AAARGH
Tout a commencé avec cet article de Christopher Hitchens:
1/
THE HOLOCAUST ON TRIAL By D.D. Guttenplan; W.W. Norton: 328 pp.,
$24.95
WHEN the first news of the Nazi camps was published in 1945, there
were those who thought the facts might be exaggerated either by
Allied war propaganda or by the human tendency to relish "atrocity
stories." In his column in the London magazine Tribune, George
Orwell wrote that though this might be so, the speculation was
not exactly occurring in a vacuum. If you remember what the Nazis
did to the Jews before the war, he said, it isn't that difficult
to imagine what they might do to them during one. In one sense,
the argument over "Holocaust denial" ends right there.
The National Socialist Party seized power in 1933, proclaiming
as its theoretical and organizing principle the proposition that
the Jews were responsible for all the world's ills, from capitalist
profiteering to subversive Bolshevism. By means of oppressive
legislation, they began to make all of Germany Judenrein, or "Jew-free."
Jewish businesses were first boycotted and then confiscated. Jewish
places of worship were first vandalized and then closed. Wherever
Nazi power could be extended -- to the Rhineland, to Austria and
to Sudeten Czechoslovakia -- this pattern of cruelty and bigotry
was repeated. (And, noticed by few, the state killing of the mentally
and physically "unfit," whether Jewish or "Aryan,"
was tentatively inaugurated.) After the war broke out, Hitler
was able to install puppet governments or occupation regimes in
numerous countries, each of which was compelled to pass its own
version of the anti-Semitic "Nuremberg Laws." Most ominous
of all -- and this in plain sight and on camera, and in full view
of the neighbors -- Jewish populations as distant as Salonika
were rounded up and put on trains, to be deported to the eastern
provinces of conquered Poland. None of this is, even in the remotest
sense of the word, "deniable." Nor is the fact that,
once the war was over, surviving Jews found that they had very
few family members left. The argument only begins here, and it
takes two forms. First, what exactly happened to the missing ones?
Second, why did it occur? The first argument is chiefly forensic
and concerns numbers and methods: the physical engineering of
shooting, gassing, burial and cremation. The second argument is
a debate among historians and is known as the "intentionalist
versus functionalist" dispute. The "intentionalists"
say that Hitler and his gang were determined from the start to
extirpate all Jews and that everything from 1933 to 1945 is a
vindication of certain passages in "Mein Kampf." The
"functionalists" point out (correctly) that the Nazis
actually killed almost no Jews until after 1941 and that the Endlosung,
or "Final Solution," was a semi-secret plan evolved
after Germany began to lose the war on the Eastern front. On this
continuum, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, with his view that Germans
had a cultural gene of anti-Semitism, is an extreme "intentionalist";
Yehudah Bauer, of the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, is a moderate
"functionalist." Differences of opinion between these
two schools, and discrepancies in the evidence, have recently
permitted the emergence of something that is more of a phenomenon
than a "school," by which I mean the movement of "Holocaust
denial" or (because it consists of two contrasting tendencies)
"Holocaust revisionism." This movement contains some
Nazi revivalists in Germany and elsewhere, some crackpots and
conspiracy theorists and one practicing historian, an Englishman
named David Irving. Among revisionist forces there is even more
confusion; they either argue that nothing much happened at all
and that the whole thing is a fabrication or they maintain that
the unforgettable piles of corpses were the result of epidemics,
to be blamed on the disruption of food and medical supplies by
Allied bombing. (It will be seen at once that this latter faction
has no good explanation for why the Jews of Europe were packed
into remote camps in the first place.) The toxicity of the argument
is increased by four other factors. First, there are those who
maintain that the German people have been blamed enough and that
endless suggestions of collective guilt -- accompanied by incessant
demands for compensation -- are an insult and possibly a provocation.
Second, there are those who resent the exploitation of the Holocaust,
or Shoah, by extreme Israeli nationalists. Third, there is a collective
awareness that neither the international community nor organized
Jewry did much to help the victims when it could have made a difference.
Finally, in many countries, including Germany and France, it is
actually a crime to dispute the established version of events,
which means that the "revisionist" movement now has
its free-speech martyrs. While in the United States, protected
as it is by the First Amendment, the Holocaust has become a secular
religion, with state support in the form of a national museum.
Accusations of ill will or bad faith are often made against anyone
with reservations about the elevation of this project into something
combining a cult, an entertainment resource and an industry, each
claiming to represent the unvoiced dead. Indeed, I myself feel
constrained to state here that my mother's family is of German
and Polish Jewish provenance and that on my wife's side we have
not just an Auschwitz "survivor" in our lineage but
a man -- David Szmulewski -- who was one of the leaders of the
communist resistance in the camps as well as one of those who
smuggled evidence out of it and later testified against the war
criminals in court. I look forward to a time when I won't feel
any need to mention this. I was raised in two other traditions
as well, however. The first was to believe, with the late Karl
Popper, that a case has not been refuted until it has been stated
at its strongest. The second was to take it for granted that historians
have prejudices. To manifest the first point, then, let us summarize
the best case that the revisionists can make. Would it surprise
you to know that: 1) there were no gas chambers or extermination
camps on German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald;
2) there were no Jews made into soap; 3) the "confession"
of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, was extracted by force
and contains his claim to have killed more Jews than was "humanly"
possible? These are, however, the now-undisputed findings of all
historians and experts on the subject. [We underline -- aaargh]
And if they are sound, then it means that much "eyewitness"
testimony is wrong. It necessarily changes our attitude toward
the everyday complicity of average Germans. It also means that
much of the evidence presented and accepted at Nuremburg (left)
was spurious. Of course, we knew some of this already -- the Nazis
were charged by Soviet and Allied judges with the massacres at
Katyn in Poland, which had obviously been ordered by Stalin and
are now admitted to have been. And every now and then, a bogus
Holocaust merchant makes an appearance. The most recent was the
fantasist "Binjamin Wilkomirski" whose book, "Fragments,"
was a whole-cloth fabrication by someone who had spent the entire
war in Switzerland. This did not prevent him from receiving several
awards and the warm endorsement of Goldhagen. Earlier, a high
Israeli court found the evidence of witnesses useless, ruling
that John Demjanjuk had not been at Treblinka in the mythical
shape of "Ivan the Terrible."
THE confrontation between Irving and the consensus was therefore
long overdue. He forced the confrontation himself, by putting
his own work on trial in attempting to sue the work of another.
But it was high time to have this out in public, in the relatively
objective context of an English courtroom. And so to my second
observation, about bias and historians. History, especially as
written by historians in the English tradition, is a literary
and idiosyncratic form. Men such as Gibbon and Macaulay and Marx
were essayists and polemicists in the grand manner, and when I
was at school, one was simply not supposed to be prissy about
the fact. We knew that Macaulay wrote to vindicate the Whig school,
just as we knew of the prejudices of Carlyle (though there were
limits: Nobody ever let us read his "Occasional Discourse
on the Nigger Question," a robustly obscene defense of slavery).
Handing me a copy of "What Is History?" by E.H. Carr,
my Tory headmaster loftily told me that it was required reading
in spite of its "rather obvious Marxist bias." The master
of my Oxford college was Christopher Hill, the great chronicler
of Cromwell and Milton and Winstanley and the Puritan Revolution.
Preeminent in his field, Hill had been a member of the Communist
Party and could still be slightly embarrassed by mention of his
early book, "Lenin and the Russian Revolution," in which
the name of Leon Trotsky was conspicuous by its absence. Moving
closer to our own time, we had Sir Arthur Bryant, whose concept
of history as a pageant culminated in extreme royalism and a strong
sympathy for Franco and Mussolini and Hitler. Then there was A.J.P.
Taylor, one of the most invigorating lecturers of all time, who
believed that the Nazis had more or less been tricked into the
war. And how can one forget Hugh Trevor-Roper, author of the definitive
narrative of Hitler's final days, who had close connections to
British intelligence, who might be overheard making faintly anti-Jewish
remarks and later pronounced the forged Hitler diaries genuine?
These were men who had been witnesses and participants as well
as archivists and chroniclers. Their accounts were essential reading;
the allowance for prejudice and inflection was part of the fun
of one's bookkeeping. This of course doesn't license absolute
promiscuity. Eric Hobsbawm, a member of the Communist Party (much
later than Hill), may have advertised his allegiances but retained
the respect of most critics because he had a strong sense of objectivity
in his historical work. In other words, no dirty tricks were to
be allowed. However, what I mean to say for now is that when I
first became aware of Irving, I did not feel it necessary to react
like a virgin who is suddenly confronted by a man in a filthy
raincoat. That he had a sneaking sympathy for fascism was obvious
enough. But his work on the bombing of Dresden, on the inner functioning
of the Churchill government and on the mentality of the Nazi generals
was invaluable. He changed sides on the issue of the Hitler diaries,
but his intervention was crucial to their exposure as a pro-Nazi
fabrication. His knowledge of the German language was the envy
of his rivals. His notorious flaunting of bad taste and his gallows
humor were not likely to induce cardiac arrest in anyone like
myself, who had seen many Oxford and Cambridge history dons when
they were fighting drunk. While helping to edit the New Statesman
in 1981, I encouraged the American historian Kai Bird, now a distinguished
student of the Cold War, to analyze Irving's work. Bird turned
in a meticulous essay, which exposed Irving's obvious prejudice
and incidentally trashed his least-known and worst book -- a history
of the 1956 Hungarian uprising that characterized the revolt as
a rebellion of sturdy Magyar patriots against shifty Jewish Communists.
Irving briefly threatened to sue and then thought better of it.
In the early 1990s, he took part in a public debate with the extreme
denier Robert Faurisson, at which he maintained that there was
definite evidence of mass extermination at least by shooting (and
gratuitously added that he thought the original Nazi plan to isolate
all Jews in Madagascar was probably a good scheme). I noted this
with interest -- there's nothing like a good faction fight between
extremists -- but had no contact with him, direct or indirect,
until he self-published in England his biography of Josef Goebbels
in 1996. This book is still on my shelf. I read it initially because
St. Martin's Press in New York decided not to publish it, or rather,
decided to breach its contract to do so. This action on its part
was decisive, in that it convinced Irving that his enemies were
succeeding in denying him a livelihood, and it determined him
to sue someone as soon as he could. It was also important in that
St. Martin's gave no reason of historical accuracy for its about-face.
For the publisher, it was a simple question of avoiding unpleasantness
("Profiles in Prudence," as its senior editor Thomas
Dunne put it to me ruefully). Well, as I say, I'm a big boy and
can bear the thought of being offended. The biography, based largely
on extracts from Goebbels' diaries, told me a great deal I hadn't
known. I'll instance a small but suggestive example. Irving had
in the past been associated with the British fascist movement
led by Sir Oswald Mosley. In my hot youth, I'd protested at some
of the meetings of this outfit and had circulated the charge that,
before the war, it had been directly financed by the Nazis. This
charge was always hotly disputed by the Mosleyites themselves,
but here was Goebbels, in cold print, discussing the transfer
of funds from Berlin to the British Black Shirts. On the old principle
famously adumbrated by Bertrand Russell -- of "evidence against
interest" -- it seemed that Irving was capable of publishing
information that undermined his own position. He also, in his
editorial notes, gave direct testimony about the mass killing
of Jews in the East (by shooting) and of the use of an "experimental"
gas chamber in the Polish town of Chelmno. The "deniers"
don't like this book; on the strength of it you could prove that
the Nazis tried to do away with the Jews. There was some odd stuff
about Hitler's lack of responsibility for Kristallnacht but, as
I say, I allowed for Irving's obsessions. I wrote a column criticizing
St. Martin's for its cowardice and described Irving himself as
not just a fascist historian but a great historian of fascism.
One should be allowed to read "Mein Kampf" as well as
Heidegger. Allowed? One should be able to do so without permission
from anybody. As a result of this, Irving contacted me when he
was next in Washington, and I invited him to my home for a cocktail.
He got off to a shaky start by refusing any alcohol or tobacco
and by presenting me with two large blue-and-white stickers. Exactly
the size of a German street sign, they were designed to be pasted
over the originals at dead of night. "Rudolf Hess Platz,"
they said; a practical-joke accessory for German extremists with
that especial sense of humor. Because they were intended to shock,
I tried to look as unshocked as I could. Irving then revealed,
rather fascinatingly, that some new documents from the Eichmann
family might force him to reconsider his view that there had been
no direct order for the annihilation of the Jews. It was a rather
vertiginous atmosphere all around. When it came time for him to
leave, my wife and daughter went down in the elevator with him
on their own way out. Later, my wife rather gravely asked me if
I would mind never inviting him again. This was highly unlike
her; we have all sorts at our place. However, it transpired that,
while in the elevator, Irving had looked with approval at my fair-haired,
blue-eyed daughter, then 5 years old, and declaimed the following
doggerel about his own little girl, Jessica, who was the same
age:
I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian;
I have no plans to marry
an Ape or Rastafarian.
The thought of Carol and Antonia in a small space with this large
beetle-browed man as he spouted that was, well, distinctly creepy.
(He has since posted the lines on his Web site, and they came
back to haunt him at the trial.) The next time Irving got in touch
with me was after his utter humiliation in court, and I thought
I'd give him one last chance -- though I arranged to meet him
in a neutral restaurant this time. I wanted to know if it was
true, as I had read in the press, that he had abruptly addressed
the judge in the case as "Mein Fuhrer." With some plausibility,
he explained to me that this was a misunderstanding; he had been
quoting from the slogans shouted at a rally he was addressing
in Germany and had glanced up at the bench at the wrong moment.
The transcript of the trial seemed to make this interpretation
possible. So when telephoned by my friend Ian Buruma, who was
writing on the case for The New Yorker, I suggested that he might
check it out. He called me back with the information that, when
he had asked Irving directly about the incident, Irving had taken
him into confidence and said, "Actually, I did say it."
At this point I finally decided that anyone joining a Fair Play
for Irving Committee was up against a man with some kind of death
wish.
"THE Holocaust on Trial" and "Lying About Hitler"
make that very point in widely differing ways. Like me, D.D. Guttenplan
is full of contempt for the censorship of Irving and quite prepared
to consider the idea that the Holocaust has been exploited and
even distorted. However, Guttenplan became disgusted by Irving's
alternately bullying and ingratiating style and by his repeated
failure to make good on his historical claims. His account of
the courtroom confrontation, most vividly the confrontation between
Irving and the Dutch expert on the mechanics of Auschwitz, Robert
Jan van Pelt, could hardly be bettered. He also provides a masterly
guide to the byways of English law, especially the grossly biased
and oppressive law of libel that Irving hoped to enlist on his
side. This in itself has led to an intriguing subplot, with Richard
J. Evans' London publishers abandoning his book, "Lying About
Hitler," because of their own pusillanimous fear of a libel
suit and with Evans giving Guttenplan a rather dismissive review
in a London newspaper. The issue before the court, says Evans
(left), was not whether the Holocaust occurred but whether Irving
is a fabricator. Of course that is formally true, but to my mind,
Guttenplan rather beautifully shows it to be a distinction without
a difference. Justice Gray, presiding, expressed the repeated
hope that the case would not involve revisiting Auschwitz, but
he had to "go there" all the same before the case was
fully heard. It could not have been otherwise. As Raul Hilberg
once phrased it, at Auschwitz history was destroyed at the same
time that history was made. The question cannot be approached
from the standpoint of truth without accepting this contradiction.
As an expert witness at the trial, however, Evans was quite devastating.
"Lying About Hitler" is essentially an expanded version
of his affidavit, and it redraws the whole terrain of the argument.
No longer are we faced merely with the question of Irving's elementary
right to speak or be published. We are invited to see if he deserves
the title of historian at all. Evans' method is quite a simple
one. He shows, first, that there are a number of errors, omissions
and unsupported assertions in Irving's work. Now, this might be
true of any historian, and there were indeed some distinguished
academic practitioners in the witness box who maintained that
no narrative is or can be free from error. However, what if, as
Evans said under cross-examination:
"There is a difference between, as it were, negligence, which is random in its effects, i.e. if you are a sloppy or bad historian, the mistakes you make will be all over the place. They will not actually support any particular point of view .... On the other hand, if all the mistakes are in the same direction in the support of a particular thesis, then I do not think that is mere negligence. I think that is a deliberate manipulation and deception."
Evans' knowledge, both of the period and
of the German language, are of an order to rival Irving's. He
has little difficulty in showing that there are suspicious mistranslations,
suggestive ellipses and, worst of all, some tampering with figures:
in other words, that Irving knowingly inflates the death toll
in the Allied bombing of Dresden while deflating it in the camps
and pits to the East. And, yes, all the "mistakes" have
the same tendency. In a crucial moment, Irving "forgot"
what he had said about Nazi Gen. Walter Bruns, who had confessed
to witnessing mass killing of Jews and had been taped by British
intelligence while doing so. When it suited Irving to claim that
Bruns didn't know he was being recorded, he claimed as much. When
it didn't, he suggested that Bruns was trying to please his hearers.
Having listened myself to Irving discuss this fascinating episode,
I mentally closed the book when I reached this stage in it. It
was a QED. Irving has long been notorious for his view that Hitler
never gave any order for the Final Solution and that there is
no irrefutable document authorizing it. In court, he was unpardonably
flippant on this point, saying airily that perhaps, like some
of Richard Nixon's subordinates, a few of the rougher types imagined
they knew what would please the boss. This argument has always
struck me as absurd on its face in both cases, but Evans simply
reduces it to powder. It's not too much to say that by the end
of the trial, the core evidence for the Holocaust had been tested
and found to be solid. The matter of Irving's reputation as scholar
and researcher -- which was the ostensible subject of the hearing
-- was so much "collateral damage." It would be tempting
to summarize this as a near morality tale, in which the truth
emerges as the stainless winner over bigotry and falsification.
However, the conflict is not conducted in quite such hygienic
conditions. Irving did not publish a series of books on the Nazi
era that were exposed as propaganda by a magisterial review from
Evans. That's the way things are supposed to happen but rarely
do. Instead, the efforts of a few obsessive outsiders have sharpened
the orthodox debate between intentionalists and functionalists
and also provoked a grand crisis in the "Holocaust denial"
milieu, which now subdivides yet again between those who see Irving
as a martyr and those who see him as a conscious, dedicated agent
of Zionism who let down the team. I myself learned a good deal,
about both the subject and the author, by becoming involved on
the periphery of this debate. I still regard it as ridiculous
that Irving's books are almost impossible to obtain in the homeland
of the First Amendment. This culture has assumed several great
responsibilities. It sponsored the Nuremberg trials, with all
their peaks and troughs of evidence. It has elevated the Holocaust
into a universal moral example. It is the chief international
guarantor of the state of Israel, at whatever proper size of territory
or jurisdiction over others that that state turns out to possess.
And it is the home -- on the basis of equality -- of the most
flourishing Jewish community in history. Given this quadrilateral
of historical commitments, there can be no prohibition of any
voice whatever. One asks only, as one must ask with all morally
serious arguments, that those entering the arena be transparent
as regards motive and scrupulous as regards evidence. Irving's
contribution to this very outcome is an amazing instance of the
workings of unintended consequence.
Christopher Hitchens is a
Columnist for Vanity Fair and the Nation and the Author most recently
ofThe Trial of Henry Kissinger .
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 20, 2001.
<http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Print-X!ArticleDetail-33710,00.html>
Aussitôt, Zinzin, l'allumé de la BNF, saute
en piste
2/
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 09:59:21 -0500
Sender: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust
<H-HOLOCAUST@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: LA Times book review (Karmasyn)
From: Gilles Karmasyn <gilkarm@worldnet.fr>
Hello,
Stephen Esrati <steve@esrati.com> wrote
>There is a very fine review by Christopher Hitchins in the
Los
>Angeles Times of _The Holocaust on Trial_ by D.D. Guttenplan.
The
>book is about the Irving libel trial.
>It is available on line at http://www.all-links.com/cgi-bin/newscentral/frameit/FrameIt.pl?url=http://w>ww.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/California/Cities/Los_Angeles/News_and_Media/Newspapers/Los_Angeles_Times/
>You must use the entire URL.
I could access it more easily there:
http://www.latimes.com/print/books/20010520/t000042177.html
Christopher Hitchens' review has several serious defects. The
main one is that he buys and sells deniers' lies and manipulations.
A bad start when dealing with holocaust denier David Irving.
Hitchens writes:
Would it surprise you to know that:
1) there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on German
soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald;
2) there were no Jews made into soap;
3) the "confession" of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz,
was extracted by force and contains his claim to have killed more
Jews than was "humanly" possible?
Point 1 is very well known as a falsification of Martin Broszat's
1960 article, where he said that the Dachau gas chamber was not
used,
and that there were no gas chambers in Bergen Belsen or in
Buchenwald. Holocaust deniers pretend that that meant that Broszat
said there had been no gas chambers on the "*old* Reich soil"
(Hitchens seems to have forgot the "old reich" flavour
of the lie.
Maybe he doesn't know that Auschwitz belonged to the Great Reich).
This is a lie. Broszat never said such a thing. You'll find a
study
(in french) of the Broszat article and the way deniers falsify
it
there: http://www.phdn.org/negation/broszat.html and in german,
there: http://www.h-ref.de/ar/amay/broszat.shtml
Why does Christopher Hitchens repeat that lie?
Has he not heard of Ravensbruck, Neuengamme,
Orianenbourg-Sachsenhausen? Maybe he heard about Mauthausen (but
then, Mauthausen was in Austria...)
Point 2 has been treated by John Drobniki on Nizkor at this adress:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/soap-01.html
(It has also been adressed in french, there:
http://www.phdn.org/negation/savon.html).
Most important: no
*historian* (with one minor exception) has pretended that Jews
were
made into soap. The fact that Jews corpses were not systematically
used to manufacture soap is *no news* for historians.
Why does Christopher Hitchens implies, like the holocaust deniers
do,
that "Soap made with jews" is widely accepted,?
Point 3 is a common denier lie: pretending that Hoess has been
tortured into admitting the mass murder of the Jews in Auschwitz.
See
for example:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand/on-torture
Why does Christopher Hitchens repeat that lie?
Why does Hitchens implies that, somehow, Irving (or Holocaust
deniers?) helped in undescovering these "facts", when
in fact those
points are either lies or fraudulent presentations?
The anwser seems pretty obvious to me: Hitchens was exposed to
those
deniers' manipulations and he didn't do his homework. This kind
of
neglect is generally of no importance. But in the case of holocaut
denial, it always bring the lazy people to buy the deniers' lies.
Hitchens complains that he can't find Irving's books but gives
the
very proof that he is unable to judge them critically, or any
denier's claim, with his repeating of 3 classical examples of
Holocaust deniers' manipulations.
Hitchens article does not seem "fine" to me. But it
*is* remarquable.
Charles Taylor's review on salon.com
(http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/23/irving/index.html),
appears to be much more lucid about the whole thing.
Gilles Karmasyn
On voit que Zinzin veut absolument croire à TOUTES les
salades, et s'il accepte d'en rejeter quelques-unes, il affirme
que les historiens n'y ont jamais prêté de crédit.
Il nage en pleine confusion.
3/ Niall
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 13:44:26 -0500
<H-HOLOCAUST@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: LA Times book review (McNamara)
From: Niall McNamara <niallmcnamara@eircom.net>
As a newcomer and non-expert on the Holocaust, I feel that Gilles
Karmasyn has been somewhat unfair to Christopher Hitchen for his
widely reproduced review of the book, "The Holocaust on Trial"
by D.D. Guttenplan, which has appeared in the LA Times and many
other newspapers. In detailing three relatively minor issues upon
which some confusion does exist, much of the flavour of Hitchen's
review has been needlessly lost. On the three points Karmasyn
centre's his attention on I think many people feel the following
sentiments:
1. Many people today do still assume that soap was made from the
fat of the victims of Nazi exterminations. This had been unchallenged
for some time and genuine confusion thus arose.
2. On concentration camps, the use of Auschwitz as a death-camp
in the east allowed the Nazi's policy on racial hygiene to be
implemented away from attention of the world; or that is what
the Nazi's and their collaborators incorrectly thought. Whether
Jews and others were murdered within the "old" or the
so-called "Greater Reich" with its extended borders,
got by force, should not be let blur the reality of what happened.
It is not a surprise that mass-shootings of Jews took place in
Russia.
3. Hoess and other Nazis were tortured and inaccuracies in their
statements, where they exist, cannot be overlooked. Rather, such
anomalies should be answered in a scholarly fashion.
Hitchen's is not intellectually lazy nor is he someone who refuses
to believe in the Holocaust. I thought it was a very good informative
review written in an attentive way.
Regards,
Niall McNamara
4/ Esrati vieux dur à cuire zolo
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 13:41:36 -0500
Reply-To: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust
Subject: re; Hitchens' "denials" (Esrati)
From: Stephen Esrati <steve@esrati.com>
I read the Hitchens piece and found it a fair and precise review
of
the Guttenplan book, which is about David Irving's beliefs. It
is a
very long review. I do not agree with Karmasyn's view that would
make Hitchens appear as a Holocaust denier because I took it to
mean that Hitchens was trying to show what deniers think and how
they think. I did not take these three points to mean that Hitchens
believed that these three points were new or that they were necessarily
true.
I, myself, have found the level of ignorance about the Holocaust
to
be tremendous. I usually ask people while trying to sell my novel,
COMRADES, AVENGE US, if they knew that there were American prisoners
of war in extermination camps, whether they knew that the SS killed
Canadian POWs on Juno beach, whether they knew about the Counter-Intelligence
Corps' "rat line," which smuggled war criminals into
the United States. Most people don't know and think my book made
it all up.
Thus, I do not find it surprising that Hitchens' used these examples
as the lede for his article. I would have done something similar.
5/ Retour du zinzineur
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 09:56:20 -0500
From: Gilles Karmasyn <gilkarm@worldnet.fr>
Hello,
I will adress here the answers of Stephen Esrati and Niall McNamara
about my critics to Christopher Hitchens' article.
I must state that I *am* concentrating on Hitchens' 3 points
statement, because, as I said before, it seems to me *remarquable*.
Maybe Hitchens' article provides some good points, but we cannot
ignore this *major* flaw: Hitchens is buying and selling three
classical examples of Holocaust deniers' lies and manipulations.
Hitchens' article, and Hitchens' approach is disqualified by this
scandalous presentation.
Let me remind what Hitchens wrote (a little bit more complete
than
what I cited before):
To manifest the first point, then, let us summarize the
best case that the revisionists can make.
Would it surprise you to know that:
1) there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on
German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or
Buchenwald;
2) there were no Jews made into soap;
3) the "confession" of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of
Auschwitz, was extracted by force and contains his
claim to have killed more Jews than was "humanly"
possible?
(To read a short analysis of these lies and manipulations with
references to longer rebuttals, see my previous article. It can
be
accessed via the following URL:
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010528)
Stephen Esrati writes:
I do not agree with Karmasyn's view that would make
Hitchens appear as a Holocaust denier because I took it
to mean that Hitchens was trying to show what deniers
think and now they think. I did not take these three
points to mean that Hitchens believed that these three
points were new or that they were necessarily true.
First, I must strongly oppose any view that would imply that I
suggested that Hitchens could appear as a holocaust denier. On
the
contrary: what I stated was that he has been the victim of holocaust
deniers. What I suggested and still suggest is that he was their
victim out of lazyness and neglect. I do hold Hitchens as beeing
responsable for his blindness.
Second, it is utterly *false* to believe that Hitchens was ONLY
trying to provide three examples of deniers's thoughts. Sure Hitchens
writes that those points are the "best case that the revisionists
can
make". But after the above cited three points, he states
very clearly
that he agrees with those points. he writes (emphasis mine):
These are, however, the NOW-UNDISPUTED findings of all
HISTORIANS and experts on the subject. And if they are
sound, then it means that much "eyewitness" testimony
is wrong.
The first point is NOT a "now-undisputed finding". It
is a
lie, a gross distorsion of what a real historian said. As
is the third point. As for the second point, historians
*never* bought the soap story. It is a gross
misrepresentation of the historiography and of the history
of the historian knowledge of the Holocaust to pretend that
the fact that jewish bodies were not used to manufacture
soap is, NOW, an undisputed finding of all historians. It
was never considered as a fact by historians. I gave all
the relevant URLs in my previous article
(http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010528). None of the three
points are either recent, or "findings", or even true
for some of them.
Hitchens does believe that the 3 points making this "best
case that the revisionists can make" are true. Hitchens
falsely states that historians NOW agree with those three
points. His very words contradict Stephen Esrati's these. I
think I had every reason to write that Hitchens buys and
sells Holocaust denier's manipulations.
The more so when he goes straight into abjection and writes:
And if they are sound, then it means that MUCH
"eyewitness" testimony is wrong.
This is a scandalous and vicious attack on witnesses. Using deniers
lies, Hitchens implies that MUCH "eyewitness" testimony
is wrong.
Just like the Holocaust deniers. And just like Holocaust deniers,
Hitchens uses quotation marks. Does Hitchens substantiate such
an
attack? No. I must insist on the fact that the lie of point number
1
is meant to do just that: disqualifies eyewitness accounts. Hitchens
is really a puppet in the hands of the deniers!
Niall McNamara calls those "three relatively minor issues".
I must
disagree with him. Those issues themselves might be minor, not
the
fact that they constitute lies and manipulations that Hitchens
presents as truths.
Mr. McNamara answers each of my discussion of the 3 points. Let's
see. he writes:
2. On concentration camps, the use of Auschwitz as a
death-camp in the east allowed the Nazi's policy on
racial hygiene to be implemented away from attention of
the world; or that is what the Nazi's and their
collaborators incorrectly thought. Whether Jews and
others were murdered within the "old" or the so-called
"Greater Reich" with its extended borders, got by
force, should not be let blur the reality of what
happened. It is not a surprise that mass-shootings of
Jews took place in Russia.
Mr McNamara completely misses the point of the lie advanced by
Hitchens as a "now undisputed find by historians": that
there had not
been any gas chamber on the german soil. This is the classical
lie I
denounced. This is the important point that Mr McNamara did not
adress.
Mr McNamara writes, about the soap story:
1. Many people today do still assume that soap was made
from the fat of the victims of Nazi exterminations.
This had been unchallenged for some time and genuine
confusion thus arose.
I do agree with the first sentence. "People" do assume
false things
such as the soap story. But, "people" is not who Hitchens
talks
about. His target, concerning this "now undisputed finding"
are not
people but, according Hitchens' own words: "historians and
experts on
the subject". Historians did not believe or propagate the
soap story.
For anyone familiar with holocaust denial "litterature"
-- which I
have been reading as exhaustively as possible for many years --
those
are very common claims by deniers. Deniers always pretend that
they
influenced the "official" historiography with their
"findings". That
is untrue. I find it remarquable to find the deniers' vocabulary
and
rhetoric (however implicit) under Hitchens' pen.
As for the second sentence, it is simply false. Mr McNamara will
find
the illustration that he is wrong when he reads the texts he will
find at the URLs I provided in my previous article (to which I
add
the appendices to be found there:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/).
Mr McNamara writes about Hoess:
3. Hoess and other Nazis were tortured and inaccuracies
in their statements, where they exist, cannot be
overlooked. Rather, such anomalies should be answered
in a scholarly fashion.
I am sorry to state that this is not true. Hoess was beaten during
his arrest. Because he refused to admit he was Hoess, not to extract
from him "confessions" as Christopher Hitchens writes,
in a way that
could confuse whatever "confessions" he is writing about
with the
autobiography written by Hoess while in custody, and which was
in no
way extracted from him by any form of pressure. Hoess testified
in
Nuremberg as a witness for the defense (called by Kaltenbrunner's
lawyer!). Hoess was *not* tortured into confessing the mass murder
of Jews in Auschwitz, as stated by Hitchens, as Holocaust deniers
claim.
I would be very interrested in knowing which Nazis, was ever tortured
in a case relating to the Holocaust. References should be provided
in
case of such claims, of course...
As for inaccuracies in statements made by Hoess, some other Nazis,
or
anybody, historians have been evaluating them for more than 50
years
for a very simple reason: that is their job. And on the whole,
as for
the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz, Hoess statements have often
been quite accurate (see:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/hoess-memoirs/)
Mr McNamara concludes:
Hitchen's is not intellectually lazy nor is he someone
who refuses to believe in the Holocaust. I thought it
was a very good informative review written in an
attentive way.
If Hitchens is not intellectually lazy, then it is even worse
that he
supported Holocaust deniers' lies and manipulations as he did.
And it
is because I am convinced that Hitchens is NOT "someone who
refuses
to believe in the Holocaust" (something I never suggested)
that I do
think that he was lazy and did not do his homework.
Let me state that I was not (and am still not) familiar with
Hitchens' work, or political orientation (if he has any). This
article was the first I ever read from him. [On voit bien
pointer l'inculture typique de ces obsédés du Zolo.
Ils ne lisent rien que du Zolo. -- aaargh] I really, as a french,
do not have any bias for or against Hitchens (why should I?).
I strongly think that one should not, one cannot deny that he
has
been *very* wrong in the way he presented as "now undisputed
findings by historians" what were in reality
deniers' lies and manipulations.
He has been even more wrong with his vicious account against
(much...) eyewitness testimony... What would be more interresting,
is
understanding why he has been lazy, why he let himself bne lazy
about
that subject, why somebody, who seems intellectually equiped,
has
been caught in the deniers' web of lies, why somebody who should
know
better has even been brought to promote those lies. That would
tell
us about the perversity of Holocaust denial and its rhetoric.
That
should help us to think about how really bad it is that Irving's
books are hardly found anymore... to think about what the complaints
of Hitchens are worth.
Regards,
Gilles Karmasyn
6/ Jacobs nous fait savoir qu'il a des photographies
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 10:00:29 -0500
From: Alan Jacobs <ajacobs@bravenewweb.com>
IDEA, http://www.ideajournal.com
-------------------
Karmasyn makes some very good points about Hitchens review. Hitchens
and has made a career out of railing and roiling, not so much
when when it is appropriate, but rather for the sake of splenetic
regurgitation and senasationalism. In his case the attraction
of his aggression, so compelling in fast food, politically mean,
shoot-em-up America, stands out far more than his ideas.
Gas chambers a myth? Where has the man been all these years?
As a friend of mine wrote privately, the Hitchens review says
more about the reviewer than Guttenplan.
Oh yes I am quite surprised to know that the gas chambers I photographed
in Dachau, Mauthausen Auschwitz, and Birkenau are not there. As
a matter of fact, I went back to my slides, and your are, as always,
right! They were meatpacking houses, and kindergarten cloakrooms.
Somehow I got it all mixed up. I guess I misunderstood when interviewing
Milton Buki and Filip Mueller, two Sonderkommando from Auschwitz
and Birkenau.
Shame on me huh?
Alan Jacobs
7/ Zinzin complète
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 14:28:41 -0500
From: Gilles Karmasyn <gilkarm@worldnet.fr>
Hello,
I must come back to the issue of what Christopher Hitchens wrote
in
his review (see my first article on that subject:
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010528) about there beeing no
gas chambers on the "german soil". There might be some
too strong
opinions against Hitchens because of what I previously wrote.
So I
must set some record straight.
What Hitchens wrote was:
1) there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on
German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or
Buchenwald;
Writing that there was no gas chambers on the german soil *is*
completely false (see below).
But I must be strong on the fact that Hitchens in no way denied
that
there were gas chambers in Auschwitz, nor denied the Holocaust.
Yes
he bought and sold other holocaust deniers's lies and manipulations,
and must be hold responsible for it, but not to the point of even
approaching holocaust denial.
What is the catch? In 1960 Martin Broszat wrote a short piece
for Die
Zeit, in which he stated that the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers
did not take place in the *Old Reich* (Germany within its 1933
borders). He also wrote that the gas chamber of Dachau was not
used
(in which he may have been wrong), and that there were no gas
chambers in Belsen and Buchewald, in which he was right, but that
was no news to historians.
There *were* gas chambers in the *Old Reich*, for example in
Ravensbr¸ck, Neuengamme and Orianenbourg-Sachsenhausen.
I am not even citing the "Operation T.4" centers where
thousands of handicapped and disabled human beeings were murdered.
The gas chambers in "Old Reich" concentration camps
did not have the same purpose as gas chambers in killing centers
(Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and "mix" camps
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek). The gas chambers in "Old
Reich" concentration camps were used to get rid of sick,
unproductive or "burdensome" (for whatever reasons)
inmates. The murder using those gas chambers was commited in the
thousands, whose majority were not jewish, not in the millions.
From the 1960 Broszat piece, holocaust deniers (the french impostor
Rassinier beeing the first) falsely "deduced" that there
had not been
any gas chambers *at all* in the "Old Reich". Of course
that was a
lie. But they often made reference (in footnotes) to Martin Broszat's
article to purport this lie, often adding also that there had
been no
gas chamber in Dachau, another lie, and something Broszat did
not
write.
Why did they use this lie? Well, Faurisson made it clear: if there
has been no gas chambers in the Old Reich, that meant that there
had
been no gas chambers in Ravensbr¸ck, Neuengamme and other
such camps
for which we have testimonies from both Nazis and inmates. So
those
witnesses had lied. So why believe the witnesses for Auschwitz
or the
Operation Reinhard killing centers? What is at stakes is a vicious
attack against *all* witnesses.
The "Old Reich" precision is always compulsory because
Broszat used
it for a very simple reason: as I wrote before, Auschwitz was
situated within (if near) the limits of the "Great Reich".
Paradoxicaly, Holocaust deniers choose to be precise in their
lie:
the falsified what Broszat had really written, but not about his
"Old
Reich" precision.
Now, obviously Christopher Hitchens has been subjected to these
lies.
Obviously he believesd them and he believes what he wrote (see
my
second article on that subject:
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530). But he also got it wrong
(which might also just be what Holocaust deniers want!). He made
a
more general statement then the usual deniers' form: "no
gas chamber
in the Old Reich". Hitchens went further. He wrote "on
the German
soil". Of course he didn't do it on purpose. He must not
have even
thought about it. "Old Reich", "German Soil",
all those must have
appeared the same to him. He is no historian and no geographer.
And
he wouldn't do his homework.
Hitchens must not have realised that, within a second world war
context, within a Third Reich context, "German soil"
might mean
"Great Reich" and include Auschwitz. Or Mauthausen.
I am convinced
that he did not want to deny the Auschwitz gas chambers or the
fact
that Auschwitz was (also) an extermination camp. Maybe Alan Jacob
was a little bit too harsh on him. Hitchens is not a Holocaus
denier.
It remains that stating, a he did, that there was no gas chamber
on
the German soil is completely false and *does* come from Holocaust
denier's propaganda and lies. Even stating that there was no gas
chamber in Dachau is wrong. It remains that Christopher Hitchens
has made his well known Holocaust deniers' lies.
It remains that Hitchens has made his the abject Faurissonian
"logic"
when he writes that, because of the points (which are false) he
made,
"much 'eyewitness' testimony is wrong".
As I wrote before, the relevant questions are: why? And: what
does
that teach us about Holcoaus denial, the way to treat it, the
way
some journalists treat it?
Regards,
Gilles Karmasyn
P.S: The original Broszat article can be found here (german page):
http://www.h-ref.de/ar/amay/broszat.shtml
The following pages are in french and belong to a (french) web
site
against Holocaust denial for which I am responsible.
An analysis of Broszat's article and examples of deniers's lies
about
it can be found here (in french):
http://www.phdn.org/negation/broszat.html
An analysis of Rassinier's lies about Broszat's article can be
found
here: http://www.phdn.org/negation/rassinier/rass-broszat.html
An analysis of Faurisson repeating 19 times the lie about the
Broszat
article can be found here (in french):
http://www.phdn.org/negation/faurisson/faur-broszat.html
Faurisson's "logic" about witnesses (deduced from his
lie about
Broszat's article) can be found here (in french):
http://www.phdn.org/negation/faurisson/chambrescamps.html
8/ Keren, dit le docteur approuve. Zinzin se veut une sorte
de clone de Keren qui harcèle tous les forums américains.
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 15:51:44 -0500
From: Daniel Keren <dkeren@world.std.com>
I wish to say that I totally agree with Mr. Karmasyn's critique
of Hitchens' article. While the three points addressed by Mr.
Karmasyn may appear minor, they are not; they are, as he correctly
pointed out, three very common lies disseminated by Holocaust-deniers.
That Hitchens didn't even bother to check before writing such
nonsense is indeed scandalous, and it reflects rather poorly on
his research skills and reliability.
Best regards,
Dr. Daniel Keren.
9/ Niall se rebiffe
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 14:40:36 -0500
From: Niall McNamara <niallmcnamara@eircom.net>
Hitchens writes:
<<Would it surprise you to know that:
1) there were no gas chambers or extermination camps on
German soil, in other words, at Belsen or Dachau or
Buchenwald;
Mr. Jacob's makes the quote appear to deny Auschwitz by the observation:
"Oh yes I am quite surprised to know that the gas chambers
I photographed in
> Dachau, Mauthausen Auschwitz, and Birkenau are not there."
I think Mr. Jacobs is a little hard on Hitchen's. I don't see
how the
reality of Auschwitz is denied by the quote above. The confusion
about
concentration camps in what was pre-1938 Germany and the post-1938
"Greater Germany" does not deny the construction and
use of the Auschwitz death-camp.
If Mr. Jacob's dislikes Mr. Hitchen's views on US foreign policy
and by
extension the Palestine question, Vietnam etc. then that his private
view.
It does not bear directly on Hitchen's LA review of Guttenplan's
book.
Regards,
Niall McNamara
10/ Mazal, vieux médaillé des campagnes anti-révisionnistes,
vend son bif:
>Oh yes I am quite surprised to know that the gas chambers
I photographed in
>Dachau, Mauthausen Auschwitz, and Birkenau are not there.
[deleted for brevity]
I call the attention of this list to the article entitled "The
Dachau Gas
Chambers"
on our web site:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/
wherein we distinguish between the four small delousing chambers
and the larger homicidal chamber attached to the new crematorium.
I particularly call attention to Rascher's letter to Himmler [FN28]
and Captain S. Payne Best's comments in his book _The Venlo
Incident._ [FN29] Both are included in my article. There are
simply too many coincidences to ignore.
Harry W. Mazal OBE
11/ Niall se réveille
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 14:57:23 -0500
From: Niall McNamara <niallmcnamara@eircom.net>
Dear Mr. Karmasyn,
I wish to post a brief and incomplete reply to Mr. Gilles Karmasyn's
recent posting. A fuller reply is forthcoming. I appreciate the
seriousness with which Mr. Karmasyn's views Mr. Hictchens' review
and therefore it deserves structured and referenced reply.
1. To the general public and non-experts of the Holocaust - and
I am a
member of both classes - the terms "gas chambers" and
"extermination camps" are invariably and, somewhat erroneously,
associated together. Furthermore, they are linked geographically
to areas in Eastern Europe and Poland: additionally, they are
inextricably identified as extermination camps where Jews where
murdered on a mass scale by Nazis and their collabators, with
the intent that their deeds would not biome known. In regard to
the mass shootings of Jews, such acts of barbarity were committed
in Russia and less
so in Poland, as these were very easterly districts. This may
be due to our schooling rather than any laziness or neglect conscious
or otherwise.
2. It is not an attempt to distance Germany from being a land
where
concentration camps were located and murder committed. My opinion
is that that Mr. Christopher Hitchen, whom I do not know nor have
I met, though I do read his books and watch him on TV, may be
of a similar mind.
3. It is not intentional. The significant revision downward of
the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca.
1 million persons was surprising for we had always been taught
the former figure at school. As a non-expert I am seeking to improve
my knowledge about the Holocaust. I have read Irving's books,
I am a librarian and I can get them easily; also, I believe in
free speech and I would not support the banning of his books,
no more than I would allow Karl Marx's manifesto to be banned
or the reports of Amnesty International, or books critical of
Chinese domestic policy, or
books condemned by Pope John Paul II.
4. I have written to Mr Irving in 1999 on the Holocaust explaining
to him why I think that at least 3-4 million Jews were murdered
under the Nazi genocidal policy. The famous Professor Dr. Raul
Hilberg conceded that there is no extant order signed by Hitler
ordering the murder of the Jews. But I do believe Hitler may well
have allowed it (is that irrational?) and is fully and morally
responsibility for the ill-fate of European Jewry under Nazi controlled
Europe. Hitchen's I believe would accept the same thesis. So,
I am glad you accept he is not a Holocaust denier. You must remember,
we are all not experts but we are trying to master a very complex
topical subject or perhaps, in Hitchen's case, probably meeting
a deadline (this latter point is purely speculation on my part).
4. The other points of my email on the Hitchen's article which
you helpfully gave me links to I will read in order to do justice
to a reply to you; namely,
3) the "confession" of camp commandant Rudolf Hoess,
of Auschwitz, was extracted by force and contains his claim to
have killed more Jews than was "humanly" possible?
(Recall how years later the 4 million reduced to ca 1 million).
4) That Hitchen's is not a Holocaust denier.
5). That Hitchens is not intellectually lazy inter alia.
I will try to document my sources as you wish: namely, the use
of physical and psychological torture or even the threat of it,
if any evidence exists, against Nazi's to force them to admit
to historical facts that are now problematic. What is not now
in doubt is the homicidal policy folowed against European Jews.
On that we all agree though location and extent may divide us.
But we are here to share views and learn. Perhaps semantics may
bloack us but we can work and overcome them.
Regards,
Niall
12/ Le censeur intervient.
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 09:27:40 -0500
From: Gabriel Schoenfeld <GabrielSchoenfeld@commentarymagazine.com>
The LA Times review by Christopher Hitchens that Stephen Esrati
calls "very fine" is indeed shocking, but not entirely
surprising. Back in 1999, the generally reliable investigative
reporter Edward Jay Epstein reported that Hitchens had flirted
with Holocaust denial in his presence. Epstein's account was not
widely accepted in the face of Hitchens' denial at the time that
he was or had ever been a denier. But in light of Hitchens' latest
writing, Epstein's account, which appeared in several newspapers,
is worth remembering.
What follows is a brief excerpt from the the February 22, 1999
Guardian (London).
<In 1995, the writer Edward J Epstein told a number of media
organisations last week, he and Hitchens had dinner after the
New Yorker's 70th anniversary party. At the dinner, according
to Epstein, Hitchens told him that there was no evidence of the
existence of Holocaust death camps and that he was sceptical about
claims that the Nazis killed six million Jews. Epstein said that
Hitchens's remarks were so disturbing that he noted them in his
diary that night.>
Gabriel Schoenfeld
Senior Editor, Commentary, 165 E. 56th Street, New York, NY 10022,
tel: 212 751 4000 x232, fax: 212 751-1174
13/ Zinzin estoque et veut les oreilles et la quueue
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 13:05:55 -0500
From: Gilles Karmasyn <gilkarm@worldnet.fr>
I must apologize in advance for what will be a long answer about
a
point that I consider as having been already made: Hitchens served
Holocaust deniers' lies. But the way Mr. McNamara treats my articles
(which he never cites from) leads me to do so.
A proper understanding would need a reading of my three previous
articles on that subject. They can be accessed using the followin
URLs (subsequently refered to as "my first article",
"my second
article" and "my third article"):
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010528
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b
I must insist on the fact that the reader won't learn anything
new
about Hitchens or the lies he served, however "unwillingly",
in the
following exercise. What will be at stakes is what *I* wrote and
the
Way Mr. McNamara does not adress it. Maybe not that much
interresting. But *necessary* for future reference and example...
Niall McNamara <niallmcnamara@eircom.net> wrote:
> [...]
About the fact that Hitchens stated that there was no gas chamber
on
the German Soil, which is a lie....
> 1. To the general public and non-experts of the Holocaust
- and I
> am a member of both classes - the terms "gas chambers"
and
> "extermination camps" are invariably and, somewhat
erroneously,
> associated together. Furthermore, they are linked geographically
> to areas in Eastern Europe and Poland: additionally, they
are
> inextricably identified as extermination camps where Jews
where
> murdered on a mass scale by Nazis and their collabators,
with the
> intent that their deeds would not biome known.
That may be so. *But*:
1) Christopher Hicthens, as I wrote previously is not talking
about
"general public" knowledge, but about knowledge by "historians
and
experts on that subject" (his own words). Arguing that "general
public" knowledge is confused does not excuse Hitchens as
stating
false facts taken from Holocaust deniers' lies.
You have not aknowledged that what Hitchens wrote *is* false and
*is*
taken from Holocaust deniers lies. You have not aknowledged that
Hitchens states falsely that these lies are endorsed by "historians
and experts".
I would appreciate to get answers to what I really wrote. Or no
answer at all, which might be more appropriate in some case.
2) Christopher Hitchens makes it clear that what he is talking
about
is also gas chambers in *concentration camps*, since he does cite
Belsen and Buchenwald as not beeing equiped with gas chambers
(for
which he is right) and also Dachau where he wrongly states that
there
was no gas chambers. Very clearly, Hitchens' subject is *also*,
at
least, concentration camps on the "German soil". Very
clearly,
Hitchens is wrong about that subject (see my secon article). Very
clearly he got that lie from Holocaust deniers' rhetoric.
> In regard to the
> mass shootings of Jews, such acts of barbarity were committed
in
> Russia and less so in Poland, as these were very easterly
> districts. This may be due to our schooling rather than any
> laziness or neglect conscious or otherwise.
The subject of mobile killing operations was not even alluded
at.
What about answering *me*?
> 2. It is not an attempt to distance Germany from being a
land
> where concentration camps were located and murder committed.
I don't think I ever wrote anything like that. I was never looking
for Mr Hitchens' motivations. I stated *facts* that you have been
unable to adress.
> My
> opinion is that that Mr. Christopher Hitchen, whom I do not
know
> nor have I met, though I do read his books and watch him
on TV,
> may be of a similar mind.
What mind? A "general public" mind not beeing able to
dsitinguish
concentration camps' gas chambers from extermination camps gas
chambers?
Not so.
On the contrary, everything shows that Mr Hitchens does not place
himself on a "general public" state of mind, but is
posing as
revealing "expert" knowledge *to* the ("surprised")
general public.
Everything shows that he does adress the question of concentration
camps.
I must remind the reader that the context is not a general discussion
about some knowledge of the Holocaust. No. We are discussing one
point that Hitchens presented, very unduly, as beeing true, and
incidentally more truthfully, as beeing "the best case that
the
revisionists can make" -- unwillingly, Hitchens may have
stated that
"the best case that the revisionists can make" are still
lies! We are
discussing that in the context of the Irving-Lipstadt trial where
Irving was proved to be what he is: a Holocaust denier and a
falsifier of sources and history. The context in which we are
discussing is the very question of historical rigour, the matter
of
elaborating an honest, truthful, and as precise as possible,
historical knowledge.
In *that* context, there was no room for approximation. The more
so
that Hitchens pretended to reveal things to its readers, things
that
might surprise them... No, Hitchens does not have the excuse of
beeing on the side of the "general public", beacuse
he was not,
because he posed to be on the side of the "historians and
expert".
Hitchens was no candid. Hitchens was writing for a wide audience.
He
has responsability. He has the responsability of beeing accurate,
the
more so when the subject is a man -- Irving -- who is willingly
misleading its readers, who was willingly inaccurate.
Incidentally we are also at the heart of the viciousness of Holocaust
denial: it poses as beeing serious, when it is treachery. It pretends
to reveal things to a general public, when it *uses* the "general
public" misconceptions to promote lies.
One more thing: having read Hitchens' books and having watched
him on
TV should prevent you from writing that "you don't know him".
You
sure have a stronger opinion about him than I could have, since
*I*
never read anything from him or about him prior to the article
discussed.
> 3. It is not intentional.
Well, before stating that "it is not intentional", It
would be better
to state *what* is not intentional. So far you did not aknowledge
that what Hitchens wrote were lies and manipulations, usualy found
within Holocaust deniers' litterature.
> The significant revision downward of
> the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to
ca. 1
> million persons was surprising for we had always been taught
the
> former figure at school.
Well, well, well!
Surprise!
How is it that *you* now serve a watered down form of a lie promoted
by Holocaust deniers?
There was *no* such thing as a "significant revision downward
of the
number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca. 1
million". What I mean is that Holocaust deniers pretend that
there
was one but they try to confuse the fact that the Auschwitz polish
adiministration aknowledged, in 1991, the western historiographical
estimations.
Western (non-communist) historians have been evaluating the Auschwitz
death toll between 1 and 2 millions for many years (some a little
bit
higher, but the least specialized the historian, the higher his
number), from whom 90% were jewish. Let me cite 3 major works:
Poliakov placed in 1951 hte number at 2 millions. Reitlinger in
1953
at between 800 000 and 900 000, and Hilberg since 1961 at 1 million.
The communists have been repeating since 1945 that 4 millions
"persons" died at Auschwitz, willingly concelling the
jewish aspect
of the mass murder commited at Auschwitz. Western historians who
wrote about Auschwitz almost never bought that number. Incidentally
I was able o determine that in the communist litterature about
Auschwitz, the majority of the "4 millions" was *not*
jewish.
Suggesting the contrary and confusing real historical knowledge
with
communist propaganda has been a Holocaust denier lie for such
a long time, that it is known as the "Auschwitz Gambit".
Nizkor has a web page about it:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/four-million-01.html
This subject was one of the *first* pages on PHDN (the web site
in
frehcn, against Holocaust denial, for which I am responsible),
in
1997: http://www.phdn.org/negation/plaques4m.html
The Auschwitz death toll is discussed (in french) there:
http://www.phdn.org/histgen/auschwitz/bilan-auschwitz.html
(Read those pages if you want to understand why Holocaust deniers
confuse communist propaganda with serious historiography)
So stating that there was a "significant revision downward
of the
number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca. 1 million"
is a form a an very common Holocaust lie.
A *very* bad point in order to defend Hitchens from having served
Holocaust deniers' lies and manipulations.
You seem to have been subjected to Holocaust denial propaganda
and
been unabel to detect it.
> As a non-expert I am seeking to improve
> my knowledge about the Holocaust. I have read Irving's books,
I
> am a librarian and I can get them easily;
Trying to improve ones knowledge about the Holocaust reading Irving's
books would be close to trying to improve ones knowledge about
Evolution Theory reading creationist litterature.
> also, I believe in free
> speech and I would not support the banning of his books,
no more
> than I would allow Karl Marx's manifesto to be banned or
the
> reports of Amnesty International, or books critical of Chinese
> domestic policy, or books condemned by Pope John Paul II.
So what?
So far we have the demonstration that the free circulation of
Holocaust deniers litterature made Hitchens and you buy their
lies.
Not a strong point.
> 4. I have written to Mr Irving in 1999 on the Holocaust
> explaining to him why I think that at least 3-4 million Jews
were
> murdered under the Nazi genocidal policy.
Oh? Really? "at least 3-4 million Jews". Well, you see,
the
overwelming majority of all the historians of genocide do place
the
total death toll 2 millions higher than you do: between 5 and
6
millions.
How is it that you diminish the average usual estimates by 2 millions?
> The famous Professor
> Dr. Raul Hilberg conceded that there is no extant order signed
by
> Hitler ordering the murder of the Jews.
"Professor Dr"?
Did you know that Holocaust deniers keep coming again and again
to
the fact that no written order was ever found? Funnny, no?
Well, there is no written order for the "Night of the long
knives"
either. So what? All Hitler's biographers have shown that he had
an
oral way of ruling. And Henry Friedlander has convincingly showed
that the "bad" precedent of the written order for "Operation
T.4"
might very well have prevented Hitler from writing anything about
the murder of the Jews. And Hitler was kept informed with the
Einsatzgruppen "performances". And many documents, speeches,
ans also testimonies allude more or less directly to a "Fuhrer
order". So
what? And Goebbels wrote in his journal that Hitler told him that
"modern peoples have no other solution than to exterminate
the Jews"
(may 13th, 1943)
So what?
What is the link with Hitchens' scandalous three points?
As for Raul Hilberg "concede" anything (which is just,
by pure
conincidence, the vocabulary used by Holocaust deniers), I would
prefer to state that Raul Hilberg has refined his knowledge...
> But I do believe Hitler may well have allowed it
"allowed it"? Hitler didn't "allow it". He
made it an option,
ideologically and politically, and made it a more or less spoken
wish
towards which any lucid Nazi, in position to to so, would have
to
work (See Ian Kershaw's works).
> (is that irrational?)
What would be irrational would be to think that Hitler was not
a
force behind the Holocaust. That does not mean the only force,
but a
determining force.
> and is fully and
> morally responsibility for the ill-fate of European Jewry
under
> Nazi controlled Europe.
A question that is out of the scope of Hitchens serving Holocaust
deniers' lies and manipulations, which you sill did not aknowledge.
> Hitchen's I believe would accept the same
> thesis.
That is not the subject.
> So, I am glad you accept he is not a Holocaust denier.
To my knowledge.
> You must remember, we are all not experts but we are trying
to
> master a very complex topical subject or perhaps, in Hitchen's
> case, probably meeting a deadline (this latter point is purely
> speculation on my part).
Oh my! Hitchens was under pressure to get his paper out so he
served
three Holocaust deniers lies and manipulations and resorted to
Faurisson's abject rhetoric against eyewitnesses (see my second
and
third article)?
That *is* really bad luck!
Anything to get Hitchens out this mess?
> 4. The other points of my email on the Hitchen's article
which
> you helpfully gave me links to I will read in order to do
justice
> to a reply to you; namely,
Where is the lie about the "soap story"? Won't you aknowledge
the
fact that suggesting that "historians and experts" had
ever bought
the "soap story" was very wrong?
> 3) the "confession" of camp commandant Rudolf Hoess,
of
> Auschwitz, was extracted by force and contains his claim
to have
> killed more Jews than was "humanly" possible?
I already answered that. I will cite what I already wrote:
I am sorry to state that this is not true. Hoess was
beaten during his arrest. Because he refused to admit
he was Hoess, not to extract from him "confessions"
as
Christopher Hitchens writes, in a way that could
confuse whatever "confessions" he is writing about with
the autobiography written by Hoess while in custody,
and which was in no way extracted from him by any form
of pressure. Hoess testified in Nuremberg as a witness
for the defense (called by Kaltenbrunner's lawyer!).
Hoess was *not* tortured into confessing the mass
murder of Jews in Auschwitz, as stated by Hitchens, as
Holocaust deniers claim.
> (Recall how years later the 4 million reduced to ca 1 million).
Recall how this is a Holocaust deniers' mispresentation!
> 4) That Hitchen's is not a Holocaust denier.
To my knowledge.
> 5). That Hitchens is not intellectually lazy inter alia.
Yes he *is*.
> I will try to document my sources as you wish: namely, the
use of
> physical and psychological torture or even the threat of
it, if
> any evidence exists, against Nazi's to force them to admit
to
> historical facts that are now problematic.
But that is *not* what I asked! What I wrote (my second article)
was:
I would be very interrested in knowing which Nazis, was
ever tortured in a case relating to the Holocaust.
References should be provided in case of such claims,
of course...
I wrote: "in a case relating to the Holocaust". Not
"historical facts
that are now problematic".
You see, the Holocaust is not a "historical fact that is
now problematic".
Once again, you don't answer (or don't intend to answer) to what
I wrote.
> What is not now in doubt is the homicidal policy folowed
> against European Jews.
The homicidal policy *pursued" against European Jews was
*never* in doubt...
> On that we all agree though location and extent may divide
us.
No. The location of it does not divide anybody that I know of.
As for
the extent, it is not a matter of "division", but a
matter of
precision. The order of the estimates do not differ.
What "we" agree about concerning these subjects is not
what counts.
What counts is the work and results obtained by historians and
scholars.
> But
> we are here to share views and learn. Perhaps semantics may
> bloack us but we can work and overcome them.
The first step should be to read correctly what your interlocutor
writes and cite what you answer to in order to avoid going astray.
Hitchens served 3 Holocaust deniers' lies and manipulations. He
made
a vicious and unjustified attack against eyewitnesses. You did
not
aknowledge any of these and you served a watered down form of
a
Holocaust deniers falsification.
I do not find our exchange very fruitful.
Regards,
Gilles Karmasyn
14/ Réponse de Niall.
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 10:27:35 -0500
From: Niall McNamara <niallmcnamara@eircom.net>
> Dear Mr. Gilles Karmasyn,
> I accept your points that I digressed on some, or perhaps
all, the issues you raised. I will attempt to address your requests
as best I can.
> I will deal with a set number of points in my 2 replies in
order to articulate myself as clearly as I can. I need to read
up on things as I am unfamiliar with many aspects of the questions.
But I am willing to learn.
> On any issue one cannot expect 100% agreement on complex
issues and the historiography of the Holocaust illustrates such
complexity. This would be true of the orthodox school which understands
the Holocaust as the > deliberate and premeditated murder of
the Jewish people and other victims of Nazi evil.
>
> To be fair, to say one does not know somebody whom one has
never meet, is a common statement that means one has no personal
knowledge of the person other than that mediated through their
intellectual work. I read a lot of Noam Chomsky but I do not know
the man albeit I know his views on economics, politics, certain
social issues etc. So it would be fair to say I don't know him.
Or I should write I do not personally know him and have no personal
motive or motivation to defend them.
> The same is true of other authors I read like Norman Finkelstein,
Marc Bloch, Heinrich Boll and others. I respect Hitchen's socialist
views as I am a socialist myself. Recently I came across several
books by Primo Levi and I liked what I read. I would rather that
there is no personalization in our exchanges as I find your intellectual
observations interesting and thought provoking. I am not patronizing
to you and would welcome if you treated me without adopting patronizing
and ironic(?) or sarcastic(?) asides.
> I will post this email in my initial reply on H-HOLOCAUST@H-NET.MSU.EDU
to show that I accept your view that I digressed from directly
answering your questions. There was nothing personal or insensitive
about this, I did not know you required such definitive categorical
replies. Your methodology is very good in that one must reply
directly to the issues at hand (if this was put harshly at times).
To answer your question:
> Well, well, well!
> Surprise!
> How is it that *you* now serve a watered down form of a lie
promoted > by Holocaust deniers?
>
I don't think I qualify as a Holocaust denier as I think I have
made clear that the Nazi's implemented a policy to systematically
eliminate the Jewish people by the use of poisin gas in gas chambers.
There is no doubt that extermination camps existed.
In relation to Auschwitz and the 4 million who died there I admit
to not knowing what it is you are asking of me. But my non-expert
understanding is:
The number of people murdered at Auschwitz is "...[A]ccording
to the Polish historian Francizek Piper, at least 1.1 million
people had been murdered in Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were
Jews." This source is available online at:
http://www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1942-1945/1945/chronolog
_1945_5.html. In "Nazi mass murder : a documentary history
of the use of poison gas" edited by Eugen Kogan ...[et al],
(Yale : 1993) -originally published in German 1983 - the (then)
most recent figure cited for the least number of victims is given
at 1.33 million and Georges Wellers is credited with the scholarship
for studies leading to that conclusion (Kogon : 1993:173).
You wrote:
> There was *no* such thing as a "significant revision
downward of the
> number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca.
1
> million". What I mean is that Holocaust deniers pretend
that there
> was one but they try to confuse the fact that the Auschwitz
polish
> administration acknowledged, in 1991, the western historiographical
estimations.
In relation to the figure of 4 million victims this would revise
the number downward by 2.67 million. Therefore, 1.33 would be
0.33% of the figure first given. In any person's language this
is a significant reduction based as you said on Western scholarship
methodology. The Holocaust debate has become somewhat "Americanized"
whereas you prefer the communist approach.
That is a question of methodology. And thus source material. You
have your preferences for citations.
Richard R. Evans has written: "And of course it is not Holocaust
denial to point out, as has been known at least since the post-war
publication of the memoirs of Rudolf Hss, the Commandant of Auschwitz,
that the best estimate for the number of victims of gassing there
was slightly in excess of one million, not the four million that
has sometimes been claimed." source:
http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/moevans.html
On Auschwitz's place within "Greater Germany" the original
name was in Polish as it was part of Poland. Its annexation to
"Greater Germany" was illegal. It was always Polish.
Neither of Mr. Jacob or us would argue about the violation if
international law by such an annexation. There was no referendum
for the Poles to vote to give the region to Hitler.
You wrote:
About the fact that Hitchen's stated that there was no gas chamber
on
> the German Soil, which is a lie....
If this refers to Auschwitz see above; but if it's Dachau on German
soil, see below.
Dachau's place in the history of concentration camps.
"Dachau was not planned as an extermination camp; its prisoners
were shot trying to escape or died of hunger, disease, and exhaustion,
under torture or as victims of pseudoscientific experiments. Source:
Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan).
Eugon Kogon states (Cambridge : 1993), it is stated that: "It
has not yet
been conclusively proved that killing by poison gas took place
at Dachau."
However, it then states some accounts to indicate how gas may
have been used. But visitors are alerted to the fact that it "has
not been proved that the gas chamber on site was ever used".
(Kogon : 1993:204). Does that answer your question on gas chambers
within Germany?
I will address the other points very shortly.
Regards,
Niall McNamara
15/ Zinzin lâche pas le bout.
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 09:36:32 -0500
From: Gilles Karmasyn <gilkarm@worldnet.fr>
Hello,
Mr. McNamara wrote:
> As I am the non-expert and the general public referred to,
may I
> perhaps explain my argument?
>
> In "Nazi mass murder : a documentary use of poison gas"
edited by
> Eugen Kogon et al, (Yale : 1993) under the heading in appendix
8
> entitled, "Map showing "Euthanasia" facilities,
concentration
> camps, and extermination camps" , there are no extermination
> camps identified within the Germany which pre-dated the "Greater
> Germany". In a posting to Mr. Gilles Karmasyn I explain
a little
> further about this.
In that article you confused collective representation and
historiography. You defense of Hitchens lie did not conform to
where
Hitchens explicitly placed himself: on the side of "historians
and
experts". See my answer: http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010602
Stating that there was no extermination camp (no killing center)
in
the Old Reich is true. Stating that there was no gas chambers
in
Germany is a lie that Hitchens has burrowed from Holocaust deniers.
See http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b
> On the issue of the 4 million and western
> historiography I cited what Professor Evans (who defended
> Professor Lipstadt) said about the 4 million.
No serious historian ever bought the communist figure of 4 millions.
This has been already explained. See other articles in the same
thread.
> Discussions on the
> site illustrate how hard it still is to get exact figures
for the
> number of people who entered Palestine before immigration
to that
> area was stopped after war broke out. One can image the
> difficulty in establishing other data especially where it
was
> intentionally concealed.
But concerning Auschwitz, the scale and nature of the murder in
Auschwitz (between 1 and 2 millions, from whom 90% were jewish,
*not*
4 millions with a non jewish majority) has been known for decades!
> But I would not get too bogged down with
> the "Germany" and "Greater Germany" issue:
don't retrospectively
> legitimise Hitler's annexation of parts of Poland to his
Germany.
About that beeing outside the scope of Hitchens having burrowed
from
Holocaust deniers propaganda, see
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b
> If only I Jew had died under Nazi Germany than that is still
one
> soul too many.
That makes about 6 millions souls too many.
> On euthanasia and its evil fall-out yes the very
> ill and mentally ill population of Germany were murdered
within
> the old Germany without any question.
In gas chambers that were located in Germany. Hitchens has burrowed
a
lie commonly made by Holocaust deniers.
> One should examine the evidence as impartially as possible.
What evidence are you talking about?
Gilles Karmasyn
16/ Zinzin fait la manche:
Finalement...
Comment aider PHDN ?
Et lutter ainsi contre le négationnisme...
La première façon de lutter contre le négationnisme
est de connaître l'histoire. Lisez les ouvrages des historiens
tant sur le nazisme que
sur le génocide. Lisez également des ouvrages sur
le négationnisme pour en comprendre les mécanismes.
De cette façon, vous saurez
vous protéger, ainsi que vos proches, des falsifications
négationnistes
Vous pouvez également aider PHDN.
Dans le cadre de ce projet nous nous sommes fixés comme
moyen de lutte la connaissance, aussi poussée que possible,
tant de l'histoire
du génocide que du fonctionnement du discours négationniste
et des origines et buts idéologiques de ses sectataires.
Nous nous
efforçons d'extraire de cette connaissance, tirée
de la pratique de l'histoire et des travaux des historiens, les
éléments qui permettent de
présenter l'histoire du génocide et de démonter
les falsifications négationnistes de façon pertinente
et efficace. Le site PHDN est le
résultat de cette démarche.
Notre principal outil de travail, ce sont les livres. Ces livres,
nous les achetons, depuis de nombreuses années, sur nos
fonds
personnels, et nous les lisons. Nous disposons aujourd'hui d'une
bibliothèque de plusieurs centaines d'ouvrages sur la Shoah,
l'antisémitisme et le négationnisme. Ce sont les
ouvrages en anglais et en allemand qui nous font le plus défaut.
Aussi avons nous
constitué deux listes d'ouvrages (une en anglais, et une
en allemand) sur ces sujets, sur le site web du libraire on line
Amazon. Tout un
chacun peut choisir des ouvrages dans ces listes et nous les faire
parvenir en les réglant sur le site web d'Amazon. Précisons
que nous ne
tirons aucun avantage ni bénéfice financier des
achats effectués sur Amazon. Nous en sommes simplement
nous-même clients depuis
plus de quatre ans.
Bref, pour nous aider à lutter contre le négationnisme,
ENVOYEZ NOUS DES LIVRES (en anglais)
ENVOYEZ NOUS DES LIVRES (en allemand)
Merci.
Gilles Karmasyn
Responsable de PHDN
Il oublie de dire qu'il est censé travailler à la
BN, où l'on trouve quelques livres...
annexe
17/ Niall a aussi quelques activités marginales:
Documents on the Fight to Preserve the Right to Free Speech
Niall McNamara Lodges a Formal Complaint with the Charities
Commission about the Wiener Library Ltd
Charitable Institutes and their obligations to the public
Sun, 19 Mar 2000
From: Niall Mcnamara
Re.: Rights of Researchers to Consult Historical Archives At Wiener
Library
The Charity Commission for England and Wales,
8-16 Great New Street
New Street Square
London EC4A 3EU.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you in relation to the charitable status of bodies
that are incorporated
as non-profit making organizations within the jurisdiction of
the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and their obligations as by
law established.
In the recent high court action taken by Mr. Irving against Professor
Lipstadt and Penguin Books for
alleged defamation, it appears some archival source material held
by the Wiener Library of the Institute of
Contemporary History, which was required by Mr. Irving (whom I
do not know nor have I ever meet),
was denied to him. Apparently, this material was required for
a lawsuit. The Wiener Library denied
access to Mr. Irving because of some remarks they say Mr. Irving
made against some academic members
of the Institute. In essence, the Institute, a charitable body,
funded by tax-free gifts and public monies,
proceeded to deny Mr. Irving access to the diary of a Doctor Kremer,
which was a document
contemporaneous to a period of time (c.1943?) required by Mr.
Irving for his law case. It has been
identified that this diary was made readily available to lawyers
for Dr Lipstadt and Penguin Books.
I think a charitable public body, enriched by its public charitable
status and public monies has an
obligation, in fact a duty, to make important historical material
available to everyone, regardless of how
any individual may have inappropriately expressed themselves in
relation to personnel of the Institute.
This is more so the case when an individual requires such material
for a legal case. This right should
apply to everyone in such a predicament; it is not an issue that
relates solely to the episode concerning Mr.
Irving. Should a precedent be set about whom may, and whom may
not access material, one could have a
form of censorship or the deliberate withholding of information
to anyone who needs to consult material
in the large and valuable collection held by your Institute's
library. This would be most undemocratic and
authoritarian. It would also pose serious legal implications.
I would welcome your observations about this matter. A public
archive has duties to perform, and the
issue is not whether an institute likes the researches who use
such archival material or not, it is about
meeting the rights of researchers who need to consult the material
held by a (quasi)-public body. As the
Charitable Commission are responsible for the evaluation of what
bodies qualify for charitable
tax-exceptions and public subsidies, I feel it is your duty is
to ensure that all bona fide researchers have
access to the archives at the Wiener library, regardless of the
personal feelings some members of the IHR
and Wiener Library hold about the individual/s concerned.
It is about openness, accountability and fairness to all academics
and researchers who need access to
material held in trust for the people. I believe the International
Federation of Library Associations also
requires that all peoples, no matter what their political opinions
are, alleged or otherwise, have access to
all libraries, public and specialist. Given the Wiener's Library's
high esteem in the eyes of many, it would
be a great pity if it were to appear that it fails to uphold the
standards of the International Federation of
Library Associations (IFLA).
I look forward to a reply from you to my letter in the near future.
Yours sincerely,
Niall McNamara M.A. (Dubl., NUI), D.L.I.S. (NUI).
(© Focal Point David Irving 2001)
18/ Zinzin n'a pas le temps de livre les livres de la Bn parce
qu'il doit intervenir touzazimut.
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 08:54:57 +0200
Reply-To: medito3@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [medito3] pas de débats avec les interlocuteurs
de mauvaise foi ou les illuminés ?
L'historien Gilles Karmasyn nous fait l'honneur d'écrire
plusieurs pages dans le prochain numéro de medito dans
le contexte du négationnisme /révisionnisme :
Ces sujets touchent aussi la liberté d'expression.
Faisant suite au plaidoyer pour la loi Gayssot "Peut-on lire
les écrits
contestant les crimes contre l'humanité ?", Gilles
Karmasyn nous donne sonopinion sur les limites du débat.
(voir aussi : Pour la loi Gayssot par G Karmasyn)
http://www.medito.com/hi0706k2.htm (provisoire)
(voir aussi : des avis contre la loi Gayssot de Jorge Semprun,
Madeleine
Rebérioux (ligue de droit de l'homme), Jacques Toubon,
Alain Griotteray, Pierre Vidal-Naquet) http://www.medito.com/hi0706k.htm
(provisoire)
-------------
GK: Vous me permettrez une petite digression sur cette notion
de " débat " :
Un débat ne peut avoir lieu qu'entre personnes honnêtes
qui utilisent *la
même* méthodologie pour établir la vérité.
On ne saurait avoir le moindre
échange avec des individus qui cultivent systématiquement
la mauvaise foi,
comme les négationnistes. N'importe qui de sensé
a pleinement conscience
qu'aucun débat n'est possible avec un interlocuteur de
mauvaise foi.
De plus, l'histoire ne se fait pas dans des " débats
publics " (qui est la
forme de discussion toujours revendiquée par les négationnistes)
Qu'il me suffise ici de citer le paléontologue Stephen
Jay Gould qui a
entrepris, lui de contrer les "créationnistes",
ces illuminés qui prétendent
que la terre a été créée il y a 7000
ans.
" Le débat est une forme d'art. Il s'agit de sortir
victorieux de la
confrontation. Il ne s'agit pas de découvrir la vérité.
Le débat relève d'un
certain nombre de règles et de procédés qui
n'ont absolument rien à voir
avec l'établissement des faits [...] Ils [les créationnistes]
sont très bons
à ce jeu là. Je ne pense pas que je pourrais avoir
le dessus dans un débat
contre les créationnistes "
(Conférence donnée à Caltech en 1985, cité
par Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, W. H. Freeman
and Company, New York, 1997, p. 153)
La réclamation par les négationnistes et leurs sympathisants
d'un " débat
public " montre une seule chose: seule une tribune pour leur
propagande les
intéresse.
Je rappellerai en outre que les Protocoles des Sages de Sion furent
en leur temps amplement " débattus " et leur
caractère antisémite et faux
parfaitement démontré. Pourtant ils ne cessèrent
pas d'être édités et de faire des dégats
considérables. Il aurait fallu les interdire tout
simplement.
La réalité de l'extermination des Juifs n'est *pas*
la conclusion des
travaux des historiens, mais l'évènement sur lequel
ils travaillent, le
point de départ de ce travail, leur matériau. Les
historiens établissent
comment, pourquoi, dans quel contexte cet évènement
a eu lieu et permettent de mieux le connaître et le comprendre.
Ils ne décident *pas* s'il a eu lieu ou non. La réalité
des faits existe en dehors du travail des historiens. Le discours
négationniste ne constitue pas l'expression d'une "
opinion " mais relève d'une propagande antisémite.
Le fait de parler d'" opinion " à propos du négationnisme
semble suggérer (plus ou moins consciemment) que nous serions
en présence d'une " thèse " comme un autre,
d'une " autre version " de l'histoire. Ce n'est absolument
pas le cas pour les deux raisons déjà évoquées:
1) le génocide est un fait. 2) Par sa *méthodologie*,
le discours négationniste ne relève absolument pas
d'un discours historien et ne peut prétendre à se
présenter comme " interlocuteur " de bonne foi.
Il trahit toutes les règles de production de la connaissance
historique. Il pratique l'hypercritique, le mensonge, la falsification,
la citation hors contexte.
Hors il faut bien reconnaître: un mensonge négationniste,
s'il s'énonce en une phrase, en nécessite 40 pour
la démonstration du mensonge. Vous en trouverez un exemple
paradigmatique ici:
http://www.phdn.org/negation/plaques4m.html
Je prendrai un exemple auquel je crois vous serez sensible. Imaginez
qu'une secte d'allumés décide de promouvoir la double
" thèse " suivante: le sida n'est pas du à
un virus et le préservatif n'est pas une protection efficace
contre le sida, qui en fin de compte n'est pas une maladie sexuellement
transmissible. Autrement dit: le préservatif est inutile.
Imaginez que le tout soit servi par un rhétorique pseudo-scientifique
qui apparaisse crédible aux yeux du profane.
Tant que ces imbéciles ne répandent pas leur discours,
pas de problème
n'est-ce pas? Mais le jour où Le Monde fait sa première
page sur le sujet, ainsi que le Parisien, qu'une revue prétendument
médicale est distribuée par les NMPP, que des tracts
sont distribués dans les lycées, la situation est-elle
toujours la même? Pensez-vous *vraiment* qu'il ne soit pas
temps de légiférer?
Gilles Karmasyn Responsable de PHDN:
Richard Wild
* Webzine de réflexion médicale : http://www.medito.com
18/ La potion est amère.
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 13:57:26 +0100 (BST)
http://www.medito.com/hi0706k2.htm
medito : j'ai du mal à vous suivre dans votre défense
de la loi Gayssot
http://www.phdn.org/negation/gayssot.html (je
comprends le bon sentiment qui semble l'animer...)
Gilles Karmasyn : L'objet de cette page est moins
d'exprimer mon sentiment à l'égard de cette loi
que
d'en fournir la lettre et des exemples
d'interprétation par des politologues et des juristes
et de couper court aux mensonges que les
négationnistes profèrent à son sujet.
Il reste que je suis, évidemment, favorable à
l'existence d'une telle législation.
medito : je comprends le bon sentiment qui semble
l'animer, mais suis plutôt réticent en raison du
risque d'avoir une "histoire" officielle dictée
par la
loi - réticent comme Semprun, Weill et bien d'autres.
Gilles Karmasyn : Je suis tout à fait d'accord sur le
fait que la loi Gayssot puisse faire question.
Plusieurs années de confrontation avec des personnes
hostiles (pour de bonnes ou de mauvaises raisons) à la
loi Gayssot, m'ont cependant amené à constater que
la
plupart des reproches faits à la loi Gayssot ne
résistaient pas à un examen minutieux.
Vous me permettrez de vous faire part ici de ces
réflexions, dont la plupart ne figurent pas (ou pas
par ma voix) sur la page que vous citez.
La loi Gayssot induit-elle le risque de l'existence
d'une " histoire officielle "? Cette question relève
de la première grande catégorie de critiques contre
la
loi Gayssot: elle risquerait d'être une sorte
d'entrave au travail de l'historien.
Combien de fois ais-je vu poser cette question? Je ne
compte plus. Jamais en tous cas je n'ai vu d'argument
accompagnant la question et sa réponse plus ou moins
implicite. Pourtant la question a-t-elle un sens? Je
prétends que non. Il n'y a pas un domaine de
l'histoire qui fasse aujourd'hui l'objet d'une version
" officielle ", c'est-à-dire défendue
par
l'institution (mettons par l'état) de telle façon
qu'elle étoufferait des " thèses non-officielles
".
La loi Gayssot interdit l'expression publique du
négationnisme, à savoir de la négation de
la réalité
et de l'ampleur du génocide des Juifs pendant la
Seconde Guerre mondiale. Est-ce là participer d'une "
histoire officielle "?
Le négationnisme n'est pas une autre " version de
l'histoire ". Il n'y *pas* plusieurs " versions "
de
la réalité, en ce qui concerne le génocide
et son
ampleur. Il peut y avoir plusieurs " interprétations
"
de la réalité. Mais il n'y a *pas* plusieurs réalités
différentes qui constitueraient autant de " thèses
".
La loi ne contraint pas plus les historiens à
"conclure" à l'existence du génocide que
les
astronomes ne sont contraints à celle de la lune. La
lune existe. Point.
La loi ne fixe pas la réalité. Elle *prend acte*
de la
réalité. Les anglo-saxons ont une notion proche
de
cette approche: ils appellent cela " to take judicial
notice ". Cette notion juridique permet d'éviter de
discuter du fait que le Soleil se lève l'Est et se
couche à l'Ouest.
La loi Gayssot n'interdit nullement de revenir sur les
explications et les interprétations de la destruction
des Juifs d'Europe par les Nazis et leurs complices.
D'ailleurs la vigueur de l'historiographie des
politiques d'extermination nazies le prouve de façon
claire.
Le *fait* du génocide relève de la *réalité*,
une
réalité qui existe en dehors de toute interprétation
historienne. Le *fait* de l'extermination des Juifs
par les Nazis, son ampleur, ses modalités, sont
connues et établies de telle sorte que leur négation
ne relève pas d'un discours historien, mais d'un
discours a-historique, un discours qualifié par
Bernard Comte d'" anti-historique ", un discours tout
simplement antisémite (j'y reviendrai)
Le *fait* est advenu quelle qu'en soit *l'analyse*
historienne.
Surtout: il n'y a *pas* d'historien (c'est à dire
d'historien travaillant sur le génocide) qui soit gêné
dans son travail par l'existence de la loi Gayssot,
dans la mesure où la loi Gayssot et l'historien
suivent un même chemin: celui de la réalité
historique. Le génocide est un fait. N'importe quel
historien travaille avec ce matériau factuel et donc
ne peut être gêné par la loi Gayssot. Les dizaines
d'ouvrages récents de dizaines d'historiens, de toutes
nationalités, que je possède sur le sujet, en sont
la
parfaite illustration.
Un historien, qui par définition ne peut que prendre
acte de la réalité du génocide et de son
ampleur, ne
peut pas être gêné par la loi Gayssot. En
l'occurrence, aucun historien travaillant sur le
génocide des Juifs n'a été gêné,
ni ne peut être gêné
par la loi Gayssot,
La loi Gayssot n'interdit pas de revenir sur la
connaissance du génocide, de l'affiner, de la
réinterpréter, de la réviser, même
si le fait et
l'ampleur (du génocide) sont patents, évidents,
ultra-documentés. La loi Gayssot ne signifie
aucunement que cette connaissance soit figée ou
absolue. D'ailleurs, une telle connaissance, absolue,
d'un évènement est impossible quel que soit
l'évènement.
Mais le sens commun accordé à un évènement
permet de
déterminer à quoi ce que le vocable de génocide
des
Juifs recouvre: une politique d'assassinat
systématique, l'ampleur globale du crime, les
principales modalités de ce crime.
La connaissance de la bataille de Verdun, la
reconnaissance de sa réalité, n'implique pas que
l'on
connaisse sa durée à la seconde (la milliseconde?)
près, ni que l'on détermine au centimètre
carré près
la surface du champs de bataille, ni que l'on
connaisse à la dizaine de milliers près le nombre
de
morts.
Cela ne m'empêchera pas d'affirmer haut et fort que la
bataille de Verdun est un évènement patent, évident,
ultra-documenté. De la même façon, le fait
du génocide
est patent, évident, ultra-documenté.
On objectera alors qu'aucune loi ne prend acte de la
réalité de la bataille de Verdun. Nous touchons
là à
la nécessité de la loi Gayssot: l'expression publique
du négationnisme est interdite tout simplement parce
que le négationnisme est un discours antisémite.
Il s'agit ici de la seconde grande catégorie de
critique envers la loi Gayssot: la législation
existante serait suffisante...
De quelle législation parlons-nous? De la législation
qui interdit l'expression publique des discours qui
incitent à la haine. Je pars d'un premier postulat que
la nécessité de l'interdiction de tels discours
ne
saurait être remise en cause.
Le second postulat, qui n'en est pas un mais découle,
en ce qui me concerne de la lecture systématique que
j'effectue de la littérature négationniste, est
le
caractère antisémite du négationnisme. Un
antisémitisme extrêmement virulent et pervers. Je
ne
discuterai pas ici des arguments étayant cette
constatation, mais ils sont disponibles sur PHDN,
ainsi que dans l'abondante littérature, souvent des
études fouillées, qui traite du négationnisme.
On peut
cependant rappeler que les négationnistes se sont
exprimés librement de 1948 à 1990. Cela a suffit
pour
comprendre que leurs propos ne relevaient que de
l'incitation à la haine. Laquelle est justement
interdite.
Le négationnisme est donc, sans la moindre ambiguïté
possible, un discours antisémite. Il l'est
implicitement, dans l'objectif même de réhabiliter
un
antisémitisme explicite et de promouvoir les
conditions de survenue de l'évènement même
qu'il nie.
Mais le négationnisme peut parfaitement prendre la
forme d'un discours raisonnable et
pseudo-scientifique.
Dans le cas des discours négationnistes, les procès
qui eurent lieu avant 1990 ont montré que les
négationnistes avaient beau jeu de jouer sur la
*lettre* de la loi pour prétendre que leurs discours
n'étaient ni diffamatoires ni incitatifs à la haine.
Des juges les ont parfois entendu, à fort mauvais
escient. Certains se sont même permis un jugement
appréciatif du "travail" de Faurisson, une véritable
aberration lorsqu'on connaît un peu le caractère
proprement frauduleux de son discours (voir notamment
http://www.phdn.org/negation/faurisson/). C'est bien
l'illustration qu'un jugement sur la qualité d'un
travail qui se présente frauduleusement, mais
habilement, comme un travail historique, ne saurait
être laissé à l'appréciation des juges,
dont ce n'est
*pas* le métier. Lorsque les négationnistes furent
condamnés, ce fut souvent sur la forme plus que sur le
fond. Ils apprirent à édulcorer la forme, sans
remettre en cause le fond: la négation radicale de la
réalité du génocide. La situation devenait
périlleuse
pour le juge qui devait de plus en plus recourir à une
interprétation des intentions de l'auteur
négationniste, voire à une analyse historienne.
Le
délit de "tromperie délibérée"
n'existe pas en droit
français, et ce n'est pas sur cet aspect là que
pouvait se fonder une interdiction du négationnisme.
C'est en tant que discours antisémite, qu'il est
normal -- je dirais naturel, dans notre société
-- que
le négationnisme soit interdit.
La société se fonde sur une prise de responsabilité
du
législateur sur des problèmes qui doivent être
traités
parce qu'un seuil a été franchi. Si le négationnisme
n'avait pas dépassé le stade de la "thèse"
discutée
dans leur coin par trois hurluberlus, il n'y aurait
eut aucun besoin de légiférer. Mais il faut constater
qu'à la fin des années 1980, un seuil dangereux
avait
été atteint. Le législateur en a pris acte
et décidé
que la société devait protéger ses membres.
Il a
décidé de décharger le juge de prises de
positions par
rapport à la lettre de la loi (interdisant
l'incitation à la haine et la diffamation), à
l'histoire, et pris, enfin, acte du caractère
antisémite du négationnisme.
La loi Gayssot interdit donc le discours négationnisme
en tant que discours d'incitation à la haine. La
réalité n'intervient que comme élément
de *diagnostic*
du discours négationniste. Il faut bien fixer un
critère aussi objectif que possible d'identification
de ce discours par la loi, afin d'éviter les abus. Ce
critère, c'est la négation de la réalité
du génocide
telle que fixée par l'article 24bis de la loi sur la
liberté de la presse de 1881. Mais la loi ne fixe
aucunement la réalité. En fait, la loi permet d'éviter
au juge de se prononcer sur des points d'histoire
(Voir à ce sujet:
http://www.phdn.org/negation/troper.html)
Si on avait interdit la propagation des Protocoles des
Sages de Sion, ce faux antisémite fabriqué par la
police tsariste au début du siècle, peut-être
aurait-on pu éviter bien des massacres. (A ce sujet,
voir:
http://www.phdn.org/antisem/origines-protocoles.html)
Sur le motif d'interdiction de l'expression publique
du négationnisme, il convient de rajouter ceci: dans
la mesure où il est largement admis, reconnu, établi
que le négationnisme *est* un discours antisémite,
il
serait aberrant, sous prétexte que le négationnisme
*prétend* être un discours historique (ce qui est
faux), de ne pas l'interdire! Un discours d'incitation
à la haine bénficierait en quelque sorte d'un
passe-droit parce qu'il s'incarnerait (en tous cas, il
le prétend) sous une forme "intouchable"? Il
y aurait
*là*, un véritable scandale.
Ayant établi, je crois, la nécessité de la
loi
Gayssot, on peut revenir sur la première catégorie
de
critique: la loi et l'histoire. Une autre façon
d'exprimer cette critique et de prétendre que par la
loi Gayssot, c'est le juge qui dit l'histoire. Cette
affirmation serait encore plus fausse que celle (que
j'ai d'abord discutée) comme quoi ce serait la loi qui
dirait l'histoire. En effet, la loi Gayssot permet
*justement* au juge de ne pas dire l'histoire, de ne
pas avoir à se prononcer sur la qualité historienne
des discours qu'il a à juger.
Ainsi que je l'ai écrit plus haut, avant l'existence
de la loi Gayssot, à plusieurs occasions, des juges
eurent à se prononcer sur des points d'histoire.
C'était une aberration. Le juge n'a pas à se mêler
d'histoire. Et de fait, c'est ce que la loi Gayssot
permet d'éviter (Voir
http://www.phdn.org/negation/troper.html). Le juge n'a
plus à se prononcer que sur le respect ou le
non-respect de cette loi.
Un contre-exemple paradigmatique a été donné
l'année
dernière en Grande-Bretagne, à l'occasion du procès
de
l'écrivain britannique David Irving, passé au
négationnisme en 1988. Celui-ci avait porté plainte
contre une historienne américaine, Deborah Lipstadt,
qui avait produit un ouvrage sur le négationnisme et
les négationnistes, très critique (et pour cause)
à
l'encontre d'Irving. (Sur Irving, voir:
http://www.phdn.org/negation/irving/). L'enjeux du
procès était de prouver que Deborah Lipstadt avait
dit
vrai en écrivant qu'Irving falsifiait la réalité.
La Grande-Bretagne n'est pas dotée d'une loi semblable
à la loi Gayssot. Le procès vit Irving étaler
ses
thèses négationnistes et, pour le contrer, il a
fallu
recourir à des démonstrations historiennes. Le juge
a
quasiment eu à se prononcer sur des questions
d'histoire. Cela a duré des semaines. Les journaux ont
rendu compte du déroulement du procès d'une façon
scandaleuse, faisant la publicité du pseudo
argumentaire d'Irving et oubliant d'en démonter la
mécanique mensongère. Irving a bien évidemment
perdu
son procès. La grande lucidité du juge ne lui a
cependant pas permis d'éviter de se prononcer sur le
terrain de l'histoire. Sa grande compétence, la durée
très longue du procès, ont permis que des impairs
soient évité. Mais le juge ne peut remplacer
l'historien. Cela aurait pu se passer beaucoup plus
mal.
Ce sont de telles situations que la loi Gayssot permet
d'éviter en France.
Elle est un outil indispensable et salutaire. Dans son
principe, je pense qu'il est heureux qu'elle existe.
Je peux vous assurer que si tel n'était pas le cas,
les lycées seraient saturés de tracts, et la presse
extrémiste (de droite ou de gauche) serait constamment
émaillée de propos négationnistes.
Il demeure que la rédaction de la loi peut être
discutée. C'est une autre question.
medito : Les textes révisionnistes sont terribles mais
on devrait pouvoir se forger son opinion en comparant
les textes originaux et les réactions anti)
Gilles Karmasyn : Je me permets de bondir devant votre
formulation: " on devrait pourvoir se *forger une
opinion* ".
Je ne peux absolument pas vous suivre sur ce terrain.
La réalité et l'ampleur du génocide ne sont
pas
l'objet d'une " opinion ".
Ce sont des faits historiques qui existent en dehors
de la connaissance et de la conscience que l'on peut
en avoir.
Même la jurisprudence américaine (pourtant placée
sous
l'égide du tout puissant premier amendement) reconnaît
que la présentation frauduleuse des faits ne relève
pas de l'"opinion".
Les négationnistes ne présentent pas une "
autre thèse
". Ils falsifient la réalité dans un but antisémite.
Le génocide fut. Il ne peut y avoir de " débat
" sur
ce point.
 
Vifs remerciements à Gilles Karmasyn de PHDN.
A noter le site Pratique de l'histoire et dévoiements
négationnistes
19/ Signalons une énième resucée de Zinzin
dans Information juive, Paris, numéro 206, mars
2001, p. 12. On retiendra la conclusion du type qui tend sa sébille
aux ponte de la communauté: "Nous sommes dans une
phase critique parce que l'Internetr explose et que les négationnistes
tiennent le haut du pavé, pour ce qui est des textes
en français. On peut être confiant pour le long terme
[ce n'est pas notre avis] mais pessimiste sur le court terme.
Combien d'émules les négationnistes auront-ils le
temps de fabriquer grâce aux énormes lacunes actuelles?".
Ce type voudrait bien que la "communauté" lui
file des caisses de roupies. Il a envie de rouler carrosse. A
notre avis, il seront trop radins. Ce sera Niet. Zinzin va végéter,
avant de sombrer dans l'oubli. Il nous aura fait rire un peu.
C'est déjà ça.
(30 juin 2001)
+++++++++++++++++++
L'adresse électronique de ce document est: http://aaargh-international.org/fran/actu/actu001/doc2001/zinzin.html
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Nous nous plaçons sous
la protection de l'article 19 de la Déclaration des Droits
de l'homme, qui stipule:
ARTICLE 19
<Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion
et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être
inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher,
de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de
frontière, les informations et les idées par quelque
moyen d'expression que ce soit>
Déclaration internationale des droits de l'homme,
adoptée par l'Assemblée générale de
l'ONU à Paris, le 10 décembre 1948.