Shameless Hollywood Handlers Exploit Failing Old Ladies—and Other Atrocious Scenes

The last few weeks have seen a renewed assault on revisionism in Hollywood, Washington, and New York, all venues which CODOH has targeted (so far) with modest success. First it was the glittering and schlocky Academy Awards presentation, at which “One Survivor Remembers,” the story of Anne Frank's helper Miep Gies, garnered the obligatory Holocaust Oscar.

Poor old Miep, who brought food to the Franks in their hideout in Amsterdam at some personal risk, was trundled out to prove that Anne Frank’s diaries, and thus the planned extermination of six million Jews, are as real as anything turned out in Tinseltown. Here's how the wire services told it:

“In faltering English, Gies, now in her 70s, still seemed profoundly astonished at attempts by revisionist historians to claim the Holocaust never took place.

“I want to ask [these] people. The last time I saw [Anne and her sister Margot] Frank was August 4, 1944. They left the house with the Gestapo and a few days later I saw them standing [on] the train for Auschwitz. What can you tell to people who say this is a lie?”

(Quoted in the Hackensack, NJ Record, March 27, 1996)

Revisionists don't dispute the facts of the Anne Frank story, nor do they take any comfort from the awful deaths of Anne Frank and her sister at Bergen-Belsen, or that of their mother elsewhere. They do contest the reality of a German policy of extermination of Jew's (after all, the Franks were all sent to Auschwitz, but none was gassed there), and revisionists have challenged the authenticity of the diary, which, largely due to revisionist pressure, has recently been re-issued in a much altered and augmented edition.

But since the lady asked, there's one thing, perhaps, her handlers should tell us: why neither the supposedly authoritative Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, in its comparatively exhaustive introduction, nor her own book, Anne Frank Remembered (Simon and Schuster, 1987), makes any mention of her seeing the Franks on a train, either to Westerbork (where by all accounts they were deported and held for a month), or to Auschwitz.

One good thing about being a survivor (or a member of the Survivors Auxiliary) – that ole memory gets better and better with age. One bad thing about being a revisionist: seeing how some – usually those with vested interests in the Holocaust fables – are driven to help old ladies lie because of revisionist successes.

Meanwhile, the politicians were gearing up to out ham the Hollywood set. On April 14 in New York City, Governor Pataki (who writes a regular, exclusive column for the rabid Jewish Press – Meyer Kahane's old paper) told a survivor-studded audience at Manhattan's posh Temple Emanuel that the writings of Holocaust revisionists are “anti-Semitic rubbish” (New York Post, April 15). It would probably be worth the governor's job to admit he'd read revisionist lit, but in any case this issue of Smith's Report is going to him in Albany. Both Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, also present, praised Holocaust “remembrance” as a weapon against persecution and inhumanity; each then enthusiastically endorsed Israel’s assault on Lebanon. (And yes, this issue of SR is going to City Hall in downtown Manhattan.)

Two days later, at the Capitol, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Holocaust revisionists. The vote was 420-0. According to the UPI (April 16, 1996), the House sent “a stern warning to revisionist historians who insist the genocide never took place.” Not yet having seen the full text of the resolution, we can't imagine what the warning might be. Do our lawmakers propose to abolish the First Amendment? Do they plan to fund a SWAT team for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Commission?

UPI's competitor, AP, struck a different note in its dispatch, and had textual ammunition to back it up. AP characterized the resolution as “deploring” revisionists, and cited that the House: “…deplores individuals in the U.S. or abroad who deny the historical reality of the Holocaust.”We checked our trusty old Webster's New Twentieth Century Unabridged (1950) and came up with this definition of “deplore”:

“1. to lament; to bewail; to mourn; to feel or express deep and poignant grief for.”

And remember, this wasn't for the victims, real and imagined; it was directed at the likes of us.

But somehow I don't think our esteemed representatives were literally weeping and wailing and tearing out their hair on the floor of the House. More likely, they were reading from a prepared script, like actors, and wailing on cue, like those professional mourners hired in some cultures to give the departed a fitting send-off.

The intended corpse at this particular funeral is freedom of expression for historical truth – and our solons [Ed.: Californian slang for senators] are finding out that it's the liveliest corpse since Finnegan's Wake. And not even the House of Representatives, 420 members weak, whether weeping or threatening, bullying or bellyaching, will put it to rest.

Your contribution of $450, or part of that sum, will help me pay the cost of sending a copy of this issue of Smith's Report to every member of the House of Representatives.