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History of Revisionism as of 1993

Yoshua Shalev

CHAPTER 1

The Development of Holocaust Revisionism

It is now three and a half centuries since Galileo's well-known submission of intellectual autonomy to the orthodoxy of his day, and almost two centuries since the demise of the dreaded Inquisition which forced his acquiescence. One might think that challenging accepted opinions carries today no threat of punishment or death, except perhaps in less developed nations or totalitarian regimes. 'Freedom of expression' is heralded in the western world as an essential human right, comparable in importance to freedom from slavery or torture. However, challenging accepted opinion is often still considered a heresy – despite this much paraded freedom of expression – and may result in corrective measures which resemble in many ways the actions of the Inquisition. It will be argued in the following chapters that Holocaust Revisionists are now amongst the most despised of all 'heretics' or 'thought criminals' (to use Orwell's term) in the western world. They have encountered intense opposition for daring to dig below the surface of the sacred and taboo terrain of Holocaust orthodoxy. Of course, the present writer does not wish to suggest that they are the only victims of our present-day 'inquisitors', and is mindful that the case of Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most infamous example of a modern day heresy trial.

Perhaps like Rushdie in some ways. Holocaust Revisionists – by challenging accepted opinion on the Holocaust – have "blasphemed" about something considered inviolable to a great many people in the western world. Indeed, for many Jews the Holocaust has become an event not only of historical importance, but also of immense theological importance – an event almost comparable in its enormity to the revelation at Sinai. As such it is regarded by many as a sacrosanct subject, not open to legitimate private investigation, let alone public debate. Elie Wiesel, the recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and perhaps the most prominent Jewish writer on the Holocaust, frequently describes it as "holy history", and at one point even asserted "The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word ['Holocaust']" [38] The imagery used here, and in very many [25] other Jewish books on the Holocaust, is obviously borrowed from Exodus 3:2, the account of God telling a trembling Moses at the foot of Sinai, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standeth is holy ground." A number of Jewish philosophers and theologians
have also written articles elevating the subject to the level of sacred history, at the same time even denouncing as sacrilegious the efforts of Jewish scholars who have attempted to treat it with a degree of scholarly objectivity. [39]

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38 / L. Edelman, "A Conversation with Elie Wiesel", in H. J. Cargas, (ed.), Responses to Elie Wiesel (New York: Persea Books, published in Cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1978), p. 18. Yeckel Eckstein used identical imagery before stating: "To speak of the holocaust is to tread on terra sancta, holy ground". Y. Eckstein, What You Should Know About Jews and Judaism (Waco: Word Books, 1984), p. 182.
39 / For Jewish works condemning Jewish (non-Revisionist) academic investigation, cf. N. Podhoretz, "Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance", Commentary, November 1962, pp. 201-208; N. Eck, "Historical Research or Slander?", Yad
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In Israel an annual commemoration day, Yom HaShoah, is observed on Nisan 27, although many religious Israelis prefer to commemorate it on Tevet 10 (a fast day, now called Yom HaQad-dish), the day on which the mourners' prayer is recited. Yom HaShoah was created in 1959 as a national day of mourning and commemoration for the victims of the Holocaust. It has definite religious overtones and is becoming increasingly similar in nature to Tisha B'Av (on Av 9), the traditional day of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples. It would also appear that it is being fully integrated into the Jewish religious calendar, followed by over ten million Jews around the globe. The present writer is not criticizing the way Jewish people mourn their dead, and wishes only to illustrate the fact that the Holocaust has become a sanctified subject, an integral part of Jewish religious identity.

Also in Israel is Yad Vashem, the huge memorial to the Jewish heroes and martyrs of the Second World War. The various buildings in this facility include one used as a shrine, complete with an eternal flame and other symbols of sacredness, which was purposely constructed to resemble a Nazi gas chamber. They are visited every year by hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists, very many of whom leave feeling tremendously moved by the experience, which is almost of a religious nature. [40] As well as containing immense archives and study facilities, Yad Vashem [26] serves every year on Yom HaShoah as the gathering point for thousands of Israelis who come to offer prayers to God.

In a genuine and well-intentioned move to safeguard the memory of the very many Jewish victims of the Nazis, on July 8, 1986 the Israeli Knesset passed a new law: Denial of Holocaust (Prohibition) Law, 5746-1986. This has unfortunately resulted in presently accepted opinion on the Holocaust becoming official Israeli dogma, to which a major challenge will be treated not only as a heresy but as a crime. This law demands of Israeli historians of the Holocaust – and, indirectly, the rest of the population – the submission of their intellectual autonomy; the abolition of the freedom to perceive and describe that historical event according to their own understanding of the evidence. It states, inter alia:

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 he liable to imprisonment for a term of five years." [41 ]

In the United States – where almost half the world's Jews live – laws have not yet been passed making illegal any major challenges to accepted opinion on the Holocaust (it was illegal in Canada, under that nation's 'false news' laws). However, in the United States the Holocaust has sadly become a flourishing business, with novels, television "mini-series" and unfactual motion pictures on the horrors of life in the concentration camps being produced at a remarkable rate. It has also become a "civil religion"; an immense and horrific cynosure, unifying, motivating and giving identity to millions of American Jews (and many others, as will be seen). Jacobo Timerman, a well known Jewish writer, eloquently made these points when he wrote:

Many Israelis feel offended by the way in which the Holocaust is exploited in the Diaspora. They even feel ashamed that the Holocaust has become a civil religion for Jews in the United States. They respect the works of Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe, and Marie Syrkin [who treat the subject with the desired reverence]. But of other writers, editors, historians, bureaucrats, and academics they say, using the word Shoah, which is Hebrew for Holocaust: "There's no business like Shoah business." [42]

Indeed, in the United States alone there are nineteen major Holocaust museums, forty-eight research centres, thirty-four archives, twelve memorials and five major libraries, and still more are being constructed. Most are funded entirely by Jewish organizations, which have managed to keep the Holocaust unforgotten in the collective memory of the American people, but several of these institutions are funded either partly or wholly by the United States government. For example, in 1980 a unanimous vote of Congress mandated the construction of the United

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Vashem Studies, vi, 1967, pp. 385-430; J. Robinson, Psychoanalysis in a Vacuum: Bruno Bettlheim and the Holocaust (New York, 1970), et al. For works on the relationship between the Holocaust and Jewish faith, cf. R. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism (Indianapolis, 1966); M. Wyschogrod, "Faith and the Holocaust", Judaism: A Quarterly Journal, Volume 20, Number 3, Summer 1971, pp. 286-294; I. Greenberg, "The Holocaust, The Need to Remember", Council of Jewish Federations General Assembly Papers 1977; M. Wyschogrod, "Auschwitz, Beginning of a New Era?", Tradition, Vol. XVII, Number 1,Fall 1977, pp. 63-78; et al. [27]
40 / The present writer was himself deeply moved when he visited Yad Vashem in May 1989, and still considers his visit to that memorial centre as something of a religious experience. He personally knows many others who felt likewise after visiting the centre.
41 / Passed by the Knesset on Tammuz 1, 5746 (July 8, 1986) and published in Sefer HaChukkim Number 1187 of Tammuz 9, 5746 (July 16, 1986), p. 196. Italics added for emphasis.
42 / Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War, New York, Vintage, 1982, p. 15.
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States Holocaust Memorial Museum on 1.7 acres of granted federal land in Washington, D.C.; the museum itself to be financed by private funds. Illustrating the fact that the Holocaust has been elevated to the status of great national importance, the new building (complete with a massive, temple-like "Hall of Remembrance") will be situated on the National Mall – the very hub of American government – right in amongst the United States' most prominent and emblematic icons of independence, liberty and greatness: the Smithsonian buildings, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and, ofcourse, the White House.

The Congress and President Carter formed a government-funded public body, the 55-member U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, to manage the construction of the $147,000,000 museum, and to "encourage and sponsor observances of an annual nationwide civic commemoration of the Holocaust known as the Days of Remembrance." [43] Indeed, the Council facilitates "commemoration across the country in state houses, city halls and thousands of schools [in many of which Holocaust education ismandatory], libraries, churches and synagogues ... [culminating] in the annual national civic observance at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda with the participation of leading Americans." [44 ] Included amongst these"leading Americans" have been Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush, and, naturally, the person appointed by President Carter as first chairman of the Council: Elie Wiesel, the aforementioned 'priest' of the Holocaust.

Many people consider it remarkable that the government of the United States has endorsed and aided so unreservedly this excessive emphasis on the Holocaust, especially when they consider that Jews comprise but three percent of the total population, that the Nazi maltreatment of Jews did not occur on American soil, and that it did not directly result in the death of a single American serviceman or civilian (although, of course, many died attempting to end it). This constant aggrandizement has had a considerable impact on American consciousness, a fact recognized by Michael Berenbaum, the Project Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and a professor of theology at Georgetown University, who stated with some pride: "The Holocaust was [once regarded as a side story of the much larger story of World War II. Now one thinks of World War II as a background story and the Holocaust as a foreground story."[45 ]

Whilst this brief analysis has so far focused only on Israel and the United States, the present[28] writer will argue in the following chapters that an excessive emphasis on the Holocaust exists in many other western countries, including Germany, Austria, Britain and Canada, and historical orthodoxy on the Holocaust has become an official dogma in those countries also. Thus, accepted opinion on the Holocaust – that is, that approximately six million Jews were purposely murdered, several million ofthem in gas chambers constructed for the task, by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of state – has been championed by numerous governments. Additionally, it has become entirely inviolable, perhaps the only historical event for which it is considered totally unacceptable to express doubts about or demand evidence.

Presently there are very many Revisionist historians zealously wielding the battering ram of 'free inquiry' against the heavy steel gates of Holocaust orthodoxy – denting them and forcing them slightly ajar on occasions – allowing the Revisionists to catch fleeting glimpses of what they claim is the historical reality held captive behind, locked away for more than forty-five years.
However, until the mid-1970s there were very few Revisionist troops involved in the siege, and the arguments most of them thrust forward – weak and often illogical – bounced like pebbles off those gates (constructed by the Allies at the International Military Tribunal and subsequently maintained and repaired by numerous governments).

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43 / For The Dead And The Living We Must Bear Witness (information booklet published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Washington, D.C., 1990).
44 / Ibid.
45 / The Washington Times, January 10, 1991.
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