Letters

The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate, is one of the best revisionist articles I have read. It has the additional advantage of being in leaflet form. I put them in the postage-free return envelopes I get with my junk-mail. You used to advertise this leaflet in Smith’s Report. Why don’t you still do it? And send me another 100 copies.

Bill Reedy, Arizona

[It got away from me. Big mistake. I've taken care of it. See page five, lower right. Thanks.]

I can’t help but notice that the name of the group for which CODOH is an acronym keeps swinging back and forth between the Committee for Open Debate of the Holocaust, and the Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust Story. Which is it? Open debate has a decisive ring to it, and the context has always made clear that its meaning is: No laws or other state intimidation of dissent from Holocaust orthodoxy; no blacklists and boycotts of Holocaust revisionists by “private” publishers, publications, distributors, universities and the like.

Open discussion has a weaseling sound to it. If it’s in use because CODOH buys the idea that “Open Debate” equals an endless name calling match with the obfuscators in the press and other special-interest groups, that’s a victory for the obscurantists of the Holocaust cult. Open Debate means freedom of speech, not logic-chopping and insult, Talmudic or otherwise. So, Open Debate—Open Dis-cussion—which is it?

Stephan Gallant, New Jersey

[All right. Open Debate. I’ll fix it.]

Well, as I read your newsletter each month, I find it interesting to watch how you manage to continue tilting at the Holocaust Windmill, exposing your neck to the axeman’s blade, and seem to take delight in the risk. I cannot help but be intrigued. Do you realize we go back almost forty years? Since you were a bookseller on Hollywood Boulevard. I think if I were as single-minded of purpose as you, I would be wealthy today.

H.M., California

[The other night I sat at Mother's bedside and together we watched a remake of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights on television. I wax astonished by Heathcliff’s passionate, life-long obsession—his life, not hers, for she died in childbirth while still young— for Cathy. There is something gigantic about it. It's hair-raising. Later, as I was preparing for bed myself, thought recalled a David Mamet essay on theater where he defines “character” as being illustrated through repetition of the same response to different, even unrelated situations. Then there is John Weir, who has taken on our fax and email outreach programs. He ends each of his e-mail communications with a quote from Nietzsche: “It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.” Thought was adding up these observations in a burst of logical free association. In each instance, regardless of its roots, there was the example of persistence, for better or for worse. Setting aside the “great men” business with regard to myself I began reflecting on how for twenty years I have pursued one idea—one ideal really—through thick and thin.

The ideal that intellectual freedom should be available to all of us, not just the elites, the politically correct, and the special interest groups. Tying intellectual freedom to the Holocaust controversy was a rotten career choice, but I have never regretted making it. Like Heathcliff, my infatuation with the light of my life is without limit, no matter how peculiar it appears to others. Like character in Mamet’s dramatic thesis, my one reaction to every attempt to suppress open debate on the H. controversy is a demand for more intellectual freedom. The desire for intellectual freedom is a great sentiment, but you do not have to be a great man to desire it or to work for it. You can be an ordinary man, persistent in following your ideal.]

We are, I surmise, about the same age. I, too, was in service during the Korean war, but assigned to the Army of Occupation in Germany (2nd Armored Div.). You might be interested to know that, while I saw no combat, I garrisoned at the Foch Kasserne in Bad Kreuznach. During the winter of 1945-46, B.K. was the site of an infamous “Rhine Camp” where—as I soon learned—some 10,000 German POWs died of exposure, malnutrition, and/or dysentery. In 1953 we were told it was a “isolated incident.” I believed that true until the publication in 1991 of James Bacque’s Other Losses.

[When I was your age I was a lot farther behind the curve than you on this one. I didn't hear of the camps at all until James Bacque.]