Letters

Great Impact

I will be 87 on my next birthday. During my life I have seen so many promising organizations come and go. I hope this will not happen with the IHR. Mind you, in the time you have been with us, from 1978, the Institute has made an impact greater than many other organizations. Long may you continue.

R.R.
Gateshead, England

In Awe

I must say I did have a soft spot for the Journal's old format, but I welcome the change. The current format is both pleasant and practical. I'm in awe of your capacity to keep up such a high standard both in presentation and content.

Do keep up the great work as so much depends on your survival. Here in Australia, things seem to be getting more and more “tight.”

P.M.
Mundaring, W. Australia

Western Self-loathing and the Cult of Victimhood

Having received from you several letters and copies of The Journal of Historical Review, it seems appropriate to acknowledge your kindness. I was gratified to see the references to my work and to my friends in the review essays by Andrew Clarke [Sept.-Oct. 1994 issue], as well as the touching eulogy for Murray Rothbard [May-June 1995 issue].

As you might imagine, there is much in your publication that pleases me. The critical discussion of liberal and neocon dehumanization of the Germans is right on the money, though by now the dehumanization has been expanded to include all sorts of other groups which our journalistic-media elites don't like. You and your Journal do succeed in exposing liberal-neocon bigotry, and on this point there is no difference in our stands.

Where we do differ is on the question of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry. Having known hundreds of European Jews who lost families to the Nazis and having heard eyewitness accounts of SS atrocities, I cannot treat Nazi butchery as a fraud. I won't dispute exact numbers or whether two million Jews were shot rather than six million gassed.

More to the point, you have picked the weakest, not the strongest, ground on which to fight the victimological Left. To dispute the mass murder of Jews, by raising questions not only about the numbers and instruments of execution but about the reality of the atrocity, will evoke inevitable outrage; and there are enough people out there who suffered under Hitler to make that outrage seem justified.

The point to be made is not that Nazi butchery was trivial or fictitious, but that disgusting characters are using it to obscene ends. One can no longer even be sure who was or was not affected by Nazi persecution. The Holocaust Museum has done to slain Poles what the Jewish lobby has accused you of doing, denying the suffering of Nazi victims. Meanwhile, the homosexuals have received co-victim status with the Jews, thanks to Jewish liberals like Tony Kischner and Alan Dershowitz.

The victimizers are no longer simply Nazi thugs, but all of Christendom, which even [“Christian Coalition” executive director] Ralph Reed now finds complicitous in the Holocaust. Thus, American and European Christians who opposed Hitler were part of the genocidal culture that produced Auschwitz. By contrast, all Jews, even American ones who avoided service in the Second World War, have been ascribed victim status.

Unfortunately, Western self-hatred seems so deep that even without Nazi crimes or a Jewish liberal establishment, it would continue to fester. There is always guilt about blacks or homosexuals that would fill the void if the Holocaust issue went away. Besides, there are loathsome liberal countries – e.g., Holland and Sweden – which are free of influential Jewish journalists. The Jewish and Holocaust factors do not seem necessary to explain the self-loathing combined with self-indulgence which characterizes our culture. If people are bent on cutting off their heads, any ax will do.

I trust you will take these counsels in good cheer. My own sense of the matter is that one must avoid feeding grist to the mill of ones enemies, particularly those with power.

Paul Gottfried
Dept. of Political Science
Elizabethtown College
Elizabethtown, Pa.

Prof. Gottfried may not disagree as much as he thinks with revisionist scholars such as Paul Rassinier, Robert Faurisson and David Irving. No serious historian disputes that large numbers of Jews were killed or otherwise lost their lives as direct and indirect consequence of German (and Axis) wartime policy. Gottfried writes that he “won't dispute exact numbers or whether two million Jews were shot rather than six million gassed.” Well, nailing down precisely such things is what responsible historians do – however unpopular their investigations may be.

Whatever the precise number of Jewish victims, abundant and growing evidence shows that much of what we've been told about the Holocaust is untrue or greatly exaggerated. We now know that numerous specific Holocaust claims – accusations that were once “proven” at Nuremberg and authoritatively propagated – are simply not true. That aside, we do agree on the role that the Holocaust story now plays in Western society, and that this is part of a larger, self-destructive pathology.

– The Editor

Education Essential

The Holocaust story defames not only Germans, but all people of Germanic heritage. More broadly, the Holocaust story is used to defame white Europeans and Christians. Precisely because the Holocaust story is the most venomous lie propagated continually around the world by an international cult, exposing it (and its many ramifications) is critically important. It is the Institute's most important work.

Gentiles must be reeducated to the beginning of written history. They must learn, for example, why rulers of so many different realms, in such diverse historical eras, resolved to disenfranchise (not exterminate) Jews, removing them from all positions of influence in political, cultural and economic life.

L.M.
Carmel, Calif.

Forgotten Victims

In “Who Bombs Children?” (July-August 1995 issue), Nicholas Strakon writes of the bombings in World War II and in Vietnam. But one must also remember the bombings in Iraq, and the many children who are still suffering in that country as a result of US policy.

Y.S.
Le Vesinet, France

Not Mentioned

The piece by Joseph Sobran in the July-August Journal, “The Holocaust as Excuse,” was outstanding, but it contained at least one important error in the sentence, “How strange in the modern world, to ban opinion about a historic fact!” Alas, it is not just a matter of banning opinion. Opinion is one thing, but research, scientific research at that, is another matter, and that has been banned.

The fight against historical revisionism is not just a matter of “banning.” It is also a matter of physical attacks on those who question Holocaust material. Sobran did not mention these.

Charles Weber
Tulsa, Okla.

Considerable Element

In the September-October Journal, Dr. Oluwatoyin, in reviewing the Lipstadt book, has a passage [p. 41] that could give the impression that it is an established fact that I claimed that “Jews have had … control over the media after the war.” I never made such a claim. It is obvious that the Jewish element in the media is considerable, but “control” is too strong a word. Should it be “domination”? “Significant influence”? I will leave the haggling to those who think it is important to settle the matter.

Arthur R. Butz
Evanston, Ill.

Reason and Ignorance

On a Compuserve historical forum, I used to great success the reference material on Leuchter and Pressac I picked up from your Web site. It was a bombshell on the opposition.

Maintaining the revisionist position in a debate is easy, I notice, because it's based on science, reason and a healthy attitude of skepticism. Being an engineer myself, I'm very much at home with that. What is depressing and virtually insurmountable, however, is the exterminationists” Khomeniite emotionalism: “Believe it or die.” Reason does not overcome that.

I like [Austrian engineer Walter] Lüftl's citation of Schopenhauer in his report [Winter 1992-93 Journal], which makes the point that reason cannot overcome invincible ignorance.

[by Internet]
R.K.
Canada

Activism In Denmark

I have just been connected to the Internet. Today I have been reading some of your IHR material on your Web site.

There is no problem receiving it here in Denmark. I have, as you may know, translated five IHR pamphlets into Danish, and distributed hundreds of copies. I have also read them on a small radio station broadcasting in the greater Copenhagen area. Altogether with my added commentaries I talked about revisionism for more than two hours in four lectures. Some of them were even repeated.

[by Internet]
K.O.
Denmark

A Great Favor

You are doing this nation a great favor by telling it how it is. I appreciate your easy-to-read facts and figures. Keep up the unending work. Hopefully the internet will not be censored, and ideas will continue to be freely expressed.

[by Internet]
M.H.
Salinas, Calif.

Congratulations

Congratulations on Martin's article about the Mafia and Weber's article about the Belsen camp in the May-June 1995 Journal. This is the best issue I've seen for a long time.

C.P.
Sart Les Spa, Belgium

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