66 Questions and Answers on the Holocaust

(an early IHR publication)

1. What proof exists that the Nazis killed six million Jews?

None. All we have is postwar testimony, mostly of individual "survivors." This testimony is contradictory, and very few claim to have actually witnessed any "gassing." There are no contemporaneous documents or hard evidence: no mounds of ashes, no crematories capable of disposing of millions of corpses, no "human soap," no lamp shades made of human skin, and no credible demographic statistics.

2. What evidence exists that six million Jews were not killed by the Nazis?

Extensive forensic, demographic, analytical and comparative evidence demonstrates the impossibility of such a figure. The widely repeated "six million" figure is an irresponsible exaggeration.

3. Did Simon Wiesenthal state in writing that "there were no extermination camps on German soil"?

Yes. The famous "Nazi hunter" wrote this in Stars and Stripes, Jan. 24, 1993. He also claimed that "gassings" of Jews took place only in Poland.

4. If Dachau was in Germany, and even Wiesenthal says that it was not an extermination camp, why do many American veterans say it was an extermination camp?

After the Allies captured Dachau, many GIs and others were led through the camp and shown a building alleged to have been a "gas chamber." The mass media widely, but falsely, continues to assert that Dachau was a "gassing" camp.

5. What about Auschwitz? Is there any proof that gas chambers were used to kill people there?

No. Auschwitz, captured by the Soviets, was modified after the war, and a room was reconstructed to look like a large "gas chamber." After America's leading expert on gas chamber construction and design, Fred Leuchter, examined this and other alleged Auschwitz gassing facilities, he stated that it was an "absurdity" to claim that they were, or could have been, used for executions.

6. If Auschwitz wasn't a "death camp," what was its true purpose?

It was an internment center and part of a large-scale manufacturing complex. Synthetic fuel was produced there, and its inmates were used as a workforce.

7. Who set up the first concentration camps?

During the Boer War (1899-1902), the British set up what they called "concentration camps" in South Africa to hold Afrikaner women and children. Approximately 30,000 died in these hell-holes, which were as terrible as German concentration camps of World War II.

8. How did German concentration camps differ from American "relocation" camps in which Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII?

The only significant difference was that the Germans interned persons on the basis of being real or suspected security threats to the German war effort, whereas the Roosevelt administration interned persons on the basis of race alone.

9. Why did the German government intern Jews in camps?

It considered Jews a direct threat to national security. (Jews were overwhelmingly represented in Communist subversion.) However, all suspected security risks -- not just Jews -- were in danger of internment.

10. What hostile measure did world Jewry undertake against Germany as early as 1933?

In March 1933, international Jewish organizations declared an international boycott of German goods.

11. Did the Jews of the world "declare war on Germany"?

Yes. Newspapers around the world reported this. A front-page headline in the London Daily Express (March 24, 1933), for example, announced "Judea Declares War on Germany."

12. Was this before or after the "death camp" stories began?

This was years before the "death camp" stories, which began in 1941-1942.

13. What nation is credited with being the first to practice mass civilian bombing?

Britain -- on May 11, 1940.

14. How many "gas chambers" to kill people were there at Auschwitz?

None.

15. How many Jews were living in the areas that came under German control during the war?

Fewer than six million.

16. If the Jews of Europe were not exterminated by the Nazis, what happened to them?

After the war millions of Jews were still alive in Europe. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps as many as one and a half million) had died of all causes during the war. Others had emigrated to Palestine, the United States, and other countries. Still more Jews left Europe after the war.

17. How many Jews fled or were evacuated to deep within the Soviet Union?

More than two million fled or were evacuated by the Soviets in 1941-1942. These Jews thus never came under German control.

18. How many Jews emigrated from Europe prior to the war, thus putting them outside of German reach?

Perhaps a million (not including those absorbed by the USSR).

19. If Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, why did the commandant, Rudolf Hoess, confess that it was?

He was tortured by British military police, as one of his interrogators later admitted.

20. Is there any evidence of American, British and Soviet policy to torture German prisoners in order to exact "confessions" for use at the trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere?

Yes. Torture was extensively used to produce fraudulent "evidence" for the infamous Nuremberg trials, and in other postwar "war crimes" trials.

21. How does the Holocaust story benefit Jews today?

It helps protect Jews as a group from criticism. As a kind of secular religion, it provides an emotional bond between Jews and their leaders. It is a powerful tool in Jewish money-raising campaigns, and is used to justify US aid to Israel.

22. How does it benefit the State of Israel?

It justifies the billions of dollars in "reparations" Germany has paid to Israel and many individual "survivors." It is used by the Zionist/Israeli lobby to dictate a pro-Israel American foreign policy in the Middle East, and to force American taxpayer aid to Israel, totaling billions of dollars per year.

23. How is it used by many Christian clergymen?

The Holocaust story is cited to justify the Old Testament notion of Jews as a holy and eternally persecuted "Chosen People."

24. How did it benefit the Communists?

It diverted attention from Soviet war mongering and atrocities before, during and after the Second World War.

25. How does it benefit Britain?

In much the same way it benefitted the Soviet Union.

26. Is there any evidence that Hitler ordered mass extermination of Jews?

No.

27. What kind of gas was used in German wartime concentration camps?

Hydrocyanic gas from "Zyklon B," a commercial pesticide that was widely used throughout Europe.

28. For what purpose was "Zyklon B" manufactured?

It was a pesticide used to fumigate clothing and quarters to kill typhus-bearing lice and other pests.

29. Was this product suitable for mass extermination?

No. If the Nazis had intended to use poison gas to exterminate people, far more efficient products were available. Zyklon is a slow-acting fumigation agent.

30. How long does it take to ventilate an area after fumigation with Zyklon B?

Normally about 20 hours. The whole procedure is very complicated and dangerous. Gas masks must be used, and only trained technicians are employed.

31. Auschwitz commandant Hoess said that his men would enter the "gas chambers" to remove bodies ten minutes after the victims had died. How do you explain this?

It can't be explained because had they done so they would have suffered the same fate as the "gassing" victims.

32. Hoess said in his "confession" that his men would smoke cigarettes as they pulled bodies out of gas chambers, ten minutes after gassing. Isn't Zyklon B explosive?

Yes. The Hoess confession is obviously false.

33. What was the exact procedure the Nazis allegedly used to exterminate Jews?

The stories range from dropping gas canisters into a crowded room from a hole in the ceiling, to piping gas through shower heads, to "steam chambers," to "electrocution" machinery. Millions are alleged to have been killed in these ways.

34. How could a mass extermination program have been kept secret from those who were scheduled to be killed?

It couldn't have been kept secret. The fact is that there were no mass gassings. The extermination stories originated as wartime atrocity propaganda.

35. If Jews scheduled for execution knew the fate in store for them, why did they go along with the Germans without resisting?

They didn't fight back because they did not believe there was any intention to kill them.

36. About how many Jews died in the concentration camps?

Competent estimates range from about 300,000 to 500,000.

37. How did they die?

Mainly from recurring typhus epidemics that ravaged war-torn Europe during the war, as well as from starvation and lack of medical attention during the final months of the conflict, when virtually all road and rail transportation had been bombed out by the Allies.

38. What is typhus?

This disease always appears when many people are jammed together under unsanitary conditions. It is carried by lice that infest hair and clothes. Ironically, if the Germans had used more Zyklon B, more Jews might have survived the camps.

39. What is the difference if six million or 300,000 Jews died during the Second World War?

5,700,000.

40. Some Jewish "death camp" survivors say they saw bodies being dumped into pits and burned. How much fuel would have been required for this?

A great deal more than the Germans had access to, as there was a substantial fuel shortage during the war.

41. Can bodies be burned in pits?

No. It is impossible for human bodies to be totally consumed by flames in this manner because of lack of oxygen.

42. Holocaust historians claim that the Nazis were able to cremate bodies in about ten minutes. How long does it take to incinerate one body, according to professional crematory operators?

About an hour and a half, although the larger bones require further processing afterwards.

43. Why did the German concentration camps have crematory ovens?

To dispose efficiently and sanitarily of the corpses of those who had died.

44. Given a 100 percent duty cycle of all the crematories in all the camps in German-controlled territory, what is the maximum number of corpses it would have been possible to incinerate during the entire period such crematories were in operation?

About 430,600.

45. Can a crematory oven be operated 100 percent of the time?

No. Fifty percent of the time is a generous estimate (12 hours per day). Crematory ovens have to be cleaned thoroughly and regularly when in heavy operation.

46. How much ash is left from a cremated corpse?

After the bone is all ground down, about a shoe box full.

47.If six million people had been incinerated by the Nazis, what happened to the ashes?

That remains to be "explained." Six million bodies would have produced many tons of ashes, yet there is no evidence of any large ash depositories.

48. Do Allied wartime aerial reconnaissance photos of Auschwitz (taken during the period when the "gas chambers" and crematoria were supposedly in full operation) show evidence of extermination?

No. In fact, these photographs do not even reveal a trace of the enormous amount of smoke that supposedly was constantly over the camp, nor do they show evidence of the "open pits" in which bodies were allegedly burned.

49. What was the main provision of the German "Nuremberg Laws" of 1935?

They forbid marriage and sexual relations between Germans and Jews, similar to laws existing in Israel today.

50. Were there any American precedents for the Nuremberg Laws?

Years before Hitler's Third Reich, most states in the USA had enacted laws prohibiting marriage between persons of different races.

51. What did the International Red Cross have to report with regard to the "Holocaust" question?

An official report on the visit of an IRC delegation to Auschwitz in September 1944 pointed out that internees were permitted to receive packages, and that rumors of gas chambers could not be verified.

52. What was the role of the Vatican during the time six million Jews were allegedly being exterminated?

If there had been an extermination plan, the Vatican would most certainly have been in a position to know about it. But because there was none, the Vatican had no reason to speak out against it, and didn't.

53. What evidence is there that Hitler knew of an on-going Jewish extermination program?

None.

54. Did the Nazis and the Zionists collaborate?

As early as 1933, Hitler's government signed an agreement with the Zionists permitting Jews to emigrate from Germany to Palestine, taking large amounts of capital with them.

55. How did Anne Frank die?

After surviving internment in Auschwitz, she succumbed to typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp, just a few weeks before the end of the war. The was not gassed.

56. Is the Anne Frank Diary genuine?

No. Evidence compiled by Dr. Robert Faurisson of France establishes that the famous diary is a literary hoax.

57. What about the familiar photographs and film footage taken in the liberated German camps showing piles of emaciated corpses? Are these faked?

Photographs can be faked, but it's far easier merely to add a misleading caption to a photo or commentary to a piece of footage. Piles of emaciated corpses do not mean that these people were "gassed" or deliberately starved to death. Actually, these were tragic victims of raging epidemics or of starvation due to a lack of food in the camps toward the end of the war.

58. Who originated the term "genocide"?

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, in a book published in 1944.

59. Are films such as "Schindler's List" or "The Winds of War" documentaries?

No. Such films are fictional dramatizations loosely based on history. Unfortunately, all too many people accept them as accurate historical representations.

60. How many books have been published that refute some aspect of the standard "Holocaust" story?

Dozens. More are in production.

61. What happened when the Institute for Historical Review offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz?

No proof was submitted as a claim on the reward, but the Institute was sued for $17 million by former Auschwitz inmate Mel Mermelstein, who claimed that the reward offer caused him to lose sleep and his business to suffer, and represented "injurious denial of established fact."

62. What about the charge that those who question the Holocaust story are merely anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi?

This is a smear designed to draw attention away from facts and honest arguments. Scholars who refute Holocaust story claims are of all persuasions and ethnic-religious backgrounds (including Jewish). There is no correlation between "Holocaust" refutation and anti-Semitism or neo-Nazism. Increasing numbers of Jewish scholars openly admit the lack of evidence for key Holocaust claims.

63. What has happened to "revisionist" historians who have challenged the Holocaust story?

They have been subjected to smear campaigns, loss of academic positions, loss of pensions, destruction of their property and physical violence.

64. Has the Institute for Historical Review suffered any retaliation for its efforts to uphold the right of freedom of speech and academic freedom?

The IHR had been bombed three times, and was completely destroyed on July 4, 1984, in a criminal arson attack. Numerous death threats by telephone have been received. Media coverage of the IHR has been overwhelmingly hostile.

65. Why is there so little publicity for the revisionist view?

Because for political reasons the Establishment does not want any in-depth discussion about the facts surrounding the Holocaust story.

66. Where can I get more information about the "other side" of the Holocaust story, as well as facts concerning other aspects of World War II historical revisionism?

The Institute for Historical Review, P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, carries a wide variety of books, cassette and video tapes on significant historical subjects. (updated 1/95)