Daniel McGowan – What Does Holocaust Denial Really Mean?
By Guest Post • Sep 25th, 2009 at 13:29 • Category: Israel, Middle East Issues, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Zionism
In April 2007 the European Union agreed to set jail sentences up to three years for those who deny or trivialize the Holocaust.[1] More recently, in response to the remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson, the Pope has proclaimed that Holocaust denial is “intolerable and altogether unacceptable.”
But what does Holocaust denial really mean? Begin with the word Holocaust. The Holocaust[2] (spelled with a capital H) refers to the killing of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It is supposed to be the German's "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem. Much of the systematic extermination was to have taken place in concentration camps by shooting, gassing, and burning alive innocent Jewish victims of the Third Reich.
People like Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zundel, and Bishop Williamson who do not believe this account and who dare to say so in public are reviled as bigots, anti-Semites, racists, and worse. Their alternate historical scenarios are not termed simply revisionist, but are demeaned as Holocaust denial. Rudolf and Zundel were shipped to Germany where they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to three and five years, respectively.
Politicians deride Holocaust revisionist papers and conferences as "beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptable behavior."[3] Non-Zionist Jews who participate in such revisionism, like Rabbi Dovid Weiss of the Neturei Karta, are denounced as "self-haters" and are shunned and spat upon. Even Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were both Holocaust survivors and who wrote the book, The Holocaust Industry, has been branded a Holocaust denier.
But putting aside the virile hate directed against those who question the veracity of the typical Holocaust narrative, what is it that these people believe and say at the risk of imprisonment and bodily harm? For most Holocaust revisionists or deniers if you prefer, their arguments boil down to three simple contentions:
1. Hitler's "Final Solution" was intended to be ethnic cleansing, not extermination.
2. There were no homicidal gas chambers used by the Third Reich.
3. There were fewer than 6 million Jews killed of the 55 million who died in WWII.
Are these revisionist contentions so odious as to cause those who believe them to be reviled, beaten, and imprisoned? More importantly, is it possible that revisionist contentions are true, or even partially true, and that they are despised because they contradict the story of the Holocaust, a story which has been elevated to the level of a religion in hundreds of films, memorials, museums, and docu-dramas?
Is it sacrilegious to ask, "If Hitler was intent on extermination, how did Elie Wiesel, his father, and two of his sisters survive the worst period of incarceration at Auschwitz?" Wiesel claims that people were thrown alive into burning pits, yet even the Israeli-trained guides at Auschwitz refute this claim.
Is it really "beyond international discourse" to question the efficacy and the forensic evidence of homicidal gas chambers? If other myths, like making soap from human fat, have been dismissed as Allied war propaganda, why is it "unacceptable behavior" to ask if the gas chamber at Dachau was not reconstructed by the Americans because no other homicidal gas chamber could be found and used as evidence at the Nuremburg trials?
For more than fifty years Jewish scholars have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to document each Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust. The Nazis were German, obsessed with paperwork and recordkeeping. Yet only 3 million names have been collected and many of them died of natural causes. So why is it heresy to doubt that fewer than 6 million Jews were murdered in the Second World War?
"Holocaust Denial" might be no more eccentric or no more criminal than claiming the earth is flat, except that the Holocaust itself has been used as the sword and shield in the quest to build a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, where even today over half the population is not Jewish.
The Holocaust narrative allows Yad Vashem, the finest Holocaust museum in the world, to repeat the mantra of "Never Forget" while it sits on Arab lands stolen from Ein Karem and overlooking the unmarked graves of Palestinians massacred by Jewish terrorists at Deir Yassin. It allows Elie Wiesel to boast of having worked for these same terrorists (as a journalist, not a fighter) while refusing to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the war crimes his employer committed. It makes Jews the ultimate victim no matter how they dispossess or dehumanize or ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinian people.
The Holocaust narrative eliminates any comparison of Ketziot or Gaza to the concentration camps they indeed are. It memorializes the resistance of Jews in the ghettos of Europe while steadfastly denying any comparison with the resistance of Palestinians in Hebron and throughout the West Bank. It allows claims that this year’s Hanukah Massacre in Gaza, with a kill ratio of 100 to one, was a “proportionate response” to Palestinian resistance to unending occupation.
The Holocaust is used to silence critics of Israel in what the Jewish scholar, Marc Ellis, has called the ecumenical deal: you Christians look the other way while we bludgeon the Palestinians and build our Jewish state and we won't remind you that Hitler was a good Catholic, a confirmed “soldier of Christ,” long before he was a bad Nazi.
The Holocaust narrative of systematic, industrialized extermination was an important neo-conservative tool to drive the United States into Iraq. The same neo-con ideologues, like Norman Podoretz, routinely compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler and Nazism with Islamofascism with the intent of driving us into Iran. The title of the Israeli conference at Yad Vashem made this crystal clear: "Holocaust Denial: Paving the Way to Genocide."
"Remember the Holocaust" will be the battle cry of the next great clash of good (Judeo/Christian values) and evil (radical Islamic aggression) and those who question it must be demonized if not burned at the stake.
Daniel McGowan
Professor Emeritus
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY 14456
September 24, 2009
Because of admonishment by the administration, it is hereby stated that the above remarks are solely those of the author. Hobart and William Smith Colleges neither condone nor condemn these opinions. Furthermore, the author has been instructed to use his personal email address of mcgowandaniel@yahoo.com and not his college email at mcgowan@hws.edu for those wishing to contact him with comments or criticisms.
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/850644.html
[2] Holocaust. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Holocaust (accessed: February 09, 2007).
[3] http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=268474 (accessed: February 09, 2007)
Editor's note: This article is meant to contribute to the discussion of the question that opens cyclically every time Ahmadinejad makes a speech (that people run out of the room before it begins, but are able to respond afterward that it was "Holocaust Denial"). Regarding point 1 in the list, the utilisation of the ante-litteram term "ethnic cleansing" opens more questions than it resolves, as the term has been defined thus:
"Despite its recurrence, ethnic cleansing nonetheless defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an "undesirable" population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these."
Bearing in mind that genocide is included in this definition, it cannot be excluded that the "Final Solution" did not include extermination. That it was unsuccessful in what it set out to do is evident, and even in history, a trial of intention is impossible without "documentation" to substantiate it.
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Dear Friend,
FREE Chapters and Contents for New Book:
http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com
DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton, PhD
Publisher's Note: This is a non-Revisionist title for Theses & Dissertations Press. It will be the first book on the Holocaust, in publishing history, that will not take a Traditionalist or a Revisionist point of view.
http://www.amazon.com/Debating-Holocaust-Look-Both-Sides/dp/1591480051/
Founded in 2000 the publishing company Theses & Dissertations Press is at the center of a worldwide network of scholars and activists who are working — often at great personal sacrifice — to separate historical fact from propaganda fiction. The previous owner of Theses & Dissertations Press is Germar Rudolf, who has served 44 months of incarceration in Germany in recent years for his published works that can be found at this website: http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com. He will no longer be associated with Holocaust studies.
As the new director of TADP.org, I wish to express my outrage that the Holocaust, unlike any other historical event, is not subject to critical examination. Furthermore I deplore the fact that many so-called democratic states have laws that criminalize an examination and understanding of the Holocaust. It is my position that the veracity of Holocaust assertions should be determined in the marketplace of scholarly discourse and not in our legislatures bodies and courthouses.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
Great cartoon. Just one comment. Please do not use the term "Islamophobic", use "Anti-Islamic"
"Islamophobic" implies "fear" of Islam. These murderers have no fear of Islam they hae a hatred of Islam.
Also Islamophobic sounds more like Homophobic whereas anti-islamic sounds more like anti-semetic.
Any subject which "cannot be discussed" is something uniquely fascinating and ought to be discussed and researched at great length. Perhaps a thorough, modern, transparent forensic investigation into the Nazi 'death camps' would be enlightening. Account for every prisoner and guard and administrator from start to finish. Back this up with hard physical evidence. Who would benefit from greatly inflating any actual figures?
Hmm
The notion that history cannot be debated, epsecially when so much conflicting information
has surfaced, suggests to even the most casual observer, that those that cloak their
"version" of history behind the curtain of law, punishable by imprisonment, must truly live in
fear of the truth.
What the Nazis did to the Jews, so Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Punishing them for a Holocaust they had no part in or responsibility for.
But say one word regarding the influence of Jews on US politics, criticise Israel, especially for war crimes, or suggest that Holocaust was in some sense exaggerated (which demonstrably it is), and the standard response kicks in. Accusations of anti-Semitism followed by claims of Holocaust denial. And they don’t mean a river in Egypt. Some joker yesterday even claimed I'd like to see a second Holocaust. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, except perhaps for Intelligent Design. Perhaps Jesus will come down and show Hitler and the Catholic Church how it should have been done. Are banal, illogical insults really the best they have to offer? Just brings out the worst in me. Seriously, consider how much less trouble there would be in the world if the state of Israel had never existed? The price of oil, even?
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McGowan is a brave man indeed – but something he's not mentioned is that much of the popular literature about the Holocaust (in some cases earning the authors very large sums) was fraudulent, and in many cases, very obviously so.
Kozinski didn't wander alone amongst sadists and sexual perverts in Poland, he lived with his parents, protected by the very peasants (at great risk to their lives!) he later defamed so badly. Wilkomirski wasn't Jewish and spent the entire war in Switzerland. In 2008, the author of "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," (translated into 18 languages and the basis for a French movie) , "Survivre avec les Loups" ("Surviving With the Wolves"), a child wandering Eastern Europe, admitted she spent the war safely in Brussels and wasn't Jewish. In 2009 the "apple thrown over the fence" story was proved impossible just before a film of it was going to be made.
If the Holocaust memorial Industry were more than a gigantic money making scam, then other people wouldn't have to unmask these frauds.
Even if six million Jews were not killed in WWII, it seems that quite a few were killed in an objectionable way, targeted because of their perceived ethnicity. These killings have resulted in cultural pain which many in the Jewish community are still coming to terms with, just as many in the black community are still coming to terms with the cultural pain that resulted from slavery.
It seems to me that when people are objecting to Holocaust 'revisionists,' what is really being objected to is insensitivity.
The Holocaust, as with any holocaust, is an emotionally charged, deeply personal issue to many. Tone is important: sensitivity should be exercised when evaluating what 'actually' happened.
As an Orthodox Jew (not Hasidic), I want to clarify a point made in the article which is completely wrong – Rabbi Weiss of Neturei Karta is in no way a revisionist with respect to the mass slaughter of Jews during WWII. Pro-Israel and Pro-Zionists do try to portray Neturei Karta in as negative a light as possible, because they take an Anti-Zionist position and attended the "Holocaust Conference" in Iran. But what Zionists fail to mention is that the Neturei Karta attended the conference and spoke (yes, there are videos and transcripts which obviously show the pro-Zionists lying and misleading people) out and specifically were telling the attendees that the slaughter did occur during WWII – no if, ands or buts about it. There is no revisionism being done by Rabbi Weiss or Neturei Karta – it's sad that the only way Zionists can defend their justification for the State of Israel is by lying at every opportunity they have.
the killing of people regardless of their race or creed is a shamelessly despicable act. the numbers of jews who died in world war II may be subject to debate, but what is beyond doubt is that jews were targeted by nazi germany for anihilation, sixty years down the road, jews have kept reminding the world how dangerous it is to punish people simply because they belong to a certain race, creed or religeon. some may think that the holocaust is nolonger some thing relevant to teach the future generations about and for some reason (political, religeous or ideological) have chosen to deny it ever occurred. the world at large and the middle east in particular will never be able to realise and enjoy meaningful peace and prosperity for as long as we naively accept to have these kind of people as our leaders.