Huhne backs holocaust denier in extradition case
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has spoken out in defence of an alleged holocaust denier arrested in the UK earlier this week.
Mr Huhne told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme British courts should refuse to act on an EU arrest warrant requesting the extradition of Dr Gerald Toben who has been remanded in custody since his arrest.
German authorities allege Dr Toben published online material “of an anti-semitic and/or revisionist nature”.
However holocaust denial is not a crime in the UK and Mr Huhne said Dr Toben should not be extradited.
Dr Toben, a German-born former schoolteacher, was en route from the United States to Dubai when he was arrested.
He has been remanded in custody ahead of a bail hearing on 10th October and a full hearing on 17th October.
While making clear that he was completely opposed to anti-semitism, Mr Huhne said: “We don’t in this country tend to prosecute people for issues that we regard as issues of freedom of speech”.
He added the case seemed “pretty dodgy” given the fact the offence was not committed in Germany.
Human rights campaigners are backing Dr Toben arguing that his views – however unpleasant – do not make him a criminal in the UK.
But the Crown Prosecution Service, acting for the German authorities, argues agreements signed in 2003 between the UK and other European countries mean that Britain is duty-bound to assist the German authorities.
Mr Huhne countered this however telling the Today programme that countries could “pick and choose” cases in which they would apply warrants issued by fellow EU member states.
He said there were good legal grounds for refuse in this case adding Belgium wass refusing to send suspects to Poland on murder charges which related to abortion.
Dr Toben has previously described the Holocaust as “a lie” and has claimed on his Australian-based website, the Adelaide Institute, there was “no proof” Hitler systematically exterminated the Jews.
In court earlier this week, Dr Toben, 64, claimed he was the victim of a “legal ambush” and promised never to return to Britain if he was allowed to leave.
Right
This is a law in Germany that you can be jailed for saying anything against the official version of the “holocaust” in World War II. Now the jewish lobby is pushing this to become EU Law. This is a totally unjust attack on freedom of speech. It is as if this one subject has been hand picked to be protected from investigation. WHY? Why just this? All that says to me is that there is something to hide!
This angers me and makes me want to investigate what it is they are hiding. I tell you I understand why they have this law now because you don’t have to look for very long before you start to find holes in the story. I have never questioned the story before and never read up on it either but it took literally half an hour of searching and reading and you can pick the guts of the Holocaust story to ribbons.
Here are just a few items I quickly discovered which might interest you to think about
1 – It has been estimated that it would have taken 60 years to dispose of 6 million Jews rather than the few short years that they were in the work camps.
2 – The 6 million figure was a figure thrown out by a german jewish lobbyist to the US before they had even been moved to the camps
3 – Strangely enough the same 6 million figure was quoted in the “American Hebrew” newspaper in New York in 1919 regarding the “holocaust” of Jews during WWI
4 – There was a BBC documentary shot in early 1945 before the collapse of Germany called “Life in the camps” which showed a vibrant healthy working community with sports and music and education. I’m sure the best face was shown by the authorities but if things were as bad as was painted after the war it would have been hard to hide
5 – The Auschwits memorial was changed in 1989. Before that it read 4 million suffered and died in there. Now it says 1.5 million. A reduction of 2.5 million overnight, why wasn’t the 6 million figure similarly dropped?
6 – The photgraphs in existence of death and mass open graves and emaciated people were taken on the liberation of the camps at the end of the war. It has not been paired with the fact that the Allies blanket bombed Germany for months causing their collapse prior to the final push. Including the 7 day bombing of Dresden that killed 350,000 people. After this bombing of all Germany’s road and rail infrastructure and factories, the distribution of food and medicine was impossible for the last few months of the war and starvation and death by disease was rampant. The camps would not have been high on Germany’s priority list in defence of their borders anymore.
7 – The world population of Jews in 1938 was 15,748,000. In the same publication in 1947 it was 15,690,000. A drop in population of 58,000, not 6,000,000. Some of these losses, like in every other nation, would also have been taken up by those Jews who bravely fought and died in the war, on both sides. So this doesn’t really add up does it?
8 – No autopsies done by allied medical personel on bodies found at the camps revealed any death by gas
9 – Independant scientific analysis as well as Polish government analysis of the walls of the alleged “gas chambers” in Auschwits have found no residue of cyanide which should be present if there had indeed been gassing done there
10 – The alleged “gas chamber” there has an entry door with a glass window. hardly what you would expect to keep people in
11 – The building filmed as a gas chamber contained manholes and sealed off plumbing and signs that showed where walls had been demolished, leaving only the heating furnaces in the centre. To all intents and purposes it looked like it used to be a bathhouse before it was hurriedly altered for filming.
12 – The giant chimney we were told was the flue for the furnaces burning corpses was new and not connected to the building at all
13 – The Belzec camp was supposed to have executed 600,000 but relied on only 2 witnesses for this story. 1 Jewish man who was an escapee and a statement by the camp commendant at his trial which he completely discredited in his statement by saying 25 million were killed there which is ridiculous and in the record and slipped by everyone
14 – The Americans interned all the Japanese in the US after Pearl Harbour “for their own safety” Could there have been an element of this in Germany with the Jews. I suggest this only because there was some old anger towards the Jews in Germany as a fallout from World War I after the Jewish bankers that were bankrolling the war for the Germany and Austria then sold them out. They did this by making a deal with Britain that if these bankers could get America to join the war that Britain would give them Palestine. The deal was done.
16 – The large Jewish banking interests (Rothschild mainly) again financed both sides of the conflict in WWII
17 – Some of the photographs used have been proven to have been faked
18 – The Red Cross counted the deaths in all work camps for the duration of the war and their total only comes to around 300,000 people for all reasons (disease etc) and of all races including the Jews !!!!!!!!
One thing that makes me open to the suggestion that this is one of the biggest false stories in history is that during the Yugoslavian war ITN went in t
o Bosnia and filmed a refugee camp. They then used the footage of the refugee camp and concocted the story of it being a Serbian extermination and rape camp. It has been since proven and admitted by ITN that this was the case. This again was done for expediency to gain war support
Now In every country in the world we have seen attrocity yet the only one we are constantly reminded of all around the world with museums and exhibitions and book after book after book and films and memorials etc etc is the Jewish one. 60 to 70 years on and still the propoganda continues and still the Germans pay millions and millions in reparation. WHY?
WHY? why is it the only one? Why so much continued exposure? There were worse attrocities in the world. The Americans anihilated the Native Indians and even enforced sterilization on 40% of the Native Indian women in America in the 1950s. Nothing is said about that genocide.
No there is more to this than meets the eye and it only took me an hour to find out all that. How much more will I find out if I really look. This stinks to high heaven and I will read further into this now my interest has been wetted.
This is a dirty law that must go before it spreads. I did read that this isnt the forst time it’s been invoked. When Lenin then Stalin took over Russia many of their top men were Jewish including the head of the security services. It was he, a Jew, who oversaw the the mass genocide that took place in Russia. Interesting enough though he made it a crime punishable by death for anyone in Russia to be Anti-Semitic.
ANTI-SEMITIC ! that’s the defense the vocal Jews leap up and shout if you question anything about them. Even about the mass murder they commit in Palestine. Yet what does it mean?
Well as far as I can find out it basically means if you are anti-semitic then you don’t agree that the Jews should be treated as a priveliged race (in that they believe they are a superior race to the “gentiles” who are only equal to say cattle)
Well then in that case, if I have it right, then yes I am definitely going to join the anti-semitic club, and any one who accuses me of it is basically telling me I have no right to judge them because they are my superior. Well I don’t think so matey. You are under the same scrutiny as we all are and you have no special place or phrase to hide behind.
OK so why has the 6 million story perpetuated? The only reason I can see is that 96% of the worlds media is owned by Jews. That could have something to do with it ,and why you never see a story painting the Palestinians in a good light. It also explains the false statement that the leader of Iran said Israel should be wiped off the map, when if you properly translate what he said in the speach he didn’t say that at all, yet the papers wont change the story.
Anyway
I think this all needs a lot of further reading and investigation to get to the truth of it. Just wondered what you think about this and that law
Behind Door32 
October 6, 2008 at 3:31 pm |
Boo this is great I knew I could spark you into life with this. I will read it when I find my glasses then comment. Muah xxx
October 6, 2008 at 2:04 pm |
PS – I’m knackered now x
October 6, 2008 at 2:03 pm |
Part 3 –
This sinister encroachment of hate crime into English law has little to do with preventing harm and more to do with an abuse of power. And the EU has put rocket fuel behind it.
It is this erosion of fundamental liberties and denial of national differences at the heart of the EU project which is behind the current alarming rise of neo-Nazi parties in countries such as Austria – which jailed David Irving for Holocaust-denial.
It is not bigots like Fredrick Toben who pose the biggest threat to our freedom, but the EU and its incendiary doctrine of nation-denial.
Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail 6/10/08
October 6, 2008 at 2:02 pm |
Part 2 –
In a free society, the proper antidote to the dissemination of lies is the expression of the truth. The arch Holocaust-denier David Irving was jailed for this crime in Austria. Did that expunge his poison? Of course not; if anything, it helped him pose as a martyr.
What was more effective was surely the destruction of his ideas in a British courtroom when he chose to bring a libel action – which rebounded against him by discrediting his claim to be a ‘historian’ and ending with his denunciation by the trial judge as a ‘pro-Nazi polemicist’.
That is the British way of doing things. But what is so disturbing about the Toben case is that we may be forced to become accomplices to a view which is inimical to our own.
If Toben is extradited, this will mean that Britain will be treating as a criminal suspect someone who is accused of behaviour which is not regarded as a crime in this country.
That breaches an ancient principle of our law – which we so regrettably junked when we signed up to the European arrest warrant. Moreover, it is not just foreigners but British citizens who in theory can now be arrested in the UK and extradited to a country which accuses them of committing a crime there which is not treated as a crime here.
This is part of the attempt to create a ‘corpus a European body of criminal law, which is in turn a key element of the EU vision of a unified super-state whose inhabitants all subscribe to the same principles.
But we do not. Both Germany and Austria have a very particular reason for criminalising Holocaust-denial. Given their appalling history, they are understandably terrified that it will help bring about a revival of Nazism.
They are entitled to reach such a conclusion and enshrine it in their own law. But equally, we should be entitled to say that we don’t share this view. By signing up to the European arrest warrant, however, we have removed that most precious privilege.
Even if Toben is not extradited – and there is a view that the wording of the Extradition Act may provide him with a loophole – the EU arrest warrant remains a threat to our liberties.
Its scope is dangerously imprecise. Under its terms, people can be extradited to a country which accuses them merely of ‘racism and xenophobia’. But these prejudices are notoriously difficult to define.
Indeed, those who object to the EU arrest warrant and the EU project itself as an attack on national sovereignty are themselves routinely accused of xenophobia.
It is surely not fanciful, therefore, to imagine an Orwellian scenario in which such people may themselves be extradited and prosecuted – for warning against the very abuse of power that may put them in the dock.
Holocaust-denial falls into the category of ‘hate-crime’ which has become such a fixation among Left-wingers and an article of faith within the EU. These zealots appear to believe that hatred and prejudice can be expunged from the human heart through the exercise of the law.
Like other utopian fantasies, however, far from ushering in a new era of tolerance and enlightenment, this creates the very illiberalism it purports to oppose.
More and more arrests and prosecutions are taking place against people who are deemed to offend against ‘hate speech’ – simply because they are preaching Christianity, denouncing immorality or even, in one consummately ironic case, scrawling on a wall ‘Free speech for England’.
And all this against the background of the campaign by certain Muslims who seek to outlaw even the term ‘Islamic terrorism’ in order to shut down debate about that particular threat.
October 6, 2008 at 2:01 pm |
I think in venting some ‘aren’t Jews terrible’ polemic, you’ve missed the point about why this is dodgy ground. I’m just going to attach an atricle that explains why this is bad news and is nothing to do with rehashing some hysterical version of the old ‘blood libel’. Once again, I ask you to quote your sources and websites so that an interested reader can go and read your ‘facts’ in context and from source, and then enter a discussion with you.
Part 1 –
Holocaust-denial law and the attempted extradition of a man for publishing antisemitic material
Later this week, a London magistrates’ court will hear a bail application in an extradition case which should be ringing alarm bells.
A German-born Australian citizen, Fredrick Toben, was arrested as he passed through Heathrow by British police acting under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities.
The Germans have accused him of publishing antisemitic Holocaust-denial material on his Australian website.
There is no doubt that the views expressed by Toben, a notorious falsifier of history who was previously sentenced to nine months’ jail in Germany for breaching its Holocaust- denial law, are vile. He says, for example, that there is no proof that Hitler systematically exterminated the Jews and that Auschwitz was merely a ‘transit camp’.
As a Jew, I am acutely alive to the vicious potential of denying the Nazis’ attempted extermination of the world’s Jews. Such lies are used to whip up hatred against the Jewish people by effectively accusing them of fabricating claims of genocide. There is no question that this not only denies the historical evidence of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, but also subjects Jews round the world to further hatred and persecution. Holocaust-denial is, indeed, a modern form of Jew-hatred.
But, through gritted teeth, I have to say that I am totally against the extradition of this man and appalled at the political and legal developments that have brought these moves about.
There are two fundamental issues at stake here. First is the threat to the principle of freedom of speech. Second is the erosion of Britain’s power to uphold its own historic commitment to that principle.
Freedom of speech is a bedrock of our society. Sure, it’s not absolute; but we limit it only in the most rare of circumstances where it poses a direct threat to individuals, such as inciting or encouraging people to violence.
For similar reasons, we also outlaw incitement to racial hatred. But we draw a distinction, for example, between inciting hatred of people for what they inescapably are, which we rightly treat as a crime, and inciting hatred of their views, which we see as part of the cut and thrust of a liberal democratic society. That’s why there was such uproar over the new crime of incitement to religious hatred.
It’s because of this respect for debate that this country has never criminalised Holocaust-denial.
Odious as it is, it is an interpretation of history – and one which in any event defies easy categorisation.
True, it’s an interpretation that used to stir up hatred against Jewish people. But once you argue that it should therefore be made a crime, there’s no end to it.
After all, you could make exactly the same point that the current vilification of Israel and the denial that it is the victim of aggression in the Middle East has led to an upsurge in violence and prejudice against Jews worldwide.
Even more fundamentally, classic English literature is stuffed with anti- Jewish stereotypes and attitudes. But no one would suggest that expressing such opinions about Israel should therefore be made a crime, or that such literary classics should be censored.
October 6, 2008 at 1:44 pm |
Col, tyrants understood that if you repeat a big lie often enough people would begin to believe it. The big lie that is being repeated at the moment is that anyone who is critical of Israeli policies or Israel will automatically be branded an anti-Semite. While criticism itself is not anti-Semitic, there are certain kinds of criticism of Jews that is clearly anti-Semitic, even if the word Jew is never mentioned. And obvious instance is Amiri Baraka claiming in his poem that Israel and Sharon knew about the attack on the World Trade Centre before it happened and warned 4.000 Israelis to stay away. Can anyone doubt that this variation on the blood libel is anti-Semitic to the core? Can anyone dispute that those who target Jews for physical attack – whether in France, Germany, Russia or England – are engaging in anti-Semitic actions?
Professor Irwin Cotler, a leading scholar of human rights, has identified the following nine sets of what he calls ‘new anti-Semitism’ – source Professor Irwin Cotler, ‘Beyond Durban’, Global Jewish Agenda, http://www.jafi.org.il/agenda/2001/english/wk3-22/6.asp
1 – “Genocidal antisemitism”: the public calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People. Examples are:
The Covenants of terrorist groups like Hamas which commit themselves to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People;
Religious legal rulings (Fatwas) which call for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People;
State-incited calls for Genocide (e.g. the Iranian threat to annihilate Israel).
2 – Political antisemitism
The denial of the Jewish People’s right to self-determination.
The de-legitimization of Israel as a state.
The attribution to Israel of all the world’s evils. Israel as the “poisoner of international wells”.
3 – Ideological antisemitism (which surpasses the Zionism =Racism rhetoric) to “Nazify” Israel;
4 – Theological antisemitism (the convergence of Islamic antisemitism and Christian “replacement’ theology, drawing on classical hatred of Jews);
5 – Cultural antisemitism: the melange of attitudes, sentiments and discourse of “fashionable” salon intellectuals;
6 – Economic antisemitism, which goes beyond the Arab boycott of Israel to include extra-territorial application of restrictive covenants against countries trading with Israel;
7 – Holocaust denial;
8 – Racist terrorism against Jews; and,
9 – Denial to Israel of equality before the law in the international arena – the singling out of Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena.
October 6, 2008 at 1:24 pm |
12. Didn’t Simon Wiesenthal himself state that there were no extermination camps in Germany?
The Nazis classified their many hundreds of concentration camps on their basis of their primary function. In a very real sense, all were death camps because the death of the inmates, whether through overwork, starvation/disease, or outright murder, was ultimately expected. Those sites, however, which functioned as extermination centers (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno), were specially equipped for the gassing of hundreds of thousands of victims each (millions altogether). All of these camps were located in Poland, and for good reason. Poland had far more Jews than Germany and the rest of Western Europe combined. The Nazis also felt that the relative remoteness of Poland’s rural areas would also minimize reports of mass murder taking place there.
13. For years, the death statistics at Auschwitz-Birkenau had been put at well over 3 million. Recently, however, a memorial plaque at the former death camp estimates Jewish losses closer to 1 million. Shouldn’t the new figures imply that Jewish losses for the Holocaust are much lower than previously thought?
The figure of 3-4 million murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau was an invention of communist officials in Poland (and the former U.S.S.R.) which sought to blur the uniqueness of Jewish suffering at Auschwitz. To do this, they purposely overstated the number of non-Jewish casualties at Auschwitz-Birkenau by many times their true numbers. In a clever attempt to disguise the subterfuge, the figures for Jewish losses were inflated by nearly double, so that their losses would still be larger than those of non-Jewish victims, though now by a much smaller ratio. With the end of communism in Poland and the former Soviet Union, officials at the Auschwitz museum finally lowered the casualty figures in line with the estimates of historians who, for years, have insisted that between one and 1 1/2 million people perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 80 – 90% of them Jews. The figure of 6 million Jewish losses during the Holocaust has always been in line with the lower Auschwitz figures.
October 6, 2008 at 1:23 pm |
11. American engineer and execution ‘expert’, Fred Leuchter, proved that the ‘so-called’ gas chambers at Auschwitz could not have been used for their ‘alleged’ purpose.
In 1988, Fred Leuchter of Malden, Massachusetts was contacted by Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson and hired to prepare a report on the gas chambers of Auschwitz on behalf of Canadian neo-Nazi, Ernst Zundel. Zundel was on trial on charges stemming from the distribution of Holocaust revisionist literature. With his client footing the bill, Leuchter visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek death camps. Upon returning to the United States, he published a lengthy report which concluded that the facilities he examined “could not have then been…utilized or seriously considered to function as execution gas chambers.” During the Zundel trial, however, it became increasingly clear that something was terribly wrong with the “Leuchter Report.” As it turned out, Mr. Leuchter had no credentials as an engineer, and in fact, held only a Bachelors Degree in history. Leuchter’s bizarre explanation that anyone who went to college knew enough Mathematics and Science to be an engineer, raised even more eyebrows. Judge Ronald Thomas listened to excerpts from the “Leuchter Report,” then castigated the author for his methodology which he labeled “preposterous,” before ruling that “Leuchter has no expertise.” Leuchter’s lack of credentials resulted in more than embarrassment at the Zundel trial. Leuchter, who had represented himself as an engineer and execution expert to various government agencies for years, was indicted by the state of Massachusetts for the imposture. Faced with the possibility of jail time if convicted, Leuchter reached a pre-trial agreement with the Court in which he admitted that he “was not and had never been registered as a professional engineer,” although he had represented himself as “an engineer able to consult in areas of engineering concerning execution technology.” As part of the humbling agreement Leuchter also agreed to cease and desist from the distribution of anymore engineering reports during his probationary period. An analysis of the “Leuchter Report” by Professor George Wellers in Paris concluded Leuchter’s “calculations to be an absurdity… One can see in many ways to what degree this expert chemist (Wellers was unaware that Leuchter had no degree in any science) is operating outside the realities of the problem.” Concluding the analysis, Wellers characterized Leuchter’s interpretation as “false and absurd from start to end.” Despite his embarrassment from both academic as well as legal circles, Leuchter took his show to Germany. Arrested in October 1993 on charges of inciting racial hatred, he was released on bail and allowed to return to the U.S. pending trial. Leuchter, however, refused to return to Germany for trial. A warrant for his arrest is still outstanding. Despite the exposure of the self-styled engineer and his report as fraudulent, both are still held in high esteem among Holocaust “revisionists.”
October 6, 2008 at 1:21 pm |
7 . Zyklon B was a fumigant. It wasn’t a practical agent for mass murder.
Ordinarily, Zyklon B (a hydrogen cyanide preparation) was used as an insecticide. Hydrogen cyanide, however, is actually more dangerous to humans than insects. When the level of HCN reaches only 300 parts per million, it will kill a person within a few minutes. The amount of hydrogen cyanide required to kill a person of average weight is only 60 mg. Because Zyklon was, in fact, so toxic, its manufacturers warned personnel not to re-enter a room fumigated with the gas for 20 hours after airing. In addition, a compound was added to the preparation emitting a powerful, intolerable odour – a warning agent that the gas was present. When purchasing Zyklon B for the death camps, the SS ordered the manufacturer to remove the warning compound, a clear indication of its intended use.
8. If Zyklon B is so highly toxic, how could bodies have been removed from gas chambers only minutes after execution?
The death chambers were outfitted with special ventilation systems to remove any remaining gas. In addition, those prisoners charged with removing the bodies (the sonderkommando) wore gas masks.
9. Zyklon B is so highly flammable that a single spark from the ventilation system or the immense heat created by the nearby furnaces would have resulted in an explosion.
Zyklon B will explode – at 60,000 parts per million. It only takes a concentration of 300 parts per million to kill a person in just a few minutes. (Less than half that amount will kill in less than an hour.) Clearly, the concentration of Zyklon used in the gas chambers was far below flammability or explosion levels.
10. There is no proof whatsoever that the Nazis ever murdered anyone in gas chambers.
The use of gas chambers by the Nazis is proven by a wide array of evidence. Testimony by the perpetrators themselves as well as the first-hand accounts of prisoners, especially members of the “Sonderkommando” (groups of inmates forced to remove the dead from the gas chambers and dispose of their bodies) constitute only a part of the evidence. Documents including blueprints of the killing installations as well as orders for construction materials and Zyklon B (the deadly hydrogen cyanide preparation used for gassings at Auschwitz and Majdanek…carbon monoxide exhaust was used at other camps) survived the war as did some of the actual gassing facilities themselves. Photos clandestinely taken by prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau even show the disposal of corpses removed from the gas chamber. The manufacture, distribution and use of the deadly gas was clearly demonstrated at the “Zyklon B Trial” in March 1946, Hamburg, Germany. Two of the defendants, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher, the owner and a major executive of a company that manufactured the gas were sentenced to death after notes of their trips to Auschwitz disproved their contention that they were unaware that the poison was used to kill inmates. Jean-Claude Pressac, a one-time skeptic of the gas chambers, had undertaken a careful study of Auschwitz in which he analysed a wide variety of camp documents, photos, reports and blueprints. Pressac, who had at one time been intrigued by the Holocaust-denying theories of Robert Faurisson, concluded that his original skepticism could no longer be supported in the face of the evidence. In 1989, the Klarsfeld Foundation published his study, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, in which Pressac demonstrates the use of the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the murders of hundreds of thousands of people. Incidentally, Jews were not the first people gassed by the Nazis. The first victims of Nazi gassings were German mental patients condemned by Hitler’s “Euthanasia” order of 1939.
October 6, 2008 at 1:20 pm |
5. Nazi policy towards the Jews was emigration, not extermination.
From the beginning, the Nazis made no secret of their goal of creating a “Jew-free” Germany and Europe. One of the earliest methods was, indeed, forced emigration. But on November 10, 1941, precise instructions from Berlin to kill the Jews in his area were received by Higher SS and police leader, Friedrich Jeckeln from Berlin, stating, that pursuant to the Fuehrer’s order, Jews would no longer be allowed “to emigrate”, instead they would be “evacuated.” In his October 4, 1943 speech to SS generals in Poznan, SS Chief, Heinrich Himmler, left no doubt as to the meaning of evacuation. “I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people”, he declared. “Evacuation” had been a Nazi code word for murder even earlier. In the Spring of 1940, 1,558 mental patients had been transferred from sanatoriums in Eastern Prussia for “evacuation” near the Soldau concentration camp. They were never heard from again. The Nazis attempted to hide their intentions by the use of code words. “Resettlement” was commonly used to describe the deportation of Jews to the gas chambers, hence SS Major Francke-Gricksch’s 1943 report on Auschwitz in which he remarks that the camp’s “resettlement furnaces” were capable of burning 10,000 bodies a day. Despite the attempts at deception, Victor Brack, one of the chief architects of Hitler’s “euthanasia” experiments testified to the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, that it was no secret among the Nazi hierarchy that “the Jews were to be exterminated.”
6. Not a single document has been found with Hitler’s signature ordering the extermination of the Jews.
This is true. Hitler was not about to repeat the mistake he had made earlier when he initialled his “euthanasia order,” condemning over 70,000 German mental patients to death at so-called “charitable care facilities” such as Hadamar and Grafineck. (Ironically, the first victims of Nazi gassings were actually non-Jewish Germans). Popular protest which threatened his popularity, eventually forced Hitler to abandon his euthanasia experiment, or at least take it underground. Never again would Hitler initial any document connecting himself to mass killings.
Nevertheless, historians have been able to establish with convincing certainty that the order to exterminate millions of Jews came directly from Hitler. On November 10, 1941, Higher SS and police leader, Friedrich Jeckeln, received orders to liquidate the Jewish population of Riga. He was informed by his superior, Hinrich Lohse, that it was “the Fuehrer’s wish.” A few months earlier, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller, sent a message to the commanders of the 4 Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads active in Eastern Europe) advising them that “the Fuehrer was to be informed about the work of the Einsatzgruppen on a continual basis.” Discussing the liquidation of Jews in Eastern Europe, SS Chief, Heinrich Himmler, told SS Gruppenfuehrer, Gottlob Berger, “the occupied East will be freed of Jews. The Fuehrer has placed the execution of this diffi cult order on my shoulders.” Hitler’s involvement in the “Final Solution” extended to gassing operations. On October 25, 1941 a directive addressed to Hinrich Lohse
regarding the use of special “gassing vans,” came by way of German judge, Dr. Erhard Wetzel. Wetzel had been summoned to the Chancellory and informed that the directive he was to prepare was, in fact, a “Fuehrer order.” On February 4, 1943, Hitler equated the extermination of the Jews with having “exterminated a bacterium.” In his January 30 speech to the Reichstag 4 years earlier, Hitler warned that in the event of war, “the result will be…the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!” Those who argue that Hitler did not order, approve, or even know about the wanton murder of millions of Jews and others during the Holocaust, do so in direct contradiction of all the evidence.
October 6, 2008 at 1:19 pm |
3. The estimates of Jewish losses during the Holocaust are greatly exaggerated. There were never even 6 million Jews in Germany.
It is true that Germany had fewer than 600,000 Jews when Hitler came to power in 1933. The majority of Jews murdered by the Nazis, however, did not live in Germany. They resided in the countries which Germany invaded during the war, especially Poland and areas of the former Soviet Union, where millions of Jews once made their homes. In fact, the Protocol of the Wannsee Conference (Jan. 20, 1942) a German document outlining the Nazi plan to annihilate European Jewry, lists over 11 million Jews throughout the continent. The 6 million figure can be demonstrated by comparing Europe’s Jewish population before and after the war. Even after making allowances for those who fl ed Europe and others who could be expected to die due to natural causes, there are nearly 6,000,000 people who cannot be accounted for. Authentic German documents confirm the slaughter of Jews in the millions. The famous “Korherr Report,”(named after Richard Korherr, chief statistician for the SS) puts the number of Jewish losses at more than 2,454,000 by the end of 1942 alone. The war in Europe would not end until May, 1945. The Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry, meeting in April 1946, put the total Jewish Holocaust losses at 5,721,500. On the basis of
wartime statistical reports on ghettos, concentration camps and mass murder operations carried out by the Nazis, historian and international jurist, Jacob Robinson, arrived at a figure of 5,820,960. German historian, Helmut Krausnick, put the number of Jewish losses nearer to seven million. While the exact figure will never be known, scholars of the Holocaust find the rounded-off figure of six million to be in line with all the evidence.
4. Didn’t the International Committee for the Red Cross report that only 300,000 people had perished in the German concentration camps, not all of them Jews?
The Red Cross never issued such a statistic, nor has it offered any estimate of the number of victims who perished in the camps. In its bulletin of February 1, 1978, the Red Cross declared that it had never compiled, much less published such statistics. The 300,000 figure was actually taken from the Swiss paper, “Die Tat,” in 1955. This estimate, however, was only a figure for the number of Germans who perished in the concentration camps. No mention of any Red Cross figures, however, was ever made by the paper. Despite the obvious deception, Holocaust deniers, continue to peddle it, hoping that few people will actually check the sources.
October 6, 2008 at 1:18 pm |
In accepting your request for thoughts, I’m going to clog up your blog, but I really want to be thorough. I agree with you that a lot more reading and investigating are required. I’ll attempt to give a different take on some of your points, and offer a few more of my own.
1. The Holocaust was merely Allied propaganda.
The Allies actually ignored reports filtering out of Europe about the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. Even when convinced of their veracity, they tried to withhold the information from the public. On August 8, 1942, Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, asked the U.S. legation in Switzerland to relay information about Germany’s plan to exterminate all European Jews under its control to American Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. The information had been given to Riegner by a highly-placed German official. Instead of relaying the message, the U.S. State Department actually withheld it and ordered its Swiss legation not to relay any such reports in the future. In the same year, a member of the Polish underground Jan Karski, had secretly been smuggled into a German concentration camp in Poland. Making his way out, he was sent to London by the Underground to deliver his report on the horrors he witnessed. Karski spoke with both Roosevelt and Churchill. History records, however, that Karski’s pleas were largely dismissed. One need only check the major newspapers of the period to realize how little attention was paid to Nazi atrocities. If the Holocaust were merely “propaganda,” why did the Allies go to such lengths to downplay it?
2. There is no proof that the Holocaust occurred.
No crime in history has been as well-documented as the Holocaust. Proof of the Holocaust is multi-faceted. It is demonstrated by a myriad of documents, the majority of them Nazi-authored, captured by Allied troops before the Germans had a chance to destroy them. Included are detailed reports of mass shootings and gassings. Some 3,000 documents on the destruction of Europe’s Jewish community by the Nazis were, in fact, presented by the prosecution before war crimes tribunals at Nuremberg. The first-hand testimony of survivors who lived through the horrors of the death camps as well as the reports and confessions by the perpetrators leave little doubt as to the nature of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Horrifying films and photos of killing operations and their aftermath can only begin to give us a picture of the extent of Nazi bestiality; as do the reports of Allied Generals and troops who were sickened by what they saw at sites of slaughter they had just liberated. Interestingly enough, Nazi war crimes suspects who stood trial in the post war years for their misdeeds never claimed that the crimes of which they were accused were fictional. They instead argued that they were “only following orders.” The evidence is, in fact, so overwhelming that on October 9, 1981, Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the California Superior Court, took judicial notice of the Holocaust ruling that, “The Holocaust is not reasonably subject to dispute. It is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to resources of reasonable indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.”
October 6, 2008 at 12:50 am |
No Cotes, nobody has, because the weight of media in it’s favour is so large and relentless that people are afraid to go near it or question it because up jumps someone to accuse you of being anti-semitic and throw you in jail. Well I am not happy with it, it is too inconsistent.
I did fail to mention that a lot of despicable murder did go on at that time including people that were considered sub human for example mentally and physically handicapped. This was part of a western pre-occupation at the time with Eugenics. It was the new religion at the time and was being practiced all over the western world, although they like to hush that up these days. Mass sterilisations were going on of people not considered good enough physically or intellectually. Children in orphanages were being used as guinea pigs in medical tests. There were many terrible things going on and this was not only in Germany which was the heart of the eugenics movement but also in the US and Britain and other european countries at that time
You might see the link there when you learn that HG Wells who wrote the Time machine was romantically envolved with one of the worlds leading eugenists. He supported the work and it shows in his Eloi and Morlocks doesnt it
October 6, 2008 at 12:26 am |
Interesting. I’ve never questioned the 6 million figure before. But maybe it doesn’t add up. I do wish all this war memorial shite would stop though. What is done is done. Most of those who were there would rather not remember.
Mind you, the Americans didn’t land on the moon either, did they?
Who the heck do you believe?