You Bunyans, Come Forth, and you Samaritans!
A Call to Christians Worldwide and to Others of Faith and Goodwill to Step Forward to Defend a Group of People Most Unjustly Persecuted in Our Time: Revisionist Historians with Dissident Views About the Holocaust
The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us of our Christian duty to go to the aid of those wrongfully treated. It was not the respectable priest or the respectable Levite who went to the aid of the man who had fallen among thieves, been stripped, wounded and left half-dead. It was a man from the unrespected Samaritans. So put aside your craving for respectability and approval and heed my message. And put aside your fear of suffering personal loss or injury. Do you believe that that Samaritan was unaware that the thieves might have been watching him, ready to punish him most terribly for his temerity? Of course not! He still went ahead and did what was right.
John Bunyan (1628-1688) is famous as the English Puritan Christian author of a world classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Roger Sharrock, in his introduction to the 1965 Penguin English Library edition, had this to say of Bunyan: ‘His new strength and resolution were soon put to the test, for in November 1660, a few months after Charles II’s Restoration, he was arrested by a local magistrate while preaching in the fields. He refused to give an undertaking not to preach and was imprisoned off and on for the next twelve years. It seems that at any time he might have obtained his release: he had only to enter into a bond giving assurance that he would cease from preaching and evangelizing and conform to the worship of the Church of England. It is a measure of the personal integrity he had achieved that he refused to do this….. Isolated among people who believed that his conduct was foolish or criminal or both, he had to give a reason for the faith that was in him.’ (pp 8-9)
Russell R. Standish and Colin D. Standish clarified the significance of Bunyan’s stand for religious liberty in their book Liberty in the Balance (Hartland Publications, Rapidan, Virginia, USA, 1998). They point out that a compassionate judge tried to avoid sentencing him to prison by offering some compromises, which Bunyan refused. ‘Bunyan rightly contended that God had not authorized the Church of England or any other human agency to exercise the right to decide who could and who could not preach….. Bunyan witnessed to a mature understanding of the most basic principles of religious liberty. He recognized that a calling to preach the Word is not at the discretion of any human priest or potentate, but is the calling placed upon humanity by Christ himself.’ (p 6)
Bunyan went to prison; and in our own time a number of critics of the received story of the Holocaust have gone to prison in the same spirit and in defence of the essential principles. Men such as Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf and David Irving have insisted that no human authorities, neither churches, nor states, nor universities, nor governments, nor courts of law, have the right to make absolute declaration as to what may or may not be discussed about matters of history and politics.
Many other historical revisionists have been grossly and wickedly persecuted for daring to express their dissident views about the Holocaust and associated matters. In France Robert Faurisson has been repeatedly harassed and fined; he has also been physically assaulted several times. In Switzerland Jurgen Graf, a brilliant linguist, has had to flee his native land to avoid imprisonment. A long list of others could be compiled.
No Christian should allow this terrible persecution, which operates in many Western nations, to continue without voicing a public protest. We need to recall the words of Jesus: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ As Christians we cannot afford to allow the truth enshrined in the principles of intellectual freedom to be violated and compromised, no matter what the controversy in question. We are also bound by our sacred tradition to honour the ninth of the ten Mosaic commandments: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’ It is easy to ascertain that historical revisionists who query the Holocaust story are repeatedly defamed in public forums around the world and rarely allowed a commensurate right of reply. For Christians to allow such a situation to continue without actively protesting against it and seeking to end it, is to make themselves accomplices of those who break the commandment with impunity.
This essay has been written to justify this call to Christians and others of faith and good will. It will clarify necessary issues and answer anticipated questions.
A Case Study: The Tehran Holocaust Conference as Reported by the Three Major Melbourne Newspapers
The President of Iran, a devoted Shiite Muslim, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, decided to hold a conference in Tehran to inquire into the validity or otherwise of the current Holocaust story, to examine the findings and claims of the historical revisionists who dispute major and minor aspects of that story, and to allow these historians a public platform denied to them in most Western nations.
This conference took place on 11th and 12th December 2006 and it is interesting to analyse carefully the ways in which the three major Melbourne newspapers covered the event. It is fair to say that their coverage, in general, was unmistakably hostile to the conference, to the Iranian President and to the revisionists. News reports tended to be strongly biased; supporting articles favoured the approaches of the newspapers; letters to the editor favourable to the newspapers’ approaches were published, but virtually no letters to the editor unfavourable to their approaches were published in any of the three newspapers – and none at all arguing that the Holocaust revisionists might be partly, largely or wholly correct.
Christians and others of faith and good will need to consider very seriously whether such hostile and one-sided coverage of a major intellectual controversy is in accord with the teaching of Jesus.
The next part of this essay will analyse in very great detail this coverage. In its first stage, the series of letters I emailed day by day to the three newspapers, none of which were published, will feature prominently. This serves a double purpose of introducing readers to many of the strong arguments that exist in support of the revisionists and their critiques, and of displaying the kind of letters that these three newspapers refused to publish. The reader is asked to be patient as we move through this process.
Monday, December 11th
The national newspaper, The Australian, published a two paragraph story on its front page, headed ‘Holocaust deniers meet’. On an inner page of world news the paper published a long news report headed ‘Holocaust denier in “farcical” summit’. This coverage elicited the following response from me:
‘Any view of history that defends itself by persecuting its critics is immediately suspect; and the currently accepted model of the Holocaust does not escape this doubt.
‘Thus it is neither absurd nor offensive for people in Iran to organise a conference to re-examine that model.
‘Moreover, your report (‘Holocaust denier in “farcical” summit’, 11/12) can be challenged on several grounds.
‘It is unlikely that Dr Frederick Toben has ever claimed that “there would have been no room for the Jews at Auschwitz” (a ridiculous notion), but it is quite possible that he has argued that his study of the various camps there has led him to believe that there was no room for the alleged installations for mass gassings.
‘And the chief executive officer of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, has engaged in culpable exaggeration in stating that “the motive of any Holocaust denier is anti-Semitism pure and simple”, for a study of the writings of leading Holocaust revisionists reveals clearly that a concern for truth is their leading motive and the redemption of Germany’s image sometimes the secondary motive.
‘Despite assertions to the contrary, doubt remains that over a million Jewish deaths have been “documented in painful detail in Nazi records” or that “the mountain of evidence is overwhelming”.
‘Even the phrase “Holocaust denier” is a loaded term; and the failure of the Australian press to report fairly and fully on the trials of revisionists such as Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf is another indicator that truth may be being suppressed in this great controversy.’
Tuesday, December 12th
Next day The Australian published another news report headed ‘Holocaust impossible, says Aussie in Tehran’. It also published a letter hostile to the conference by Geoffrey Zygier, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. These items drew the following response from me:
‘The Iranian Holocaust conference has predictably drawn adverse criticism from Jewish spokespeople, some of which is manifestly excessive.
‘For example, Jeremy Jones, former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has linked it with “obscene anti-Semitism” and claimed that it is “all about racial hatred” (‘Holocaust impossible, says Aussie in Tehran’, 12/12). Mr Jones sounds almost Gilbertian: “Everyone in it should be condemned to the utmost.”
‘As for independent historian Dr Frederick Toben, an educated man with a Ph.D, Jones claims that “there’s no serious academic institution in the world that would think he’s anything other than a complete ratbag”. That is gutter abuse, of course.
‘Then there is Geoffrey Zygier, executive director of the ECAJ, stating (Letters, 12/12) that the conference “has no serious research purpose but rather seeks to offend Israel, Jews worldwide and all civilized, decent people by mocking a tragedy that still lives on in the memories of survivors.”
‘Anyone who actually studies in detail the publications of prominent historical revisionists such as Germar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson, Jurgen Graf, Ernst Zündel and David Irving will know how absurd and unjust these aspersions are.
‘Serious doubt about the currently accepted understanding of the Holocaust has been inescapably raised by their researches and those of others. Insults and public defamation will not lay the matter to rest. Nor will the present persecution that involves depriving revisionists of employment and subjecting them to massive fines and imprisonment. Only open debate can do so. So why not allow it?’
The Age, Melbourne’s much loved newspaper for intelligent readers, published a similar letter by Mr Zygier.
MX, a newspaper freely distributed for returning rail commuters and others, published a brief report headed ‘Rabbi joins Iran storm’. It told that the 83 year-old Rabbi Ahron Cohen stated that he supported the holding of the conference, but unspecified ‘Jewish leaders’ were quoted as accusing him of ‘a warped form of religious extremism.’
To The Age I emailed the following comment:
‘Contrary to the claims of Geoffrey Zygier (12/12), the Iranian conference on the Holocaust does have an honourable and serious purpose, which is to re-examine the currently accepted understanding of the Holocaust to see whether it can survive the researches and criticisms of revisionists such as Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, Jurgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno and others.
‘In many Western nations there exists an inquisitorial apparatus of persecution against Holocaust revisionists which has led to serious questioning of received historiography, for any historical thesis that defends itself by gaoling critics is at once suspect. The whole matter should be fully and fairly discussed in public forums.
‘Since, however, that does not happen, revisionists have had to go to Iran to publicise their findings. It is a pity that the context is one of Middle Eastern hostilities and that a full range of views on the controversy may not be heard.
‘However, extravagant appeals to pity for “the millions murdered in the Holocaust” appear to be merely a tactic to avoid public debate which “civilized people” should support and not suppress.’
Wednesday, December 13th
The Australian carried another substantial news report headed ‘Leader gets lesson on free speech at Iran uni’, the animus against the Iranian President being quite apparent in that headline. It also published a brief letter to the editor by David Broadfoot, adversely critical of Dr Toben’s contribution to the conference.
The letter I emailed in response ran as follows:
‘Why is there such irrational hostility to the Tehran conference on the Holocaust?
‘It is plain from the reported words of French revisionist Georges Theil (‘Leader gets lesson on free speech at Iran uni’, 13/12) that participants are not for a moment denying that the Nazi regime persecuted Jews and unjustly deported them, or trying to justify that.
‘They are debating whether a horrible series of events has or has not been significantly exaggerated, what the implications of such exaggeration (if it occurred) might be, and why the topic is not allowed to be freely discussed in public in many Western nations.
‘Why then are these intellectuals being defamed as “racists” and “Nazis”? Why are the negative, or apparently negative, aspects of their careers being emphasized – such as gaol sentences (purely for publicly disputing the accepted story) or long-past membership of the Ku Klux Klan?
‘Why is a new myth being disseminated of “international condemnation” of the conference, when its intellectual contents are not being fairly and impartially reported so that citizens can make up their own minds after studying both sides of the controversy?
‘My answer is that a major cover-up operation is occurring. Can anyone argue a convincing case otherwise?’
The Herald Sun ran a two-paragraph news story on a remote inner page, headed ‘Nazi talks anger Israel’. The following letter was emailed to the paper.
‘The conference on the Holocaust in Tehran (‘Nazi talks anger Israel’, 13/12) needs to be fairly described and reported.
‘Enemies of the participants may insult them as Nazis, but the great majority have no allegiance to Nazi ideology at all. They are intellectuals who have come to believe that detailed scientific researches have disproved major aspects of the Holocaust story.
‘It is a pity that an intellectual debate has become a football in Middle Eastern politics. If Western nations had allowed free discussion of the issues in their public forums, this would not have happened.
‘The Israeli prime minister is wrong to describe the conference as “sickening”. What is sickening is the persecution of historical revisionists, including the gaoling of men like Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel and David Irving. It is morally no different to the past persecution of men like Socrates, Bruno, Galileo and Bunyan.’
Thursday, December 14th
On this day The Australian stepped up its coverage of the conference. It had a news report titled ‘Second Aussie joins Holocaust denial conference’, an opinion article hostile to the conference and President Ahmadinejad (‘Israel isn’t all that Ahmadinejad has in his sights’) by Alan Gold, a novelist and the president of the Jewish Board of Deputies Holocaust Remembrance Committee, and two letters to the editor, both hostile to the conference, by Dr Mark Zirnsak, director, Justice and International Mission Unit, Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania, and Peter Sussman.
This prompted the following email from me to the paper:
‘The much-slandered Tehran Holocaust conference continues to draw a staggering range of insults and irrational comments from its opponents.
‘Peter Sussman (14/12) is entitled to grieve over the loss of family members in 1942, but their disappearance does not prove that they were murdered in gas chambers. They may have died of overwork or illness.
‘It is regrettable that a Christian spokesman, Dr Mark Zirnsak, has swallowed whole the anti-revisionist line by associating all conference attenders with racism and anti-Semitism, thus breaching the Biblical commandment against bearing false witness against one’s neighbours. The Vatican (‘Second Aussie joins Holocaust denial conference’, 14/12) appears to have been more circumspect in its language, since the revisionists at the conference would agree with its set of six quoted statements.
‘Other examples of grossly excessive attacks on the conference include the US claim that it was an “affront to the entire civilized world” and the cry of Alan Gold (‘Israel isn’t all that Ahmadinejad has in his sights,’ 14/12) that its effects “are frightening for the sanity and security of the Western world.”
‘All this hullabaloo is strikingly reminiscent of the outpourings of Stalinist puppets and lickspittles as documented so extensively by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Now that the power of the Soviet Union has been broken, we wonder how so many otherwise intelligent and gifted people could have been willing to abase themselves so disgracefully to tyranny. A similar situation now exists as regards Zionist Jewish influence in Western nations.’
The Age struck new ground with a news report headlined ‘Bolton backs push to charge Iran’s leader on Israel hatred’. I emailed the paper in response as follows:
‘It is regrettable that the President of Iran appears on occasions to have used intemperate language in referring to the state of Israel (‘Bolton backs push to charge Iran’s leader on Israel hatred’, 14/12).
‘However, his quoted statement that “just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out” does not prove a genocidal intention.
‘The Soviet Union was a particular political order that held sway over Russians and others for some seventy years. It is Israel as a political order that President Ahmadinejad is opposing, not the Jews as a people, whether in Israel or elsewhere. The collapse of the Soviet Union involved no genocide.
‘Thus the proposal to charge the President with “inciting genocide” appears unjustified.
‘It is interesting to note that the prime movers against this man are “a Jewish umbrella group in the US, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations”, long-time Zionist apologist Alan Dershowitz and a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold.
‘These people and others of their community appear to exercise enormous power in Western nations, perhaps too much. And it appears that they believe that their community’s interests should take precedence over the traditional rule that citizens of nations should be protected by their nation from attack by aliens.’
The Herald Sun published a substantial news report whose headlines plainly indicated its partisan attitude: ‘Iran’s Holocaust conference condemned – A Klan finale to hate fest.’ My response emailed to the paper ran as below:
‘It is a pity that you have not reported more dispassionately on the Holocaust conference in Iran. Headlining your article ‘A Klan finale to hate fest’ (14/12) is intemperate and unjust.
‘The word “Klan” must have been inspired by the presence in Tehran of David Duke, former member (long in the past) of the Ku Klux Klan. In his autobiography Duke has given a detailed analysis of the KKK in its various phases, why he joined it and why he left it.
‘In the light of that articulate and honest account, it is misleading to pin the Klan tag on him in 2006.
‘As for the phrase “hate fest”, many Australians now realise very clearly that the word “hatred” is often used by particular political groups to stigmatise points of view with which they disagree, when in fact their opponents have provided no evidence of actual hatred at all.
‘The conference has drawn an extraordinary amount of excessive and irrational condemnation from various quarters, of which the US claim that it was “an affront to the entire civilized world” is a good example.
‘Rabbi Moshe David Weiss got it right: “We don’t want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed.” That is exactly what the revisionists have been saying for thirty or more years.
‘So why is there such over-the-top hostility to them?’
Friday, December 15th
On this day The Australian published three letters to the editor, all hostile to the conference. These elicited the following prompt email from me:
‘There are two fatal weaknesses in the arguments advanced by Phillip Mendes in his attempt (15/12) to defend the disgraceful public assaults made on the Tehran Holocaust conference.
‘In the first place there is no body of intellectually able persons from many nations seeking to disprove the accepted stories about the Burma railway or the Bali bombings; but there is such a body actively critical of the current understanding of the Holocaust. That could well indicate that the first two stories are true, but that the third is at least partly untrue.
‘Secondly, Holocaust revisionists do not deny that large numbers of Jews were killed and unjustly treated by the Nazi government; they claim that the reality of “horrible events” has been grossly exaggerated and that the historical record should be put right.
‘Mendes produces no evidence for his slanderous statement that revisionists seek to “absolve the perpetrators” of crimes and “blame the victims”.
‘As for Elizabeth Moser’s reference to Nazi doctrines about “subhuman” peoples, neither Muslims nor the revisionists promote such doctrines, so that there is nothing illogical in President Ahmadinejad holding the Tehran conference.
‘Pamela Dempster wonders why Prime Minister John Howard has not condemned the conference. Perhaps he believes in free speech!’
The Australian also republished from the London Times on this day a huge half-page opinion article by Stephen Dalton headlined ‘Questions for a mass murderer’ and sub-headlined ‘A film on high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann disputes the idea of the banality of evil.’
Within the first two paragraphs could be read a powerful affirmation of the current view of the Holocaust: ‘This is Hungary’s shiny new Holocaust memorial museum, wrapped around a synagogue and guarded by airport-style security gates, presumably against neo-Nazi attack…..
‘Inside is a moving audiovisual record of the obscene, grotesque, industrialized genocide inflicted on Hungary’s Jewish and Gypsy populations by Nazi Germany in the latter stages of World War II. So systematic was the so-called Final Solution by this point that one in 10 victims of the Holocaust, and one in three of those sent to Auschwitz, was deported from Hungary.’
That is a reminder to us of the degree to which this view of the Holocaust is incorporated in the world culture of our times. It is not merely a central feature of a relentlessly promoted zeitgeist, defended by many other kinds of force as well as airport-style security gates, but is also being fabricated into a quasi-religious cult to which all are expected to pay homage, including, of course, school children. (A new textbook for the Victorian Certificate of Education subject ‘Texts and Traditions’, which covers the various great sacred traditions of the planet, also includes a section on the Holocaust.) It can be seen from this that the comparison of the historical revisionists who query much of the basis of this cult with 17th Century Puritan Christian John Bunyan has more validity than might initially have been supposed.
Saturday and Sunday, December 16th and 17th
The Australian in its summary of the preceding week’s world news published a substantial report under the headline ‘Iran’s Holocaust ploy’. I did not find time to send an email response to the paper, so I will make a few comments here:
Firstly, there was a good spray of gratuitous insults: ‘bizarre’, ‘kookfest’, ‘anti-Semitic spewing’, ‘off-the-wall President’, ‘parody of academic freedom’, ‘Ahmadinejad’s madness’ and ‘repulsive promotion’.
Secondly, there were a number of claims which deserve evaluation.
The Persian Journal was quoted as stating that ‘the absurd proceeding would have been laughable had it not been so deeply offensive and, because it was hosted by so powerful a state, so frighteningly dangerous.’ In any major controversy involving radically opposed ways of looking at culture, politics and history, there is a likelihood that contentions from any side or interested party will seem offensive to others. To argue that something should not be publicly said because it is ‘offensive’, whether deeply or not, would be to terminate the ongoing discussion that is a part of all healthy cultures and civilizations. As for the alleged power of the state of Iran, it is hardly as powerful as the international Jewish lobby or the USA, which, in coalition, have inflicted such damage in Iraq and elsewhere.
A New York Times writer, Michael Slackman, saw President Ahmadinejad’s hosting of the conference as a clever way of winning favour in the Arab world. Whether or not such a view is true does not affect the validity of my own claim that Western and other nations should allow freedom of speech on all issues of religion, politics, culture and history.
Yosef Lapid, writing in the Israeli Maariv, was quoted as likening the President to the Hitler of the early 1930’s as someone not to be mistakenly assessed as ‘a madman who should not be taken seriously’ , the implication being that this Iranian ‘madman’ should be taken seriously. This comparison relies on the comic book caricature image of Hitler widely disseminated across the world at the present time. The fact is that Adolf Hitler in the pre-war years was not mad, was a very gifted and successful German leader and was taken very seriously from the start by his opponents around the world including Jewish interests. Of course, it is also true that Hitler made a disastrous personal mistake by taking too much authority and responsibility to himself, turning his back on Tradition and its wisdom and eventually, while under increasing diplomatic and then military pressure from outside his nation, presiding over a noxiously authoritarian tyranny. It may well be that he was at least partly mad by the end of his time in power.
The Guardian in Britain was quoted as asserting that to suggest ‘that Auschwitz was a “big lie” concocted to serve Jewish interests’ is not ‘right’ or ‘fair’. Historical revisionists do not make such a simplistic assertion. They know well that there were a complex of concentration camps at Auschwitz, that conditions for the inmates were often very harsh and worsened by outbreaks of plagues and that some unjustified punishments and killings occurred there. It is certain important details of the overall ‘Auschwitz story’ that they question. One wonders why such an esteemed newspaper could not have stated the issue more accurately. In any case its actual statement is purely a matter of opinion and in no way binding upon anyone else or containing journalistic infallibility.
The German Die Welt was reported to have written that ‘the mass murder of the Jews during Nazi rule is and remains a singular crime, not to be compared or relativised.’ Historical revisionists dispute that claim of singularity, while the cult of Holocaust remembrance depends upon it. Die Welt’s statement, of course, is merely another example of personal opinion, by no means containing an inherent guarantee against error. Die Welt continued with a classic example of the non sequitur (‘it does not follow’) argument: ‘Whoever uses the cover of academic freedom to disavow it mocks the millions of victims and their descendants.’ To me, that is slander pure and simple.
Deutsche Welle, another German paper, was quoted as claiming that President Ahmadinejad has portrayed himself as ‘a messiah’. That appears to be another extravagance of diction. Deutsche Welle’s chief correspondent, Peter Phillips, also argued that the President’s agenda is ‘damaging to Iran’. Obviously those opposed to the current leadership in Iran will try to foment disunity within the nation. In my view Iran has certainly taken a dangerous step in opposing itself to the interests of Israel, the USA and the worldwide Jewish lobby; but that does not prove that the step is wrongful, unwise, against the national interest or against Arab and Muslim interests. It may be both necessary and heroic. Whatever the truth, it would be better to have a more open and honestly conducted discussion of all the issues in Western newspapers.
Saturday, December 16th
The Herald Sun published a letter to the editor by Paul Rozental, hostile to the conference and questioning President Ahmadinejad’s sanity.
Monday, December 18th
The Australian returned to the attack on the conference with a new slant in a large news report headlined ‘Socialite meets the stars of Holocaust denial’. My email response to the paper went as follows:
‘Those who have read deeply into the writings of historical revisionists on the Holocaust will know that there is more intellectual substance to their claims than your latest report on the Tehran conference suggests (‘Socialite meets the stars of Holocaust denial’, 18/12).
‘It is a pity that more coverage has not been given to the details of evidence adduced by Frederick Toben and Richard Krege and others. The personality and career of Lady Michele Renouf is a side issue.
‘A vague assertion about “otherwise undisputed evidence – provided by the Nazis themselves – that Zyklon-B gas was used to murder Jews in their millions” may prove nothing more than the stubbornness under pressure of prejudice challenged by lateral thinking; while merely sneering at Krege’s evidence is even less impressive.
‘Controversy about the Holocaust is a very serious matter for participants on both sides. Profound issues of history and politics are involved. Making light of the Tehran conference by jocular and contemptuous “human interest” tittle-tattle is inappropriate.
‘It also looks like diversionary tactics by commentators more insecure about the commonly held view of the Holocaust than they are willing to admit.’
The Herald Sun published an opinion article by Dvir Abramovich, headed ‘Deny these deniers’. He argued that Holocaust denial is ‘an evil act’ and that Holocaust revisionists should not be allowed to express their views in public forums.
Tuesday, December 19th
The Herald Sun published two letters on the issue. Neil Maydom directed attention to mistreatment of Palestinians by Israel . Nathan Maskiell felt that in a democracy Holocaust deniers should be allowed a say, but described their views as ‘uninformed’, ‘uneducated’, ‘misguided’ and ‘racist’. He also implied that they expressed ‘hatred and intolerance’.
Wednesday, December 20th
The Australian continued its defence of the Holocaust story by publishing in its ‘Cut & Paste’ column an extract headed ‘How could anyone deny the horror of the gas chambers?’. The sub-headline indicated its source: ‘Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in Auschwitz Report (1946), published in English for the first time.’ My immediate thoughts were: ‘Why has it taken so long for this document to appear in English? Is it genuine?’ Primo Levi, of course, is a respected Jewish writer whose books on his experiences of World War II and on his philosophy drawn from those experiences have been highly praised and read by huge numbers of people. He committed suicide late in life.
In response I emailed the following letter to the paper:
‘The detailed account of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Primo Levi (‘How could anyone deny the horror of the gas chambers?’, 20/12) is not proof conclusive that such crimes were committed.
‘At the Nuremberg Trial the judges accepted the accusation that the Nazis had slain some 11,000 of the elite leadership cadres of Poland at Katyn. Years later it was established that the accusation was a complete lie and that the Soviet Union had committed the crime. Atrocity stories are often invented for propaganda purposes or from even less admirable motives.
‘Even if Levi’s account is wholly true, it is still wrong in principle to prohibit historical revisionists from publishing their dissident theses. Free speech remains an essential bulwark against tyranny.’
Professor Robert Faurisson advised me that Primo Levi was in Monowitz from February 1944 to January 1945. In the original 1947 edition of his book he writes about a rumour of one gas chamber in Auschwitz. Sometimes he seems to believe in its existence, but in Chapter Four of the book he is described by a Polish Jew as ‘the Italian who does not believe in the selections’. Apparently, in a new 1976 edition Levi added a long postface containing a huge number of references to the gas chambers (in the plural). He states that, while in Monowitz, he knew nothing precise about the gas chambers, but learned very much about them after the war.[*]
Thus Levi’s testimony is not first-hand, something not clear in the publication of the extract by The Australian.
Thursday, December 21st
Never give up hoping for miracles. Today The Australian published a short letter by Richard Krege, one of the Australian revisionists who attended the Tehran conference. Here it is in full:
‘The frequent references to my employer in your story on the Holocaust conference in Iran (‘Second Aussie in Holocaust denial’, 14/12), while totally irrelevant to the conference, were obviously intended to seriously jeopardize my employment standing. In no circumstances did I mention my employer nor did I associate them with my participation in the conference. The alleged inappropriate use of my work email “to promote… views on the Holocaust” presumably refers to an incident four years ago when it was listed in an online book review by an unknown person, apparently in an attempt to discredit me.’
It is interesting to note that The Australian did not contest Krege’s accusation against it. His little letter opens a small window on to the wicked treatment currently afforded the revisionists by their political enemies. If the Holocaust story is true, why does it have to be defended by such mean and nefarious behaviour?
The Australian also published another statement in its ‘Cut & Paste’ column, written by Somali immigrant and former Dutch parliamentarian Aayan Hirsi Ali, in the Los Angeles Times, which drew the following email response from me:
‘Aayan Hirsi Ali wonders (‘Cut & Paste, 21/12) why there has been such an ‘acquiescence of mainstream Muslims’ in the Tehran Holocaust conference, as shown by the silence of their national leaderships and key representative organisations.
‘Perhaps they have read Professor Robert Faurisson’s long and comprehensive address to his fellow delegates at the conference on the many victories won by historical revisionists against defenders of the Holocaust story during past decades.
‘It is probably impossible to rebut the case made by that address, which may explain why it has not been publicized by those eager to destroy the conference’s intellectual standing.’
It so happened that a copy of Faurisson’s address had been emailed to me the previous day and I had read it carefully, since I regard him as the doyen of Holocaust revisionists. This seems to be a good point to bring forward for the reader some of the points made by Faurisson and to comment on them where necessary.
Robert Faurisson’s Address at the Tehran Conference given on 11th December
This address is entitled ‘The Victories of Revisionism’ and its core is an analysis of twenty key victories won by Holocaust revisionists against their opponents during the past six decades. It comprises twenty-three close-typed pages in small font and is possibly the best short, up-to-date introduction to the subject in existence. Any Christian or other reader of faith and goodwill is urged to obtain a copy and study it for himself or herself. My treatment of it, provided below, is limited in scope.
Faurisson was born in 1929 of a French father and a Scots mother. He taught classical letters (French, Latin and Greek) before specializing first in the analysis of modern and contemporary French literary texts and, finally, in the appraisal of texts and documents (literary, historical and from the media). He was Professor at the Sorbonne and the University of Lyon. Because of his historical revisionist stands, he was effectively forbidden to teach. He has incurred many convictions in the law courts and has suffered ten physical assaults. In France, access to the press, radio and television is barred to him, as it is to all revisionists. Amongst his works is Ecrits Revisionnistes (1974-1998) in four volumes.
Here is how some of his intellectual opponents have referred to him. ‘Robert Faurisson has the motivation of an exclusive love of the truth. This would seem to be an obsession of his. An academic, Robert Faurisson was never to cease using this scientific surety, a presumed pledge of respectability. He read Maurice Bardeche. He discovered Paul Rassinier….. A brilliant and cultured man…..through the Seventies, he worked. He outlined his historico-literary method. He went to the Auschwitz archives. His denial was to build itself there. It rests on a real fact: the gas chamber at the Auschwitz 1 camp is a “reconstitution”, for it served as a storehouse for SS medical supplies and as an air-raid shelter…’
Faurisson states the essential accusation of the Holocaust as follows: ‘At the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), a tribunal of the victors accused a defeated Germany notably (1) of having ordered and planned the physical extermination of the Jews of Europe; (2) of having, to that end, designed and used certain weapons of mass destruction, in particular those that it called “gas chambers”; and (3) of having, essentially with those weapons but also through other means, caused the death of six million Jews.’
Faurisson’s judgement is that in the succeeding sixty years ‘no proof capable of standing up to examination has been produced’ in support of that threefold accusation. He stands by his 1980 summary: ‘The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie, which has permitted a gigantic political and financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism and whose main victims are the German people (but not their leaders) and the Palestinian people in their entirety.’
Faurisson describes revisionism as ‘the great intellectual adventure of the present time’. For him, as an atheist, this is how it appears. More accurately, it should be described as one of the great intellectual adventures of the present time. There are others. One is the investigation into the possibility of an ancient and virtually obliterated lost human civilization of tens of thousands of years in the past. Men like Graham Hancock, Alan Butler, Christopher Knight, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and Colin Wilson have played important roles in that adventure. Another is the exploration of the possibility of human faculties higher than those normally available to us in our everyday state of consciousness. P. D. Ouspensky is one of the foremost writers in that field; another is Idries Shah. However the greatest intellectual adventure of our times is surely that of the reformation of sacred tradition worldwide, in which the leaders have been the so-called Perennialists: Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, Titus Burckhardt, Marco Pallis and Julius Evola. That reformation offers the best hope of avoidance of a massive conflict between the West and Islam, which certain individuals and groups, for varying motives, seem eager to bring on, but which should be evaded at all honourable costs.
Faurisson also tends to exaggerate the role of the Holocaust in present-day Western European nations. Commenting on the ‘prevailing censorship and repression’ of Holocaust revisionists, he writes: ‘Nonetheless the “Holocaust” remains the lone official religion of the entire West, a murderous religion if ever there was one. And one that continues to fool millions of good souls in the crudest ways: the display of heaps of eyeglasses, hair, shoes or valises presented as “relics” of the “gassed”, faked or deceptively exploited photographs, texts of innocuous papers altered or purposely misinterpreted, endless proliferation of monuments, ceremonies and shows, the drumming of the Shoah into our heads as early as primary school, organised excursions to the holy sites of alleged Jewish martyrdom and great show trials with their calls for lynch-law.’
The truth is that Christianity is still the primary religion of the Western nations, which is why it is particularly incumbent upon Christians, in conjunction with Muslims, to challenge injustices perpetrated in the name of the Holocaust.
Faurisson’s reference to ‘lynch-law’ may also be inappropriate. In Australia, certainly, Jewish interests have first sought favourable amendments to national legislation before demanding various kinds of show trials against geriatric ‘Nazi war criminals’ as they allege them to be, assuming them to be guilty before tried, as their language in public forums often indicates. None of that amounts to lynching.
However, Faurisson has drawn attention to a reality: in France the Holocaust occupies a position of anomalous importance. (And it does in other nations, too.) He describes it as follows: ‘President Ahmadinejad has used the right word: the alleged “Holocaust” of the Jews is a “myth”, that is, a belief maintained by credulity or ignorance. In France it is perfectly lawful to proclaim unbelief in God, but it is forbidden to say that one does not believe in the “Holocaust”, or simply that one has doubts about it. This prohibition of any kind of disputing became formal and official with the law of July 13, 1990….. It states that the punishment may run to as much as a year’s imprisonment and a fine of up to 45,000 Euros, but there may also be orders to pay damages and the considerable costs of judicial publication. Relevant case law specifies that all this applies “even if (such disputing) is presented in veiled or dubitative form or by way of insinuation”. Thus France has but one official myth, that of the “Holocaust”, and knows but one form of blasphemy, that which offends the “Holocaust”’.
Faurisson later in his address returned to this theme of myth. ‘On the plane of history and science, the immense edifice of lies put up by the “Holocaust” or “Shoah” sect has been thrown down, with not one stone left upon another. In contrast to this expanse of ruins , we have seen the construction of a whole revisionist literature. In it can be discovered a profusion of documents, photographs, expert studies, trial transcripts, technical and scientific reports, testimonies, statistical studies, all bearing on a hundred aspects of the history of the Second World War that show what the lot of the European Jews was in reality, and demonstrate in striking manner that the Jewish version of that war is largely of the order of myth. From the myth, the Jews have gone on to mythology, and from mythology to religion or, rather, to a semblance of religion.’ Faurisson notes, however, that in the last decade certain Jewish commentators seem to have been quietly distancing themselves from the ‘traditional’ Jewish account of the Holocaust, almost as though preparation is being made for an evacuation from territory impossible to maintain.
Faurisson provides evidence that Holocaust supporters also tamper with the machinery of justice. He tells of how in France an organisation called the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France openly boasts of how it ‘trains’ European judges. Faurisson recently found himself before a judge, Nicolas Bonnal, who had attended ‘a training course’ organised by the FCJIF and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on means of ‘cracking down on revisionism over the Internet’. Faurisson adds that the state prosecutor he faced, a Jewish woman named Anne de Fontette, in her closing words of a speech requesting conviction, though speaking in the name of a secular state, called for the vengeance of ‘Yahweh, protector of his chosen people’. Finally, Faurisson argues that, despite errors of strategy and tactics, British historian David Irving should have won his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt. He claims that, in effect, the High Court judge, Justice Charles Gray, simply ignored the significance of certain critical evidence.
It is worth noting here what Faurisson states did happen to the Jews under the Nazis during World War Two. ‘The Germans wanted to extirpate the Jews from Europe but not to exterminate them. They sought “a definitive – or final – territorial solution to the Jewish question.”….. They had concentration camps but not “extermination camps” (an expression forged by Allied propaganda). They used disinfection gas chambers operating notably with an insecticide called Zyklon-B (the active ingredient of which is hydrogen cyanide) but never had any homicidal gas chambers or homicidal gas vans. They used crematory ovens to incinerate corpses… After the war, the photographs purportedly exposing “Nazi atrocities” showed us camp inmates who were either sick, dying or dead, but not killed. What with the Allies’ blockade and their “area” bombing of Germany, and the apocalypse experienced by the latter towards the end of a nearly six years long conflict, famine and epidemics, notably of typhus, had ravaged the country and, in particular, the camps in the western regions, overwhelmed by the arrivals en masse of detainees evacuated from the camps in the east, and thus severely lacking in food, medicine and the Zyklon-B needed for protection against typhus…..
‘ During the conflict that, from 1933 to 1945, pitted them against the Germans, the European Jews… had occasion to suffer….. Certainly the Germans treated them as a hostile or dangerous minority (there were reasons for that), and against these people the Third Reich authorities were led to take, due to the war, more and more coercive police or military security measures. In certain cases those measures amounted to placement in internment camps, or indeed to concentration or forced labour camps. Sometimes Jews were even executed for sabotage, spying, terrorism and, especially, for guerrilla activities in favour of the Allies, mainly on the Russian front, but not for the simple reason that they were Jewish. Never did Hitler order or permit the killing of a person because of his or her race or religion.’
On this background it would not have proved unduly difficult to plant the Holocaust story, if that is indeed what happened.
Faurisson asserts that defenders of the Holocaust story have been unable to satisfactorily meet three requests made of them by the revisionists: (1) Show us one single document that, in your view, proves that Hitler or any other National Socialist ordered and planned the physical extermination of the Jews; (2) Show us that weapon of mass destruction, which, as alleged, was a gas chamber….. (or) provide us at least with a technical drawing representing one of those slaughterhouses… and explain to us how that weapon with such a fabulous killing performance had been able to work without bringing on the death of either those who ran it or their helpers; (3) Explain to us how you have arrived at your figure of six million victims.
Making accusations without any evidence amounts to slander.
Faurisson adds that historical revisionists ‘have set forth a series of established facts proving that the physical extermination, gas chambers and six million in question cannot have existed.’ In summary, these are as follows: (1) Millions of European Jews lived among the rest of the population throughout the war, often employed in factories; moreover, the Germans offered to hand over to the Allies up to the last months of the war as many Jews as they wanted, as long as these were not sent to Palestine; (2) The Jews under German rule continued to enjoy, if they observed the regulations in place, the protection of the penal law, even in the face of the armed forces; (3) The alleged Nazi gas chambers of Auschwitz or elsewhere are quite simply inconceivable for obvious physical and chemical reasons.
Faurisson next deals with the question of how such a gigantic error can have been publicly maintained as gospel truth for so long. ‘From 1951 onwards, year after year, our adversaries, so rich, so mighty, so bent on practising all possible forms of repression against historical revisionism, have found themselves progressively forced to admit that we are right on the technical, scientific and historical levels. The victories achieved by Second World War revisionists are many and significant, but, as must sadly be recognized, they still remain, in our day, almost wholly unknown to the greater public. The mighty have done everything to conceal these victories from the world. That is understandable: their domination and sharing of the world between them are in a way grounded in the religion of the alleged “Holocaust” of the Jews. Calling the “Holocaust” into question, publicly disclosing the extraordinary imposture of it all, pulling the masks off the politicians, journalists, historians, academics and people of the churches, clans and coteries who, for more than sixty years, have been preaching falsehoods whilst all the time casting anathema on the unbelievers, amounts to a perilous adventure.’
Those are my own italics. It is very important to realise that, owing to an accumulation of interlocking factors, this historical controversy has become magnified to the point where its resolution promises a major paradigm shift in Western European civilization. That is why the revisionists are attacked with such an amazing proliferation of irrational and unjust political machineries, of which the grossly one-sided presentation of the Tehran conference by Melbourne’s major newspapers, and primarily The Australian, is one of the latest examples in microcosm. The well-known resistance of the Catholic Church to the discoveries of Galileo is an analogous drama.
Faurisson correctly argues that the imposition of the legal sanctions of the French law of July 13th, 1990, and comparable legislation elsewhere, is ‘a flagrant admission of weakness’ in the case of those who defend the Holocaust story. ‘To resort to special laws, to the police and prisons is to admit one’s utter inability to use the arguments of reason, history and science.’
One important figure to whom Faurisson refers is Michel de Bouard, himself deported from France during the war for his part in the Resistance, a professor of history and Dean of Letters at the University of Caen in Normandy and a member of the prestigious Institut de France. In Ouest-France of August 2nd and 3rd, 1986, de Bouard declared that the dossier on the history of the German concentration camp system was ‘rotten’ due to, in his own words, ‘a huge amount of made-up stories, inaccuracies stubbornly repeated – particularly where numbers are concerned – amalgamations and generalizations.’ He wrote of the revisionists’ studies that there were ‘very carefully done critical studies demonstrating the inanity of those exaggerations’.
Faurisson had this to say of de Bouard: ‘He was a professional historian, indeed the ablest French historian on the subject of the wartime deportations. Up to 1985 he defended the strictly orthodox and official position. Upon reading the revisionist Henri Roques’s doctoral thesis on the alleged testimony of SS man Kurt Gerstein, he saw his error. He honestly acknowledged it, going so far as to say that, if he hitherto personally had upheld the existence of a gas chamber in the Mauthausen camp, he had done so wrongly, on the faith of what was said around him. (His untimely death in 1989 deprived the revisionist camp of an eminent personality who had resolved to publish a new work aiming to put historians on their guard against the official lies of Second World War history.)’
Faurisson also makes use of important admissions by Arno Mayer, an American professor of Jewish origin teaching contemporary European history at Princeton University, and Swiss historian Philippe Burrin, to show what an extraordinary void of evidence for the Holocaust story exists. ‘The greater public imagine that the traces of Hitler’s crime are many and unambiguous, but the historian who has examined the relevant documentation has, for his part, found nothing but sparse semblances and “traces”, and wonders what interpretation to give to them.’
Another example of this disparity between the apparent facts of the situation and public awareness is brought up by Faurisson with reference to the life and death of Jean-Claude Pressac: ‘The man who had supposedly saved the day for History, who once was presented by the world press as an extraordinary researcher who had at last discovered the scientific proof of the Nazi gas chambers’ existence, ended up acknowledging his error. A few years later, not a single newspaper or magazine announced his death.’
Faurisson, in his general conclusion to his address, comments: ‘We are granted the privilege of witnessing, in this beginning of the 21st Century, a serious calling into question of one of the greatest lies in history.’ He discusses the implications of that alleged lie: ‘It has served to justify the creation in the land of Palestine of a warlike colony that has taken the name of “Jewish State” and endowed itself with a “Jewish Army”. It imposes on the Western world the yoke of a Jewish or Zionist tyranny bringing itself to bear in all fields of intellectual, academic and media activity. It poisons the soul of a great country, Germany. It has allowed the extortion from the latter, as well as from a good number of other Western countries, of exorbitant sums in marks, in dollars or in euros. It overwhelms us with films, with museums, with books that keep the flame of a Talmudic-style hatred burning. It makes it possible to call for an armed crusade against “the axis of evil” and, for this, to fabricate, on demand, the most shameless lies… It makes it possible to accuse nearly the whole world and to demand “repentance” and “reparations” everywhere, either for alleged actions directed against “Yahweh’s chosen people”, an alleged complicity in the crime, or an alleged general indifference to the fate of the Jews during the Second World War. Under its belt it has a glut of rigged trials, beginning with the loathsome Nuremberg trial. It has sanctioned thousands of hangings of defeated soldiers, an atrocious post-war Purge, the deportation of millions of civilians chased from their ancestral homelands, indescribable pillaging, tens of thousands of scandalous legal proceedings, including those carried out today against octogenarians or nonagenarians, attacked by “miraculous” Jewish survivors giving their false testimony.’
Again, those are my italics, because this is such an enormous composite indictment which, even if largely but not wholly true, if acknowledged, will demand a vast change of paradigm for Western civilization. Faurisson had more to add in this context: ‘Practising mendacity on a grand scale, the “Holocaust” religionists have made themselves, little by little, the enemies of the human race….. They have attacked Roosevelt, Churchill, De Gaulle, Pope Pius XII, the International Committee of the Red Cross and numerous other personalities, official bodies or countries for not having denounced the existence of the “gas chambers”…..It was… clear-sightedness and not indifference that the Allies and others charged showed. It was that same clear-sightedness which, after the war, in their speeches or in their memoirs, Churchill, De Gaulle and Eisenhower showed as they avoided mentioning, even so much as once, the said “gas chambers”.
Faurisson concludes by suggesting ‘some practical means to launch a real action against this false religion with its sanctuary located at Auschwitz.’ He suggests an approach to UNESCO. He also calls for the widespread publicizing of revisionist victories. My own approach is to insist on the principle of intellectual freedom in this context and, especially, to call upon my fellow-Christians and others of faith and goodwill to speak out and campaign to end what is plainly a grossly unjust persecution, regardless of what the exact truth is about the alleged extermination camps, gassings and numbers of Jews killed.
Friday, December 22nd
The Australian published an opinion article by Michael Costello, ‘No merit in a delusional approach to the Middle East’, in which the author asserted simplistically: ‘The reason Iran recently hosted a Holocaust denial conference was because, in its view, eliminating the Holocaust as a historical fact undermines a key rationale for Israel’s existence.’ Costello ignored other associated reasons for the organisation of the conference and was silent about the question of the truth or otherwise of claims made at the conference.
The Australian also had another reference to the issue in its ‘Cut & Paste’ column, this time in a speech made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, headed ‘Fighting the good fight against extremism and reaction’. Mr Blair complained that ‘elements of the Government of Iran’ were engaging in several kinds of reaction and extremism including ‘denying the Holocaust’. He professed to be defending ‘democracy and modernisation’.
The Herald Sun published a letter to the editor by Pauline Rockman and Shmuel Rosenkranz, co-presidents of the Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick, headed ‘Don’t lie about history.’
This elicited the following email from me to the paper:
‘Pauline Rockman and Shmuel Rosenkranz (22/12) wrote of the “indisputable evidence of the atrocities” of the Holocaust. However, that evidence has been disputed, and very ably, by a number of historical revisionists, whose theses are effectively barred from publication in the mass media.
‘There is, of course, no evidence whatever that revisionists are “pursuing total power and domination over other peoples”, or that they are interested in helping others to do that, but perhaps those powers bent on suppressing free speech in history in this context do have such an agenda.
‘As for the claim by Dvir Abramovich (‘Deny these deniers’, 18/12) that Holocaust denial is “an evil act”, that is a pure statement of faith. In my view, what is more easily establishable as evil is the current practice in several Western nations of imprisoning people just because they dispute the ‘official’ version of history. It looks like naked tyranny to me.’
Saturday, December 23rd and Sunday, December 24th
The Australian carried a reference in its huge editorial ‘Christmas Reveals Our Shared Values’ to the extract from Primo Levi it had published earlier in the week and which I have discussed above. ‘The gas ovens of Auschwitz, described in stark detail by Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in an extract from The Auschwitz Report (1946) published in this newspaper earlier this week, were the clinical application of scientific thought to achieve a diabolical end – the mass murder of 20,000 people a day.’
Information provided by Professor Faurisson calls into question the veracity of this information. Once again The Australian has implied that this is eye witness testimony, without explaining that it is not. It is interesting to note the theological terminology (‘diabolical’) which the paper has used, Perhaps it is just a piece of hyperbole.
Conclusion
A very strange anomaly should by now have made itself obvious to the judicious reader. A historical thesis, misleadingly dubbed by its enemies as ‘Holocaust denial’, is reported to be intellectually utterly worthless, if not downright insane. It is compared to exploded viewpoints such as flat earth theory or the claim that Elvis Presley is still alive. Yet, at the same time, this thesis, which must, if the above claims are true, be as feeble and fragile as any hot air from any time, is said to be evil, diabolical and a menace to ‘democratic society’. As such, it is fulminated against by some of the most eminent Jewish spokespeople and also by world leaders and major newspapers.
Another anomaly is that which has been sedulously demonstrated by the three major newspapers read in Melbourne. The claim is that we live in a democratic nation in which citizens are free to express varying viewpoints in public on political issues, unlike authoritarian or totalitarian tyrannies such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Yet, on what is obviously an extremely important historical issue, one side of the controversy is not merely denied equitable space in major public forums (the newspapers), but is even continually insulted, derided and misrepresented in an extraordinary and bizarre ‘one-way street’ discussion.
I argue that any fair-minded and impartial Christian or person of faith and goodwill should be highly suspicious of this situation; and I appeal to each such reader of this essay to investigate the matter carefully and to be willing to comment publicly on what he or she finds.
This essay will conclude with a series of propositions based on what seem to be the implications of the present situation, followed by a bibliography.
My Propositions
One: The term ‘Holocaust’ is unfortunately ambiguous. It can be taken to refer to the sum total of Jewish suffering under Nazi rule, or to the particular triple allegation that the Nazis under Hitler sought to exterminate Europe’s Jews in homicidal gas chambers which contributed the major part of six million Jews killed under Nazism.
Two: The term ‘Holocaust denial’, normally used by adversaries of the historical revisionists, is a misleading term, since they do not deny the occurrence of the Holocaust in the first sense, but only in the much more limited second sense.
Three: The currently received model of the Holocaust has been very seriously called into question by historical revisionists, by means of genuine historical and scientific research and scholarship.
Four: Claims that this research and scholarship is bogus, unacademic and not to be taken seriously are false. In many cases they are deliberate lies.
Five: Claims that the historical revisionists who dispute the current model of the Holocaust are racists, neo-Nazis, lunatics or anti-Semites are false. In many cases this impugning of their motives and ad hominem attack is deceitful and employed deliberately in order to fool the public into not investigating the controversy for themselves – or to frighten them into avoiding contact with such alleged pariahs.
Six: Denial of fair space in major public forums to the revisionists directly infringes on the basic principle of intellectual freedom, which is the sine qua non protection of humanity from tyranny.
Seven: The punishment of historical revisionists by misuse of legal systems to inflict on them loss of employment, huge fines, public defamation and imprisonment is a monstrous injustice which Christians and persons of faith and goodwill should actively oppose until it is brought to an end.
Eight: The Holocaust, or ‘Remembrance of the Holocaust’ or the Shoah, is not a religion. It may be termed a pseudo-religion in certain manifestations. A true religion involves a revelation and/or inspiration from the realm of the divine, mixed with varying degrees of success with human reason and understanding or misunderstanding. No such revelation or inspiration is apparent in the Holocaust.
Nine: The Holocaust has no special moral significance which marks it off from other mass killings in human history.
Ten: It appears that in some Western nations, including Australia, as demonstrated in this essay, an unholy alliance to protect the current model of the Holocaust has been formed between Jewish organisations, governments and major media. This combined misrepresentation of a smallish group of sincere researchers amounts to a repulsive exhibition of political and social bullying, which all Christians and persons of faith and goodwill should publicly deplore and endeavour to bring to an end.
Eleven: Appeals to sympathy for Jews who suffered under the Nazis and for their descendants have no validity as a means of refutation of the theses of the revisionists and should be treated as an irrelevance in the context of the search for historical truth.
Twelve: The size and dimensions of the current persecution of historical revisionists raises very serious questions about the degree of influence of Jewish minorities in Western and some other nations and the ways in which that influence is being exerted. These matters need to be openly, honourably and equitably investigated.
Thirteen: The nature of the persecution also raises serious doubts about the moral and spiritual health of the peoples in whose nations it is being practised. It may indicate that so-called ‘democracies’ have deteriorated into semi-secret oligarchies, whose rulers, in pursuing their own agendas, may be acting against the interests of their majorities and even of humanity itself. This is a grave matter which also needs to be openly, honourably and equitably investigated.
Fourteen: Revision of our understanding of the Holocaust does not, nor should it, imply any irrational or unjust attitude towards Jewish people, past and present. Unjust sufferings which Jews and others experienced under the Nazis are not to be endorsed or approved.
My case is completed and, I believe, irrefutable. If so, Christians and others of faith and goodwill should speak out to end the wickedness.
Notes
© Melbourne, 10th January 2007
[*] Concerning Primo Levi, Dr Faurisson has pointed out that his book Survival in Auschwitz originally appeared in English under the title If This is a Man (Italian, Se questo é un uomo). The author’s preface (Torino, January 1947) begins with these rather surprising words:
‘It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that is, after the German Government had decided, owing to the growing scarcity of labour, to lengthen the average life span of the prisoners destined for elimination; it conceded noticeable improvements in the camp routine and temporarily suspended killings at the whims of individuals. As an account of atrocities, therefore, this book of mine adds nothing to what is already known to readers throughout the world on the disturbing question of the death camps.’ (page 9)
Dr Faurisson points out that the phrase ‘at the whim of individuals’ is very different from ‘systematic murder’.
Bibliography
The reader who is willing to investigate my claims by means of further reading needs to explore two separate but related themes: (1) The nature of the Jewish people, their history and their interaction with non-Jewish people over the centuries and particularly today; (2) The nature of the Nazi period of rule in Germany and in particular Nazi treatment of the Jews and the revisionist critique of the currently accepted model of the Holocaust.
A short essay like this does not need a huge bibliography. I will first list the sources Dr Faurisson recommended for study in his address at the Tehran conference. Then I will add a few recommendations of my own.
Professor Faurisson’s List
Butz, A. R., The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (the 2003 edition of this book first published in 1976 is especially recommended and has five important supplements).
Leuchter, Fred, The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland (the 1988 Samisdat Publishers, Toronto edition is recommended and has an important letter on page 42, dated 14 May 1988). (Leuchter also authored three other reports.)
Gauss, Ernst, Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of ‘Truth’ and ‘Memory.’ (This contains 600 pages of essays by specialists. The real name of the author is Germar Rudolf, who also edited a series of periodicals in English under the name The Revisionist. See the website vho.org). (Theses and Dissertations Press, Alabama, USA, 2000.)
Kulazka, Barbara, Did Six Million Really Die? Report of the Evidence in the Canadian ‘False News’ Trial of Ernst Zündel,1988 (This 560-page publication is comprehensive.) (Samisdat Publishers, Toronto, 1992.)
The Journal of Historical Review (The 97 issues published between 1980 and 2002)
(Dr Faurisson also recommends studies by Wilhelm Staglich, Udo Walendy, Carlo Mattogno, Enrique Aynat Eknes, Jurgen Graf, Pierre Guillaume, Serge Thion, Henri Roques, Pierre Marais, Vincent Reynouard and Jean Plantin.)
My Own Additional List
Duke, David, Jewish Supremacism (Free Speech Press, Louisiana, 2003) (Duke’s earlier book, My Awakening, contains his account of the Ku Klux Klan.)
Macdonald, Kevin, The Culture of Critique, (first pb edition) 1st Books Library, California, USA, 2002 (especially the preface)
Rassinier, Paul, The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, (Institute for Historical Review, California, USA, 1978)
Reed, Douglas, The Controversy of Zion (Veritas, WA, Australia, 1985)
Robertson, Wilmot, The Dispossessed Majority, (Howard Allen, Florida, USA, 1973) (especially Chapter 15, pp 149-193, on ‘The Jews’)
Schmidt, Hans, End Times/End Games, (self-published, Florida, USA, 1999)
Simpson, William Gayley, Which Way Western Man? (National Alliance, Washington DC, USA, 1979) (especially pp 607-743 and 746-747 on the Jews)
Smith, Bradley R., Break His Bones: The Private Life of a Holocaust Revisionist, (self-published, California, USA, 2002)
Stäglich, Wilhelm, Auschwitz: a Judge Looks at the Evidence, Institute for Historical Review, California, USA, 1990 (The earlier 1986 English edition was titled The Auschwitz Myth.)
Veale, F. J. P., The Veale File, Institute for Historical Review, California, USA, 1979 (see Volume 2, Crimes Discreetly Veiled, pp 38-51, on the Katyn Forest massacre.)
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