Archive/File: orgs/australian/adelaide-institute/statement-of-raven
Last-Modified: 1998/04/01

                                                    [Page 1]
                                                            
Jeremy Jones and members of the Committee of Management of
the Executive Council of Australian Jewry on Behalf of those
members of the Jewish community of Australia who are members
of organisations affiliated to the Executive Council of
Australian Jewry

                                                 Complainant
                                                            
                             and
                              
Fredrick Toben on Behalf of the Adelaide Institute

                                                  Respondent
                                                            
Witness Statement: Mr. Greg Raven, POBox 10545, Costa Mesa, CA
92627, USA

5 November 1997

My name is Greg Raven and I am a resident of Costa Mesa,
California. I am the vice president of the Legion for the
Survival of Freedom (LSF), Inc. a Texas corporation with its
principal office in Costa Mesa, California. The LSF does business
as the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and as Noontide
Press. I am the associate editor of the IHR Journal.

The Journal re-examines historical issues in the light of new,
suppressed, or ignored facts, in an attempt to provide proper
historical context to often emotion-laden or politicized events
of the past. It has been said that the goal of the IHR is to
"bring history into accord with the facts". A large part of the
research done by the IHR since its formation in 1978 deals with
the Holocaust in general and various Holocaust claims in
specific.

On October 16, 1997, I received an electronic mail (e-mail)
message from Dr. Fredrick Toben of the Adelaide Institute in
Australia, which contained what purported to be a `witness
statement' by Jeremy Sean Jones. In this witness statement, Jones
makes several complaints about the material on Toben's Web site.
While I am not familiar with the material on Toben's Wed site,
many claims and statements made in Jones' witness statement are
false or misleading. For the purposes of this Declaration, I am
relying on the text of Jones' witness statement as supplied me by
Dr. Toben.

Perhaps the most egregious examples of Jones' deceptiveness can
be found in Section 3.3 Holocaust Denial. Nowhere does Jones
define either `Holocaust' or `Holocaust denial'.

As a researcher of the Holocaust who does not accept the
currently popular view of the Holocaust, I, too, have been
labeled a `Holocaust denier', even though I do not deny the
Holocaust. In my years of experience in this matter, I have found
that `Holocaust denier' is a pejorative label applied to
revisionists by opponents who have no substantive response to the
facts uncovered by revisionists.

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In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and
Austria, `Holocaust denial' is against the law, and `deniers'
have been punished with stiff fines and prison sentences. Some
frantic Jewish community leaders are calling for similar
government measures elsewhere against revisionists. In Canada,
David Matas, Senior Counsel for the `League for Human Rights' of
the Zionist B'nai B'rith organization, says:

     "The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews,
     including two million children. Holocaust denial is a
     second murder of those same six million. First their
     lives were extinguished then their deaths. A person who
     denies the Holocaust becomes part of the crime of the
     Holocaust itself."[1]
     
Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question:
Just what constitutes `Holocaust denial'?

Should one be considered a `Holocaust denier' because he does not
believe -- as Matas and others insist -- that six million Jews
were killed during World War II? This figure was cited by the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946. It found
that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in
the killing of six million Jews, of which four million were
killed in the extermination institutions.[2]

Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust
historians could be regarded as `deniers', Professor Raul
Hilberg, author of the standard reference work, `The Destruction
of the European Jews', does not accept that six million Jews
died. He puts the total of deaths (by all causes) at 5.1 million.
Gerald Reitlinger, author of `The Final Solution', likewise did
not accept the six million figure. He estimated the figure of
Jewish wartime dead might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted
that this was conjectural due to a lack of reliable information.

Is someone a `Holocaust denier' if he says that the Nazis didn't
use Jewish fat to make soap? After examining all the evidence
(including an actual bar of soap supplied by the Soviets), the
Nuremberg Tribunal declared in its Judgment that `n [sic] some
instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies
of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap.'[3]

In 1990, though, Israel's official `Yad Vashem' Holocaust
memorial agency `rewrote history' by admitting that the soap
story was not true. "Historians have concluded that soap was not
made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever
happened, why give them something to use against the truth?",
said Yad Vashem official Shmuel Krakowski.[4]

Even Deborah Lipstadt, an implacable foe of any revision of the
received Holocaust story, who is cited by Jones in Section
3.3.1.b, has acknowledged that there is no evidence to support
claims of soap made from bodies of Jews.[5]

Is someone a `Holocaust denier' if he does not accept that the
January 1942 `Wannsee conference' of German bureaucrats was held
to set or coordinate a program of systematic mass murder of
Europe's Jews? If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer
must be wrong -- and a `Holocaust denier' -- because he has
declared: "The public still repeats, time after time, the silly
story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived
at". In Bauer's opinion,  Wannsee was a meeting but "hardly a
conference" and "little of what was said there was executed in
detail."[6]

Is someone a `Holocaust denier' if he says that there was no
order by Hitler to exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time
when the answer would have been yes. Holocaust historian Raul
Hilberg, for example, wrote in the 1961 edition of his study,
`The Destruction of the European Jews', that there were two
Hitler orders for the destruction of Europe's Jews: the first
given in the spring of 1941, and

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the second shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any
such order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book
published in 1985.[7]

As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted:

     "In the new edition, all references in the text to a
     Hitler decision or Hitler order for the `Final
     Solution' have been systematically excised. Buried at
     the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary
     reference: `Chronology and circumstances point to a
     Hitler decision before the summer ended'. In the new
     edition, `decisions were not made and orders were not
     given'.[8]
     
A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has
contributed to a controversy that divides Holocaust historians
into `intentionalists' and `functionalists'. The former contends
that there was a premeditated extermination policy ordered by
Hitler, while the latter holds that Germany's wartime `final
solution' Jewish policy evolved at lower levels in response to
circumstances. But the crucial point here is this:
notwithstanding the capture of literally tones of German
documents after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence
of a wartime extermination order, plan or program. This was
admitted by Professor Hilberg during his testimony in the 1985
trial in Toronto of German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zundel.[9]

So just what constitutes `Holocaust denial'? Surely a claim that
most Auschwitz inmates died from disease and not systematic
extermination in gas chambers would be `denial'. But perhaps not.
Jewish historian Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University professor,
wrote in this 1988 study `Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The
`Final Solution' in History:

     "From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but
     probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called
     `natural' causes than by `unnatural' ones."
     
Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz --
allegedly the main extermination center -- are no longer clear
cut. At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged that
the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz.[11]

Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read: `Four Million
People Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers
Between the Years 1940 and 1945'.[12]

During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope John Paul II stood before
this memorial and blessed the four million victims.

Is it `Holocaust denial' to dispute these four million deaths?
Not today. In July 1990, the Polish government's Auschwitz State
Museum, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, conceded
that the four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and
references to it were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz
monument. Israeli and Polish officials announced a tentative
revised toll of 1.1 million Auschwitz dead.[13]

In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac, in a
much-discussed book about Auschwitz, estimated that altogether
about 775,000 died there during the war years.[14]

Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really
died at Auschwitz remains open. In `Why Did the Heavens Not
Darken?' he wrote (p. 366):

     "... Many questions remain open ... All in all, how
     many bodies were cremated at Auschwitz? How many died
     there all told? What was the national, religious, and
     ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of victims? How
     many of them were condemned to die a `natural' death
     and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what
     was the proportion of Jews among those murdered
     
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     in cold blood among these gassed? We have simply no
     answers to these questions at this time."
     
What about denying the existence of extermination `gas chambers'?
Here too, Mayer makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his
book):

     "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once
     rare and unreliable".
     
While Mayer believes that such chambers did exist at Auschwitz,
he points out that

     "most of what is known is based on the depositions of
     Nazi officials and executioners at postwar trials and
     on the memory of survivors and bystanders. This
     testimony must be screened carefully, since it can be
     influenced by subjective factors of great complexity".
     
One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Hoess, an SS
officer who served as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment,
the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal quoted at length
from his testimony to support its findings of extermination.[15]

It is now well established that Hoess' crucial testimony, as well
as his so-called `confession' (which was also cited by the
Nuremberg Tribunal), are not only false, but were obtained by
beating the former commandant nearly to death.[16]

Hoess' wife and children were also threatened with death and
deportation to Siberia. In his statement -- which would not be
admissible today in any United States court of law -- Hoess
claimed that exterminations were already underway at a camp
called `Wolzek', at the time he was ordered to establish
extermination facilities at Auschwitz. In fact, no such camp ever
existed. He further claimed that during the time that he was
commandant of Auschwitz, two and a half million people were
exterminated there, and that a further half million died of
disease.[17]

Today no reputable historian upholds these figures. Hoess was
obviously willing to say anything, sign anything and do anything
to stop the torture, and to try to save himself and his family.

In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the
killing sites and in their immediate environs" to determine more
about the gas chambers. In fact, such forensic studies have been
made. The first was conducted in 1988 by an American execution
equipment expert, Fred. A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-
site forensics examination of the alleged gas chambers at
Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek to determine if they could have
been used to kill people as claimed. After a careful study of the
alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites
were not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas
chambers. Further, an analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from
the walls and floors of the alleged gas chambers showed either no
or misuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active
ingredient of Zyklon-B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder
Jews at Auschwitz.

A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report)
commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by the
Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow has confirmed Leuchter's
finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can be
found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers.[18]

The significance of this is evident when the results of the
forensic examination of the alleged homicidal gas chambers are
compared with the results of the examination of the Auschwitz
disinfestation facilities, where Zyklon-B was used to delouse
mattresses and clothing. Whereas only trace amounts of cyanide
were found in the alleged homicidal gas chambers (when any such
compounds are found at all), massive traces of cyanide were found
in the walls and floor in the

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camp's delousing chambers.

German chemist Germar Rudolf carried out a forensic study of his
own. On the basis of his on-site examination and analysis of
samples, the certified chemist and doctoral candidate concluded:

     "For chemical-technical reasons, the claimed mass
     gassings with hydocyanic acid in the alleged `gas
     chambers' in Auschwitz did not take place.;
     
     "... The supposed facilities for mass killing in
     Auschwitz and Birkenau were not suitable for this
     purpose ...".[19]
     
Finally, there is a study by Austrian engineer Walter Lueftl, a
respected expert witness in numerous court cases, and former
president of Austria's professional association of engineers. In
a 1992 report he called the alleged mass extermination of Jews in
gas chambers "technically impossible".[20]

So just what constitutes `Holocaust denial'? Those who advocate
criminal persecution of `Holocaust deniers' seem to be still
living in the world of 1946 where the Allied officials of the
Nuremberg Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But the
Tribunal's findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because
it relied so heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the Hoess
testimony, some of its most critical findings are now
discredited.

For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups
desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust
story taboo. But the truth cannot be suppressed forever: There is
a very real and growing controversy about what actually happened
to Europe's Jews during World War II. Let this issue be settled
as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free
inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and
classrooms.

Because Jones does not specify passages from the Adelaide
Institute Web site that he finds objectionable, instead of
resorting to ad hominem attacks against `deniers', it is
difficult to understand what Jones is talking about, and
impossible to respond substantively. Using Jones' method of
quoting others in an attempt to show the defective nature of
Holocaust revisionists, one could easily find dozens of quotes
from people pointing out defects in Zionism, and in the conduct
of the State of Israel.

Zionism was condemned by the United Nations as being the
equivalent of racism, and the state of Israel routinely practices
discriminatory behavior, censors books and ideas, represses other
human rights, and engages in warlike activities. It is well known
that many Israeli leaders were members of terrorist organizations
prior to coming to power. Does Jones lobby for the cessation of
the very real transgressions, past and present, of the state of
Israel with the same vigor that he pursues the curtailment of Dr.
Toben's freedom of speech?

In Section 3.3.1.a, Jones quotes Walter Reich as stating, "The
primary motivation for most deniers is anti-Semitism".  Although
in my experience, this statement is false, it is more to the
point that there are Holocaust revisionists from all walks of
life, and every religious background, including Jewish. It is
also worth noting that it is illogical to impute bad motives to
those with whom you disagree, and that motives are completely
beside the point at best. No one attempts to censor those who
write positively about Jewish history or the state of Israel.

In Section 3.3.1.i Jones claims that "Holocaust denial is, for
the racist of today, as potent a weapon as charges of deicide and
witchcraft in times past." This is a false statement that
attempts to smear revisionism and silence revisionists by
associating revisionism with racism and racists. It is equally
true that the Israeli-built Uzi submachine gun is `as potent a
weapon' for modern street gangs as the Thompson submachine gun
was for Chicago gangster Al Capone. Yet, it would be ludicrous to
call

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for the end of Israeli arms production, or the dissolution of the
state of Israel, simply because criminals make use of this
product. Likewise, Holocaust revisionism is a legitimate pursuit,
practiced by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars alike. Revisionists
cannot be held accountable for the uses to which their findings
are put. If Jones feels revisionists are wrong, he should present
facts that he believes support his position, so they may be
evaluated.

Concerning the matter of Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik
regime in the Soviet Union, it has long been well known that Jews
were over-represented in the Soviet hierarchy. This fact is
neither anti-Semitic nor philo-Semitic: it simply is. Those who
wish to avoid discussion of these facts and their consequences
are guilty of perverting historical inquiry for ideological
reasons. The linkage between Judaism and socialist movements has
been written about for decades by prominent historians, including
Winston Churchill.[21]

For example, award-winning Jewish author Norman F. Cantor,
professor of history, sociology, and comparative literature at
New York University, writes:

     "Half of the six members of the politburo that was the
     supreme government of Soviet Russia in 1920 were Jews.
     The first head of the Soviet secret police was Jewish.
     Jews were prominent in the leadership of the Communist
     party in Germany, Hungary, and Austria. In the 1920s
     close to half the members of the small and politically
     insignificant American Communist Party were Jewish.
     There was, therefore, an affinity between the Jews and
     not only market capitalism but also late nineteenth-
     century and early twentieth-century communism.... [22]
     ... But also before the Russian Revolution in 1917, of
     the four communist giants, Marx was a German Jew,
     Luxemburg a Polish-German Jew, and Trotsky a Russian
     Jew. Even the fourth, V.I. Lenin, is suspected by some
     of having had a Jewish grandparent...."[23]
     
While not an expert on the `Talmud', I am aware of books that
reproduce, from English-language translations of the `Talmud',
passages that contain language and concepts that any decent
person would find offensive.[24]

It is revealing that at no time does Jones disavow or even
distance himself from these repugnant passages.

In closing, it has been said that truth is hate only to those who
hate the truth. The larger issue, however, is not whether the
revisionist position is closer to the `truth' about the Second
World War than that of the anti-revisionists. Freedom of speech
aside, the larger issue is that there must be give and take on
historical issues, in order that we may better arrive at an
understanding of what actually happened. Without discussion and
debate, only one side will be represented, and there will be no
way of determining if that side is in fact accurate. Jones'
request to silence Toben and others like him is an admission that
his views on history cannot compete in the academic arena, and he
therefore needs government intervention to maintain and promote a
viewpoint for which he has no factual support, his vague and
shopworn claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Greg Raven

Footnotes

1. Globe and Mail, Toronto, Jan. 22, 1992

2. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International
Military Tribunal, IMT `blue series', Vol. 1, pp. 252-253.

3. IMT `blue series', Vol. 1, p. 252

4. Globe and Mail, Toronto, April 25, 1990; See also M. Weber,
`Jewish Soap', The Journal of Historical Review, Summer, 1991

5. D. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The growing assault on
truth and memory, New York, Toronto: Free Press, 1993, p.188. See
also: C. Hitches, `Whose History Is It?', Vanity Fair, December
1993, p.117

6. Canadian Jewish News, Toronto, Jan. 30, 1992

7. See: Barbara Kulascka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die

8. `The Revised Hilberg', Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986,
p.294

9. Barbara Kulascka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die, Toronto,
1992), pp.24-25

10. A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The `Final Solution
in History' Pantheon, 1988), p.365

11. IMT, `blue series', Vol. I, p. 47 (indictment); Nuremberg
document 008-USSR; IMT, Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261

12. B. Kulascka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die, Toronto, 1992),
p.441

13.  Y. Bauer, `Fighting the Distortions', Jerusalem Post,
Israel, Sept. 22, 1989; Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million,
Daily Telegraph, London, July 17, 1990; `Poland Reduces Auschwitz
Death Toll Estimate to 1 Million,' The Washington Times, July 17,
1990

14. J.-C. Pressac, Les Cremetoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du
meurtre de masse, Paris: CNRS, 1993). See also: R. Faurisson,
`Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book', The Journal of
Historical Review, Jan-Feb 1994, p. 24

15. IMT `blue series', Vol. I, pp. 252-252; Nuremberg document
3868-PS (USA-819), in IMT, Vol. 33, pp. 275-279

16. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death, England, 1983, pp. 235-237;
C. Hitchens, `Whose History is It?', Vanity Fair, New York, Dec.
1993, p.117

17.  See: R. Faurisson, `How the British Obtained the Confession
of Rudolf Hoess,' The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991

18. The complete text of this report is published in English in
the Journal of Historical Review, Summer, 1991

19. G. Rudolf, Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit
von Cyanidverbindunger in den `Gaskammern' von Auschwitz, London:
1993. See: The Journal of Historical Review, Nov-Dec, 1993, pp.25-
26

20. The Lueftal Report, The Journal of Historical Review, Winter
1992-93

21. W. Churchill, `Zionism versus Bolshevism: A struggle for the
soul of the Jewish people,' Illustrated Sunday Herald, London,
February 8, 1920.

22. N.F. Cantor, `The Sacred Chain: The history of the Jews,' New
York: Harper Perennial, 1995, p.274

23. N. Cantor, p. 278

24. Benjamin H. Freedman, `Facts are Facts,' New York, 1954, pp.
27-45. See also: Elizabeth Dilling, `The Plot Against
Christianity.'

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