From the Editor

We begin this issue with another IHR “scoop.” Published here for the first time in the United States are revealing reconnaissance aerial photographs of the site of the Treblinka “death camp.”

These wartime reconnaissance photos – which lay forgotten for more than forty years on the dusty shelves of the National Archives in Washington, DC – cast new doubt on the widely accepted story that Treblinka was a mass extermination center.

(This German camp was supposedly one of the greatest killing centers in history. Only Auschwitz-Birkenau is supposed to have claimed more victims. Treblinka became the focus of worldwide attention in 1987-1988 during the trial in Israel of Ukrainian~American John Demjanuk who was accused of operating machinery used there to gas more than 800,000 Jews. )

As the accompanying article points out, Treblinka’s reputation as an extermination center rests on dubious testimony evidence. More reliable evidence – including these aerial photographs – suggests instead that Treblinka was actually a transit camp.

Next, American writer Samuel Taylor takes a hard look at at “multiculturalism,” the anti-Western movement that is currently very fashionable among much of America’s cultural-educational elite. In Taylor’s view, this misguided phenomenon has alarming implications for the future. “The multicultural, multiperspective history that has arisen,” he writes, “is not merely a departure from the history that America has always taught its children. It may be the first time that a nation has abandoned the single identity of its origins and set out deliberately to adopt multiple national identities.” Interestingly, Taylor is critical of both liberal and traditional conservative views of how we should look at our history and ourselves.

When people flrst hear about Holocaust Revisionism, a very common reaction is to say something like “What about Nuremberg? What about all the evidence presented at the war crimes trials~ Everyone knows that the extermination of the Jews was proved at Nuremberg.” In our next article, “The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust,” we take a close look at those trials, and the evidence presented there to prove Judeocide.

This article – which is adapted from a chapter of a forthcoming book that your editor has been working on for several years now – shows that the evidence presented at Nuremberg for an extermination plan or program is, to put it mildly, far from compelling. This article also exposes the hypocrisy and moral pretentiousness of the most elaborate judicial undertaking in history.

In our book review section, Dr. Robert Countess introd.uces an important new book by an astute and sensitive Jewish writer, Beyond Innocence and Redemption: Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power. In carefully argued and sometimes eloquent prose, author Marc Ellis challenges two of the most venerable icons our age: Israel and the Holocaust story, He warns of the terrible price to be paid for Zionist cruelty towards Palestinians, and for Jewish obsession with the pseudo-religion of the Holocaust.

So provocative is Ellis's book that, in New Zealand at least, a kind of boycott has been organized to stifle distribution and sales. In Christchurch, a New Zealander recently told Dr. Countess, the book purchaser at the main branch of Whitcoulls, the country's largest national bookstore chain, acknowledged that Ellis' book is not available because, he had heard, it is “offensive to Jewish people.” While conceding that the book is not, as far as he knows, actually anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, he said that he had been told that it treats the Holocaust in a way that Jews find offensive. Managers of individual branches of the Whitcoulls chain are, however, still free to order Ellis' book for persistent customers, the store official added.

At a branch of another bookstore Philip King Books, the manager said that although he knew nothing about the book, he considered the title provocative, and therefore would not fill orders for it. The manager of yet another local area bookstore, Target Books, told our visitor that he had “read somewhere” that Ellis's book is “redactionist”, (apparently meaning “revisionist”), and would not take orders for it.

The influence and power of the enemies of truth are truly amazing.

A reliable indication of the growing impact and acceptance of Revisionism – and specifically – work of the Institute for Historical Review – are the respectful reviews of IHR books that have been appearing in reputable periodicals. In the lead item in this issue's “Historical news and Comment” we summarize a good selection of these reviews. Although by no rneans always favorable, they are nevertheless a gratifying reflection of real progress.

A skeptical view of the Holocaust story may be taboo or even illegal in some countries but in the newly-free, countries of Central and Eastern Europe a revisionist view of twentieth century history is virtually taken for granted. As the next item explains, the historian-president of Croatia publicly supports the revisionist view of the Six Million story.

We conclude the “Historical News and Comment” section with a short item that debunks a lurid story of Iraqi cruelty that played such an important role in solidifying political and public support for President Bush's “Desert Storm” war against Iraq.

Although we have always welcomed thoughtful letters f'rom readers, from now on we hope to be more conscientious about publishing them. We want the Journal to be a more lively forum for thoughtful commentary on pertinent historical and contemporary social-political issues. (Ideally, readers' letters should be no more than about 500 words in length. We reserve the right to edit for style and space.)

This is the first issue of our Journal produced entirely by computer “desktop” layout and publishing. While it greatly simplifies our work, we still have some exasperating glitches to work out.

With this issue we are pleased to welcome Professor Hideo Miki as a member of the Journal's Editorial Advisory Committee. Miki is a professor of history at Musashino Junior College, Sayamashi, a former professor of history at Japan's National Defense Academy, and a retired Lieutenant General of his nation's Ground Self Defense Force. He lives in Tokyo.

He made a particularly striking impression as a speaker at the Ninth IHR conference. (His warmly received presentation was published in the Summer 1989 issue of the Journal.)

As we go to press, we are working hard to get ready for the Eleventh IHR conference in October. It promises to be a landmark Revisionist gathering that will underscore the remarkable progress that has been made in recent years to increase historical awareness and understanding. We also look forward to meeting again with some of our many good friends and faithful supporters, who make our work and progress possible.