- I see three principal reasons for the widespread but
erroneous belief in the legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans
during World War II: US and British troops found horrible piles of corpses
in the west German camps they captured in 1945 (e.g. Dachau and Belsen),
there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland, and historians
generally support the legend.
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- During both world wars Germany was forced to fight typhus,
carried by lice in the constant traffic with the east. That is why all
accounts of entry into the German concentration camps speak of shaving
of hair and showering and other delousing procedures, such as treatment
of quarters with the pesticide Zyklon. That was also the main reason for
a high death rate in the camps, and the crematoria that existed in all.
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- When Germany collapsed in chaos then of course all such
defenses ceased, and typhus and other diseases became rampant in the camps,
which quartered mainly political prisoners, ordinary criminals, homosexuals,
conscientious objectors, and Jews conscripted for labor. Hence the horrible
scenes, which however had nothing to do with "extermination"
or any deliberate policy. Moreover the west German camps involved were
not the alleged "extermination camps", which were all in Poland
(e.g. Auschwitz and Treblinka) and which were all evacuated or shut down
before capture by the Soviets, who found no such scenes.
-
- The "Final Solution" spoken of in the German
documents was a program of evacuation, resettlement and deportation of
Jews with the ultimate objective of expulsion from Europe. During the war
Jews of various nationalities were being moved east, as one stage in this
Final Solution. The legend claims that the motion was mainly for extermination
purposes.
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- The great majority of the millions allegedly exterminated
were east European, not German or west European, Jews. For that reason
study of the problem via population statistics has been difficult to impossible,
but it is a fact that there are no longer large communities of Jews in
Poland. However the Germans were only one of several parties involved in
moving Jews around. The Soviets deported virtually all of the Jews of eastern
Poland to their interior in 1940. After the war, with Polish and other
Jews pouring out of the east into occupied west Germany, the Zionists moved
large numbers to Palestine, and the US and other countries absorbed many
Jews, in most cases under conditions making impossible a numerical accounting.
Moreover the Polish borders were changed drastically at the end of the
war; the country was literally moved west.
-
- Historians generally support the legend, but there are
precedents for nearly incomprehensible blindness on the part of scholars.
For example throughout the Middle Ages even the Pope's political enemies
conceded his false claim that the 4th century Emperor Constantine had ceded
rule of the west to the Pope, although all knew very well that Constantine
had been succeeded by more emperors. Near unanimity among the academics
is especially suspect when there exist great political pressures; in some
countries Holocaust revisionists have been prosecuted.
-
- It is easy to show that the extermination legend merits
skepticism. Even the casual reader of the Holocaust literature knows that
during the war virtually nobody acted as though it was happening. Thus
it is common to berate the Vatican, the Red Cross and the Allies (especially
the intelligence agencies) for their ignorance and inaction, and to explain
that the Jews generally did not resist deportation because they did not
know what was in store for them. If you add all this up you have the strange
claim that for almost three years German trains, operating on a continental
scale in densely civilized regions of Europe, were regularly and systematically
moving millions of Jews to their deaths, and nobody noticed except for
a few of our Jewish leaders who were making public "extermination"
claims.
-
- On closer examination even those few Jewish leaders were
not acting as though it was happening. Ordinary communications between
the occupied and neutral countries were open, and they were in contact
with the Jews whom the Germans were deporting, who thus could not have
been in ignorance of "extermination" if those claims had any
validity.
-
- This incredible ignorance must also be attributed to
Hans Oster's department in German military intelligence, correctly labelled
"the veritable general staff of the opposition to Hitler" in
a recent review.
-
- What we are offered in evidence was gathered after the
war, in trials. The evidence is almost all oral testimony and "confessions".
Without the evidence of these trials there would be no significant evidence
of "extermination". One must pause and ponder this carefully.
Were trials needed to determine that the Battle of Waterloo happened? The
bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The slaughter in
Cambodia? Yet this three year program, of continental scope, claiming millions
of victims, requires trials to argue its reality. I am not arguing that
the trials were illegal or unfair; I am arguing that such historical logic
as the legend rests on must not be countenanced. Such events cannot happen
without generating commensurate and contemporaneous evidence for their
reality, just as a great forest fire cannot take place without producing
smoke. One may as well believe that New York City was burned down, if confessions
to the deed can be produced.
-
- Detailed consideration of the specific evidence put forward
in support of the legend has been a focus of the revisionist literature
and cannot be undertaken here, but I shall mention one point. The claim
of the legend is that there were no technical means provided for the specific
task of extermination, and that means originally provided for other purposes
did double duty in improvised arrangements. Thus the Jews were allegedly
gassed with the pesticide Zyklon, and their corpses disappeared into the
crematoria along with the deaths from "ordinary" causes (the
ashes or other remains of millions of victims never having been found).
-
- Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical.
-
- -- Arthur R. Butz is an associate professor of electrical
engineering.
-
- (end of article)
-
- A lengthier presentation of the ideas found here are
in my 1982 article Context and Perspective in the "Holocaust"
Controversy.
-
- http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/context/context.html
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- Go to original for the links: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html
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