The Student Press Illustrates Once Again the Depth of the Holocaust Taboo in the American University

The Belfer First Step Workshop on the Holocaust is a program created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to prepare pre-service secondary teachers to integrate the Holocaust into their lesson plans effectively. I learned about the Workshop in The Anchor, the student newspaper at Rhode Island College. It is worth noting that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is a proactive State agency, funded by tax dollars, dedicated to forwarding the State narrative that during World War II the Germans were uniquely monstrous. It is a narrative that has been carried out brilliantly in the name of various American war parties, spearheaded in the university by Hillel and the ADL, but infecting all media and intellectual classes. 

Rhode Island College was one of six institutions of higher education across the nation selected by the USHMM to host the Belfer Workshop. The other five included Auburn University, Cal State U Long Beach, Illinois State University, St. Cloud State, and the University of Northern Colorado. The day after encountering this material we submitted announcements to the online editions of the student newspaper at each of these campuses. In each instance the text of the announcement read:

INCONVENIENT HISTORY: The Power of Taboo.

Six words. The text itself is a link which, when the student clicks on it, will take her to the Website of Inconvenient History. In the latest issue of that journal she will find, among other papers, the 9,000-word paper by Germar Rudolf titled “Resistance Is Obligatory.”  The ad was accepted by The UNC Mirror at U Northern Colorado, by The Chronicle at St. Cloud U., and by The Anchor at Rhode Island College.  I wrote The UNC Mirror to congratulate the editor for standing with the ideal a free press. I wrote the advisor of The Daily 49er to express my dismay—well, not my dismay, I’m well acquainted with how “advisors” to the student press operate in the American university—but my disapproval of such advice. 

The point to these simple, almost pro-forma letters is not to communicate with a single individual editor or advisor, but to copy each letter to hundreds of student organizations and faculty on each of the six campuses so that it is understood widely how a minority of student editors can stand with the ideal of a free press in spite of what they are being advised and pressured to do by special interests.

While the editor who folds is responsible for her actions, I understand fully the difficult position she is in, and how she is being asked to risk her position on the paper she is working for now, and upon graduation risk losing the possibility of working in journalism anywhere. It’s not fair, not right, but the culpability rests with a professoriate that betrays its own ideals as it betrays its students. And this time we all—students, faculty, and CODOH itself—were to benefit from the unexpected involvement of Heinz Bartesch. You will find his open letter at the end of this article. And then there is the large send we did to introduce Eric Hunt’s The Last Days of the Big Lie to the Six we are talking about here and to some 20 other campuses across the nation.  Meanwhile, here is my brief letter to the UNC Mirror editor.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Benjamin Welch, Editor-in-Chief
The UNC Mirror
U of Northern Colorado
Greeley, Colorado 

Mr. Welch:

I would like you to know that we very much appreciate the fact that the UNC Mirror has agreed to run our announcement for "Inconvenient History: The Power of Taboo." Clicking on the link your readers are taken to the Website of Inconvenient History: A Quarterly Journal for Free Historical Inquiry. 

The Spring 2012 issue includes:

• Editorial: “Bookburning in the Style of 2011”
• Resistance Is Obligatory
• Ritual Defamation: A Contemporary Academic Example
• Stephen F. Pinter, An Early Revisionist
• A Postcard from Treblinka
• Review: The Wandering Who
• The Palestinians as an "Invented People"
• Relegation—A Formula for Blowback 

We advocate a free exchange of ideas about a series of historical questions that are taboo with the American professoriate across the nation. Example: I doubt that there is one academic at U Northern Colorado who openly supports a free exchange of ideas with regard to Holocaust orthodoxy. Or one academic who will encourage, or even allow, such a free exchange of ideas to take place on this matter in his/her classroom.

All this being so, I understand that you are in a difficult situation. Still, we encourage the UNC Mirror to continue to support the right to free inquiry against the opposition of UNC academics and administration. And, I should add, the opposition of a number of special-interest organizations on and off-campus that you may hear from.

Sincerely,

Bradley Smith 

PS: I understand I might be wrong about any particular of the above. If I am, please tell me where and I will acknowledge my error publicly. Do you want to talk about it? You can reach me at [email protected]   

At the same time, the announcement was rejected out of hand by The Plainsman at Auburn University, The Daily 49er at Cal State Long Beach, and The Vidette at Illinois State U. The Anchor at Rhode Island College was an exception. The Anchor does not publish ads in its online edition, but accepted ours for its hardcopy edition. The ad ran one time but was pulled before it could run a second week.  I wrote the editor of The Anchor and again we copied it to hundreds of student organizations and faculty on the RIC campus, then to the other campuses in The Six.

George Bissell, Editor-in-Chief
The Anchor
Rhode Island College
Providence, Rhode Island
[email protected] 

20 March 2012

Mr. Bissell:

Earlier this month we submitted an announcement to run in The Anchor that read: “Inconvenient History: The Power of Taboo,” along with a URL that leads to the Website of Inconvenient History: A Quarterly Journal for Free Historical Inquiry. The Spring 2012 issue of the Journal includes: 

• Editorial: “Bookburning in the Style of 2011”
• Resistance Is Obligatory
• Ritual Defamation: A Contemporary Academic Example
• Stephen F. Pinter, An Early Revisionist
• A Postcard from Treblinka
• Review: The Wandering Who
• The Palestinians as an "Invented People"
• Relegation—A Formula for Blowback 

The ad appeared one time in The Anchor and then was suppressed because of the “reaction” of readers. We are not informed as to which readers, how many readers, if they were on-campus or off-campus readers, or what their problem was. There is a special irony here in the fact that this week there will be a State-sponsored program, organized as the Belfer First Step Workshop on the Holocaust, presented at RIC on March 22, 23. The Workshop will focus on presenting an orthodox academic perspective on the history of a number of issues, incidents, and moralities of that fragment of World War II referred to as the “Holocaust.” It is a given that nothing presented at such a function can be questioned publicly. Just as it is with The Anchor.

We advocate a free exchange of ideas about a series of historical questions that are taboo with the American professoriate across the nation. Example: I doubt that there is one academic at Rhode Island College who openly supports a free exchange of ideas with regard to Holocaust orthodoxy. Or one academic who will encourage, or even allow, such a free exchange of ideas to take place in his/her classroom, All this being so, I understand that you are in a difficult situation. Still, we encourage the RIC Anchor to continue to support the right to free inquiry, which is the primary ideal of the university in the West, against the opposition of RIC faculty and administration. And, I should add, that of a number of special-interest organizations on and off-campus that you may already have heard from.

Sincerely,

Bradley Smith 

PS: I understand I might be wrong about any particular of the above. If I am, please tell me where and I will acknowledge my error publicly. I can be reached at [email protected]

I received the following reply from Mr. Bissell, editor of The Anchor.

Hello Bradley, 

I am responding to your complaint about the advertisement "Inconvenient History: The Power of Taboo," that ran in the last issue of The Anchor that came out on March 10. We have not had an issue come out since then because of Spring Break and our conference so no issues have passed since the advertisement last ran. Our ads manager made a mistake deciding to "pull the ad". He took this action without my knowledge and without my approval. The advertisement will run in The Anchor as long as you are willing to pay for it. We are a forum for free expression and the exchange of ideas, meaning that we will not censor any of our content. Our ads manager made a mistake and has been re-assigned. The Anchor would be willing to run the ad again as long as your organization is willing to pay for it.

I hope this clears everything up and I thank you for bringing this situation to my attention. I was not aware that this action had been taken by my ads manager.

If you have any questions, let me know.

George Bissell, Editor-in-Chief
The Anchor Newspaper
Rhode Island College's Student Newspaper
(cell) [deleted by editor] (401)-456-8790 (office) 

Here was a student editor willing to stand up to his peers, and to his “advisors,” to the Hillel/ADL mishmash, and who knows who else? Meanwhile, I had fumbled payment of the ad. I called Bissell to tell him I wanted to straighten out the payment business but he did not respond. 

After some ten days Hernandez was told via telephone that The Anchor had “made a mistake” in running the ad even one time, was cancelling it, and would not accept a check for what it had already run. I can well imagine what Bissell had to go through, perhaps is still going through, with his “advisors” and with those representing Hillel and the ADL on and off his campus..

At the same time, our original announcement was rejected out of hand by The Vidette at Illinois State U, The Daily 49er at Cal State U at Long Beach, and The Plainsman at Auburn U. I wrote letters to the editor or advisor at each of these papers. Nothing original. Rather a pro forma version of the letter sent to The Anchor at RIC.

http://tinyurl.com/6n8vk77 

An old-hat text for us, but a wake-up call to the hundreds of student organizations, faculty and administration that the letters were copied to, alerting one and all to Inconvenient History and through that page to CODOHWeb.

When I learned that The University Chronicle at St. Cloud University had accepted the ad, I congratulated the editor, Jun-Kai Teoh, as I had the editor of UNC Mirror at U Northern Colorado, copying it to student orgs, faculty and administration at St. Cloud U. The next day I received this note from the editor of The Chronicle, Jun-Kai Teoh: 

From: Jun-Kai Teoh< [email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2012
Subject: University Chronicle online ad

Hello Brad,

I am Jun-Kai Teoh, the Editor-in-Chief at the University Chronicle, and I was made aware recently that the University Chronicle has run an ad for your organization. I would like to inform you that it was an oversight with the advertising department and that the ad has been taken down. Your payment will be refunded to you. The University Chronicle reserves the right to be selective with advertising, and we do not agree with the message, content or implications of your organization's ad.

Also, I request that you remove references of my name in any and all emails you send out, as the decision to run that ad was not made by me and was made by the ad manager.

I responded briefly: 

Jun-Kai:

I agree that The Chronicle has the right to be selective with advertising, to run or not run what it chooses.

Re: how you were "made aware recently" that the ad was being run, I take it that you are making a reference, not to some neutral observation, but to a complaint, a protest. Can you reveal how you were "made aware," and by whom, or is that information to remain confidential? 

Why do I want to know? That's where the story is, Kai, you know how it is. You're a journalist. The story behind such a story as this one (I will not pretend that it is a world-shaking story) but it is a real story. It has to do with a free press. It has to do with the ideal of a free exchange of ideas in the University itself. And it has to do with the radical idea that a routine examination of historical questions should be just that, routine. Not for some, but for all. 

I wonder what your thinking is. Under your editorship will the University Chronicle publish only that with which it is absolutely in agreement with the message content and "implications" of a given text? Is that the route you are being "advised" to take?

And then there is the obvious question: which of the articles published in our quarterly, Inconvenient History, are most disturbing to you? And/or to your advisor/s? –

– Bradley [Kai has not responded.]

During this back-and-forth I had alerted Heinz Bartesch to the story of the Belfer Workshop in The Anchor. It was reported there that Peter Black, Senior Historian at the USHMM, had addressed the case of Martin Bartesch. Heinz is the son of Martin Bartesch, who had been hounded to the end of his life by the Office of Special Investigations and media for having been assigned as a guard at Mauthausen and during his service there shot and killed an inmate who was trying to escape, which his duty required him to do. 

Heinz wrote a memorable letter to The Anchor to question the activities of not only the OSI, but those of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum itself. The Anchor, to its credit, published the letter as a “comment.”

It is worth emphasizing again that it is not just the letter we write to a specific editor or paper, but how we distribute the letter. 

With regard to the letter by Heinz, which you will find below, as of this writing it has gone out to some 2,400 student organizations, faculty and administration at the six Workshop campuses alone, to some 600 members of free-press organizations, and to the 800 online subscribers to Smith’s Report.

Peter Black is the Senior Historian at the USHMM. He is quoted in the RIC Anchor as saying that the main goal of the OSI is denaturalization—revoking the citizenship of guilty perpetrators and sending them overseas to receive  proper criminal punishment. “In some cases, such as the case of Martin Bartesch, evidence was presented in a book entitled The Unnatural Death Book.

This book was a record of the deaths of inmates in concentration camps, “This book was only able to survive because prisoners rescued it before American forces liberated the camps. In this book, it was recorded that Bartesch had shot and killed an inmate. Not only was there visible proof of Bartesch’s crimes, but he also lied under oath to gain access into the country.”

I prefaced Heinz’s letter to The Anchor with a note to Senior Historian Peter Black to help orient the reader, the student, or the professor who received this text unexpectedly.