I had really meant to include the letter below in yesterday's ZGram, but I had so much fun with that one it got a bit too long.
It is important, however, to make it part of the ZGram intent to "catch the flavor of the times" - so here it is, an intelligent and measured response to the derogatory even though funny New Yorker article, courtesy of Mark Weber, Director of the Institute for Historical Review:
Subject: Letter to The New Yorker
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW
P.O. Box 2739
Newport Beach, CA 92659 USA
Monday, 1 February 1999
FOR PUBLICATION
The New Yorker
20 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
Dear Sir or Madam,
As a member of "the Holocaust denial mob" and as someone who has known Fred Leuchter rather well, I was disappointed to read Mark Singer's polemic, "The Friendly Executioner" (Feb. 1).
All too readily he dismisses "The Leuchter Report," which concludes, on the basis of a 1988 on-site forensic examination of the alleged execution gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau, and an analysis of samples taken from the sites, that these facilities could not possibly have been used to kill people as alleged, and in fact were never used to kill people as claimed.
As it happens, Leuchter's findings have been authoritatively corroborated and confirmed by others.
Dr. William B. Lindsey, an American research chemist who was employed for 33 years by the Dupont Corporation, anticipated Leuchter's findings in his sworn testimony during a February 1985 trial. Based on his own careful on-site examination of the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, and on his years of experience as a chemist, Lindsey declared under oath: "I have come to the conclusion that no one was willfully or purposefully killed with Zyklon B in this manner. I consider it absolutely impossible."
In a September 1990 forensic report, the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow, Poland, corroborated Leuchter's findings.
A prominent engineer in Vienna, Walter Lüftl, explicitly defended "The Leuchter Report" in a detailed March 1992 analysis, and similarly concluded that the widely accepted allegations of mass gassings at Auschwitz and other wartime camps are not credible.
German engineer Germar Rudolf confirmed Leuchter's findings in a detailed 1993 forensic report. On the basis of an on-site investigation, chemical analysis of samples, and meticulous research, Rudolf similarly concluded that the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz and Birkenau were never used to kill prisoners as alleged.
In January 1995 the prestigious French weekly magazine L'Express acknowledged that the "gas chamber" in the Auschwitz main camp, which has been shown for decades to tourists in its "original" state, is actually a postwar reconstruction, and that "everything is false" about it.
In July 1998 Austrian engineer Wolfgang Fröhlich corroborated Leuchter's findings in a district court trial in Baden, Switzerland. Testifying under oath, the expert witness explained that prisoners could not possibly have been killed by gassing at Auschwitz and Birkenau as has been alleged for decades.
Singer's characterization of the 1988 trial in Toronto of Ernst Zündel (in which I testified) is misleading. In August 1992 Canada's Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the law under which the German-born publicist had been convicted and twice found guilty.
Singer regrettably expresses not a word of criticism for the outrageous persecution of Holocaust "thought criminals" in European countries where it is now illegal to express doubt about the orthodox Holocaust extermination story.
If the revisionist view of the Holocaust were really as simplistic and mistaken as Singer suggests, it would not have gained the support of university professors such as Arthur Butz and Robert Faurisson, historians such as David Irving and Harry Elmer Barnes, and former concentration camp inmates such as Paul Rassinier. These individuals did not decide publicly to reject the orthodox Holocaust story -- thereby risking public censure, and worse -- because they are fools, or because their motives are evil, but rather on the basis of a sincere and thoughtful evaluation of the evidence.
Fred Leuchter is indeed a victim, not of some "denial mob," as Singer suggests, but rather of contemptible bigots who have succeeded in destroying his career. He deserves not Singer's patronizing scorn, but our gratitude for his courageous investigation of a particularly emotion-laden chapter of history.
Sincerely,
Mark Weber
Director
Institute for Historical Review
Thought for the Day:
"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization."
(Daniel Webster)
Back to Table of Contents of the Feb. 1999 ZGrams