Smith’s Report, no. 189

Arthur Butz and “Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity.” An Insufficiently Dispassionate Review

By Carlo Mattogno

Smith’s Report no. 185 of October 2011 published an article by Arthur Butz entitled “Two Cutting-Edge Works of Holocaust Revisionism” (pp. 3-7).[i] It was a review of Samuel Crowell‘s recent book The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes, and Other Writings on the Holocaust, Revisionism, and Historical Understanding (Nine-Banded Books, Charleston, WV, 2011), and of my own Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity (The Barnes Review, Washington, 2010), which is the American edition of Le camere a gas di Auschwitz (Effepi, Genoa, 2009).

Butz does not need any introduction; his position as a leading light on the international Revisionist scene is uncontested, but for this very reason what he writes here is somewhat disap pointing, as it does not remotely live up to his reputation… [a lengthy quote from Butz's review follows]

And this is all that Butz can find to say about a two-volume book of 750 pages!

He does not explain what is its purpose, yet this is clearly indicated in the subtitle: A Historical & Technical Study of Jean-Claude Pressac’s 'Criminal Traces' and Robert Jan van Pelt’s 'Convergence of Evidence'. It is therefore a critical work that should be evaluated for what it promises, namely to present an exhaustive, radical, systematic and detailed rebuttal of all the arguments put forward by these two exterminationist authors concerning the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. A serious review should assess whether the task was performed in an accurate manner, and if the arguments are sound and the demonstration convincing.

Surprisingly, Butz instead pays no attention to all of that. He cites my work without even mentioning the subtitle: What can his reader infer from the simple title Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity? In his article van Pelt (to whom over 200 pages are devoted in the book) is not even mentioned, while Pressac, whose theses are, directly or indirectly, the subject of the rest of the book, is mentioned only in passing and in relation to a specific interpretation by him….

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