Letters

Carlos Porter on how to document collections of human skulls, document gassings anywhere, and document documents.

I see that we are back in the land of “may have” that we once visited with Charles Provan.

This story about Strathof and Joseph Kramer is the same old crap that William L. Shirer dished up over 30 years ago. If Kramer’s “confession” is supposed to mean anything, and if the “skull collection” is supposed to be a reality, then why doesn’t somebody dig up the documents (or the skulls) and show them to us? The evidence is available; the only problem is that the transcript to the Belsen Trial costs 35 cents a page to photocopy, and it is 3,000 pages long.

William L. Shirer’s reference to this story … is NMT 1, the Doctor’s Trial, which is crazy, because Kramer was hanged in his own trial, the Belsen Trial.

…

I think I have shown that none of these trials prove anything, because of the procedures used, and also because all defense evidence was simply ignored. But if we are really going to get all this old garbage hashed up again (“he gave me a bottle of salts. … I think they were salts of cyanide. . . .”) then why not get the transcripts, write to the National Archives for the documents, and show them to us?

The NMT trials are available on microfilm. The cost 200 bucks. If somebody can pay for David to go to France for 2 weeks, why can’t somebody pay to get the transcripts to these two trials, and then we can talk sensibly? For 1,500 bucks we can get an idea of what we are talking about.

The first question is, what is the source of a statement? Is it a document, or is it oral testimony? If it is oral testimony, I want to get it and read it, including the cross examination. If it is a document, I want to know what kind of document it is. Is it an “affidavit”? Is it a “copy”? Is it a “photocopy”? All authentic documents ought to be cross-reterenced in any case, so authentic documents can be traced.

In any case, I want a photocopy of it so that I can see it, and I want to know whether it is a photocopy of an original, or the photocopy of another photocopy. I also want to know where the original is. Otherwise, this kind of discussion is utterly useless.

I am not impressed by J.C. Pressac or the quotation of odd phrases like “Gasraum, gaskammer, Material zur Vergasung”, etc., because J.C. Pressac’s whole book on the crematories at Auschwitz is based on deliberate mistranslations of terms just like these. Pressac is a con-man, the smartest literary con-man of the 20th century. I have great respect for him—as a con-man. It’s an art form.

As I say, I don't know anything about the Belsen case except this; the transcript costs $1,200 plus shipping and insurance. The references for it are:

National Archives, Military Reference Branch, Suitland (NNRMS), Office of the Judge Advocate General, Record Group 153, File 12-459: Trial of Joseph Kramer.

The reason it’s so expensive is that nobody wants to see it.

Carl Hottelet on brain, heart, kidney and skull collections:

This afternoon your SR 21—Ave atque Vale!—came in. . . . Dave Cole’s piece is well reasoned and well written … all depends, of course on whether or not what he writes is based on facts. I’m certain he believes it to be so. . . and he may be right, though I am constrained to say that stories about mad scientists with brain collections, heart collections, kidney collections, and skull collections have aroused in me an almost invincible skepticism. It will be interesting to see how Monsieur Docteur Professeur Faurisson, rebuts . . . if he does.

Don Hirsh on the Faurisson / Cole exchange.

As Exalted Pundit of The Senator Joseph McCarthy Fan Club, my questions regarding holocaust revisionism were sometimes frustrated by what seemed to be a lack of objectivity on the part of exterminationists and revisionists alike. My impression was that if revisionists happened to [discover] evidence that supported the exterminationist premise, if only to a degree, they would fail to report it, a stance conducive to “proving” themselves correct, rather than pursuing the truth.

Thus, it was heartening to read the scholarly disagreement between Professor Faurisson and David Cole in your March issue. It was the best issue thus far.

Ideally, both men will remain above counterproductive egoistic factors in determining their views, and continue to regard the matter as a difference among friends.

Al Durette on David Cole, Robert Faurisson and was it “disrespectful?”

I see that in Smith’s Report, Supplement to #21, April 95, that you characterize David Cole’s 16-page essay on Robert Faurisson as “disrespectful.” I re-read Cole’s essay carefully to see if I could find anything that seemed to me to be disrespectful, and I couldn’t. David’s statement on page 2, “many of the points Faurisson has made about Krema I are dangerously fraudulent” made me sit up, but the statement seems well supported by Faurisson’s misrepresentations of the steam autoclaves as delousing chambers (discussed by Cole on page 3), and by Faurisson’s substitution of “gas chambers” for “ovens” (p. 5) in his conversation with Mr. Michael of the Auschwitz Museum.

… there could conceivably be some non-fraudulent explanation of these two matters. E.g., is it certain that the steam autoclaves are just that, or is there room for disagreement about what they are? Is it somehow possible that Mr. Michael made both statements, but that Faurisson found no opportunity to report the more interesting gas chamber statement until 17 years after it was made? (Or did Faurisson report it elsewhere, and has Cole been sloppy—or fraudulent—in not saying so?). Let Faurisson respond in detail to all of this so that we all might be enlightened.

If Cole feels that the evidence (only some of which he would have an opportunity to share in 16 pages) is overwhelming that these two matters could only be examples of fraud, then I see nothing disrespectful in his saying so. …

I hope you will take my comments in the friendly spirit in which they are offered.

Come to think of it, perhaps by “disrespectful” you only meant to convey the [fact] that Cole's essay is not laudatory! (?)

Andrew Allen on one reason why it will benefit Willis Carlo to see the Institute for Historical Review destroyed.

Many revisionists wonder about the series of vicious personal attacks Willis Carto is making against long term revisionists like Ted O’Keefe, Mark Weber, and Bradley Smith as well as Carto’s absurd claim that the IHR has been taken over by agents of the ADL. It is clear that the missing millions of the Farrel estate explain these attacks.

Jean Farrel was the granddaughter of Thomas Edison and was very wealthy. She had an estate of over $17,000,000. Much of the estate consisted of precious gems, gold coins and bearer stock certificates that were place in safe deposit boxes around the world.

All available evidence, including court records from North Carolina and Switzerland, make it clear that the Farrel Estate was meant for revisionism and the IHR Only one or two percent of the 17 million ever went to the IHR. The rest has disappeared.

It appears that Willis Carto filed the minutes of various fictitious meetings of the Board of Directors of The Legion for the Survival of Freedom [the controlling legal entity for IHR and Noontide Press] which gave him authority to act as an agent of the IHR. The assets of the Farrel estate were distributed to Carto or his associates when the IHR tried to take Carto’s deposition to obtain an accounting. Carto “took the 5th” on the grounds that his answers could lead to criminal prosecution or liability.

If the IHR is run legally and properly, then Carto will have to account for the millions of dollars that are missing. If the IHR is destroyed, Carto will have no one asking him for an accounting.

Sinister Foxx, Jr. on Smith’s Report, on Smith himself, and on why Smith should be lynched by revisionists.

You are the only editor I know who is not afraid to mention and describe in detail your failures, not only insignificant errors but major failures (example: the Rhode Island radio program). This is extremely refreshing and educational and [encourages] progress.

I love your position on Zuendel. He gets angry with me because like you I point out that nazis were anti-libertarians. Moreover, I stress they were [dumb], e.g., laying off 200,000 Polish teachers in September 1939 and in not dissolving collective farms in Ukraine, this last being the major reason they lost W.W.II. They were also brutal toward Jews and others.

I love your dissynchronous mixture of high-falutin’ and erudite language with simple spoken language. Extremely refreshing technique.

Re the University of Miami: You brilliantly turned defeat into a joke. From a historical perspective, and objectively and heartlessly, you should by lynched by revisionists. They returned your ad money to you, $288, and you generated $2,000,000 in research and educational funds for exterminationists. Why? Because your ad was stupid, particularly the one sentence I warned you about: “.. . the Museum displays no convincing proof whatever of homicidal gassing chambers, and no proof that even one individual was “gassed” in a German program of “genocide.”

Because of this single sentence at the beginning of your ad, reasonable people did not read the rest of the text and you got no converts! Instead, this ad will, for decades, create new exterminationists backed by the Ziff millions.

James P. Hogan on why Hemingway’s ex, reporter Martha Gellhorn, could report on “gas chambers” in September 1944 when revisionists claim the myth wasn't established until after the war.

A major thrust of revisionist writers is that the suggestion of homicidal gas chambers was first made to State Department officials by Jewish activists during the war years, but rejected as unsubstantiated allegations. Attention is drawn to the fact that no reference is made to them by the otherwise excellently informed Allied intelligence services, Red Cross, or Vatican agents. Neither are they mentioned in the diaries or memoirs of war leaders such as Churchill and Eisenhower. The myth was shaped, we are told, after the war during the Nuremberg trials, and subsequently became the official historical line.

Enclosed is a copy of an article titled “Death of a Dutch Town,” by the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, which appeared in Colliers magazine in October, 1944. On the third page there appears a description of gas chambers operating just as has been later depicted. The questions that arise, of course are: (1) If none of the Allied leaders or intelligence services knewof such events in the middle of 1944, how did this reporter know? And (2) How could the SS guard have described such things at this time if they weren’t happening, and the story wasn't fabncated until much later?

(SR has a photocopy of this article. The text is clear, the photos are unreadable, but are not pertinent. If you want to look at it drop me a post card saying so.)

E.K.S. Judge on the weakness of confrontation and violence in changing men's thinking.

There is a sadness about your “last” newsletter that haunts me. . . . Maybe God is trying to tell us (at times like these) that we have unknowingly finished one phase and are entering (or should be) another. These are days of Resurrection: prime time if there ever was a prime time. We must make good use of it.

Put your thinking cap on, Bradley. Better yet, open your heart. Do you think God is not looking for good men at a time laden with such favorable [possibilities]?

Jews are worried. Worried people are open to suggestion. Isn’t there some effective way of reminding them that Christians are commanded not to retaliate, for that’s the realm of God? . . . They have painted themselves into a corner and so have we to a certain extent.

I’m glad to learn you re “not going away.” There is plenty of work to be done but maybe of a different kind. Good forces don’t always flow along in rational ways.

At least they don’t seem rational to us of finite mind.

There is a lot of work crying to be done among the Muslims. They are not good at the art of informal, communication. Enclosed is a sample of a Muslim publication on the eastern seaboard [New Trend, Kingsville, MD]. Could you cooperate with Kaukab Siddique [it’s editor] in some way? He has a universal spirit, courage and a (non-violent) drive to change things in a global way.

When Kaukab was a boy he noticed his father emulating Hitler, to the point of growing a similar mustache. His father saw Hitler as the only force resisting global economic control…. Interesting that that feeling should arise in far off Pakistan fifty years ago.

Jesus Christ gave us a much more practical suggestion than Hitler’s [of confrontation and violence]: care for one another and your problems disappear. . . . Our war today is a spiritual war and using negative forces in combat is taking it out of its rightful realm. The new Jerusalem mentioned in Scripture is not a turbulent place on the map of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is a change in men’s hearts. . . .

Let’s have some of the “good news.” Not just the bad. There is plenty of it out there. The young, progressive, “sassy” Blacks (like L. Farrakhan) are part of it.

Mary Lucas on the necessity for patience and understanding and the dangers of the “hardening of outlook” and of friendship among revisionists.

Having just leaned about the “clash” between David Cole and Robert Faurisson, I feel very sad and concerned. . ..

The hardening of one’s outlook on the world or one’s explanation of specific events may have various causes. One of them must be a lack of sophistication when it comes to dealing with the world. A well known example, I suppose, is Luther. He concluded his indictment of the Catholic Church before his judge, the emperor Charles V, with “Here I am, I cannot help it, God help me,” meaning, 'I have come to the conclusion that reform is necessary and my good conscience does not allow me to consider any compromises.' .. .

Given the lack of direct experience with the human and political background [in Europe] in those times, I wonder if David Cole thinks of all the right questions to ask in order not to be misled. The literature of the times, especially the original state sponsored educational writings, show very clearly the profile of the [Nazi] ideology. The indoctrination was idealistic, simplistic and in many ways stupid in my view, but it has nothing in common with the image projected today. That does not mean however that crimes were not committed by the state and particular people. It is just the whole wrapping of the atrocity stories that looks so disingenuous.

If empathy with the victims [plays] a role in David Cole’s assessment of the documentation, that is perfectly comprehensible, but so is Faurisson’s bitterness when asked to give more evidence than his opponents. The victims of yesterday have been the masters since 1945—throughout the Western World. When emotions are involved, everybody is liable to err and there is just no antidote to it but a comparable emotional involvement, which in the case of this issue would be the feeling that the search for the truth is an important human value.

If people come together over a common goal like [revisionism], they tend to develop friendships and a warm feeling of solidarity and purpose, and their closeness may increase under outside pressure. But I think that the impression of friendship is a danger for thecommon undertaking. The nearer you feel as friends, the more agreement you expect. Worse even, the more the emotional involvement grows in the group and around the project, the more the issue is liable to become one of faith.

Revisionism has had and still has to struggle so hard not so much because the issue of the history of the Jews under the Nazis feeds into some material interests but because the historical account itself is largely one of faith. It is a question of faith not only for those who were victimized and those who identify with them as second-generation survivors, but also for all those who have integrated into their picture of the world this particular tragedy as it has been presented to them since their early childhood days.

So while I would plead with David Cole to have patience with Faurisson’s occasional closures (of mind), taking into account that the other side has been strictly dogmatic for the past 50 years, I cannot agree more with Cole when he reminds Faurisson of the need to continue explaining one’s insights to others and not ask them just to believe in one’s own veridiction.