ANSWERMAN!

• Did the Holocaust exist?
• Did the SS trade down Jewish escapees from Treblinka with helicopters?
• Are revisionists anti-Semitic?
• What ever became of Herschel Grynszpan?

To each of these questions, to many others large and small, indeed to any and all questions that extermmatiomsts, revisionists and, above all, those in between, ask on the Holocaust and on revisionism, AnswerMan!—the latest feature on CODOHWeb, CODOH's ever-growing site on the World Wide Web—stands ready to present, if not always the answer, a very good answer: researched, considered, sane, and always humane.

If AnswerMan! sounds a little gimmicky and showbiz, that's not entirely by accident. Allowing non-revisionists the chance to ask the toughest questions and receive a reasoned answer is more than a little like giving cheeky college sophomores a chance at dunking the dean of studies with a well-pitched toss at the campus equivalent of the county fair.

But the latest in revisionist Q & A, and to our knowledge the first in which we revisionists are not supplying the questions as well as the answers, is lots more than just a gimmick. For starters, AnswerMan! is the persona of an actual, revisionist, academic historian, not long retired (but still young in years). As a scholar of modem European history and an active revisionist researcher, AnswerMan! is on top of his subject; as what SR subscriber Dr. Jim Martin once called a “refugee from the eraser pits,” AnswerMan! is well on to what makes inquisitive college students tick.

Not a moment too soon! To date, CODOHWeb has done wonders in amassing, editing, and posting revisionist scholarship, commentary and news. Until AnswerMan!, however, there has been no provision for scholarly exchange between revisionists and the all-important folks who aren’t revisionists, but still have open minds, on just those burning questions that we ourselves, through our Campus Project and other outreach programs, are encouraging them to ask.

To date the AnswerMan! has answered questions from Web-surfing wonderers about revisionism on nine Holocaust-related issues. Reading through his replies, we can't help noticing— though these exchanges are meant primarily for outreach—how useful for revisionists are the incisive facts, and common-sense, and often brilliant, arguments the AnswerMan! supplies. Not without a piquant sense of humor (we, for sure, had never thought of Herschel Grynszpan as the “Man in the Iron Yarmulke”), very much in sympathy with many who fear and mistrust revisionists, a master at answering the doubtful and inquisitive in their own language, the AnswerMan! has answered this to visitors to CODOHWeb who ask about the way we see the world:

The important thing about the revisionist attitude is twofold The revisionists have a handle on the truth, and the rest of the world has got to catch up.

That means the future is ours, no matter what we do. Second, revisionists have vision. They see the reality of the Jewish ordeal but they put it in the context of the ordeals of the other peoples of Europe, including those East Europeans who collaborated with Nazi Germany against Communism, and including the German people themselves. In short, revisionists have a view on 20th century European history that is inclusive, charitable, and magnanimous.

[Interested in reading AnswerMan! on “showerheads” in the Dachau gas chambers, the six million number, and those Treblinka helicopters? See our enclosed catalogue update for how you can receive printed versions of all the AnswerMan's CODOHWeb Q&A's to date.]