Raul Hilberg is widely and often facetiously referred to as the "Pope of the Holocaust". He is ostensibly the foremost scholar in the world in the orthodox version of the "Holocaust". He was an expert witness for the Prosecution at the First Great Holocaust Trial in 1985, during which Zündel's defense attorney, Doug Christie, made mincemeat out of the Hilberg testimony - so much so that Hilberg refused to re-attend the Second Great Holocaust Trial in 1988, even though he was asked by Crown Attorney, John Pearson, the new prosecutor in Zündel Trial II.
The text that follows is from attorney Barbara Kulaszka's transcript summary, titled "Did Six Million Really Die?")
In a letter to Pearson dated 5 October, 1987, Hilberg wrote:
"I have grave doubts about testifying in the Zündel case again. Last time, I testified for a day under direct examination and for three days under cross-examination.
Were I to be in the witness box for a second time, the defense would be asking not merely the relevant and irrelevant questions put to me during the first trial, but it would also make every attempt to entrap me by pointing to any seeming contradiction, however trivial the subject might be, between my earlier testimony and an answer that I might give in 1988. The time and energy required to ward off such an assault would be great, and I am afraid that the investment of time alone would be too much, given all the commitments and deadlines I am facing now."
As a result, Crown Attorney Pearson applied to the court to have Hilberg's 1985 testimony read to the jury. Defence attorney Christie objected to the reading in of the testimony, alleging that Hilberg had perjured himself in 1985 with respect to his views on the existence of a Hitler order or orders, and that this was the real reason he was refusing to reattend in Canada. Christie pointed out that in 1985 Hilberg had testified that he believed a Hitler order existed; within weeks of that testimony, however, Hilberg's second edition of his book The Destruction of the European Jews had been published, in which he excised all mention of a Hitler order in the main body of the work. Christie argued it would be gravely prejudicial to Zündel and an insult to the administration of justice to allow the evidence to go to the jury without benefit of cross-examination in person of Hilberg.
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Hilberg had written a major work on the Holocaust entitled The Destruction of the European Jews, "...which was first published in 1961, and has been re-printed a number of times. An enlarged edition came out in Germany two years ago, and a somewhat larger one that will come out in three months in three volumes in the United States. That will be a revised, expanded edition, but in between I have published other works, both articles and books." The Destruction of the European Jews was about 800 pages long with double columns of text and about 3,000 footnotes. The forthcoming second edition, said Hilberg, "will be larger. Some condensation of material, but much that's been added. It's hard to transfer percentages, because the format is a little different. It's not double columned anymore, but it is 30, 40 percent longer than the first, even though it comes out in three volumes." (4-683, 686, 687)
Articles which Hilberg had written included ones for the Encyclopedia Americana and Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia: "On the Americana, on concentration camps, as well as the entry in Dachau and Buchenwald, and in Funk & Wagnalls on the Holocaust as such." Almost everything that he had written, said Hilberg, pertained to the destruction of the Jews. (4-683, 684)
Hilberg was a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by appointment of the President of the United States. He had also been a member of the President's Commission on the Holocaust by appointment of President Carter. His other memberships included the American Society of International Law and the Jewish Studies Association as well as being a sinecure on some editorial boards. (4 684)
Hilberg defined the "Holocaust" to mean "the annihilation by physical means of the Jews of Europe during the Nazi regime between the years 1933 and 1945." (4-686)
In carrying out his research, Hilberg testified, "My main research strategy is to look at documents, to rely primarily on documents, and secondarily on the statements of witnesses, all kinds of witnesses who have knowledge of or direct observation of any part of the subject matter that I am interested in... When I speak of documents, I mean primarily public documents. That is to say, records of the German Nazi regime, kept primarily during the years 1933 to 1945. The United States government in particular captured a large part of these records during the war and kept them physically in Alexandria, Virginia. I looked at some of them while they were located in that area. In addition, of course, I looked at the so-called Nuremberg documents which are, essentially, taken from this pile, for purposes of introducing evidence in the war crimes trials in Nuremberg - namely, 1946, 7, 8, 9. In addition to that, I have been to archives in foreign countries where smaller collections are available and looked at those, quite a few in the original... In the pre-Xerox age, one had to copy the documents by hand, and that is what I did for years." Hilberg believed he copied "a few thousand" by hand over the years. (4-685, 686)
In his methodology as a historian, Hilberg said, "I would describe myself as an empiricist, looking at the materials, particularly the small details, and trying to come to conclusions from these details about the larger processes and the larger issues." As an example, he would "look at railway transports from specific areas to death camps with a view to establishing the pattern of deportations and killings in Europe, or I would look at the manner in which clothing, or the lost belongings of the gassed would be collected and distributed to find out some, in some way, as to how thorough the process was, what the mentality behind it was, and how, indeed, it was financed." (4-687, 688)
What perspective did he take in his work? "I was mainly curious from the beginning," said Hilberg, "and I am still curious now about the details, about how this process was implemented from stage one to the last. I did not view it as a simple, massive, amorphous undertaking. I wanted to see it in its step-by-step procedure. Trained as a political scientist, I was interested in who made these decisions and in what order they were made. And on the whole, that is a perspective of a political scientist approaching a historical probe." (4-688)
In other words, here - in this fellow called Raul Hilberg - you have as massive an "authority" on the orthodox version of the "Holocaust" as you are likely to find on this earth. For more on his 1985 testimony, visit http://www.lebensraum.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd09hilberg.html
Now it is fifteen years later. Today, Dr. Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry", has this on his website about that very same Dr. Hilberg:
RAUL HILBERG on The Holocaust Industry Raul Hilberg, author of the classic THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN JEWS, is the world's leading authority on the Nazi holocaust. A Brazilian journalist, Carlos Haag, questioned him about my new book. Below is Hilberg's reply:
Today (Finkelstein) is rather unpopular and his book will certainly not become a best seller, but what it says is basically true even though incomplete. It is more a journalistic account than an in depth study on the topic, which would need to be much longer.
To say that the Holocaust has been used in order to secure Palestine for the Jews is nothing new and we know how important it was in the creation of Israel. Nevertheless it will be a bitter yet necessary reminder to the community.
(Finkelstein) is also right when he argues that nobody talked about this topic in the USA: in 1968 a well known local encyclopedia asked me to write an article on the Holocaust and they only wanted me to talk about Dachau and Buchenwald because they were not interested in Auschwitz; these topics were censored.
I agree with him that people overestimate the number of survivors and that the concept itself is ill-defined - it includes not only the victims of the camps - and it is true that an exaggerated number of compensation requests are made.
There is something radically wrong in this exploitation because it is an issue that should not be used to make money and I must confess that I found the whole affair with the Swiss banks disturbing. The Jewish-American community is very prosperous and there is no reason for them to ask the Swiss for money. That seems obscene to me.
In other words, Raul Hilberg, for years traveling the world as "Professional Witness Numero Uno" showing up and defending the orthodox version of the Holocaust, to be quoted endlessly in Holoschlock writings, has made a total switcheroo. He says what Zündel says - the victim numbers are "overestimated", "the concept itself is ill-defined" and the "exploitation" of compensation requests is "obscene."
We hope that Germany will take the hint with the proverbial fence post - and start INVESTIGATING to separate truth from fiction - or have no choice but to continue to be shaken down by ever new "Holocaust" schemes, accusations and claims about utterly unverifiable "victims".
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Thought for the Day:
"Oh what fine scribblers and spouters we had back then, in those early days of borrowed calm before the storm!"
(Jean Raspail in "The Camp of the Saints")