I was gone again for a week and have just now returned to my computer
after sleeping off the horror of the Central California floods in which
I was caught for a few days. It was something to be seen to be believed!
At any rate, I'm back, and those of you who either asked to be added to,
or to be taken off, the ZGram list - it will be done today. Just give me
a few hours!
Meanwhile, here is one of the best pieces of writing I have seen in recent
months. I don't know the author personally, but he gave me permission to
use his "Letter to a Liberal about the Holocaust" for one of my
ZGrams, and I consider it a classic for its clean-cut, lucid and quietly
understated conclusions.
Ken Blewitt here in a letter to a friend he describes as a "liberal
activist":
"Seven or eight years ago, when I first heard of Holocaust revisionism, I thought it was probably a mean- spirited propaganda campaign, the allegations of which those making them did not themselves believe. Since I had such a negative first impression - although I had been exposed to "anti-Semitic" literature, and had formed the belief that the Jews were a nation, not a religion, a nation, moreover, whose long-standing practice it was to do evil to its various host nations with the intention of taking them over, and since such thinking generates an *a priori* possibility that would otherwise be lacking that the Holocaust was a hoax - I can only anticipate that you, who are less "anti- Semitic" than I, must be very skeptical about the claims of the Holocaust revisionists. So let me make a few remarks about some of the considerations that changed my initial negativity regarding Holocaust skepticism or denial.
(1) One of the founders of Holocaust revisionism was a Socialist named Rassinier who had been imprisoned in a concentration camp by the Nazis due to his Leftist opinions. Rassinier was a French geologist. I don't recall if he had a Ph.D., but he was an intelligent, educated man.
After the war, claims of atrocities committed against the Jews in the camp where he had been interred were made that contradicted his experiences in this camp. Rassinier conducted research that confirmed his suspicions that these claims were untrue.
Having made this discovery regarding his own camp he proceeded to research the question of the claimed atrocities committed against the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps in general, and, between 1950 and 1964, wrote a series of books on the subject.
In 1950 Rassinier questioned the reality of the Holocaust; and as time progressed, his doubts that the Holocaust was real grew stronger, until he denied it completely in 1962, when he called it "...a historic lie: the most tragic and the most macabre imposture of all time."
I do not know how Rassinier felt about the Jews - (though it would seem probable that if he had been significantly anti-Semitic the Nazis would not have been as down on him as they were). At any rate, inasmuch as he was imprisoned in a Nazi camp, I do not see how he could possibly be called a "Nazi apologist." In all likelihood he hated the Nazis.
(2) Largely as a result of Rassinier's books, coupled with the fact that the camps on German soil (unlike those behind the Iron Curtain) were able to be inspected, an agency of the German government issued a statement in 1960 stating that none of the camps on German soil had been "extermination" camps - i.e., there had been no gas chambers or genocide in any of the camps on German soil.
There are two points to be made here:
(a) The films we are constantly shown on television of the horrible scenes our troops discovered when they liberated these camps on German soil are not proof of any Holocaust - as they purport to be. A total breakdown of Germany's infrastructure during the last months of the war caused starvation and outbreaks of disease in these camps. That is what these films depict - not genocide, as it is insinuated on television.
Given that it has been known since 1960 that these camps that our troops liberated were not extermination camps, the manner in which the gruesome scenes filmed in these places are presented on television - as proof of genocide - must be termed deceptive. What is the meaning of this deception?
(b) Several ranking officers who ran these camps on German soil "confessed" that they had killed Jews in gas chambers. Here we have "confessions" that are known to be false. What does this suggest?
(3) Auschwitz was the site of Germany's newest and most technologically advanced synthetic rubber plant; and Germany was the world's leader in this particular field of technology. Shortly after Pearl Harbor the Japanese cut off our supply of natural rubber. In the months that followed we set about building our own synthetic rubber plants.
This was an area where we had no experience. It stands to reason that efforts would have been made to obtain aerial photographs of the synthetic rubber plant in Auschwitz (the most modern of such plants in existence) during the summer of 1942, when Congress authorized the construction of such plants - which was after the mass murder of Jews had allegedly begun in Auschwitz and thousands of Jews were allegedly being killed every day. It is probable that such aerial surveillance was carried out. Yet no damning aerial photographs of Auschwitz were offered as evidence at Nuremberg.
Furthermore, is it credible that the Germans were conducting their largest mass murder operation at a site that they must have known America would be going to lengths to photograph from the air?
(4) Let us draw a distinction between "hard" and "soft" evidence, such that the former includes aerial photographs and contemporaneous German documents, and the latter consists of testimony: both confessions of Germans and eyewitness testimony of camp inmates.
The overwhelming bulk of evidence for the Holocaust consists of "soft" evidence. The few aerial photographs cited as evidence are inconclusive. And only a few German documents have been found that suggest the existence of gas chambers, genocide, etc. - while the meaning of these few documents is subject to interpretation.
Isn't it doubtful that an operation of such massive scale as the alleged Holocaust would leave only traces of "hard" evidence?
(5) The Germans did not have DDT. Their general purpose pesticide, which was used whether the pests were rats, lice, or whatever, was a commercial product named Zyklon B. Its active ingredient was hydrogen cyanide. Zyklon B consisted of solid disks that would give off hydrogen cyanide gas when exposed to air.
Large amounts of Zyklon B were found in the Nazi camps. But there is a non- criminal explanation for this that is well documented. In the camps there were outbreaks of typhus fever, which was carried by lice. Zyklon B was the agent supposedly used to kill Jews in mass in the alleged gas chambers. However, since 1988 forensic evidence has existed that refutes this claim.
Hydrogen cyanide combines with iron found in bricks and mortar to form a stable iron-cyanide compound that can be detected years later. In 1988 Fred Leuchter took samples from the inner walls and floors of the alleged gas chambers in Auschwitz and compared them with samples taken from the inner walls and floor of what was known to be a delousing chamber in Auschwitz - a delousing chamber that was used to disinfect clothing.
Enormous differences in the amounts of iron-cyanide compound found in the samples taken from the alleged gas chambers and those taken from the delousing chamber were discovered. The former were only trace elements whose probable cause was occasional delousings of the buildings in question.
Leuchter's findings have been confirmed by subsequent forensic analyses, including one that was commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum.
My readings of revisionist literature have convinced me that the Holocaust was a hoax from the very beginning. I think a sizable percentage of educated Americans, especially those with a liberal arts education, would draw the same conclusion if they were familiar with the revisionist arguments.
But one does not have to make such a strong statement in order to derive far-reaching implications. From the mere fact that the Holocaust fails to be an "established fact," as it has been presented to us as being for fifty years, conclusions of very great significance follow.
- An established fact is something that your society assures you is beyond doubt. The proposition that the earth is round is an example. You can verify this somewhat by observing ships on the horizon of a sea or large lake; but it is your trust in your society that mostly makes you believe it.
- Through your trust in your society you believe that when something has been given the status of an established fact it has been determined to be knowledge, and you can examine it all you like and find no contradictory evidence.
- From the points I have made above it is clear that the Holocaust falls short of what an established fact is supposed to be. Critical examination turns up far more contradictory evidence than should be possible in the case of an established fact.
- We are obviously not dealing with knowledge here. Even if the Holocaust happened, it is not KNOWN to have happened. If tomorrow or next year new evidence should emerge that proved beyond all doubt that the Holocaust was real, the fact would remain that for fifty years it held the status of an established fact when in truth it fell short of what an established fact should be. This can be said with the highest certainty.
- How did this failure come about? What was the condition of the possibility that the Holocaust, which lacked the certainty required of an established fact, was given the status of an established fact - for no less than fifty years?
- I submit that this could not have happened unless the Jews possessed near absolute control of publicity - in violation of the free press principle that is law in America by the First Amendment.
- From the failure of the Holocaust to be what an established fact should be there is additionally an important implication found in the fact that university professors, who have been given tenure to ensure that they will not fear to expose falsity, have remained silent.
- Must we not conclude that the power of the Jews has overridden the security provided by, as well as the duty implicit in, the institution of tenure?
- And what does it mean that our Congressmen have remained silent? Again this speaks of Jewish power.
- That the Holocaust has been given the status of an established fact when it has lacked the requisite indubitability to be knowledge is not mere conjecture. This is something that we can know. It is a reality.
- And from this reality a number of things of extreme importance follow by clear logic: the main one of which is that the Jews control our press in violation of basic American law."
Thought for the Day:
"The whole world has . . . sunk today to a slave of the Revolutionary ideal; and yet this ideal is, before which all, without exception, on this point, bow to the ground, here, too, so basically false, so incredibly foolish, that future generations will not comprehend how it was possible to stultify even the intelligent among us for so long."
(Houston Steward Chamberlain in "Political Ideals")