Trumpdom No. 4 Reflections on the holocaust
Norman Finkelstein writes of his The Holocaust Industry; Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering: “This book is both an anatomy and an indictment of the Holocaust industry. In the pages that follow, I will argue that the Holocaust is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. The Holocaust is not an arbitrary but rather an internally coherent construct. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, the Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a ‘victim’ state, and the most successful ethnic group In the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood—in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified. Those enjoying this immunity, I might add, have not escaped the moral corruptions that attend it.”
Finkelstein demonstrates how American Jews used the holocaust as a political weapon. When anti-Semitic barriers fell away after World War II, Jewish income almost doubled that of non-Jews. They became conservative politically, shed their allies in social activities, steered their resources to benefit Jewish concerns only and blamed “irrational Gentile loathing of Jews” when it was the Jews who were taught to hate Christians. “Just as Israelis, armed to the teeth by the United States, courageously put unruly Palestinians in their place, so American Jews outrageously put unruly Blacks in their place,” he wrote. “Lording it over those least able to defend themselves: that is the real content of organized American Jewery’s reclaimed courage.” In a chapter entitled “Hoaxers, Hucksters, and History” Finkelstein exposes Elie Wiesel, Jerzy Kosinski, Binjamin Wilkomirski’s memoirs and other fraudsters while denouncing Jewish refusal to refuse to recognize the Gypsy genocide in the Holocaust Museum for fear it make untenable the Museum’s dogma of a “millennial Gentile hatred of Jews”. Finkelstein then demonstrates how Jewish organizations used the Holocaust for shaking down Swiss and German governments for billions in reparations aided by United States’ pressure.
As for Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, it is a well-researched, powerful debunking of the Holocaust. “As stated, the ‘material’ approach will be extended here and, in addition, a ‘historical-political’ approach will be ‘introduced’,” he wrote. “This is just a fancy way of saying that we will grasp that there are two political powers involved in the problem, not just one. That is to say, we have a tale of extermination, and we should inquire into the circumstance of its generation. . . Germany had an anti-Jewish policy involving, in many cases, deportations of Jews from their homes and countries of citizenship. That is certain. The wartime policy of Washington was to claim extermination, and the post-war policy was to hold trials, at which there was generated the only evidence that we have today that these wartime claims had any foundation. That is also certain. The policies of both states are necessarily of interest, and if there is any respect in which this book may be breaking fundamentally new ground on the problem, it is in its insistence in seeing Washington as an active agent in the generation of the story. Thus, we are interested not only in what Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, and Heydrich were doing during the war in regard to these matters, but also what Roosevelt, Hull, Morgenthau, and the New York Times and associated media were doing during the war, and what the various tribunals controlled or dominated by Washington did after the war. This is not only a fair but, more importantly, an illuminating historical approach.
“The conclusion is that Washington constructed a frame-up on the Jewish extermination charge. Once this is recognized, the true nature of German Jewish policy will be seen.”
Butz insists that without the evidence generated at the IMT (International Military Tribunal) and NMT (Nuremberg Military Tribunal) and lesser trials at Dachau camp (close to Nuremberg) and of staff at some concentration camps (Buchenwald, Flossenbuerg, Dachau) and the Malmedy case of the killing of American prisoners, there would be no significant evidence that the program of killing Jews ever existed at all. Supervised by the War Crimes Branch these trials were the “most shameful episodes in U.S. history,” he wrote. “The entire repertoire of third degree methods was enacted at Dachau: beatings and brutal kicking, to the point of ruining testicles in 137 cases, knocking out teeth, starvation, solitary confinement, torture with burning splinters, and impersonation of priests in order to encourage prisoners to “confess.” Low rank prisoners were assured that convictions were being sought only against higher ranking officers and that they had absolutely nothing to lose by cooperating and making the desired statements. Such “evidence” was then used against them when they joined their superiors in the dock. The latter, on the other hand, had been told that by “confessing” they had taken all responsibility onto themselves, thereby shielding their men from trial. A favourite stratagem, when a prisoner refused to cooperate, was to arrange a mock trial. The prisoner was led into a room in which civilian investigators, dressed in U.S. Army uniforms, were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the centre, with two candles providing the only light. This “court” then proceeded to hold a sham trial, at the conclusion of which a sham death sentence was passed. The “condemned” prisoner was later promised that, if he cooperated with the prosecutors in giving evidence, he would be reprieved. Sometimes interrogators threatened to turn prisoners over to the Russians. In many cases the prisoner’s family was threatened with loss of ration cards or other hardships if cooperation was not obtained.”
These and other methods of torture by American agents are familiar to those who have read of Guantanamo prison and other dark cells run by the CIA throughout Europe in the present day. Many of the judges at Nuremberg were Jewish and their judgments of the death sentences were seen as revengeful.
During the life of the Nazi Regime, Jews were encouraged to leave Germany. When Germany was at war with Russia the greater part of Jews in Europe were in the German sphere of influence and resettled in the East. Though the program was only partially carried out, “nowhere near six million Jews were involved.” Excluding Polish and Romanian Jews, perhaps 750,000 were settled in Ukraine, White Russia and Latvia. Several hundred thousand Jews were deported from Poland by the Russians and dispersed in the Soviet Union. For the most part, the Polish Jews who came into German hands were crowded into ghettoes in Eastern Poland. The remainder of the Jews who had been uprooted resettled in Palestine, the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere.
A typhus epidemic plagued the German concentration camps from the start of the war and its sweep of death at the end of the war was owing to the total collapse of measures to kill the lice spreading it, mainly due to constant rail traffic with the East. The “human” extermination camps were supposed to be in occupied Poland, not Germany, that is Auschwitz, Belsec, Kulmhop (Chemo), Lublin (Majdanek), Solider and Treblinka, locations abandoned before being captured by the Russians, not at camps which were still functioning, however disastrously, when captured by Western troops. Auschwitz is the key to the story as little documentary evidence is offered for the others.
The typical inmate of a German concentration camp was a person being detained for punitive or security reasons. There were five major categories, and they were distinguished by coloured insignia, which were associated with their uniform: Green for Criminals; Red for political prisoners (mainly communists); Pink for homosexuals; Black for Asocials (vagrants, drunkards, etc.); Purple for those considered disloyal on account of religious views (mainly Jehovah’s Witnesses). For labour the Germans used them all and Russian POWs (excusable because Russia did not respect the Conventions of War). The number of inmates in the entire German concentration camp system was about 224,000 in August 1943 and 524,000 a year later. These figures include only camps referred to by the Germans as concentration camps and do not include any transit camps or camps referred to in other terms, such as the Theresienstadt ghetto or any other establishments intended for quartering families. A fraction interned for security and punitive reasons were Jews and separated from Aryan inmates; Jews, under special legislation, were selected to labour in the camps; Jewish families were sent to transit camps, temporary quartering pending transportation to another destination, mostly ghettoes.
Butz examines the special work for the war effort done in the major camps and the types of prisoners doing the work. Auschwitz was interesting for its large area and several industries of strategic importance, especially as the site of the most advanced developments in synthetic rubber. Typhus was rife there. Germans cremated the dead, mainly in pits, and later in crematories. The claims of exterminations of Jews have their origin not in Allied intelligence information but in the operations of the World Jewish Congress, whose leaders were at first either unconcerned with, or uninformed about, the facts pertaining to Auschwitz. In this connection one must reject two possible fallacious expectations. The first is that Allied propaganda would strive to maximize Auschwitz propaganda after it was realized that the propaganda possibilities were excellent. The second is that the claims made in the Allied propaganda relative to Auschwitz would be almost completely devoid of real fact.
Butz examines how the propaganda was developed from a rumour attributed to an anonymous German industrialist that a decision was made to kill all non-Soviet Jews. It was forwarded to Washington. Zionists, principally the World Jewish Congress, demanded endorsement of the six million figure and Washington was eventually made to comply. Butz writes: “The inconsistencies and implausibilities and obvious lies will appear and finally the crushing blow, a fact contradicting the claims, so huge in significance that there can be no mumbling about ‘mysteries.’” His findings are thorough and undeniable, but for their acceptance by the world at large his work must be read and denunciations of it unmasked. His work inspired many writers to attack the hoax from other aspects which has resulted in a large revisionist literature.
Victor Thorn’s short book, The Holocaust Hoax Exposed; Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie is worth reading for its conciseness and straight reasoning—for example, “Further, Auschwitz’s original design plans still exist, and none of them depict what could be called ‘gas chambers’. Moreover these plans—again original and unaltered— did not contain provisions for exhaust units to dispense of any supposed poisonous gasses. Lastly no crematoria smokestacks ever existed in the design plans or construction at Auschwitz. There weren’t any whatsoever. All these ‘show pieces’ were added later for the benefit of museum visitors.
“Then there’s the matter of sheer numbers. Historians claim that anywhere upwards of 600—800 Jews were simultaneously crammed into the Krema 1 gas chamber [originally an air raid shelter]. However, with a mere floor space of 844 square feet, at the very most 100 people could fit into this area. Considering the obvious struggle under such perilous circumstances quite possibly only 40—50 people could be corralled at a time before bedlam resulted. At any rate, the next matter at hand is the subject of cremation. Morticians agree that it requires approximately 60-70 minutes using up-to-date technology to adequately cremate a human body. Now, if we buy the version of events provided by holocaust historians—namely, that ovens at Auschwitz were used for, at best, a total of 600 days—let's do some mathematics. If every supposed oven at Auschwitz ran non-stop except for maintenance and the removal of ashes, the total number of bodies that could have been cremated was 374,000. Now, how do we go from this figure to the four million total that stood for decades? A Canadian man named Ivan Lagace, who managed a crematory, revealed during the April 1988 Ernst Zündel trial that the Auschwitz cremation tale was "preposterous" and "beyond the realm of reality." He added that allegations regarding the incineration of 10,000-20,000 Jews every day was "technically impossible.” If all the supposed ovens at Auschwitz had worked non-stop with no downtime whatsoever, it would have taken until 1972 to incinerate four million bodies. On that note, if four million bodies had been cremated, it would result in 15,000 tons of ashes. In pounds, that equals 30 million pounds of ashes. There has never been one photograph showing these mountains of ash that would have been produced. In addition, imagine how many tons of coal would have been necessary to cremate four million Jews. It would require trains traveling around the clock to Auschwitz delivering the coal needed to cremate four million Jews. But there are no Allied reconnaissance photos in existence revealing huge supplies of coal (millions and millions of them) at Auschwitz. Nor do German records support any such massive deliveries to Auschwitz in regard to this much coal. Rather, the Nazis actually needed coal to fuel their war machine, not incinerate Jews. In all, two researchers—Carlo Mattogno and Franco Deana—estimated that at the very most, 162,000 bodies of the sick and elderly were cremated at Auschwitz after they died natural deaths.”
Butz and Thorn calculated after the fact. The Volunteer; the true story of the resistance hero who infiltrated Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather features Witold Pilecki who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz to report to the outside world what was happening there and to recruit prisoners willing to sabotage activities and cause an insurrection. His report and memoirs with the archived collection of 3,727 prisoner accounts brings us the horrors of everyday life in the camp. In 1940 Hitler began eliminating the Polish professional class by mass shootings. Other Poles they swept off the streets and sent them to a new camp outside Warsaw called Auschwitz. Arriving in cattle cars, the Polish prisoners were told that they would starve to death within six weeks. For the slightest error they were beaten to death. Disease was prevalent and death from pneumonia, typhus, blood-sucking lice, injections of phenol killed thousands. Poles of the professional class and intellectuals were beaten to death. Survivors were sent to a penal colony where they would soon die from overwork. The Jews and priests, a small minority, received extra-harsh treatment in a penal colony. This essay, however, concerns the deaths by gassing and cremation. The dead every day were cremated; 20 corpses could be cremated every 24 hours. Pretending to send the crippled and ill to a sanitarium, the camp commandant entrained them to a secretive medial centre outside Dresden where tens of thousands of German citizens, including children, deemed mentally-ill or disabled were gassed with carbon monoxide. Hundreds of Soviet Prisoners of war were trucked to Auschwitz, herded into a penal block, locked in cells where Zyklon B was dropped through holes in the flat roof to gas them. In January 1942 senior Nazis planned to deport Jews from the rest of Europe to the occupied East to be murdered immediately or worked to death in labour camps, called the Final Solution. By March 1942 of the 30,000 Poles registered in the camp, 11,132 were still alive; the figure included 2000 Polish Jews, most of whom were dead. Out of 12,000 Soviet POWs,100 survived. 1000 Jewish men each day began arriving from Slovakia and some from France. In early May a transport of 600 Jews, men, women and children, arrived in Auschwitz, told they were to be disinfected and were gassed from the roof. The bodies were trucked to near-by Birkenau and buried in the woods. 200,000 Jews were gassed in Birkenau. Later in May, 10,000 Jews were gassed in Auschwitz, which marked the start of the mass extermination of Jews, the first from near-by towns. The crematorium team could not keep up. The Nazis made Auschwitz part of a network of regional killing centres in Poland. By July it became the central hub for the killings. The Nazis were using houses in the woods especially remodelled for gassing. 3,500 people could be disposed of in two hours. Transports of Jewish families arrived every few days for gassing. Bodies had to be piled up by the walls of the crematoria. Pyres were used to burn corpses. More than 30,000 jews were deported to Auschwitz in August. That summer 35,000 Jews were gassed at Birkenau, 4000 Polish inmates died of typhus and 2000 from Nazi executions and phenol injections. There were three crematoria in Auschwitz for gassing Jews. It was now called a Jewish death camp.Trains brought Jews from Holland, Germany, France; two-thirds were gassed immediately and one-third admitted into the camp. A news report reached Churchill that 4000 unaccompanied Jewish children left Lyons for Germany and families were deported every day but he did not know they went to extermination in Auschwitz. One of Witold’s men in the camp escaped with reports of the murders but it took him months to reach London. Only in November 1942 did the West know that two million lives had been lost. In mid-August 1943, Polish resistance reported 35,000 Jews had been killed. Hundreds were dying everyday in the camps but the news was filled with the discovery of the Katyn massacres when 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Joseph Stalin's orders. Witold escaped in 1943 and fought resisting the German destruction of Warsaw and its inhabitants while Stalin delayed taking the city. World War II deaths amounted to 70 to 85 million people globally, more than half were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the holocaust and by massacres, starvation and disease. The advance of the Russians on Warsaw brought the end of murder in Auschwitz.
My next blog, Trumpdom No.5, deals with the origins of the holocaust propaganda and its purposes.
