This morning I wrote to a group of my friends:
"Regarding my follow-up ZGram after I had read the article, I must say that I felt a lot more benevolent toward Sack once I had blasted him. There are constraint realities professional writers chafe under, and he probably did the best he could, given the Esquire slant and the editorial makeup. In my opinion, he pushed the limits with Bronfman etc., and I can assure you not one of us could have gotten some of the finer points of Revisionism into Esquire. In the world that we live in, I believe that Sack did what he could.
"The omission of names like Faurisson were probably due to some editing scissors. The fact, however, that Sack chose the idiocies of Provan as representing Revisionism must be laid on Sack's shoulders. He knows better than that, and at least he portrayed EZ fairly - and truthfully."
I was curious what others would say once they had read the article. It has been raining comments, and I have selected a few (one lengthy one toward the end) as representative of the general tone.
Very few letters were even remotely supportive of John Sack, but a handful on my reading list felt that we ought to take things in stride, since we are The Tolerant Ones.
Here are some letters to the Zundelsite:
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I have never "read" you so angry. I understand you. At the Conference I mentioned to you that I was not comfortable with John Sack there - at the way he was taping. He gave me the copy of his presentation, the actual one he read from. There are comments there reminding him where he should move his arms, etc., i.e. for a theatrical presentation. He is not straightforward.
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I find your yesterday's article about John Sack interesting. I gave up on him early last year (I think, it could have been late 1999) when he posted at www.codoh.com/bbs that he believed in the GASCHAMBERS because while writing his book ( An Eye for an Eye), he interviewed 3 different Holohoax survivors, in 3 different nations, at 3 different times, and they all described the GASCHAMBERS identically.
Then someone posted a rebuttal to his post, and asked him: "How do you know they were telling the truth?", and he answered: "Because I have a built in 'BULLSHIT INDICATOR'!!!!
I then posted a reply regarding the reliability of his 'bullshit indicator', but I got no responses.
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There is good and bad in the article. Extract whatever is useful, I suppose. The opposition will do the same. The article may pique more interest in revisionism, but will certainly not win any new adherents on its own merit.
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The ultimate facts to be gleaned from the article are:
Hoess was tortured - but the holocaust is still true.
Witnesses exaggerated or lied - but the holocaust is still true.
Revisionists are not anti-Semitic - they are simply deluded because the holocaust is still true.
Certainly revisionists were and are persecuted, but the holocaust is still true.
And how does he know this? By devotion.
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Sack is quite vivid in his description of those who claim the holocaust did not occur as it has been handed down to us. He writes,
"The invitiation, which came from the Institute for Historical Review in Orange County, California, the central asylum for the delusion that the Germans didn't kill any Jews and that the Holocaust is, quote unquote, the Hoax of the Twentieth Century..."
The man is referring to revisionists as lunatics and the IHR as an asylum. Now, I for one am all for seeking out allies whenever possible, but I will say that I was far more impressed by Finkelstein's book than by Mr Sack's article.
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I was extremely uncomfortable with Sack's article after a first reading, but then, when I reflected upon it overnight, the import of that scurrilous attack struck me with all the force of a ton of bricks, which prompted me to send that little essay to you this afternoon. A fine way to repay our trust and hospitality. When will people ever learn?
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The answer to all this is simple, if one remembers that the Jewish mindset is inherently religious. Whether the Jew is an ultra-Orthodox Hassidic, or a totally assimilated Westerner, their psyche is wired for religion.
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RE: "They're morally ugly. They're morally sick," said Elie Wiesel on PBS. Boy! If *that* ain't a case of the pot calling the kettle black, there isn't one!
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People like Germar Rudolf, Mark Weber, Carlo Mattogno, Ted O' Keefe, Bradley Smith, etc., did far more for revisionism than Provan has ever done. People like this deserve to featured in Esquire long before Provan is even mentioned.
I suspect the real reason Provan was featured was to embarrass us. That picture with his family makes us look like a bunch of illiterate, backwoods hillbillies.
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The equation goes like this: Sack article + interest + Internet = more adherents (hard, soft, moderate...) to the Revisionist cause.
Fifteen years ago, our public radio and TV broadcaster went ballistic over Zundel and Keegstra. For a year we had wall-to--wall coverage of the trials of Z & K, which made me wonder WHAT DO REVISIONISTS SAY IN THEIR OWN WORDS?
As a result, I read Butz's book and was stunned by the absence of HATE (from the media's point of view, I was to expect a Sadean rant). Instead, there was low-key scholarly style that methodically checklisted 101 REASONS WHY THE HOLOCAUST COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED AS DESCRIBED.
Think of the Sack item as the hook that brings buyers into the Revisionist supermarket
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I know a great amount of talk will be generated as a result of this article, but I wanted to share with you my brief impressions. It did not dawn on me until this morning, after an entire night of reflection, how horrendous this article really is in a subliminal sense, in spite of the few rather inconsequential bones which Mr Sack tossed toward the revisionist side.
A thorough reading of this article makes it indisputably clear that Mr Sack and Mr Provan are two individuals who interpret the *holocaust* in a very personal way, seeking to extrapolate moral and spiritual lessons from what they believe occurred at Auschwitz and other camps. Sack himself quite candidly expressed himself on this point in his book, *An Eye for an Eye.*
And so he repeats this performance in the Esquire article in a very clever way, by shoving Mr Provan and his theories into the limelight. True to form, Mr Provan is immediately served up to the readers as the pivotal figure in this drama, a man who was *once* a revisionist, but due to his religious convictions and the testimony of Konrad Morgen, apostasizes.
*Revisionists,* on the other hand, are usually depicted as benighted fools, foolishly pointing out foolish quotations from the Talmud which no Jew takes or ever took seriously. Indeed, in rather ill described detail, the article points to the most influential *revisionists* (in this case, those who have endured the worst harassment and persecution) as self-deluded and filled with ill-concealed hostility and anger, who are blinded to the spiritual truth as revealed to and by Mr. Provan. Undoubtedly Mr. Provan is a righteous individual and sincere in what he believes, but beliefs and imagined spiritual illuminations, in and of themselves, however well intentioned, are not convincing scientific evidence.
Revealingly, Sack concludes his article by noting that "I and the Jews in An Eye for an Eye *devoutly* believe that the Holocaust happened." And therein lies the crux of his entire case, the entire core of his beliefs, - and Provan's - which are based upon an indefinable mystery tauted as *devotion."
They are spiritual devotees of a Holocaust cult where all evidence is evaluated in symbolic and relgious tones, a la Van Pelt, the Prima Donna of "Mr. Death," who portrayed Fred Leuchter's sample-taking of evidence at Auschwitz in blasphemous terms--describing Leuchter as an iconoclast, who impudently and stupidly dares to enter and desecrate the *Holy of Holies* by taking samples of evidence for scientific testing.
Thus, whatever scraps or concessions Sack offered revisionism in this lengthy article, pale in contrast to the fact that, viewed in its entirety, Sack's article ultimately portrays revisionists as people, harmless in and of themselves, who serve as apologists for those whose task and pleasure was to exterminate children.
It is an evil image, an image in accord with mass abortionists and earlier attempts to lump revisionism into the same category with child molesters on the net. It is an image which should ring the sound of alarm among all reivisonists throughout the world, who are now branded with the additional stigma of being apologists for child murderers-murders which have now assumed a frightening *ritual* connotation, just as Jews were once accused of ritual child murder...The holocaust libel has now become a true "Blood Libel." The horror has now run full circle, simply because those obstinate revisionists refuse to believe the holocaust Gospel as revealed to Chuck Provan and his disciple, Mr. Sack.
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Screw the complaints. Use the facts. Headline: "John Sacks supports Revisionism." Headline: "Provan confirms old fraud."
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Thought for the Day:
"Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth."
(Douglas Jerrold)
Back to Table of Contents of the Jan. 2001 ZGrams