Holocaust Revisionism in a Nutshell:

(Bruce Hagen)

Observers of the debate about the Holocaust may come away with some grotesque misimpressions about Holocaust Revisionism from the postings that appear on the Internet, pro and con. Here is what Holocaust Revisionism is and is not:

1 - Revisionists object to the terminology "THE Holocaust," which by implication suggests it was unique, monumental, over-arching, perhaps even the central historical event of our century if not epoch. In fact there have been many holocausts over the centuries, a good portion of them in our own Twentieth century. The Jewish Holocaust is merely one of them.

From the point of view of the world as a whole it is far from the greatest
or most terrible, Hollywood to the contrary notwithstanding. A marked improvement in both accuracy and objectivity can be achieved if the term "Jewish Holocaust" is substituted for the term "THE Holocaust."

2 - Having stated the previous, it is therefore obvious that Revisionists do not "deny" the Jewish Holocaust as their critics claim. (Though of course it is understandable why those critics assert this; if, in a debate about the shape of the earth, you can successfully pin on someone the label "flat-earther," you've scored big points even if what they say is very far from the absurdity of such a posture.) Revisionists are, in fact, Holocaust DIMINISHERS, not deniers. They are questioners about what they believe are significant exaggerations in the Holocaust tale, and they are critics of the view that somehow this historical event is beyond discussion on pain of being placed in the category of child-molester or worse, shunned by society, even fined and imprisoned by some so-called free countries in the western world.

3 - Revisionists do not deny that there was much Jewish suffering during WW II, that there were many Jews who had property confiscated wrongfully, that many Jews died of disease or starvation in terrible conditions or were killed, that there were terrible brutalities and atrocities committed against Jews by Germans and others. None of this do Revisionists deny. Revisionists do diminish the impact of these facts by pointing out that WWII was the bloodiest, deadliest, most atrocity-ridden conflict in the history of man and that there was criminal behavior on all sides. One need merely mention Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the deadly carpet bombing of German and Japanese working class living areas, the Soviet rape of Germany in their 1945 advance, the treatment of German civilians and German POW's after the war. One could go on almost ad infinitum in this recitation of atrocities. Fifty million - some say sixty million - died as a result of the war. Was there more criminal behavior on one side than the other? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Many revisionists would probably tend to say no, because:

4 - Contrary to Holocaust Mythology there was no attempt by Nazis, or anyone else, to exterminate the Jews. There was an attempt, largely successful in the areas controlled by the Axis, to expel the Jews from Europe. In the context of the 1990's it was a terrible undertaking. In a different context, the context of European history over the last two millennia, the expulsion of the Jews from this region or that region was not uncommon. Historically there seems to be something about the Jews that brings forth a plenitude of animosity on the part of people amongst whom they live.

5 - What is the basis for Revisionists asserting there was no attempted genocide of the Jews? The linch-pin in this argument is simply that there were no gas chambers. None. Zero. Nada. There is NO evidence of gas chambers that an objective person can find credible. There is growing credible evidence that what purport to be the remains of gas chambers at Auschwitz, and elsewhere, are frauds - less believable than Potemkin villages. There are NO documents, NO orders, NO planning, NO blueprints, NO photographs, NO autopsies - NOTHING that is definitively or even reasonably credible to support gas chambers. It is not believable that an enterprise as massive as the extermination through gassing of six million people in two or three years in a chaotic environment would not leave behind some physical evidence, some documentary remains. And yet there isn't any. As Professor Arno Mayer, the Princeton historian (who is Jewish), has said, "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." He wouldn't make such an admission if any credible evidence existed. And he was writing in the late 1980's.

6 - What does exist - as Revisionists are as aware as anyone - are, by the tens or even hundreds of thousands, testimonies and confessions. Many, if not most, of the testimonies are preposterous, preternatural, not in keeping with the laws of the physical world. The confessions (were) typically made by persons seeking desperately to curry favor with their captors or their jailers, to save their lives and the lives of their families in the prostrate world of utterly defeated Nazi Germany. Most are "coerced" confessions, as in "sign this or we'll pull some more of your fingernails out. Or we'll turn your wife and children over to the Russians."

7. Also existing are testimonies of survivors of the concentration camps, of camp personnel, of nearby civilians who had some connection or other with the camps, testimonies which completely contradict the notion that massive extermination programs were ongoing. All of these testimonies are of course discounted and denigrated because they do not further Holocaustery. And then there are the aerial photographs made during the war by allied fly-overs of Auschwitz and other camps which lend no support whatever to the Holocaust story.

8 - Why would so many people lie? is the question invariably put to Revisionists. Some lie because it is quite profitable. There is no business like Shoah Business, said one Jewish observer some years ago in a candid moment. Others lie because it is helpful to Israel, or for any of thousands of other perfectly understandable reasons. Lying, or mythologizing, is a common human trait according to Joseph Campbell. Many others among the testifiers are not lying. They believe sincerely in what they proclaim about the gas chambers, about having seen them, about having seen the victims, about having seen the smoke rise from the stacks, etc. etc. They are "honest and true believers" (as Elizabeth Loftus would put it) in the myth because it is important to them and to the Jewish people that the myth survive. The Holocaust has become the unifying myth of modern Jewry, as we all know. Even Jews who believe in the Holocaust will admit this if they are honest. Some people believe in Jesus, some in Mohammed, some in the efficacy of crystals, some in the Jewish Holocaust Myth. Revisionists for the most part are non-believers in mythology.

9 - There were no gas chambers but there were many Jews who died or were killed. They were executed by the thousands for opposing German advances toward the east, for partisan activities connected with that opposition, for numerous other reasons. Jews by the tens of thousands died in the concentration camps of deadly epidemics of disease, they died in the latter stages of the war of starvation when Germany was collapsing. (Professor Mayer, a rare historian, has admitted many more Jews died this way than were executed.) How many died during the war? A lot. Most Revisionists would probably say half a million, perhaps as many as a million. But not six million. Too many survived the war for that number to be anything but part of the Jewish Holocaust Myth. If a million did die it was but two per cent of the total slaughter of World War II. That's the reality of the Jewish Holocaust. Two per cent. 98% of the blood bath of World War II involved other than Jews. Why, Revisionists ask, is almost the sole concentration today on Jewish deaths? Why has the Jewish Holocaust become "the" event of the 1930'S and 1940's around which all others revolve including even World War II itself?

10 - The truth about what Revisionists claim, in summary, is this:

1) The Jewish Holocaust is but one of many Holocausts even in the twentieth century;

2) There were no gas chambers and no attempt by the Germans to exterminate Jewry, expulsion being very different from extermination;

3) The common figure of six million is too large by 500% at least;

4) World War II was a slaughterhouse of unprecedented proportions for everyone involved - not just Jews, who made up perhaps 2% of the total fatalities.

In 50 or 100 years, when the Holocaust Myth has met its proper demise, what Revisionists believe today will be standard historical canon from which only cranks and religious zealots will dissent.