Joel Finkel [1]

"I was like everybody else in my own postwar years in Germany. I was disgusted with my father's generation whom I believed to have been monsters. Like practically all people on our planet, I used to believe in the standard, widely accepted notion that the government of National Socialist Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, had attempted to kill the Jews by an act of state-decreed genocide. I was ashamed to be a German…..In the 1960's ….I experienced my first doubts about some details of the Holocaust story. Further study, mostly at night, convinced me that many segments of the story were highly exaggerated, and the number of Jewish losses were wildly inflated." Ernst Zündel

Everyone who willfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

In the spring of 1994, several Marxist street groups organized to attempt to drive Zündel out of his neighbourhood in Toronto. Pamphlets were distributed calling him a "hatemonger" and "white supremacist" and calling for his charging under Canada's hate laws. These groups began a campaign of posters put up across Toronto with Zündel's face in a rifle sight, giving directions to his home with instructions on how to build Molotov cocktails. Street graffiti appeared on fences and buildings calling for people to "drive Zündel out." Zündel lodged complaints with Toronto police but nothing ever came of his complaints . . . On May 7, 1995, an arsonist torched Zündel's house which was almost completely gutted on the second and third floors, causing over $400,000.00 in damages and destroying an extensive library and rare book collection. No person was ever charged with this offence. After the arson, Zündel suffered from severe anxiety, loss of memory, and loss of concentration. . . . At the end of May 1995, a powerful pipe bomb was sent to Zündel through the mails from Vancouver, British Columbia. Suspicious of the parcel, he took it unopened to the police. The bomb contained nails and metal shrapnel; Toronto police determined it would have killed anyone who opened it and anyone within 90 metres of the blast. [2]

Ingrid Rimland

"Despite some occasional slipping into the RKPS mode….this Eisen essay is one remarkably crafted essay! Beautifully done! Rich in imagery and ice-cold in precision. "

Dear Paul,

RKPS stands for Requisite Knee-fall Paragraph Syndrome. It is a common, near universal writer's affliction in every Western country. It neutralizes what crude folks call a "sh-t detector." It befalls otherwise perfectly reasonable intellectuals much more than low-brow folks. It is as common as freckles.

It kicks in whenever the so-called "Holocaust" comes up. It's automatic. One cannot help it. By inner command, one must immediately get down on ones knees, bow to the dust, pay homage to the "six million", get up, kick Hitler in the shin, deplore the "racism" of the Third Reich, and otherwise distance oneself from the period of '33-'45 so that there is no doubt as to exactly where one stands - fair square against (gulp!) "Nazis".

Now, dear (future) friend - I have probably nixed a potentially congenial friendship right at the start by showing my true colors and putting my foot in the mouth - but I am a German, married to the world's premier thought-criminal presently languishing in Abu Ghraib North, and my heart aches when I read otherwise magnificent writing like yours - and then detect the RKPS. It hurts me, because it is unworthy of thinking and otherwise fair people who have been raised on the Holocaust Drip that has deformed that part of their nature that is meant to be fair and critical.

Here is the example of the RKPS in your piece:-

"In its zeal and self belief Zionism has come to resemble the most brutal and relentless of modern ideologies. But unlike the brutal rationality of Stalinism, willing to sacrifice millions for political and economic revolution, this Jewish ideology, in its zealotry and irrationality, resembles more the National Socialism which condemned millions for the attainment of a nonsensical racial and ethnic supremacy." (From "Jewish Power" by Paul Eisen) [3]

You see, Paul, when I read passages like that, I wince. Let me take it apart, bit by bit. "Zealotry", yes - to the extent one wants a better, cleaner, saner, more honest, more compatible world for one's own where life does not feel like having to wear a hair shirt for the benefit of strangers. Scientists deeply committed to their inventions are zealous. Mothers are zealous in wanting the best for their children. I am zealous when it comes to keeping smut out of the language I love. But not zealous like some Deep South Baptist preacher who thumbs the Bible, chews tobacco, and thinks nothing of spitting on your feet.

"Irrationality" - far from it! I used to think like that - I am ashamed to say I suffered badly from RKPS for most of my life. When I first started questioning why I behaved exactly like some brainless robot, I became curious about what people who were part of the National Socialist movement really thought. I talked to an old man whom I respected deeply for his integrity, and who had lost his only 18-year-old son at Stalingrad. He said to me, holding his son's picture in his hands: "It felt right in my mind, and it felt right in my soul." I asked: "You paid a price. Do you regret it?" And he said very quietly: "How could I? How could anyone who took the trouble understanding?"

That was the start of my resolve to take the trouble understanding.

"Non-sensical racial and ethnic supremacy." You are just plain misinformed. Let me put it this way. You have been lied to about the murder of JFK, about Vince Foster, about the USS Liberty, about Weapons of Mass Destruction, about --- you get the point. You have been lied to and lied to and lied to. You know you have. You accept that. And you haven't been lied to about this "racial and ethnic supremacy" nonsense?

Here's what I say to people who question my motives. Hitler has been dead for more than half a century. I don't want to resurrect him. Nobody in my circle does. It cannot be done. What is gone is gone and is never going to return. But what we Germans want is balanced thinking, fair assessment of what the Hitler days were like. We don't want people to assault us morning, noon, and night for things we didn't do. I for one don't like to watch grown men and women run and hide like rabbits the moment the Holocaust Lobby says "Boo!" After all, we all enjoy the Autobahn, don't we? Why should not our world enjoy the benefits that came out of those times - the research in fighting cancer, for instance? The superb appreciation of genuine art? The emphasis on simple lifestyle, respecting the ecological system? The brilliant strides in space research? It is unworthy of us to let ourselves be spooked by professional smear mongers for profit. Paul, put your hand on your heart and confess: Just what have you read of the times that did not come out of the propaganda mills of Hollywood and such?

For me, your sentence read like a traditional RKPS - to nodding agreement of the audience. Am I wrong? If I am right, you have just arrived at what is sneeringly called a "Holocaust Denier." I will look you straight in the eye and say that one cannot deny what did not exist. And now, to my regret, we have a mis-tone in our new-found mutual love (dare I say zealotry?) for ideas expressed in precise and finely honed words.

I suggest that forensic science ought to settle that disagreement about what Germans did or did not do in World War II in an open public forum - not by imprisonment and "torture lite" - as has happened to my husband, who sent the first forensic team EVER to inspect the "murder weapon", the so-called "gas chambers at Auschwitz" - and found it not what it was purported to be.

Ingrid.

Message to Ingrid Rimland from a ZGram reader

• That there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe.
  
  
• That there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers.
  
  
• That the numbers of Jewish victims have been exaggerated.

Dear Paul

Many WWII soldiers (now very old) have told me that World War II - that is, the war against the East - was really a preventive/defensive war against Communism, which was Jewish. Europe was about to be overrun by the Red Terror - Stalin had amassed his assault troops at the border, and it was only a matter of weeks, so Hitler hit first. Right now I am reading a book by a Swede, Juri Lina that is one long, horrid accounting of the Bolshevik/Jewish horrors. I don't know how good his sources are - but he has certainly documented them. Six million? Even if it were true, which we say it isn't, it was peanuts compared to the bloodbath in Russia, starting with the 1917 Revolution, all of it laid at the feet of the Jews. How much of that was known in Germany by the common people, I don't know. But it was certainly known by the leadership. And the Jews were seen as subversives, rightly or wrongly, more and more so as the war went on. Add to that the Versailles Treaty that brutalized Germany financially, and the corruption of the Weimar Republic, which brutalized it spiritually, both of which were blamed on the Jews - and you have cause aplenty, as that generation saw it.

Ingrid

• They deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe;
  
  
• They deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers;
  
  
• They deny the figure of six million Jewish victims of the Nazi assault and claim that the actual figure was significantly less.

• There exists no documentary evidence whatsoever that there ever was a decision on the part of Hitler or the National Socialist state to physically murder all the Jews of Europe. There is, however, an abundance of evidence for the decision to persecute, disempower and expel all Jews from Europe
  
  
• There is no physical evidence whatsoever for the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz or indeed anywhere else. There is, however, abundant evidence for the widespread use of hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) gas and gas chambers for delousing and disinfection against typhus. no one has yet been able to produce, draw or describe a homicidal gas chamber or produce a photograph or plan of one, because no one has ever seen a homicidal gas chamber.
  
  
• no one has ever seen a homicidal gas chamber because they did not exist. The gas chambers shown to thousands of visitors to Auschwitz are, by the admission of the museum authorities, post-war reconstructions. Common images of gas chambers from other locations are either disinfestation chambers or more commonly morgues, air-raid shelters (often gas-tight) or crematoria. Common images of the gassing of Jews - deportees boarding and disembarking from trains, mountains of eyeglasses and shoes, piles of corpses, crematoria chimneys are just that - people and trains, eyeglasses and shoes, corpses, smoking chimneys, no more, no less - they do not constitute evidence of mass gassing.
  
  
• Not only is there no physical evidence for the existence of homicidal gas chambers, there is substantial physical, architectural, topographical, geographical and forensic evidence against their existence. The critical evidence is in three reports all resulting from investigations at the site itself at Auschwitz. The first and most famous of these was the Leuchter report commissioned by Ernst Zündel in 1988. Acclaimed by revisionists, this report was somewhat hurriedly put together and, because of dispute about the interpretation of its conclusions, must be regarded as revelatory but nonetheless, inconclusive. However, Leuchter's findings and conclusions were refined and confirmed by a forensic study carried out by German chemist Germar Rudolf and by a forensic examination and report commissioned by the Auschwitz State museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow.
  
  
• The gassing and cremation of the numbers claimed, in the time claimed and with the facilities claimed, is simply not possible. Some of the evidence for this conclusion comes from studies of individual gas executions performed in the United States, any study of which will show how hard it is to kill one person safely and efficiently, let alone the hundreds claimed.
  
  
• The numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis, usually held to be around six million, is grossly exaggerated. This is largely because of greatly inflated pre-war Jewish population figures and underestimated Jewish survival and emigration figures.
  
  
• The context of much of the evidence for the Holocaust narrative was the Nuremberg Trials - an extraordinary and unprecedented set of trials of the vanquished by the victors with little attempt to find or to tell the truth. Without the evidence generated by these proceedings, there would be no significant evidence that the extermination of Jews took place at all. The legitimacy of the court itself was questionable, its procedures were a disgrace with defendants denied basic procedural rights and with much of the evidence presented in the form of survivor testimony taken at face value or confessions beaten and tortured out of the hapless defendants. As a matter of record, the key confession of Auschwitz Commandant, Rudolf Hoess, was obtained through torture and coercion. [6]
  
  
• Overall there is very little evidence for the established Holocaust narrative. Hard evidence is elusive, and what evidence as does exist is built largely on eyewitness reports, confessions and hearsay. Witness reports, notoriously unreliable anyway, are in this case totally false. Many key witnesses have already been demolished in the witness box and many noted ones, such as those by Rudolf Vrba, Felipe Muller, Kurt Gerstein and Rudolf Hoess, are now partially or completely discredited.
  
  
• Many key elements of the Holocaust narrative have already been disproved to the extent that even establishment Holocaust writers have conceded their inaccuracy. Examples of these are the Jews-into-soap story - the long disproved story of how the Nazis used the bodies of gassed Jews to make soap - the use of "steam chambers" to steam victims to death, and the existence of homicidal gas chambers at concentration camps in Germany itself such as Dachau and Buchenwald. All claims were made at Nuremberg, and all have subsequently been quietly discarded. Most telling is the quiet downgrading of the figures of victims illustrated by the removal of nineteen signs at Auschwitz, which told visitors in nineteen languages that four million Jews died in the camp. These have now been replaced with signs claiming a million and a half (still claimed by revisionists to be a significant exaggeration).

Robert Faurisson [7]

no one is able to show us, at Auschwitz or anywhere else, even one of these chemical slaughterhouses. no one is capable of describing to us their exact appearance or workings. Neither a trace nor a hint of their existence is to be found. Not one document, not one study, not one drawing. Nothing. Nothing but some occasional, pitiful "evidence", which vanishes, like a mirage, as soon as one draws near, and which the Jewish historians themselves, in recent years, have finally been obliged to repudiate. Robert Faurisson [8]

For 15 years, every time that I heard of a witness anywhere, no matter where in the portion of Europe that was not occupied by the Soviets, who claimed to have himself been present at gas exterminations, I immediately went to him to get his testimony. With documentation in hand, I would ask him so many precise and detailed questions that soon it became apparent that he could not answer except by lying. Often his lies became so transparent, even to himself, that he ended his testimony by declaring that he had not seen it himself, but that one of his good friends, who had died in the camps and whose good faith he could not doubt, had told him about it. I covered thousands and thousands of kilometers throughout Europe in this way. Paul Rassinier [9]

• The ADL website [10]
  
• The Nizkor website [11]

If somebody came along today and reported the calling of a scientific congress to examine the question of whether the sun revolves around the earth or the earth around the sun, he would either be ridiculed or declared non-compos mentis. It wouldn't occur to anyone to discuss the matter seriously... A similar thing occurs with the propagandists of the so-called 'Auschwitz Lie' or 'Holocaust Lie': their statements that there was no extermination of the Jews, is so obviously false that it is basically unworthy of serious scientific discussion. [12]

Those who argue that the Holocaust deniers must be given a fair hearing fail to recognize that the deniers' quest is not a search for truth. Rather they are motivated by racism, extremism, and virulent anti-Semitism. …their methodology is based on deception and falsification, and the scholarly and restrained tone of most revisionist writings, are merely window dressing to conceal their real character and intentions. Deborah Lipstadt [13]

Holocaust denial should not be seen as an assault on the history of one particular group. It repudiates reasoned discussion, the way the Holocaust, itself, engulfed all civilization. Its attack on Jewish history is, like anti-Semitism, an attack on the most basic values of a reasoned society. Deborah Lipstadt [14]

Lately, the deniers' work has become more virulent and dangerous, in part because it has become more sophisticated. Their publications, including The Journal of Historical Review, mimic legitimate scholarly publications. This confuses those who do not immediately know the Journal's intentions. Deborah Lipstadt [15]

What began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy."

In the final analysis, the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands, as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronisation.

A person who, in writing or by word of mouth, publishes any statement denying or diminishing the proportions of acts committed in the period of the Nazi regime which are crimes against the Jewish people or crimes against humanity, with intent to defend the perpetrators of those acts or to express sympathy or identification with them, shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years [16]

I now regret working on such a complex topic without sufficient knowledge and preparation, and hope this brief addendum will prevent my work causing distress to the Jewish community here in New Zealand and elsewhere or being misused by individuals or groups with malevolent motives….. I can now see that I failed in my M.A. thesis to place adequate analytical weight on the motivation of numerous authors on the Holocaust, even though some were obviously writing with a view to attacking Jews and rehabilitating Nazis. Joel Hayward [17]

This statement is given in an attempt to set the record straight about my current views regarding the Holocaust and Holocaust denial. As anyone who follows the subject of the Holocaust denial knows, from 1991 until 1994 I was well known in the movement as a Jewish Holocaust denier (a self-described "revisionist"). For the last three years I have no longer been associated with this movement, having realized that I was wrong and that the path I was taking with my life was self-destructive and hurtful to others. I have spent the last few years in silence on the subject of my time with the denial movement, a silence caused mainly by my shame at what I had done with my life and my desire to distance myself from that life.

However, in that shame-induced silence it has been brought to my attention that I have not gone as far as I should have to make a clear and complete public statement in order to set the record straight as to where I stand. It is my great hope that this statement accomplishes that task.

I would like to state for the record that there is no question in my mind that during the Holocaust of Europe's Jews during World War II, the Nazis employed gas chambers in an attempt to commit genocide against the Jews. At camps in both Eastern and Western Europe, Jews were murdered in gas chambers which employed such poison gases as Zyklon B and carbon monoxide (in the Auschwitz camp, for example, the gas chambers used Zyklon B). The evidence for this is overwhelming and unmistakable.

The Nazis intended to kill all of the Jews of Europe, and the final death toll of this attempted genocide was six million. This atrocity, unique in its scope and breadth, must never be forgotten.

During my four years as a denier, I was wracked with self-hate and loathing, a fact that many of my critics were quick to point out. Indeed, this self hatred was obvious to most, but I was too blind to see it. The hate I had for myself I took out on my people. I was seduced by pseudo historical nonsense and clever-sounding but empty ideas and catch-phrases. When my eyes were finally opened, thanks to several good, kind friends who refused to give up on me even at my worst, I was horrified by what I had done. My instinct was to flee and never look back, but I now understand that I owe it to the people I wronged to make a forceful repudiation of my earlier views. I also owe a very large apology, not only to the many people I enraged, and to the family and friends I hurt, but especially to the survivors of the Holocaust, who deserve only our respect and compassion, not re-victimization.

Therefore, to all of the above people, let me offer my most humble and very, very sincere apology. I am sorry for what (I) did, and I am sorry for the hurt I caused.

And just as I must set the record straight concerning my views, it is also incumbent on me to set the record straight regarding the video "documentaries" and media appearances I did from 1991 to 1994. These "documentaries" are merely videotaped garbage filled with self-hatred and pseudo-intellectual nonsense. My "media appearances" were nothing but an embarrassment. My glazed look, specious reasoning, and talking-in-circles during my talk show appearances would have hopefully alerted any astute viewers that this was a man not in touch with reality.

It has been brought to my attention that Bradley Smith is still using one of my videos in advertisements he is running on college campuses. Therefore, I would like to make these additional points: This video is being advertised without my consent, and I denounce this video as being without worth. Bradley Smith is no historian, and denial is no "historical field". Students on college campuses should look elsewhere to find out about the Holocaust. To these students, I would say, look to books like Hilberg's "Destruction of the European Jews", Yahil's "The Holocaust", and Dawidowicz's "War Against the Jews" for correct information. If your school library doesn't stock these books, have them order copies. Do not pay any attention to any "David Cole" videos, except to rightly denounce them as frauds.

I am thankful for being given the opportunity to make this statement. This statement is made freely and under no duress, and is quite willingly, even happily given to Mr. Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League for the widest possible distribution. This statement is the most current and accurate compilation of my views, and it supersedes any previous writings, videos, or statements. It is my hope that there will be no more confusion as to where I stand. I thank you for letting me set the record straight. David Cole [18]

"Zündel may once again go to prison for his research and beliefs or be threatened with deportation. All this is possible. Anything may happen when there is an intellectual crisis and a realignment of historical concepts of such a dimension. Revisionism is the great intellectual adventure of the end of this century. Whatever happens, Ernst Zündel is already the victor."

I remember fairly clearly one such "experience" sometime in 1944. This was during the Wehrmacht retreat from the Eastern front, when huge refugee treks of ethnic Germans traveled westward with horse-drawn wagons under German Army protection, experiencing horrendous hardships from hunger and cold, the advancing Red Army ever in our backs.

My family belonged to German-descent Mennonites, a fundamentalist Christian community who had come to the Ukraine in 1789, but we still considered ourselves to be Germans and still spoke the German language. Ever since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution - which happened when my grandmother was still a young woman and my mother was only four years old - my people had been savagely persecuted by the Communists. Many of my cousins, aunts, uncles, more distant relatives perished in waves of ethnic cleansings. This persecution started before I was born and became deadly in 1938, affecting practically every male age 14 and over. My own father was exiled to Siberia when I was only five years old in 1941, and our entire family escaped exiling only at the last moment, literally hours before the German Army overran the Ukraine in September of that year - only weeks after my father was taken from us forever.

When the (for us) voluntary retreat to Germany began two years later, in the fall of 1943, there were four of us left - my grandmother, my mother, my baby sister and I. The rest of our family had either been exiled to Siberia, been killed, or simply disappeared in the havoc of those horror years since 1917. Now we were running for our lives from the Red Army - almost all of us women and children.

We entered Nazi-occupied Poland sometime in 1944 and were invited to be officially naturalized as Germans. I remember the city as Litzmannstadt (Lodz) but I cannot be sure.

But first we had to be deloused. Naturally! As far as I know, this was routine for everybody entering German-occupied territory and certainly Germany proper, an obligatory health measure to control epidemics such as typhus, a disease that was carried by lice. Everybody who was coming from the East was infested with lice in those days - Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews - soldiers and civilians. There was no way not to have lice, unless you underwent delousing. We were made to enter a long train. Whether that train took us to a building, or if it ended in a building, I don't remember any more. Somehow the rumor sprang up that we were going to be gassed. I have no idea who started it. As a seven-year old, I do remember how terrified I was.

We were all stripped naked, had our hair shorn, and then, while we were all sitting, old and young, in long rows of benches, water and soap, probably mixed with insecticide, rained down on us from shower heads above. I don't remember the relief, only the fear. Similarly, the rumor sprang up on that train that the Germans were looking for "yellow blood", presumably Jewish, by clipping our ear lobe. I was just as terrified of that one. Ingrid Rimland

Not far from us blazed flames from a pit, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drove up to the pit and dumped its load into the pit. They were small children. Babies! Yes, I had seen it, with my own eyes...Children in the flames (is it any wonder, that sleep shuns my eyes since that time?). We went there, too. Somewhat further along, was another, bigger pit, for adults. 'Father", I said, ' if that is so, I wish to wait no longer. I shall throw myself against the electrified barbed wire fence. That is better than lying around in the flames for hours." [19]

(Your writing) ultimately serves the same forces of racism that allow Israeli soldiers to kill Palestinians in cold blood. The Nazis not only articulated - they took daily, direct action to implement -- their conception of a racial hierarchy. They killed people they believed threatened Aryan racial purity and superiority -- the physically and mentally handicapped; gypsies; homosexuals; Slavs; Poles; Jews. Tinkering around trying to establish whether or not millions were gassed or killed by other means seems to me to be simply running away from the central political point: that racist ideologies are fundamentally murderous, and when people who espouse them get into power, they become literally murderous. What else matters? Do you really think that 'proving' that a few hundred thousand Jews/Slavs/Poles here and a few hundred thousand there were shot rather than gassed, will make any difference at all to how the state of Israel is perceived, or how Israelis perceive themselves, to Europe's sense of culpability (displaced onto the Palestinians, of course), or whether or not Europe and the US decide to implement sanctions against Israel, or withdraw financial support to Israel.

(The Holocaust is)… "not simply one example of genocide, but a near successful attempt on the life of God's chosen children and, thus, on God himself" [20]

If Auschwitz is something other than a horror of history, if it goes beyond the 'banality of evil', then Christianity totters on its foundations. Christ is the Son of God, who went to the end of the humanly endurable, where he endured the cruelest suffering... If Auschwitz is true, then there is a human suffering which simply cannot be compared with that of Christ... In this case, Christ is false, and salvation will not come from Him…… Auschwitz is the refutation of Christ. Claude Lanzmann

I suggest that forensic science ought to settle that disagreement about what Germans did or did not do in World War II in an open public forum.

Zionists truly fear the weapons of the poor (children's stones, their slingshots like that of David against the giant Goliath, the suicide attacks) and all that may endanger persons and business; they fear a demeaning of their brand image. But they are above all apprehensive of "the poor man's atomic bomb", that is, the disintegration, by historical revisionism, of the lie of the gas chambers, the genocide and the six million; they dread this weapon that kills no one but that would not fail, if properly used to explode their big lie like a bag of hot air . . . to lose the "Holocaust" is to lose the sword and the shield of Israel as well as a formidable instrument of political and financial blackmail; [21]