The latest effort to combat “Denial”, i.e., Holocaust Revisionism. (Part III)

By Wilfried Heink

The second study in chapter one is by Dr. Moshe Zimmermann, Prof. for contemporary history and head of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The essay is titled “Massenmord durch Giftgas in der Wahrnehmung der Überlebenden” (How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas).

Before we go into this, the book this article is part of is about new studies on killing with poisonous gas by the Nazis, and the denial by Revisionists of said killings. The first article by Mr. Evans contributed nothing to the issue supposedly under discussion, the title of the second seems to follow that trend. One has to wonder why we need to know how the alleged murder by poisonous gas was perceived by the, ahem, survivors. But let’s not judge a book by its cover and see what Mr. Zimmermann has to say.

He starts out by informing us that he will concentrate on how Jewish survivors perceived this mass murder, specifically Israelis, even though only a small percentage of actual survivors live in that country. But, so Zimmermann, the whole of Israeli society, starting with the “Survivors of the second generation”, consider themselves to be a society of survivors. And in their opinion they represent the whole of Jewish society (Doch die gesamte israelische Gesellschaft, mit den „Überlebenden der zweiten Generation“ beginnend, betrachtet sich als eine Gesellschaft von Überlebenden. Darüber hinaus geht diese Gesellschaft davon aus, dass sie die gesamte jüdische Gemeinschaft repräsentiert).[1]

Comments: The last part makes it clear that “surviving the Holocaust” has turned into a social exercise and has nothing to do with actual numbers. But the part about percentages is interesting, because one needs to ask: A percentage of what? In a Ha’aretz article of December 29, 2005, we read: “As of 2005, of the nearly 400,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Israel, 40% live below the poverty line…”. This article has since disappeared, all I have is the printout of a portion of it. Some of it is still available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_Holocaust — look under “Survivors welfare in Israel” (footnote 7 refers to the disappeared Ha’aretz article). And this article talks about cancer/colon cancer as a result of starvation — clearly just about actual survivors. Thus, if 400 000 is a small percentage of the total of survivors, how many did “survive”? Why do we have no exact figures when they surely must exist because Germany is paying retribution to each of the survivors? I have seen numbers as high as 4 million [2], but it is said that some of those were double claims. Possibly so, but why the big secret?

Fact is, no historian ever concerned himself with the issue of how many survived, and many did survive the war.[3] In this essay, links are provided to works by Messrs. Kulischer and Scheidl, among others, with the latter demonstrating that the numbers we are given – of Jews allegedly murdered by the Germans – are not based on solid research. We also know now that up to 20,000 camps, i.e., detention facilities existed instead of the 5,000 to 7,000 believed to have existed. Mr. Thomas Kues mentions this in his article.[4] So, why is the issue of how many survived seemingly unimportant? It should not be, for only if we know how many Jews were able to flee or make it through the war somehow can we begin to look for those missing.

According to Jewish customs, Zimmermann continues, at the funeral of a diseased, and the anniversary of that day, the “Jahrzeit”, a special prayer is offered: El male Rachamim (merciful God), the merciful God is asked to give eternal peace to the souls of the diseased. On the 10^th day of the Jewish month Tevet, the day of the of remembrance of the Shoah, special versions of El male Rachamin are offered for the six million Jewish victims of the European Shoah. One version inserts the following into the original prayer: “that were killed, butchered, burned and became martyrs through the German Nazi murderers and their helpers” (die getötet, geschlachtet, verbrannt und Märtyrer wurden, durch die deutschen Nazi-Mörder und deren Helfern aus anderen Völkern). The other version adds: „that were killed, butchered, suffocated, burned and buried alive by the German Nazis and their helpers”(die getötet, geschlachtet, erstickt, verbrannt und bei lebendigem Leibe begraben wurden, durch die deutschen Nazis und ihre Helfer). Thus, in this prayer death by gassing is grouped in (zugeordnet) with suffocation, a known punishment in ancient Judaism.

This makes two things clear: the word “gassing” does not exist in the Hebrew language to this day, and second, that burning is implanted more firmly in the collective Jewish conscience than gassings and has become synonymous with the mass murder of Jews during the Shoah. To wit: in one of the prayers the word “suffocating”, as a substitute for gassing, is missing. Thus as monstrous as the killing by poisonous gas was, in the end the expressions “oven” and “burning” have become better known as the word “Gas chamber”.

Comments: This is of some importance, for it is true that in some eyewitness accounts only burnings are mentioned, E. Wiesel for instance never mentions gas chambers – only burnings in ditches. This of course puts the veracity of their testimony in doubt, for Jewish tradition and language are one thing but surely a Jew could never forget the gas chambers in which millions of his compatriots were allegedly killed.

Zimmermann now goes into detail as to why burnings are burned, pardon, implanted into the Jewish subconscious, and tells us that there are various reasons for this. In the descriptions of the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, and beyond that in Jewish historiography — which accentuates (unterstreicht) the difference between the subdued “bent down” (gebückten) Jew of the Diaspora and the proud, allegedly new Jew of Israel – burning pyres (Scheiterhaufen) play a central role. When religious Jews understand the Third Reich as a return to the middle ages, then the killing by fire seems to be (scheint) what connects those killings to the Jewish martyrdom of the middle ages. When looking at pictures which portray the mass murder of Jews in iconographic language (ikonografischer Sprache), we find that ovens are not just used for burning of corpses but become a murder weapon of their own, and this even though burning of live people was the exception. Zimmermann then quotes H. Heine, as a nice touch: “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen“ (Where books are burned, humans will follow)

Death by suffocation was one form of execution in ancient Judaism, as punishment for patricide for instance, but for obvious reasons one cannot find anything about gassings in the ancient Jewish catalogue of punishments. In fact, gassing, in its implementation, reminds more of the punishment by burning practiced in old Judaism, because it depicts the blocking of the air ways with glowing lead (glühendem Blei), instead of burning on pyres (this makes no sense in German either). This is why the burning facilities, the crematoria (“Misrafot”), as well as the smoking chimney’s (“Arubot”) are mentioned, instead of the gas chambers (“Ta’ei Gisim”) when talking of the Shoah.

And even without going back to the middle ages it would have been possible for flames as icons to displace the invisible gas, for in Palestine hardly any gas pipelines existed before the establishment of Israel. Then, in early summer of 1942, when the news of mass murder methods reached the country, Ha’aretz reported on 30 June 1943: “In November and December of 1941 the Nazis have began to murder Jews with poisonous vapor (Dunst, the word poisonous gas did not exist). They did this in the city Chelm[no[ […] Following this, those poisoned were burned in the forest”. And at a meeting of the Jewish Agency of 22 November 1942 it was reported: “They are destroyed (vernichtet) with gas. Three ovens exist in Oswiezim,[…] in which Jews are burned”. (Als im Frühsommer 1942 dann die ersten Nachrichten über die neue Mordmethode das Land erreichten, meldete die hebräische Tageszeitung Haaretz dies am 30. Juni 1942 mit den Worten: „Im November und Dezember [1941] begannen die Nazis Juden mit Giftdunst [das Wort Giftgas stand damals überhaupt nicht im Wörterbuch] zu ermorden. Sie taten dies in der Stadt Chelm[no],[…]. Danach hat man die Vergifteten in den Wäldern verbrannt.” Und bei einer Sitzung des Direktoriums der Jewish Agency am 22. November 1942 wurde berichtet:  „Man vernichtet sie mit Gas. In Oswiezim gibt es drei Öfen, […] in denen man Juden verbrennt.”2 (2 Dina Porat/Yehiam Weitz, Between the Star of David and the Yellow Star. The Jewish Community in Palestine and the Holocaust 1939-1945, Tel Aviv 2002, S. 106.)[5]

Comments: One might want to ask what all of this old Jewish history has to do with evidence for the alleged killing of Jews by poisonous gas. Well, nothing, and yet… Zimmermann makes a good case here for how the story came to be. Burning and suffocating, not the gassing, is what is implanted in the Jewish psyche. We must remember here the first reports from the camps, and I’ll start with Treblinka, the area around it conquered by the Red Army in the middle of August 1944:

“The Military Examining Judge of the Military Office of Prosecution First Lieutenant of Justice Jurowski went to work immediately, supported by other officers – Major Kononjuk, Major V.S. Apresjan, First Lieutenant F.A. Rodionov, Major M.E. Golovan, and Lieutenant N.V. Kadalo – and carried out investigations between August 15 and 23 on the grounds of the camps Treblinka I and Treblinka II. He furthermore questioned witnesses: Samuel Rajzman, Lucjan Puchała, Marianna Kobus, Stanisław Zdonek, Barbara Zemkiewicz, Józef Pukaszek, Stanisław Kon, Mieczysław Anyszkiewicz, Tadeusz Kann, Franciszek Wesolowski, Max Lewit, and Kazimierz Skarzyński (GARF, 7021-115-11, pp. 15-43.)[…]

The ‘bath’ was a house, which consisted of 12 cabins, each 6 × 6 m in size. 400 to 500 people were driven at a time into one cabin. It had two doors, which could be sealed hermetically. In the corner, between ceiling and wall, were two openings connected with hoses. Behind the ‘bath’ stood a machine. It pumped the air out of the room. The people suffocated within 6 to 10 minutes. The second door was opened and the dead were brought on wheelbarrows to the special ovens[…]

The oven – this was a large trench 250-300 m in length, 20-25 m in width and 5-6 m deep, excavated by an excavator. Driven into the bottom of the ditch were three rows of reinforced concrete posts, one-and-a-half meters in height each. The posts were connected to one another by cross-beams. On these cross-beams rails were placed at intervals of 5 to 7 cm. That was a gigantic oven grill. A narrow-gage spur track led down to the edge of the trench. (Witness testimony of Abe Kon, Hejnoch Brenner, Samuel Rajzman,

and the content of the book ‘One Year in Treblinka’).[…]

On the basis of the preliminary facts, the cremation of people has been determined with no doubt. The extent of the extermination of people was monstrous: about three million.”[6]

And here we have it all, suffocation – followed by burning. However, the alleged suffocating in vacuum chambers has since been changed to gassings by diesel exhaust, at first, and now to gassings by gasoline engine exhaust. Also, it is no longer claimed that the “ovens” were 5-6m deep ditches. One has to wonder why that has been changed, since the first eyewitnesses surely must have remembered how it was allegedly done, especially the witnesses Samuel Rajzmann and Yankiel Wiernik, who claim to have been in Treblinka during its operation and both participated in the revolt, even though neither mentions the other. The three million cremated has also been downsized somewhat, but no agreement has been reached on a number, Yad Vashem has it as 880,000.

And now to the first report of Oswiezim, or Auschwitz as it is better known. As we know, Auschwitz was ‘liberated’ by the Red Army on 27 January 1945. On 2 February an article appeared in “Pravda”, a Soviet daily, in which the author, Boris Polevoi, writes about what eyewitnesses had told him:

The name of the town “Auschwitz” has long been a synonym for bloody German atrocities in the lexicon of the peoples of the world. Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens.” ^[2] […]Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world the terrible and abominable secrets of Majdanek, the Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe out the traces of their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called “old” ^[3] graves in the Eastern ^[4] part of the camp, tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace ^[5] where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.[7]

Ok, no suffocation, but we have this: “Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens”. And: “…their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace”. The electrocution, as well as the blast furnaces have also not survived, even though attested to by eyewitnesses. But what we see here is the story in the making, the suffocating in Treblinka and the burnings in both camps, although “details” had to be worked out yet, and were.

As for the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, mentioned by Zimmermann, here is what Bernard Lazare, a Jew himself, had to say about his contemporaries:

“If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown toward the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other,

since' they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of Anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel.[8]

Dr. Theodor Herzl sounds much the same in his “Der Judenstaat”, it is therefore incorrect to refer to Jewish persecution, a fact, and not mention the “why”.

To the News (Nachrichten) about Chelmno. First, we must recall what was said in the introduction to this book: that only after the war had ended did the world as a whole find out what had happened in the concentration camps – were people informed about the mass murder (Völkermord).[9] So, how could Ha’aretz have known about the murder of Jews in Chelmno with poisonous vapor already in 1942? Then the times given, “November and December”. In the same book, on p.153 we read:

“[I]n Chelmno wurde am 8. Dezember 1941, und damit am frühesten, die systematische Ermordung von Juden in einem Vernichtungslager aufgenommen”.(On 8 December the systematic murder of Jews in Chelmno started).

And in “Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas”, by Kogon et al, we read on p.120, a Jozef Czuprynski testifying:

“Während der gesamten Kriegsdauer wohnte ich im Dorf Zawadki, arbeitete jedoch in Powiercie. Am 5. Dezember 1941 kamen die ersten Autotransporte mit Juden aus Kolo nach Chelmno”. (During the whole of the war I lived in Zawadki, and on 5 December 1941 the first transports of Jews arrived in Chelmno).

If, what Ha’aretz reported, is fact based, how could they then talk about gassings in November when the alleged gassings did not start until December? This report was based on rumors, just like any other “report” peddled at that time. Pierre Blet writes about the rumors of Jews killed that reached the Vatican, all dismissed by the Pope because they could not be substantiated.[10]

Other iconographic images, Zimmermann continues, the manufacturing of soap from human fat for instance, are also associated with burnings, not gassings, that particular image has now been largely dropped (aus dem Diskurs verdrängt). Of course the history of the Shoah, the gassings as killing method, is well known to historians and lay persons alike. Therefore it is not possible to separate the gas chamber from the crematoria, but in Israels’ iconography both are depicted as killing devices. For example: The heavy burden of that icon of extermination, the crematoria, played a role in public discussions in Israel. According to the rules of the Jewish “Halacha”, deceased can only be buried, not cremated and by burning Jewish bodies the National Socialists committed sacrilege (Zimmermann continues by talking about a crematorium existing in Israel).

Comments: Ye old soap canard again, and Zimmermann does not dismiss it as a tall tale, oh no, it is just not mentioned as often anymore, according to him. The repeated reference to “iconography” and “Iconic imagery” is also of interest. “The Holocaust” in pictures? Yes indeed, just look at the drawings by David Olère, most of them demonstrate that what is told is untrue. And we must remember that hardly any photographs exist, an abnormality since camps like Treblinka were only fenced off with barbed wire and the alleged Totenlager (killing site) situated on a rise in the camp. We should have albums of pictures, showing the digging of graves, the hauling away of the soil from diggings (we need to remember that at least seven graves were allegedly dug, measuring 50m x 25 x 10m deep) the burnings, etc., etc.

But staying with iconography, we have here also the other meaning of the word ‘icon”, Webster’s defines it as: “3: an object of uncritical devotion”. So when Zimmermann refers to that “icon of extermination” (Ikone der Vernichtung), the crematoria, he refers to it as a religious symbol, an icon, “an object of uncritical devotion”. In fact, by now “The Holocaust” has turned into a quasi religion, as is acknowledged by many.[11]

In the memory of survivors, death by gas and cremation are one and the same (unzertrennbar), understandably so – for there were no survivors of gassings. And if someone survived a camp, he did not survive the gas chamber. Only in films, as in “Schindlers List” could people survive, the twenty children who survived by being asked to help unload potatoes – as mentioned in the Eichmann trial – an exception.

And the few surviving members of the “Sonderkommando” were responsible only for getting rid of the bodies of the gassed by burning them in the ovens. One of my colleagues, the Holocaust survivor and Holocaust historian Otto Dov Kulka, remembers the fire flaming from the crematoria (das Feuer das aus den Krematorien emporflammte) as the crucial point of his remembrance.[12]

Comments: There are accounts of gas chamber survivors, but that is hardly the issue here. Also, flames coming out of crematory chimneys, as in one of the Olère drawings — rubbish.

Ever since the Baby Yar massacre of 1941 has become a symbol of the Shoah, beside the gas chambers, the mass shootings are now also in competition with the image of the gas chamber. The questions asked: Who is holding the rifle? How does a Jew react, does he willingly go to get butchered (Schlachtbank), or does he resist? Thus the image of a Jew, shovelling his own grave, is perhaps more powerful than all other images when considering the necessity of establishing the state of Israel. But at the close, the story of Babi Yar (die Geschichte von Babi Yar) also ends with the burning of bodies.

Comments: Babi Yar has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter, the Jews of Kiev allegedly shot, so why mention it here, when alleged killings by poisonous gas is the issue? But yes, lately the shootings have moved more and more to the front, because they are harder to dispute. As for the defenceless Jew who never resists, this has been a problem with the story right from the start. In a meeting of 7 February 1961, between Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer and American Consul Wayland B. Wuters (Waters?), regarding the Eichmann trial, the latter wrote in his report:

“Bauer did not think that Israel would be in any sort of hurry with the Eichmann trial, on the contrary; nor did he think the trial would be particularly sensational. He seems to feel all parties involved would ‘behave wisely’ and that Ben Gurion’s main aim would be to secure ‘historical light’ for internal educational purposes within Israel. (“Ben Gurion thinks the new generation in Israel is as unbelieving of Jewish passivity in the face of mass murder as the new Generation in Germany is unbelieving of mass German guilt”, Bauer said)

The reporting officer suspects, though he can in no way document his supposition, that Bauer may well be connected in some high-ranking capacity with the Israeli Intelligence Service in West Germany”.[13]

One has to read this slowly to grasp the meaning. First, Ben Gurion only wanted to make “history (historical) light”, why? Was the evidence for “The Holocaust” not convincing enough at that time? And then we have the part about Jews not believing that millions of their compatriots could be murdered without any sign of resistance, and that remains unbelievable to this day. As for Germans not believing the story, this is why the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials had to be conducted from 1963 to 1965, school classes invited to witness the proceedings, with the prosecutor calling the accused “murderers”, reminiscent of the Stalinist trials. And even though no substantial evidence was submitted at that trial, the judges admitting to this in the verdict, the publicity and baseless horror stories told did what it was supposed to do: establish “The Holocaust” in the minds of Germans.

And of course we must never forget that the State of Israel rests on “The Holocaust”.

Zimmermann then writes about Israeli school books (curriculum), and that the Holocaust is, since 1977, a compulsory course. The books of the 1980s concern themselves more  with the shooting by the Einsatzgruppen (EG, task forces) — with issues like the Jewish councils(Judenräte) in the ghettos and the Warsaw uprising in the foreground — the gas chambers mentioned only in passing, ditto for the newer books. In one of the books from 1999 a connection is made between the T4 actions and the killings with gas during the “Endlösung”, this based on newer research, the historian Shulamit Volkov contributed to the book. The only photo in the book, however, is that of a mass shooting, and thus it actually distracts from the T4 story (Geschichte). The selection of photos serves more as corroboration to our actual perception.[14] Zimmermann published the only school book in 1981 which featured a picture of a gas chamber.[15] In a book written for graduates, published in 1999, the change over from mass shootings to extermination camps is addressed, but murder by gas is marginalized, the book sharply criticized for lack of patriotism. The photo shown in the book that of a crematoria in Dachau.[16]

Comments: It always strikes me as odd when I read that “The Holocaust” still needs to be taught in school, not only in Israel but throughout most of the western world. Not only is it taught, but special guidelines for teaching the subject needed to be issued: “Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust”.[17] Why is that? By now, the facts should speak for themselves, in fact, there should be no need to publish this book under discussion. So why the continued Holocaust “education”. Because what is presented as evidence is just not convincing. Now to the issues of photos, i.e., the lack of same. Zimmermann tries to induce that photos only serve to convince us of what we already know, he does so in vain (the wording of what he wrote is a little strange, this is why the German original is provided). We know that at least one camera had been smuggled into Auschwitz [18], the pictures leaving much to be desired. Also, the Auschwitz resistance had excellent connections to the outside [19], the question that needs to be asked then: Why not more pictures? And to dismiss the evidentiary value of photos is not convincing in the least, with all the opportunities that no doubt presented themselves, we should have piles of them, if what is alleged really happened.

Zimmermann writes that in the school book he published in 1981, a picture of a Gaskammer is shown, the only book to do so, here is what he wrote in German:

“Das einzige Schulbuch, in dem ein Foto einer Gaskammer gezeigt wird, habe ich bereits im Jahre 1981 herausgegeben”.[20]

No details about which gas chamber he featured, and the book he is referring to (footnote 15) seems to have disappeared. I searched for it in every on-line book store, from ABAA to Zentrales V.A.B., nothing. Why is this important? Well, in the newspaper write up to the Berlin conference of 2008 — attended by 200 scientists from around the world to discuss “the historical significance, the technical development and revisionists denial of the Holocaust”, the book under discussion based on the findings of said scientists — we read that the description of gas chambers is fictional (fictive Darstellung), no pictures exist, all we have is eyewitness testimony. But now we learn that Mr. Zimmermann provided a picture of a gas chamber already in 1981, why not show that picture? Or is it also a picture of a genuine shower room, as shown by Henryk Mandelbaum, and claimed to be the gas chamber of Auschwitz?[21]

Zimmermann then talks more about the cremations, and also about films, “Witness to Murder” a 1954 Hollywood production is mentioned, as is “I want to live”, produced four years later, that film about state sanctioned killings in gas chambers in the USA. But, no connection is made between American and German gas chambers.

We then learn about the distribution of poisonous baby food “Made in Germany” in Israel, some babies died. It turned out that vitamin B1 was missing, not by accident according to a Member of the Knesset. Then, the gas pipeline from Egypt was put into operation, in April 2008, on the day when the Shoah is commemorated in Israel. But the climax of the association with “gas” and Germany was reached in 1991, when Saddam had conquered Kuwait. The discussion in Israel centred around the association between the German chemical industry and Saddam, the fear that the latter would use chemical weapons, built with German expertise, against Israel. The Soviet Scud rockets a modernized version of the German V-2. There was even talk about gassings in Iraq with Zyklon B, but this rumor was discarded.[22]

Comment: Typical Jewish paranoia.

But then, five years later and three years following the gassings of his own Kurdish people, Zimmermann continues, the Iraqi chemical weapons arsenal seems to have (schien) threatened Israel. This brought back the memories of gassings of Jews during the Shoah — Saddam Hussein a Hitler copy and Israel’s worst enemy — and chemical weapons “Made in Germany”, an explosive combination. Michael Bar Zohar gave a detailed speech concerning the participation of German companies and the export of poisonous gas to Iraq. He spoke of: “a devilish formula which goes: Jews – Germans – Gas”. Yitzchak Levi added: “There are things that are implanted in the pedigree (Wurzeln) of a people”, referring to the inclination of Germans – the modern Amaleks — to use poisonous gas against Jews. Two weeks after the start of that war Knesset Member Gershon Shafat summarized: “The father delivers Zyklon B for the extermination of Jews, the son the gas to Iraq so it can be used against Israel”.[23]

Comments: Zimmermann goes on and on, and even though this could be considered a “tongue in cheek” account, one has to ask: What has all of this to do with the subject? Why fill almost four pages with what amounts to Jewish paranoia? Or is it just paranoia? Most likely not, for “The Holocaust” is used by Israelis to justify just about anything, starting with the crimes committed against Palestinians, or to convince the “Coalition of the Willing” that a war against Hussein was necessary to save the world, although some in that coalition did not need much coaxing.

And now, toward the end of his essay, Zimmermann tells us that the attitude in Israel re. the Shoah is not as sacrilegious as before (with this again adding the religious undertone), even though we still have the new addition of Yad Vashem, the yearly “Marches of the Living”, and the ritualizing of the Holocaust Memorial Day. But, on the other side, the number of survivors is dwindling, and voices are heard criticizing the use of the Holocaust for political gains. Even Shoah jokes are told, originating in Germany of 30 years ago. Why this is so — the psychological aspect of this — Zimmermann does not wish to address. But in the jokes burning also plays a major role: “Question: “What do we call a survivor?’ Answer: ‘Schnizolim’ (Schnitzel)”. Hebrew for survivors being “Nizolim”. Be that as it may, even now tear gas is not used against Jewish, right-wing demonstrators because the right immediately points towards the Shoah. Tear gas is used against Arabs, however, and against the left in Israel, no concern here that the Shoah will be evoked.

There is no interest in discussions about facts, the Leuchter Report almost ignored by the media. The naming of an institute for theoretical chemicals (Institutes für theoretische Chemie) as “Fritz Haber” also of no interest. Advertising by Hoover for their vacuum cleaner “Zyklon” was allowed. This shows that the poisonous gas theme can only be brought into the conscience in certain connections, and then used for political purposes. The fight against Shoah deniers is seen as a fight for existence, but in this framework attention is not focused on gassings alone, and that rightly so.

Final comments: Zimmermann convinces us that in the Jewish psyche burnings are what makes the Shoah, not the gassings, unless “Germany” and “Gas” are mentioned in the same context. He, aside from a few deviations into the world of paranoia, addresses the issue, the heading of his essay “How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas”. But, the question has to be asked again: What has all of this to do with proving that Jews were mass murdered with poisonous gas? This is after all what the title of the book promises, to provide new evidence for said gassings. One could dismiss this article, as well as that of Evans, as irrelevant, but it is not. The intent here is to get the reader conditioned, to soften him/her up to later accept all that is presented without question. And sadly, this tactic will work, most readers having never concerned themselves with details about “The Holocaust”. Zimmermann alludes to this in the last part of his essay in regards to Israel, but the same may be said for most people in the rest of the world.

To be continued…

Sources:

1. Günter Morsch und Bertrand Perz, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, Metropol Verlag Berlin 2011, p.11
2. http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Wiedergutmachung
3. http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/05/well-where-are-they-then/#more-931
4. http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/02/facing-a-new-decade/#more-1416
5. Neue Studien…, p.12
6. Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Treblinka. Extermination Camp of Transit Camp, Theses & Dissertations Press, PO Box 257768, Chicago, Illinois 60625 January 2004, pp.77-80
7. http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Pravda020245.html#Anchor3
8. Vicomte Leon De Poncins, Freemasonry & Judaism. Secret Powers Behind Revolution, A&B Publishers Group. 1000 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklym New York (no publishing date given), p.183 (B. Lazare, L’Antisemitism, p.3)
9. Neue Studien…, p. XI
10. Pierre Blet, S.J, Pius XII and the Second War. According to the Archives of the Vatican, Paulist Press, New York, N.Y, Mahwah, N.J. 1997. English translation 1999
11. http://www.stateofnature.org/holocaustReligion.html (this just one example)
12. Neue Studien…, pp.13/14, footnote 4: “These Images of blue skies and columns of people in black swallowed into the confines of the crematoria and disappearing in clouds of smoke.” Zit. in Otto D. Kulka, In Search of History and Memory: Excerpts from „Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death”, in: Moshe Zimmermann (Hrsg.),On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime, Jerusalem 2006, S. 401-471, hier S. 411.”
13. All I have is a printout of the document. Page 1 has this number printed on it: PL105-246 and on the bottom of each page a stamp reads “Decalassified, Authority NND 36822, By UB, NARA Date 2-7-05
14. Neue Studien…, p.15: The German original: Die Auswahl der Fotos dient ohnehin als starkes Indiz für die eigentliche Wahrnehmung.
15. Ibid: Moshe Zimmermann (publisher), Von Krieg zu Krieg 1918-1945, Jerusalem 1981, p.182
16. Ibid: Dani Jakobi (publisher), Olam Schel Tmurot (Eine Welt voller wenden. Geschichte für die 9. Klasse [A world full of changes. History for the 9. grade]), Tel Aviv 1999, pp.134-140
17. http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2009/12/guidelines-for-teaching-about-the-holocaust/
18. Bruno Baum, Widerstand in Auschwitz, Kongress-Verlag Berlin 1961, p.88
19. Ibid, p.89f
20. Neue Studien…, p.15
21. http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/02/the-latest-sonderkommando-testimony/
22. Neue Studien…, pp.16/17
23. Ibid, p.17