Lines: 986 Supersedes: <1994May31.175156.23410@oneb.almanac.bc.ca> Archive/File: holocaust/usa/ihr raven.003 Last-Modified: 1994/06/01 In response to a challenge by Greg Raven of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), Dr. Daniel Keren posted a number of pieces of evidence to show that the Nazis had a plan to exterminate millions of Jews (and others), many in homicidal gas chambers. Raven posted a response which he believed refuted Keren's claims. We have seen these Holocaust denial arguments, or ones like them, before; on the surface they are persuasive. Perhaps some of them persuaded Mr. Raven to join the "revisionist" cause, and rather than having written all of them himself he merely repeats them here in good faith. And each time they are not answered he becomes more convinced that they must be valid. We propose here to answer them point by point. And we propose more: we will describe in detail the psychological mechanisms which explain why these arguments seem, to the unsuspecting mind, so persuasive. Once we have done this, and you have seen the methods exposed, it is our sincere hope you will forever after be able to recognize them for what they are, and will never be taken in by them again. In article <2pi7nk$dqj@kaiwan.kaiwan.com> Greg Raven (greg.ihr@kaiwan.com) wrote: > In response to my request for one or two pieces > evidence from those who believe in the Holocaust story of > millions of Jews being gassed to death by the Nazis, > Danny Keren provided five quotes. (For those who do not > remember, I asked for evidence that BEST shows the Nazis > had a plan to exterminate millions of Jews in gas > chambers.) He did indeed end that way. However, for those who do not remember, this is how he began, in article <2p2a1i$ff0@kaiwan.kaiwan.com>: "For the purposes of this discussion, I am using a fairly generic definition of the word Holocaust, which is the murder of six million Jews as a central act of state by the Nazis during the Second World War, many in gas chambers." This is Definition #1, the hook at which Dr. Keren bit. He didn't notice that later the definition was changed to: "... the Nazis had a plan to exterminate millions of Jews in gas chambers." ....not "murder ... *many* in gas chambers," which is what Danny responded to, but subtly and sneakily shifting to millions in gas chambers *only*. Perhaps it was just an honest mistake on his part, though Raven made much of Dr. Keren's failure to address Definition #2 in his arguments below. Nonetheless, it was bait and switch, forbidden by consumer protection laws everywhere. Mr. Raven continued, providing his "overview:" "Before looking at the individual pieces of evidence, I would like to make a few comments about these pieces collectively. First, all citations are postwar. This means the evidence presented was not generated at the time the so-called gassings were taking place." Well, yes. We have *never* seen sworn legal testimony about a crime taken at the same time the crime was committed. If Mr. Raven has, we would love to hear about it. What's the point? Mr. Raven asks, "Why are we not presented with any contemporaneous documentation?" The reason, of course, is that Mr. Raven placed limits upon the number of items introduced. The reader is also invited to note that though Mr. Raven started by saying he wanted to make a few comments about the pieces collectively the line cited above is not a comment about the *pieces* of evidence presented either collectively or individually. It is a subliminal suggestion to the audience to speculate about the *motivation* of Dr. Keren in choosing the evidence he did. If Mr. Raven wishes to insinuate that Dr. Keren has some dishonest motivation, it would be nice if he were honest enough to make the charge openly. If that is not his reason for asking this question, perhaps he will be good enough to explain himself. Raven continued: "Second, these citations are from testimony, and as such present many of the problems one would normally expect with testimony under similar conditions. As Professor Arno Mayer has written, 'Most of what is known [on homicidal gassings] 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.' (page 362-363)" Sure it can. But note that Mr. Raven makes no attempt to: a) list the problems one would expect, b) explain these subjective factors of great complexity, or c) show that the testimony Dr. Keren cites *was* in fact influenced by any of those problems or subjective factors of great complexity. If he wants to screen that testimony, he is encouraged to do so. But just throwing out a random quote without demonstrating how it applies to the specific testimony at hand is simply handwaving. Raven continues: "Why are we not presented with plans or photos of a gas chamber (in this forum, I suppose this would take the form of instructions on how and where to find same)?" Once again, Mr. Raven has tried to impeach the evidence introduced by making snide insinuations about evidence not introduced. If Dr. Keren had produced a photo, Mr. Raven would merely say that it does not show what it was used for; it might have been for delousing. We remind the audience that the reason more evidence was not introduced is that Mr. Raven wanted to limit the number of pieces we were to discuss. Although he has been asked, in public, why he imposed such limitations upon discussion, he has failed to provide a clear public answer. If Mr. Raven is an open-minded historian searching for the truth, as he would have us believe, surely he would provide the answer we seek. We repeat our question. Why is he placing limits on the number of pieces of evidence? > Third, Keren fails to mention that we have similar > testimony about virtually all the camps. The recent > English-language translation of the 1983 "Nazi Mass > Murder" (Kogon, Langbein, and Rueckerl. New Haven: Yale > University Press. 1993), for example, cites testimonies > and other evidence that the Nazis conducted homicidal > gassings at Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrueck, Stutthof, > Neuengamme, Natzweiler-Struthof, and even Dachau. No > serious scholar of the Holocaust now holds that gassings > took place at any of these sites, yet we have testimony > that gassings did take place. How is Keren's testimony > substantively different from this other, now discredited, > testimony? After all, this other testimony used to be > considered accurate at one time. Dr. Keren has previously posted citations about the camps to which Raven is referring. First, it should be kept in mind that these were small-scale gassings, and the authors took great pains to explain the limitations of the evidence and testimony involved. Raven glosses over all of this, the better to lead the reader into thinking that Keren is ignorant or dishonest. It is true that no serious scholar now believes there were *mass* gassings. But *any* gassings? Raven says it was discredited, and that no serious scholar now believes that "gassings" (again, "any" or "mass?") took place, but cites no source whatsoever. Vague unsubstantiated assertion is one of the hallmarks of Holocaust denial technique. It cannot be rebutted, because it is so vague that we have no clear idea what it is we're trying to rebut. Is he saying Kogon et al. are not serious scholars? Who does Raven consider a serious scholar? How does he know what they think? Is this claim made up out of whole cloth? Is it a citation from a crackpot with no credentials? We don't know, so we can't respond. And that is what the denier hopes for: that the lack of response will stick in your mind and work on your subconscious. We will return to this point later. We repeat, Mr. Raven makes an assertion totally unsupported by any literature reference. If he knows that they were discredited, he should know where he saw it. "Fourth, none of these pieces, by itself, would normally be considered definitive." This is irrelevant. We challenge Mr. Raven to supply even one citation of a criminal case which was proved on one, and only one, definitive piece of evidence. We are quite confident he cannot. We invite him to explain why he believes it should be possible to do so with the Holocaust. Or is it that he merely hopes he can fool *other* people into believing it should be possible to do this? > (This can be seen in the very fact that Keren presented > them all together, rather than relying on one or two.) > Thus, what we are faced with might be called > "adminicles," which Robert Faurisson describes thus: > "[T]he Exterminationists all employed the all too facile > system of converging bundles of presumptions or again, as > it was called in past times, adminicles (parts of a > proof, presumptions, traces). Each of their alleged > proofs, rather shaky, was supported by another proof, > itself rather fragile. There was much use of testimonial > proof, which is the weakest of all because, as its name > indicates, it is based only on testimony. Dr. Faurisson has a firm grasp of the obvious. We are rather surprised he did not go on to announce that documentary proof, as the name implies, is based on documents. But why should that imply anything about its strength or weakness? Dr. Faurisson does not explain. > The essence of the testimony of Kurt Gerstein was called > on, supported by the essence of the confession of Rudolf > Hoess, which rested on the essence of a personal diary in > which, they say, in veiled language, Dr. Johann Paul > Kremer revealed, and at the same time concealed, the > existence of the gas chambers. In other words, the blind > man leans on the cripple, aided by a deaf man. Making fun of the handicapped is not nice. And more importantly, it does not erase the fact that though they may be infirm on an individual basis, it is undeniable that they *do* stand as a whole. Oh, and it does not address the evidence that Dr. Keren cited. Wait a minute. How did we get to "cripple" anyway? Raven hasn't even addressed a specific piece of evidence cited by Dr. Keren, and all of a sudden he is entitled to dismiss them all as cripples? What's going on here? We *are* glad Mr. Raven brought Faurisson into the discussion. As he makes much of Dr. Keren's omissions, why did he omit to tell people that Dr. Faurisson's degree is in literature, not history? But we must admit that he is eloquent, far more so than we. Dr. Faurisson can explain exactly what mode of argument Greg Raven is employing. The audience is invited to note the parallels between the rewrite below and Faurisson's original. We apologize for the length, but it will give the reader a detailed road map to the revisionist debating tactics. The Holocaust Deniers all employ the all too facile system of splitting bundles of solid evidence and casting small doubts on each piece, or again, as it might have been called in past times, diminicles (parts of a doubt, presumptions, traces). Each of their alleged doubts, rather shaky, is supported by another doubt, itself rather fragile. There is much use of unsupported assertion, which is the weakest of all because, as its name indicates, it is entirely without support. The distorted essence of the testimony of Stark is called on, to be contradicted by the out-of-context citation of the work of Pressac, which is refuted by the ramblings of a discredited liar named Leuchter which, with ludicrous pseudoscience and unwarranted and unrealistic assumption, denies the possibility of the existence of the gas chambers. In other words, the blind man leans on the cripple, aided by a deaf man. In the present, holocaust deniers make great use of diminicles and, in order to condemn Holocaust Hoaxers, rely on a strange accounting method whereby a quarter of a shadow of a doubt added to a quarter of a shadow of a doubt, itself added to half an ambiguity, are considered to equal a convincing refutation (the argument from Greg Raven currently under discussion depicts someone practicing this type of arithmetic). Naturally, one could not provide definitive proof of the existence of Holocaust Hoaxers. It was impossible to prove their existence as one could not prove that of a Satan. That was not the fault of the deniers, the thinking went, but precisely that of the Holocaust Hoaxers, who, it is no doubt thought, are too clever to leave traces proving their misdeeds. Intrinsically perverse by nature, Hoaxers leave at the most only vague traces of their passing through. These traces do not speak of themselves. One has to make them speak. Especially wise intellects are skilled at detecting them in places where ordinary people see nothing. For minds such as these, Holocaust Hoaxers have tried to cover their tracks but had forgotten to hide the traces of their so doing, and, beginning there, revisionists with few if any academic credentials, helped by scholarly professors of literature or electrical engineering - not history - such as Dr. Faurisson, were able to reconstruct everything. Change just a few words, and you can see exactly how the holocaust deniers operate. For while Dr. Keren has provided solid, well- documented testimony, not "adminicles," the writer has supplied - what? We will discuss this in detail below. In article <2p2a1i$ff0@kaiwan.kaiwan.com>, Mr. Raven wrote: > I will not consider personal attacks, discussions of > race, discussions about the meta-meaning of Holocaust > denial, or other non-substantive, off-topic posts to > address the issue at hand. For someone who doesn't want to discuss non-substantive, off-topic issues, Mr. Raven is certainly spending a lot of time discussing things other than the issue at hand: the evidence Dr. Keren *has* provided. Let us return to the original line of argument: > "It was no different from any of the trials in which, > since 1945, SS men have been tried for their > participation, always indirect, This sounds sinister, but all it really means is that they did not perform the killing themselves, merely gave an order. > in the homicidal gassings. The adepts of Satan, these > SS men allegedly left not a single trace of the gassings, .... except for the dynamited gas chambers, the records of the Zyklon-B shipments, and the testimony of those who participated - but Mr. Raven limited the scope of the discussion, so Dr. Keren couldn't include this mass of evidence into his response ... That does not, however, suggest that this evidence is not readily available, as anyone employing Mr. McVay's file server quickly discovers. To receive a sampling of the testimony alluded to by Mr. Raven, send the commands listed below to LISTSERV@ONEB.ALMANAC.BC.CA: INDEX HOLOCAUST HELP GET GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.01 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.03 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.04 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.05 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.008 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.009 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.010 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.011 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.012 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.013 GET AUSCHWITZ AUSCHWITZ.014 (We believe the documents noted above will provide users with sufficient resources to support additional research, and have included the retrieval help file for those wishing to access the archives further -we have not scratched the surface here, as this article is already quite lengthy...) > This may be sufficient in some arguments, but it hardly > suffices in the writing of historiography. As we shall show below, Greg Raven's arguments and methodology may be sufficient to fool grade school children, but they hardly suffice in the writing of historiography or in honest debate. Speaking of that, in which *are* we participating? If this is historiography, then why limit the number of items discussed? No honest historian draws conclusions before viewing *all* of the evidence. Or is there something other than honest, objective historiography that Mr. Raven is employing here? He has so far refused to declare, clearly and openly, whether he is engaged in open- minded and impartial inquiry, or partisan debate. Having thus limited the scope of this discussion, quite deliberately, and then commented upon the lack of evidence, Mr. Raven persists in this line by adding a fifth point to his overview, "Fifth, it is interesting to see what is NOT here." No, just boring...a comment noted and addressed. Again, it's because Mr. Raven wanted to limit the number of items introduced, for reasons he has repeatedly failed to justify here ... and that *is* something of interest! > For example, there are no statements made by Auschwitz > Commandant Rudolf Hoess, who for years has been held out > as proof there were gassings (the U.S. Holocaust > Memorial Museum depends on a Hoess statement to make its > point). Recently, Deborah Lipstadt and Christopher > Browning have admitted that the Hoess statements are > useless (Vanity Fair, December 1993). Lipstadt and Browning most certainly did not 'admit' anything of the sort - this is a good example of how deniers distort and misrepresent their evidence - when they're not simply making it up. But first, notice what Mr. Raven has done: he has again attacked an argument that Dr. Keren didn't even raise! "I'm surprised you didn't claim this," says Raven, "and if you had, it would have been wrong." If he considers this to be fair play, we can certainly chip in by shredding a host of denier arguments which *he* didn't raise. This sort of thing only clouds the issue, and it's strange that Raven would attempt it, considering his April 20th. claim that he "would like to get this discussion back on track." But back to the claim Raven makes. Apart from the fallacy of suggesting that the Museum "depends" on Hoess to make a point - there are countless other pieces of evidence upon which they could similarly "depend" - is it true that Lipstadt and Browning "have admitted that the Hoess statements are useless"? No. A grain of truth, covered by an ocean of distortion. The grain of truth is that Hoess made rather bad estimates of how many people were exterminated while he was Kommandant of Auschwitz. In his testimony, he estimated 2.5 million were killed; it has been known for decades that this number is far too high. Current estimates range from 1.2 to 1.5 million deliberately gassed, and many more killed by other means, primarily the simple but effective combination of starvation, overwork, and disease. In his memoirs, Hoess writes "During previous interrogations I have put the number of Jews who arrived in Auschwitz for extermination at two and a half millions. This figure was supplied by Eichmann who gave it to my superior officer, Gruppenfuehrer Gluecks, when he was ordered to make a report to the Reichsfuehrer SS [Himmler] shortly before Berlin was surrounded. Eichmann, and his permanent deputy Guenther, were the only ones who possessed the necessary information on which to calculate the total number destroyed. ... I myself never knew the total number and I have nothing to help me make an estimate of it." (Bezwinska, pp. 126-7) Hoess merely warns that the 2.5 million figure, which he got essentially from hearsay, is shaky. Later he writes: "I regard a total of two and a half millions as far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities." (Ibid, p. 129) Now jump ahead to the present. In December 1993, a three-page article on "revisionism" appeared in _Vanity Fair_ (not exactly a professional historical journal). A half-page discusses "the most sinister of the current revisionist arguments - if indeed it is an argument at all," Holocaust-denial. (p. 117) The author contacted Browning and Lipstadt to get their opinions of Hoess. Browning said, "Hoess was always a very weak and confused witness...the revisionists use him all the time for this reason, in order to try and discredit the memory of Auschwitz as a whole." (ibid) Weak and confused is one thing, but where does Browning say that "the Hoess statements are useless?" Nowhere. Lipstadt directed the article's author to her book, which merely points out what historians have known for decades: Hoess was wrong about the total death count. But where does Lipstadt say the "the Hoess statements are useless"? Again, nowhere. The classic denier distortion is the deliberate attempt to confuse Hoess's statements regarding the number of victims gassed with his statements regarding the actual gassing process. Because Hoess got the numbers wrong, Mr. Raven would have you believe that we should ignore the rest of his memoirs, including: "By the will of the Reichsfuehrer SS, Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination centre of all time...he himself gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations." (Bezwinska, pp. 89-90) "Protected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded cells death came instantaneously the moment the Cyclon B was thrown in. A short, almost smothered cry, and it was all over." (p. 93) "The killing of these Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time. The order had been given, and I had to carry it out. I must even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon and at that time neither Eichmann nor I was certain how these mass killings were to be carried out. It would be by gas, but we did not know which gas or how it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a procedure." (p. 94) Because Hoess' numbers were wrong - as he himself warned they probably were - Mr. Raven would like people to think we must ignore the above statements as well, which clearly confess exactly what Mr. Raven denies: a Nazi plot to exterminate millions of Jews in homicidal gas chambers. This confession comes from one of the principal figures in carrying out said plan. > Sixth, none of these statements seems to deal with > gassings at the main Birkenau gas chambers, This isn't bait-and-switch, this is the old shell game. First Raven talks about the "Holocaust" (definition 1), then hides the pea under "plan to exterminate millions of Jews in homicidal gas chambers," and now it's under the shell marked "the main Birkenau gas chambers." (The pea, in this case, is the thing which Dr. Keren's evidence is asked to prove.) Once more, Dr. Keren doesn't talk about the main Birkenau chambers only because Raven refused to address a sufficient body of evidence to encompass the thousands of individual activities in hundreds of different locations which, corpse by corpse, added up to the Holocaust. And if Keren had talked about Birkenau, Raven would have asked about Treblinka, and if Treblinka, Greg would have talked about Sobibor.... The argument, once more, is specious. > First citation: Statement of Hans Stark At last Mr. Raven gets to the point. One shudders to think of how much space he would have taken if he had *not* wanted to avoid sidetracking the discussion. > For his first adminicle, Keren presents us with a > statement by Hans Stark, who claims to have taken part in > an execution using Zyklon B. There are several problems > with this statement, Then he should list *all* of them, not just the ones "of most interest." Mr. Raven wouldn't be trying to slip in an unsubstantiated assertion here, would he? A little subliminal message that he's got more to talk about, but not enough time to address? He'd like us to believe that, wouldn't he, without being required to prove it? > but of most interest are 1) Stark's > statement is almost never cited by Holocaust historians, Which proves nothing. In this case, the writer actually tries to make the wealth of evidence in support of the truth of the Holocaust work *against* it. Imagine if you were asked to pick the one or two $100 dollar bills out of a bank vault which *best* prove there is a bank? They are *all* good; how can one be "best?" And since there are so many, one picks at random, so any particular bill is indeed "almost never" cited as proof. The reader may further note that Mr. Raven has made another unsubstantiated assertion. Dr. Keren provides detailed documentation. Compare before you buy. Mr. Raven goes on to note: "Stark claims that the gassings were already taking place in the autumn of 1941," and then performs another bit of denial slight-of-hand. As the evidence shows, the gassings which occured at Auschwitz in the Fall of 1941 were experimental in nature. The following information, from the Auschwitz FAQ, discusses the matter: On September 3 Fritsch decided to experiment. First he crammed five or six hundred Russians and another 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital into an underground detention cell. Then the windows were covered with earth. SS men wearing gas masks opened the Zyklon-B canisters to remove what looked like blue chalk pellets about the size of peas, creating a cloud of poison gas. After they left, the doors were sealed.(Ho"ss, Commandant at Auschwitz, 173. See also Yehuda Bauer, "Auschwitz," in Ja"ckel and Rohwere, eds., Der Mord an den Juden, 167-68) Ho"ss wrote later that death was instantaneous. Perhaps that was what he was told. But he was not present to witness the event; he was away on a business trip. Other sources indicate that even the next day not everyone was dead, and the SS men had to release more insecticide. Eventually all the prisoners died. When Ho"ss returned to Auschwitz, he heard about the successful experiment. On Eichmann's next visit to Auschwitz, Ho"ss told him about the possibilities of Zyklon-B, and, according to Ho"ss, the two decided to use the pesiticide and the peasant farmstead for extermination.(Ho"ss, Commandant, 175. From the History of KL Auschwitz, New York, 1982, I, 190)(Breitman, 203) In The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Jozef Buszko (Jagiellonian University, Krakow) writes: "The first, relatively small gas chamber was built in Auschwitz I. Here the experimental gassing using Zyklon B gas first took place, on September 3, 1941. The victims were 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners. After that experiment, the firm J. A. Topf and Sons received a contract to build much larger, permanent gas chambers connected with very large crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the mass exterminations were mainly carried out. Altogether four such installations -- II, III, IV, and V -- were built in Birkenau." (Encyclopedia, Vol. I, 113) Mr. Raven continues: "... when most scholars now believe that the alleged plan for mass gassings was formed between June and August 1942, and implemented between March and June of 1943 (see for example, Pressac)," At last, a citation to real evidence. Too bad it's irrelevant, as mass gassings and experimental gassings are not the same thing. Thus there is no discrepancy - the experiments in 1941 proved successful; a plan was formed in 1942 based on those experiments, and then implemented. Stark's credibility remains untouched. The "revisionist's", on the other hand.... "... and 3) Stark's timetable for a Zyklon B gassing are fantasy, allowing nowhere near enough time for the process to take place." Dr. Keren's detailed documentation is met with another unsubstantiated assertion. Let the record show that so far, Greg Raven has introduced no credible citation to rebut Stark's testimony, only unsubstantiated assertion. The apparent discrepancy on dates is seen to be the result of utter confusion about the difference between small-scale test gassings and mass gassings. However, this confusion calls into question just how careful a historian the writer is. If he is faulty in his argument here, where else in his argument has he been faulty? This is why you should never, ever buy an undocumented assertion from a revisionist (or, for that matter, from anyone else, even us). Demand the full story, not vague summaries. At least, we hope this horrible distortion of the facts was just confusion on the writer's part. No doubt Mr. Raven will explain how this embarrassing little error crept into his work when he replies. > Second citation: Statement of SS Doctor Kremer > > In addition to the general flaws noted ... and refuted ... Undaunted by his failure to deal with Stark's testimony, Mr. Raven continues in the same vein... "...in the overview above, it is interesting to see that in this adminicle Kremer alludes to a diary, which would have been written at the same time as the gassings were allegedly taking place, but curiously this document is not used by Keren." Not at all "curious." How many times must we remind Mr. Raven that _he_ placed limits on the amount of evidence? And there is another limit: since Mr. Raven objected to snippets (for reasons we agree are valid; context is important), posting the whole diary would have exceeded many systems' limits on article line count. "This could be because the diary makes no mention of gassings or gas chambers, as can be seen in the short segment included as part of th[e] testimony offered by Keren. In short, Kremer was not an eyewitness..." This conclusion does not follow. Kremer's failure to write something in his diary is not proof it didn't happen. It has been explained earlier in this newsgroup that it may have been, shall we say, hazardous to Kremer's health if something too explicit were found in his diaries by the SS or Gestapo. "...and as such is in a poor position to give us testimony about what happened." Again, Raven's completely unsubstantiated assertion against Keren's detailed documentation. Is anyone keeping score? > Third citation: Statement of SS Private Boeck > Again, this statement is rarely cited, which must make > us wonder why, if it is so damaging, isn't it held out > more often as proof? The reason why this argument is fallacious has already been explained above. "Pressac himself casts doubt on some of the aspects..." Which aspects, besides the one example specifically mentioned below? Why not provide full quotes and let the reader judge, rather than summarizing? (Mr. Raven's summaries have already been shown to be untrustworthy.) "...of this statement, pointing out, for example, that Boeck could only have witnessed one such gassing (at most)." Is "at most" in Pressac's original text, or is it a clever insertion on Mr. Raven's part, as we are only presented with a paraphrase, not a direct quote, and no exact page citation to make it easy to check the accuracy of it, so that if we want to verify it for ourselves we must take the time to read Pressac cover to cover? However, nothing has been said to rebut Boeck's testimony about witnessing of a gassing. May we assume, then, that Mr. Raven grudgingly accepts that Boeck *did* witness a gassing, that the Nazi use of poison gas is now established, and we are now only involved in a discussion of numbers? "This, in addition to the unrealistic description of the gassing operation..." Yet another unsubstantiated assertion. No explanation is given of why this is unrealistic. We do not see anything unrealistic about it. However, Dr. Keren provided the actual quote, not a paraphrase, so each reader can make up his or her own mind. Dr. Keren also provided the *exact* bibliographic citation, so that anyone who wishes to do so can *easily* check up on him and catch him in any error or omission. "...forces us to conclude that Boeck was not an actual eyewitness." We see no basis for drawing such a conclusion. But we invite the fair- minded reader to analyze the arguments and decide. "Fourth citation: Statement by SS Unterscharfuehrer Pery Broad" "After the war Broad cooperated fully with the Allies, and his testimony was important in the 1946 Tesch trial and the 1947 Nuremberg Farben trial. He testified that 10,000 Jews were gassed every day, and that altogether some two and a half to three million were killed (Broad testimony, 2 March 1946, NI-11954). Some years later, though, he distanced himself from his earlier testimony, saying that it had been based at least in part on hearsay ("Le Proces d'Auschwitz," Le Monde, April 23, 1964 (AFP dispatch from Frankfurt, Apr. 21, 1964); W. St glich, Auschwitz-Mythos, pp. 214, 215, 325)." At last, some detailed literature citations. It would have been nice to have the full quotes, not summaries which may or may not be distorted (unfortunately, 1964 issues of Le Monde are hard to come by). But this at least is a somewhat more honest style of discussion as it *does* allow for verification of the claims made. Still, the most damaging thing that has been said is that it was based at least (is "at least" in the original?) in part on hearsay (we are not told what part). While this may be enough to get a new trial on appeal if this were the *only* testimony (though it isn't, not by a long shot), this is supposed to be a search for historical truth, which operates by somewhat different rules. Or is it? Mr. Raven has not been forthcoming on that point. "In the passage quoted by Keren, Broad speaks of a Zyklon B gassing, in a truck of some sort while it is parked next to a building we are told was itself a gas chamber. Even Pressac says 'Broad's testimony raises questions yet to be solved." (page 124) Pressac also says Broad's 'declaration has been 'slightly' reworked by the Poles.' (page 124) As Faurisson has point out, Pressac's use of quotes around the word 'slightly' indicate that the reworking was anything but slight." The writer does not reproduce Faurisson's argument so that you can evaluate it for yourself, nor does he tell you where to find it (though one could probably assume it's somewhere in the Faurisson book Raven cited earlier). Neither does he give us anything more than a sentence - no, only two snippets of a sentence - from Pressac. He expects you to accept his unsubstantiated assertion and summary once again. We have already exposed how untrustworthy these are. But we thank him for providing the page number this time. On the other hand, Dr. Keren actually took the time to show you what he was talking about, because he had the goods. He was not afraid to let you see it - all of it, not snippets, distorted summaries, and out- of-context quotes - and have you come to your own conclusions. > Fifth citation: Statement of Dr. Czeslaw Glowakci > This is the third not-often-cited piece. Out of the > mountain of evidence we are told exists to support the > Holocaust gassing claims, why are three of Keren's five > pieces of evidence rarely cited by other Holocaust > scholars? The answers to this question have been provided. We simply wish to point out another use of this particular denier technique. > Not being familiar with this declaration or with > Glowakci, and because there is so little in the quoted > piece with which to work, We are not exactly sure what this statement means, either the "so little" or "with which to work." But Dr. Keren has provided the full text for open inspection by the reader. > I can only make a couple of general comments. Glowakci > speaks of gassings at Block 11, which is on the extreme > opposite side of the camp from the crematory in Auschwitz > (this crematory is where the "gas chamber" was supposed > to have been). We had thought the purpose of the discussion was proving that the Nazis carried out gassings. What difference does it make where this particular gassing, one of many at many different places, occurred? This comment is wholly irrelevant to the issue at hand. > He at least gives the gassing process time to work > properly, but then goes on to say that the bodies have > decomposed so rapidly in two days that they are falling > apart. He does not say this. He only says that the skin of the dead stuck to their hands. This does not even clearly mean that it was detaching from the bodies; it could just mean that there was some tackiness. How is it that revisionists can so consistenly get things confused like this? Yet it should also be noted that there is no impossibility in having decomposition proceed this rapidly. It depends on the temperature. > Perhaps most important, though, he claims the victims > were Soviet POW; is Keren saying that all Soviet soldiers > were Jewish, or just these? Keren doesn't elaborate. Dr. Keren doesn't elaborate because he thinks the point of the quotation should be clear: gas chambers existed, despite Mr. Raven's attempts to get us to doubt the fact. Nothing that has been said about this quotation in any way diminishes its credibility. The fact that this particular example was of gassing of non-Jews says nothing about whether Jews were gassed, only that the Nazis did, as hundreds of witnesses testified, use poison gas as a means of disposing of "enemies of the state" both non-Jewish and Jewish. The case for the existence and use of gas chambers is solidly supported, and *nothing* has been said which really challenges the credibility of that testimony - unless you believe that an unsubstantiated assertion is a legitimate challenge. >Summary > > My challenge to produce evidence that demonstrates > a Nazi plan to kill millions of Jews in gas chambers > has not been met. And it never will be, if Mr. Raven is allowed to play both defense attorney and judge. For that, friends, is exactly what Mr. Raven has been doing throughout his so-called "reply." He has been hoping you wouldn't notice. He has been pretending to be a fair-minded historian, but if you follow his argument you will see it is long on fallacious reasoning, subtle poisonous insinuations (the repeated question "Why did Keren do/not do so and so?" to try to establish the subliminal impression that Keren is being underhanded or evasive), shifting definitions, and vague unsubstantiated assertions - tactics of the defense attorney, not of an impartial seeker of truth. What he was short on - in fact, entirely devoid of - was any factual citation whatsoever which in any way impeached the smallest piece of a single word of testimony introduced by Dr. Keren. Remember the diminicles? That's all he had. Diminicles. Yet he feels that he can get away with asserting: > My challenge to produce evidence that demonstrates a > Nazi plan to kill millions of Jews in gas chambers has > not been met. Illicitly running around to the other side of the bench and putting on the judge's robes. Would anyone seriously expect the defense attorney to return a verdict other than not guilty? We wonder if, after reading this response, Mr. Raven would be willing to submit his case to an impartial and randomly-selected jury, or if he would start begging for a plea bargain. > I would hope that even Mr. Keren would admit this. We would hope even Mr. Raven would admit that he has failed, and failed utterly. Just as what a magician does seems mysterious and marvelous until the gimmick is exposed, the deniers' cheap debating tricks are all too well known to us. The reader is invited once more to go over the original Faurisson quote, confidently used by Raven to support his position, and then compare it with our rewrite. Then compare Dr. Keren's detailed and carefully documented evidence with the unsubstantiated assertions, distortions, irrelevancies, and little snippets such as the Mayer quotes (despite Mr. Raven's *own* refusal to deal with snippets, note that he shows no reluctance to use them for his own purposes). Dr. Keren has solid facts. Greg Raven has diminicles. The smart shopper in the market for historical truth will recognize the quality product. > I would also hope that he would agree with me that > although we are told over and over that there is a > mountain of evidence to support the gassing story, and > that the Nazis recorded everything because they were > proud of what they did, "Sources for the study of the gas > chambers are at once rare and unreliable." (Mayer, page > 362) Another denier technique is the quote out of context. For some reason Raven did not quote another of the favorite denier lines from p. 363 of Mayer: "In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources. These cannot be ignored [....]" It certainly sounds like Mayer does not support the Holocaust story, doesn't it? Except that if you look at the actual page, all of it, not selected snippets, you find that the ellipsis dots stand for the following: " ..., although it must be emphasized strongly that such defects are altogether insufficient to put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz." > This, in a nutshell, is the revisionist position. People > are constantly being told one thing about the Holocaust, > yet the documents themselves tell a much different story, > when there are documents at all. Revisionists do not > claim the Holocaust never happened, just that some of the > stories that have been included under the heading > "Holocaust" are false. There are ambiguities, distortions, misunderstandings, errors, and quite probably a few outright lies, yes. It would be impossible to avoid in the mountain of testimony and documentation which constitutes the Holocaust record. But take a few pebbles and a small rock from a mountain; does the mountain go away? If "some" of the stories are false, then one would assume the rest are true - so if that is indeed the only claim that revisionists make, why are we having this long-winded discussion? Here we see the parting distortion. Compare > Revisionists do not claim the Holocaust never happened, > just that some of the stories that have been included > under the heading "Holocaust" are false. with the earlier quote from Faurisson, which charges far more - that those who put together the story of the Holocaust used invalid reasoning, dubious evidence, and (though he does not say so openly, we're sure he would not be sorry if he left the impression in the mind of the reader) outright fraud. Oh, no, they do not *claim* it - but we have shown how the argument tries to imply it subliminally. We apologize for the length of this article. But we felt we could not allow even the smallest of the deniers' little tricks to go unexposed. For that is precisely their hope: that they could throw so many insidious little subliminal diminicles that one or two would sneak past the counterargument and burrow into the reader's brain, growing from small ambiguity to minor discrepancy to major flaw to inexplicable contradiction to the ultimate conclusion of deliberate Holocaust Hoax - just as the small shadow in your closet grew to be a horrible monster when you were a child, as it preyed on your imagination. All we have done here was turn on the light. The HIV virus evades the body's defenses by sneaking past the outer wall of the T4 cell and into its heart before the body is aware that it is under attack. In the same way, the IHR virus works its way past intellectual defenses and into the heart of the subconscious by coming under the guise of reasonable, fair-minded discourse before the intellect is aware that it is under attack. But once there, the little innuendoes ("Why didn't...." [psst! Could he have something to HIDE?] "One can only wonder...." [If they were HONEST, they would have SAID MORE, wouldn't they?]) and the dozens of unchallenged vague unsupported assertions ("Many scholars believe...." [Notice they didn't respond to that statement? Could it be because they CAN'T?]) begin their insidious work, growing from little niggles to an inarticulate feeling that something is wrong. And from there they grow to uncertainty about the Holocaust, and so on until the terminal stage of the disease, Holocaust Denial. Sadly, there is no vaccine for the HIV virus. However, we hope that our discussion has provided the reader with intellectual vaccination against the IHR virus. "Revisionists" often claim that they are unfairly branded as Nazis, racists, and anti-Semites. As some of us have been branded "vile little liars," "Holocau$t Mythologists," and other unsavory names, we are sensitive to this charge. Perhaps at times we *have* been too quick to mistake the duped victims of those behind Holocaust denial for wilful perpetrators of that denial. Therefore, although he has publicly stated elsewhere that Hitler was a great man, we will not claim that as evidence that Mr. Raven has knowingly made any of his arguments in bad faith. We earnestly hope that after reading our response, he will realize the illegitimacy of not only the substance (such as it was) but the fundamental tone and technique of his argument. If he realizes and admits his error, we will gladly forgive him. From the explanation above, it can readily be seen that we understand just how clever the tactics of the deniers are, and how easily they can fool the unwary. Perhaps Mr. Raven was one of those fooled. We hope our intellectual vaccine has reached him in time, and he is now on the way to a full recovery. We do not require that he stop asking questions. The recovery process can be slow, so we will be glad to treat those sudden flareups of doubt. We merely ask that he adopt a style of discussion more suited to honest and objective search for the truth, and abandon rhetoric more suited to the cheap defense lawyer than the serious historical scholar. However, if he continues to use the same methods of argument, then we *will* start to question his honesty and his motives, or begin to deny his intelligence and his sanity. One last note: Read again the sentence: "Therefore, although he has publicly stated elsewhere that Hitler was a great man, we will not claim ....." Did you spot *our* sneaky use of the denier debating technique? The subtle innuendo, "We do not *claim* [but we'd sure like you to think it's true!]." If so, congratulations! Our vaccine is already starting to work. If you missed it, you now understand why it works so well. Please read this entire article again, but more carefully. Work Cited Bezwinska, Jadwiga, Ph. D., and Danuta Czech M.A. KL Auschwitz seen by the SS: Hoess, Broad, Kremer. Howard Fertig Inc., New York, 1984. Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Encyclopedia. See Gutman. Gutman, Israel, ed. in Chief, et al. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1990. ISBN 0-02- 896090-4 (set) (Referenced in this FAQ as "Encyclopedia") Mayer, Arno J. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Vanity Fair, December 1993. Signed ------ Danny Keren Jamie McCarthy Ken McVay Mike Stein
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