Criminal Prosecution of "Holocaust Denial"
By Barbara Kulaszka
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.
Hoess Testimony
One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Hoess, 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 Hoess' 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) Hoess' 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 -- Hoess
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. Hoess 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 disinfestation 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 disinfestation
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 Hoess 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
- Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992.
- Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military
Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496.
- IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496.
- Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish
Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
- Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992.
- See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the
Evidence in the Canadian "False News" Trial of Ernst Zuendel
(Toronto: Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349.
- "The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986,
p. 294.
- B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-25.
- A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution"
in History (Pantheon, 1988), p. 365.
- Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39,
pp. 241, 261.
- B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441.
- 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.
- J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires 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.
- IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 485; Nuremberg document 3868-PS
(USA-819), in IMT "blue series," Vol. 33, pp. 275-279.
- Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-237; C. Hitchens,
"Whose History is it?," Vanity Fair (New York), Dec. 1993, p.
117.
- See: R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confession of
Rudolf Hoess," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp.
389-403.
- A deluxe edition of The Leuchter Report is available from the IHR for
$20.00, plus $2.00 shipping.
- The complete text of this report was published in English in The Journal
of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
- 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.
- "The 'Lueftl Report'," The Journal of Historical Review,
Winter 1992-93.
We wish to acknowledge that the above article was made available
courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review.
Institute For Historical Review
Post Office Box 2739
Newport Beach, California 92659
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