Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
". . . Reading about the Penn State "Holocaust History" course reminded me of my own experience in the winter of 1986-87 when my wife and I, along with another couple, decided to attend a night course on the Holocaust at a Toronto High School. The first Zundel ["Holocaust"] trial had ended in the spring of 1985, and we were curious to know how this subject was being taught to high school students. As we very quickly learned, those in charge assumed that no one would dare break the hushed tone of reverence by asking inconvenient questions. It seems that we were expected merely to pay respectful homage to the Holocaust, and not actually study or, heaven forbid, critically examine it.
We had planned to keep a low profile, asking questions only at crucial points. But this was not to be. On the first evening instructor Frank Bialystok -- who described himself as a child of "survivors" even though his parents, like many others, had left Poland in 1939 before the outbreak of war -- wanted straightaway to probe our inner-most feelings on mankind's most "horrendous tragedy." He drew us into a tight circle and proceeded to ask each of us individually why we had decided to take this course. Not wishing to feign mindless adherence, we told him that we were looking for credible supporting evidence for Holocaust claims. Mr. Bialystok was further shocked when another student volunteered that her boyfriend didn't believe in the Holocaust. Thus ended the "inner feeling" session.
For the rest of the evening we were subjected to slides of Mr. Bialystok's recent visit to Auschwitz. When he came to a slide of the camp's alleged execution gas chamber, without comment he quickly flipped to the next slide. When I asked Bialystok what that slide had been, he evaded the question. He left class that night in a state of virtual shock.
On the second evening Bialystok came well-prepared to respond to our simple request for proof. There, to our surprise, was Peter Griffith, Crown Prosecutor in the first Zundel trial, and Alan Shefman of the League for Human Rights of the B'nai B'rith (the Canadian counterpart of the ADL). At the back of the class sat a guilt-ridden Anglican minister, along with an official from the government agency euphemistically known as the "Human Rights Commission." With the original course itinerary now completely discarded, the classroom had become a kind of intellectual battle field. That ostensibly independent officials could be trotted out on such short notice for our modest little group speaks volumes. To the surprise of those in charge, we weren't at all intimidated.
After Shefman was introduced, we were informed that tape recorders would not be permitted, even though Bialystok had specifically welcomed them on the first evening's class (when he was looking forward to a Holocaust love-in). Ignored were our queries of what they were afraid or even ashamed of. Shortly into Shefman's talk it became apparent why he didn't want his words recorded. He vehemently lit into the Institute for Historical Review, maligning -- in a most mendacious manner -- not only it but individually each member of the IHR _Journal_'s Editorial Advisory Committee as well. We were given no satisfactory answers to our requests for evidence of his malicious claims.
Griffith told us that the "definitive" new edition of Raul Hilberg's book, _The Destruction of the European Jews_, contained conclusive proof of mass gassing. Unable to give any such evidence himself, he simply told us to read Hilberg's book. When I asked Griffith if he believed that hearsay evidence should be admissible in court, he declared in a sanctimonious monologue that not only did he believe that the use of hearsay evidence was counter-productive to a fair trial, but that our society's judicial rules of evidence did not permit it. When I pointed out that hearsay testimony had been permitted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, his tone changed to one of evasive rationalization. Griffith implied that the Tribunal was an omniscient body with correspondingly appropriate rules that were indispensable in dealing with such grotesque crimes. My retort that the Nuremberg courts were nothing more than victor-formulated bodies designed to convict the vanquished so unnerved him that he shouted at me to "shut up." With Griffith and Bialystok trying to put the best light on their non answers, and Shefman sniping from the side lines with his ad hominem attacks, the evening passed quickly.
As we arrived for the next session, we were startled to find the classroom overflowing with people. What had begun as a small class of nine students -- barely enough to justify a course -- had grown into a gathering of 45 or 50, with not enough desks for everyone. Earlier that day, it turned out, Ernst Zundel had enquired about the course. Surrounded by a gaggle of media people, he was trying to register. In an effort to thwart his effort by claiming that the course was already fully booked, they had packed the classroom, mostly with other teachers and some volunteers from Jewish organizations. During that evening's session the guilt-ridden Anglican minister explained to the class just how thoroughly anti-Semitic the _Bible_ was, and how this had set the climate that permitted the Holocaust to happen. I asked if he had studied the [Jewish] _Talmud_. He said that he had. To my question of whether there were anti-Christian or anti-Gentile passages in the Talmud, he embarrassingly retorted: "Nowhere near the anti-Semitic hate that is in the _Bible_."
At the next class the following week, the room was once again full. This time, though, the teachers were gone, replaced by Jewish volunteers. They hoped to overwhelm us. When the intimidating shouts and insults failed to stem the inconvenient questions, whole evenings were taken up with dogmadrama video tapes that allowed no time for questions and discussion. Those in charge even tried to intimidate us one evening by having two plain-clothes detectives from the so-called ethnic squad sit at the back of the room. We recognized them from the Zundel trial. During the eight week course, unregistered people wandered in and out of the classroom as if this was a Holocaust remembrance social club or a kind of changing of the Holocaust defense guard.
Frustrated that nothing they tried seemed able to stem our blasphemous questions, Mr. Bialystok resorted to a kind of censor's "final solution." Forbidding any further questions during instruction sessions, he announced that there would be a half-hour period for questions at the end of each evening's session. In practice we were lucky to get ten minutes; usually it was five. And with so many dedicated "seekers of truth" running interference, we were fortunate if we got in even a single skeptical question. More to the point, we never got even one cogent answer.
Typical was the performance of Harold Tropper, the author of _None is Too Many_, a book decrying Canada's refusal to take a boat-load of Jewish refugees. His not so subtle message -- of Canadian guilt and complicity in the Holocaust for sending refugees back to what he claimed was certain death -- was expected to be humbly accepted as gospel. "Why should Canadians feel guilty about refusing a boatload of aliens," I impertinently asked, "when Israel is presently preventing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from returning to their own homeland?" At that point all hell broke loose, with everyone shouting at once. Irrational statements, such as "don't bring Israel into this," were made. Tropper proclaimed (inaccurately) that "this wasn't true," and then refused to discuss the matter any further.
After the course had concluded, my wife tried for several weeks to arrange a meeting with the school principal. When she finally spoke with him, he seemed nervous and embarrassed, giving some pretty lame excuses for some of what had happened. He explained, for example, that the teachers who had packed the class had been invited for "educational" purposes. He was surprised and seemingly upset to learn about the two detectives who had been in the classroom. As a result of his meeting with my wife, he also learned that quite ordinary, middle class Canadians -- and not trouble makers as Bialystok would have described us -- could have trouble believing all the Holocaust stories.
While we didn't learn anything new about Holocaust history, we did learn something about how the guardians of the cult think, and to what lengths they will go to foster and protect their creed. We also had the satisfaction of seeing the course dropped altogether from the night school curriculum. . . "
(The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 13, Number 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993)
(The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 13, Number 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993)
Thought for the Day:
"You can call it freedom if you wish. You could even call it success. Our alien rulers and their front men . . . certainly would call it that. But then their power over you depends on their skill at lying to you and their skill at manipulating your moral sentiments.
"Your acceptance of the situation depends on your ability to lie to yourself."
(Yggdrasil)