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OPINION

Why Holocaust deniers are beyond Debate

Andrew Markus

THERE are two reasons why we should not engage in debates with Holocaust deniers.

The first parallels the reason for not debating with those who believe that the position of the planets at the moment of our birth determines our destiny or that the earth is flat.

David Irving comments: IT is amusing the way that Deborah Lipstadt's threadbare old arguments circle the globe, literally.    No wonder she was too scared to step into the witness box in London, and expose her case to cross examination, even by a novice in legal matters like myself.    There is the "flat earth" argument -- Lipstadt added to this her own argument that we should not argue with child-molesters, something she seemed obsessed with, as though she was trying to tell us something about her own childhood.    There is the "not-one-recognized- historian" argument, nobody of merit who questions the existence of gas chambers -- not in Poland, nor in Germany, nor France, nor elsewhere. I challenged this "overwhelming consensus" argument when it was used by a young German historian, Peter Longerich, called as a witness for Lipstadt, in cross examination.    I asked him if he would tell the Court the length of the prison terms imposed on historians in Germany, Poland, France or elsewhere who did dare to question these facts, and what his "consensus" was actually worth in the light of that?    But this writer even trots out the old story that "mass extermination" was discussed at the Wannsee conference. Unless he has obtained a transcript of that conference of which other historians are unaware, then he is lying here too.    There is not a word about extermination in the Wannsee conference: it is a discussion between mid-level civil servants on the logistics of getting rid of, as in booting-out, the Jews from the Reich territory.    He relies on the Italian suicide Primo Levi, who wrote one novel about Auschwitz, and the notorious liar and fantasizer Elie Wiesel, who wrote another, though Wiesel sometimes gets confused about whether he was actually in Buchenwald or Auschwitz.    He quotes Rudolf Höss, although even Raul Hilberg says that the testimony of Höss is worthless.    More quixoticalloy, he also refers to the thousands of survivors of Auschwitz; but under my cross-examination Professor Robert Jan Van Pelt admitted that some 7,500 were in the camp when it was liberated in January 1945, and he had to agree that we never heard from them -- history only ever gets to hear from the same seven or eight professional Auschwitz survivors -- Henryk Tauber, Ada Bimko, and the rest.    The sheer paucity of the arguments offered by this opinionated Australian writer just reveals the actual lack of evidence in support of the general case he seeks to make.    No wonder he and his ilk don't want a debate, and use violence at every level in order to avoid it. Too much is at stake. Millions. And millions, and millions. And they know it.

We do not argue with people who reject rationality -- just as we do not attempt to teach the laws of quantum physics in kindergartens.

The second reason is the one that leads us to wash in the morning, wear decent clothes and seek to pass on our values and beliefs to our children: we have self-respect. We have no need to validate our sense of self by seeking the approval of those who would destroy us, nor of their fellow travellers.

The likes of David Irving question whether there were gas chambers in the hell that went by the name of Auschwitz.

There is not one historian holding a position at a recognised university who questions the existence of gas chambers. Not in Germany, not in Poland, not in the United Kingdom, not in the United States of America, not in Australia. Not one -- for a simple reason. It is called evidence.

Hitler publicly announced in January 1939, and on many earlier occasions, his manic determination to destroy the Jewish people. Historians have the records of the Wannsee conference held in January 1942 at which details of mass extermination were discussed. They have the text of Heinrich Himmler's secret speech of October 1943 at which he justified mass murder. The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, left a detailed testament of his crimes.

What more evidence is required? The testimonies of Polish bystanders -- peasants, town dwellers, members of the underground and Catholic clergy? Detailed records of train movements, photographs, architectural plans, a patent application by the crematorium designers Topf and Sons, the physical remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau -- including warehouses of personal belongings?

There is one other category of evidence -- survivors. Because Auschwitz-Birkenau -- unlike Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno -- served, in addition to its extermination role, as a labour camp, and because it was the last of the centres to remain operational, thousands of witnesses survived. They include Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.

To debate with the likes of David Irving we thus have first to agree that this mass of evidence could possibly be fraudulent, perhaps the work of the Elders of Zion who secretly control the world. We have to assume that during the course of war, when the German armies were marching victorious over Europe and northern Africa, the agents of the Elders were secretly placing fraudulent documents in the archives of the Nazi Government. Or that after the war they were able to force hundreds of the innocent SS to confess to crimes that they had not committed. Or that they were hiding populations numbered in the millions. Or that they recruited and coached tens of thousands of witnesses, Jew and Gentile, to recite scripted tales of acts that never occurred -- and to continue reciting them to the present day.

Those willing to make such assumptions should debate the deniers. The leading American expert on Holocaust denial, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, never engages in such debate. She writes that "deniers want to be thought of as the 'other side'. Simply appearing with them on the same stage accords them that status."

Those concerned with ignorance of the Holocaust still in evidence in our society should engage in Holocaust education, without giving legitimacy to the assassins of memory.

Zeev Gideon Korwan planted elaborately forged documents in Russian and German Federal Archives to authenticate Hitler's handgun and make millions.

 

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