The Traditional Enemies of Free Speech (99 percent unproved)

The
International Campaign for Real History

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That’s
not what he said under oath in the trial
of DJC Irving vs.

Penguin Books Ltd and
Lipstadt

Ninety-nine
per cent of what we know [about Auschwitz]
we do not actually have the physical evidence to
prove

Toronto, Canada, December 27, 2009

A case for letting nature take back Auschwitz

This leading Holocaust scholar argues that there would be dignity in death camp’s neglect

Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter / Toronto Star

THE recent theft and retrieval of the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Sets You Free”) sign that marks the gateway into Auschwitz has reignited debate over what should be done with the sombre monument to one of humanity’s darkest hours.

Last week Poland’s culture minister promised the equivalent of $137,000 for improving security at the site where more than one million people died during the Holocaust.

But Robert Jan Van Pelt, an architectural historian and a leading expert on
Auschwitz, says it may be time to consider other strategies for the site, which is split into two camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. They sprawl over nearly 500 acres.

Van Pelt, a professor at the University of
Waterloo, suggests the museum consider sealing off the Birkenau death camp, where 95 per cent of the murders took place, and letting nature take over. We asked him to explain.

Why have you have posited that Birkenau should be closed up and reclaimed by nature?

There is a present problem of preservation in
Auschwitz. The place that is actually well-preserved – that’s where the museum is. But the site of Birkenau, a couple kilometres away, where the murders happened, is falling apart.
That camp was very hastily constructed. The buildings were built to have a lifespan of two to three years. They were built from recycled bricks. When they ran out of recycled bricks, the SS bought from the German army prefab horse stables.

In 1945, when the war came to an end, these horse stables were very valuable because they were kind of instant housing for someone who needed it. So people had the idea that the best thing that they could do was to pick up all of these horse stables – and there’s like 500 of them – take them apart, put them on the train and send them to Warsaw. By 1948 all of the brick barracks in Birkenau were already falling apart.

Each of the old horse stables had two stoves inside with two brick chimneys that were not taken to Warsaw.

So you had this very weird landscape – and you still have that – where you get these small, primitive brick chimneys rising three metres out of the ground. They don’t have any other bracing and if you have a storm they blow over. But of course the chimneys themselves – altogether there are hundreds of them – create a very powerful symbolic landscape because we associate
Birkenau with the chimneys of the crematoria.

Those crematoria aren’t there anymore, they were blown up by the Germans and one of them was blown up by the prisoners in 1944. So because there are only these ruins of the crematoria and because people expect to see chimneys in some way, that field of small chimneys that are the leftovers of the barracks creates a kind of landscape that people in some way associate with the killing and the burning of the bodies of the victims.

By allowing nature to take over the site, do we run the risk of allowing humanity to forget what happened and set the stage for future questioning of the Holocaust?

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.

I don’t think that the Holocaust is an exceptional case in that sense. We in the future
– remembering the Holocaust – will operate in the same way that we remember most things from the past. We will know about it from literature and eyewitness testimony. . . . We are very successful in remembering the past in that manner. That’s how we know that Cesar was killed on the Ides of March.

To put the holocaust in some separate category and to demand that it be there – to demand that we have more material evidence – is actually us somehow giving in to the Holocaust deniers by providing some sort of special evidence.

Why has the site not been closed off already?

In 1959, a proposal was made to let nature take over the camp. The museum wanted to seal the gates and let everything fall into disrepair. The idea was that this spot represented a place where humanity failed in such a monumental way that we really have no business maintaining it.

At that time the survivors opposed that proposal. They said `You cannot lock us out of our own experience. We suffered here; we need to be able to return to the site where we suffered.’

Fifty years later, we are facing the end of the age of the survivors – the age of the witnesses – and I think when the last survivor of the Holocaust has died, when that almost silent passing happens, we as a civilization or as a species should mark this.

And (what) if no one was going to provide the funds to preserve this site? My response to that challenge is `So what? Maybe it’s not so bad if this site is erased.’ But if indeed there is a moment when we can surrender this site to nature, we cannot do that before the last survivor dies.

The chairman of the international
Auschwitz council says the decision should be left to those who died at Auschwitz. Do we have any insight – recorded statements from victims before they died – on what they wanted to be done with the site?

No. So when you call on the victims to some way indicate what happened at the site we can only talk about the survivors. But can survivors really represent those who died? The survivors can do that to a degree, but once they are dead
I don’t think it’s our place to interpret. This is a decision that we have to take as the living. The earth belongs to the living. It is the living that have to make the tough decisions.

It is fine with me if we the living decide that this site should be preserved and . . . we are willing to spend the money to maintain the site in a proper way . . . that somehow leaves the dignity of the place intact. I’m not going to quarrel with that. But that means we as a worldwide society are actually accepting responsibility for the site – and putting resources toward that.

Our
Auschwitz index

Our
Van Pelt index

and also…

• Documents on Robert Jan
  Van Pelt’s mendacity and intention to deceive.
  “The man is a shameless dissembler, not
  scholar”
• Items about
  Holocaust and Auschwitz architect expert Robert
  Jan van Pelt gives (false) Testimony

  on January
  28, 2000 that there were no air raids on
  Auschwitz in 1943, a crucial point

• Van Pelt
  fears reconstruction of Auschwitz camp will be
  seized on by “deniers”
• Jerusalem
  Post reviews latest book by Van Pelt on the
  Lipstadt trial and Auschwitz; and our expert
  remarks on uncertainties about Van Pelt’s
  doctorate and qualifications
• Prof Van Pelt
  reveals: When Auschwitz was transformed into a
  museum in 1948, the Poles decided to fake a
  crematorium-cum-gas chamber for

  the
  purpose

• David Irving
  wrote to Prof Van Pelt with questions from
  Chicago, May 29, 1997
• Withdrawal
  of Professors Robert Jan Van Pelt and Deborah
  Dwork from their Holocaust Museum sponsored
  commission to draw up a master plan for the
  Auschwitz-Birkenau complex
• Prof. Van Pelt boasts,
  Feb. 1999, he is being called as an Auschwitz
  witness everywhere
• Identities
  of Lipstadt’s four courtroom history experts
  revealed. Van Pelt is among them.

  Debate-dodgers
  now obliged to face questions

• How Robert Jan Van
  Pelt milks the Auschwitz cow: Canada, Bronfmans
  bankrolling his latest book
• March 2009: Toronto’s National Post
  interviews Lipstadt’s not-really-an-architect
  Professor Van Pelt: Finding
  architectural beauty in the Holocaust
• The
  book of my enemy has been remaindered — A Clive
  James poem, from The Nation’s Favourite Comic
  Poems [Van

  Pelt’s
  book was heavily subsidised by an Israeli and
  Jewish body].

• The
  Van Pelt Report by Robert Jan Van Pelt (Zip
  file, 1.2MB)
• The
  draft of the David Irving appeal document book,
  refuting Van Pelt’s allegations
• Sub-index: The
  problem presented by the Holes in the roof of
  Krema II, through which eye-witnesses “describe” SS men throwing the Zyklon B, but which Pelt
  says are no longer visible in the roof
• In
  which Professor Robert Jan Van Pelt testifies on
  oath

  January 25, 2000 during the Lipstadt Trial
  that he has no plans to publish his Report as a
  book

• But then: Indiana
  University Press announces plans to publish Van
  Pelt’s report on the Lipstadt trial and his
  expert evidence
• Van
  Pelt to lecture on his trial victory at Miami
  Beach and elsewhere, Jan 2002 : A
  Canadian snowbird in Miami: A brief report on
  Van Pelt’s vaporings
• First
  section of Van Pelt’s book on Lipstadt Trial,
  posted for research purposes only
• Feb 10,

  2002: “Sam
  Crowell” reviews Van Pelt’s new book: finds it
  thought provoking and deserving of
  respect

• Van
  Pelt book reviewed by Theodor Herzl journal
  Midstream
• Index
  to Van Pelt
• Investigation
  on Auschwitz statistics in reputable journal
  Osteurropa quietly agrees that the Kremas were
  not gas-chambers, actual deathtoll has been
  exaggerated by a factor of ten
• First
  section of Van Pelt’s book, posted for research
  purposes only
• David
  “Ratface” Cesarani reviews

  the book for The
  Jewish Chronicle | “Ratface”
  Cesarani: Britain was ‘wary’ of Nazi [sic.
  Jewish] refugees

• The
  Jerusalem Post review: Murdering
  History
• Matthew
  Herrington Reviews the Pelt book for
  FindLaw
• Brian
  Renk’s critique of Van Pelt’s arguments on the
  “holes”

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