Letters

More Letters

I recently received the second volume of David Irving's Churchill series, which looks magnificent. I now have to find the time to do justice to it.

Also, on the latest Journal, unless it's my imagination, the space made available for readers' letters seems to have been reduced significantly. If so, my input would be to see it restored to carrying the number of letters it used to. The mix of views and reactions was always interesting to read.

Jim Hogan
[by email]

Those Furtive Holes

Thanks for the latest Journal (20, nos. 5/6 [September-December, 2001]), which I read enthusiastically from cover to cover. I agree that the article by Brian Renk (“Convergence or Divergence?: On Recent Evidence for Zyklon Induction Holes at Auschwitz-Birkenau Crematory II”) covers a most important “seemingly insignificant” issue. Please allow me to make one or two remarks on this very well-researched and -written piece.

Renk gives a good definition of “convergence of evidence” on p. 34: “a process of evaluation by which independent strands of evidence… are said to indicate a common conclusion…” and he shows how some researchers, in particular Robert Jan van Pelt, have distorted the evidence: van Pelt tries to make the openings smaller than what was stated by his favorite witnesses, Henryk Tauber and Michal Kula. The author also gives much weight to the divergence in interpretation of the evidence for the “openings” (which of course is another thing altogether from “convergence of evidence”). Nevertheless, the descriptions of the wire mesh devices given by Tauber and Kula are pretty much in agreement and so would seem to constitute “convergence of evidence,” especially if they were independent.

Russ Granata has placed Carlo Mattogno's article on the “holes” in its English version, “No Holes, No Gas Chamber(s): An Historical-Technical Study of the Holes for Introducing Zyklon B in the Roof of Leichenkeller 1 of Krema II at Birkenau,” on his website ([…site now defunct; now at http://codoh.com/node/1750]). Mattogno shows convincingly that not only are the claims of Kula and Tauber spurious but that fraud was most likely committed by the examining magistrate, Jan Sehn, on March 15, 1947, at the trial of Höss in Poland. I found John Ball's interpretation of the marks seen on the roofs of the Leichenkeller in the aerial photographs as possible CIA “forgeries” very unconvincing (why do this rather than show dots of “people” lined up for the “gas chambers”?). Mattogno expounds on Kenneth R. Wilson's suggestion of “discolorations”: darker bitumen under the thin layer of cement shows through when the latter begins to disintegrate. Much more plausible!

There is a fair amount of overlap with Renk's article, but I think that Mattogno's, with its thorough use of sources (in particular from the Zentralbauleitung) is the more incisive, and it would be good to see it – perhaps after some editing – in the JHR. (For example, some details could go into the footnotes for easier reading.)

All the other articles in the Journal were interesting too, especially Mark Weber's on Wilhelm Höttl and the reviews. I can understand the disappointment over R. B. Stinnett's study, yet it would be most interesting to know just how much of the Japanese code the U.S. was reading on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. Daniel Michael's reviews of the latest books on Barbarossa give the impression that discussion on who preempted whom in this war may enter the mainstream before Holocaust revisionism does.

Costas Zaverdinos
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Technical Arguments

I enjoyed reading the copy of the Journal you sent me (20, nos. 5/6 [September-December, 2001]). Keep up the good work, especially with somewhat technical articles such as Brian Renk's. The technical arguments are the key to unraveling the hoax – and must never be sold short.

In the advertisement for Germar Rudolf's Dissecting the Holocaust on the inside back cover of that issue, the title of my chapter is incorrectly given as identical to the title of my 1984 essay, which appeared in JHR 5, no. 5 (Winter 1984-5). The correct chapter title is “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture, Absurd for Murder.” This chapter is quite different from my earlier essay, and I want people to recognize that, and to read it.

Friedrich P. Berg
Scottsdale, AZ

Revising Revisionism's Reviser

I was quite astonished to read “New Light on Dr. Miklos Nyiszli and His Auschwitz Book” (JHR 20, no. 1 (January-February 2001)) by Charles Provan, whom you describe as a “revisionist who believes in the gas chambers,” or as he describes himself “a believer in the revisionist method.” The work was so ridiculous as to be unworthy to be published in your journal, unless it was there to prove how pitiful even moderate exterminationists have become.

Provan clearly sets out to prove that Nyiszli has been misrepresented, even though he suggests that he already knows the book is bogus by stating: “I was proceeding under the hypothesis that Nyiszli's book had in fact been written by someone else.”

After exhaustive research Provan came to the same conclusion that revisionists had before him: the book was rubbish. Thereafter, however, he completely ignored the revisionist method to which he ascribes, and gives us the gem of wisdom that the book was not a nonsensical extravagance at all but an “historical novel.” An oxymoron if ever there was one! Instead of simply admitting that revisionists were quite correct all along, he seems suddenly to feel that he has strayed from friendly territory and come too close to the revisionist camp. He almost appears to feel sorry for his exterminationist friends, and to be making an effort to soften the blow.

Revisionists have a deserved reputation for calling a spade a spade and not suddenly changing direction when research seems ready to deliver an unwanted result. I understand that Mr. Provan deserves credit for debating the undebatable, but for my money you seem so grateful for his willingness to debate that you forgive him far too much.

Paul Jones
[by email]

Revisionist Pied-Noir

Dr. Faurisson's mention of Germany in the Hitler years was most interesting (“An Imaginary Holocaust May Lead to a Real Holocaust,” JHR 20, no. 1 [January-February 2001]). Perhaps one day it will be possible to discuss objectively what Hitler and the National Socialist regime accomplished, in six short years, on the social front. As a pied-noir (a European from Algeria) born in 1943, I grew up in isolation from the anti-Nazi frenzy that exists in Europe to this day. From 1955 to 1962 we were also occupied with a guerrilla war against the Arab terrorists of the FLN [National Liberation Front (of Algeria) –Ed.), who had the total support of the UN and the U.S.A., so we had other concerns than living in the past.

If your readers would like to know what happened to us and to the Arabs faithful to France, they can learn by visiting the website: www.algerie-francaise.org. I have translated several pertinent documents which may be read at the site's English-language page. The website also displays photographs of the atrocities; the worst pictures will never be published.

Forty years later, we who had to leave Algeria must still endure the insults of the left, the FLN, and their fellow travelers. What brings us hope is that more and more of the generation that was born in France after 1962 or were babies at that time is interested in learning more about what we had to suffer, not only from the terrorists of the FLN but also from the secret service and police of Degaulle's French government. This is an area of history that also needs revising before my generation dies off and there is nobody left to tell of our losses, human and material.

I have been a revisionist since 1961, when I began to read interviews of Paul Rassinier in the weekly, Rivarol. I already knew a lot, thanks to my father's friends, and I haven't ceased to learn.

We are grateful for the IHR and the Journal, since it is becoming harder and harder in France to write anything objective on the history of the Second World War. Best of luck to all of you.

Alexander Siaus
Australia

[The displacement from Algeria of its European colonists, many of whose families had been there for generations, and the terrible vengeance exacted on numerous Arabs loyal to France is one of the many tragedies of the twentieth century, and Degaulle's policy of outwardly reassuring the pied-noirs while working surreptitiously to abandon French rule in Algeria was certainly duplicitous. It should be said, however, that Algeria's Arabs and Berbers suffered, too, and there are notable revisionists who have favored and supported Algerian self-determination, whatever the shortcomings of the FLN. What makes the situation tragic, as with so many national liberations (or rebirths) that have been intertwined with terrorist tactics, draconian reprisals, and wholesale uprootings of long-settled peoples, is that there is usually some justice on each side, and on each it is very often the innocent who have paid the biggest price. Those who would diabolize the pied-noirs of French Algeria, as has long been the custom among certain jackals of the French left, would do well to recall that. –Editor]

Likes Our looks

The latest issue of the JHR came yesterday. I like the new typefaces, and the overall appearance is much improved. I read Mark Weber's article on [Wilhelm) Höttl with great interest and appreciate the background info on this unreliable witness. He was as bad as Tauber and Kula and Olère et al.! Again, your article shows that Butz was amazingly way out front in 1976.

Robert Countess
[by email]

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