Fwd: ZGram - 11/29/2004 - "The Campaign to Decriminalize History" - Part II -

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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>Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!
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>November 29, 2004
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>Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
>
>Herewith the second part of a three-part Zgram on political 
>correctness unleashed on that handful of Revisionist dissidents 
>questioning and disputing the Holocaust Dogma:
>
>[START]
>
>There is no doubt that the Nazis committed many inexcusable crimes 
>during the war, but the question facing modern historians is this: 
>did the Allies, in their postwar haste to find evidence of Nazi 
>"crimes against humanity," take major liberties with the truth? Even 
>the most respected figures in Holocaust history have admitted the 
>vast extent of the postwar disinformation campaign conducted by the 
>Allied governments. The Director of the Auschwitz State Museum 
>admitted in a 1992 documentary that the building displayed at the 
>camp as a "gas chamber" is actually a postwar fabrication created by 
>the Soviets and Poles.27 Similar admissions have been made about the 
>gas chamber on display at Dachau, which was apparently created by 
>the U.S. Army after the war for propaganda purposes.28 The Dachau 
>Museum in Munich admits that the claims made by the U.S. Army about 
>people being gassed at Dachau were unfounded.29
>
>Officials of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 
>Washington, DC, admit that the Soviet Union went to great extremes 
>in order to create false war-crimes evidence, even to the extent of 
>staging phony footage of "Nazis" gassing children. According to the 
>Director of the Department of Film and Video at the U.S. Holocaust 
>Museum, Soviet soldiers wearing German uniforms posed as Nazis, and 
>pretended to gas children while the cameras rolled. This phony 
>"gassing" film was created for use against the Germans at the 
>Nuremberg Trial.30
>
>Raul Hilberg, perhaps the most respected Holocaust author in the 
>world, admitted that the Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz 
>concentration camp had been tortured by the British into signing a 
>confession that was totally false.31 Yehuda Bauer, Chair of 
>Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University, disclosed in 1989 that, 
>after the war, Polish Communists and nationalists, "for political 
>purposes," grossly inflated the number of dead at Auschwitz, yet 
>"sheer repetition led many Jews to accept the numbers. It's the 
>historian's task to examine myths," Bauer said, "and, if necessary, 
>explode them."32
>
>Konrad Heiden, a refugee from Nazi Germany and perhaps the most 
>important anti-Nazi author of the war years, published a detailed 
>article in Life magazine immediately after the war, providing 
>step-by-step details of how the Nuremberg defendants were being 
>tortured by the Allies into confessing, and contrasting the Soviet 
>methods of torture (psychological) with the U.S. methods (physical 
>brutality).33
>
>The Campaign to Decriminalize World War II History has collected 
>over 100 quotes from the world's most respected mainstream Holocaust 
>historians attesting to just how little is actually known about the 
>central features of the Holocaust (the gas chambers, the number of 
>Jews killed, and the existence of a genocide plan).34
>
>In fact, it wasn't until 1989 that anyone even attempted to 
>scientifically prove the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz - in 
>a book titled Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas 
>Chambers, published by the world-renowned Holocaust education 
>organization, the Klarsfeld Foundation. Before publication, the book 
>was hailed in the New York Times as a major breakthrough in 
>Holocaust history.35 Unfortunately, the book's author, Jean-Claude 
>Pressac, concluded that there is "an absence of any 'direct,' i.e. 
>palpable, indisputable, and evident proof of homicidal gas chambers" 
>at Auschwitz.36 The book was immediately withdrawn from circulation.
>
>In light of the paucity of reliable evidence for certain aspects of 
>Holocaust history, some of our nation's leading Holocaust 
>institutions have turned to using less-than-credible evidence. The 
>United States Holocaust Memorial Museum displays a cast of the door 
>to a "gas chamber" from the Majdanek camp in Poland. The problem is, 
>Jean-Claude Pressac (see above) wrote in his book that this room at 
>Majdanek was simply a chamber for delousing clothes.37
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>Furthermore, Dr. Michael Shermer, who has penned several books aimed 
>at countering the claims of revisionist Holocaust historians, has 
>said that he agrees with revisionists that this room was not a gas 
>chamber used for killing people.38 Amazingly, when Shermer 
>questioned Michael Berenbaum, Director of the Holocaust Memo-rial 
>Museum,39 about the authenticity of the Majdanek "gas chamber" door, 
>Berenbaum replied that he had never actually examined the door, even 
>though it's a central exhibit in his own museum!40 (According to 
>Shermer, both Berenbaum and world-renowned Holocaust scholar Raul 
>Hilberg are "remarkably ignorant" of the "anomalous data" that might 
>prove revisionists right.41)
>
>The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles 
>offers its visitors "documentary footage" of the Nazis gassing 
>children in a "gas van" that the Nazis had deceitfully disguised as 
>an ambulance. In reality, this footage is actually a scene from a 
>1962 Polish black-and-white fictional film, The Ambulance, directed 
>by Janusz Morgenstern. The Wiesenthal Center has removed the opening 
>and closing credits from the movie, exhibiting the altered film as 
>authentic "documentary" footage.42
>
>And in 1993, in honor of the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial 
>Museum, the U.S. National Archives re-edited a piece of 1945 U.S. 
>Army Signal Corps footage of a Paris rifle range, removing the 
>soundtrack and changing the description in the National Archives 
>catalog from "Parisian firing range" to "Nazi gas chamber." This 
>altered footage is prominently featured in a guide to National 
>Archives "Holocaust footage" that is sold in the Holocaust Museum 
>gift shop.43
>
>
>(A warning to the reader: being in possession of the information 
>contained in the preceding nine paragraphs could well get you 
>arrested or expelled from most European countries and Canada - so be 
>careful where you take this information!)
>
>
>The laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history have 
>the net effect of providing legal cover for the myths that are 
>exploited by people of all political persuasions and ideologies 
>during times of war and national crisis. By suppressing research 
>that questions these myths, we deprive ourselves of the information 
>we need in order to ask our leaders, and ourselves, the kinds of 
>hard questions that are particularly relevant right now:
>
>Can there be such a thing as a "good" war? Can a "preemptive" war 
>ever be necessary? If it was right to declare war against one brutal 
>dictator (Hitler) before he committed the crimes that would later be 
>used as the very reason for that war, is it right to preemptively 
>strike other brutal dictators before they become greater menaces?
>
>Can a war, and can a postwar occupation, be conducted successfully 
>without resorting to brutality? Is brutality ever warranted? If it 
>was justifiable to torture captured Nazis after the war in order to 
>obtain evidence of Nazi war crimes, is it okay to use torture to 
>gain information from captured Al Qaeda fighters? If it was 
>acceptable to try Nazis in front of military tribunals in which they 
>had limited rights of defense, and in which false evidence was used 
>to convict, is it okay to do the same to Muslim extremists - who 
>have, after all, murdered more U.S. civilians than the Nazis did?
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>Is it ever permissible for our government to use deception in order 
>popularize a war? If it turns out that some of the war crimes 
>accusations made against the Nazis were unfounded, should we correct 
>the historical record? Or is it better to keep quiet, lest we risk 
>making the Nazis appear less evil to future generations? And if it's 
>okay to continue using falsehoods against the Nazis, is it okay to 
>use falsehoods against Al Qaeda, or Saddam Hussein?
>
>Those who advocate an open and unrestrained debate over our 
>government's case for going to war in Iraq say that allowing such a 
>debate strengthens our democracy. If that's true, then why shouldn't 
>we allow an equally open and unrestrained debate over our 
>government's case for going to war against Germany and Japan?
>
>Finally, if it's okay to suppress "revisionist" Holocaust views 
>because some people claim that they are insensitive to Holocaust 
>survivors, should it be okay to suppress views critical of the war 
>on terrorism, because they're insensitive to the victims of 
>terrorism and their families?
>
>These questions may not have easy "yes" or "no" answers, but it is 
>simply wrong to criminalize and suppress the historical research 
>that prompts us to face these necessary questions. We don't have to 
>agree with dissident World War II and Holocaust researchers in order 
>to recognize the value and relevance of the questions their research 
>raises. When we deprive them of the ability do their work, we are 
>depriving ourselves of something valuable, as well.
>
>And we should not just be asking ourselves these "hard questions." 
>Laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history have turned 
>many of our European "allies" into hypocrites.
>
>In Germany, it is legal for Germans and foreign nationals to belong 
>to Al Qaeda and publicly talk about murdering Americans and Jews, 
>but German citizens and foreign nationals who violate the German 
>laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history are 
>immediately charged and prosecuted.44
>
>In France, books claiming that 9/11 was a hoax perpetrated by the 
>U.S. and Israel have become bestsellers carried by almost every 
>major French bookstore.45 At the same time, however, authors who 
>write critically about World War II or Holocaust history are thrown 
>in prison or fined (France has Europe's most severe anti-revisionist 
>law, prohibiting people from questioning the version of World War II 
>history that was laid out immediately after the war by the Allies at 
>the Nuremberg Trial in 1946).
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>The French government has no problem with wild conspiracy theories 
>about 9/11, or the American war on terrorism, but it won't allow its 
>own citizens to critically examine the history of France's last war 
>- a war through which, it should be noted, France acquired quite a 
>lot of territory. The French have condemned Israel for, among other 
>things, acquiring territory through war, but there are no laws in 
>Israel prohibiting the critical examination of Israel's past wars.46 
>Why won't the French government allow its citizens the same right?
>
>In 2002, when the U.S. decided to conduct tighter screening 
>procedures for foreign visitors from countries that sponsor 
>terrorism, the Canadian government reacted in horror to this "human 
>rights violation," even going so far as instructing its residents of 
>Middle Eastern descent not to visit the U.S. Yet the Canadian 
>government supplies its own customs agency with a veritable laundry 
>list of World War II and Holocaust history books that are illegal in 
>Canada. These books cannot be imported into Canada or possessed by 
>Canadians. The Canadian government thinks that the U.S. should not 
>screen visitors from "high risk" nations who seek to enter our 
>country, yet the Canadians rigorously screen every book that is 
>brought into their country.47
>
>Why is the Canadian government afraid to allow its citizens to read 
>dissident views of World War II and the Holocaust? The 
>criminalization of Holocaust and World War II history is taken to 
>such extremes in Canada that, in 1997, a well-known columnist for 
>one of Vancouver's largest newspapers was prosecuted for writing a 
>negative review of the movie Schindler's List!48 According to the 
>logic of the Canadian government, it is a "human rights violation" 
>for the U.S. to require foreign visitors from high-risk nations 
>traveling on guest visas to report changes of address during their 
>stay, but it's not a human rights violation to prosecute a man for 
>writing a movie review!
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>
>OPEN DEBATE
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>Even though there are not yet any laws in the United States that 
>criminalize Holocaust and World War II research, that doesn't mean 
>that there is a free and open exchange of ideas regarding these 
>subjects. There are plenty of ways to suppress free speech in a free 
>country. Apart from the banning of dissident Holocaust views on 
>college campuses (discussed earlier), there is also that most 
>reliable method of stifling free speech - outright intimidation and 
>threats of violence.
>
>Irv Rubin ran a Los Angeles-based organization called the Jewish 
>Defense League (JDL), a militant, paramilitary-style activist group. 
>If Mr. Rubin's name sounds familiar, it's because in December 2001, 
>three months after 9/11, Rubin and his JDL second-in-command, Earl 
>Krugel, made headlines when they were arrested by the FBI for 
>plotting to blow up Muslim and Arab targets in L.A. The targets 
>included a West L.A. mosque, and the offices of Lebanese-American 
>congressman Darrel Issa. The day of destruction was apparently 
>planned for December 13, 2001, but fortunately the FBI was able to 
>intercept the plot before the bombs could be planted.49 Had Rubin's 
>plan been carried out, hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent 
>people would have been killed. Rubin committed suicide on November 
>4, 2002, while in prison awaiting trial. Soon afterwards, Krugel 
>pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and hate-crime charges.
>
>What no one in the press or in law enforcement seemed eager to 
>discuss in the wake of Rubin's arrest was that, for the past twenty 
>years, Rubin and the JDL had routinely terrorized dissident 
>Holocaust and World War II scholars and researchers, and the 
>authorities did nothing about it. In May 1982, the JDL firebombed 
>the Los Angeles home of history teacher Dr. George Ashley.50 In 
>December of that year, Dr. Ashley's home was ransacked, and a note 
>left behind by the JDL warned Ashley to stop espousing revisionist 
>Holocaust views.51 Finally, in May 1985, Dr. Ashley's home was 
>firebombed and burned to the ground.52
>
>In 1982 and 1983, the JDL physically assaulted Cal State Long Beach 
>professor Reinhard Buchner, who served on the editorial board of a 
>publishing house that published revisionist books.53 In September 
>1982, the offices of that publishing house were riddled with bullets 
>and burned by an arson device.54 On July 4, 1984, that same 
>publishing house was completely burned to the ground by the JDL, 
>causing over $400,000 in damage and destroying over 10,000 books.55
>
>In June 1985 the JDL firebombed the offices of a Santa Monica, CA, 
>German-American organization that had published revisionist 
>Holocaust views in its newsletter.56 And in April 1985, the JDL 
>trashed the car of University of Tulsa professor Charles Weber 
>because of his Holocaust research. A note left on Dr. Weber's 
>windshield brazenly identified the attack as the work of the JDL, 
>and threatened Dr. Weber with further violence should he continue 
>writing about the Holocaust.57
>
>In February 1989, the JDL threatened the Red Lion hotel chain with 
>violence unless it cancelled a conference of Holocaust and World War 
>II revisionists that was scheduled to take place at one of the 
>chain's Orange County, CA, locations. Red Lion cancelled the event, 
>which was moved to a nearby Holiday Inn. When the Holiday Inn 
>received similar threats from the JDL, it, too, cancelled the 
>event.58
>
>The JDL's attacks on dissident Holocaust researchers reached its 
>peak in 1994, when Irv Rubin, now making use of the information 
>superhighway, posted a notice in the Internet calling for the murder 
>of documentary filmmaker and Holocaust researcher David Cole, who 
>had produced the film in which the Director of the Auschwitz State 
>Museum in Poland admitted that the "gas chamber" there was a postwar 
>fake. Rubin had previously assaulted Cole (who, it should be noted, 
>is a Jew) in 1991, when Cole was invited to speak at UCLA, beating 
>Cole on stage, in front of hundreds of people, and as cameras for 
>the CBS news program 48 Hours were rolling.59 The notice that Rubin 
>circulated on the Internet in 1994 was titled Who Is David Cole and 
>Why Must He Die? It referred to Cole as a "Jewish traitor" who had 
>to be "taken out," and it featured a photo of Cole.60
>
>In November 1994, three months after Rubin's "death warrant" for 
>Cole was put on the Internet, Cole was beaten by unknown assailants 
>in his Culver City, CA, neighborhood.61 Several months before that 
>attack, Rubin and Earl Krugel - Rubin's co-conspirator in the 
>thwarted 2001 bombings - were interviewed by a freelance journalist 
>in L.A. During the videotaped interview, Krugel unambiguously 
>expressed his desire to see Cole dead.62 After 1994, Cole went into 
>hiding, prompting Rubin to offer a "large monetary reward" to anyone 
>who could divulge Cole's location, adding that he was now ready to 
>take "immediate action" to "eliminate" Cole.63
>
>In December 1997, Irv Rubin and David Cole reached an agreement, in 
>which Cole publicly recanted his Holocaust views, and Rubin removed 
>the death warrant and the "reward" from the JDL website. After 
>receiving Cole's recantation, Rubin bragged on his website that this 
>is "evidence of the power of the Jewish Defense League."64 Cole has 
>not spoken a word publicly since then.
>
>At no time during this twenty-year history of threats and attacks 
>against revisionist researchers and historians did the local police, 
>the FBI, or the press express any real interest in the JDL's 
>terrorist activities. As long as the targets of Mr. Rubin's wrath 
>were dissident historians and filmmakers, no one seemed to care. It 
>was only when Rubin tried to mount an attack against other targets 
>that the authorities started paying attention.
>
>Fortunately, the FBI was able to prevent a massacre in 2001, but 
>it's not unreasonable to suggest that if the JDL's earlier attacks 
>against dissident historians had been taken seriously, if people had 
>cared that these beatings, bombings, and threats were taking place, 
>Rubin might not have been in a position to mount the December 2001 
>attacks, and hundreds of innocent Arab and Muslim-Americans wouldn't 
>have come so close to meeting a violent death.
>
>Of course, it doesn't always take something as extreme as a 
>fire-bomb or a death warrant to intimidate people. Across the U.S., 
>dozens of teachers, at the grade school, high school, and college 
>level, have been fired, suspended, or reprimanded for voicing 
>alternative viewpoints regarding the Holocaust and World War II.65 
>Dissident historians have been unable to find publishers for their 
>books, or have been unceremoniously dropped by their publishers.66 
>Even without formal laws criminalizing Holocaust and World War II 
>history, the private sector has, in its own way, been able to stifle 
>free speech through job reprisals. Reprisals such as these can be 
>just as effective as state-sponsored censorship.
>
>A case in point: In Japan, as in the U.S., there are not as of yet 
>any laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history. In 
>1995, the Japanese magazine Marco Polo (a Vanity Fair-type mixture 
>of pop culture and politics) published an article by a Tokyo 
>neurosurgeon detailing his trip to Auschwitz, and the questions he 
>came away with concerning the accuracy of some of the exhibits. 
>Immediately, there was an international outcry, and Marco Polo's 
>publisher, Japan's powerful Bungei Shunju publishing house, 
>responded by completely dissolving the magazine and firing its 
>entire staff, from the editors right down to the receptionists.67 
>This sent a message that was just as powerful as any governmental 
>law. In the nine years since the Marco Polo incident, no other 
>Japanese publication has dared to revisit the subject.
>
>The fear of losing one's job can be just as strong as the fear of 
>going to jail, or the fear of violence.
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>[END]
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>Tomorrow:  Conclusion and footnotes