-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- .............................................................. Forwarded from the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]: From: Lloyd Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [prj] Fw: L.A. Times on Holocaust Denial Date: Sunday, January 09, 2000 1:00 PM Rare Book Searches - Ruling Class/Conspiracy Experts: http://a-albionic.com/search.html ***** Conspiracy Shopping Cart: http://a-albionic.com/shopping.html*****Viagra On-Line http://a-albionic.com/ads/srch.html************************************************************************** ----- Original Message ----- From: Marge O'Brien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2000 5:44 AM Subject: L.A. Times on Holocaust Denial > Los Angeles Times > Friday, January 7, 2000 > > http//www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_libel000107.htm > > Danger in Denying Holocaust? > > A revisionist is accusing a prominent critic of the movement of libel. > Scholars and survivors say the evidence is irrefutable, but those who > question extent of horrors say they pay a price. > > By KIM MURPHY, Times Staff Writer > > A young German chemist named Germar Rudolf took crumbling bits of > plaster from the walls of Auschwitz in 1993 and sent them to a lab for > analysis. There were plenty of traces of cyanide gas in the delousing > chambers where Nazi camp commanders had had blankets and clothing > fumigated. There was up to a thousand times less in the rooms > described as human gas chambers. > > Rudolf, a doctoral candidate at Stuttgart University, concluded that > large numbers of Jews may have died of typhoid, starvation and murder > at Europe's most famous World War II death camp, but none of them died > in a gas chamber. > > When a report on his findings--commissioned by a former Third Reich > general--got out, Rudolf lost his job at the respected Max Planck > Institute and his doctoral degree was put on hold. He was sentenced to > 14 months in prison under a 1985 German law making it a crime to > incite racial hatred, his landlord kicked him out, he fled into exile > and his wife filed for divorce. > > There are many who say Rudolf got exactly what he deserved. But to the > increasingly vocal movement of Holocaust deniers and revisionists, > Rudolf stands as a crucial figure because of what he representsa > highly trained chemist who purports--despite a wide variety of > scientific evidence to the contrary--to have physical proof that the > gas chambers at Auschwitz did not exist. > > Over the last decade, supporters of such theories have scrutinized > hundreds of thousands of pages of Third Reich documents and diaries > made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have > analyzed gas chamber construction. They have pinpointed contradictions > and hard-to-believe details in stories told by camp survivors and, > amid nearly universal scorn from the academic establishment, won > testimonials for some of their work from academics at respected > institutions, such as Northwestern University and the University of > Lyon. > > The revisionists, whose theories will be at the center of a > high-profile libel trial scheduled to begin Tuesday in London, are not > operating in a vacuum. A 1993 poll by the Roper Organization found > that 22% of Americans thought it possible that the Holocaust never > happened. > > The theorists contend that far fewer than 6 million Jews died in > Europe during World War II--and that most of those who died did so > through starvation, disease and ad hoc executions carried out by > lower-level Nazi officers. > > That scenario has been almost universally dismissed as a flawed > misreading of history, cooked up out of deep-seated anti-Semitism. > Indeed, at least two dozen people have been prosecuted in Germany, > France, Spain, Austria, Poland and Canada since 1990 under various > laws prohibiting racial hatred and the defaming of the memory of > those who died in Nazi death camps for even questioning what has > become one of the defining horrors of the modern age. > > Now one of the leading deniers of the Holocaust, British historian > David Irving, is striking back, suing the most prominent critic of the > movement, Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt, for libel. The > trial is likely to feature many of the world's premier WWII historians > weighing in on the mechanics, logistics, chain of command and > blueprints for the extermination of millions of European Jews. > > In her book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and > Memory," Lipstadt accuses Irving of skewing documents and > misrepresenting data. The book quotes analysts who describe his work > as "closer to theology or mythology than to history." As a British > citizen, Irving can take advantage of British libel law, which places > much of the burden on Lipstadt to prove her book did not libel the > historian. Irving says his lawsuit will prove Lipstadt's book is part > of an international Jewish campaign to discredit him. > > Irving, author of biographies of Adolf Hitler and his propaganda > chief, Joseph Goebbels, has argued that Hitler has never been found to > have ordered a massive extermination of the Jews and, in fact, tried > to stop some of the killings. He has described Auschwitz as "a very > brutal slave labor camp, where probably 100,000 Jews died." And not > unlike U.S. Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, > he asserts the world would have been better served if Winston > Churchill had accepted Hitler's peace overtures in 1940 and allowed > Hitler to fight it out with Josef Stalin in Russia. > > Confronting Deniers' Arguments Head-On > > Lipstadt was among the first in the American Jewish community to > abandon the long-standing practice of ignoring the Holocaust deniers, > choosing instead to confront their arguments head-on. Her book accuses > Irving of misreading documents and distorting facts. > > Historians she quotes have said Irving ignores the fact that the Nazis > deliberately avoided a paper trail and that it is quite plausible that > Hitler would never personally have affixed his signature to the Final > Solution. > > She cites accusations by prominent British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper > that Irving "seizes on a small and dubious particle of 'evidence' " > and allegedly uses it "to dismiss far more substantial evidence that > may not support his thesis." > > "There are more people in the United States who believe that Elvis > Presley is alive than who believe the Holocaust didn't happen. As an > American, that's a demi-consolation," Lipstadt said in an interview. > "But I see it as a clear and future danger. The future danger is when > there are no people left who can say in the first-person singular, > 'This is what happened to me,' it's going to be much easier to deny > it." > > For Irving, who is regarded in some mainstream quarters as one of the > premier documentarians of the Third Reich, it is an issue of > professional vindication. It is no accident, he says, that he has been > banned from even entering Canada, Italy, Germany and Austria because > of Holocaust denial laws in those countries. "They regard me as > dangerous, and the word 'dangerous' puzzles me," he said. "I don't > go around punching people in the face. ...'Dangerous' can only > mean dangerous to their interests, either in the long term or the > short term. > > "In the end, it isn't really a question of whether it's 6 million or > only 1 million" Jews who died. "I think the figures have been > inflated, and the significance of the inflation is that the Jewish > community is trying to make out that their suffering is unique in its > grandeur and the methods applied to achieve it. And it wasn't. It was > just one of the many barbarisms committed under the cloak of war." > > Some revisions in Holocaust history have been generally accepted. > Stories that Jewish remains were manufactured into soap and lampshades > have been dismissed as myth. There were, most historians now agree, no > human gassings at Dachau. Deaths at Auschwitz, once estimated, based on > the testimony of Nazi commanders, at up to 3 million have been scaled > back to about 1.1 million. Even the widely accepted figure of 6 > million Jewish dead all over Europe has been questioned in recent > years by some of the world's most prominent Holocaust scholars. > > Raul Hilberg and Robert Jan van Pelt, two of the leading authorities, > now believe the figure is probably closer to 5.1 million. > > Still, scholars say, the evidence of a massive extermination campaign > that resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews is so exhaustive that > it is irrefutable. > > It includes detailed stories from camp survivors, confessions and > memoirs from Nazi commandants (including Auschwitz commander Rudolf > Hoess), testimony of Jewish prisoners who removed bodies from the gas > chambers, blueprints uncovered from newly opened archives in Moscow > that document construction of the gas chambers, records from the > contractors who built the gas chambers and orders for large quantities > of hydrogen cyanide gas, far more than would have been needed for > fumigation, according to Van Pelt and others. > > Revisionist Questions Limits on Inquiry > > There is the sheer number of Jews who arrived at the camps and never > left, far more than could have fallen victim to disease or starvation, > most historians believe. > > Since when, Lipstadt wants to know, does anyone in the name of > academic inquiry have the right to claim there is "another side" to > the Holocaust debate? And why is there even a debate? > > To this, Rudolf, who could be called as a witness at the trial, says > that no issue of history should be exempt from reexamination--even if > it pains the victims. > > In convicting him, Rudolf says, the court took no notice of prominent > German military historian Joachim Hoffman, who credited the quality of > Rudolf's research and said that to suppress it would "work a powerful > hindrance to legitimate striving for scientific understanding." The > court apparently was moved, however, by a preface by the former Third > Reich general who had commissioned Rudolf to do the research, Otto > Ernst Remer, who in 1992 himself was sentenced to prison for > incitement to racial hatred. > > Could a report commissioned by a man like Remer--who once joked while > sniffing a cigarette lighter that he was mimicking "a Jew nostalgic > for Auschwitz"--ever be a justifiable contribution to scientific > literature? > > More to the point, says Irving, should there be political limits on > academic inquiry? > > "I think, by the end of this case, the word 'scholarship' will come to > stink," Irving predicts. "Scholars tend to award that accolade to each > other. And their scholarship usually consists of sitting in libraries > reading each others' books." > > Irving prides himself on relying on primary sources for his > biographies--interviews or diaries of the principals, radio > transmission intercepts, memorandums. In the case of his book > "Hitler's War," Irving interviewed in detail most of the surviving > members of Hitler's staff and only used documents that would have > crossed Hitler's desk. > > In the process, Irving said he did not come across a single document > or interview that indicated Hitler had ordered a campaign to > exterminate the Jews. > > "Others who have come across with something have looser criteria than > I do, like the Nuremberg trials.... I won't accept that. Not > standing by itself," he said. > > Irving's numerous critics say he fails to address the fact that the > extermination campaign was carried out in deliberate secrecy, without > written orders. SS chief Heinrich Himmler "explicitly forbade all > discussion of it, and if it had to be mentioned, it was always > disguised as 'resettlement' or 'transport to the east,' " Trevor-Roper > pointed out in a review of Irving's book. > > St. Martin's Press abruptly dropped plans to publish Irving's > controversial biography of Goebbels in 1996 in the wake of a storm of > criticism from reviewers, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith > and even, according to some employees, telephone death threats against > the book's editor. Thomas McCormack, chairman of the publishing house, > said he read the book and found it "repellent [and] effectively > anti-Semitic." When the Doubleday Military Book Club backed out as > well, Irving self-published the book, calling the whole affair "the > most extraordinary treatment of a historian since what the Iranians > did to Salman Rushdie." > > Yet Irving has his admirers as well. Christopher Hitchens, writing of > Irving's work in Vanity Fair, called him "not just a Fascist > historian, [but] . . . also a great historian of Fascism." Gordon A. > Craig, considered the dean of German historians, acknowledged that > Irving has been an "annoyance" but said "The fact is that he knows > more about national socialism than most professional scholars in his > field." His book on Hitler, Craig said, "remains the best study we > have of the German side of the Second World War." > > On the advice of her lawyers, Lipstadt won't discuss Irving or the > upcoming trial. But she did say there is a danger in allowing what she > calls Holocaust deniers to wear the mantle of legitimate > revisionists--those who look at accepted history and raise new and > often enlightening questions. > > "There's a definite political agenda," she said. "This is not just > Looney Tunes history. These are people who want to make national > socialism respectable again. And how do you make a thoroughly > discredited movement respectable? > > "First of all, you deal with moral equivalencies. You say, 'Oh yes, > the Germans bombed London, but the Allies bombed Dresden. There were > Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, but the Americans had camps for the > Americans of Japanese descent.' But there's no moral equivalency for > them to bring up about the Holocaust. So instead, they are left > denying the Holocaust. And denying it in such a way that you almost > hear them saying, 'It didn't happen, but it should have.' " > > Van Pelt, who is considered one of the world's leading authorities on > Auschwitz, prepared an 800-page report on the death camp for the > trial. "The whole idea of trying to prove the Holocaust is, for me, a > kind of ridiculous exercise. But in some ways, it forces historians to > show what they can do. I think the case has forced me ... to look at > things I preferred not to look at in the past," he said. > > Van Pelt now can tell you how the gas chambers operated, how the > capsules of Zyklon B were dropped in the ceiling vents, how the bodies > were hauled out, and how long it took human beings to die at what > concentrations of gas (about 35 minutes, in most cases). > > Van Pelt's new report has not yet been made public, and Rudolf has not > responded to it. "I can deal with Himmler. I can deal with Hoess. > There's a certain kind of naive honesty in what they do, however evil > it is," Van Pelt said. "But the contortions and complete fabrications > of these deniers is obscene. > > "What they do is take all kinds of very straightforward evidence and > basically turn it upside down. And it's an incredible effort to simply > sit there and take every sentence they write and compare it to the > record.... It doesn't help you to understand anything except the > contortions of their minds. And their minds are not very interesting." > > Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times > > > > _____________________________________________________________ > Keep up with breaking news! 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