The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Deceit & Misrepresentation
The Techniques of Holocaust Denial

Schindler's List
& "Revisionist Scholarship"


[Continued]

When the actual book quote was posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.revisionism, along with the (rather rhetorical) question of how the "crack revisionist scholars" could have made such a mistake, the denier response was not long in coming, as Ross Vicksell posted the comments from Jack Wikoff which follow. While it may have been a response, it would be somewhat inaccurate to call it an answer.

The following is a guest posting from Revisionist publisher Jack Wikoff, editor of REMARKS, Commentary on Current Events and History, PO Box 234, Aurora, NY 13026:

Recent postings by Ross Vicksell, Danny Keren, and Mike Stein have debated whether it was "physically impossible" for Commandant Amon Goeth to have murdered inmates with a sniper rifle from his villa balcony, as depicted in the Academy Award winning film "Schindler's List."

Ross Vicksell has claimed that: "Wartime aerial photographs of the Plaszow camp show clearly that the camp was over the crest of a hill from Goeth's villa. As I've said before, he'd have needed a mortar or a howitzer to knock off inmates in the concentration camp yard."

Mike Stein retorted with a claim, based on a passage in the novel "Schindler's List", that Goeth had done the shooting of inmates from his "temporary villa" while "They were renovating a better place for him down at the other end of the camp perimeter."[7]

Mr. Wikoff not only revises history, but even subtly revises the framework of the discussion. The primary claim is that there is no inconsistency between the shooting story and the map and photos. It shows that the deniers are wrong in *their* claim to have found an inconsistency which would prove that Goeth could not have shot anyone, that the shooting never happened. However, Wikoff tries to shift the focus from the illegitimacy of the denier argument to the shooting itself. This shift of focus is another standard technique.

Wikoff continues:

I have several points to make concerning the dubious historicity of both the film and novel of "Schindler's List."

1) Goeth could not have shot inmates from the balcony of his villa as depicted in the film "Schindler's List." The position of Goeth's villa is clearly marked in a map of the Plaszow camp which was presented at the 1946 trial of Goeth in Kracow.[...] [8]

Thus Mr. Wikoff repeats a claim which has already been shown to be irrelevant!

2) Although the claim has been made by Mike Stein that a "temporary villa" was actually the place from where Goeth was shooting, this has not been proven nor has any evidence been presented to prove this assertion beyond one sentence in the novel "Schindler's List." [9]

Again Wikoff tries to distract from the fact that the issue under discussion is not whether the shooting occurred, but whether the map and aerial photos can be said to prove that the shootings could *not* have occurred. The paragraph above does not address that point - nor does any other part of Wikoff's reply. Evading questions is another hallmark of the denier.

Wikoff now takes another tack, and repeats that the book is simply a novel. [10] Mr. Wikoff can repeat this all he likes. It does not change the fact that Keneally explicitly noted that he based the book on interviews with the survivors. The "Author's Note" at the beginning of the book states clearly what is, and is not, intentionally fictional about the book.

[Continued]


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