An Introduction to Holocaust Revisionism

What is 'Holocaust denial'?

In recent years, more and more attention has been devoted to the supposed danger of "Holocaust denial." Politicians, newspapers and television warn about the growing influence of those who reject the Holocaust story that some six million European Jews were systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them in gas chambers.

In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and Austria, "Holocaust denial" is against the law, and "deniers" have been punished with stiff fines and prison sentences. Some frantic Jewish community leaders are calling for similar government measures in North America against so-called "deniers." In Canada, David Matas, Senior Counsel for the "League for Human Rights" of the Zionist B'nai B'rith organization, says: (note 1)

The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews, including two million children. Holocaust denial is a second murder of those same six million. First their lives were extinguished; then their deaths. A person who denies the Holocaust becomes part of the crime of the Holocaust itself.

Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"?

Six Million?
Should someone be considered a "Holocaust denier" because he does not believe - as Matas and others insist - that six million Jews were killed during World War II? This figure was cited by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946. It found that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in the killing of six million Jews, of which four million were killed in the extermination institutions." (note 2)

Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust historians could be regarded as "deniers." Professor Raul Hilberg, author of the standard reference work, The Destruction of the European Jews, does not accept that six million Jews died. He puts the total of deaths (from all causes) at 5.1 million.

Gerald Reitlinger, author of The Final Solution, likewise did not accept the six million figure. He estimated the figure of Jewish wartime dead might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted that this was conjectural due to a lack of reliable information.

Human Soap?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use Jewish fat to make soap? After examining all the evidence (including an actual bar of soap supplied by the Soviets), the Nuremberg Tribunal declared in its Judgment that "in some instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap." (note 3)

In 1990, though, Israel's official "Yad Vashem" Holocaust memorial agency "rewrote history" by admitting that the soap story was not true.

"Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something to use against the truth?," said Yad Vashem official Shmuel Krakowski.

(note 4)

Wannsee Conference?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the January 1942 "Wannsee conference" of German bureaucrats was held to set or coordinate a program of systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews?

If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer must be wrong - and a "Holocaust denier" - because he recently declared:

"The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at."

In Bauer's opinion, Wannsee was a meeting but "hardly a conference" and "little of what was said there was executed in detail." (note 5)

Extermination Policy?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that there was no order by Hitler to exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time when the answer would have been yes.

Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, for example, wrote in the 1961 edition of his study, The Destruction of the European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the destruction of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the second shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book published in 1985. (note 6)

As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted: (note 7)

In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the "Final Solution" have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were not made and orders were not given.

A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has contributed to a controversy that divides Holocaust historians into "intentionalists" and "functionalists." The former contend that there was a premeditated extermination policy ordered by Hitler, while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution" Jewish policy evolved at lower levels in response to circumstances. But the crucial point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally tons of German documents after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence of a wartime extermination order, plan or program.

This was admitted by Professor Hilberg during his testimony in the 1985 trial in Toronto of German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zuendel. (note 8)

Auschwitz
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Surely a claim that most Auschwitz inmates died from disease and not systematic extermination in gas chambers would be "denial."

But perhaps not.

Jewish historian Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University professor, wrote in his 1988 study Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?:

"The 'Final Solution" in History': . . . From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called 'natural' causes than by 'unnatural' ones." (note 9)

Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz - allegedly the main extermination center - are no longer clear cut. At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz. (note 10) Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read:

"Four Million People Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers Between the Years 1940 and 1945."

(note 11)

During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope John Paul II stood before this memorial and blessed the four million victims.

Is it "Holocaust denial" to dispute these four million deaths? Not today. In July 1990, the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, conceded that the four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and references to it were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz monument. Israeli and Polish officials announced a tentative revised toll of 1.1 million Auschwitz dead. (note 12)

In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac, in a much-discussed book about Auschwitz, estimated that altogether about 775,000 died there during the war years. (note 13)

Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really died in Auschwitz remains open. In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? he wrote (p. 366):

. . . Many questions remain open . . . All in all, how many bodies were cremated in Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religious, and ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were condemned to die a 'natural' death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood among these gassed? We have simply no answers to these questions at this time.

Gas Chambers
What about denying the existence of extermination "gas chambers"? Here too, Mayer makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his book): "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." While Mayer believes that such chambers did exist at Auschwitz, he points out that

most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials and executioners at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and bystanders.

This testimony must be screened carefully, since it can be influenced by subjective factors of great complexity.

Höss Testimony
One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Höss, an SS officer who served as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment, the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal quoted at length from his testimony to support its findings of extermination. (note 14)

It is now well established that Höss' crucial testimony, as well as his so-called "confession" (which was also cited by the Nuremberg Tribunal), are not only false, but were obtained by beating the former commandant nearly to death. (note 15) Höss' wife and children were also threatened with death and deportation to Siberia.

In his statement - which would not be admissible today in any United States court of law - Höss claimed the existence of an extermination camp called "Wolzek." In fact, no such camp ever existed. He further claimed that during the time that he was commandant of Auschwitz, two and a half million people were exterminated there, and that a further half million died of disease. (note 16) Today no reputable historian upholds these figures.

Höss was obviously willing to say anything, sign anything and do anything to stop the torture, and to try to save himself and his family.

Forensic Investigations
In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the killing sites and in their immediate environs" to determine more about the gas chambers. In fact, such forensic studies have been made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American execution equipment consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-site forensic examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as claimed.

After a careful study of the alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites were not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged gas chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz. (note 17)

A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report) commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow has confirmed Leuchter's finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can be found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers. (note 18)

The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic examination of the alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with the results of the examination of the Auschwitz disinfestations facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse mattresses and clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were found in the walls and floor in the camp's disinfestations delousing chambers.

Another forensic study has been carried out by German chemist Germar Rudolf. On the basis of his on-site examination and analysis of samples, the certified chemist and doctoral candidate concluded: "For chemical-technical reasons, the claimed mass gassings with hydrocyanic acid in the alleged 'gas chambers' in Auschwitz did not take place . . . The supposed facilities for mass killing in Auschwitz and Birkenau were not suitable for this purpose . . ." (note 19)

Finally, there is the study of Austrian engineer Walter Lueftl, a respected expert witness in numerous court cases, and former president of Austria's professional association of engineers. In a 1992 report he called the alleged mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers "technically impossible." (note 20)

Discredited Perspective
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Those who advocate criminal persecution of "Holocaust deniers" seem to be still living in the world of 1946 where the Allied officials of the Nuremberg Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But the Tribunal's findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because it relied so heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the Höss testimony, some of its most critical findings are now discredited.

For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by purposely mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers." But the truth can't be suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing controversy about what actually happened to Europe's Jews during World War II.

Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and classrooms.

Notes

1. Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992.
2. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496.
3. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496.
4. Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
5. Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992.
6. See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zndel (Toronto: Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349.
7. "The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 294.
8. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-25.
9. A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in History (Pantheon, 1988), p. 365.
10. Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261.
11. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441.
12. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept. 22, 1989; Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph (London), July 17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate to 1 Million," The Washington Times, July 17, 1990.
13. J.-C. Pressac, Les Cr¦metoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris: CNRS, 1993). See also: R. Faurisson, "Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book," The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-Feb. 1994, p. 24.
14. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 485; Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-819), in IMT "blue series," Vol. 33, pp. 275-279.
15. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-237; C. Hitchens, "Whose History is it?," Vanity Fair (New York), Dec. 1993, p. 117.
16. See: R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confession of Rudolf Hoess," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp. 389-403.
17. A deluxe edition of The Leuchter Report is available from the IHR for $20.00, plus $2.00 shipping.
18. The complete text of this report was published in English in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
19. G. Rudolf, Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit von Cyanidverbindungen in den 'Gaskammern' von Auschwitz (London: 1993). See: The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993, pp. 25-26.
20. "The 'Lueftl Report'," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1992-93.

Back to Contents

Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers'
by Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

Introduction
1988 was a very informative and likewise disturbing year. I was appalled to learn that much of what I was taught in school about twentieth-century history and World War II was a myth, if not a lie. I was first amazed; then annoyed; then aware: the myth of the Holocaust was dead.

Like all American children born during and after World War II, I was taught about the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews. By the time I had reached college, I had no reason to disbelieve any of my education, except that I had some problems swallowing the numbers of decedents, said to total some six million. But there it stopped. I believed in the Nazi genocide. I had no reason to disbelieve.

Some 24 years later, a very believing engineer sat at his desk working one snowy January afternoon in 1988, when the telephone rang.

This very believing engineer was about to receive a very shocking history lesson, one which would cause him to question that 50-year-old Holocaust lie and the application of that lie to generations of children.

"Hello, this is Robert Faurisson" - and that very believing engineer would believe no more.

Background
I have for the past nine years worked with most, if not all, of the states in the United States having capital punishment. I design and manufacture execution equipment of all types, including electrocution systems, lethal injection equipment, gallows and gas-chamber hardware.

I have consulted for, or supplied equipment to, most of the applicable states and the federal government.

Because of my association with the states in this capacity, I was recommended to the Zündel defense as a consultant on gas chambers by Warden Bill Armontrout of the Missouri State Penitentiary.

After answering my telephone on that cold January afternoon, I met with Dr. Robert Faurisson twice in Boston and, as a result of these meetings, I was summoned to Toronto to meet with Ernst Zündel, attorney Douglas Christie and the rest of Zündel's very able staff.

Dr. Robert Faurisson had postulated 13 years ago that a gas-chamber specialist should be sought who could evaluate the alleged gas chambers in Poland and report on their efficacy for execution purposes.

Valentine's Day weekend found me and Carolyn, my wife of two weeks, in Toronto. Two days of lengthy meetings followed, during which I was shown photos of the alleged German gas chambers in Poland, German documents and Allied aerial photographs. My examination of this material led me to question whether these alleged gas chambers were, in fact, execution facilities.

I was asked if I would go to Poland and undertake a physical inspection and forensic analysis resulting in a written evaluation of these alleged execution gas chambers, some at places I had never even heard of.

After due consideration, I agreed and made plans to leave for Poland, awaiting a time of minimal snow covering. I also stated that although the photos and documents seemed to support the view that these places were, indeed, not execution facilities, I would reserve final judgment until after my examination and, if I determined that these facilities were, in fact, or could have been, execution gas chambers, I would state this in my report.

The final report was to be utilized as evidence in Ernst Zündel's defense in his pending criminal trial at Toronto, and I had to be prepared to testify under oath.

Preparations for the trip required me to take sample bags, documentation journals and tools. Because we were in a Communist country, I would have to be careful with the tools. Very few tourists carry hammers, chisels, star drills and tape measures while travelling. I hid them in the lining of my valise and hoped for the best. Further, I had maps of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, in the event that we might have to make a hasty and unscheduled exit.

And finally, I had gifts with which we bribed the museum people to supply us with copies of documents from the Museum Archives.

Our Staff
I was fortunate to have a competent and dependable party of professionals: my wife Carolyn, my general assistant; Mr. Howard Miller, draftsman; Mr. Jürgen Neumann, cinematographer; Mr. Tijudar Rudolf, interpreter. All knew that, if caught, the Polish government would take a dim view of our activities and purpose, let alone my removal of forensic samples from national shrines and monuments.

And the two ex officio members of our party, Mr. Ernst Zündel and Dr. Robert Faurisson, who could not accompany us in person, but who nevertheless were with us every step of the way in spirit.

The Trip
On February 25, 1988, we left for Poland. Neumann and Rudolf, the Canadian contingent, joined me and the remainder of our team in Frankfurt.

We arrived at Cracow in the late afternoon and spent our first night at the Hotel Orbis. We consumed the first of our three decent meals while in Poland. The following day we drove to Oswiecim (Auschwitz). We arrived at the Auschwitz hotel and were greeted by the smell of sulphur napthal disinfectant, a smell I had not encountered for many years. The hotel is apparently the old officers' quarters for the camp. We ate lunch at the hotel dining room, a cafeteria style facility.

This was our first unidentifiable meal, starch soup and sundries.

We made a reconnaissance tour of the camp, lasting into the dim light of the Polish afternoon and several snow squalls, a common occurrence. We ate no supper, in that we found no place to eat in Auschwitz after sundown our first evening.

Auschwitz and Birkenau
The following day we began our work in the alleged gas chamber at the Auschwitz [camp] facility. Unfortunately, we were unable to accomplish much due to constant interruptions by both official and unofficial Sunday tours. Carolyn stood guard at one entrance and Tijudar at the other, advising myself, Jürgen and Howard of their arrival.

It was too dangerous to take forensic samples and tape, so we left for Birkenau [camp site] about noon.

At Birkenau we began a four-hour walk into the damp Polish cold and through snow squalls so dense we could not see each other at a distance of a few feet. Unfortunately, we did not expect to spend that much time walking through the camp and, since vehicles are not permitted within the camp, we left Carolyn behind in the car. Since we forgot to leave her the keys, she nearly froze in the cold Polish afternoon.

We visited the barracks, crematories II, III, IV and V, the sauna and the alleged burning pits. We took samples, documented our activities on video tape and in still photos, and made scale drawings of these facilities, carefully documenting the removal locations of all the forensic samples. We had to break into the sauna building, since it was locked.

At crematory II, I descended into the depths of the alleged gas chamber, a wet, dank subterranean place not visited by man in almost 50 years, since the building had been reduced to rubble, probably by a German military demolition team. Fortunately, there were fewer guards and less pedestrian traffic, making working conditions considerably better than they had been earlier at Auschwitz.

Having been instructed by our empty stomachs of the evening before, we found and ate at the restaurant at the bus station, the only legitimate restaurant in Auschwitz. We returned to the Auschwitz hotel for the night.

The following day, Monday, we again began our work at Auschwitz [camp site], the Sunday tours having subsided. We were able to get our samples, tapes and documentation. We had, by this time, obtained blueprints of the alleged gas-chamber facility and were able to follow the structural changes back to the dates in question. We also verified the existence of the floor drain for the periods of alleged gas chamber usage.

Upon completion at Auschwitz, we drove again to Birkenau to take our control sample at delousing facility 1. Unfortunately, the building was locked and again we had to break and enter in order to access the delousing chamber. Again we ate at the bus station, and retired early to the Auschwitz hotel.

Tuesday morning, while awaiting Tijudar's unsuccessful attempt to obtain a can of Zyklon B, Jürgen and I made video tapes of locations within the camp. We moved from the Auschwitz hotel to a hostel nearby, obtaining newly vacated rooms. We ate at the bus station and retired early.

On Wednesday morning [the 24th] we ate a very enjoyable breakfast of ham, cheese and bread (our second decent meal in Poland) and began our trip to Lublin to see the Majdanek camp site.

After one final look in at Auschwitz, we set off by car for Majdanek.

Majdanek
Several hours later, we arrived at Majdanek (Lublin), and visited the museum, the reconstructed alleged gas chamber and the crematory. We finally arrived at disinfection [buildings] 1 and 2, and examined the facilities. It was extremely difficult to work, in that a guard made rounds every 10 or 15 minutes. The alleged gas chambers were blocked by gates and not accessible for a detailed inspection by the general public.

It was necessary for me to trespass beyond these gates in forbidden areas. Again Carolyn and Tijudar stood watch while I made measurements and did a detailed examination in these areas. Once we were caught short: I was forced to hurdle the gate, and was still in the air and in mid-jump when the guard entered.

Fortunately, he was more interested in Jürgen and his camera to see me before I touched ground.

Return
The camp closed in early afternoon and the guard rather nastily told us to leave. By three o'clock we were en route to Warsaw, a trip that would take five hours through rain and snow. Our hotel reservation had been fouled up but, fortunately, with the help of an embassy attaché, we were able to secure rooms at another hotel.

We had our third edible meal in Poland that evening, and went to bed in preparation for our trip home on Thursday. The following morning we had breakfast and proceeded to the airport for our return trip.

We boarded the Polish airlines plane after clearing customs -- my suitcase containing twenty pounds of the forbidden samples, fortunately none of which were found. I did not breathe easy until we cleared the passport checkpoint at Frankfurt. Our team split at Frankfurt for the return trips to the United States and Canada, respectively.

After our return [on March 3], I delivered the forensic samples to the test laboratory in Massachusetts. Upon receipt of the test results, I prepared my report, combining my knowledge of gas execution facilities and procedures with the research I had completed at crematories and with retort manufacturers in the United States. With the results of my research I believe you are all familiar.

Upon completion of my report I testified at Toronto - but that is another story.

The Findings:

Gas Chambers
The results published in the Leuchter Report are the important thing. Categorically, none of the facilities examined at Auschwitz, Birkenau or Lublin (Majdanek) could have supported, or in fact did support, multiple executions utilizing hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide or any other allegedly or factually lethal gas. Based upon very generous maximum usage rates for all the alleged gas chambers, totalling 1,693 persons per week, and assuming these facilities could support gas executions, it would have required sixty-eight (68) years to execute the alleged number of six millions of persons. This must mean the Third Reich was in existence for some seventy-five (75) years. Promoting these facilities as being capable of effecting mass, multiple or even singular executions is both ludicrous and insulting to every individual on this planet. Further, those who do promote this mistruth are negligent and irresponsible for not investigating these facilities earlier and ascertaining the truth before indoctrinating the world with what may have become the greatest propaganda ploy in history.

Crematories
Of equal importance are Exterminationist errors relating to the crematories. If these crematories, operated at a theoretical rate of maximum output per day, without any down time and at a constant pace (an impossible situation), and we accept the figure of at least six million executed, the Third Reich lasted for at least forty-two (42) years, since it would take thirty-five (35) years at an impossible minimum to cremate these six million souls.

No one by any stretch of the imagination would allege (or even believe) that the Third Reich ever lasted for seventy-five (75) or even forty-two (42) years, yet they would have us believe that six million souls were executed with equipment that could not possibly have functioned, in less than one-seventh of the absolute minimum time it could possibly have taken.

Forensics
Forensic samples were taken from the visited sites. A control sample was removed from delousing facility 1 at Birkenau. It was postulated that because of the high iron content of the building materials at these camps the presence of hydrogen cyanide gas would result in a ferric-ferro-cyanide compound being formed, as evidenced by the Prussian blue staining on the walls in the delousing facilities.

A detailed analysis of the 32 samples taken at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complexes showed 1,050 mg/kg of cyanide and 6,170 mg/kg of iron. Higher iron results were found at all of the alleged gas chambers but no significant cyanide traces. This would be impossible if these sites were exposed to hydrogen cyanide gas, because the alleged gas chambers supposedly were exposed to much greater quantities of gas than the delousing facility. Thus, chemical analysis supports the fact that these facilities were never utilized as gas execution facilities.

Construction
Construction of these facilities shows that they were never used as gas chambers. None of these facilities were sealed or gasketed. No provision was ever made to prevent condensation of gas on the walls, floor or ceiling. No provision ever existed to exhaust the air-gas mixture from these buildings. No provision ever existed to introduce or distribute the gas throughout the chamber. No explosion-proof lighting existed and no attempt was ever made to prevent gas from entering the crematories, even though the gas is highly explosive. No attempt was made to protect operating personnel from exposure to the gas or to protect other non-participating persons from exposure. Specifically, at Auschwitz, a floor drain in the alleged gas chamber was connected directly to the camp's storm drain system. At Majdanek a depressed walkway around the alleged gas chambers would have collected gas seepage and resulted in a death trap for camp personnel. No exhaust stacks ever existed. Hydrogen cyanide gas is an extremely dangerous and lethal gas, and nowhere were there any provisions to effect any amount of safe handling. The chambers were too small to accommodate more than a small fraction of the alleged numbers. Plain and simple, these facilities could not have operated as execution gas chambers.

Conclusion
After a thorough examination of the alleged execution facilities in Poland and their associated crematories, the only conclusion that can be arrived at by a rational, responsible person is the absurdity of the notion that any of these facilities were ever capable of, or were utilized as, execution gas chambers.

Back to Contents

'Jewish soap'
by Mark Weber

One of the most lurid and slanderous Holocaust claims is the story that the Germans manufactured soap from the bodies of their victims. Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second.

More important, this accusation was "proved" at the main Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, and has been authoritatively endorsed by numerous historians in the decades since. In recent years, though, as part of a broad retreat from the most obviously untenable aspects of the "orthodox" extermination story, Holocaust historians have grudgingly conceded that the human soap tale is a wartime propaganda lie.

In their retreat, though, these historians have tried to dismiss the soap story as a mere wartime "rumor," neglecting to mention that international Jewish organizations and then Allied governments endorsed and sanctioned this libelous canard.

Wartime rumors that the Germans were manufacturing soap from the corpses of slaughtered Jews were based in part on the fact that soap bars distributed by German authorities in Jewish ghettos and camps bore the impressed initials "RIF," which many took to stand for "Rein juedisches Fett" or "Pure Jewish Fat." (It did not seem to matter that the letters were "RIF" and not "RJF.") These rumors spread so widely in 1941 and 1942 that by late 1942 German authorities in Poland and Slovakia were expressing official concern about their impact.

According to a Polish source quoted in a secret wartime U.S. Army military intelligence report, for example, the Germans were operating a "human soap factory" in 1941 at Turek, Poland. "The Germans had brought thousands of Polish teachers, priests and Jews there and after extracting the blood serum from their bodies, had thrown them on large pots and melted off grease to make soap," the intelligence report added.

Macabre "Jewish soap" jokes became popular in the ghettos and camps, and many non-Jews on the outside came to believe the story. When trains loaded with Jewish deportees stopped temporarily at rail stations, Poles reportedly would gleefully shout at them: "Jews to soap!"

Even British prisoners of war interned at Auschwitz in 1944 testified later about the wartime rumors that corpses of gassing victims were being turned into soap there.

In spite of its inherently incredible character, the soap story became an important feature of Jewish and Allied war propaganda. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, wartime head of both the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress, publicly charged in November 1942 that Jewish corpses were being "processed into such war-vital commodities as soap, fats and fertilizer" by the Germans. He further announced that the Germans were "even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses," and were paying fifty marks for each body.

In late 1942, the Congress Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress, editorialized that the Germans were turning Jews "by scientific methods of dissolution into fertilizer, soap and glue." An article in the same issue reported that Jewish deportees from France and Holland were being processed into "soap, glue and train oil" in at least two special factories in Germany. Typical of many other American periodicals, the influential New Republic reported in early 1943 that the Germans were "using the bodies of their Jewish victims to make soap and fertilizer in a factory at Siedlce."

During June and July 1943, two prominent representatives of the Moscow-based "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" toured the United States and raised more than two million dollars for the Soviet war effort at a series of mass meetings. At each of these rallies, Soviet Jewish leader Solomon Mikhoels showed the crowd a bar of soap that he said was made from Jewish corpses.

After the war the soap story was given important legitimacy at the main Nuremberg trial. L. N. Smirnov, Chief Counsellor of Justice for the USSR, declared to the Tribunal:

... The same base, rationalized SS technical minds which created gas chambers and murder vans, began devising such methods of complete annihilation of human bodies, which would not only conceal the traces of their crimes, but also to serve in the manufacturing of certain products. In the Danzig Anatomical Institute, semi-industrial experiments in the production of soap from human bodies and the tanning of human skin for industrial purposes were carried out.

Smirnov quoted at length from an affidavit by Sigmund Mazur, an Institute employee, which was accepted as Nuremberg exhibit USSR-197.

It alleged that Dr. Rudolf Spanner, the head of the Danzig Institute, had ordered the production of soap from corpses in 1943. According to Mazur's affidavit, Dr. Spanner's operation was of interest to high-ranking German officials. Education Minister Bernhard Rust and Health Leader Dr. Leonardo Conti, as well as professors from other medical institutes, came to witness Spanner's efforts. Mazur also claimed to have used the "human soap" to wash himself and his laundry.

A human soap "recipe," allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196), was also presented. Finally, a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of "human soap" was submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393.

In his closing address to the Tribunal, chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross echoed his Soviet colleague: "On occasion, even the bodies of their victims were used to make good the wartime shortage of soap." And in their final judgment, the Nuremberg Tribunal judges found that "attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap."

It is worth emphasizing here that the "evidence" presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal for the bogus soap story was no less substantial than the "evidence" presented for the claims of mass extermination in "gas chambers." At least in the former case, an actual sample of soap supposedly made from corpses was submitted in evidence.

After the war, supposed Holocaust victims were solemnly buried, in the form of soap bars, in Jewish cemeteries. In 1948, for example, four such bars wrapped in a funeral shroud were ceremoniously buried according to Jewish religious ritual at the Haifa cemetery in Israel. Other bars of "Jewish soap" have been displayed as grim Holocaust relics at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Stutthof Museum near Gdansk (Danzig), the Yivo Institute in New York, the Holocaust Museum in Philadelphia, the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne (Australia), and at various locations in Israel.

Numerous Jews who lived in German ghettos and camps during the war helped keep the soap story alive many years later.

Ben Edelbaum, for example, wrote in his 1980 memoir Growing Up in the Holocaust:

Often with our rations in the ghettos, the Germans had included a bar of soap branded with initials R.J.F. which came to be known as "RIF" soap. It wasn't until the war had ended that we learned the horrible truth about the bar of soap. Had we known in the ghetto, every bar of "RIF" soap would have been accorded a sacred Jewish funeral in the cemetery at Marysin. As it was, we were completely oblivious to its origin and used the bones and flesh of our murdered loved ones to wash our bodies.

Nesse Godin was transferred from a ghetto in Lithuania to the Stutthof concentration camp in the spring of 1944. In a 1983 interview, she recalled her arrival there:

That day they gave us a shower and a piece of soap. After the war we found out the soap was made out of pure Jew fat, Rein Juden Fett, marked in the initials on the soap that I washed with. For all I know sometimes maybe there was a little bit of my father's fat in that soap that I washed with. How do you think I feel when I think about that?

Mel Mermelstein, the former Auschwitz inmate who was featured in the sensationalized April 1991 cable television movie "Never Forget" (and who sued the Institute for Historical Review and three other defendants for $11 million), declared in a 1981 sworn deposition that he and other camp inmates used soap bars made from human fat.

It was an "established fact," he insisted, that the soap he washed with was made from Jewish bodies.

Renowned "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal repeated the soap tale in a series of articles published in 1946 in the Austrian Jewish community paper Der Neue Weg.

In the first of these he wrote:

During the last weeks of March the Romanian press reported an unusual piece of news: In the small Romanian city of Folticeni twenty boxes of soap were buried in the Jewish cemetery with full ceremony and complete funeral rites. This soap had been found recently in a former German army depot. On the boxes were the initials RIF, "Pure Jewish Fat." These boxes were destined for the Waffen-SS. The wrapping paper revealed with completely cynical objectivity that this soap was manufactured from Jewish bodies. Surprisingly, the thorough Germans forgot to describe whether the soap was produced from children, girls, men or elderly persons.

Wiesenthal went on:

After 1942 people in the General Government [Poland] knew quite well what the RIF soap meant. The civilized world may not believe the joy with which the Nazis and their women in the General Government thought of this soap. In each piece of soap they saw a Jew who had been magically put there, and had thus been prevented from growing into a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein.

In another article he observed:

"The production of soap from human fat is so unbelievable that even some who were in concentration camps find it difficult to comprehend."

Over the years, numerous supposedly reputable historians have promoted the durable soap story. Journalist-historian William L. Shirer, for example, repeated it in his best-selling work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Leading Soviet war propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in his postwar memoir: "I have held in my hand a cake of soap stamped with the legend 'pure Jewish soap', prepared from the corpses of people who had been destroyed. But there is no need to speak of these things: thousands of books have been written about them."

A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, Canada: The Twentieth Century, told students that the Germans "boiled" the corpses of their Jewish victims "to make soap."

The Anatomy of Nazism, a booklet published and distributed by the Zionist "Anti-Defamation League" of B'nai B'rith, stated:

"The process of brutalization did not end with the mass murders themselves. Large quantities of soap were manufactured from the corpses of those murdered."

A detailed 1981 work, Hitler's Death Camps, repeated the soap story in lurid detail. While noting that "some historians claim that the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor," author Konnilyn Feig nevertheless accepted the story because "most East European camp scholars ... validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from humans are displayed in Eastern Europe -- I have seen many over the years."

New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier repeated the tale at the opening ceremony of the largest Holocaust meeting in history. In his invocation to the "American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors," held in Washington in April 1983, the Rabbi solemnly declared:

"We remember the bars of soap with the initials RJF - Rein jdisches Fett, Pure Jewish Fat - made from the bodies of our loved ones."

In spite of all the apparently impressive evidence, the charge that the Germans manufactured soap from human beings is a falsehood, as Holocaust historians are now belatedly acknowledging.

The "RIF" soap bar initials that supposedly stood for "Pure Jewish Fat" actually indicated nothing more sinister than "Reich Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning" ("Reichsstelle fr Industrielle Fettversorgung"), a German agency responsible for wartime production and distribution of soap and washing products. RIF soap was a poor quality substitute that contained no fat at all, human or otherwise.

Shortly after the war the public prosecutor's office of Flensburg, Germany, began legal proceedings against Dr. Rudolf Spanner for his alleged role in producing human soap at the Danzig Institute. But after an investigation the charge was quietly dropped. In a January 1968 letter, the office stated that its inquiry had determined that no soap from human corpses was made at the Danzig Institute during the war.

More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur "denied established history" by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality. Gitta Sereny, another Jewish historian, noted in her book Into That Darkness:

"The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes."

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history, similarly "rewrote history" when she confirmed in 1981:

"The fact is that the Nazis never used the bodies of Jews, or for that matter anyone else, for the production of soap."

In April 1990, professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University, regarded as a leading Holocaust historian, as well as Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, confirmed that the human soap story is not true. Camp inmates "were prepared to believe any horror stories about their persecutors," Bauer said. At the same time, though, he had the chutzpah to blame the legend on "the Nazis."

In fact, blame for the soap story lies rather with individuals such as Simon Wiesenthal and Stephen Wise, organizations like the World Jewish Congress, and the victorious Allied powers, none of whom has ever apologized for promoting this vile falsehood.

Why did Bauer and Krakowski decide that this was the appropriate time to officially abandon the soap story? Krakowski himself hints that a large part of the motivation for this "tactical retreat" has been to save what's left of the sinking Holocaust ship by throwing overboard the most obvious falsehoods.

In the face of the growing Revisionist challenge, easily demonstrable falsehoods like the soap story have become dangerous embarrassments because they raise doubts about the entire Holocaust legend. As Krakowski put it:

"Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something to use against the truth?"

The bad faith of those making this calculated and belated concession to truth is shown by their failure to note that the soap myth was authoritatively "confirmed" at Nuremberg, and by their unwillingness to deal with the implications of that confirmation for the credibility of the Tribunal and other supposedly trustworthy authorities in establishing other, more fundamental aspects of the Holocaust story.

The striking contrast between the prompt postwar disavowal by the British government of the infamous "human soap" lie of the First World War, and the way in which a similarly baseless propaganda story from the Second World War was officially endorsed by the victorious Allied powers and then authoritatively maintained for so many years not only points up the dispiriting lack of integrity on the part of so many Western historians, but underscores the general decline in Western ethical standards during this century.

The "human soap" story demonstrates anew the tremendous impact that a wartime rumor, no matter how fantastic, can have once it has taken hold, particularly when it is disseminated as a propaganda lie by influential individuals and powerful organizations.

That so many intelligent and otherwise thoughtful people could ever have seriously believed that the Germans distributed bars of soap brazenly labeled with letters indicating that they were manufactured from Jewish corpses shows how readily even the most absurd Holocaust fables can be - and are - accepted as fact.

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The US Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Costly and Dangerous Mistake
by Theodore J. O'Keefe

Hard by the Washington Monument, within clear view of the Jefferson Memorial, an easy stroll down the Mall to the majestic Lincoln Memorial, has arisen, on some of the most hallowed territory of the United States of America, a costly and dangerous mistake.

On ground where no monument yet marks countless sacrifices and unheralded achievements of Americans of all races and creeds in the building and defense of this nation, sits today a massive and costly edifice, devoted above all to a contentious and false version of the ordeal in Europe, during World War II, of non-American members of a minority, sectarian group.

In the deceptive guise of tolerance, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum promotes a propaganda campaign, financed through the unwitting largesse of the American taxpayer, in the interests of Israel and its adherents in America.

How did the federal government allow the creation of such a monstrosity? What is its meaning for American policy and for American values? And what must the American people do to regain control of the land their servants in Washington handed over to a foreign interest, and to establish an enterprise thereon, whether a museum or otherwise, informed by and conducted according to American principles and interests?
Origins

In the late 1970s, during the presidency of James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, a propaganda campaign to promote the "Holocaust," the alleged systematic slaughter of some six million Jews by the Germans during the Second World War, was organized and carried out from Hollywood and New York.

As Benjamin Meed, an important functionary of the Council that controls the Holocaust Museum, wrote in 1990: (note 1)

Almost a dozen years ago, a new phenomena [sic] developed. The Holocaust was introduced into schools, colleges, and universities. Television broadcast programs on the Holocaust and millions of Americans watched them. Soon, Americans took great interest in the lessons of the Holocaust, its uniqueness and its universal message.

Why the urgency of this campaign? Two factors were paramount: first, the beginnings, more than three decades after the end of the Second World War, of an objective, scholarly assessment of the facts of the alleged German policy to exterminate European Jewry. (note 2)

Second, the need to justify Zionist theory and practice in the face of unprecedented international resistance to Israeli intransigence (including the famous UN General Assembly Resolution that equated Zionism with racism), and to defend Israel's aggressive policy under the leadership of the former terrorist, Prime Minister Menachem Begin. (note 3)

The US Holocaust Memorial Council
In 1978 President Carter, his administration beleaguered at home and abroad, succumbed to pressure from the new "Holocaust" lobby (and thus America's influential Israel-first minority) by creating, through executive order, the President's Commission on the Holocaust.

Two years later, on October 7, 1987, Congress passed - unanimously - a law establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, charged principally with constructing and overseeing the operation of,

"a permanent living memorial to the victims of the holocaust" and with providing "for appropriate ways for the Nation to commemorate the Days of Remembrance, as an annual, national, civic commemoration of the Holocaust ..."

(note 4)

A priceless tract of public land was turned over to the Council, and, after years of costly delay (during which the Council's budget swelled from $2.5 million to over $18 million a year), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum was finally completed and opened, to great media fanfare, in April 1993.
A Sectarian, Alien Agenda

Besides soliciting tens of millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations to finance the Holocaust Museum, the US Holocaust Memorial Council has busied itself with promoting an agenda of unalloyed support for minority, Zionist ends.

The membership of the Council, a US federal agency, has been overwhelmingly Jewish since its founding in 1980. The Council's two different chairmen - Elie Wiesel and Harvey Meyerhoff - have both been committed to the support of the State of Israel, and the chairs of the Council's most important committees have been likewise Jewish and Zionist.

The chief fund-raiser for the Holocaust Museum [and later Council Chairman], Miles Lerman, was formerly American vice chairman for the State of Israel Bonds Organization, promoting tax-free investment in a country which receives by far the largest amount of US foreign aid per year. Working the same wealthy Jewish-Americans he has long dealt with in his fund-raising for Israel, Lerman has helped raise nearly $160 million in tax-deductible contributions.

The biggest donors have been rewarded by having various components of the museum named for them (e.g. the Wexner Learning Center).

Nor is erecting and operating the Museum the only function with which the Holocaust Memorial Council has been charged. Another of its duties is to commemorate the "Days of Remembrance for Victims of the Holocaust," which Congress has raised to "an annual, national, civic commemoration of the Holocaust." Like the Israeli Yom ha-Shoah ("Day of the Holocaust"), on which they are based, the Days of Remembrance are dated according to the lunar Hebrew calendar, and thus, like Passover or Chanukah, fluctuate from year to year. These foreign days of lamentation are currently celebrated, under the flag of the Republic, to prayers and chants in Hebrew, across the land in governmental settings from the Capital Rotunda to city halls.

Need it be stated that no group of American victims of persecution, let alone another foreign group, enjoys any such federally mandated and tax-supported day, or days, of recognition?

Museum's One-Sided 'History'
Although the Council during its early years made noises about recognizing the ordeals of non-Jews during the Second World War, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is relentlessly Judeocentric.

While here and there are nods to non-Jewish groups oppressed by the German National Socialists (although never to groups victimized by Germany's enemies, above all by Stalin's USSR), the larger holocaust of the Second World War, which claimed an estimated 75 to 80 million lives around the world, is ignored in preference to the Jewish ordeal. Thus, to cite just one telling example, the Museum's "Life before the Holocaust" exhibit refers strictly to Jewish life before the Holocaust. (note 5)

Where, in fact, non-Jews figure in the Museum, they figure largely as villains:

the Germans and their allies and collaborators

the Western allies, including America, who refused to accept a large immigration before the war

the American political and military leaders who refused to authorize costly bombing raids on the Auschwitz "gas chambers"

Soviet Liberators?
The Museum's message that support for Jews is the sole measure of decency during the Second World War leads to anomalies which, in an American museum raised on ground hallowed to the principles of liberty on which this republic is based, can only be called shocking.

That the victims of World War II atrocities by the Allies - massacres such as the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet slaughter of Polish prisoners at Katyn, the mass rapes carried out by the Red Army at the war's end - receive no mention is deplorable. But the Museum's treatment of the armed forces which defended Stalin's savage Soviet tyranny is nothing short of grotesque.

Communists appear in this Museum only in the guise of "resistance fighters" and "liberators." For example, the submachine gun and false papers of Samuel Weissberg, a Communist Party member who rose to high rank in a Communist guerrilla group in North France, are on honored display, no less precious a relic in the Museum's permanent exhibit than the standard heaps of shoes and hair. (note 6)

Even more unsettling is the honor given to Stalin's notorious Red Army, which compiled a bloody and shameful record of atrocities across Europe during, and after, the war.

As the US Holocaust Memorial Council's newsletter fulsomely puts it,

"Flags will hang in the museum to honor the millions of Soviet soldiers who drove Nazi forces westward and who were the first allied forces to liberate and publicize the existence of the camps."

In the words of Council chairman Meyerhoff, these martial banners of the Red tyranny have a single association:

"Much more than simply wartime memorabilia, these military artifacts are a significant contribution to memory, one that will remind future generations of the pivotal role Soviet forces played in defeating Nazism ..."

(note 7)

What must the millions of Americans originating or descending from the European nations -- Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia -- for which the Red "military artifacts" symbolize invasion, tyranny, oppression, and persecution of religion, think as they see the fierce armies of their persecutors hailed as "liberators"?

Israel in the Museum
Just as one might guess from the circumstance that the Museum's director, Jeshajahu Weinberg, and the head of its "Learning Center," Yechiam Halevy, were brought in from Israel, the Museum's treatment of the state of Israel is adulatory.

An emotive tribute to the founding of Israel is an integral part of the exhibition. That the establishment of Israel, and its expansion in subsequent wars, has meant colonial occupation and oppression for millions of the land's native Palestinians, and dispossession and exile for millions more, goes unmentioned -- another grotesquery in an American museum supposed to instruct in the dangers of intolerance and disregard of human rights.

As for the momentous collaboration between Hitler's German state and the Zionist Jewish Agency in the 1930s, which through the Ha'avara Agreement enabled the transfer of vital capital and the influx of tens of thousands of highly skilled Jewish immigrants to Palestine - that is passed over in utter silence. (note 8)
'Historical Correctness'

The Museum's skewed history is not simply a matter of one-sidedness and omission. It has further committed itself to a fixed and final interpretation of the surprisingly scanty and sometimes suspect evidence for a German policy of annihilating European Jewry, largely in gas chambers, in numbers approaching six million. This despite a considerable body of research and scholarship that has arisen over past two decades in many lands, and which contests, by academic means, the substance of the Holocaust "extermination thesis." (note 9)

That the US Holocaust Memorial Council is aware of the work of revisionist scholars is clear: the Council's literature is replete, not with substantive refutations of revisionist scholarship, but with slander and polemic. To cite one characteristic example, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter of May 1992 featured a front-page attack on Holocaust revisionism by Professor Deborah Lipstadt.

In this article, Lipstadt decried the revisionists for producing material that looked scholarly, then lauded the US Holocaust Memorial Museum as "among the most efficacious ways" of "combatting this pernicious trend," while neglecting to specify a single error of revisionist scholarship. (note 10)

While the US Holocaust Memorial Council recognizes that there is a historical debate on the Holocaust, it takes official notice of the dissenting position only to attack it.

That an American institution, supported by the taxes of all Americans, should commit itself to inflexible historical orthodoxy - in the service of a single American minority - is an intolerable imposition on our First Amendment rights, as well as a mockery of the Western, and American, ideal of objective scholarship.

A Center for Education?
Council Chairman Meyerhoff has stated:

"The Museum is primarily an educational institution."

(note 11)

From the Council's own literature, however, it is clear what Meyerhoff means by education.

the "role-playing" for children as well as adults who visit the Museum (visitors issued "identity cards" bearing the name and alleged fate of various Holocaust victims)

the high-tech computer and video effects, and the recordings of speech and music that augment the Museum's tendentiously described artifacts

the Museum's goal, as proclaimed by its Zionist fund-raising chairman, Miles Lerman, of insuring that "Children in Dubuque, families in Tucson, and schoolteachers in Atlanta will learn the history and the lessons of Auschwitz as thoroughly as they learn the history of their own communities"

...all these show that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is a propaganda enterprise that seeks to indoctrinate all Americans in a uniquely and partisanly Jewish (and Zionist) version of not merely the past, but the present and the future. (note 12)

The American Response
What is the American response to a partisan museum constructed in a place solemnly consecrated to the heroes and the values of our Republic, to be lavishly operated with taxpayer dollars at a time when, even in our country's capital, thousands sleep homeless in the shadow of our national monuments?

What is the American response to an ambitious propaganda agenda that aims to impose a sectarian "Holocaust remembrance" in schools where our children cannot pray, in town halls and federal buildings from which the religious symbols of the majority are banned in the name of freedom of worship?

Over two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

(note 13)

Nearly 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln said:

"I insist, that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions."

(note 14)

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Council that runs it, as agencies of the government in which the American people is sovereign, must be removed from the special interest that now controls it.

The scope and purpose of the Museum must be expanded, from its present one-sided emphasis on foreign Jewish sufferings, real and imagined, in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s to a compassionate yet realistic concern for all victims, but above all for American victims, of historic injustice.

The Museum must be made a place where Americans of every heritage, and scholars of every viewpoint, may gather, educate, and be educated, without accusation and in the absence of propaganda.

Until it is, the men and women who founded and built and suffered and fought and died for America, of every race, nationality and creed, will rest uneasy.

Notes

1. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter (Washington, DC), August, 1990, "Survivors Play Major Role in Establishing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum," p. 1. Meed is president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, and chairman of the Council's Content and Days of Remembrance committees.
2. In 1976, Professor Arthur Butz's book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry was first published in England; in November 1978 Professor Robert Faurisson's article, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers," was published in the Paris daily Le Monde. Professor Butz has commented on the simultaneous and independent appearance of a variety of earlier academic criticisms of the wartime propaganda version of Jewry's ordeal in "The International Holocaust Controversy," The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1980, pp. 5-22.
3. By resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 10, 1975, Zionism was condemned as "a form of racism and racial discrimination."
4. Public Law 96-388, 1, Oct. 7, 1980, 94 Stat. 1547.
5. Statements regarding the Museum's permanent exhibit, except where otherwise noted, are derived from the floor plan and photographs in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a brochure published in 1991 by the USHMC.
6. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter, "French Resistance Fighter's Weapon Will Help Tell Story of Underground Movement," Sept. 1991, p. 4.
7. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter, "Russian Embassy Presents Flags of Liberating Units to Museum," Fall 1992, p. 6.
8. For the most complete account of relations between the Nazis and the Zionists, see Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1985). See also: M. Weber, "Zionism and the Third Reich," The Journal of Historical Review, July-August 1993, pp. 29-37.
9. The most complete survey of Holocaust revisionist writings to date is Carlo Mattogno's "The Myth of the Extermination of the Jews -- Part II," in The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1988, pp. 261-302.
10. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter, May 1992, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth," p. 6.
11. US Holocaust Memorial Museum Newsletter, Nov. 1991, "Wexner Family Donates $5 Million to Fund Interactive Learning Center," p. 1.
12. The "identity cards" and other features of the Museum are described in the brochure cited in note 5, above. Lerman's statement is in a fund-raising letter mailed out by the Museum to potential Jewish contributors in 1991.
13. From "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," 1779, in Jefferson: Magnificent Populist, edited by Martin Larson, (Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair, 1981), p. 319.
14. "Speech at Peoria, Ill.," Oct. 16, 1854, in The American Intellectual Tradition, Vol. 1, edited by David Hollinger and Charles Capper (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), p. 382.

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