Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history Subject: Holocaust Almanac - The ICRC & Denial Duplicity Summary: Lipstadt's "Denying the Holocaust" demolishes Kuschel's contention that the Red Cross report (1948) exonerates the Nazis regarding the existence of death camps. Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA References:Keywords: ICRC,Red Cross Lines: 150 Archive/File: holocaust/usa/lipstadt lipstadt.003 Last-Modified: 1994/01/05 In (Message-ID: ) Boris Kuschel asserts: In 1600 pages recorded on Concentration Camps by the Red Cross, there was no mention of gas chambers. and... Not only this but the Red Cross and Vatican interviewed thousands on freed camp inmates at the end of the was and asked about alleged gas chambers. The reponse was always the same."The detainees themselves have not spoken of them." Red Cross Document No. 9925, June, 1946 and... Not only this but the Red Cross and Vatican interviewed thousands on freed camp inmates at the end of the was and asked about alleged gas chambers. The reponse was always the same."The detainees themselves have not spoken of them." Red Cross Document No. 9925, June, 1946 and... The were actaully at the camps.. there are pictures of them there. The Red Cross has not claimed anything of what you have said. The ICRC also complained that they could not send any relief parcels to Russia, while they arrived at German camps, with them recieving several letters of thanks. Boris, of course, not noted for accuracy in his research, hasn't actually _read_ the ICRC report, but has instead relied upon Richard Harewood's [in actuality, Richard Verral, British neo-Nazi] "Did Six Million Really Die?", long a staple part of the denial diet. Deborah Lipstadt, to illustrate the level of scholastic duplicity employed by deniers, addresses the ICRC report and its misrepresentation by folks like Boris... "Harwood contended that the report made 'nonsense' of the allegation that there were 'gas chambers cunningly disguised as shower facilities.' He substantiated this assertion by quoting a passage from the report that depicted how ICRC officials inspected baths and showers in the camps. When they found problems they acted swiftly 'to have fixtures made less primitive and to have them repared or enlarged.' <53> This, Harwood argued, demonstrated conclusively that showers functioned as showers, and not as killing apparatus. The problem with Harwood's choice of this citation, which he quoted correctly, is that the passage had nothing to do with German concentration camps: It referred to _Allied_ camps for civilian internees in Egypt.<54>" (Lipstadt, 115-116) Lipstadt then goes on to examine Boris' claim regarding care parcels: Harewood repeatedly asserted that from August 1942 the ICRC was allowed to visit and distribute food parcels to major concentration camps in Germany, and that from February 1943 this privilege was extended to all other camps and prisons.<55> Harwood claimed that this information was to be found on page 78 of the report's third volume. The page did refer to 'major concentration camps' in Germany but indicated that they included only Dachau and Oranienburg. The concession that was extended in 1943 included all other camps and prisons _in Germany_.<56> This meant that numerous camps outside Germany were not included. Moreover, the Red Cross acknowledged that it was limited to giving parcels only to deported aliens for whom it had addresses, and that many inmates, among them the vast majority of Jews, were not allowed to receive food parcels at all." (Lipstadt, 116) The true depth of Mr. Kuschel's "research" is now clear - he hasn't done any! This reality is driven home when Lipstadt addresses the primary issue - did the ICRC deny the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz? "According to him [Harwood] [the ICRC report] demonstrated that the International Red Cross had found no evidence 'whatever' in camps in Axis-occupied Europe of a 'deliberate policy to exterminate the Jews.'<47> Harwood contended that in all its sixteen hundred pages the report failed to make any mention of 'such a thing as a gas chamber.' Though the ICRC admitted that Jews had suffered rigors and privations, as had many other wartime nationalities, 'its complete silence on the subject of planned extermination is ample refutation of the Six Million legend.'<48> Harwood could make this claim only by ignoring key sections of the ICRC report. The Red Cross was absolutely specific about the Jews' fate. It made reference to the Nazi attempt to annihilate them, observing that under Nazi rule Jews had been transformed into 'outcasts condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution and _systematic extermination_.'<49> ...Most important, the ICRC specifically delineated how systematic annihilation was carried out: 'They were penned into concentration camps and ghettos, recruited for forced labour, subjected to grave brutalities and sent to _death camps_ without anyone being allowed to intervene in those matters.'<50> These were not the ICRC's only references to death camps or systematic annihilation." (Lipstadt, 114-115) It is important to understand the mechanics commonly employed by Holocaust deniers, including the simple-minded Mr. Kuschel. When a document like the ICRC report is examined, any quote which would, when presented out of context, support the denial claims, is embraced like a long lost friend. On the other hand, any quote which refutes their claims, or even casts doubt about them, is simply ignored. This technique is essential to the entire denial industry, since an honest examination of the evidence absolutely destroys their position. Lipstadt's footnotes: <47> Harwood, "Did Six Million Really Die?", p. 24. For analysis of his use of the ICRC report, see Arthur Suzman and Denis Diamond, "Six Million Did Die: The Truth Shall Prevail" (Johannesburg, 1977), pp. 10-13. <48> Harwood, "Did Six Million Really Die?", p. 25 <49> "The Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on its Activities during the Second World War" (Geneva, 1948), vol. 1, p. 641 (italics added). The report is replete with numerous quotes that demonstrate that Harwood totally misconstrued its findings. For additional examples see Suzman and Diamond, "Six Million Did Die," p. 12 <50> Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 641 <53> Harwood, p.25 <54> Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 594. Harwood incorrectly cited this passage as coming from vol. 3. <55> Harwood, p. 25 <56> Report of the ICRC, vol. 3, p. 77. Work cited Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: The Free Press (A division of Macmillan, Inc.), 1993. From: dzk@cs.brown.edu (Danny Keren) Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Re: Holocaust Almanac - The ICRC & Denial Duplicity Date: 31 Jan 1994 06:36:34 GMT Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 52 Message-ID: <2ii8ti$89l@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: cslab6b.cs.brown.edu Keywords: ICRC,Red Cross A claim often made by Nazi propagandists regarding the Holocaust is that the 1948 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) supports "Holocaust revisionism". As usual, this is a slander and a lie, and another demonstration of a technique which the deniers are fond of - plain lying, quoting a person or an organization as saying something it has never said. The ICRC report is very clear regarding Nazi atrocities; for instance, in page 641 of vol. 1, the report states that the Jews were "outcasts condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution, and systematic extermination". It goes on to say "they were penned into concentration camps and ghettos, recruited for forced labor, subjected to grave brutalities and sent to death camps". Another verbatim quote is the following (in the same page): "During the period in September 1940, when the 'Iron Guard' supported by the Gestapo and the German SS had seized power, the Jews had been subjected to persecution and deported to death camps". and from vol. 2, page 514 "In Germany and her satellite countries, the lot of the civilians belonging to this group was by far the worst. Subjected as they were to a discriminatory regime, which aimed more or less openly at their extermination, they were unable to procure the necessities of life". The report includes more references to the policy of extermination the Nazis adopted with regard to the Jews. The deniers often make the preposterous claim that the ICRC estimated the number of Jewish losses during WW2 as far less than 6 million. This claim has no foundation in reality. In 22 August 1975, the central office of the ICRC announced, regarding such assertions, that - "The figures cited by the author of the booklet are based upon statistics falsely attributed to us, evidently for the purpose of giving them credibility, despite the fact that we never publish information of this kind". (The booklet in question was published in 1974 by Richard Verrall, the editor of the publication of the neofascist "National Front". Verrall used the name "Richard Harwood". It contains the same lies about the ICRC report which are currently repeated by Holocaust deniers). The ICRC explicitly stated that it never published nor compiled any such statistics. All references to such statistics are lies. -Danny Keren.
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