Interview with a Holocaust Revisionist (1990)

At the time of this interview, Michael Hoy was publisher of Loompanics Catalog

Loompanics. What exactly is your book, Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist, about?

Bradey R. Smith. Exactly? Why don't you ask something difficult? I don't know what it's about. If I did I probably wouldn't be working on Part II. I thought it was going to be about how I investigated the Holocaust story and found out for myself if it's true or not, because I had begun to hear it isn't. That was a good professional concept for a book but I had to throw it out almost immediately after I got started because the first thing you discover about the Holocaust story when you look into it is that it is very crappy and you see through it right away and that there isn't all that much to say about it. There's a lot to say about why you were so respectful of it for so many years, however, and why you were so afraid to challenge it, and how much it costs you professionally and personally to say, simply, “I don't believe it anymore,” and how many friends you lose and how isolated you feel. I suppose that's what Confessions is about. But then, Part II is growing substantially more complicated and dangerous than Part I.

Loompanics. How do you define holocaust revisionism?

Smith. The effort to get the history of the Holocaust into accord with the facts, as we do with every other historical event that we remember taking place in the West and around the rest of the planet. Who is it who believes it would be kind of nice and kind of beneficial to suppress free inquiry into the “Holocaust?”

Loompanics. How did you first get involved in holocaust revisionism?

Smith. It was just bad luck. I describe it pretty closely in the opening chapters of Confessions. I read a paper on Auschwitz by Robert Faurisson and decided in about twenty minutes that the story I had believed all my life with all my heart — that is, the Auschwitz gas chamber story — was something less than what I had thought it was. A lot less.

Loompanics. Most people would probably say that it is a well documented fact that Hitler gassed six million Jews to death, give or take a couple million.

Smith. If most people would say that, it must be true. I'm probably wasting my life.

Loompanics. What about the gas chambers that still exist?

Smith.There are no “gas chambers” that still exist. There are a few buildings or ruins of buildings scattered around eastern Europe that the historians tell us functioned as execution gas chambers. Forty-five years ago the governments of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union used the Nuremberg trials to stipulate the existence of execution gas chambers in the camps. Our academics and media intellectuals made the story their own, as they do most stories supplied them by the State. After forty-five years promoting the story in our universities and the media, where is there one scientific or scholarly paper demonstrating the existence of the fabled gas chambers, one paper on how they were designed, manufactured, installed, operated and destroyed? It's time for the historians to either put up about the gas chambers or shut up about them.

Loompanics.What about the photos of the death camps?

Smith. What “death camps?” Do you mean the news-reel and other photos of German camps illustrating that a lot of people suffered and died there that are reproduced endlessly in the media for our edification? Do you mean the photographs of the “death camps” in the Soviet “gulag” which we never see any photos of whatever? Entire cities in Germany became “death camps” under Allied mass terror bombings of German working class districts. Of course we never see the photographs of the tens of thousands of German babies that our government purposely burned alive in those death camps so it's as if they were not death camps at all, isn't it? Interesting experiment in the formation and control of public awareness, or don't you think so? Who benefits from this selective showing of “death-camp” photos? It's estimated that the American air force burned alive 135,000 Japanese civilians in the fire bombing of Tokyo alone a couple of months before Hiroshima. Don't expect to see photographs of the Tokyo “death camp” on your TV tonight. Why not? Who would benefit? It's also interesting to note that not a single cadaver in any of the German camps was discovered to have been poisoned with Zyklon B, supposedly the German gas of choice. The dead in the photos of the German “death camps” died from typhoid, typhus, chronic diarrhea, dysentery and so on. They died when the German camp administration was unable to care for them. The German and Japanese civilians who died by the hundreds of thousands in mass terror bombings died because the American and British, primarily, made a conscious decision to burn them. We have to thank the gods that there were not a lot of Jews living in Tokyo when the Americans turned their attention to their great cook-out there or we'd still be seeing American aviators being strung up or shot for “war crimes.” Reflecting on the double standards of all this, you begin to get an inkling of just how filthy the whole “holocaust” scenario really is.

Loompanics. What about the eyewitness testimony of the survivors?

Smith. The “eyewitness” testimony of holocaust “survivors” has become the most corrupt part of the holocaust story. Survivor testimony against Germans and others should be corroborated with other evidence like any other testimony. That's what revisionists demand, and that's why revisionists are so despised by these eyewitnesses and those who raise money for Israel using their corrupt testimony. It's not all corrupt, but plenty of it is. At Yad Vashem alone, which is the international center for Holocaust studies in Jerusalem, there are 10,000 to 20,000 false eyewitness testimonies about German atrocities against Jews — according to Yad Vashem's own archives director, Yitzak Irad. Elie Wiesel, the most widely known ex-internee in North America, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has written that there is eyewitness proof that at a Babi Yar Jewish cadavers spurted geysers of blood from their graves for months after they were buried. He tells this yarn with a straight face. He can afford to. Who's going to challenge him? He's a survivor. He doesn't tell us how those Jewish cadavers were able to pump that blood up through the dirt into the wild blue yonder. He doesn't say why, either. You don't have any idea how much I'd like to be able to do that stunt myself. I'd be willing to give up the ghost right now if I could be assured of having a few friends at the grave side to watch my spectaculum. Of course, I'm Gentile, so I don't suppose I would ever be able to pull off a caper like that one.

Loompanics.What about the Nuremberg Trials?

Smith.The International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg was a vicious parody of Western ideals of justice and legal procedure. If you want a quick look at the kind of documents employed by the Tribunal to hang Germans with get hold of Carlos Porter's The Holocaust: Made In Russia, which is a compilation of excerpts from the primary documents. The Soviet documents that prove that the Germans murdered thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forest is particularly convincing — but false from beginning to end. Recently the Polish Government issued a statement acknowledging that it was the Soviets who murdered its officers and intellectuals, not the Germans. I have a copy of the original Soviet documents translated into English if you'd like to see them. As revisionist scholarship begins to make its way into the university there will be a great scandal about the Nuremberg Trials and how corrupt they were and how corrupt our historians have been in covering it up all this while.

Loompanics. What has been your personal involvement with Holocaust revisionism?

Smith. By 1984, I understood that the history of the 20th Century would have to be rewritten. In July of that year, when the headquarters of the Institute for Historical Review (which even then was the leading publisher of Revisionist literature on the Holocaust) was burned to the ground in an arson attack, I was already working on the manuscript for Confessions. The same week it was burned down, I offered to become a public spokesman for the Institute. I suggested I publish a newsletter to be directed toward working journalists advising them of the falsehoods they were repeating in the press about the holocaust story. It was a pretty expensive project, the newsletter (Prima Facie) was distributed to some 4,500 print journalists across the country and was an utter failure. The last thing our reporters wanted was to think about verifying the stories they were handed from survivors, spokesmen for the Holocaust Lobby, or the academics. Next, I talked the Institute into supporting a media project whereby I would solicit telephone interviews to discuss the other side of the holocaust story on radio talk shows. This cost less that the newsletter and was more successful. I've been interviewed on radio and sometime sin TV some 200 times from one end of the country to the other, mostly by telephone. I've been banging away at it for almost three years. Now, together with an associate, I'm trying to put together a series of television interviews and college speaking dates. This will be a lot of fun. When I spoke at Ohio State last year there were thirteen death threats, a bomb scare, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'rith was in a frenzy. I place little notices in college papers that read: “Are the Gas Chambers Stories False? Is Open Debate Suppressed?” Students call or write and I send them information. It stirs things up nicely and I get to observe who supports free inquiry on our campuses and who works to crush it.

Loompanics.Have you had any previous involvement with suppressed literature?

Smith. In 1960-61 I was arrested, jailed, tried and convicted for selling a book banned by the U.S. Government, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. At that time the best people among the progressive forces supported my refusal to participate in censoring Miller's book. Today it's the progressives that work with such dedication to suppress the revisionist critique of Holocaust orthodoxy. The progressives will go to the wall for sexual freedom. What they balk at is free inquiry into the foundations of their own world view. Progressives supported the Roosevelt administration in its efforts to involve the U.S. in the European wars. To fight on the side of freedom against fascism, they encouraged an alliance with the Soviet Union, the most vicious totalitarian state in the modern world. To fight against racism, the progressives urged the Roosevelt administration to ally itself with the British Empire, which at that time held hundreds of millions of non-white peoples in racist subjugation. And it was the progressive forces that applauded most loudly the fraud and falsehood produced at the Nuremberg trials, which were instituted to give moral legitimacy to the debased, anti-human wartime policies of the Allied governments. Is it any wonder then that it's the progressives today who lead the attack against open debate on the holocaust with their puerile and hypocritical fixation on “fascism,” and “racism” and an “open society?” Holocaust revisionism adds to what we know about the progressives being a front for Stalinism. They still are. Who are the progressives? They're the people who tell the liberals what to think. Which explains a lot about what's going on in the universities today.

Loompanics.What are the three questions you are asked most frequently during your radio interviews?

Smith.What about the photographs? What about the eyewitness testimony? And what about anti-Semitism? In America it's widely believed that if you express doubt about even the craziest holocaust story, particularly if the person who relates it is a Jew, you are anti-semitic. That is, you despise all Jews everywhere for no reason other than that they are Jews. This is a childish proposition but one much admired by organizations like the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies and the so-called progressive forces generally. When you express doubt about something a German says, however, you are only doing what comes naturally.

Loompanics. Does it seem to you that some Holocaust revisionists have a hidden agenda? That is, is Holocaust revisionism, to one degree or another, really a cover for racist or anti-Semitic views?

Smith. Some Holocaust Revisionists do have hidden agendas, as a matter of fact. But you have put the question wrongly. Revisionist scholarship is one thing, what some people do with it is something else. There are individuals who are self-avowedly anti-Jewish who use revisionist scholarship as a weapon to beat up on Jews with. You really have to ask to ask yourself, why wouldn't they? Revisionist scholarship demonstrates that the Holocaust story is full of fraud and falsehood from beginning to end. If you want to attack Jews as a people, the best weapons you can get right now are being published by holocaust revisionists. Jewish extremists have worked for 40 years to make the holocaust story a Jewish story. It has become a Jewish story. It's a Jewish story rotten with lies, half-truths, false accusations, racial hatred, bigotry, willful ignorance, arrogance, self-righteousness and stupidity. The antisemites love this stuff. Why wouldn't they love it? The typical response to the appearance of revisionist scholarship on the campus or in the media is to denounce it as racist, antisemitic, anti-historical drivel. The next step is to suppress it, stonewall it or censor it. I have a suggestion for our professors and our journalists. Employ revisionist scholarship as a tool to remove from the Holocaust story all the fraud and falsehood that's in it. Afterwards there won't be anything left in the story that the dreaded antisemites can use as a weapon against Jews, and the story will be much shorter as well.

Loompanics. If it's true then that holocaust revisionism is often used as a cover for racist and antisemitic views, do you feel any guilt by association?

Smith. No, but I used to. That's the purpose of the accusation. To be fingered as a racist or antisemite is the most destructive thing that can happen to you socially, professionally and spiritually in this society. It's the new McCarthyism, but many times more powerful. It has the full backing of the progressive forces, which inform our liberals of what is moral and immoral in the society, who in turn inform the democratic masses of what is right and wrong. With few exceptions, conservatives and Republicans heed the same sources. It's tough to go up against the entire society, particularly when you understand that it is sincere when it condemns you.

Loompanics. What recent developments have taken place in revisionist scholarship?

Smith. The most interesting is a paper called The Leuchter Report. It consists of analyses of forensic samples taken from the walls of the alleged gas chambers at the Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek camps. The control samples were taken from the fumigation cubicles at the same camps. These little fumigation cubicles are acknowledged by all sides it have been used solely for the fumigation of clothing and objects. There is nothing in the literature claiming that these fumigation cubicles were used to kill people in. As it turns out there are no significant residues of the poison, Zyklon B, on the walls of the alleged gas chambers. There are one thousand (1,000) times more residues of Zyklon B in the fumigation cubicles than in the alleged gas chambers. The engineering work was done by Fred Leuchter Associates in Boston, while the chemical analysis was done by the Alpha Analytical Laboratories in Ashland, Massachusetts. You might have thought that similar tests were performed before the trials at Nuremberg but no one bothered because everybody knew that the gas chambers were real. Why bother proving it? What a bore. Besides, the British and the Americans dropped leaflets over Auschwitz several times in 1944 informing the internees there, as well as the administration, which must have been a little surprised at the news, that millions of human beings were being murdered in the camp in gassing chambers. When you have evidence like that, why get real evidence? In the event, Fred Leuchter Associates were sent to Auschwitz by German-Canadian Ernst Zuendel. Zuendel has been in the courts for years now trying to beat a prison rap for having distributed “false news” about an historical event, the holocaust. That is, literature demonstrating that the holocaust is a hoax. The most significant fall-out to date from The Leuchter Report is that David Irving, the British historian who is probably the most widely read historian writing in English, and who describes the report as “shattering,” has become a full-fledged revisionist on the holocaust and is now researching a book on Auschwitz. The walls are crumbling.

Loompanics. What are the strongest points you feel that holocaust revisionism makes?

Smith. Revisionist scholarship is asking questions. It encourages others to ask questions. Did Germans skin Jews to make lamp shades from their hides? If they did, where are the lamp shades? You don't have to be a brain surgeon to ask this question. Where are the lamp shades? Did Germans cook Jews to make soap from them? Where's the soap? If you tell me, like Nat Hentoff tells me, that in the Chamber of the Holocaust in Jerusalem there are three bars of soap made from “the tissues of Jews” on display then I want to know the history of this “Jewish tissue.” Where did the Chamber of the Holocaust get the tissue? Where was it produced? Who manufactured it? How has it been shown that the “tissue” is Jewish rather than Gentile? And so on. No such documentation exists. Revisionists are like the old lady in the hamburger commercial a couple years back. She's in the hamburger joint and is unhappy with her sandwich. There's a lot of bun but not much beef. She wants to know, where's the beef? These are not highly sophisticated questions that you have to go through the discipline of a university education to dream up. You don't have to be a Ph.D historian to ask them. What you have to be, is willing. So — where is there one scholarly or scientific paper that proves that gas chambers existed or that Zyklon B could have done what it is claimed it did? Where's the beef?

Loompanics. What are your personal political views? Contrast them with National Socialism and fascism.

Smith. When my play, The Man Who Saw His Own Liver, was produced in Los Angeles in 1983, the Los Angeles Times drama critic described it as the work of a “libertarian-anarchist.” Setting aside the labels, I reject the authoritarian ideal in every form, but particularly as it is expressed by the State.

Loompanics. The First Amendment seems to protect Holocaust revisionists from persecution in the United States, but some other countries have prosecuted revisionists for expressing their views–how would you comment on that?

Smith. I don't like it. It's a big subject. Revisionists or revisionist writings have been prosecuted or banned in West Germany, South Africa, France, Switzerland, Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and probably some others I can't recall at the moment. Too much to discuss here, I suppose. Revisionist writings are banned as well in all countries under the benevolent eye of the Soviets. But of course the Soviets are anti-Fascist, aren't they? I will only add that I have published one issue of a quarterly titled Revisionists Letters. A subscriber took his copy to West Germany with him earlier this year and when the West German border guards found it in his briefcase he was arrested, jailed, the magazine was confiscated and he had to pay a fine to get out on the street again. The authorities were particularly incensed by a cartoon in the magazine showing the Tenniel drawing of Alice eyeing the Caterpillar as he sucks on his hookah with a caption reading: “Alice observes eyewitness preparing to recall details of human soap factories.”

Loompanics. What response has your book received outside the revisionist community? When can we expect Part II?

Smith. None. But the Revisionist “community” is growing energetically. Part II of Confessions will be out in 1990.

Loompanics. Have you ever been threatened for expressing doubt about the holocaust story?

Smith. The threats come in bunches. I've been told by callers to radio interviews, on the air, that I am going to be offed. Sometimes the host protests a little, sometimes not, making me unsure how he would like to envision my future. I used to get calls from the “Irv Rubin Meat Packing Company” but I haven't heard from them for awhile. The most annoying occurred one morning when I entered my office with a lady typist. A fellow with a Yiddish accent was laying out a plan for my demise to my message recorder. The salient points revolved around how he and his associates were going to nail me when I was with my family so that my wife and children could watch me die. His preferred time of day seemed to be around breakfast time. The lady typist and I stood there listening to the fellow go on and when his message was finished she told me that she had a lot of ways to make trouble for herself without typing manuscripts for me in my office, and she quit. She was the best typist I ever had.

Loompanics. What do you see in the future for Holocaust revisionism?

Smith. Unbounded success. Not for the so-called revisionist movement but for revisionist scholarship. The holocaust is a hoax.

Loompanics.What keeps you going when you have to face so much hostility? Wouldn't it be easier to just drop the subject?

Smith. Interestingly, no. My subject isn't the holocaust story, which I am very bored with. My interest is in the ideals of free inquiry, an open society and, if you will, my own moral being. As a writer, how do I stand aside from the issues that I see corrupting public discourse, and thus the lives of my friends and neighbors? As a man, how do I stand aside from them? It's pointless to talk about motive. You can never get to the bottom of it. Almost thirty years ago, the night I got the word that a bookseller on Hollywood Boulevard was going to be arrested and prosecuted for selling Miller's Tropic, my first reaction was to take the book out of my store window. When I went to the window to take it out, something caused me to pause. I already had a couple of the books in my hands. There was something about what I was doing that I didn't like. I wasn't sure what it was. The next morning I took a walk along Hollywood Boulevard and looked over the display windows in the other book shops. Tropic wasn't in any of their windows any longer. That was good enough for me. I went back to my own shop and climbed into the display window but I couldn't bring myself to take out the books. Later that morning I tried it again but I couldn't make myself do it. That afternoon I was arrested by a couple of L.A.'s finest in plain clothes and the stage was set for the longest civil trial to have taken place in Los Angeles up to that time. It wasn't First Amendment idealism that made it impossible for me to remove Miller's book from my window. It wasn't professionalism or dedication to the book industry. It was shame. It made me feel ashamed to think of removing a book from my displays that I respected and that I had gotten so much pleasure and encouragement from. I had read Miller at a particularly tumultuous time in my life –there was a ruined marriage and a few other matters — and Tropic had been a wonderfully liberating experience for me, and I loved Henry Miller for having written it. It was the thought of betraying that love, I suppose, by denying it publicly if I should remove Tropic from my window, that made me feel the shame. I have never thought of it just this way before, but when the State put me to the test to declare myself publicly, I chose my heart's desire hands down and told the State to shove it along. I feel something similar for revisionist scholarship. While I have no love for the work, to not stand up for it now that I know what it is would make me feel ashamed. That's why I can't “just drop the subject.” Hostility is easy to face when the alternative is shame.

This interview dates from 1990 following publication of Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist, Part I. Michael Hoy was director of Loompanics Unlimited, Publishers. Unfortunately Loompanics is no longer publishing or selling books.