The article below appeared yesterday in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Home Edition, headlined "Bizarre burial prods Holocaust angst", by staffer Jim Galloway. It should have been headed "Milking the Lie"!
As is our custom, the Zundelsite comments, paragraph by paragraph.
Galloway:
Before sunrise on a cold March morning in 1970, a rabbi and an architect slipped over the fence to Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta to scout out a burial site for four bars of soap.
A hasty funeral service was conducted later that afternoon --- Jewish law required quick interment for the green-gray cakes, which had surfaced days before. About 35 people, most of them survivors of European concentration camps, gathered around a small hole dug at the base of the local Holocaust memorial.
Zundelsite:
What a strange medieval cult! From 1946 to 1970 that soap was around, bothering no one in some basement - suddenly it had to be buried "before sundown" as per Jewish religious custom. Read on!
Galloway:
None had any doubt that the soap bars were made from human beings.
The architect, Ben Hirsch, devoted a chapter to the incident in a memoir published this spring and urged scholars to take a closer look at the topic.
As a result, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has barred Hirsch from conducting a book-signing on its premises in Washington. Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt, who triumphed over a Holocaust denier in a British libel trial this year, endorses the decision.
Zundelsite:
Interesting that they do not mention David Irving's name who brought the lawsuit - only Lipstadt's, who was one of the defendants in that London case.
Galloway:
During World War II, the Nazis killed millions through gassing and starvation, torture and firing squads. They conducted bizarre human experiments, harvested hair and gold fillings, and used human skin for lampshades.
Zundelsite:
This paragraph is packed with lies. The "human lampshades" story, for instance, was disproven as long ago as the "human soap" story - and for the same reason: lack of verifiable, believable evidence.
Yet papers like the Atlanta Journal and Constitution have no problem repeating it, over and over and over! Why not check with Revisionist sources - starting with the "gassing" lie?
Galloway:
But there's no proof that Nazis made soap of their victims, museum officials said, and the institution won't endorse any book that argues otherwise.
"(Hirsch) was advocating that we explore what is essentially a dead end," said Peter Black, chief historian at the Holocaust museum.
Zundelsite:
Peter Black is fully aware that it is not a "dead end" he is talking about, but a World War II Allied atrocity propaganda lie originating in the USA in 1942, as this article clearly reveals a few paragraphs down.
Galloway:
The issue has become a bone of contention between scholars and the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, who now watch a post-World War II generation take control of their story. "I think I've piqued the fraternity," said Hirsch, 68, who still designs churches and synagogues in metro Atlanta.
Zundelsite:
Exactly what "fraternity" is Hirsch talking about?
The younger generation now looking at those Holocaust tales are not the simple ghetto dwellers who initially concocted them and retold them to uncritical audiences of True Believers. The younger generation is usually media- and Internet-savvy, with minds trained in academic disciplines. Most of them, like Norman Finkelstein, are not quite as easily bamboozled by emotions - as Elie Wiesel, Wilkimorski and others are now finding out to their grief.
Galloway:
But more than a generational rift is at work. The making of soap from murdered humans has long served as a particularly horrific example of the Final Solution's depravity.
"It is something that symbolizes the ultimate horror of using every molecule of the murdered," conceded Black, the museum historian. Survivors are loath to see that symbol reduced to a 60-year-old rumor.
Zundelsite:
Not a "rumor"! A lie! A vicious, anti-German lie!
Galloway:
Survivors wonder whether, in an effort to secure the historical record against those who argue that the Holocaust never happened, scholars have set a standard for proof that is too high --- and have unilaterally cut off the debate.
Zundelsite:
No! The "fraternity" aka the Holocaust Lobby is conscious of the dangers of the debate, for once they admit they believed and peddled the false soap story, all their other atrocity stories are suspect. Once examined, they will fall like a row of dominoes.
Galloway:
"There's a religious issue here," Hirsch said. "These are not just bars of soap. They were buried as if they were human beings."
And that indeed raises the uncomfortable question of what lies in the cemetery off Cascade Road. (...)
Officials at the Holocaust museum in Washington emphasize that they are not censoring Hirsch or any other survivor. "Hearing a Different Drummer" (Mercer University Press) remains on the shelves of the museum's bookstore.
Zundelsite:
They are censoring people all right - but only if they don't fit the Jewish agenda! The museum has no problem with censoring John Sack, and they welcomed the now exposed pathological liar Wilkimorski and the still to be exposed Elie Wiesel and many others, even Simon Wiesenthal who thinks nothing of painting prisoner garment stripes on executed Germans - implying they were Jews!
The Museum drops liars only after they are exposed by Revisionist articles in the media. Until then, they blithely stock their books.
Galloway:
But a book signing would be interpreted as a sanctioning of Hirsch's views, officials said.
Hirsch had timed the signing to coincide with a November reunion of Jewish children who were sheltered from the Nazis by a French network. Hirsch was one of them. His parents and two siblings died in the camps.
Most of "Different Drummer" is devoted to Hirsch's experience as a U.S. soldier in postwar Germany. But in the 10 pages of Chapter 23, he expresses his disappointment in the verdict of historians on Nazi soap-making. He cites the example of his uncle, a chemist who was forced to work in Auschwitz making soap.
Hirsch says his uncle, who died in the 1950s, confessed to Hirsch's brother that he had saved his own life by using human corpses --- something that historians say never happened.
Zundelsite:
Hearsay and rumors! Contradicted by science and documents!
Galloway:
Hirsch also tells the story of the four bars of soap in Atlanta. They were found by a Jewish soldier who was part of a U.S. force that liberated a concentration camp near Stettin, (sic?) Germany, near Frankfurt (sic?) . The soldier saw the soap cakes, which had been stamped "RIF."
Historians say the initials stand for Reich Industrie Fett, or Reich Industrial Fat. But at the time, the "I" was widely interpreted as a "J," and the initials for Reines Juden Fett --- or Pure Jewish Fat.
Zundelsite:
A rumor based on abysmally educated ghetto and shtetl dwellers.
Galloway:
The soldier stuffed the soap bars in a bag and took them home. He eventually married a concentration camp survivor. Twenty-five years later, the couple was living on LaVista Road in DeKalb County. The soap bars were stashed in the basement.
One night, the husband came home from work and found that his wife, having run out of detergent, was using the soap on the laundry. As he explained what they were, they both became highly disturbed.
At 3 a.m., the distressed couple called Rabbi Emanuel Feldman of nearby Congregation Beth Jacob, who consulted rabbinical scholars in New York and Israel, then set the burial service in motion. Feldman accompanied Hirsch to the cemetery on that early morning in 1970. (...)
"I don't think (the soap bars) would be buried if they were found today," said Lipstadt, the Emory historian. She is a member of the Washington museum's executive council.
Zundelsite:
Amazing! A cautious "I don't think..." - not a categorical explanation of why not! Or that it is a lie - just like Raul Hilberg's performance in cross-examination in Toronto's 1985 Zundel trial when asked about the "human soap story" and the "jumping bucket of twitching muscles" story!
Galloway:
One problem with scholarly research of the Holocaust has been the seamless manner in which World War II flowed into the Cold War. The dropping of the Iron Curtain sealed away many of the facts from the first generation of Holocaust scholars.
Zundelsite:
Pure nonsense! The Iron Curtain was very convenient to keep the Holocaust Schlock alive since the concentration camps were off limits to scientific investigation.
Galloway:
But a great rush of information has come in the last two decades with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, site of some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Zundelsite.
It has only been one decade! Not two! Kindergarten history!
Galloway:
Nothing in the newly opened archives has shed any light on the topic of making soap from Jews, historians say. "We haven't found anything yet that would give us something to grasp onto, that we didn't have in 1945," said Peter Black, the Holocaust museum historian.
Zundelsite:
So what is all this blah-blah above? They have no proof! No evidence! Why not just say so - in one sentence?!
Galloway:
The Washington museum now has a standardized summary that is faxed to those who inquire about Nazi soap-making. Included on the fact sheet:
"The soap rumor seems to have been first mentioned in the United States media in 1942."
Zundelsite:
So it ***was*** an American War Time atrocity propaganda story! Canadian Human Rights Tribunal members, pay heed!
Galloway:
A recipe for soap in German, dated February 1944, was found tacked to a piece of plywood at the Danzig Anatomical Institute in Poland. The recipe calls for fat, but does not refer to human fat, the museum says.
Zundelsite:
Some proof! So every cookbook or recipe handed from mother to daughter mentioning "fat" could potentially be instructions to boil Jews into soap?
Galloway:
Raul Hilberg, the dean of Holocaust historians, has cited the testimony of the postwar mayor of Danzig, who said 350 bodies were found at the plant, along with a caldron containing the remains of boiled human flesh. But Hilberg failed to verify the authenticity of the testimony, the museum statement says.
Zundelsite:
First of all, the "postwar mayor of Danzig" has not yet been put on the stand to check out this macabre story. Secondly, even if it is true, many scientific institutes preserve the skeletons of deceased people - as seen and discussed on a British TV documentary about preserving the skeleton of the "Elephant Man." Were they making soap of his flesh? Ridiculous!
Galloway:
The testimony of two British POWs who labored at the same plant "is contradictory and inconclusive," the museum says.
What historians say they lack are bills of laden, (lading...?) evidence of a manufacturing plant or receipts of purchase or exchange --- documentation the Nazis carefully maintained for other noxious enterprises.
Zundelsite:
They ***admit*** they have no evidence - yet the yarn is spun on page after page after page to milk it for every grotesque, bone-chilling, macabre, false detail!
Galloway:
"If you look at all the evidence available about Nazis experimenting with human beings . . . the composite of all that evidence cannot permit you to conclude that this happened," said Black. He compares the soap-making stories with the myth of Hitler's Jewish ancestry.
But survivors think historians may be too strict in their criteria, citing the museum's statement that "There is absolutely no evidence to indicate this was ever done on an industrial basis or in a centrally directed fashion."
Zundelsite:
That point has already been made pages ago. Why repeat it?
Galloway:
"Yes, there was no mass production," agreed Morris Spitzer, 77. "But yes, there was production in smaller quantities at many of the (extermination) camps." Spitzer, a camp survivor and resident of the Bronx, N.Y., is trying to obtain recognition for a photograph of a 1946 funeral procession in Sighet, Romania, involving bars of soap collected by the village.
Zundelsite:
It would be of the same "scientific proof" as the macabre burial rite in Atlanta. It would only prove the callousness of the perpetrators in exposing the gullibility of their unsophisticated ghetto and shtetl dwellers on this and the other side of the ocean.
Galloway:
The proven facts are 'bad enough'
Holocaust history is constantly being adjusted as new evidence and research surface.
Zundelsite:
Not "adjusted"! Holocaust history is being ***revised by Revisionist scholarship***!
Galloway:
Hilberg, the eminent historian, has recommended that the number of European Jews killed by the Nazi machine be revised downward, from 6 million to 5.1 million. And even that number now may be nudged slightly up --- based on even fresher information coming out of the former Soviet Union.
Zundelsite:
Hilberg revised himself only under duress after being grilled on the witness stand in Toronto on other points as well, like the non-existent "Hitler order" to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
Galloway:
Such revisions, while common enough in other historical fields, are handled with extreme care, with the expectation that Holocaust deniers will twist any change in the record into a retreat from the truth.
Zundelsite:
No! What you are seeing in the "soap story" a retreat from deliberate propaganda lies, told to serve the Jewish-Allied agenda for the last 60 years, by them and their fellow travelers.
Galloway:
But Lipstadt, the Emory professor and author, said deniers aren't driving the standards of historians. "If deniers are a concern, they are down at the bottom," she said.
Zundelsite:
So why the celebrated show trials of Zundel, Faurisson, Irving, Graf, Deckert, Wahl and others - the world over? Revisionist are driving the standards of historians as never before! We are talking an entirely different ball game - as the Finkelstein translation into German, slated for next year, will show!
Galloway:
At the top is a desire for rock-solid historical accuracy. "It's important because you don't want people to say it's demi-fiction," Lipstadt said.
Zundelsite:
It is not "demi-fiction"! It's lies piled on more lies, based on rumors who turn out to be based on still more lies - and on and on and on!
Galloway:
Soap-making has been a handy metaphor for Nazi cruelty, she said, but its disappearance from the catalog of Nazis atrocities shouldn't make much difference. "The truth that we know is bad enough. We don't need the soap," she said.
Zundelsite:
They will say that about every other lie they have so callously peddled. They will abandon them only after a protracted legal fight - one lie at a time.
Now you can see why Zundel is still before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal - where the "soap story", believe it or not, is one of the contested documents on the Zundelsite!
These show trials are useful to Revisionists, even though they are painful to the "show trial victims" - they help preserve the records of the criminal methods and unconscionable tactics used by the Holocaust lobbyists.
Galloway:
If Lipstadt has a regret, it might be that the matter might have been handled more diplomatically. Early in her career, she stated categorically that soap-making by the Nazis never happened. If she had it to do again, Lipstadt said, "I wouldn't say (the Nazis) never did it. I would say we have no evidence." She would leave the door slightly cracked.
Zundelsite:
Wow! Now is that callous - or what?! Napoleon Hill wrote 50 years ago: "Every time you talk, your mind goes on parade." Lipstadt's mind just did! :)
Galloway:
"If they dug up those bars of soap and DNA tests showed they were made from human beings, I would say, 'Oh, my God, we need to take another look at this, ' " Lipstadt said.
Zundelsite:
Absolutely amazing how this "fraternity" works. Brazen! And in public, no less!
We have much to learn about the mindset of these people!
Galloway:
Science has no answers now
But science is an unlikely arbiter when it comes to what is buried in Atlanta's Greenwood Cemetery.
The Holocaust museum says it has tested some bars of soap for human DNA and found nothing.
Zundelsite:
They could have said that pages ago in this article - and Lipstadt, Hilberg et al could have mentioned that fact years ago! But no - they try to "leave a crack open".
Galloway:
But even if human DNA were found in the suspect soap, it probably wouldn't prove anything, according to Connie Kolman of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory in Gainesville, Fla.
A specialist in tracing ancient DNA, Kolman said the bars of soap in Greenwood Cemetery probably do contain some human genetic material. The problem is one of contamination. Regardless of whether they were made from humans, human beings were involved in the production.
Anyone who has touched the cakes has left minute DNA material on them, including the housewife on LaVista Road, the scientist said.
A DNA test could not distinguish between the genetic material left by the casual handler, Kolman said, and material left by a human ingredient. "It'd be nice if science could provide an answer for this, but right now there's no way," she said.
Zundelsite:
This will not silence the believers in German fiendishness, as little as the Shroud of Turin analysis satisfied or silenced the believers in that cloth being the burial shroud of Christ.
Galloway:
That limitation doesn't upset everyone. Rabbi Feldman, who conducted the Atlanta burial service for the bars of soap in 1970, was recently contacted in Israel via e-mail.
Asked if he favored exhuming the small soap casket, the rabbi replied, " Maybe it would be best for it to remain a mystery."
Zundelsite:
What did I tell you? Why give up on such a good propaganda tool against your enemy, right? "Use it or lose it!" seems to be the modus operandi in this case.
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GRAPHIC: Photo Architect Ben Hirsch kneels by the Atlanta burial site of bars of soap supposedly made from the bodies of Holocaust victims. Most experts believe they are just ordinary soap. / JOHN SPINK / Staff
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Thought for the Day:
"Take time enough: all other graces will soon fill up their proper places."
(John Byrom in "Advice to Preach Slow"
Back to Table of Contents of the Sept. 2000 ZGrams