Answers to the 66 Questions of Holocaust Deniers
The following material comes from Nizkor, an extraordinary site devoted to combatting Holocaust deniers. The original version is filled with hyperlinks to other material on Nizkor, which we either had to recode or remove to avoid bad links from the JVL. We chose to remove them, so we urge those interested in more careful study of this topic to use the link to Nizkor to take advantage of their detailed information on specific individuals and arguments. The original also had extensive links to the deniers' web sites. We chose not to include them here for two reasons: first, not all the links worked and second, we prefer not to encourage visits to those sites. Nizkor's philosophy is to make both sides available to all and let the reader draw their own conclusions. We do not believe there are two sides to the question of whether the Holocaust occurred. Anyone wishing to see the deniers' sites can use the links provided by Nizkor . Finally, before printing this document, be forewarned that it is very long.
The Institute for Historical Review, or IHR, publishes many small pamphlets designed to misinform people about the Holocaust. One of the most-persistent has been a pamphlet called "66 Questions And Answers About the Holocaust," or simply "66 Q&A."
This pamphlet neatly summarizes many of the most common arguments used by Holocaust-deniers. Refuting these 66 claims strikes directly at the core of Holocaust-denial.
What follows is a point-by-point refutation of its half-truths and untruths. The full text of the original pamphlet is included, with the IHR's questions and answers reproduced unaltered.
Ernst Zündel's publishing house, Samisdat, has distributed an earlier version as recently as November 1995, which we will occasionally refer to as the "Samisdat" version for lack of a better name. We are currently only in possession of the first page of this, and it skips quite a few questions, so we don't know how much we're missing. We are also not sure exactly when it was written, but its answer to question 22 refers to a united Germany, which places it in the 1990s. Updates will come as we learn more, of course.
In any case, the various revisions that have been made have rarely made the pamphlet any more truthful. This is not surprising, because the aim of the pamphlet is not to educate but to mislead. Where the revisions are noteworthy, we will comment upon them.
If our treatment seems tedious, consider yourself lucky: years ago, the IHR used to publish one hundred and twenty Q&A about the Holocaust. We have been unable to obtain a copy of that older pamphlet, so for now we resign ourselves to critiquing the abridged version. Remember as you're reading this that there were 54 other Q&As that were not good enough to make their final cut!
Finally, for another good antidote to the "66 Q&A," we suggest two documents put out by the Simon Wiesenthal Center: their "Responses to Revisionist Arguments," and their "36 Q&A" (which are unrelated except for the similarity in format).
The IHR's Questions & Answers
General
1. What proof exists that the Nazis practiced genocide or deliberately killed six million Jews?
Note that this reply is unusually long, serving as a quick primer on Holocaust "revisionism" itself. Remaining replies are much more to-the-point.
2 . What evidence exists that six million Jews were not killed by the Nazis?
3. Did Simon Wiesenthal once state in writing that "there were no extermination camps on German soil "?
6. If Auschwitz wasn't a "death camp," what was its true purpose?
Trivializing the Holocaust; Blaming the Jews
7. Who set up the first concentration camps, and where and when?
9. Why did the Germans intern Jews in concentration camps?
10. What extensive measure did world Jewry undertake against Germany as early as 1933?
11. Did the Jews of the world "declare war on Germany"?
12. Was this before or after the rumors of the "death camps" began?
13 . What nation is credited with being the first to practice mass civilian bombing?
The Fate of the Jews
14. How many gas chambers to kill people were there at Auschwitz?
15. How many Jews were in areas that came to be controlled by the Germans before the war?
16. If the Jews of Europe were not exterminated by the Nazis, what happened to them?
17. How many Jews fled to deep within the Soviet Union?
18. How many Jews emigrated prior to the war, thus being outside of German reach?
Conspiracies
21. How does the "Holocaust" story benefit the Jews today?
22. How does it benefit the state of Israel?
23. How does it benefit many Christian clergymen?
24. How does it benefit the Communists?
25. How does it benefit Britain?
26. Is there any evidence that Hitler knew of a mass extermination of Jews?
Zyklon-B
27 . What kind of gas was used by the Nazis in concentration camps?
28. For what purpose was, and is, this gas manufactured?
29. Why did they use this instead of a gas more suitable for mass extermination?
30. How long does it take to ventilate fully an area fumigated by Zyklon-B?
General
33. What was the exact procedure the Nazis allegedly used to exterminate Jews?
34. How could such a mass program have been kept secret from Jews who were scheduled for extermination?
36. About how many Jews died in the concentration camps?
38. What is typhus?
39. What is the difference if six million or 300,000 Jews died during this awesome period?
Cremation
41. Can bodies be burned in pits?
43. Why did the concentration camps have crematory ovens?
45. Can a crematory oven be operated 100% of the time?
46. How much ash is left from a cremated corpse?
47. If six million people had been incinerated by the Nazis, what happened to the ashes?
Trivializing Anti-Jewish Laws
49. What was the main provision of the German "Nuremberg laws" of 1935?
50. Were there any American precedents for the Nuremberg Laws?
51. What did the International Red Cross have to report with regard to the "Holocaust" question?
General
53. What evidence is there that Hitler knew of the ongoing Jewish extermination?
54. Did the Nazis and the Zionists collaborate?
55. What caused Anne Frank's death just several weeks before the end of the war?
56. Is the Anne Frank Diary genuine?
58. Who originated the term "genocide"?
59. Were films such as Holocaust and The Winds of War documentary films?
About "Revisionism"
62. What about the claim that those who question the "Holocaust" are anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi?
63. What has happened to the historians who have questioned the "Holocaust" material?
65. Why is there so little publicity for your point of view?
Responses 1 . What proof exists that the Nazis practiced genocide or deliberately killed six million Jews? This is as good a place as any to present some detailed evidence which is consistently ignored, as a sort of primer on Holocaust denial. It will make this reply much longer than the other sixty-five, but perhaps the reader will understand the necessity for this. Let's look at their claims one at a time: Supposedly the only evidence, "the postwar testimony of individual survivors." First of all, consider the implicit conspiracy theory. Notice how the testimony of every single inmate of every Nazi camp is automatically dismissed as unconvincing. This total dismissal of inmates' testimony, along with the equally-total dismissal of the Nazis' own testimony (!), is the largest unspoken assumption of Holocaust-denial. This assumption, which is not often spelled out, is that the attempted Jewish genocide never took place, but rather that a secret conspiracy of Jews, starting around 1941, planted and forged myriad documents to prove that it did; then, after the war, they rounded up all the camp survivors and told them what to say.
February 14, 1942: The Führer once again expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. 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 procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 per cent can be used for forced labor. |
As even the revisionist David Cole has admitted, revisionists have yet to provide a satisfactory explanation of this document.
Regarding postwar testimony from Nazis, were they all tortured into confessing to heinous crimes which they supposedly did not commit? This might be believable if only a few Nazis were captured after the war, or maybe if some had courageously stood up in court and shouted to the world about the supposed attempt to silence them. But hundreds testified regarding the Holocaust, in trials dating from late 1945 until the 1960s.
Many of these Nazis testified as witnesses and were not accused of crimes. What was the basis for their supposed coercion?
Many of these trials were in German courts. Did the Germans torture their own countrymen? Well, Holocaust-deniers sometimes claim that the Jews have secretly infiltrated the German government and control everything about it. They prefer not to talk too much about this theory, however, because it is clearly on the lunatic fringe.
The main point is that not one of these supposed torture victims -- in fifty years, not one -- has come forth to support the claim that testimony was coerced.
On the contrary, confirmation and reconfirmation of their testimony has continued across the years. What coercion could have convinced Judge Konrad Morgen to testify to the crimes he witnessed at the International Nuremberg Trial in 1946, where he was not accused of any crime? And to later testify at the Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt, Germany, in 1963-65? What coercion was applied to SS Doctor Johann Kremer to make him testify in his own defense in 1947, and then, after having been convicted in both Poland and Germany, emerge after his release to testify again as a witness at the Frankfurt trial? What coercion was applied to Böck, Gerhard Hess, Hölblinger, Storch, and Wiebeck, all former SS men, all witnesses at Frankfurt, none accused of any crime there?
Holocaust-deniers point to small discrepancies in testimonies to try to discredit them. The assumption, unstated, is that the reader will accept minor discrepancies as evidence of a vast, over-reaching Jewish conspiracy. This is clearly ludicrous.
In fact, the discrepancies and minor errors in detail argue against, not for, the conspiracy theory. Why would the conspirators have given different information to different Nazis? In fact, if all the testimonies, from the Nazis' to the inmates', sounded too similar, it is certain that the Holocaust-deniers would cite that as evidence of a conspiracy.
What supposed coercion could reach across four decades, to force former SS-Untersturmführer Dr. Hans Münch to give an interview, against the will of his family, on Swedish television? In the 1981 interview, he talked about Auschwitz:
Interviewer: Isn't the ideology of extermination contrary to a doctor's ethical values? Münch: Yes, absolutely. There is no discussion. But I lived in that environment, and I tried in every possible way to avoid accepting it, but I had to live with it. What else could I have done? And I wasn't confronted with it directly until the order came that I and my superior and another one had to take part in the exterminations since the camp's doctors were overloaded and couldn't cope with it. Interviewer: I must ask something. Doubters claim that "special treatment" could mean anything. It didn't have to be extermination. Münch: "Special treatment" in the terminology of the concentration camp means physical extermination. If it was a question of more than a few people, where nothing else than gassing them was worthwhile, they were gassed. Interviewer: "Special treatment" was gassing? Münch: Yes, absolutely. And what supposed coercion could reach across four decades, to force former SS-Unterscharführer Franz Suchomel into giving an interview for the film Shoah? Speaking under (false) promises of anonymity, he told of the crimes committed at the Treblinka death camp (from the book Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 1985, p. 54): Interviewer: You are a very important eyewitness, and you can explain what Treblinka was. Suchomel: But don't use my name. Interviewer: No, I promised. All right, you've arrived at Treblinka. Suchomel: So Stadie, the sarge, showed us the camps from end to end. Just as we went by, they were opening the gas-chamber doors, and people fell out like potatoes. Naturally, that horrified and appalled us. We went back and sat down on our suitcases and cried like old women. Each day one hundred Jews were chosen to drag the corpses to the mass graves. In the evening the Ukrainians drove those Jews into the gas chambers or shot them. Every day! Ask the deniers why they shrug off the testimony of Franz Suchomel. Greg Raven will tell you that "it is not evidence...bring me some evidence, please." Others will tell you that Suchomel and Münch were crazy, or hallucinating, or fantasizing. But the fantasy is obviously in the minds of those who choose to ignore the mass of evidence and believe instead in a hypothetical conspiracy, supported by nothing but their imaginations. That total lack of evidence is why the "conspiracy assumption" almost always remains an unspoken assumption. To our knowledge, there has not been one single solitary "revisionist" paper, article, speech, pamphlet, book, audiotape, videotape, or newsletter which provides any details about this supposed Jewish/Zionist conspiracy which did all the dirty work. Not one. At best, the denial literature makes veiled references to the World Jewish Congress perpetuating a "hoax" (in Butz 1976) -- no details are provided. Yet the entire case of Holocaust-denial rests on this supposed conspiracy. As for the testimony of the survivors, which the "revisionists" claim is the only evidence, there are indeed numerous testimonies to gassings and other forms of atrocities, from Jewish inmates who survived the camps, and also from other inmates like POWs. Many of the prisoners that testified about the gassing are not Jewish, of course. Look for instance at the testimony of Polish officer Zenon Rozansky about the first homicidal gassing in Auschwitz, in which 850 Russian POWs were gassed to death, in Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 154: Those who were propped against the door leant with a curious stiffness and then fell right at our feet, striking their faces hard against the concrete floor. Corpses! Corpses standing bolt upright and filling the entire corridor of the bunker, till they were packed so tight that it was impossible for more to fall. Which of the "revisionists" will deny this? Which of them was there? Which of them has the authority to tell Rozansky what he did or did not see? The statement that "no 'survivor' claims to have actually witnessed any gassing" is clearly false; this was changed to "few survivors" in later versions, which is close to the truth. But we do not need to rely solely on testimony, from the survivors, Nazis, or otherwise. Many wartime documents, not postwar descriptions, specifically regarding gassings and other atrocities, were seized by the U.S. armed forces. Most are in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; some are in Germany. Regarding the gassing vans, precursors to the gas chambers, we find, for example, a top secret document from SS Untersturmführer Becker to SS Obersturmbannführer Rauff (from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 1946, Vol. I, pp. 999-1001): If it has rained for instance for only one half hour, the van cannot be used because it simply skids away. It can only be used in absolutely dry weather. It is only a question now whether the van can only be used standing at the place of execution. First the van has to be brought to that place, which is possible only in good weather. ... The application of gas usually is not undertaken correctly. In order to come to an end as fast as possible, the driver presses the accelerator to the fullest extent. By doing that the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation and not death by dozing off as was planned. My directions now have proved that by correct adjustment of the levers death comes faster and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully. And Just wrote of the gas vans to Rauff, on June 5, 1942, in a letter marked both "top secret" and "only copy". This is a horrific masterpiece of Nazi double-talk, referring to killing as "processing" and the victims as "subjects" and "the load." (See Kogon, Nazi Mass Murder, 1993, pp. 228-235.) Since December 1941, for example, 97,000 were processed using three vans, without any faults occurring in the vehicles. ... The normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meter. The capacity of the larger special Saurer vans is not so great. The problem is not one of overloading but of off-road maneuverability on all terrains, which is severely diminished in this van. It would appear that a reduction in the cargo area is necessary. This can be achieved by shortening the compartment by about one meter. The problem cannot be solved by merely reducing the number of subject treated, as has been done so far. For in this case a longer running time is required, as the empty space also needs to be filled with CO [the poison exhaust gas]. ... Greater protection is needed for the lighting system. The grille should cover the lamps high enough up to make it impossible to break the bulbs. It seems that these lamps are hardly ever turned on, so the users have suggested that they could be done away with. Experience shows, however, that when the back door is closed and it gets dark inside, the load pushes hard against the door. The reason for this is that when it becomes dark inside, the load rushes toward what little light remains. This hampers the locking of the door. It has also been noticed that the noise provoked by the locking of the door is linked to the fear aroused by the darkness. Slip-ups occurred in written correspondence regarding the gas chambers themselves, some of which, fortunately, escaped destruction and were found after the war. A memo written to SS man Karl Bischoff on November 27, 1942 describes the gas chamber in Krema II not with the usual mundane name of "Leichenkeller," but rather as the "Sonderkeller" "special cellar." And two months later, on January 29, 1943, Bischoff wrote a memo to Kammler, referring to that same chamber as the "Vergasungskeller." (See Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, pp. 223, 227.) "Vergasungskeller" means exactly what it sounds like: "gassing cellar," an underground gas chamber. Holocaust-deniers turn to Arthur Butz, who provides a specious explanation for the Vergasungskeller: "Vergasung," he says, cannot refer to killing people with gas, but only to the process of converting a solid or liquid into gas. Therefore, he says the "Vergasungskeller," must have been a special room where the fuel for the Auschwitz ovens was converted into gas -- a "gasification cellar." There are three problems with this explanation. First, "Vergasung" certainly can refer to killing people with gas; Butz does not speak German and he should not try to lecture about the language. Second, there is no room that could possibly serve this function which Butz describes -- years after writing his book, he admitted this, and helplessly suggested that there might be another building somewhere in the camp that might house a gasification cellar. Third, the type of oven used at Auschwitz did not require any gasification process! The ovens burned solid fuel. (See Gutman, op. cit., pp. 184-193.) So what does the term "gassing cellar" refer to? Holocaust-deniers have yet to offer any believable explanation. An inventory, again captured after the war, revealed fourteen showerheads and one gas-tight door listed for the gas chamber in Krema III. Holocaust-deniers claim that room was a morgue; they do not offer to explain what use a morgue has for showerheads and a gas-tight door. (See a photograph of the document, or Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation, 1989, pp. 231, 438.) A memo from the Auschwitz construction office, dated March 31, 1943, says Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, 1971, pp. 207-208): We take this occasion to refer to another order of March 6, 1943, for the delivery of a gas door 100/192 for Leichenkeller 1 of Krema III, Bw 30a, which is to be built in the manner and according to the same measure as the cellar door of the opposite Krema II, with peep hole of double 8 millimeter glass encased in rubber. This order is to be viewed as especially urgent.... Why would morgues have urgently needed peepholes made out of a double layer of third-of-an-inch-thick glass? The question of whether it can be proved that the cyanide gas was used in the Auschwitz gas chambers has intruiged the deniers. Their much-heralded Leuchter Report, for example, expends a great deal of effort on the question of whether traces of cyanide residue remain there today. But we do not need to look for chemical traces to confirm cyanide use (Gutman, op. cit., p. 229): Letters and telegrams exchanged on February 11 and 12 [1943] between the Zentralbauleitung and Topf mention a wooden blower for Leichenkeller 1. This reference confirms the use of the morgue as a gas chamber: Bischoff and Prüfer thought that the extraction of air mixed with concentrated prussic acid [cyanide] (20 g per cu m) required a noncorroding ventilator. Bischoff and Prüfer turned out to be wrong, and a metal fan ended up working acceptably well. But the fact that they thought it necessary demonstrates that cyanide was to be routinely used in the rooms which deniers call morgues. (Cyanide is useless for disinfecting morgues, as it does not kill bacteria.) Other captured documents, even if they don't refer directly to some part of the extermination process, refer to it by implication. A captured memo to SS-Brigadeführer Kammler reveals that the expected incineration capacity of the Auschwitz ovens was a combined total of 4,756 corpses per day (see a photograph of the document or Kogon, op. cit., p. 157). Deniers often claim that this total could not be achieved in practice (see question 45). That's not the point. These crematoria were carefully designed, in 1942, to have sufficient capacity to dispose of 140,000 corpses per month -- in a camp that housed only 125,000. We can conclude that massive deaths were predicted, indeed planned-for, as early as mid-1942. A camp designed to incinerate its full capacity of inmates every four weeks is not merely a detention center. Finally, apart from the abundant testimonies, confessions, and physical evidence of the extermination process, there is certainly no want of evidence of the Nazis' intentions and plans. Here are just a few examples. Hans Frank’s diary (from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 1946, Vol. I, pp. 992, 994): But what should be done with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled down in the 'Ostland' [eastern territories], in [resettlement] villages? This is what we were told in Berlin: Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in the 'Ostland' nor in the 'Reichkommissariat.' So liquidate them yourself. Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain the structure of the Reich as a whole. ... We cannot shoot or poison these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures, which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation.... That we sentence 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally. Himmler's speech at Posen on October 4, 1943 was captured on audiotape (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. XXIX, p. 145, trans. by current author): I refer now to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of those things that is easily said: "the Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it." The extermination effort was even mentioned in at least one official Nazi court verdict. In May 1943, a Munich court wrote in its decision against SS-Untersturmführer Max Taubner that: The accused shall not be punished because of the actions against the Jews as such. The Jews have to be exterminated and none of the Jews that were killed is any great loss. Although the accused should have recognized that the extermination of the Jews was the duty of Kommandos which were set up especially for this purpose, he should be excused for considering himself to have the authority to take part in the extermination of Jewry himself. And Hitler spoke quite clearly in public on no fewer than three occasions. On January 30, 1939, seven months before Germany invaded Poland, he spoke publicly to the Reichstag (transcribed from Skeptic magazine, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 50): Today I want to be a prophet once more: if international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevation of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. By the way, this last phrase is, in German, "die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa," which German-speakers will realize is quite unambiguous. In September, 1942: ...if Jewry should plot another world war in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples in Europe, it would not be the Aryan people which would be exterminated but Jewry... On November 8, 1942: You will recall the session of the Reichstag during which I declared: if Jewry should imagine that it could bring about an international world war to exterminate the European races, the result will not be the extermination of the European races, but the extermination of Jewry in Europe. People always laughed about me as a prophet. Of those who laughed then, countless numbers no longer laugh today, and those who still laugh now will perhaps no longer laugh a short time from now. There are many other examples of documents and testimonies that could be presented. Keep in mind that the IHR#&146;s answer to "what proof exists?" is "none." It has certainly been demonstrated already that this pat answer is totally dishonest. And this is the main point we wish to communicate: that Holocaust-denial is dishonest. We continue by analyzing the remaining, more-specific, claims about what evidence supposedly does not exist. "No mounds of ashes" is an internal contradiction. In an article in the journal published by the same IHR that publishes these Q&A, the Journal's editor reported that a Polish commission in 1946 found human ash at the Treblinka death camp to a depth of over twenty feet. This article is available on Greg Raven's web site. (Apparently some survivors claimed that the corpses were always thoroughly cremated. Because uncremated human remains were mixed with the ash, the editor suggested that the testimonies were false. Amazingly, he had no comment on how a twenty-foot layer of human ashes came to be there in the first place. Perhaps he felt that to be unworthy of mention.) There are also piles of ashes at Maidanek. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, ashes from cremated corpses were dumped into the rivers and swamps surrounding the camp, and used as fertilizer for nearby farmers' fields. "No crematoria" capable of disposing of millions of corpses? Absolutely false, the crematoria were more than capable of the job, according to both the Nazis' own internal memos and the testimony of survivors. Holocaust-deniers deliberately confuse civilian, funeral-home crematoria with the huge industrial ovens of the death camps. This is discussed in much detail in the replies to questions 42 and 45. "No piles of clothes"? Apparently, the IHR considers piles of clothes to be "hard evidence"! This is strange, because they do not deny the other sorts of piles found at Nazi camps: piles of eyeglasses, piles of shoes (at Auschwitz, Belzec, and Maidanek), piles of gold teeth, piles of burned corpses, piles of unburned corpses, piles of artificial limbs (see Swiebocka, Auschwitz: A History in Photographs, 1993, p. 210), piles of human hair (ibid, p. 211), piles of ransacked luggage (ibid, p. 213), piles of shaving-brushes (ibid, p. 215), piles of combs (ibid), piles of pots and pans (ibid), and yes, even the piles of clothes (ibid, p. 214) that the IHR claims do not exist. Perhaps the authors of the 66 Q&A realized that it was dangerous for them to admit that these piles were hard evidence, because then they would also be forced to admit a number of other things as "hard evidence." Perhaps this is why they removed this phrase from the revised 66 Q&A. If items were not generally found in mass quantities, it is only because the Nazis distributed them to the German population. A memo on this was captured, revealing that they even redistributed women's underwear. "No human soap"? This is true, but misleading. Though there is some evidence that soap was made from corpses on a very limited experimental scale, the rumored "mass production" was never done, and no soap made from human corpses is known to exist. However, there is sworn testimony, never refuted, from British POWs and a German army official, stating that soap experiments were performed, and the recipe for the soap was captured by the Allies. To state flatly that the Nazis did not make soap from human beings is incorrect. "No lamp shades made of human skin?" False -- lampshades and other human-skin "ornaments" were introduced as evidence in both trials of Ilse Koch, and were shown to a U.S. Senate investigation committee in the late 40s. We know they were made of human skin because they bore tattoos, and because a microscopic forensic analysis of the items was performed. (A detailed page on this is being prepared.) "No records"? This is nonsense (which may explain why this claim was removed from the "revised" versions of the 66 Q&A). True, extermination by gassing was always referred to with code-words, and those victims who arrived at death camps only to be immediately gassed were not recorded in any books. But there are slip-ups in the code-word usage that reveal the true meanings, as already described. There are inventories and requisitions for the Krema which reveal items anomalous with ordinary use but perfect for mass homicidal gassing. There are deportation train records which, pieced together, speak clearly. And so on. Several examples have been given above. "No credible demographic statistics"? This is the second internal contradiction -- see question 2 and question 15. The Anglo-American committee who studied the issue estimated the number of Jewish victims at 5.7 million. This was based on population statistics. Here is the exact breakdown, country by country: USSR - 1,050,000 Less dispersed refugees (308,000) Total number of Jews killed 5,721,500 (This estimate was arrived at using population statistics, and not by adding the number of casualties at each camp. These are also available -- for instance, a separate file with the ruling of a German court regarding the number of victims in Treblinka is available. The SS kept rather accurate records, and many of the documents survived, reinforced by eyewitness accounts). Some estimates are lower, some are higher, but this is the magnitude in question. In an article in CMU's student newspaper, the head of CMU's History Department, Peter Stearns, is quoted as saying that newly discovered documents -- especially in the former USSR -- indicate that the number of victims is higher than six million. Other historians claim not much over five million. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust uses 5,596,000 as a minimum and 5,860,000 as a maximum (Gutman, 1990, p. 1799). In summary: "Revisionists" often claim, correctly, that the burden of proof is on historians. The proof, of course, has been a matter of public record since late 1945, and is available in libraries around the world. The burden has been met, many, many times over. You've just seen a brief presentation of some of the highlights of that immense body of proof; much more is readily available. 2 . What evidence exists that six million Jews were not killed by the Nazis? We also note in passing that they ask me to prove a negative, which is impossible. It is possible to prove a negative, of course, but since none of the "evidence" is given here, it is impossible to respond definitively to this absurd claim. "Forensic evidence " is probably a reference to the fraudulent "Leuchter Report," of which a detailed analysis has been written. What is this about "demographic evidence"? Didn't they just say in question 1 that "no credible demographic statistics exist"? Another internal contradiction. 3 . Did Simon Wiesenthal once state in writing that "there were no extermination camps on German soil"? Because there were no extermination camps on German soil the Neo-Nazis are using this as proof that these crimes did not happen [...] The Nazis had at least two good reasons for building the death camps outside of Germany. First, they were easier to conceal from the German people. Given the chaotic wartime conditions in the territory surrounding the Altreich, they were easier to conceal in general. 4 . If Dachau was in Germany and even Simon Wiesenthal says that it was not an extermination camp, why do thousands of veterans in America say that it was an extermination camp? What is not in question is that the gas chamber did exist. The Allies captured the memo sent from Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Dachau to Himmler, which read (see Kogon et al., Nazi Mass Murder, 1993, p. 202): As you know, the same facilities [gas chambers] have been built at the Dachau concentration camp as at Linz Hartheim]. Whereas the "invalid transports" end up in certain chambers anyway, I ask whether we cannot test some of our various combat gases on specific persons who are involved in the action. Up till now there have only been animal tests or accounts of accidental deaths in the manufacture of these gases. Because of this paragraph, I have sent this letter marked "Secret." An American reporter made a movie showing the gas chamber very soon after the camp's capture, showing how it was labelled "Brausebad" ("showers") despite having no shower facilities. The question of whether the gas chamber can be proved to have been used has not been definitively answered. Some historians say that there is no question: it was never used. Some say that the question is still open. It comes down to two testimonies: that of a British officer named Payne-Best who says he heard Dr. Rascher speak of gassings, and that of Dr. Franz Blaha, who testified under oath to experimental gassings. For more information, see Kogon et al., op. cit., pp. 202-204, and Blaha's testimony in Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1947, vol. V, pp. 167-199. Holocaust-deniers, of course, only present the point of view which says that it was never used. They often quote from a 1960 letter written by the director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History), in Munich (see Die Zeit, August 19, 1960, p. 16): No Gassing in Dachau Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The letter of course confirms that mass gassing did take place in the larger camps. Holocaust-deniers don't like to mention that part. They also don't like to mention that, since 1960, the Institut has performed more research and has come to a new conclusion. They now say: ...a gas chamber was established [in Dachau] in which...a few experimental gassings were undertaken, as more recent research has confirmed. 5 . Auschwitz was in Poland, not Germany. Is there any proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz? The Honorable Thomas T. Johnson, on October 9, 1981, took judicial notice as follows: Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944 and It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact. The IHR complains that they were not given a chance to dispute this fact, but then the American court system is not meant to be a place for people to try to prove crackpot theories. No "credible evidence" was produced because there was no call for it -- a courtroom is not the place to rehash the work of historians over the last half-century. Besides, "credible evidence" means only what Holocaust-deniers want it to mean. Michael Shermer, in an open letter, has offered to take the IHR up on a similar offer, but only if they precisely define ahead of time what they will accept as evidence. He has received no reply. (In fact, to date, his letter has not even been printed.) After this trial, both Mermelstein and the IHR sued each other for libel, but both decided not to go to court. The Holocaust deniers claim this is a "stunning victory" which "nullifies the result of the first trial." Nonsense: the two were unrelated, and the second trial would have had nothing to do with the gas chambers of Auschwitz. As with most legal proceedings, the details get quite complicated. Great detail, including copies of several official documents, is available in the FTP archives. 6 . If Auschwitz wasn't a "death camp," what was its true purpose? Many prisoners were indeed used for forced labor in Auschwitz. But the "unfit" -- meaning the elderly, the children, and most of the women -- were immediately sent to the gas chambers. In its revised answer, the IHR states that "synthetic fuel" was produced there, not Buna. This is more accurate. By war's end, not a single ounce of rubber had been produced at the Buna camp. 7 . Who set up the first concentration camps, and where and when? 8 . How did German concentration camps differ from American relocation camps which interned Japanese-, German- and Italian-Americans during WWII? For example, a 1942 report from Himmler to Hitler lists three categories under "Bandenverdaechtige" -- suspected members of the opposition. Under "captured," there were 19,000. Under "executed," there were 14,000. And under "executed Jews," a third of a million. A photograph and a transcription of this document is available. By the way, that's a third of a million Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen in just four months in late 1942. 9 . Why did the Germans intern Jews in concentration camps? The fact is that the Nazis used such propaganda to justify the slaughter of every Jew they found behind the advancing Eastern front, and in every other country they overran: millions of them, men, women, and children. 10 . What extensive measure did world Jewry undertake against Germany as early as 1933? Nizkor replies: This boycott happens to be the exact same thing referred to in the next question, except there it's referred to as "declaring war on Germany." Why did the IHR describe this single action twice with different words? Something fishy is going on here. The boycott of German goods was undertaken in response to various Nazi atrocities, including a planned Nazi boycott of Jewish goods and services. But the IHR just conveniently "forgot" to mention this. Note the blatant antisemitism in the Samisdat Ernst Zündel) version. Never mind the gas chambers and the extermination effort, never mind that six million died. Just ask yourself if the Nazis had "every right" to send Jewish infants to camps with little food, no sanitation, and rampant typhus epidemics, where they died like flies? Were those Jewish babies "prisoners of war"? Even "revisionists" must admit that this slaughter occurred. The Holocaust-denier David Irving describes a 1944 Himmler speech (Skeptic magazine, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 50): "If people ask me," said Himmler, "why did you have to kill the children too, then I can only say I am not such a coward that I leave for my children something I can do myself." ... I agree, Himmler said that. He actually said "We're wiping out the Jews. We're murdering them. We're killing them." ... He is talking about solving the Jewish problem, about having to kill off women and children too. Did a newspaper story in 1933 give the Nazis "every right" to do this? 11 . Did the Jews of the world "declare war on Germany"? A transcript of the article is available. The next paragraphs after the headline were: A strange and unfortunate sequel has emerged from the stories of German Jew-baiting. The whole of Israel throughout the world is uniting to declare an economic and financial war on Germany. Hirtherto the cry has gone up: "Germany is persecuting the Jews." If the present plans are carried out, the Hitlerite cry will be: "The Jews are persecuting Germany." The fact that this "Hitlerite cry" has been echoed four decades later by Holocaust-deniers should surprise no one. (See question 62 for information about various deniers' views on Hitler.) In sum, this question and answer is a cheap trick to make it seem as if "the Jews of the world" started the "war" against Germany, instead of the other way around. The word "war" means many things. In this case it meant planning to apply economic pressure. But the IHR and Zündel want you to think it was a real declaration of war. How many divisions of troops did "Judea" have? How many tanks? How many planes? How many artillery shells? The fact is that Germany started the real war, World War II, and started it by overrunning Poland with planes, bombs, tanks, and millions of infantrymen. To compare this to a planned economic boycott is ludicrous, but typical of "revisionist" trickery. 12 . Was this before or after the rumors of the "death camps" began? Here's an internal contradiction: in the answer to question 10, the Samisdat version claims that the "death camp phony stories" were "circulating" in 1933. And here's another internal contradiction: in the answer to question 54, the IHR states that "the Germans maintained cordial relations with the Zionist leadership." War is not a cordial relation. Here are some statements and actions of Nazi leaders, years before the shooting war broke out in 1939: 1919: Hitler writes in a letter: ... Everything that makes the people strive for greater things, be it religion, socialism, or democracy, merely serves the Jew as a means to the satisfaction of his greed and thirst for power.... Rational antisemitism, by contrast [to emotional antisemitism] must lead to a systematic and legal struggle against, and eradication of, what privileges the Jews enjoy over other foreigners living among us. Its final objective, however, must be the total removal of all Jews from our midst. 1924: Hitler writes Mein Kampf while in prison, regretting that Germany did not gas influential Jews during World War I. 1932: Hermann Goering speaking on behalf of the Nazi Party (not yet in power) tells an Italian reporter in an interview that the Nazis need to defend themselves against the Jews by forbidding intermarriage, expelling Jews in Germany of Eastern European descent, dismissing native German Jews from all jobs, honorary position or capacity that the Nazis deem they might exert their "destructive, antinational or international influence." In the same white paper that the Nazis reprinted this interview they said that they would set the synagogues aflame, close the murderous band of Jews up in Ghettos and prisons, and hang them from trees (July 13, 1932, Stellung der NSDAP [NSDAP = Nazi Party.]) 1932, summer: Nazi faction in the Prussian (Weimar) Parliament demands dismissal of actors and artists not of German descent, a ban on the Jewish ritual method of slaughtering animals for food, and the expropriation of property belonging to East European Jews residing in Germany. 1932, July 31: Goebbels writes an article in the newspaper Der Angriff calling for a pogrom against the Jews. 1933, January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany. 1933, March: Nazi opponents arrested and imprisoned in the first concentration camps. 1933, March 13: Hitler establishes the Ministry of Information and Propaganda under Goebbels. 1933, March 23: Hitler signs into law "The Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich", giving Hitler the authority to abolish all regional parliaments within Germany. 1933, March 31: Hans Kerrl, Commissar of the Prussian Ministry of Justice and Hans Frank, Commissar of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, announce that all Jewish judges and prosecutors were to take an immediate leave and that Jewish lawyers and notaries would no longer be permitted to work [in their provinces; same dictum spreads to other provinces shortly thereafter]. The "66 Q&A," and most denier propaganda, always seek to make issues cut-and-dried. They present one curious fact out of context and hope to convince the reader that he needs to know no more. But after some of the context is restored, the curious fact often reveals itself to be no more curious than anything else happening at the time. These are just the public, known anti-Jewish actions and writings before the Jewish boycott in 1933. The actions and writings became more pronounced and violent as time went on. Hitler became more and more explicit, until he stated publicly on January 30, 1939: Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! 13 . What nation is credited with being the first to practice mass civilian bombing? But what does this have to do with the Holocaust? It is true that the Allies had massively bombarded civilian population -- as had the Germans. Does the fact that atrocities were committed against the Germans mean they did not commit any themselves? Some weird logic. 14 . How many gas chambers to kill people were there at Auschwitz? The IHR says: None. Nizkor replies: Wrong, as usual; no evidence, as usual. There were five "Kremas," each containing, among other things, an extermination gas chamber and furnaces to cremate the victims. The first was converted from its original use. The remaining four were designed as gas chambers from the start. (For completeness' sake: a talented and well-respected amateur researcher by the name of Pressac believes that the two largest Krema were originally designed to be morgues and were switched over to gas chambers very early in their construction. He is in a minority of one in this belief.) Two other extermination installations were called "Bunker I" or the "little red house" and "Bunker II" or "the little white house." And again for completeness' sake: the first gassing was performed in the basement of Block 11, and there was also a sixth Krema which never got beyond the very early planning stages. 15 . How many Jews were in areas that came to be controlled by the Germans before the war? About three million in Poland, a million in Hungary, more than a million in the area of Russia occupied by the Nazis, and many, many more all over Europe. According to the Nazis' own figures given in the Wannsee Protocol , there were eleven million Jews in occupied Europe in 1942. See the reply to question 1 . 16 . If the Jews of Europe were not exterminated by the Nazis, what happened to them? 17 . How many Jews fled to deep within the Soviet Union? 18 . How many Jews emigrated prior to the war, thus being outside of German reach? 19 . If Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, why did the commandant, Rudolf Hoss, confess that it was? What exactly did this torturer admit? The IHR's first claim was that the interrogaters were Jewish operatives wearing (phony) British uniforms. If one of these interrogators supposedly admitted this, why did the IHR change things around and make these phony Jewish operatives into real British military police? We must consider all information in context. There are numerous other testimonies which confirm the essential facts of Höss' confession. There are captured documents which speak very clearly of gassing and mass shooting. The list goes on and on; for just a few examples, see the answer to question 1.
· A lurid book by one Rupert Butler called Legions of Death. Butler tells of seeing Hoess beaten when he was first found. He makes no mention of the interrogators being Jewish agents in British uniform, of course. And most importantly, Butler's version of what happened contradicts the deniers' hypothesis that Hoess was fed a story. Butler's book nowhere mentions Hoess being given a particular story to tell, it simply says Hoess was beaten. · A piece of hearsay that is supposedly contained in a secret document which the "revisionist" Robert Faurisson is not at liberty to reveal. (And even if it were revealed, it would be the first time the deniers ever accepted hearsay as being valid...) |
We must consider all information in context. There are numerous other testimonies which confirm the essential facts of Höss' confession. There are captured documents which speak very clearly of gassing and mass shooting. The list goes on and on; for just a few examples, see the answer to question 1.
· A lurid book by one Rupert Butler called Legions of Death. Butler tells of seeing Hoess beaten when he was first found. He makes no mention of the interrogators being Jewish agents in British uniform, of course. And most importantly, Butler's version of what happened contradicts the deniers' hypothesis that Hoess was fed a story. Butler's book nowhere mentions Hoess being given a particular story to tell, it simply says Hoess was beaten. · A piece of hearsay that is supposedly contained in a secret document which the "revisionist" Robert Faurisson is not at liberty to reveal. (And even if it were revealed, it would be the first time the deniers ever accepted hearsay as being valid...) |
What exactly did this torturer admit? The IHR's first claim was that the interrogaters were Jewish operatives wearing (phony) British uniforms. If one of these interrogators supposedly admitted this, why did the IHR change things around and make these phony Jewish operatives into real British military police? We must consider all information in context. There are numerous other testimonies which confirm the essential facts of Höss' confession. There are captured documents which speak very clearly of gassing and mass shooting. The list goes on and on; for just a few examples, see the answer to question 1.
· A lurid book by one Rupert Butler called Legions of Death. Butler tells of seeing Hoess beaten when he was first found. He makes no mention of the interrogators being Jewish agents in British uniform, of course. And most importantly, Butler's version of what happened contradicts the deniers' hypothesis that Hoess was fed a story. Butler's book nowhere mentions Hoess being given a particular story to tell, it simply says Hoess was beaten. · A piece of hearsay that is supposedly contained in a secret document which the "revisionist" Robert Faurisson is not at liberty to reveal. (And even if it were revealed, it would be the first time the deniers ever accepted hearsay as being valid...) |
We must consider all information in context. There are numerous other testimonies which confirm the essential facts of Höss' confession. There are captured documents which speak very clearly of gassing and mass shooting. The list goes on and on; for just a few examples, see the answer to question 1.
· A lurid book by one Rupert Butler called Legions of Death. Butler tells of seeing Hoess beaten when he was first found. He makes no mention of the interrogators being Jewish agents in British uniform, of course. And most importantly, Butler's version of what happened contradicts the deniers' hypothesis that Hoess was fed a story. Butler's book nowhere mentions Hoess being given a particular story to tell, it simply says Hoess was beaten. · A piece of hearsay that is supposedly contained in a secret document which the "revisionist" Robert Faurisson is not at liberty to reveal. (And even if it were revealed, it would be the first time the deniers ever accepted hearsay as being valid...) |
20 . Is there any evidence that it was American, British, French, and Soviet policy to torture German prisoners in order to exact confessions before the trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere? As was asked in the reply to question 1 : what torture or coercion could possibly reach across decades to convince a Nazi to continue testifying about the horrors of the Holocaust in the 60s, 70s, and 80s? What torture or coercion was being applied to Nazis while they awaited trial in German courts? 1. whether he thinks that individual acts of Allies brutalizing Nazis would count as evidence toward a policy of torture. 2. what evidence he has to prove that "it was American, British, French, and Soviet policy to torture German prisoners in order to exact confessions." 3. whether he thinks that individual acts of Nazis murdering Jews would count as evidence toward a policy of extermination. 4. whether he considers Himmler's speech of October 4th, 1943 to indicate a Nazi policy to exterminate Jews: "The Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it." 21 . How does the "Holocaust" story benefit the Jews today? The Samisdat version also adds: The "big-H" story is designed to shame the Gentile: "Poor Jews! How they do suffer!" How about the former Soviet Union? Holocaust-deniers claim that most of the supposedly-forged Holocaust evidence was forged there. One of their more popular books is Porter's The Holocaust: Made in Russia. Yet the Soviet Union was traditionally the enemy of Israel, supporting and arming its enemies. And who says the memory of the Holocaust is the reason the US gives money to Israel? There were -- and still are -- important strategic reasons for the US to support Israel and to lend its even greater support to Egypt. Finally, where does the $10 billion per year figure come from? This is a vast exaggeration, as may be seen in the following tables: Aid to Israel Aid to Egypt Year in billions in billions 1988 $1.831 $3.480 1989 1.902 2.085 1990 4.377 4.977 1991 2.028 2.478 1992 4.746 2.539 1993 2.886 2.734 Total (six years) $17.770 $18.293 Source: Readers Digest Almanac and Yearbook. (Egypt was the largest recipient during that period, with Israel second). Total funds given to Israel, 1945 to 1984, in billions Grants $13.751 Loans $11.756 Loans still owed $9.360 22 . How does it benefit the state of Israel? 23 . How does it benefit many Christian clergymen? 24 . How does it benefit the Communists? 25 . How does it benefit Britain? 26 . Is there any evidence that Hitler ordered a mass extermination of Jews? Consider that Hitler received in December 1942 a report from Himmler stating that 363,211 Jews had been murdered in August-November 1942. This was just one of many reports from the Einsatzgruppen , who had the job of exterminating the Jews and anti-Nazis behind the eastern front. A photograph and the text of the report are available. Or consider a phone log from Hitler to Himmler, in which Hitler ordered "no liquidation" of a particular trainload of Jews, because they wanted one suspected passenger questioned. If Hitler did not know of the liquidation process, how could he have ordered it stopped in this one instance? (Ironically, David Irving used part of this phone log out of context to indicate that Hitler was trying to put a stop to the extermination program. Of course, this was before Mr. Irving changed his mind and decided that there never was any extermination program, much less that Hitler knew about it.) From Höss’ memoirs (Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 1959, p. 205): In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer-SS [Himmler], directly by his adjutant's office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received me without his adjutant being present and said in effect: "The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order." Eichmann 's final speech to the court, after being sentenced to death, included the following statement: These mass murders are solely the result of the Führer's policy. This is as quoted by the revisionist Paul Rassinier, The Real Eichmann Trial, 1979, p. 152. Felix Kersten was Himmler's personal manual therapist. As he wrote in his memoirs (Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1956, p. 162-3): Today I had a very long talk about the Jews with Himmler. I said that the world would no longer tolerate the extermination of the Jews; it was high time that he put a stop to it. Himmler said that it was beyond his power; he was not the Führer and Adolf Hitler had expressly ordered it. I asked him whether he was aware that history would one day point to him as one of the greatest murderers on record, because of the way hin which he had exterminated the Jews. He should think of his reputation, not sully it with that reproach. Himmler replied that he had done nothing wrong and only carried out Adolf Hitler's orders. ... I told Himmler that he still had a chance to stand well with history by showing humanity to the Jews and other victims of the concentration camp -- if he really disagreed with Hitler's orders to exterminate them. He could simply forget certain of the Führer's orders and not carry them out. "Perhaps you're right, Herr Kersten," Himmler responded, but he also added that the Führer would never forgive him and would immediately have him hanged. Hitler met with the Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini, on 28 November 1941. Notes of the meeting were taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt (see Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, 1984, pp. 101-104). At this meeting, Hitler promised the Mufti that, after a certain objective was reached, "Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands." Furthermore, don't discount Hitler's own public speeches, cited in the reply to question 1 . He stated his intentions to exterminate the Jews no fewer than three times, in public. "No evidence," indeed. In the original version of the 66 Q&A, this question was the same as question 53 , with different wording: "Is there any evidence that Hitler knew of a mass extermination of Jews?" ( question 26, original); "What evidence is there that Hitler knew of the ongoing Jewish extermination?" ( question 53, original and revised). That gives an idea of how much careful thought was put into this pamphlet. 27 . What kind of gas was used by the Nazis in concentration camps? First, Zyklon-B is the carrier of the gas, not the gas itself. Zyklon-B is the trademarked name for a substance, usually wood chips or diatomaceous earth, which has been impregnated with both the liquid form of hydrogen cyanide, and an irritant. Second, the gas in question is hydrogen cyanide (sometimes called prussic acid). "A hydrocyanic gas" is nonsensical, because there is only one gas which is hydrocyanic, and that is hydrogen cyanide gas. 28 . For what purpose was, and is, this gas manufactured? In fact, the same concentration kills humans and other mammals much faster than it kills lice and bugs. The concentration used for delousing, 8-10 grams per cubic meter, kills humans very quickly, though it takes up to 32 hours to get rid of bugs and clothes moths. Even when a lower concentration is used, death comes swiftly. In fact, HCN is used to kill people in gas chambers today, in the United States. 29 . Why did they use this instead of a gas more suitable for mass extermination? · It was easy to pack, store and transport -- it could be ordered from an ordinary chemical company, and came in sealed tins. · It was widely available, as it was used for delousing. In fact, probably over 90% of the Zyklon used at Auschwitz was used for delousing purposes. See e.g. Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 215. As noted in the answer to question 28 , it is extremely efficient for mass murder. In fact, HCN, the gas released by Zyklon-B, is used today to execute condemned people in the United States. In fairness, it should be pointed out that today's execution gas chambers generate HCN by chemical reaction, not by simply allowing it to evaporate, as was done with Zyklon-B. But there were no problems with the method the Nazis used; it worked quite well. As the Nazis found out soon enough, the bottleneck in the extermination process was the incineration of the bodies, not the gassing itself. A thousand people could be killed in a matter of minutes, or an hour or two at most, counting the entire operation from arrival at the camp to the final ventilation of the gas chamber. Yet to burn the bodies of those thousand people took quite a long while. Large, expensive furnaces were purchased, and many Reichsmarks were spent on maintaining them, but burning bodies still took at least ten times longer than actually killing people. The Nazis even reduced the size of the gas chambers after they realized that the bottleneck would always be the furnace capacity -- see Gutman et al., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 224.) So the arguments about difficulties with the gassing process, or efficiency of the gas, are just red herrings. See also the appropriate section of the Auschwitz FAQ. Anyway, if there are supposedly so many gases that are "far more efficient," why doesn't the IHR just name some? Greg Raven was asked to do exactly this in on Usenet in 1994-95, but, after being asked many times, he was only able to state: Carbon monoxide would be faster than Zyklon B, for example, as would any of numerous nerve gasses. As has already been explained, the speed of the killing agent is not the bottleneck in the killing process, so saying which gas is "faster" misses the point. That aside, carbon monoxide is not in fact "faster" than HCN, which is one of the fastest-acting poisons there is. See the paper written on the subject for details. In fact, the Nazis did try using carbon monoxide, in the Action Reinhard camps, and also at Maidanek , where bottled CO and piping apparatus was found. But, as Höss explained in his memoirs, he found the existing methods inefficient and decided to switch to Zyklon-B instead. "Nerve gasses" is not a specific enough claim to address. The only other instance of a specific gas being named, that we have yet found, is a laughable demonstration of ignorance. In the so-called "Lüftl Report," Walter Lüftl writes: Anyone familiar with the danger involved in handling hydrocyanic acid gas (which is explosive and extremely toxic) must wonder why the SS executioners didn't use carbon dioxide gas -- which is easier to handle and completely harmless to the executioner -- to kill the prisoners who were allegedly poisoned with Zyklon. Any textbook on physiology confirms that in the event of anoxia (oxygen deprivation), disturbances of brain functioning appear after five seconds, followed by unconsciousness after 15 seconds, and brain death after five minutes. This is how animals are put to sleep, painlessly and surely. It also works with people. This is sheer stupidity. Carbon dioxide simply asphyxiates its victims, drowning them in oxygenless air. Unconsciousness would take much longer than fifteen seconds. Death would not be painless, it would be about as painful as strangling or drowning. And carbon dioxide must be transported compressed in bottles, since "dry ice" cannot be sublimated quickly enough to kill anyone. How many bottles of carbon dioxide would it take to completely replace the normal, oxygenated air in a gas chamber? How much would it cost to transport and refill these bottles? Wouldn't it be easier to use a small amount of a poison that must only achieve a few hundred parts per million to be deadly, instead of having to reach a concentration sufficient to displace the oxygen from the air? In fact, Friedrich Berg, dismisses carbon dioxide in another article published by the IHR, and available on Greg Raven's web site: Carbon dioxide is not really any more poisonous than ordinary water. Most toxicology handbooks do not even mention it. When mentioned at all, it is generally classified as a "non-toxic, simple asphyxiant." So this is another internal contradiction. 30 . How long does it take to ventilate fully an area fumigated by Zyklon-B? First of all, the figure is intended to apply to ordinary, unventilated, commercial- or home-use buildings. One should not reenter an ordinary building within that period of time, because there is little if any forced ventilation. Furthermore, ordinary items like carpets, drapes, furniture, and so on lengthen the time required to restore fresh air. The Nazi gas chambers, on the other hand, were empty concrete rooms, forcibly ventilated, so even five minutes was enough to recycle the air (see Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 232). Some gas chambers did not have forced-ventilation systems; in those, the people who took the bodies out wore gas masks. Also, there is a tremendous safety factor allowed for. Safety standards don't apply in wartime, and especially not when the aim is to kill a thousand people as quickly as possible. The Germans had plenty of experience with gas in general, and Zyklon in particular, since it was used so often in delousing. Perhaps the Holocaust-deniers' next claim will be that the Germans never could have shot down any Allied planes, because it is impossible to fire a bomber's machine-gun while one is properly wearing a safety-belt according to FAA regulations. Furthermore, the SS used Sonderkommando, prisoners used as forced labor, to remove the corpses from the gas chambers and cremate them. Needless to say, they didn't care much if the Sonderkommando would be hurt by the remaining gas. They were operating under a death sentence anyway -- the first thing each new Sonderkommando unit did was to burn the corpses of the previous unit. If the "20 hours ventilation period" above was true, this would mean that the corpses of people executed using cyanide gas in US gas chambers would remain tied to the chair 20 hours after they were killed. 31 . Auschwitz commandant Hoss said that his men would enter the gas chamber ten minutes after the Jews had died and remove them. How do you explain this? The solution that the Nazis used, in the largest gas chambers, was to install ventilation systems that could completely recycle the air in under five minutes (see Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 232). There were also wire-mesh devices to remove the Zyklon-B from the chambers, improving the efficiency of the ventilation process. Other gas chambers did not have ventilation systems, and the first people to enter those gas chambers wore gas masks until the gas was diffused and made harmless. It was important to ventilate the gas chambers quickly and get on with evacuating the bodies and cremating them -- this was what took a lot of time. The gassing itself only lasted a few minutes. 32 . Hoss said in his confession that his men would smoke cigarettes as they pulled the dead Jews out of the gas chambers ten minutes after gassing. Isn't Zyklon-B explosive? The minimal concentration causing explosion is 56,000 parts per million. A concentration of 300 parts per million kills humans within a few minutes. As a reference, one can look at "The Merck Index" and the "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics," or consult any manual dealing with toxicity and flammability of chemicals. There would have been no real danger of explosion even if there were a bonfire burning in the gas chamber while the execution was taking place. In fact, the Nazis' own product literature on Zyklon-B, Nuremberg document NI-9912, points this out: Danger of explosion: 75 grams of HCN in 1 cubic meter of air. Normal application approx. 8-10 grams per cubic meter, therefore not explosive. (By the way, the 8-10 grams per cubic meter is the concentration needed for exterminating lice and other insects, not human beings. Mammals require a much lower concentration and much shorter exposure time.) A transcription of the NI-9912 document is available on Bradley Smith's web site, incidentally, including the above quotation. So the "revisionists" obviously know it exists. They just choose to ignore it. Mr. Smith calls the document "inconvenient" -- that it may be...but to whom? In any case, would the gas be explosive ten minutes into the ventilation process, after enough of it had been swept away to render the room nontoxic? Not a chance. If the Sonderkommando were smoking cigarettes, they were obviously not wearing gas masks, so they would be dead anyway unless the concentration were far below 100 parts per million! Why on earth does the IHR even bother to claim that explosion was a possibility? If there were anywhere near enough HCN to cause an explosion, any smoker would be long-dead from the poison anyway! The facts are that the IHR has ignored basic reference works, failed to notice the Nazis' own dismissal of this point, and jettisoned common sense. This says a great deal about their level of scholarship. And, for a brief digression... It seems to say something about their honesty as well. Though they ignore NI-9912 here, where it is inconvient, they actually use it in other IHR publications! The so-called Lueftl Report, available from Greg Raven's web site, lifts figures from this document without a citation, when it says: The evaporation of Zyklon B requires as many as 32 hours or as few as six hours, depending on whether the ambient temperature ranges from five to 30 degrees Celsius. So they quote NI-9912 when it suits their purposes, and ignore it when it doesn't. That pretty much sums up Holocaust "revisionism." And as long as we're on the topic, we might as well mention: that statement, even just in and of itself, is blatant academic dishonesty. NI-9912 does mention the figures of 6 to 32 hours, depending on temperature. However, those numbers are how long it takes the insects to die, and they have nothing to do with the evaporation time of Zyklon-B. Here is the original text of the captured Nazi document: Time needed to take effect: 16 hours, unless there are special circumstances such a closed-in type of building, which requires less time. If the weather is warm it is possible to reduce this to a minimum of 6 hours. The period is to be extended to at least 32 hours if the temperature is below 5 degrees Centigrade. The strength and time as above are to be applied in the case of: bugs, lice, fleas, etc., with eggs, larvae and chrysalises. 33. What was the exact procedure the Nazis allegedly used to exterminate Jews? Approximately three million Jews were gassed to death, over about three years, at the six major death camps. The rest were killed by numerous mass executions, mainly in the occupied eastern territories, and in the numerous smaller camps and ghettoes by inhuman treatment like starvation and slave-labor. Regarding "steam chambers" and "electrocution machinery" -- these were testimonies given by confused eyewitnesses, in some cases Poles who were spying on the camps from the outside. For example, someone seeing the killing process at the Action Reinhard camps might see the suffocating engine exhaust smoke billowing out of the gas chambers, and mistake it for steam. Of the Nazis themselves, or anyone else who saw the entire killing process from a close vantage point, we know of no one who repeats these false stories. 34 . How could such a mass program have been kept secret from Jews who were scheduled for extermination? Also see the 1943 German court verdict against SS-Untersturmführer Max Taubner, which apart from declaring the existence of the extermination effort itself, also declared that the defendent was to be punished for taking photographs of it: By taking photographs of the incidents or having photographs taken, by having these developed in photographic shops and showing them to his wife and friends, the accused is guilty of disobedience. Such pictures could pose the gravest risks to the security of the Reich if they fell into the wrong hands... The Poles living near the camps knew that mass extermination was going on, because they saw hundreds of thousands of Jews arriving by trains into camps which could not house even a tenth of them, and because the amounts of food brought into the camps were far less then what was needed to keep these people alive. They saw the trains leave the camp, filled with the victims' clothes and other belongings, and smelled the stench of burning flesh. They knew what was happening and reported it to the outside world. 35 . If Jews scheduled for execution knew the fate in store for them, why did they go to their death without fight or protest? They didn't fight or protest simply because they knew there was no intention to kill them. They were simply interned and forced to work. 36 . About how many Jews died in the concentration camps? In reality, more than 3,000,000 died in the camps (the rest behind the Eastern front and in the ghettos). The two worst camps were Auschwitz (about 1.3 million victims, 1.1 million of them Jews) and Treblinka (about 800,000 victims, nearly all Jews but also about 3,000 Gypsies). And didn't they say in question 7 that "tens of thousands" died in British concentration camps, which made them "far worse than any German concentration camp"? Another internal contradiction. When the Allies reached the Nazi death camps in Germany, they found the SS personnel well-fed and well-dressed, and the local population was often not undergoing serious hardship, relatively speaking. (On the other hand, the German population in the big cities did suffer a lot.) This is clearly attested to in the film footage of the liberation of the camps, where one can see the people in the nearby towns and villages, which the American soldiers brought over to the camps so they can witness what happened. None of them are starved. There is also a famous photograph of some plump SS women being captured at Bergen-Belsen. Tens of thousands of prisoners starved at Belsen. If you've seen a film of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves, it was probably taken at Belsen. The contrast to the well-fed SS women is quite remarkable. 38 . What is typhus? 39 . What is the difference if six million or 300,000 Jews died during this awesome period? The IHR here states clearly that "there was no deliberate attempt to exterminate anyone." They have clearly separated the question of Nazi gas chambers from the question of the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews regardless of means. Perhaps Greg Raven, the head of the IHR, would like to explain the quotations below. When asked about them previously, he has always tried to change the subject and bring up gas chambers. But if he truly believes that "there was no deliberate attempt to exterminate anyone" -- period -- then he should be able to respond to these quotations without referring to gas chambers: Hans Frank’s diary (from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 1946, Vol. I, pp. 992, 994): But what should be done with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled down in the 'Ostland' [eastern territories], in [resettlement] villages? This is what we were told in Berlin: Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in the 'Ostland' nor in the 'Reichkommissariat.' So liquidate them yourself. Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain the structure of the Reich as a whole. ... We cannot shoot or poison these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures, which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation.... That we sentence 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally. Himmler's speech at Posen on October 4, 1943 was captured on audiotape (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. XXIX, p. 145, trans. by current author): I refer now to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of those things that is easily said: "the Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it." Goebbels (as translated in Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, pp. 86, 147-148): February 14, 1942: The Führer once again expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. 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 procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 per cent can be used for forced labor. When the Allies reached the Nazi death camps in Germany, they found the SS personnel well-fed and well-dressed, and the local population was often not undergoing serious hardship, relatively speaking. (On the other hand, the German population in the big cities did suffer a lot.) This is clearly attested to in the film footage of the liberation of the camps, where one can see the people in the nearby towns and villages, which the American soldiers brought over to the camps so they can witness what happened. None of them are starved. There is also a famous photograph of some plump SS women being captured at Bergen-Belsen. Tens of thousands of prisoners starved at Belsen. If you've seen a film of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves, it was probably taken at Belsen. The contrast to the well-fed SS women is quite remarkable. Anyway, the question is misleading: a high-energy, refined fuel like gasoline was not required. Cheap and relatively plentiful imflammables like motor oil and methanol were used instead. Höss describes the open-air burning process at Treblinka (Bezwinska and Czech, KL Auschwitz Seen By The SS, 1984, p. 133): [After the gassing at Treblinka] the gas-chambers were opened up and the bodies taken out, undressed and burnt on a framework made of railway lines. The fires were stoked with wood, the bodies being sprayed every now and then with petrol refuse. He also describes the process at his own camp, Auschwitz (Kogon et al., Nazi Mass Murder, 1993, pp. 168-169): As late as the summer of 1942, the corpses were still carried to mass graves. It was only toward the end of the summer that cremation began to be used -- first by means of a wood pyre with about two thousand corpses, and later in the ditches, with the corpses that had been buried there earlier and then been exhumed. Used motor oil was poured over them, and later methanol. It was not a serious hardship for the Nazis to sacrifice a little used motor oil. 41 . Can bodies be burned in pits? 42 . "Holocaust" authors claim that the Nazis were able to cremate bodies in about 10 minutes. How long does it take to incinerate one body according to professional crematory operators? The IHR has a lot of nerve complaining that survivors' testimonies contradict each other on technical details like cremation time -- it can't even get its own story straight! Also, the Auschwitz furnaces were designed to run continuously, using the heat energy produced by the burning of previous bodies to keep the oven hot for the next bodies. After they were fired with coke to their proper operating temperature at the beginning of the day, they required little or no extra fuel to operate. This was a technical achievement that is well-documented (see Gutman et al., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, pp. 185-187ff). Lagace claims that there must be a "cooling off" period between each body incinerated, which shows a profound ignorance on his part as to how the ovens worked. Lagace claims that continuous operation would have caused the Auschwitz ovens to break down, but again, he simply does not understand the difference between everyday civilian crematoria and military-industrial crematoria. Those errors aside, there is still simply no question about the burning times of the ovens. In 1939, the firm of Topf and Sons was awarded a contract to build a Dachau furnace which had an estimated capacity of one corpse per hour per muffle (times two muffles). By increasing the air pressure, by July 1940 they had produced a furnace that could burn just under two corpses per hour per muffle (again, times two muffles). It required three hours of maintenance per day, a far cry from the twelve hours per day claimed by the IHR in question 45. (See Gutman et al., op. cit., pp. 185-186, 189-190.) The crematoriums that were eventually installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau were massive. They were capable of disposing of several bodies per muffle in half an hour or so, and they could run for days at a time without maintenance. (There were difficulties eventually, however, and several of the ovens were out of service for months at a time.) Topf and Sons was awarded a patent in 1951, and the patent also states that a single muffle can cremate a corpse in half an hour. 43 . Why did the concentration camps have crematory ovens? 44 . Given a 100% duty cycle of all the crematoria in all the camps in German-controlled territory, what is the maximum number of corpses it would have been possible to incinerate during the entire period such crematoria were in operation? Looking at theoretical numbers can be instructive, if one remembers that the theoretical capacity was never reached for a number of reasons. But, if one wants to consider what the theoretical numbers could have been, using a hypothetical 100% duty cycle and no downtime due to maintenance, the numbers are staggering. We needn't look at all Nazi camps; let's consider Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. In fact, let's consider only the two largest crematory facilities (out of five). Those two ovens alone, working at their full estimated capacity 24 hours a day from their installation in April 1943 to their decommissioning in November 1944, could have incinerated over 1.7 million corpses. This is simple arithmetic, based on the furnace capacity that the Nazis themselves estimated. See a photograph of the document, or Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation, 1989, p. 247. Note that the Nazis later began to realize that the theoretical capacity of the ovens was too impractical, and in late 1942 reduced their estimates from 1440 per Krema per day to 800 (see Gutman et al., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 212). Using that more-accurate figure, not quite a million corpses could be incinerated, in those 20 months, by those two Auschwitz crematoria. 45 . Can a crematory oven be operated 100% of the time? Start by looking at a photograph of the furnaces in Krema II, to get some idea of scale. They were very large. Keep in mind that the Zündelsite characterizes these massive crematoria buildings as "chicken sheds." There were five Krema in Auschwitz. Krema II and III had five huge furnaces, each of which had a "triple-muffle" that could burn three bodies simultaneously. They were designed to burn efficiently and quickly, especially when burning many bodies in a row (see Gutman et al., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, pp. 185-186). Although the furnaces were designed with three muffles, two to three bodies could almost always be placed in each muffle. Remember that many children were present, and that the victims were often inmates who had been at Auschwitz for months and who were malnourished in the extreme. The Nazis took 70 to 100 kg of animal remains as a "unit" that could be incinerated in one muffle; whether that was one large person or three small ones was irrelevant, technically speaking. Höss testified that the Sonderkommando would alternate between putting three and two bodies in each muffle. (See Gutman et al., op. cit., pp. 236, 166, 180n55.) Contrary to what the IHR claims in question 42, the furnaces would consume the bodies in anywhere from half an hour to 45 minutes maximum. This is not only verified by eyewitnesses, but by numerous Nazi memos concerning a variety of incineration jobs. Here is the arithmetic for a single Krematorium, number II: Five furnaces, each with three muffles, each muffle capable of holding two to three corpses simultaneously (call it two) and burning them in half an hour, could reduce 1440 bodies to ash in twenty-four working hours. 5 times 3 times 2, divided by one-half, times 24, equals 1440. 46 . How much ash is left from a cremated corpse? 47 . If six million people had been incinerated by the Nazis, what happened to the ashes? Many millions of bodies, however, were incinerated (including some that were buried in mass graves and had to be exhumed). It is quite easy to get rid of ash. It was dumped in fields and in rivers. Ash is not toxic; it can be dumped anywhere. In fact, it makes good fertilizer, and it is well-documented that farmers around Auschwitz used human ash in their fields. Just compute how many shoeboxes fit into a large truck. Tens of thousands. What's the problem with dumping truckload after truckload into rivers or fields? Auschwitz is built at a junction of rivers, with a large marsh nearby. In fact, one aerial photograph taken during the war shows large quantities of what may be human ash in a marsh just outside the extermination camp facility. 48 . Do Allied wartime photos of Auschwitz (during the period when the "gas chambers" and crematoria were supposed to be in full operation) reveal gas chambers? And the vents are visible on the gas chambers of Krema II and III, but not the undressing rooms. How do the deniers explain the difference, since they claim that both the gas chamber and the undressing room were morgues? Why vents on one but not the other, and is it just coincidence that the room with the vents is the one pointed to as the gas chamber since the 1940s? Remember, these photos were not declassified until the 1970s. Another photo reveals a pit dug behind Krema III, exactly where eyewitnesses had placed the pit-burning in testimony given many years before. The photos were not declassified until the 1970s, so the fact that they match the testimony is strong collaboration of that testimony. The last sentence in the IHR's answer, in any case, is a baldfaced lie. Holocaust-deniers admit this, by the way, so it qualifies as yet another internal contradiction. The "revisionist" Carlo Mattogno writes in a response to Pressac that: Aerial reconnaissance photographs show that a cremation is taking place in one of the three pits measuring 3.5 by 15 meters in the Crematory V courtyard. Again, they've failed to keep their stories straight. Now, it may be true that the pictures do not reveal smoke emenating from the crematoria. At the moment, we're researching this matter further. But if true, all this means is that corpses were not being burned on those particular days. There are only five days' worth of photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the entire year of 1944, some of which do not show the crematoria, so this does not prove anything. And what the photographs do reveal is extremely damaging to the Holocaust-deniers' position -- so, of course, they lie about it. 49 . What was the main provision of the German "Nuremberg laws" of 1935? The Nuremberg laws not only prohibited sexual relations between Germans and Jews, they effectively punished them by death. (Although the specified punishment was imprisonment or hard labour - or both - a number of Jews were indeed executed for having sexual relations with Germans. Even "petting" was reason enough to apply the death penalty.) The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 affected many things outside of personal relationships. Later in the year, an ordinance was issued on the basis of one of the Nuremberg Laws (see Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, 1971, p. 20): On the basis of article 3 of the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935 (Reich Legal Gazette I, 1146) the following is ordered: ... Article 4 1. A Jew cannot be a Reich citizen. He is not allowed the right to vote in political affairs; he cannot hold public office. 2. Jewish civil servants will retire as of December 31, 1935. ... 50 . Were there any American precedents for the Nuremberg Laws? 51 . What did the International Red Cross have to report with regard to the "Holocaust" question? For example, former SS-Untersturmfuehrer Dr Hans Münch confirmed this in his testimony at the International Nuremberg Trial (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. VIII, p. 313-321). He said: I repeatedly witnessed guided tours of civilians and also of commissions of the Red Cross and other parties within the camp, and I was able to ascertain that the camp leadership arranged it masterfully to conduct these guided tours in such a way that the people being guided around did not see anything about inhuman treatment. The main camp was shown only and in this main camp there were so-called show blocks, particularly block 13, that were especially prepared for such guided tours and that were equipped like a normal soldier's barracks with beds that had sheets on them, and well-functioning washrooms. Ironically, this policy of not showing extermination-related facilities is also confirmed by the IHR itself, though unwittingly. In the "Lüftl Report," supposed expert Walter Lüftl mentions a memo to the commandants of the concentration camps. According to Lüftl, it reads: The bordello and the crematories are not to be shown during camp visits. These installations are not to be mentioned to persons visiting the camp... Lüftl goes on to comment: Apparently, then, everything else could be shown and mentioned to visitors. Logically, then, a gas chamber, if one existed, could be shown and talked about; otherwise, it would have been included in the prohibition. Since we cannot assume that the SS ever showed a [homicidal] gas chamber to the inspectors of the International Red Cross, it is permissible to conclude that none existed. Lüftl, who is supposedly an expert, is not even aware that the term "crematories" refers to the cremation complexes, which also housed not only the ovens but also the gas chambers. Unwittingly, he has presented evidence against his own case -- for why would it be necessary to hide the cremation complexes from the Red Cross unless something were happening there that the Red Cross should not see? 52 . What was the role of the Vatican during the time the six million Jews were alleged to have been exterminated? It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem. Or, look at the following: Letter to Reich Minister of Justice ... Buses arrive in Hadamar several times a week with a large number of these victims. School children in the neighborhood know these vehicles and say: "Here comes the murder wagon." After the arrival of such vehicles the citizens of Hadamar then see the smoke coming from the chimney and are upset by constant thoughts about the poor victims especially when, depending on the direction of the wind, they have to put up with the revolting smell. The consequence of the principles being practiced here is that children, when quarreling with one another make remarks like: "You are thick, you'll be put in the oven in Hadamar." People who do not want to get married or who do not get the opportunity say: "Get married? No fear. Put children into the world who then end up going through the stack." Old people are saying "on no account will I go into a state hospital! After the feeble-minded, the old will be next in line as useless mouths to feed." 53 . What evidence is there that Hitler knew of the ongoing Jewish extermination? 54 . Did the Nazis and the Zionists collaborate? 55 . What caused Anne Frank's death just several weeks before the end of the war? Herman Van Pels, a business associate of Anne's father, was gassed upon the group's arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau , September 6, 1944 (Netherlands Red Cross, dossier 103586). His wife died "between April 9 and May 8, 1945, in Germany or in Czechoslovakia," (Netherlands Red Cross, dossier 103586). Their son Peter died on May 5, 1945, in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, after a forced march from Auschwitz (Netherlands Red Cross, dossier 135177). Dr. Friedrich Pfeffer, a friend of the family, died December 20, 1944, at Neuengamme concentration camp (Netherlands Red Cross, dossier 7500). Anne's mother died January 6, 1945, at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Netherlands Red Cross, dossier 117265). Anne and her elder sister Margot died of typhus sometime around March 31, 1945, at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Netherlands Red Cross, dossiers 117266 and 117267). Of the eight, only one, Anne's father, Otto Frank, survived. Two non-Jews, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Gustav Kugler, business associates of Otto Frank, were arrested as well, for aiding the Frank family. Both were sentenced to Arbeitseinsatz (labor service) in Germany, and both survived the war. 56 . Is the Anne Frank Diary genuine? Part of the "evidence" which Felderer "compiled" is the following, in which he argues ironically that the diary cannot be totally forged because it seems to have been written by a Jew: THE ANAL COMPLEX Dr. Robert Faurisson is at least not as crude as Felderer. But he is not a historian, forensic expert, or handwriting expert. He was a professor of literature at the University of Lyons. The testimony of this "foremost Holocaust authority" regarding the authenticity of the writings of Anne Frank was rejected by the Frankfurt Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) in 1979. See Frank, Anne, The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, 1989, pp. 96, 166. 57 . What about the numerous photographs and footage taken in the German concentration camps showing piles of emaciated corpses? Are these faked? We also see here the implicit claim that the Allied soldiers went and collected dead Germans, brought them to the camps, and photographed them there. Some evidence to back up this absurdity would be nice, but of course there is none. The many starved people are evidence that the Nazis did not make feeding their prisoners a very high priority. At the Belsen camp, hundreds of tons of food were found locked up, just a few miles away from where tens of thousands starved to death. See question 37 for a bit more on this topic. 58. Who originated the term "genocide"? 59 . Were films such as Holocaust and The Winds of War documentary films? 60 . About how many books have been published which refute some aspect of the standard claims made about the "Holocaust"? 61 . What happened when a historical institute offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz? 62 . What about the claim that those who question the "Holocaust" are anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi? There are hundreds of examples that could be given, but we'll only list a few: The IHR, or more strictly its parent corporation, was started by Willis Carto, who heads another group called "Liberty Lobby." No less of a federal judge than Robert Bork declared Liberty Lobby to be the "core, factual meaning" of antisemitism. Here is what Willis Carto has had to say about Hitler, Jews, and blacks (see National Review, September 10, 1971, p. 979): Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And of America. How could we have been so blind? The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews. It was their propaganda, lies, and demands that blinded the west to what Germany was doing.... The Jews came first and remain Public Enemy No. 1. The revolutionists have seen to it that only a few Americans are concerned about the inevitable niggerfication of America. The IHR is currently headed by Greg Raven, who in 1992 stated publicly that Hitler was "a great man...certainly greater than Churchill and FDR put together...about the best thing that could have happened to Germany." Mr. Raven has prepared additional explanation of his views on Hitler at his web site. One of the world's most prominent revisionists, Ernst Zündel, is an unabashed self-described National Socialist (Nazi). With George Dietz, he is the co-author of The Hitler We Loved and Why, under the pseudonym of Friedrich Christhof. His full name is Ernst Christhof Friedrich Zündel, according to his friend Michael Hoffman's book The Great Holocaust Trial, 1985, p. 8. (Other material authored by Friedrich Christhof includes a pamphlet organizing a "search for Hitler's Antarctic U.F.O. bases.") Regarding The Hitler We Loved And Why, Hoffman claims that Zündel only "provided photos for the book...it was largely Mr. Dietz's opus," p. 72. Also according to Hoffman, p. 74, we learn that he: ...told the court that he is the first to freely admit that the National Socialists committed some ruthless actions in World War II. But what was to Zundel the undeniable, fundamental goodness of the Hitler party, was something he would not deny. The same Michael Hoffman, described as a media critic for Carto's Spotlight newspaper, wrote a letter to Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, asking him: Suppose I made a flick, "Finklestein's Piss," about Israel and the Palestinians... Mr. Hoffman went on to inform Dr. Shermer that he was "a fucking idiot posing as an original intellectual," and included a sticker with his letter which depicted a Jew in crude caricature, and read: REMEMBAH DE SIX MILLION! For the Next Six Million Years! ... Prevent Thought Crime: Worship and Obey the Chosen Pimples Famous Holocaust "revisionists" (Irving, Faurisson, Zündel) have appeared at neo-Nazi meetings and rallies in Europe, where they spoke before sieg-heiling thugs. Holocaust-denial author Friedrich Berg, in between endorsements for CODOH, made the following comment on Usenet: Mr Kaufman is obviously Jewish and a living example of why the Nazis tried to remove Jews from Europe and short of that, into concentration camps for the duration of the war. He made other, similar antisemitic and Nazi-apologetic comments as well, which are not worth repeating here. According to the index available at Greg Raven's web site, he has contributed at least three articles to the Journal of Historical Review (and his wife worked for the IHR as a translator until recently). At least one of the articles is online at the IHR web site. Ditlieb Felderer's pornographic antisemitism is among the most filthy, disgusting and hateful ever penned (see question 56). He contributed five articles to the first four Journals that the Institute for Historical Review ever published, including one in their premier issue. The Simon Wiesenthal Center set up a phony far-right-wing "magazine" in 1993, as part of a sting operation to track the spread of Naziism and neo-Naziism in Germany. The phone number was given out only to a few secretive hard-line Nazis, so that their contacts could be traced. A short while later, the Editor of the IHR's Journal, Mark Weber, called that number and asked for a subscription. Thus, a close link between hard-core German fascists and American Holocaust-deniers, the IHR in particular, was established. More details on this story are available online, and in the book In Hitler's Shadow, Svoray et al., 1994, which was co-written by the undercover agent who made the contacts. Holocaust-denier Jack Wikoff organizes marches for White Power in upstate New York. He refers to Martin Luther King's birthday as "Marchin' Lootin' Coon Holiday," and distributes posters with crude caricatures of blacks and Jews that ask "Where's your Outrage, White America?" He has written at least seven book reviews and one article for the IHR's Journal, and according to the IHR's Holocaust calendar, has lectured on Holocaust revisionism to college students. One of the main themes of organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), which advocates "relocation" of Blacks, Jews, Asians and other minorities, is denial of the Holocaust. A young racist skinhead by the name of Reuben Logsdon has set up a web site, with pages such as the one where the Imperial Klaliff of the Ku Klux Klan provides answers to questions about the KKK. He also provides a number of web pages which deny the Holocaust. Yet, he has publicly admitted that he does not, in fact, doubt the Holocaust -- he has only posted Holocaust-denial material in order to attract racists. No correlation between the two? Try telling that to Mr. Logsdon! A young man by the name of Marc Lemire advertises his bulletin-board system by pointing out the audio files he will have available on-line: speeches by "revisionists" like Ernst Zündel, David Irving, and Fred Leuchter; speeches from Adolf Hitler, White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger, and George Lincoln Rockwell; and "National Socialist music and speeches." Another young man, this one named Milton Kleim, is not only a Holocaust-denier but a self-described National Socialist (i.e. Nazi). He is the author of what he calls the "National Socialist FAQ," and he claims that he would continue to admire Hitler even if he had killed sixty million Jews. How many more examples are necessary? We will not claim that all Holocaust-deniers are antisemitic and/or racist, but to claim that there isn't an obvious and significant correlation is ludicrous. More importantly -- and this cannot be stressed enough -- we do not claim that because these people are racist and antisemitic, therefore they are wrong. They are wrong about the Holocaust regardless of their opinions on race and ethnicity. "Increasing numbers of Jewish scholars" who supposedly support Holocaust-denial is probably a reference to Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT. They tend to claim that Chomsky supports their absurd theories, but that is a lie. Chomsky has defended the right of the French "revisionist" Faurisson to free speech, but he completely rejects Holocaust revisionism itself. Here is what he wrote on the matter: My views are quite explicitly stated: the Holocaust was the most extreme atrocity in human history, and we lose our humanity if we are even willing to enter the arena of debate with those who seek to deny or underplay Nazi crimes. And when asked his opinion on the writings of Faurisson and other Holocaust "revisionists," he answered: I have seen no reason to doubt the conclusions of authentic Holocaust historians (Hilberg, Bauer, etc.) on the facts of the matter. 63 . What has happened to the historians who have questioned the "Holocaust" material? Irving is a journalist and historical writer, and Weber has a Master's degree in history. They are as close as any "revisionist" comes to being a historian. 64 . Has the Institute for Historical Review suffered any retaliation for its efforts to uphold the right of freedom of speech and academic freedom? And when Ernst Zündel echoes this call for freedom of speech by reposting his copy of the 66 Q&A, it truly rings hollow. Zündel has helped distribute a pamphlet which invites the reader to "Join the worldwide campaign to BAN SCHINDLER'S LIST!" 65 . Why is there so little publicity for your point of view? Source: Nizkor
From Roman Catholic Bishop of Limburg
13 August 1941
