Journal of Historical Review: "Truth
Prevails"
>From The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 12, Number 4 (Winter 1992-93):
[From the REVIEWS section:]
Book-Length "Scholarly" Polemic
TRUTH PREVAILS: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the Leuchter
Report. Edited by Shelly Shapiro. New York, N.Y.: The Beate Klarsfeld
Foundation, and Holocaust Survivors & Friends in Pursuit of Justice, 1990.
Softcover. 135 pages. Illustrations. Index. $15.00. ISBN 1-879437-00-7.
Reviewed by Mark Weber
In response to
Fred Leuchter's findings about the alleged wartime
extermination gas chambers, the Holocaust lobby has mounted a
well-orchestrated campaign of slander, distortion, half-truth and falsehood
to discredit him and destroy his career as a consultant to state
governments on execution technology.
At the forefront of this effort have been the Paris-based Beate
Klarsfeld Foundation and a US-based group that calls itself "Holocaust
Survivors & Friends in Pursuit of Justice." An important propaganda tool
in this international campaign is this angry, awkwardly written and poorly
organized 135-page polemic, which is perhaps the most ambitious effort so
far to discredit
Leuchter and his findings. Published jointly by these two
organizations in 1990, it bears the pretentious and rather bombastic title
Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the
Leuchter
Report.
As Journal readers know, this is not the first time that these two
groups have sought to discredit Holocaust Revisionism with a book-length
publication. In 1989 the Klarsfeld Foundation released Auschwitz:
Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, an ambitious 564-page work by
French researcher Jean-Claude Pressac. (See the reviews of Pressac's book
in the IHR Journal by Mark Weber, Summer 1990, and Robert Faurisson,
Spring and Summer 1991.)
Truth Prevails consists of a preface by editor Shelly Shapiro (who
is also director of "Holocaust Survivors & Friends"), six essays (including
two by Jean-Claude Pressac), and a short commentary by Serge Klarsfeld. In
spite of its erudite pretension, this is a poorly written, edited and
organized work. Its language is often snide and crude.
All the same, Truth Prevails has had a measurable impact. Libelous
and error-ridden articles based on it have appeared in daily newspapers and
weekly Jewish community papers around the country. In addition to the
usual and untruthful attacks against the IHR and Holocaust Revisionism in
general, these articles viciously attack
Leuchter as a man.
Throughout this book, Revisionists are routinely referred to as
"Holocaust deniers," a formulation that suggests a medieval Inquisition
against religious heretics who have blasphemed against a sacred dogma. By
treating "Holocaust denial" as the most terrible sin that anyone can commit
these days, this book serves to underscore the way that the Holocaust has
become, for many, a kind of religion.
In the preface, "Holocaust denial" is also compared to denying the
existence of slavery in 18th and 19th century America, or denying the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima. However, one might reasonably ask, if
"Holocaust denial" is really so obviously absurd, why bother about it? No
rational person wastes time refuting those who might deny the 1945 bombing
of Hiroshima.
The preface also sets the tone of Truth Prevails, where the reader
is told: "The incomprehensible death factories 'with their bulging gas
chambers and smoke-belching crematoria eclipsed man's visions of hell.'
The name of Auschwitz means the epitomy [SIC] of evil." Overlooking the
emotion-charged rhetoric here, it should be pointed out that, as anyone who
is even superficially familiar with the reality of Auschwitz knows, there
were no "smoke-belching crematoria" there (or anywhere, for that matter).
Like similar facilities elsewhere, the crematory facilities at Auschwitz
were structurally not able to "belch" smoke. (Accordingly, Allied aerial
reconnaissance photos taken of the camp complex in 1944 -- at the height of
the supposed extermination process there -- show absolutely no trace of any
smoke whatsoever.)
Editor Shapiro also expresses outrage at a reference (in the British
edition of the
Leuchter Report) to an inmates' swimming pool at Auschwitz.
In point of fact, there was such a pool. (On this see: R. Lenski, The
Holocaust on Trial, pp. 38, 132, 142, 358-359, 385, and, R. Faurisson, IHR
Journal, Summer 1991, pp. 133-134.)
Truth Prevails seeks to discredit the
Leuchter report by, above all,
attacking its author's qualifications. A main purpose of this book is to
prove that
Leuchter lacks the expertise he claims, and to show, instead,
that he is a pretentious fraud. "Our goal," the preface explains, "is to
show
Leuchter's lack of expertise" as an execution hardware specialist, and
"to demonstrate that 'The
Leuchter Report' is not a credible scientific
analysis..." (p. 1).
Charging that "
Leuchter does not have the scientific background or
experience despite his claims" (p. 11), Truth Prevails insists that
Leuchter is simply not qualified to give an expert opinion about the
alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz and Majdanek.
In this regard, much is made of the fact that Judge Ron Thomas
declined to accept the
Leuchter Report as a defense exhibit during the 1988
Zundel trial. Strictly speaking, this is true. But Truth Prevails
essentially ignores the fact that Judge Thomas did decide to accept
Leuchter as an expert of homicidal gas chamber technology, and accordingly
permitted him to give opinion evidence. During his testimony,
Leuchter was
allowed to read extensively from his Report, which became part of the court
record.
As detailed in an article published elsewhere in this issue of the
Journal,
Leuchter's impressive expertise in the field of execution
hardware is a matter of public record, and has been authoritatively and
publicly confirmed. For example, in a letter of January 13, 1988, Missouri
state prison director William Armontrout wrote: "
Mr. Leuchter is an
engineer specializing in gas chambers and executions. He is well versed in
all areas and is the only consultant in the United States that I know of."
Testifying in the 1988
Zundel trial, Armontrout also declared that he had
consulted with
Leuchter on the design, maintenance and operation of the
Missouri state gas chamber, and reaffirmed that, to the best of his
knowledge,
Leuchter is the only such consultant in the United States.
As part of its vicious assault against
Leuchter's character, this book
charges that financial greed was the motive behind his forensic
investigation of the alleged extermination gas chambers, and his conclusion
that they were never used as killing facilities.
Leuchter's motivation,
Pressac writes here, was "to collect the steep fee he asked of
Zundel and
which the latter paid him." (p. 32)
In another chapter, contributor Arthur Goodman provides a mendacious
explanation of how
Leuchter was chosen to carry out his forensic
investigation (p. 76):
Faurisson quickly applied himself to the task of finding an
In fact (and as explained in more detail elsewhere in this issue of
the Journal),
Leuchter's motives in conducting his forensic investigation
of the alleged wartime gas chambers in Poland were entirely honorable and
professional. Prof. Robert Faurisson and
Ernst Zundel sought out
Leuchter
not because of any pre-existing views or prejudices he may have had on this
issue, but solely because he was, at that time, the only acknowledged
execution gas chamber specialist in the United States.
While it is true that he was paid a standard fee by
Zundel, this is
not at all remarkable. Any expert witness who testifies in a court case
under such circumstances is normally paid a fee in keeping with his or her
professional standing. Christopher Browning, for example, the star
prosecution witness in the 1988
Zundel trial, received 150 (Canadian)
dollars an hour for his services.
Shapiro and the Klarsfelds are understandably angry that, in spite of
their efforts, the major media continues to acknowledge
Leuchter's
expertise as America's foremost expert of execution technology. Shapiro
expresses outrage that "major news organizations" have given him "a
semblance of respectability and credibility."
The Atlantic monthly, for example, is taken to task for an
illustrated article about
Leuchter in the February 1990 issue. In this
piece, attorney and author Susan Lehman factually described
Leuchter as
the nation's only commercial supplier of execution equipment . . . A
trained and accomplished engineer, he is versed in all types of
execution equipment. He makes lethal-injection machines, gas
chambers, and gallows, as well as electrocution systems. [He] . . .
probably knows more about electric chair technology than anyone else.
The Zionist
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith responded to this
rather flattering profile with an angry letter of protest. In her reply to
the ADL, Susan Lehman correctly pointed out that
Leuchter's findings about
the Holocaust "gas chambers," and his testimony in the
Zundel trial, "have
no direct bearing...on the subject of my report." In his essay in Truth
Prevails, Charles R. Allen, Jr., dismisses Lehman's reply as "insolence."
[Transcriber's laugh: Ha ha ha!]
An even greater calamity, in the view of Shapiro and her friends, was
a profile of
Leuchter broadcast nationwide May 10, 1990, on the widely
viewed ABC television news program "Prime Time Live." Co-host Diane Sawyer
described
Leuchter as "the country's foremost expert at creating, designing
and maintaining execution equipment."
Particularly galling to the Shapiro crowd is the fact that ABC news
television went ahead with its profile of "Dr. Death" even after it had
been "informed" of
Leuchter's shocking views on the Holocaust extermination
story, and of his links with the infamous Institute for Historical Review.
Shelly Shapiro and Beate Klarsfeld had even met with producer Bob Currie to
urge him not to air the report.
Finally, The New York Times is castigated for prominently featuring
an article, October 13, 1990, which included a front-page photograph of
Leuchter, that describes him as "the nation's leading adviser to states on
capital punishment."
Leuchter, the article also reported, has "advised 16
states on every kind of execution equipment. Four states have bought his
lethal injection systems..."
This unequivocal acknowledgement of
Leuchter's expertise by the
nation's most influential daily paper is all the more significant because
its author, and the paper's editors, were entirely aware of the
Shapiro/Klarsfeld team's criticisms of
Leuchter when the article went to
press.
And much more recently,
Leuchter's standing as the premier expert of
execution hardware was affirmed in "The Execution Protocol," a television
report broadcast November 1, 1992, on the Discovery cable television
network, as well as on the session of the popular Phil Donahue show
broadcast nationwide November 13, 1992.
Truth Prevails tries to explain away these embarrassing tributes by
contending that
Leuchter has somehow been able to trick or fool these savvy
periodicals into accepting his bogus claims of expertise. If
Leuchter was
actually able to somehow "take in" the media as this book suggests, he must
be gifted with truly extraordinary powers of persuasion.
Truth Prevails ruefully notes that
Leuchter "is still sought by the
media as the only available spokesman on the technology of the death
penalty in the U.S." (p. 24). One can be certain that if there is anyone
(besides
Leuchter) in the United States who could plausibly be portrayed as
a "real" expert on execution hardware, Shapiro and her diligent colleagues
certainly would have found him. Interestingly, though, the
Shapiro/Klarsfeld team has not produced any such person: To date, the best
they have been able to come up with is a confused and unqualified suburban
French pharmacist, Jean-Claude Pressac.
Fittingly, much of this book consists of two essays by Pressac that
seek to refute the
Leuchter Report on technical grounds. (For a point by
point response to Pressac's critique of
Leuchter's findings, see the
detailed essay by Paul Grubach in this issue of The Journal.)
Shapiro and Klarsfeld use a grotesque double standard in deciding just
who qualifies as a gas chamber expert. While
Leuchter is dismissed as an
untrained fraud and crank, Pressac is praised here (by Serge Klarsfeld, on
page 29) as "one of the world's rare research specialists in gas chamber
extermination technique." This description is almost laughable in light of
Pressac's lack of any formal training, credentials or recognized expertise
in architecture, engineering, history or document analysis.
Leuchter is not this book's only target. Prof. Faurisson is accused
of "intellectual dishonesty" (p. 36), and
Ernst Zundel is referred to as
Canada's "prime practitioner of Holocaust denial" (p. 22), as if he is the
high priest of an evil satanic cult, and historian
David Irving is called a
"Nazi propagandist" (p. 85).
In a ten-page chapter by H.L. Silets, a specialist of legal history at
the University of Cambridge, the 1946 "Zyklon B" trial is cited as
irrefutable proof that German officials used hydrogen cyanide gas from
Zyklon to exterminate Jews in wartime concentration camps. Dr. Bruno
Tesch, the German businessman who headed the company that supplied Zyklon,
and his assistant and business manager Karl Weinbacher were the two main
defendants in the 1946 trial in Hamburg. They were found guilty by the
British military court, sentenced to death, and hanged.
Revisionist scholars are familiar with this important trial, wich was
a travesty of justice. (Retired American research chemist Dr. William B.
Lindsey provides a thorough examination of it in a carefully researched
article in the Fall 1983 IHR Journal.) Even Jean-Claude Pressac has
rightly castigated this trial as unjust and probably a "masquerade." (J.-C.
Pressac, Auschwitz, 1989, p. 17.)
A key witness in the trial was Charles (or Paul) Bendel, a Jewish
doctor who had been an inmate physician in Birkenau in 1944. His
"eyewitness" testimony about extermination gassings in the camp helped to
send Tesch and Weinbacher to the gallows. As even Pressac has confirmed,
Bendel's testimony is demonstrably wrong on numerous key points. (J.-C.
Pressac, Auschwitz, 1989, pp. 469-472.)
Perhaps most remarkably, this British court determined that, of a
grand total of six million people killed in the German camps, no less than
four and a half million were "systematically exterminated" with Zyklon B at
Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. (United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law
Reports of Trials of War Criminals, London: HMSO, 1947, Vol. 1, p. 94.
See also Nuremberg document NI-12207.)
As further proof of extermination gassings at Auschwitz, Truth
Prevails contributor Silets cites the postwar "confession" of former
Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss. However, as even prominent Holocaust
historians (including J.-C. Pressac in his 1989 book) now concede, key
statements in this "confession" are quite demonstrably untrue. Moreover,
it has been indisputably established that Hoss' infamous "confession" was
extracted by brutal torture. (See: R. Faurisson, IHR Journal, Winter
1986-87, pp. 389-403.)
Beate Klarsfeld has announced that
Leuchter "has to understand that in
denying the Holocaust, he cannot remain unpunished." (JTA dispatch,
Detroit Jewish News, March 1, 1991.) In this spirit, Ms. Shapiro has
boasted about the measures that she and her collaborators have taken to
pressure public officials, prison wardens, state correction departments,
politicians and journalists into blacklisting
Leuchter.
In August 1990, for example, the Shapiro/Klarsfeld group succeeded in
pressuring the Illinois Department of Corrections into canceling its
$8,320 consulting contract with
Leuchter to inspect and supervise
administration of its lethal injection equipment. (p. 17) Complaints were
also made to Arizona and Maryland. In one state, a lawmaker said that to
retain
Leuchter as an execution consultant would conflict with the stat's
requirement of mandatory "Holocaust studies" for every public school pupil.
(For more on this campaign, see the IHR Newsletter, July-August 1991, p.
3.)
Sadly, this insidious campaign to "punish"
Leuchter for his insolent
refusal to toe the Holocaust line has been largely successful. As he
explains in his essay elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, his
livelihood has largely been destroyed.
Although it is actually little more than a mean-spirited, bigoted and
error-ridden polemic, Truth Prevails is not ineffective as a work of
Holocaust propaganda. It will undoubtedly continue to have an impact among
the ignorant. All the same, its very existence is somewhat gratifying
because it is a tangible expression of the growing impact of Holocaust
Revisionism.
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from The Journal of Historical Review, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of file]
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Fails to Discredit Leuchter
"engineer" who would testify for
Zundel. Very soon thereafter,
Faurisson dug up the hitherto unknown
Leuchter whom he contacted and
who was only too willing to earn the money, gain the notoriety and
establish a reputation as the one man whose investigation would
sustain the [Revisionist] thesis...
Leuchter [was] only too eager to be
won over...