publisher: “If your magazine is going to take a neutral observer position, that of a courtroom trial, in which both sides’ arguments and claims are to be introduced, we must decline.”

At the Feb. 18 news conference in Tokyo. From left to right: Aiji Kimura; Dr. Masanori Nishioka; Prof. Keiichi Tsuneishi; the translator; David Cole.

Cole in Japan

At the invitation of Japanese revisionists, American Jewish researcher David Cole flew to Japan to explain that the Wiesenthal Center does not speak for most Americans, or even all Jews. (Cole, a young filmmaker who addressed the 1992 and 1994 IHR Conferences, made the video “David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper.” See the review in the March–April 1993 Journal.)

Cole spoke at two Tokyo news conferences, Feb. 15 and Feb. 18. About 70 journalists attended each meeting (paying $20 each). At the second news conference, he was joined by Dr. Nishioka and Prof. Tsuneishi.

With the exception of two reporters from the Asahi Shimbun (a major rival of Bungei Shunju), the journalists were friendly and receptive. “What a contrast to the mud-slinging and name-calling of journalists in the United States,” Cole later commented.

The conferences were ably organized by the energetic Kimura, who had arranged for interpreters and dubbed television showings of both Cole’s video and the March 1994 “Donahue” show on which Cole had appeared. Each journalist was also provided with information packets that included IHR leaflets and other revisionist materials.

As a result of these news conferences, articles mentioning Cole appeared in several Japanese-language daily papers. In addition, he conducted about ten interviews with individual journalists of weekly and monthly periodicals. (An IHR statement on the Marco Polo incident generated additional interest among Japanese journalists.)

In Japan, Cole reports, Holocaust revisionists tend to be leftist. Because Anne Frank and her Diary are very well known there, Bergen-Belsen seems to be as familiar as Auschwitz.

A Learning Experience

Japan’s English-language and Japanese-language press has given extensive and detailed coverage to the Marco Polo incident, informing citizens of the world’s second most important economic power of the existence of the revisionist view of the Holocaust story, and reporting in detail on the bigoted campaign waged by a powerful alien lobby. One result of all this is that the English-language term “revisionism” has now entered the general Japanese vocabulary as a loan word, joining such words as “businessman” and “weekend.”

Dr. Masanori Nishioka, author of the headline-making Marco Polo article, answers a reporter's question at the Feb. 18 news conference while Prof. Keiichi Tsuneishi of Kanagawa University listens.

American newspapers and magazines repeatedly assert that the Japanese hold “stereotyped” views about “the Jews,” and frequently disparage them for thinking that Jews wield enormous power around the world, severely punishing anyone who defies their interests. The murder/suicide of Marco Polo magazine is unlikely to disabuse many Japanese of such “stereotyped” views.

As in the United States, Japanese are expected to engage in a kind of Orwellian “doublethink,” simultaneously taking to heart the harsh lesson of Marco Polo’s demise, while regarding those who forced the execution as feeble victims.

In fact, the Marco Polo incident once again dramatically shows how a well-financed and highly effective international Jewish-Zionist network strives ruthlessly to punish those who threaten its interests.

Many Japanese journalists, editors and intellectuals are privately offended by the arrogant strong-arm methods used by the Zionist-Jewish lobby to suppress free speech and open debate. The Wiesenthal Center campaign ironically may actually increase anti-Jewish sentiment in Japan. Because of fear and intimidation, though, for the time being anyway, this widespread indignation finds little public expression.

In Japan, a long struggle for historical truth and open inquiry about a key chapter of twentieth century world history has begun in dramatic fashion.

What One Man Can Accomplish

Dr. Nishioka's Activism

Dr. Nishioka is no stranger to controversy. For several years prior to the recent publication of his controversial Marco Polo article, his thoughtful letters in one of Japan's leading English-language daily papers generated thoughtful, spirited debate about key chapters of twentieth century history.

Armed with a few books from the IHR catalog and some back issues of the Journal, in 1989 he began contesting the prevailing view of Second World War history, and especially the background to the US-Japan East Asia conflict. (At the same time, Nishioka has been very critical of Japanese wartime treatment of American and other Allied prisoners of war. With a keen concern for environmental issues, he has also been critical of Japanese environmental policies, including nuclear power plant construction.)

'Drastic Revision Needed'

In a letter of some 15 column inches published in the “Reader's Forum” section of the Mainichi Daily News, Aug. 23, 1989, Nishioka cited Hitler's Dec. 11, 1941, speech as an example of suppressed history. As Nishioka pointed out, the German leader on that occasion spoke at length about the origins of the global conflict, and gave a detailed justification for his decision to declare war against the United States. “Reading this complete text must convince you that the history of WWII needs drastic revision,” wrote Nishioka.

He went on to point out that the first publication anywhere of a complete and accurate text in English of this critically important historic document was in the Winter 1988-89 Journal of Historical Review. He urged MDN readers to write to the IHR for the text, and he provided the IHR's address.

Reaction was swift and predictable. In a letter published four days later, Michael Les Benedict, identified as a professor of history at the Kobe branch of Ohio State University, attacked the “Institute for Historical Studies” as a “neo-Nazi organization which has been formally condemned by the American Historical Association, for falsifying history and violating the ethics of the profession.”

In a lengthy letter of response (August 31), Nishioka calmly restated his earlier position and cited further evidence for his views. For example, he mentioned the work of American Pulitzer-prize winning historian John Toland (who addressed the 1990 IHR Conference), as well as David Hoggan's book, The Forced War, noting that it is published by the IHR.

Nishioka also quoted extensively from the IHR leaflet, ''The Holocaust: Let's Hear Both Sides,” and once again gave the IHR's address. Comparing professional historians such as Benedict to the “Ministry of Truth” of George Orwell's 1984, Nishioka explained “this is why I listen to the voices of revisionists such as the IHR.”

In a shorter letter that appeared Oct. 8, 1989, and citing information obtained in the meantime from the IHR, Nishioka informed MDN readers that the IHR is “most certainly not a 'neo-Nazi' organization,” and that the claim that the IHR has been “formally condemned by the American Historical Association is a fabrication.”

Chris Lock of Osaka joined the discussion with a pro-revisionist letter published Sept. 12, 1989, in which he wrote: ''The IHR is not anti-Semitic. It is a peaceful, non-militant organization that merely tries to get to the truth in historical matters.” Following another attack on the IHR by Robert Pon of Hong Kong, Lock responded on Oct. 13, 1989.

“Reading the literature of the IHR,” wrote Lock, “one soon sees there is nothing pro-Nazi, pro-Hitler or anti-Semitic about it. Their aim is to try to find the causes of war so that having found the causes, war can be eliminated.”

Further letters denouncing or defending the IHR followed. Although Nishioka's main interest is in contemporary Japanese history, letters by Nishioka have dealt with topics as diverse as the origins of the Second World War, censorship and control of the media, the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and the Holocaust story. Including those written by Nishioka himself, well over 60 letters have been published on these and other historical topics.

'Neo-Nazi Materials'

More than three years later, Anthony Schaeffer reminded MDN readers, in a letter about an entirely different subject that appeared December 18,1992, of Nishioka's “past use of neo-Nazi materials,” a reference to IHR Journal articles and books. This false charge was echoed by Doug Blumbren in a letter published March 23, 1993, in which he parenthetically referred to Nishioka's ''use of neo-Nazi material from the Institute of Historical Research.”

Chris Lock joined in again (MDN, April 2, 1993). While expressing disagreement with some books published by the IHR, he forthrightly defended the Institute against the tired “neo-Nazi” charge. He mentioned the IHR's stunning September 1991 courtroom victory over Mel Mermelstein, who ''was soundly defeated in a long-standing case against the IHR.” Concluding his letter, Lock wrote: “I just don't like nasty neo-Nazi libel hurled around, especially in this Forum by professors and academics who should know better.” A week later (MDN, April 9), Lock wrote in another letter: “Anyone can prove the IHR is not neo-Nazi by contacting them and checking out their literature.” He also once again provided the IHR address.

Another lengthy letter by Nishioka (MDN, April 10, 1993), was based on the presentation by former CIA officer Victor Marchetti at the 1989 IHR Conference, as published (Nishioka specifically noted) in the Fall 1989 IHR Journal. O. J. Cohen of Osaka joined the discussion with a letter (April 15) denouncing the views of IHR editor Weber on the Holocaust issue. Other MDN readers, such as Tokyo's Rudolf Voll (MDN, May 4), supported Nishioka. While refraining from completely endorsing the IHR, Voll affirmed the importance of keeping an open mind on historical questions, and of revising the record in accord with the facts. Alex Shishin of Kobe (MDN, May 14) took an ignorant slap at “new age racists like the Institute for Historical Review, a major David Duke connection.”

Jewish-American revisionist David Cole makes a point at the Feb. 18 news conference while his translator reviews a text.

Closely following this entire exchange, IHR associate editor Greg Raven added his voice in a cogent letter published April 18, 1993. The MDN subsequently published three further letters from Raven replying to responses to this first letter (May 19, June 2, June 11). With Nishioka's help, a letter from Raven appeared in The Daily Yomiuri (June 18) in response to a column about anti-Semitism in Japan. A measure of the Japanese English-languages press' openness to “politically incorrect” opinions can be seen in the fact that 20 letters about the Holocaust appeared in print between mid-April and the end of June 1993.

More Than a Match

Throughout this sometimes heated flurry of correspondence, Nishioka and Lock proved more than a match for their adversaries, capably fending off attacks against revisionism, their personal integrity, and the IHR. In each unhurried and methodical expression of his opinion, Nishioka carefully avoided stooping to the attacks against character and motive that characterized several of the anti-revisionist letters. Such lively, open-minded and protracted exchange in a major daily paper would be all but unthinkable in America.

While any balanced discussion of important historical issues, and every favorable mention of the revisionist viewpoint, is certainly welcome, the numerous specific mentions of the Institute in the pages of this influential daily paper, often with the IHR address, have been especially gratifying. As a result, several MDN readers in Japan have written to the IHR requesting further information.

It seems that Marco Polo's grim fate has had a sobering, “Americanizing” effect on the Japanese press. Along with other papers, the Mainichi Daily News has refused to publish any of the letters by Dr. Robert Faurisson; Mark Weber, Greg Raven and others responding to recent MDN items about the Marco Polo affair, Holocaust revisionism and the IHR.

Cole Comments on the Marco Polo Affair

David Cole, a researcher and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles and who spoke at news conferences in Japan on the Marco Polo affair, states:

I am a Jewish “Holocaust revisionist.” I believe that the Nazi persecution of the Jews during World War II should be studied freely and openly, like any other historical subject.

The Wiesenthal Center “punished” Marco Polo magazine for publishing a revisionist article that presents evidence casting doubt on claims that gas chambers were used to kill prisoners in German wartime concentration camps. Rather than respond with credible evidence for the existence of gas chambers, the Wiesenthal Center instead did what it does best: it used threats and intimidation to silence critics of the gas chamber theory.

There are those who say that Holocaust revisionism should be censored because it is distressing for Jews. As a Jew, I find that view condescending. If we censor things that are distressing for Jews, should we also censor things that are distressing for Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and so forth? Where do we stop?

The truth must stand on its own. We call things “facts” only when they can be explained and proven. My own research has convinced me that there is a legitimate reason to doubt the gas chamber story. I have traveled to concentration camp sites, and have interviewed Holocaust historians and survivors. No one has been able to answer my critical questions about the alleged gas chambers.