Letters

Faurisson Comments on Irving, Goebbels and Pressac

In the Jan-Feb. 1995 Journal (p. 15), David Irving quotes, as he does in his book Hitler's War, a handwritten note of Heinrich Himmler, dated Nov. 30, 1941, to Reinhard Heydrich. It reads: “Jew transport from Berlin. No liquidation.” This might induce some readers to think that this can only mean that usually, or sometimes, there were liquidations of a “Jew transport.”

At the conclusion of my own speech at the Twelfth IHR Conference (Sept. 1994), and after having heard Irving make mention of that note, I said that the German words were “Keine Liquidierung,” and simply could have meant that this particular transport did not include any individuals already scheduled for execution.

About Goebbels and the Wannsee conference of January 20, 1942, Irving writes (p. 16): “Although Goebbels did not hear in advance of the [Wannsee] meeting, you'll find in Goebbels' diary – in his entry of March 7, 1942 – that a copy of the well-known Wannsee conference protocol was sent to him.” And Irving adds: “Nobody else has spotted this.”

In fact this is already well known. As early as 1961, Raul Hilberg, referring precisely to this entry of March 7, 1942, in The Goebbels Diaries, as edited by Louis Lochner, had written: “One other agency, not previously represented in 'final solution' matters, had sent emissaries to the conference. That was the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels had received a copy of the protocol of the January 20 conference.” (R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Quadrangle, 1967 ed., p. 270.) He repeated this in the 1985 “revised and definitive” edition of this same book (published by Holmes & Meier, p. 441).

Irving also quotes a portion of the Goebbels diary entry of March 27, 1942. He checked the authenticity of that entry, and concludes (p. 17) that “there's no way anyone could have faked it.” I agree. I have often said that falsifications are rare, but misinterpretations quite common. For instance, I believe that certain Himmler sentences in his familiar October 1943 Posen speeches, which look suspicious to Udo Walendy and others, are in fact probably genuine. (I have not listened to the recordings.) The problem is that we must first consider the German words that look suspicious, then the surrounding, contextual words, then the entire text, and finally the circumstances of the production of the text.

In this entry Goebbels said: “Beginning with Lublin, the Jews are being expelled [abgeschoben] eastward from the General Government [occupied Poland]. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one, and not to be described here more closely, and not much will remain of the Jews themselves. Broadly speaking, one can probably say that 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work.”

In itself, this last sentence tends to show that the Reich Minister of Propaganda did not know for sure that there was a German policy to physically exterminate the Jews, either totally or in part. This is so awkward for exterminationist historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz or Raul Hilberg that when they quote this entry they either do not reproduce the actual sentence (as in the case of Dawidowicz in The War Against the Jews, 1975, p. 139), or even cleverly manage to omit it (as in the case of Hilberg in Destruction, 1967 ed., p. 266, and, 1985 ed., p. 406).

As early as 1953, Gerald Reitlinger quoted this sentence from Goebbels' diary, and expressed the view that the destination of the expelled Jews was probably Belzec: “The destination of these transports was described rather obliquely in Goebbels'diary entry of March 27th.” (Emphasis added.) (See: G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, Sphere, 1971 ed., pp. 165-166, 267-268.)

Leni Yahil, in her impressive book, The Holocaust (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), does not quote at all this entry of March 27, 1942. With regard to the deportation of the Jews, she writes (p. 293) that in 1941 “both Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg were pressing for vigorous action to deport the Jews from the Reich. There is reason to believe that Rosenberg wanted to oust the Jews as retaliation for the Siberian exile of the Germans living along the Volga.”

In order to understand what Goebbels really meant in his diary, it is necessary to cite other entries. Dr. Wilhelm SUiglich has put together some of them, providing interesting comments, although, in my opinion, he is, in passing, overly suspicious of the authenticity of some of them. (W. Staglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, Grabert, 1979, pp. 116-118; Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, IHR, 1986, pp. 87-89, where both the original German text and an English translation is provided.)

Arthur Butz helpfully points out that we must understand that “extreme statements were a pervasive feature of Nazi oratory and rhetoric.” (Which does not mean that Goebbels should be called a liar. See, in the same Jan.-Feb. issue of the Journal. Mark Weber's informative article on “Goebbels' Place in History.”) Butz also shows how, in time of war, the English likewise had their own brand of “oratory and rhetoric” along with “extreme statements,” which is “even more remarkable when one considers that they came from a nation noted for understatement. (A. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, IHR, pp. 69-72.)

Regarding Goebbels and the alleged extermination of the Jews, wartime rumors, “gas vans,” and the way Goebbels reacted to such Allied “atrocity propaganda” (Greuelpropaganda), everyone should read and carefully consider what Hans Fritzsche, head of the radio department of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, had to say during his testimony on the witness stand in the Nuremberg Trial, June 27-28, 1946. (See the original German text in Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Miltärgerichtshof, Vol. 17, pp. 191-201.)

We have to be careful with English translations, especially with even such a highly regarded historian as Raul Hilberg does not hesitate to translate “aufräumen,” which means “to clear away,” as “exterminate.” When Goebbels says, “1m Grunde genommen sind, glaube ich, sowohl die Engländer wie die Amerikaner froh darüber, dass wir mit dem Judengesindel aufräumen,” Hilberg wants us to believe that what is being said here is: “I believe both the English and Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riffraff.” (Destruction, 1967 ed., pp. 259; 1985 ed., p. 396.)

The orthodox story is that in his diary entry of March 27, 1942, Goebbels was alluding to “killing centers” such as Belzec. (See G. Reitlinger, above, and R. Hilberg talking about Globocnik's “killing centers” in Destruction, 1967 ed., p. 266; 1985 ed., p. 406.)

This, by the way, brings us to Jean-Claude Pressac, who has just published a new installment of his “discoveries” in an article in the French magazine Historia (“Enquete sur les camps de la mort,” Historia, Special issue No. 34, March-April 1995). Pressac writes of “incomprehensible things,” “strange things,” and “contradictions” in the orthodox story of the Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor camps, and states (p. 122): “The present history of those camps will have to be profoundly revised.”

Pressac now believes that at Belzec the Germans did not build execution gas chambers, but transformed delousing gas chambers into execution gas chambers! He claims that they did so “by addition of a big gasoline-powered motor producing carbon monoxide,” which is quite a piece of news because, according to the orthodox legend, Belzec gas chambers had a diesel motor.

Without giving his name, Pressac severely criticizes Michael Berenbaum, research director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Pressac repeats exactly what I said in 1993 about the Majdanek gas chambers, as portrayed in Berenbaum's book, The World Must Know. In his recent article, Pressac denounces “serious errors about the Majdanek gas chambers, presently circulated in massive doses in the USA, for example, by the Museum guide book, The World Must Know, of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.”

I remember James J. Martin saying that revisionism can be great fun.

Robert Faurisson
(March 24, 1995)
Vichy, France

A Skeptic's View of Irving

The Journal of Historical Review is to be congratulated for having the courage to publish David Irving's essay, “Revelations From Goebbels' Diary,” Jan.-Feb. 1995, even though it provides incontrovertible evidence to contradict the revisionists' conclusion that the Nazis did not intentionally liquidate Jews.

This essay provides additional data to my conclusion in my “Open Letter to Holocaust Revisionists” that David Irving is an outstanding documentarian and narrative historian, but leaves much to be desired as a theoretical or interpretive historian. Irving's essay was interesting, informative and well-written, but his interpretation of the above passage is startling, to say the least. Irving comments: “All he's [Goebbels] actually saying here is that the Jews are having a pretty rigorous time. They're being deported, it's happening in a systematic way, and not many of them are going to survive it.”

Say what? A “rigorous time',? “Deported”? This has to be the most conservative interpretation of the word “liquidate” I have ever read … I just cannot imagine that Irving really thinks this is what Goebbels meant. Please elaborate, Mr. Irving (or any other revisionists). I really am curious.

Michael Shermer
Editor-publisher
Skeptic magazin
Altadena, Calif.

Holocaust Education

Quite a bit of attention has been devoted recently to the campaign to impose “Holocaust education” in American public schools, including the portentously named “Facing History and Ourselves” program.

What exactly is the purpose of “Holocaust education”? Just what are the “lessons” of the “Holocaust”?

These who push such courses fuzzily try to relate the Holocaust story to homelessness in the United States today, disarmament, “tolerance,” alleged discrimination against homosexuals, the Vietnam war My Lai massacre, and so forth.

The Holocaust myth is used to impose a form of social blackmail, to silence opposition to schemes that destroy our civilization and obliterate our culture. But a growing number of Americans like us who know the truth will not be intimidated.

P. H.
San Mateo, Calif.

Significant Aspect Overlooked

While citing their reasonable objections, your three movie critics [May-June 1994 Journal] seem to have nearly overlooked the most significant aspect of “Schindler's List.” Spielberg made a big-budget film with a scene in which water, not hydrogen cyanide, came out of the Auschwitz shower heads – and was nevertheless praised, not attacked.

W.H.
Honolulu, Hawaii

Good Issue

The Sept.-Oct. 1994 Journal was one of the best ever, I think. Howard Stein's article, describing how a people dwelling on its status as victims finds that its fears or subconscious wishes tend to be fulfilled, is a classic.

Recently I read a review of a book by Michael Roth, Rediscovering History: Culture, Politics and the Psyche, about how history is the selective memory of those who recorded it, and of the need for a people to invent or fantasize their own collective past to give them a sense of group identity. It would seem that revisionism is fighting for much more than merely to bring history into accord with the facts.

From a Jewish point of view revisionism can be seen as an assault against their unifying myth and sense of identity as a people. It is understandably regarded as an attack against a communal sense of history in which Jews see themselves as distinctive among the peoples of the world because they have suffered uniquely.

I also liked the Journal article on Vilfredo Pareto. I was pleased to meet and talk with the author at the recent Twelfth IHR Conference, who told me that this article would be appearing in the forthcoming issue of the Journal.

Enclosed is a contribution to help with the publishing of the new books you mentioned. I hope there is enough support to keep the Institute viable, because I know how difficult it is to keep such an organization going on the receipts from the sale of books and other materials.

Unfortunately, there is not a very big market for truth in the world we live in. If someone could come up with a book entitled How I Made a Million Dollars by Understanding the 'Holocaust,' I am sure it would be a bestseller. This is not realistic of course, and anyway is not the Institute's purpose.

Again, congratulations on the Institute's excellent Journal, and my thanks to all those who contribute to it.

Terry A. Klingel
Homer, Alaska

Appreciation from Jesse Jackson

As I express my thanks for the wonderful gift (informational sheet on the “Holocaust”) that I received from you, I must first stop and take this opportunity to apologize for such a lengthy delay in acknowledging your letter…

Your gift was greatly appreciated … Again, I say “Thank you.”

(Rev.) Jesse L. Jackson
National President
National Rainbow Coalition, Inc.
Chicago, Ill.

Esteem from Bulgaria

I have the honor of introducing to you the Monarchist-Conservative Union of Bulgaria…. The Union was founded in 1990 by a small group of people sharing the same views, but today it has a substantial number of members and sympathizers across the country, as well as large political prestige and influence.

It follows these main lines:

1. To propagate and popularize among the Bulgarian people the monarchist and right-conservative political ideas;
2. To struggle with political means for the restoration of the ancient form of state rule in Bulgaria – the monarchist one …
3. To struggle with political means against the left ideological threat on every level in the name of the right principles based on the true all-Christian human values, and thus to help the national, social and spiritual growth of the Bulgarian people and the prosperity of our Fatherland.

We know your organization very well, hold in high esteem and share the ideological and political principles on which it is based, and in whose name it exists and works. Even in the magazine of the MCU “Logos” and in our newspaper “Royal Gazette” we have published information about you. Our sincere wish is, if possible, to build closer contacts, to establish firmer relations between ourselves, and eventually to cooperate in the future…

Ivan Marchevsky, President
Monarchist-Conservative Union of Bulgaria
Veliko Tarnovo
Bulgaria

Immersed in Literature

I am originally from Hungary, and every year I spend a couple of months there. I was surprised to find a total lack of revisionist literature. That such literature is not available there in bookstores is not surprising, of course, but it is remarkable that Hungarians are not aware of the existence of Holocaust revisionism.

I am not a historian, but a mathematician. In fact, history never interested me much, until the “Holocaust trial” of Ernst Zündel. Then I immersed myself in revisionist literature, and now would like others to know of it as well. I have translated several IHR leaflets into Hungarian, and would like to publish them.

J.D.
Ottawa, Ont.
Canada

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