By Mark Weber – Institute for Historical Review January 2009
For more than 30 years, writers and publicists who call themselves revisionists have presented evidence and arguments questioning generally accepted accounts of the Holocaust. Some of these researchers have shown impressive fortitude -- defying smears, abuse, physical violence, and worse.1
In countries where “Holocaust denial” is a crime, skeptics have been fined, imprisoned or forced into exile for expressing dissident views on this issue.2 These victims of what amounts to a blatant suppression of free speech include Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy in France, Siegfried Verbeke in Belgium, Jürgen Graf and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in Switzerland, and Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany.
Revisionists have published impressive evidence, including long neglected documents and testimony, that has contributed to a more complete and accurate understanding of an emotion-laden and highly polemicized chapter of history.
I have played a role in this effort. In published writings, in lectures, and in courtroom testimony, I have devoted much time and work to critically reviewing the “official” Holocaust narrative, to countering Holocaust propaganda, and to debunking specific Holocaust claims.
But in spite of years of effort by revisionists, including some serious work that on occasion has forced “mainstream” historians to make startling concessions,3 there has been little success in convincing people that the familiar Holocaust story is defective.
This lack of success is not difficult to understand. Revisionists are up against a well-organized, decades-long campaign that is promoted in the mass media, reinforced in classrooms, and supported by politicians.4
Tim Cole, a history professor and prominent specialist of Holocaust studies, has written in his book
Selling the Holocaust: “From a relatively slow start, we have now come to the point where Jewish culture in particular, and Western culture more generally, are saturated with the 'Holocaust’. Indeed, the ‘Holocaust’ has saturated Western culture to such an extent that it appears not only centre stage, but also lurks in the background. This can be seen in the remarkable number of contemporary movies which include the 'Holocaust’ as plot or sub-plot.”
Between 1989 and 2003 alone, more than 170 films with Holocaust themes were made. In many American and European schools, a focus on the wartime suffering of Europe's Jews is obligatory. Every major American city has at least one Holocaust museum or memorial. The largest is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which is run by a taxpayer-funded federal government agency, and draws some two million visitors yearly.
A number of countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy, officially observe an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. The United Nations General Assembly in 2005 approved a resolution introduced by Israel to designate January 27 as an international Holocaust remembrance day.
In the United States and western Europe, the Holocaust has become is a venerated, semi-religious mythos. Prof. Michael Goldberg, an eminent rabbi, has written of what he calls a “Holocaust cult with its own tenets of faith, rites and shrines.” In this age of secular “political correctness,” Holocaust “denial” is the modern equivalent of sacrilege.
A major reason for the lack of success in persuading people that conventional Holocaust accounts are fraudulent or exaggerated is that -- as revisionists acknowledge – Jews in Europe were, in fact, singled out during the war years for especially severe treatment.
This was confirmed, for example, by German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in these confidential entries in his wartime diary:5
Feb. 14, 1942: “The Führer [Hitler] once again expresses his resolve ruthlessly to clear the Jews out of Europe. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. Their destruction will go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness.”
March 27, 1942: “The Jews are now being deported to the East from the
Generalgouvernement [Poland], starting around Lublin. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely, and there’s not much left of the Jews. By and large, one can say that 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is carrying out the operation, is proceeding quite judiciously, using a method that is not all too conspicuous. The Jews are facing a judgment which, while barbaric, they fully deserve. The prophecy the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in the most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters.”
April 29, 1942: “Short shrift is being made of the Jews in all eastern occupied territories. Tens of thousands of them are being wiped out.”
No informed person disputes that Europe’s Jews did, in fact, suffer a great catastrophe during the Second World War. Millions were forced from their homes and deported to brutal internment in crowded ghettos and camps. Jewish communities across Central and Eastern Europe, large and small, were wiped out. Millions lost their lives. When the war ended in 1945, most of the Jews of Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and others countries were gone.
Given all this, it should not be surprising that even well-founded revisionist arguments are often dismissed as heartless quibbling.
But despite a discouraging record of achievement, some revisionists insist that their work is vitally important because success in exposing the Holocaust as a hoax will deliver a shattering blow to Israel and Jewish-Zionist power. This view, however, is based on a mistaken understanding of the relationship between “Holocaust remembrance” and Jewish-Zionist power.
Even before World War II, the organized Jewish community was playing a major role in the political and cultural life of Europe and the United States, and the Zionist movement was already very influential. Although propaganda about the wartime catastrophe of Europe’s Jews was a factor in American society during the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the late 1970s that “the Holocaust” began to play a really significant social-political role. It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that the term began to appear as a specific entry in standard encyclopedias and reference books, and became an obligatory subject in American textbooks and classrooms.
In short, the Holocaust assumed an important role in the social-cultural life of America and western Europe in keeping with, and as an expression of, a phenomenal increase in Jewish influence and power. The Holocaust “remembrance” campaign is not so much a source of Jewish-Zionist power as it is an expression of it. For that reason, debunking the Holocaust will not shatter that power.
Suppose
The New York Times were to report tomorrow that Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum had announced that no more than one million Jews died during World War II, and that no Jews were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. The impact on Jewish-Zionist power would surely be minimal.
Although “Holocaust remembrance” remains well entrenched in our society, its impact seems to have diminished in recent years. In part this is because the men and women of the World War II generation are nearly all gone. But another factor has been a major shift in the world-political situation. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet empire, the end of US-Soviet “Cold War” rivalry, the Nine-Eleven terror attack in 2001, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and current world economic crisis, have ushered in a new era – one in which the Holocaust imagery of the 1940s is less potent because it’s less relevant.
Criticism of Israel and its policies has become much more common in recent years, even in the United States. Among thoughtful men and women, and especially in the youth, sympathy for Israel has fallen perceptibly, while skepticism about the role of the Holocaust in society has grown. Tony Judt, a prominent Jewish scholar who lives and works in New York, wrote recently:6
“Students today do not need to be reminded of the genocide of the Jews, the historical consequences of anti-Semitism, or the problem of evil. They know all about these – in ways our parents never did. And that is as it should be. But I have been struck lately by the frequency with which new questions are surfacing: `Why do we focus so much on the Holocaust?’ `Why is it illegal [in certain countries] to deny the Holocaust but not other genocides?’ `Is the threat of anti-Semitism not exaggerated?’ And, increasingly, `Doesn’t Israel use the Holocaust as an excuse?’ I do not recall hearing those questions in the past.”
This shift has also been noticed at the Institute for Historical Review. Over the past ten years, sales of IHR books, discs, flyers and other items about Holocaust history have steadily declined, along with inquiries about Holocaust history and requests for interviews on this subject. At the same time, and obviously reflecting broader social-cultural trends, there has been a marked rise in sales of IHR books, discs, flyers and other items about Jewish-Zionist power, the role of Jews in society, and so forth. This has been matched by an increase in the number of inquiries and requests for interviews on those issues.
Jewish-Zionist power is a palpable reality with harmful consequences for America, the Middle East, and the entire global community. In my view, and as I have repeatedly emphasized, the task of exposing and countering this power is a crucially important one.7 In that effort, Holocaust revisionism cannot play a central role.
One influential statesman who seems to understand this is the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammed. In a much-discussed address delivered at an international conference in October 2003, he spoke forthrightly against Jewish-Zionist power, while making clear that he accepts the familiar “Six Million” Holocaust narrative. In the global struggle against this power, he said, “we are up against a people who think ... We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also … The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”8
Setting straight the historical record about the wartime fate of Europe’s Jews is a worthy endeavor. But there should be no illusions about its social-political relevance. In the real world struggle against Jewish-Zionist power, Holocaust revisionism has proved to be as much a hindrance as a help.
Notes
1. “Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France.” The Journal of Historical Review, March-April 1996
( www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n2p-2_Faurisson.html )
2. M. Weber, “Toben's Arrest: A New Assault Against Free Speech.” Oct. 2008
( www.ihr.org/other/oct08toben.html )
3. Robert Faurisson, “The Victories of Revisionism.” Dec. 2006
( www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Faurisson/at_Teheran_conf_2005.html, and, www.codoh.com/viewpoints/vprfvict.html ); R. Faurisson, “Impact and Future of Holocaust Revisionism.” The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-Feb. 2000. ( www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n1p-2_Faurisson.html )
4. M. Weber, “Holocaust Remembrance: What’s Behind the Campaign.” Feb. 2006.
( www.ihr.org/leaflets/holocaust_remembrance.shtml )
5. These Goebbels diaries quotes are from: Louis P. Lochner, ed., The Goebbels Diaries (Doubleday, 1948), pp. 86, 147-148, 195; Wilhelm Staeglich, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence (IHR, 1990), pp. 88-89; David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (London: Focal Point, 1996), pp. 387, 388, 392.
6. Tony Judt, “The `Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe,” The New York Review of Books, Feb. 14, 2008, pp. 33-35.
( www.nybooks.com/articles/21031 )
7. M. Weber, “In the Struggle for Truth and Justice.” August 2008.
( www.ihr.org/other/aug08weber.html ); M. Weber, “The Israel Lobby: How Important Is It.” Nov 2007.
( www.ihr.org/other/0711_webereugene.html ) See also: M. Weber, “A Straight Look at the Jewish Lobby.” Dec. 2007 ( www.ihr.org/leaflets/jewishlobby.shtml )
8. J. Aglionby, “Fight Jews, Mahathir tells summit,” The Guardian (Britain) , Oct. 17, 2003.
( www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/17/malaysia ) Quoted in: M. Weber, “In the Struggle for Peace and Justice: Countering Jewish-Zionist Power.” August 2008.
Original source: www.ihr.org/weber_revisionism_jan09.html
Last updated 12/01/2009
Homepage