Holocaust denial

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
m (Reverted edits by Strom (Talk) to last version by Human)
(Other mass murders outside World War II: trying to clarify)
Line 180: Line 180:
 
===Other mass murders outside World War II===
 
===Other mass murders outside World War II===
 
Holocaust deniers will point out that the Holocaust was not the largest mass murder in history, or even of the twentieth century. But this fact is not, in any way, relevant to the reality of the Holocaust.  "Stalin murdered more people than Hitler" is a common red herring, which doubly serves their purpose as the USSR under Stalin was one of the Allied nations - but again, how does this disprove the Holocaust?
 
Holocaust deniers will point out that the Holocaust was not the largest mass murder in history, or even of the twentieth century. But this fact is not, in any way, relevant to the reality of the Holocaust.  "Stalin murdered more people than Hitler" is a common red herring, which doubly serves their purpose as the USSR under Stalin was one of the Allied nations - but again, how does this disprove the Holocaust?
 +
 +
===Israeli atrocities===
 +
Another red herring used by Holocaust deniers and Holocaust relativists is the violent acts by the modern state of [[Israel]]. Indeed Israel's military policy should be subject to debate, but Israel's acts since its establishment in 1948 has no relevance to the reality of the Holocaust.
  
 
===Laws against Holocaust denial===
 
===Laws against Holocaust denial===

Revision as of 05:44, 16 May 2009

Not just a river in Egypt

Denialism

Icon denialism.svg
A dirty dozen gems

Holocaust denial takes many forms. Generally, Holocaust deniers claim that the Final Solution was in fact not the genocide of the Jewish people, but rather the expulsion of Jews from Germany; that 6,000,000 is an exaggeration of the Jewish death count; that the Nuremberg testimonies from Germans were extracted by torture; that the Jews just made everything up to gain the world's sympathy; and that the gas chambers used by the Nazis were actually breathing medication applicators hair care facilities. Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism.

Contents

"Holocaust revisionism" vs Holocaust denial

Many Holocaust deniers describe themselves as "revisionists". Does that mean they are not deniers?

How do we define Holocaust denial?

"The Holocaust" is commonly defined as:

  • The planned murder - the plan
  • of five to seven million Jews - the number
  • mainly carried out with gas chambers - the method

The Free Dictionary defines "denial" as

1. a statement that something is not true
2. (...)

From this follows:

  • The claim that the attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe was not planned is Holocaust denial, even while agreeing with modern scholarship upon the number and the method.
  • The claim that significantly fewer than five to seven million Jews died is Holocaust denial, even while agreeing with modern scholarship upon the plan and the method.
  • The claim that gas chambers were not used for mass executions is Holocaust denial, even while agreeing with modern scholarship upon the plan and the number.

Most self-proclaimed "Holocaust revisionists" disagree with established scholarship upon the plan, the number and the method. Therefore, they are clearly Holocaust deniers. The term "Holocaust revisionism" does not carry any meaning separate from Holocaust denial.

Quotes evidencing the planned extermination

This is just a sample of the wealth of documentary evidence.

(Caveat: Holocaust deniers reason that, since the Holocaust did not happen, any evidence to the contrary is a forgery created by the Jews as part of their International Jewish Conspiracy.™)

Adolf Hitler

Hitler quote.gif

In 1922, Hitler told a journalist that:

Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.
— Adolf Hitler, 1922. (Josef Hell, "Aufzeichnung," 1922, ZS 640, p. 5, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. Translation at Nizkor)

Heinrich Himmler

In 1943 Himmler spoke openly about the extermination of the Jewish people, as well as the equivocation used to cover it up, during a speech to SS Officers. An audio recording, as well as a transcription of the original German, is available.[1]

I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.
Just as we did not hesitate on June 30 to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them.
About which we have never spoken, and never will speak.
That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that tact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered, and everyone was clear that the next time, he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary.
I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people.r/> It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated," every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter."
And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.
And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through, and -- with the exception of human weaknesses -- to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned.
Because we know how difficult things would be, if today in every city during the bomb attacks, the burdens of war and the privations, we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and instigators. We would probably be at the same stage as 1916-17, if the Jews still resided in the body of the German people.
We have taken away the riches that they had, and I have given a strict order, which Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, we have delivered these riches completely to the Reich, to the State. We have taken nothing from them for ourselves. A few, who have offended against this, will be [judged] in accordance with an order, that I gave at the beginning: He who takes even one Mark of this is a dead man.
A number of SS men have offended against this order. There are not very many, and they will be dead men - WITHOUT MERCY! We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one Mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because at the end of this, we don't want, because we exterminated the bacillus, to become sick and die from the same bacillus.
I will never see it happen, that even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.

The National Archives explains why this speech was recorded: "The SS, for example, used recording equipment to obtain transcripts of Himmler's speeches. During the 1930's many of Himmler's speeches were taken down in shorthand by secretaries or SS aides who later typed texts from these shorthand notes. Then, beginning in 1940, efforts were made to replace the stenographers with sound recording equipment. Though initial efforts were not very successful, by late 1942 the technique had been perfected and nearly all the extant typed and printed texts of Himmler speeches dating from 1943 and 1944 were derived from recordings made while Himmler was speaking.2 Goebbels also found speech recordings useful. After delivering an address, he could leisurely listen to the recording and make the changes that he felt would heighten the speech's propaganda effect. Then the propaganda ministry would issue a press release containing the edited text, or parts of it, which German newspapers would publish as if they were presenting the text of the original speech.3 Though the recordings were chiefly just useful tools, Himmler, Goebbels, and other prominent Nazis were careful not to destroy the original discs. The Nazis' interest in preserving oral records matched their prodigious efforts to save written records of their rise to power and days of glory.4 The leaders of the Third Reich were convinced that they were participating in events of great historical magnitude, and, because of the importance they attached to the spoken word, it must have seemed obvious to them that the recordings should be preserved."[2]

2 days later, Himmler said:

We came to the question: what to with the women and children? I decided to find a clear solution here as well. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - that is, to kill them or have them killed - and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth. For the organisation which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had. But it was accomplished, and without -- I believe I can say -- our men and their leaders suffering any mental or spiritual damage. (IfZ, MA 309 (=NA, T 175, R 85), pp. 0152-0200), printed in: Smith/Peterson (eds.), Himmler, Geheimreden, p. 169.)[3]

Wannsee Conference

"Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.
The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)"[4]

1942 report

On 29 December 1942, Himmler presented Hitler with the "Report to the Führer on fighting against gangs", No. 51.1 This report, which covered the period from August to November, 1942, and which referred only to a part of the occupied Soviet area (southern Russia, Ukraine and the district of Bialystok); included the following numbers concerning persons imprisoned or executed:

1. Bandits

a) Established number of deaths after combat 1,337
b) Prisoners executed immediately 737
c) Prisoners executed after lengthy thorough interrogation 7,828

2. Gang helpers and suspects

a) Arrested 16,553
b) Executed 14,257
c) Jews executed 363,211[5]

Technical details

Experienced Holocaust deniers enjoy talking about technical details, such as the chemical properties of Zyklon B, the size of cremation ovens, or soap recipes.

A novice skeptic might be deceived that all these details are true, and that they support the denier's arguments. However, they don't.

Famous deniers

David Irving

David Irving is a "historian and a neutral observer". A "historian and a neutral observer" who believes that the Jews asked for it:

PRESENTER: At times in your speech to these groups you speak at, you ask if the Jews have ever looked at themselves.
IRVING: Yes.
PRESENTER: To find a reason for the pogroms and the presentation and the extermination. In other words you’re asking “did they bring it on themselves?”
IRVING: Yes.
PRESENTER: Thereby excusing the Germans, the Nazis.
IRVING: Why… well, let us ask that simple question, why does it always happen to the Jews?
PRESENTER: But isn’t that an ugly, racist sentiment?
IRVING: It is an ugly, of course it’s an ugly, racist sentiment, of course it is, you’re absolutely right but we can’t just say therefore let's not discuss it, therefore let's not open that can of worms in case we find something inside there which we’re not going to like looking at.

..that Jews control the world:

INTERVIEWER: When one reads your speeches, one had the impression that Churchill was paid by the Jews, that the Jews dragged Britain into the war, that many of the Communist regimes have been dominated by Jews subsequently, and that a great deal of control over the world is exercised by Jews.
IRVING: Right, these are four separate facts, to each of which I would be willing to put my signature. They are four separate and unrelated facts. When you string them together like that, you might be entitled then to say: “Question five, David Irving, are you therefore an antisemite?” This may well have been –
INTERVIEWER: No, this wasn’t my question.
IRVING: But the answer is this, these are in fact four separate facts which happen to be true, in my considered opinion as a historian. And I think we can find the historical evidence for it.

..and made up the Holocaust to cover up their money-grubbing schemes:

And that’s what it is all about. The big lie is designed not only to distract attention from even bigger crimes than what the Nazis did, the big lie is designed to justify, both in arrears and in advance, the bigger crimes in the financial world and elsewhere that are being committed by the survivors of the Holocaust

Other illustrations of his neutrality:

The whole rabble, all the scum of humanity stand outside. The homosexuals, the gypsies, the lesbians, the Jews, the criminals, the communists, the left-wing extremists, the whole commune stands there and has to be held back behind steel barricades for two days.

...

INTERVIEWER:...you were quoted on, Mr Irving, you were quoted on radio in Australia yesterday saying it makes you queasy seeing black men playing cricket for England. Can you explain to us what you mean by that?
IRVING: Well I think probably if you spoke to a lot of English people they’d, they’d find the same thing but not many of them are prepared to say it in public. You see there’s so much intimidation in our so-called liberal free democratic society that that people are forced to live an almost schizophrenic existence. They make statements in public which they consider to be safe but privately at the back of their heads they think differently and I say what I think. And, I’m queasy when I see, now you see I was born in England in 1938 and people will know what I’m saying now, 1938 England was a different country from the way England is now and I’m unhappy to see what we have done to England. We’ve abdicated, we’ve committed a kind of international hari kari, we’ve inflicted great misery on ourselves with coloured immigration and we’ve inflicted, let’s be frank, we’ve inflicted misery on the coloured immigrants as well. It’s a kind of 20th century slave trade. I don’t like it and I’m queasy about it and I’m frank enough to say it and no-one’s going to prevent me from speaking my mind about it.

...

So I said “before I answer your questions, would you tell me what you believe in, as a journalist, an Australian journalist? Do you believe in mixing up all God’s races into one super, kind of mixed up race? Are you in favour of racial inter-marriage and racial mixing? And he said: “well, I believe in multiculturalism”, of course that’s the buzzword, it will come here sooner or later.’
[citation needed]

Others

  • Willis Carto: founder of the Institute for Historical Review in 1979, the main Holocaust Denial group in the United States. Founder of the Barnes Review, a "historical revisionist" magazine that mostly runs articles questioning the Holocaust but covers it up with other articles on serious historical topics. Previously founded Liberty Lobby in 1955.
  • Bradley Smith: the crank who has spent the last 20 years trying to place advertisements in newspapers calling for an "open debate" on whether the Holocaust happened. He seems to crave the controversy that results, and chants the mantra of "free speech" a lot. He is especially fond of trying to place these ads in student newspapers on college campuses, which usually results in free publicity for him and his pet cause whether or not the ads are accepted for publication.
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. Hosted a 2006 conference, the "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust", at which the panel of speakers included among others David Duke and Robert Faurisson.
  • Robert Faurisson: French writer, prosecuted for defamation in 1979 after writing letters to Le Monde claiming there were no gas chambers. Author of a 1991 booklet claiming the Diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.
  • Ernst Zündel: Canadian writer, prolific promoter of Holocaust denial through his website and publishing business, recently prosecuted in Germany and sentenced to five years for violating Germany's law against inciting hatred.
  • Arthur Butz: professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University; author of the 1976 book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry.
  • Fred Leuchter: consultant to the lucrative capital punishment industry in the U.S. and manufacturer of electric chairs. In 1988 he was hired by Ernst Zündel to investigate whether the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps could have been used for mass extermination. Leuchter claims be concluded they could not have been and published The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland. Fred Leuchter has no scientific background to have made such a claim.
  • Francis Parker Yockey: an American Hitler admirer who wrote an unreadable post-WWII tome called Imperium under the pen-name "Ulick Varange", a book which you can't make heads of tails of but vaguely has something to do with advocating European unification around a program of "total politics" (read: fascism).
  • Harry Elmer Barnes: originally, a mainstream writer and historian. After World War II, a marginal crank who brought his marginalization on himself because he insisted that all accusations against Germany and Japan were fabricated wartime propaganda. Revered and frequently name-dropped by today's Holocaust denial movement but their politics are likely far from Barnes' which were more along the lines of "I didn't leave liberalism, liberalism left me".
  • Eustace Mullins: anti-Semitic writer and currently contributing editor to the Holocaust denying Barnes Review magazine.

Red herrings from Holocaust deniers

A red herring is essentially an argument without relevance.

Dresden, Hiroshima and other Allied atrocities

The Allies killed many civilians in World War II. Deniers like to mention this, because:

  • this would make the Holocaust less extraordinary.
  • it implies that the Allied atrocities were denied or censored after the Second World War, and that somehow this would make Holocaust denial more legitimate. Moreover, the Allies never denied or censored the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the firebombing of Dresden in the first place.

Other mass murders outside World War II

Holocaust deniers will point out that the Holocaust was not the largest mass murder in history, or even of the twentieth century. But this fact is not, in any way, relevant to the reality of the Holocaust. "Stalin murdered more people than Hitler" is a common red herring, which doubly serves their purpose as the USSR under Stalin was one of the Allied nations - but again, how does this disprove the Holocaust?

Israeli atrocities

Another red herring used by Holocaust deniers and Holocaust relativists is the violent acts by the modern state of Israel. Indeed Israel's military policy should be subject to debate, but Israel's acts since its establishment in 1948 has no relevance to the reality of the Holocaust.

Laws against Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is a crime in twelve European countries and Israel. Deniers usually make a fuss about that, ignoring the fact that 190 countries have no law against Holocaust denial. See list of countries where Holocaust denial is legal.

A few things once believed about the Holocaust are now known to not be true

This is another red herring. Examples include allegations that the Nazis manufactured soap and lampshades out of their victims' remains. The fact that these allegations have been disproved is supposed to imply that historians have changed their minds and that the main facts of the Holocaust are also in question. However: (1) it has no relevance to the reality of the Holocaust, and (2) according to the Nizkor Project (an Internet project documenting and refuting Holocaust denial),[6] serious historians of the Holocaust never believed the Nazis mass-produced soap from the corpses of Jews, so it was never a case of historians changing their minds to begin with.[7]

The term "The Holocaust" didn't become popular until the 1970s

How does this call the facts of the Nazis' deliberate murder of 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, into question? What happened happened, no matter what the most popular term for it has been over the years.

Questions to ask a Holocaust denier

  • According to censuses, there were about six million more Jews in Europe before the war than after the war[citation needed]. Where did they go? The population of Israel (including Arabs and other minorities, as well as Jewish immigrants from non-Axis territories) was 800 000 in 1948 and two million in 1958.[citation needed]
  • Many thousands of officers and guards were accused for participating in, being responsible for, or witnessing, the Holocaust. Many were imprisoned, many were released. Many lived west of the Iron curtain, many east of it. Most of them lived in freedom for decades, but are dead today. Why has not one of them testified in favour of the "revisionist" view? Not during the trials (deniers claim that they were tortured), not anonymously in an interview with any of these "revisionist scholars" (it would be hard to track down and torture every single participant), not for any of the "revisionist" books, websites, or radio broadcasts, not on their deathbeds, not in their posthumously released wills - not at all. How could every one of these thousands have remained silent, or falsely confessed themselves guilty, for decades?
  • Was the extermination of gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents real?
  • Very few Holocaust deniers/revisionists possess academic degrees in history. (Several of them are academics in other fields, but not in history.) Not one of them has conducted graduate studies or academic research in history. Why not first pursue an academic career in 20th century history at any university in the Western world, and then write a paper on the Holocaust? "Revisionists" would claim that such a paper would effectively end the scholar's promotion. But being the first Ph.D. in history to take this position would surely allow for a career as a "revisionist" writer and lecturer, wouldn't it?

Reasonable arguments against the facts of the Holocaust

Tumbleweed.gif


See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/
  2. http://www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/sound-recordings.html
  3. http://www.hdot.org/trial/defense/pl1/19
  4. http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/wansee-transcript.html
  5. http://www.hdot.org/trial/defense/pl1/19
  6. http://www.nizkor.org/
  7. http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/soap-01.html
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support