Many of the leading scholars of the Holocaust have stated on record, that
the actual evidence to prove the Nazis operated homicidal gas chambers,
is virtually non-existent. Following are a few of their admissions of this fact:
the actual evidence to prove the Nazis operated homicidal gas chambers,
is virtually non-existent. Following are a few of their admissions of this fact:
Professor Arno J. Mayer, whose Jewish family fled Luxembourg
in 1940, wrote in his 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken:
"Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." (A)
"Most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials and executioners at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and bystanders. This testimony must be screened carefully, since it can be influenced by subjective factors of great complexity." (B)
"In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources." (C)
Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History
By Arno J. Mayer. Pantheon Books (1990 edition) A. p.362, B. p.362/3, C. p.363
Professor Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, the "standard work"
on the Holocaust, appeared as an expert witness at the 1985 trial of Revisionist Ernst Zundel,
during which Hilberg had the following exchange with Douglas Christie, Zundel's barrister:
on the Holocaust, appeared as an expert witness at the 1985 trial of Revisionist Ernst Zundel,
during which Hilberg had the following exchange with Douglas Christie, Zundel's barrister:
"Can you give me one scientific report that shows the existence of gas chambers anywhere in Nazi-occupied territory?" defence counsel Doug Christie asked Hilberg in a day-long rapid fire of cross-examination.
"I am at a loss," Hilberg replied.
"You are (at a loss) because you can't," Christie said.
Professor Raul Hilberg also stated in an interview shortly before his death in 2007:
"there was a Holocaust, which is, by the way,
more easily said than demonstrated."
Is There a New Anti-Semitism? A Conversation with Raul Hilberg
Logos Journal. Volume 6 - Issue one-two
Professor of Architecture (but not an architect) Robert Jan van Pelt, Jewish expert on Auschwitz, and expert witness at the 2000 Irving vs. Penguin & Lipstadt trial, was interviewed for The Toronto Star in December 2009:
(Interviewer:) "By allowing nature to take over the site (Auschwitz-Birkenau), do we run the risk of allowing humanity to forget what happened and set the stage for future questioning of the Holocaust?(van Pelt:) Ninety-nine per cent of what we know we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove . . . it has become part of our inherited knowledge."
A Case for Letting Nature Take Back Auschwitz
The Toronto Star - December 27, 2009
Professor of Holocaust history Christopher Browning, was an expert defence witness in the Irving vs. Penguin & Lipstadt trial in 2000. In his report for trial he says documentary evidence for the gas chambers is "scant":
"In particular, the documentation of mass killing by shooting in the territories occupied by Germany after June 1941 is quite extensive, while documents relating to gassing in Poland is scant. For gassing, therefore, witness testimony and circumstantial evidence play a much larger role."
Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution:
Electronic Edition, by Browning, Christopher R.
III. Implementation of the Final Solution, 3.2
Justice Gray, the judge at the 2000 Irving vs. Penguin & Lipstadt trial, made numerous
references during the trial and in his judgement, to the lack of evidence for gas chambers:
references during the trial and in his judgement, to the lack of evidence for gas chambers:
"The consequence of the absence of any overt documentary evidence of
gas chambers at these camps, coupled with the lack of archaeological evidence,
means that reliance has to be placed on eye witness and circumstantial evidence."
Jean Claude-Pressac author of AUSCHWITZ: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers,
admits there is a complete lack of "indisputable" evidence for mass gassings at Auschwitz:
"In the absence of any “direct”, i.e. palpable, indisputable and evident proof (lacking so far as we know at present) such as a photograph of people killed by a toxic gas in an enclosed space that can be perfectly located and identified, or of a label on a Krematorium drawing of a “Gaskammer um Juden zu vergiften / gas chamber for poisoning Jews” an “indirect” proof may suffice and be valid. By “indirect”, proof, I mean a German document that does not state in black and white that a gas chamber is for HOMICIDAL purposes, but one containing evidence that logically it is impossible for it to be anything else."
The French historian Jacques Baynac, who stated:
"For the scientific historian a witness statement does not represent real history"
But nevertheless still believes the Nazis gassed Jews, wrote:
“it is necessary to recognize that the lack of traces involves the inability to
directly establish the reality of the existence of homicidal gas chambers.”
Well, we've still survivor testimony
Prussian Jewish historian Samuel Gringauz, himself a camp survivor, and Chairman of the
Council of the Central Committee Of Liberated Jews In The American Zone of German.
Wrote in an 1950 issue of Jewish Social Studies about survivor testimonies:
"most of the memoirs and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies."
A 1945 report requested by Eisenhower for the US Congress reads::
Report of the Committee Requested by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower through the Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall"Three classes or kinds of evidence were presented to us. (see link for first & second types)... The third kind of evidence was what may be called the common knowledge of the camp, that is to say, evidence of things done in the camp which were not done publicly but which, nevertheless, all prisoners were aware of. This is similar to certain knowledge possessed by prisoners generally in legitimate institutions like State penitentiaries. These prisoners, from custom and experience, from the conversation with the guards and among themselves, and from a very plain and almost mathematical kind of circumstantial evidence, have accurate knowledge of certain things which they have not actually seen with their own eyes. The prisoners at the camps speak about these things as though they had actually seen them. It was the unanimous opinion of our committee after talking to hundreds of prisoners that this third kind of evidence was often as accurate and reliable as the two kinds of direct evidence above referred to. An example of this kind of evidence will be found in that part of our report dealing with the torture chamber at Buchenwald, where no one actually saw the strangulations perpetrated in this chamber, but where the circumstantial evidence of it was so complete and clear as to leave no doubt in the mind of anyone."
to the Congress of the United States Relative to Atrocities and Other Conditions in Concentration Camps in Germany
Gerald Reitlinger, the British Jew who wrote the first in-depth study of the Holocaust in 1953 wrote:
"A certain degree of reserve is necessary in handling all this material, and particularly this applies to the last section ("survivor narratives"). For instance, the evidence concerning the Polish death camps was mainly taken after the war by Polish State Commissions or by the Central Jewish Historical Commission of Poland. The hardy survivors who were examined were seldom educated men. Moreover, the Eastern European Jew is a natural rhetorician, speaking in flowery similes."
Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Sphere books, 1971 edition) p. 581 & also
American Jewish holocaust historian and passionate Zionist, Lucy Dawidowicz,
wrote in her 1976 book A Holocaust Reader of survivor testimonies:
"Survivor accounts of critical events are typical of all testimony, that is, they are full of discrepancies. About all matters both trivial and significant, the evidence is nearly always in dispute. In part the unreliability of these accounts derives from imperfect observation and flawed memory, but in larger part from the circumstance that they are not constructed exclusively on the basis of firsthand experience. In order to present a coherent narrative, the author has likely included a large measure of hearsay, gossip, rumor, assumption, speculation, and hypothesis."
Primo Levi Italian Jewish Auschwitz survivor and acclaimed writer, wrote in a 1986:
"It is natural and obvious that the most substantial material for the reconstruction of truth about the camps is the memories of the survivors. Beyond the pity and indignation these recollections provoke, they should also be read with a critical eye. For knowledge of the Lagers (camps), the Lagers themselves were not always a good observation post: in the inhuman conditions to which they were subjected, the prisoners could barely acquire an overall vision of their universe. The prisoners; above all those who did not understand German, might not even know where in Europe their Lager was situated, having arrived after a slaughterous and tortuous journey in sealed boxcars. They did not know about the existence of other Lagers, even those only a few kilometers away. They did not know for whom they worked. They did not understand the significance of certain sudden changes in conditions, or of the mass transfers. Surrounded by death, the deportee was often in no position to evaluate the extent of the slaughter unfolding before his eyes. The companion who worked beside him today was gone by the morrow: he might be in the but next door, or erased from the world; there was no way to know. In short, the prisoner felt overwhelmed by a massive edifice of violence and menace but could not form for himself a representation of it because his eyes were fixed to the ground by every single minute's needs."
Raul Hilberg, the Don of holocaust studies said:
"A great percentage of the mistakes I discovered in
my own work, could be attributed to testimonies."
The much admired, and much despised (by Zionists), Jewish scholar, whose father
survived Auschwitz, and whose mother survived Majdanek; Norman Finkelstein wrote:
"The postwar German government provided compensation to Jews who had been in ghettos or camps. Many Jews fabricated their pasts to meet this eligibility requirement. "If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one," my mother used to exclaim, "who did Hitler kill?" Indeed, many scholars have cast doubt on the reliability of survivor testimony."
0 comments:
Post a Comment