GALVESTON
COUNTY DAILY NEWS
Texas' Oldest NewspaperWednesday, November 5, 2003 Historian
confronts Holocaust revisionists By Carolina Amengual
The Daily News  David
Irving comments: THE unfortunate Ms
Verveer, who was one year old in May 1940,
was presumably aged four or five when the
Netherlands were liberated in 1944.
Does she qualify for the
accolade, "Holocaust survivor"? We wonder
what kind of useful memories Mr Mazal was
able to extract from her for his project.
The strength of his
logic is contained in sentences like:
"When you deny the people who died, you
deny those who are alive," if this
reporter is to be believed. |
CLEAR LAKE -- Friendswood
residentChaja Verveer, a native of The
Netherlands and a
Holocaust
survivor, was only a year
old when she was forced into hiding from the Nazi
regime.At 62, "living with and despitethe memories" of
two concentration camps, Verveer is outraged by
those who question the genocide of 12 million
people, half of them Jews. "Words cannot describe what I feel when I hear
that," she said. "I don't speak 24 hours a day
about being a survivor. I live a normal life, but
it's always there." Fueled by the Internet,
Holocaust denial is becoming a growing
phenomenon mainly in the United States and
Europe, and lately in Middle Eastern
countries. Deniers run the gamut. Some people claim the
Holocaust was a fabrication to favor Jews and
Israel. Others accept Hitler's Third Reich
persecuted Jews, gypsies and others, but contend it
never could have developed the killing machine
portrayed in books and films. The number of deaths
was exaggerated, the testimony of survivors skewed,
the gas chambers nonexistent, they say. Researchers disputing the assertions argue that
casting a shadow on the Holocaust is like trying to
revive the notion that the Earth is flat. "The crime is so unspeakable," saidHarry W.
Mazal, president of the Holocaust History
Project. "There's so much evidence. It's amazing
anybody survived. They're living proof of what
happened." Mazal, 65, will discuss the dangers of denying
the Holocaust today at the University of
Houston-Clear Lake. Deniers, he says, are
anti-Semites posing as scholars interested in
revisionism. Originally from Mexico, Mazal lives in San
Antonio and owns one of the largest -- if not the
largest -- private collection of books about the
Holocaust. Although funded with his own money, his
library is open to everyone. "I have 20,000 books and still don't know
everything," he said. "Until I know all the names
of those who died and see their faces, I don't
think my work will be done." Among those books are about 500 denying the
Holocaust. Keeping track of the lies is also part
of the job, Mazal said. But he has developed a
self-defense mechanism. He assigns those books a
number ending in 666, which is associated with
the devil. Or he simply places them upside down
on the shelves. During a trip to Germany in 1967, Mazal began
wondering what members of his family's fate could
have been had they lived in Europe during World War
II. Smoke
coming out of factory chimneys triggered
painful thoughts. But it wasn't really until the 1990s, after
putting and end to a successful business career and
going into retirement, that he became committed to
digging out the facts about the Holocaust. Researching his Jewish roots, Mazal came across
chat rooms. Baffled by comments from Holocaust
deniers, he decided to prove them wrong. "When
youdeny the people who died, you deny those who
arealive," he said. At first he confronted them directly. Then he
joined people from different ethnic and
professional backgrounds and in 1998 started the
Holocaust History Project. The 35-member group, made of Jews and non-Jews
from all over the world, posts essays and links to
other resources about the Holocaust and answers
questions over the Internet. The latest endeavor is
to scan thousands of mimeographed documents from
the Nuremberg trials. Both Mazal and his wife have
accepted the responsibility. The site records about 6 million hits a month.
Members credit its success to the group's golden
rule: Just the facts. Mazal's research has taken himto concentration
and extermination camps all across Europe. The Auschwitz-Birkenau
site, in particular, was a moving experience. "It
was covered with beautiful birch trees, birds were
singing, the grass was green, the sun was shining,"
he said. "I couldn't conceive that any human being
could have been so cruel in such a place." Barbara Hales, visiting assistant
professor of history at UHCL, is teaching
"Holocaust: Film, Literature and History" this
semester.  | Website
note:Abraham
Foxman, wealthy and controversial
chief of the Anti Defamation League, likes
to refer to himself as a "Holocaust
survivor." As abiographyon
this website shows, he was not even born
when Hitler invaded his native Poland, and
he was looked after by Polish Catholics
throughout the war; his parents also
"survived".
Author,
"Never Again? The Threat of the New
Anti-Semitism," foreword
byElie
Wiesel($24.95,
304 pages). |
Together with the Anti-Defamation
League, she organized the presentation to help
her students, future history teachers, understand
what's at stake when people with an agenda try to
rewrite history."It's a very sophisticated form of
hatemongering," Hales said."Once they take away a
group's history, it's a very dangerous thing. It
could happen again."
- What: Harry Mazal, president of the
Holocaust History Project, will discuss the
phenomenon of people who deny the
Holocaust.
- When: 7 p.m. today
[Wednesday, November
5, 2003]
- Where: University of Houston-Clear Lake,
2700 Bay Area Blvd., Bayou Theater, Bayou
Building, second floor.
- Cost: Free.
- Information: The
Holocaust History Project
Rebecca
Cole from the University of Houston Clear Lake
has some questions about Harry Mazal, October
23, 2003 (Reader's Letter)-
Our
dossier on Auschwitz
|
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