"It is run by modern anti-Semites for modern anti-Semites, and their sympathisers, with the purpose of sanitizing the massive crimes of past anti- Semites." [369]  

One could be excused for surmising that this bold statement described a militant fascist or neo-Nazi organization, whose swastika emblazoned member[s] proudly eulogize Hitler and vainly endeavour to resuscitate the dead and feud corpse of his ill-fated political movement. Yet it was intended by its belligerent author to describe the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an American historical institute which publishes a regular newsletter and a quarterly journal containing well written and occasionally ground-breaking articles by historians and other scholars. The IHR sponsors and publishes original research and republishes relevant titles no longer available, and has to date conducted eleven well-attended international conferences at which scholars have presented papers, exchanged ideas and coordinated their work.

The IHR is without doubt the most successful and influential Revisionist organisation or association in the world. For almost fifteen years this highly organised institute has sought to revise the history of the world wars and related events by considering new types of evidence, by employing new methodologies, and by considering the known data from a different point of view. This has gained the IHR a great deal of support, with thousands of people around the globe subscribing to its journal and purchasing its various publications. As evidence of its remarkable success, the institute published in 1990, twelve years after its formation, a statement of progress containing the following noteworthy statistics:

*Number of Revisionist books distributed 400,000
*Number of Revisionist audiotapes and videos distributed 12,000
*Number of issues of the Journal of Historical Review published 36
*Number of copies of the IHR Newsletter distributed 90,000
*New Revisionist titles published in English for the first time 23
*Number of Revisionist promotional pieces mailed 1,800,000
*Number of people reached by IHR efforts 30,000,000
*Number of available titles in IHR and associated catalogues 480 [370]

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369 / D. Green, The Holocaust: Six Million Lies? Education Papers, Report Series l, No. 2.
370 /IHR Newsletter 71, February 1990, pp. 6-7.
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According to Thomas J. Marcellus, the IHR's long-serving director, the four principal people involved in the initial formation of the institute in 1978 were Lewis Brandon (who "may have first floated the idea for a new corporate entity to handle just   historical revisionism." [371]), Willis Carto, Lavonne Furr and Marcellus himself. They were assisted by the Board of Directors of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, (LSF), the institute's parent company. [372] As Secretary of the LSF, Elisabeth Carto (Willis's wife) applied in January 1980 for the institute's business licence, under the title of "The Noontide Press/Institute for Historical Review".

The Noontide Press, 'sister' to the IHR, is a right-wing distribution company and publishing house [373], which has published or distributed over one hundred general Revisionist and Holocaust Revisionist titles since it was founded by Willis Carto in the mid-1960s. [374] Many of the non-revisionist books sold by Noontide are of an anti-communist and patriotic (America First) nature or are attempts at exposing various international conspiracies. Others detail the uniqueness and historical successes of the European 'Nordic' peoples, and say others are anti-Zionist or anti-Judaic. Several of these books, including Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist, William Grimstad's Antizion, Douglas Reed's The Controversy of Zion and the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion [375], have been described by numerous literary commentators as anti-Semitic, something strenuously denied by the Noontide Press. It is not, however, within the scope of this work to argue whether these books are or are not anti-Semitic or racist, and no judgement on them will be made based on the assertions of others. Mention is made of them only to point out that the Noontide Press sells several books of an extremely controversial nature.

As the IHR shares its business premises, staff and administration team with this moderately right-wing publisher of controversial books, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and many other anti-Revisionist groups and individuals have argued that it must also share the same 'anti-Semitic' political ideology. The IHR's approach to history, they say, must be perverted by its hidden and heinous agenda. To add weight to this argument they present disparaging and sometimes slanderous profiles of the institute's founding members and their political ideologies and activities.

Willis A. Carto, the institute's founder has been the target of most of these attempts at character assassination. The ADL frequently describes him as the extreme-right's "gray eminence" [376], an allusion to the fact that whilst he has founded or funded many nationalistic or ultra-conservative organizations (and is regarded by many on the right as the benevolent 'godfather' of American patriotism), he has always chosen to remain out of the spotlight. The ADL has also described him far less complementarily as "the most influential professional anti-Semite in the United States today." [377] As evidence, it argues that around 1960 Carto formed a moderately right-wing pressure group called Liberty Lobby, which continues to be "the most active anti-Semitic organization in the country". Additionally, the ADL points out, Liberty Lobby publishes a widely-read weekly newspaper, The Spotlight (circulation over 100,000), through which "Willis

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371 / Letter from Marcellus to the present writer, dated August 6, 1991, p. 1.
372 / Ibid., p. 1. The LSF is a Texas society incorporated in 1952 by Jason and Marsha Matthews. In a letter to the present writer (dated January 14, 1992) Willis Carto described the original purpose of the Legion, which was to "disseminate anti-statist, pro-freedom articles to the news media". Additionally, wrote Carto, "The Matthews died about 1964, leaving control of the LSF in the hands of Mrs. Furr, who brought me in in 1966. It was then that Noontide Press was founded."
373 / Tom Marcellus, who is also the director of the Noontide Press, correctly pointed out to the present writer that many Noontide books were written by left-wing authors and express left-wing theses, and there are many books by Jews. (telephone interview, October 4, 1991).
374 / Cf. The Myth of the Six Million (1969; see above, p. 52) and The Six Million Reconsidered (1977; see below, p. 193); The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, described at length above.
375 / Interestingly, the Noontide Press does state in its book catalogue that the 'Protocols' are very controversial and are offered on a " caveat lector" ("let the reader beware") basis. Cf. the Noontide Press Catalog of Books, Audiotapes and Videotapes 1990/91, p. 4. The IHR does not sell the 'Protocols', books on conspiracy theories, Race or European cultural uniqueness.
376 / Cf. The 1989 IHR Conference: White-Washing Genocide "Scientifically": An ADL Fact-Finding Report (New York: Anti- Defamation League, 1989), p. 1.
377 / Extremism on the Right: A Handbook (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1988), p. 74. Cf. also A. Kazin, "Americans Right, Left and Indifferent: Responses to the Holocaust", Dimensions – A Journal of Holocaust Studies (published by the Anti-Defamation League), Volume 4, No. 1, p. 11; M. Silverberg, "The Holocaust and the Historical Revisionists", Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Volume 59, Fall 1982, p. 20; et al.
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Carto and company spread their doctrines." [378] The ADL has proudly reprinted on several occasions the following 1988 statement by the United States Court of Appeals:

Since its inception, Liberty Lobby has been an outspoken critic of Jewish groups and leaders, and of the United States' domestic and foreign policy in regard to Jewish issues [that is, Israel]. In a letter to subscribers to The Spotlight, Liberty Lobby characterized "political Zionism" as "the most ruthless, wealthy and evil political force in the history of the Western World". The Spotlight has given extensive publicity to the fantastic claim that the Holocaust, the extermination of 6,000,000 Jews by Nazi Germany, never occurred." [379]

The ADL has also stated that Carto has "put together a wide and shifting network of extremist, racist and anti-Semitic publications and organizations." [380] Among the enterprises named to support this charge were Western Destiny and American Mercury (journals), the IHR, the Noontide Press and the rather more mainstream (although still rightist) Populist Party.

The Anti-Defamation League is not, of course, a neutral and unbiased political observer. Established in 1913 as a division of the B'nai B'rith, the largest Jewish service organization in the world, the very influential ADL is an elitist Zionist pressure group designed to defend the rights and strengthen the political and social position of American Jews. Although its activities in the civil rights field include commendable campaigns for other minority groups, including Blacks, it has devoted almost all of its efforts and extensive resources to matters concerning Jews. For example, it has for over a decade published an annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, yet it does not publish a comparable audit of discrimination against Blacks or other minorities. Additionally, a sub-branch of the ADL is the International Centre for Holocaust Studies, which publishes a scholarly journal, Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, and is particularly active in the drive to have all American school children study the Holocaust. Hence, for the above reasons its own impartiality regarding the Holocaust appears questionable. Indeed, almost any Christian theological criticism of Judaism, any condemnation of Israel's activities or policies, any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people, any demand for reductions of American aid to Israel, any criticism or condemnation of Zionism, or any challenge to received opinion on the Holocaust, is seen by the ADL as racism and anti-Semitism. Dr Alfred M. Lilienthal, himself Jewish, is amongst America's foremost experts on Zionism, of which he is an opponent. Clearly dissatisfied with what he perceives as the ADL's extremism, he wrote:

the ADL's earlier emphasis on stamping out genuine prejudice and bigotry gave way long ago to acts of defamation, spying, and publishing spurious literary productions, motivated by support of Israel and effected by elimination criticism of Zionist tactics. [381]

The Jewish Defense League, without doubt the IHR's most dangerous adversary, is an unprincipled Jewish organization willing to use violence to attain or maintain political objectives. It is allegedly responsible for the murders of more than two dozen of its opponents (who are basically the same as the ADL's) in the years since it was formed in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was himself murdered in 1991. [382] The JDL's acts of intimidation and violence against the IHR, which include bombings and arson, will be discussed below. Like the ADL it is extremely sensitive to any criticism of Zionism, Israel or Jewish interests.

It is also worth noting that the terms 'right-wing' or 'conservative' are not synonyms for 'racist' or 'anti-Semitic', despite the fact that racists and anti-Semites can be found, unfortunately, in the Right, just as they can in the Left. One may define oneself as politically right-wing, even extremely rightwing, without having a hatred for Jews or any other race or ethnic group.  

If one views Willis Carto through the distorting lenses of the ADL's and JDL's ideological spectacles, one would indeed see the unappealing anti-Semite and hate criminal they describe so frequently in their publications. The evidence even appears to support the charge: for over thirty-five years he has relentlessly condemned in his various forums the influence and motivation of the international Monist movement, has argued that Israel is 'illegally parked' in the Middle East, and has strenuously attempted to have American aid to Israel

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378 / Extremism on the Right, p. 35. For more objective profiles of Carto and Liberty lobby, cf. "Willis Carto" in M. Lane, Plausible Denial: Was the CIA involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991) and L. A. Campbell, "Liberty Lobby in the spotlight with Duke, Buchanan in Race", Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1992, Section 1, p. 4.
379 / Extremism on the Right, p. 37.
380 / Ibid., p. 74.
381 / A. M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace? (Bullsbrook, Western Australia: Veritas Publishing Co. 1983. First published by Dodd Mead, New York, 1978), p. 405.
382 / For a bibliography of American newspaper and journal articles detailing the violent crimes of the JDL, including those against the IHR and individual Revisionists, see the collected notes on pp. 9-10 of The Zionist Terror Network: Background and operations of the Jewish Defence League (Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1985).
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induced in amount or withdrawn altogether. Further, he did found the IHR, the nerve-centre of international Holocaust Revisionism.  

However, if one attempts to view Carto through the politically neutral spectacles of unbiased inquiry, one will probably see a different figure: an anti-communist conservative who desires to reestablish the 'America first' tradition of armed neutrality, and to bring Constitutional principles back to government on the local, state and national levels; an opponent of all illegal immigration and the present levels of legal immigration; an advocate of drastic reductions in foreign aid (to Israel and to all other nations) except for humanitarian purposes; and a defender of what he considers to be America's Christian heritage against internal lobby groups, both Jewish and non-Jewish, trying to debase that heritage. One may still find Carto and his right-wing political ideology unappealing and extreme (many, of course, find his politics particularly appealing), but it will become obvious that hatred toward the Jewish people or anyone else was not his motivation for founding the IHR, as the ADL and his very many other opponents assert. His motivation, it appears, was a genuine desire for the truth about recent historical conflicts and politico events, and a lack of confidence in the ability of the wider historical profession to present those events [in] an honest and even-handed manner.

Lewis Brandon, the IHR's colourful and controversial first director, has also been the subject of numerous attacks on his character. In fairness to his detractors, he probably deserved this treatment. The ADL seems especially proud of the fact that "in the spring of 1981 [it] revealed that 'Lewis Brandon' was William David McCalden's alias" and that this McCalden was "a British neo-Fascist and founder of the racist British National Party... [who] was denied membership in the National Union of Journalists because of his racial views." [383] In an article in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Mark Silverberg wrote that:

Recently uncovered information on the leadership of the I.H.R., however, casts considerable doubt on the credibility of the organization. Lewis Brandon, twenty-nine, the Director of the I.H.R, was recently identified by the Board of Deputies of British Jews as William David McCalden, a former member of Britain's neo-fascist National Front. McCalden edited anti-Semitic and racist publications in England before becoming a resident alien in the United States in 1978. He defected from the National Front in 1975 to help form the National Party which espouses "British Racial Nationalism." [384]

McCalden, who died on October 15, 1990, certainly was involved with these extreme-right organizations, which were pro-white, nationalistic, authoritarian and illiberal (far more so than the organizations Carto has been involved with) [385] They did, however, seek to obtain power in England through the normal democratic processes, and were actually relatively successful in the polls during the 1970s. As noted above, McCalden probably deserved the often intense criticism he received: despite his obvious literary and organizational talents, he had difficulty working as part of a team, did and said some stupid things, and early developed the reputation of being a trouble-maker. His departure from the National Front in 1975, by way of illustration, was not entirely voluntary. John Tyndall, the Front's Chairman at the time, later wrote:

The true facts are that Mr. McCalden had up to the time of his exit from the party been employed as a full-time worker in the party's headquarters office. In December 1975 it was decided that he had abused the trust placed in him in this regard by being party to a conspiracy to split the National Front by the formation of a new organisation and an appeal to the members of the former to desert it and join the latter. This was after the failure of a faction within the NF (of which he was a leading member) to take over the party by means judged by a high court to have been unconstitutional and illegal. As part of this conspiracy to destroy the NF, the conspirators had been given access to the party's membership lists for the purpose of circularising all members with an appeal to join the new body. There was never any doubt that Mr. McCalden, as a paid member of the office staff, had been a party to this handing over of membership lists. Upon our discovery of his actions, he was immediately discharged from the paid staff of the party. He was an incorrigible trouble-maker and was always to be found at the centre of any activity which had the effect of dividing the party and setting one section of the membership against another. [386]

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383 / Extremism on the Right: A Handbook, p. 120.
384 / "The Holocaust and the Holocaust Revisionists", p. 19.
385 / There are numerous books available on the National Front, but an especially revealing article, in that it was written by an American right-wing observer who clearly then shared the same pro-white sentiments as the 'Front', is Mark Weber's "Whites on the March in Britain", National Vanguard, Issue No. 67, 1979. Weber is now perhaps America's most accomplished Revisionist historian. He has written dozens of articles on a variety of historical events and eras (not just the Holocaust), all of which are well argued and evenhanded.
386 / Letter to the Editor, The American Sunbeam, August 16, 1983, p. 3.
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Less than three years later this "incorrigible trouble-maker" surfaced in the United States as Lewis Brandon, the high-profile director of the IHR. His appointment to the position was later described by that institute:

In 1977 McCalden – exposed and washed up insofar as British right-wing politics and organizations were concerned – sought refuge and fertile new fields. Learning of a vacancy at the Noontide Press [as managing director] he was soon on his way here. Only much later was it learnt that he had lied about his background, the facts of which were unknown to those who hired him here * and who, like the British NF, had placed him in a position of trust. On Mr Carto's recommendation the Legion for the Survival of Freedom ... gave McCalden the additional task of managing the new IHR operation. [387]

Thus, both the founder and first director of the Institute for Historical Review were active in farright politics, a fact seized upon by the many opponents of the IHR, who have been almost exclusively Jewish. This fact proves, they reason, that the institute, with all its trappings of academia, was established solely to allow the American neo-fascist intelligentsia to pass off their racist and distorted views of history as legitimate scholarly opinion. The IHR's detractors could, of course, be right. But the principal organizations making such allegations are from the opposite end of the political spectrum, are extremely Zionistic, and have a tendency to automatically label all persons or theses critical of Judaism, Zionism, Israel or accepted historical opinion on the Holocaust as anti-Semitic. It seems reasonable to conclude that if the IHR's theses on history are to be automatically disregarded because of the right-wing political views of several of its key staff-members, as the IHR's opponents assert, then by this same standard the arguments and conclusions of almost all major Holocaust scholars must be disregarded because they are Jewish and actively support Jewish interests. Rather, all historical theses, even those that appear unpalatable or unfashionable, should be given fair consideration and the opportunity of being judged according to their own merits or de-merits, regardless of whether they originate from the political left or right.

The editorial team at the IHR later described the institute's formation in these terms:  

In 1978 there came together the most significant assemblage of academics, researchers, writers and free-thinkers ever to challenge the historical orthodoxy. The one thing they all had in common was Revisionism – an understanding that modern textbook and popular "history" was deliberately and systematically blacking-out whole categories of pertinent facts – facts which materially revised what almost everyone had been led to believe was the truth. [388]

Despite the obvious exaggeration of this statement, it does contain a certain degree of truth. The scholars involved with the institute have challenged the "historical orthodoxy", and not just regarding the Holocaust. They have sought out new sources, employed new methodologies, and considered evidence from new vantage points. Accordingly, they have proffered new interpretations in many areas of historical inquiry, including the American Civil War, the First World War, the British appeasement movement, the Indian independence movement, the Second World War and the Middle East conflict.

It is also correct to call the coming together of these professional and amateur historians "significant", as even the institute's opponents will agree. By bringing together like-minded historians from around the world – so that they could exchange viewpoints, coordinate their work and present their findings – the formation of the IHR contributed greatly to the development of Revisionism as an international, homogeneous movement.

Additionally, many of the academics involved in the formative stages of the institute were scholars of considerable repute, such as Dr. Charles Lutton, Dr. Martin A. Larson and Dr. James J. Martin, to name just a few. The latter, considered the 'Dean of Revisionists', is the author of the twovolume classic, American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931-1941, the well-received Beyond Pearl Harbor and numerous other important works. He was also a contributor to recent editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica and has contributed three articles to the Dictionary of American Biography. These men were certainly not racists masquerading as academics.

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387 / Dossier On A 'Revisionist' Crank (Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1984), p. 3. * Although they were not aware of his expulsion from the National Front, the Legion for the Survival of Freedom was aware that 'Lewis Brandon' was only McCalden's pseudonym and that he had been active in that extreme-right organization. Cf. letter from Tom Marcellus to the present writer, August 6, 1991 (p. 1): "Carto and I knew that Lewis Brandon was really David McCalden as that was never a secret. What was not known, however, was the real reason McCalden wanted to get out of England." (i.e., his attempted coup d'état and subsequent expulsion from the party)
388 / Worldwide Growth and Impact of 'Holocaust' Revisionism, IHR Special Report (Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1987),  p. iii.
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The First International Revisionist Conference

The first-ever international Revisionist conference, held at Northrup University (Los Angeles) on August 31-September 2, 1979, was a startling success for the IHR, the conference's sponsor. As it set the pattern for the nine such conferences which have followed, and many important developments arose from it, this first conference will be discussed in some detail. [389]

To show that the 'Revisionism' of the new institute was ideologically linked to the 'Revisionist' intellectual movement of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the conference was dedicated by Dr. Martin A. Larson, himself a Revisionist for many decades, to the memory of his lifelong friend, Harry Elmer Barnes (1889-1968). Barnes was the most important American Revisionist historian of that period and a scholar of considerable repute. He began his outstanding academic career in the fields of sociology and criminology, explained Larson, before he turned his attention, in the 1920s to history. His Revisionist writings – as he himself called them – on the origin and causes of the First World War played a major part in the subsequent revision of the 'official' view of how that great and bloody conflict started. A pioneer in the study of historiography, Barnes' 1936 work A History of Historical Writing [390] was considered for well over two decades to be a standard textbook on the subject.  

In the late 1930s, as war in Europe became imminent, Barnes, a staunch isolationist, argued for the United States's non-intervention. He held this position even after the horror of Pearl Harbor. Also, both during and after the Second World War he argued against sole German responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, anticipating A. J. P. Taylor and David L. Hoggan by over two decades. This view, of course, was very unpopular in the 1940s and 1950s, especially in the era of the Cold War and the Korean War (in which Barnes again opposed American involvement), and he began to have difficulties getting his work published.

In this period, continued Larson, Barnes began to write about what he termed the "historical blackout", a conspiracy to keep historical facts from the general public. He believed that involved in this blackout, and many other twentieth century woes, was the international Zionist movement. This belief was to earn him the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations who declared Barnes to be anti- Semitic. Efforts were made to discredit Barnes, especially in the 1960s when he publicly expressed one or two doubts about accepted opinion on the Holocaust, and those efforts were particularly successful. By the time he passed away in 1968 he was forced to live off the meager royalties he received from his earlier books, because no 'establishment' periodicals would publish his articles. [391]  

Larson concluded his dedication of the conference with these words:  

"Let this convention be a memorial to this great and courageous man, and let his great spirit, which never was never daunted by obstacles or threats, permeate our own work while we are here." [392]

These concluding remarks were rather appropriate in the light of what occurred the next day, September 1, 1979. The university received a menacing telephone call from the JDL, which threatened to close down the campus "unless those filthy nazis and anti-Semites are thrown out", to quote the words of Irving Rubin, the JDL's leader. [393] A day later a far more specific call from the JDL was received, stating that a bomb had been placed near the library auditorium in which the convention was being held.

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389 / The following reconstruction of the conference is based primarily on audio-tapes of the lectures given by the various speakers (which can still be purchased from the IHR), and on an article on the conference ("Academics Deny Gas Chambers") by Frank Tompkins, which appeared in The Great Holocaust Debate, a 1979 special issue of The Spotlight. Willis Carto informed the present writer that 'Frank Tompkins' was a pseudonym he sometimes used, and that he had indeed written the article. (letter from Carto to the present writer, dated October 24, 1991).
390 / Norman, Oklahoma, 1936. Revised paperback edition, New York, 1962.
391 / For a very brief introduction to the important Revisionist writings of the 1920s to the 1960s, see Barnes's own "Revisionism and the promotion of peace", reprinted from the Summer 1958 issue of Liberation (New York). This reprint can be purchased from Sons of Liberty Books, P.O. Box 214, Metairie, LA 70004, U.S.A.
392 / Quoted in "Academics Deny Gas Chambers", p. 6.
393 / Ibid., p. 6.
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The police were called in immediately, but were unable to find any such explosive device. It appears that, as no detonation occurred, the JDL had not placed a bomb, but merely wished to upset proceedings and intimidate the university into canceling the first of the Revisionist convention.  

Willis Carto was a prominent figure at the conference, and addressed the seventy-five assembled Revisionists at the beginning of the conference and again during the plenary session. During his first address he expounded his own views on the relationship between international power politics and history, supporting his arguments by quoting a lengthy passage from a work for which he had, almost two decades earlier, written the introduction. This was Imperium, Francis Parker Yockey's 626-page philosophical study of history which contains a rousing call for the preservation of Western civilization. This work, dedicated to "the Hero of the Second World War" – a reference to the quintessential youth who perished in that war (according to the ADL the reference was to Hitler) – is affectionately referred to by many on the far-right (and by Carto himself in his speech) as their ideological "bible". Carto's speech, however, contained several blatantly anti-Zionist statements [394] but no statements or euphemistic phrases of an anti-Semitic or racist nature. In the light of the fact that Carto has been called a bigot, fascist and Nazi by so many of his opponents – who argue that his quotation from Yockey is proof in itself – it is worth noting that in his address he stated that he was genuinely encouraged by the presence at the conference of speakers and attendees of several differing political outlooks, many vastly different from his own:

There are also many different political viewpoints represented here, and that is the way that it should be.... and some of the greatest men who have made a name for themselves in this field [historical revisionism] in the past were men like Harry Elmer Barnes, who was no conservative, and ah, others in the Senate like Burton K. Wheeler, Gerald Nye, ** etc. The high purpose of this convention – indeed the high purpose of the Institute for Historical Review is to promote a better understanding of the past among all Americans of all political viewpoints, and I submit to you that nothing could be more important than that for those of us who are genuinely concerned with improving the state of mankind and the state of the world today. [395 ]

Indeed, amongst those present were liberals, libertarians, populists, conservatives and ultraconservatives.  

Following the speeches of Carto and Larson was a succession of lectures by leading Revisionists from around the world. These included Professor James J. Martin, Professor Arthur Butz, Dr. Austin J. App, and Devin Garrity (a New York publisher who was responsible for the publication of many early Revisionist 'classics'), all from the United States. Udo Walendy came from Germany to address the conference, as did Professor Robert Faurisson from France. From Britain came Louis FitzGibbon, and from Australia came John Bennett.

Not all of the speeches were on the subject of the Holocaust. For example, Martin spoke on the history of Revisionism, surveying the important publications of the previous half century and elaborating on the lives and experiences of several of the leading revisionists whom he knew personally. FitzGibbon, author of Katyn, an authoritative account of the cold-blooded Soviet murder in 1940 of over 14,000 Polish military officers, spoke at length on that dreadful event. Garrity discussed his years as a publisher of Revisionist books, and, like Martin, shared with attendees his fond recollections of the Revisionist pioneers.

As noted above, the purpose of the conference was not just to hear papers given by other scholars, but was to bring the scholars together so that ideas and information could be exchanged and work coordinated. Indeed, several developments arose out of this Revisionist convocation. Those present, clearly feeling a desire to change the status quo regarding accepted opinion on the Holocaust and its acceptance by the public-at-large, formulated and unanimously agreed on the following ill-considered declaration:

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394 / For example, he described Zionism as a political "monster", one of "the two most predatory movements of the twentieth century" (the other being Communism).
395 / From Carto's speech contained on the same audio-tape as that of Dr J. Martin (IHR Audio-tape A001). ** United States senators Wheeler and Nye, leading American isolationists in the late-1930s, were two of the principal opponents of the Roosevelt foreign policy of that period, which moved from 1937 onward towards involvement in the war buildups in Europe and Asia.
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RESOLUTION

We, the speakers, delegates and officers of the Institute for Historical Review 1979 Revisionist Convention, meeting at Los Angeles this Sept. 2, after reviewing the evidence that the Germans killed 6 million Jews during World War II in an unmoved act of genocide, and considering both sides of this question, as well as the evidence of genuine atrocities, resolve the following:

WHEREAS, the facts surrounding the allegations that gas chambers existed in occupied Europe during World War II are demonstrably false, and

WHEREAS, the whole theory of "the holocaust" has been created by and promulgated by political Zionism for the attainment of political and economic ends, specifically the continued and perpetual financial support of the military aggression of Israel by the people of Germany and the U.S., and

WHEREAS, the constantly escalating level of "holocaust" propaganda distributed by the mass media and government agencies is poisoning the minds of the American people, especially youth, and

WHEREAS, we are conscientiously concerned that this strident hate propaganda is seriously impeding the necessary peace, unity, brotherhood and understanding that we desire among all the peoples of the Western World; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED, that we urge that the Congress of the U.S. investigate the whole question of war guilt, military aggression in the 20th century, the relationship of private political and banking interests with military aggression, deceitful wartime propaganda masquerading as fact, the real responsibility for war, twisted history, the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, proven atrocities and genocide, such as the murder of thousands of Ukrainians and Poles at Vinnitsa in 1937 and Katyn in 1940 and the truth of the alleged extermination of six million Jews in Europe during World War II. [396]

This resolution was transmitted to the appropriate committee of the House and Senate of the United States, and a press statement regarding the conference and resolution was issued to the media. Further, the resolution was reprinted in the widely read newspaper, The Spotlight.  

At the close of the three day conference Willis Carto enounced that the IHR would begin publishing in 1980 a quarterly journal devoted to Historical Revisionist theses. It would be, he said, the first periodical of its kind in the world. As promised, in the spring of 1980 the first issue of The Journal of Historical Review (JHR) came off the press, containing within its 96 pages articles by Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, Austin J. App, Louis FitzGibbon, Udo Walendy and Ditlieb Felderer. By February 1993 forty five issues of the JHR had been published, all similar in format and scholarly paraphernalia (such as footnotes, bibliographies, biographical details of contributors and errata lists) to other history periodicals. Further, like any academic journal, an editorial committee comprising specialists in a variety of fields had been established to review material submitted for publication and offer criticisms and suggestions of a more general nature. Although membership of the journal's Editorial Advisory Committee has changed over the years, the majority of persons on it have always been scholars with genuine higher qualifications from recognized academic institutions. For example, of the twenty five members of the Editorial Advisory Committee listed in the summer 1991 issue of the JHR, nineteen had doctorates, two law degrees and one had an engineering degree (appropriate for appraising submissions on technical aspects of the gas chambers).

At the close of the conference it was also announced that the IHR was offering a $50,000 "reward" [for] courtroom-standard proof of homicidal gassings in conjunction with the alleged Nazi extermination policy in Auschwitz during the Second World War. Lewis Brandon (David McCalden), the institute's director, stated that:

So many 'holocaust' witnesses have told contradictory stories, reneged on their testimony or been proven to be liars that we believe the reward will lie unclaimed for a very long time. To make sure that proper word of the offer is disseminated among interested parties, including claimed 'survivors of Hitler's gas ovens' we intend to forward our offer to all publishers of so called 'witness books' with the request that the alleged witnesses step forward to have their evidence examined by a panel of experts. [397]

In the present writer's opinion, based on a detailed study of the IHR's main activities from 1978 to the time of writing (February 1993), this offer is without doubt the most foolish thing the institute has done to date. Whilst it was a genuine offer it did have the appearance of a publicity gimmick (something perhaps a radio station would do), and therefore diminished the IHR's credibility as a serious academic institution. David Irving, a widely read historian, began making in 1977 a similar monetary offer for proof, in the form of genuine wartime

------
396 / "Academics Deny Gas Chambers", p. 6.
397 / Ibid., p. 6.
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documents, that Hitler ordered, or even knew about, the genocide of the Jews. [398] Yet no other reputable historian or academic institute had offered financial "rewards" for proof of theses contrary to their own. More importantly, it will be shown in the following pages that whilst the reward offer and its consequences brought Holocaust Revisionism to the attention of millions of Americans, therefore necessitating a detailed analysis herein, the offer ultimately cost the IHR a great deal of money and almost resulted in its bankruptcy.

Mermelstein vs. the IHR, et al.

Between the time the offer was initially made at the First International Revisionist Conference in 1979 and the time of its official expiration a year later, there were no serious claims. Therefore, the administration team decided at the second conference to replace the $50,000 offer with two offers of $25,000; one for courtroom-standard proof that The Diary of Anne Frank was genuine, and the other for proof that the Nazi regime turned the fat of murdered Jews into cakes of soap, as was (and is still) widely believed. Before these offers expired there were several claims, notably from Simon Wiesenthal, who requested the claim forms and indicated that he would submit claims regarding the Auschwitz gas chambers and the Anne Frank diary. [399] As noted, the original offer of $50,000 had officially expired, so ordinarily people could no longer claim it. However, Lewis Brandon sent Wiesenthal a personal letter inviting him to submit a claim for the rewards, including that of the original offer, which would be re-opened if he decided to make a claim for it. Wiesenthal was told that his evidence regarding the Anne Frank diary would be considered in November 1981.

However, Brandon, acting without authority from the Board of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, also re-opened the offer to Mel Mermelstein, a 55-year-old Long Beach businessman and ex-Auschwitz internee. Mermelstein had been writing anti-IHR letters to the editors of numerous newspapers, including the English-language Jerusalem Post.[400] After receiving Brandon's letter, he tried to get assistance from several Jewish organizations – including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the ADL – who advised him, however, that taking legal action against Revisionists would be expensive and unlikely to be successful. Further, it would only give them publicity and a forum from which to preach their 'gospel'. Mermelstein, disagreeing, decided that he would have to take individual action against these Revisionist "scums ... these bastards". [401] On December 18, 1980, William Cox, initially the only lawyer who would assist him (very many refused, for the reasons given by the ADL and Wiesenthal Centre), sent the IHR written notice that Mermelstein was making a claim for the $50,000. He included a sworn statement by the Jewish claimant in which he described seeing his mother and two sisters go to their deaths in the gas chamber of Krema V, Birkenau on May 22, 1944.

His written statement, accompanied by "some crystals of Zyklon-B and strands of hair" [402], did not comply with the terms and conditions of the offer. Nonetheless, after thirty days went by without receiving a reply from the IHR, Cox wrote to find out what was happening regarding Mermelstein's claim. He was sent a reply which stated that his evidence would be examined by the panel of adjudicators, but not until after Wiesenthal's had been examined in November of that year.

Cox immediately filed a lawsuit against the IHR, Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto with the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, seeking the $50,000 reward, plus $17,000,000 in damages for "breach of contract", "anticipatory breach of contract", "injurious denial of established fact", and other alleged actionable offences. This startling action was widely reported in both local and national newspapers, which almost unanimously portrayed Mermelstein in a positive light, as the victim of a campaign of harassment and intimidation. [403]

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398 / See below, pp. 281-282.
399 / Cf. IHR Newsletter, February 15, 1981; cf. also Wiesenthal's comments on the matter in his foreword to Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit: NS-Verbrechen und "revisionistische" Geschichtsschreibung (Vienna: Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kunst, 1991), p. 8.
400 / International Edition, week ending August 17, 1980; cf. also Long Beach Independent / Press Telegram, July 29, 1980.
401 / M. Mermelstein, 'The Revisionists', in M. S. Littel (ed.), Holocaust Education, A Resource Book for Teachers and Professional Leaders, Symposium Series Volume 13 (New York and Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1985).
402 / Worldwide Growth and Impact of 'Holocaust' Revisionism, pp. 112.
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Only one or two papers mentioned the fact that Mermelstein saw himself as an anti-Revisionist crusader, bent on harassing and finally destroying the IHR. For example, the March 13 issue of the Rocky Mountain News quoted him, from an Associated Press release, saying " I'm going to get them if I have to spend the rest of my life".

Several newspapers, probably unintentionally, also misrepresented the facts by asserting that Mermelstein had already proved that Jews were gassed in Auschwitz, and that the IHR then reneged on its offer. [404] One must concede that Mermelstein never proved anything of the sort; he commenced legal action well before the period in which his evidence was to be appraised by the adjudicators. Even though the IHR asked that he continue with his claim by following the stipulated procedure, Mermelstein chose not to do so. [405]

For several months in 1981 discover[y] and other pre-trial proceedings continued periodically, with depositions from both sides being taken. During his deposition Mermelstein actually discredited himself. To give just one example, he stated under oath that Dr. Miklos Nyiszli (mentioned above [406]), whom he claimed to know on a personal level, would testify on his behalf. However, at that time Nyiszli had been dead for over twenty-five years. Nonetheless, the suit against the IHR continued to go in Mermelstein's favour and on October 9, 1981 Judge Thomas T. Johnson took the remarkable step of taking Judicial Notice of the "fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during 1944 and that the Holocaust is not reasonably subject to dispute and it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy". [407] Because this action is very important, it will be discussed here in some detail.  

Common Law (also called Anglo-American Law) is the body of customary law based upon judicial rulings and embodied in reports of previously decided cases. Various forms of this type of law exist in almost all states of the United States and in most countries belonging to the Commonwealth of nations. In theory, common-law courts are bound by precedent in the sense that once a legal question has been decided a certain way by a court, it must be decided in the same way by courts of equal or inferior rank in the same jurisdiction until a court of superior rank (or the legislature) sees fit to overrule it. In practice, common-law courts have developed techniques for distinguishing new cases from older ones so that observable adherence to precedent is less a matter of strict obligation and more an acknowledgement of the importance of maintaining reasonable predictability in the law and supporting the principle that like cases ought to be decided alike.

Thus, Judge Johnson's decision to take judicial notice that the Holocaust (in its presently recognized historical terms) is an indisputable historical "fact" set a precedent which will, doubtless, be adhered to in all U.S. court trials regarding the Holocaust and Holocaust Revisionists. Although the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America prevents their right to free speech being denied them, Revisionists will no longer be able to present the Holocaust in a U.S. court as an event of history open to reasonable doubt or debate.

It is the present writer's considered opinion that judge Johnson's conduct was probably inappropriate, and reminiscent of the actions taken in authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. In free and democratic societies all individuals must have the right to perceive and describe historical events according to their own understanding of the evidence, regardless of the event in question or the orthodoxy of the interpretation. Law courts, like universities, must uphold that right, guaranteeing that all intellectual viewpoints receive a fair hearing. History, being based on the interpretations of fallible human beings, is not comprised of 'facts' but of opinions, regardless of how well argued and supported by evidence they are. Moreover, as Johnson had no training as an historian and had not researched the Holocaust at length or in depth it would be reasonable to assume that on the nature and dimensions of that alleged event his knowledge was superficial and insufficient for him to have formed a well argued opinion.

Although it was a major blow to Revisionism in the United States, Johnson's act of taking judicial notice of the Holocaust did not signify the end of Mermelstein's $17,000,000 lawsuit against the IHR. In fact, the case dragged on until July

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403 / Cf. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, February 15, 1981; et al.
404 / Cf. R. Lindsey, "Auschwitz Survivor Sues for Prize For Proving Germans Gassed Jews", New York Times, March 11, 1981, et al.
405 / IHR Newsletter, April 1982, p. 1.
406 / See above, pp. 36-38.
407 / For a Revisionist analysis of the judge's actions, Cf. The Spotlight, August 16, 1982.
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1985, when the IHR – unable to sustain cost of litigation and facing possible bankruptcy – offered Mermelstein $90,000 in an out of settlement (approved by Judge Robert Wenke), which he accepted. According to the New York Times of July 25, 1985, "Under the terms of the agreement ... the institute must issue a formal written apology to Mr. Mermelstein and all other Auschwitz survivors for the pain it caused them by claiming the Holocaust was a myth..."

The apology of the IHR and other defendants stated:

Each of the defendants do hereby officially and formally apologize to Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Buchenwald, and to all other survivors of Auschwitz, for the pain, anguish and suffering he and all other Auschwitz survivors have sustained relating to the $50,000 reward offer for proof that "Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz."

The apology was not an admission by the IHR that Mermelstein had proved that Jews or others were gassed in Auschwitz. He never proved that, and no money was paid out on the basis that he did. The apology and $ 90,000 settlement was only for the "pain, anguish and suffering" experienced by Mermelstein, and for the initial mismanagement of the offer by the institute. Mermelstein did not get the $50,000 'reward' for proving that Jews were gassed, nor did the IHR – by signing the settlement agreement – agree that gassings had occurred. Nonetheless, to the present day the settlement has been misrepresented by many anti-Revisionists, scholars and media commentators as being judicial confirmation that Mermelstein had proven that Jews were gassed, and that the $90,000 settlement included the reward money. For example, the anti-Revisionist booklet Holocaust "Revisionism": Reinventing the Big Lie, published by the ADL in 1989, stated:

In 1980 the institute for Historical Review offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Holocaust survivor Mel Mermelstein, 62, of Long Beach, California took on the IHR challenge and submitted the necessary proof. When the IHR failed to comply with its promised terms Mermelstein filed suit to enforce the reward.

In July 1985 the lawsuit was settled in favour of Mermelstein. The settlement, approved by Judge Robert Wenke of Los Angeles Superior Court, called for the IHR the $50,000 "reward" it had offered for proof of the Nazi genocide, and also to pay an additional $40,000 for the pain and suffering caused to Mermelstein by that offer. [408]

Mermelstein himself attempted to convince people that the $90,000 he received actually included the $50,000 reward for proving that gassings occurred, and that by signing the settlement agreement the IHR had agreed that gassings took place. He stated this publicly on many occasions, and after doing so on a radio show on New York's WMCA on August 7, 1985 the IHR and Willis Carto sued him for libel on August 6, 1986. However, because of the cost of the libel suit and the realization that the suit did not seem promising [409], they voluntarily dropped the charges on February 29, 1988.

In January 1986 Mermelstein had won another legal victory against Revisionism. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded him $5,250,000 in damages in a suit he had brought in 1981 against Ditlieb Felderer, an eccentric Swedish Holocaust Revisionist. Felderer, who had allegedly defamed Mermelstein in an issue of his publication Jewish Information Bulletin, was convicted in absentia, having repeatedly been refused (by the United States Embassy in Sweden a visa to enter the U.S. to defend himself. [410] Despite there being little chance of Felderer raising such an enormous amount of money, Mermelstein's morale was boosted by the court decision, apparently prompting him on June 6, 1986 to sue the IHR once more. [411]

This time he sued them for $11,000,000 on the charge of libel, insisting that comments written about him in the September 1985 issue of the IHR Newsletter, in which he and Elie Wiesel were referred to as "demonstrable frauds", constituted character defamation. His suit, however, was twice dismissed in the District Court for the Central District of California, forcing Mermelstein to change tactics and engage new lawyers. On October 17, 1988 he decided to file another suit against the IHR, Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto, this time combining his previous libel charge with a new charge: "malicious prosecution".

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408 / New York: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1989, p. 21.
409 / IHR Newsletter, 81, July/August 1991, p. 2.
410 / Cf. D. Weikel, "$5.25 million Holocaust libel judgement", Orange County Register, January 18, 1986; Letter by J. W. Davis, Orange County Register, February 10, 1986; et al.
411 / IHR Newsletter, 40, July 1986, p. 3.
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It was his opinion that the IHR's libel suit, which (as noted above) they dropped before he had been served notice, was intended by the defendants to harass him and cause him emotional harm. His attorneys released a press statement which makes this clear:

Mr. Mermelstein's complaint alleged that the defamation lawsuit that had been filed against him was completely groundless, frivolous and without probable cause. Mermelstein claims that the defendants filed the lawsuit against him in order to intimidate, harass, and attack him, because he is Jewish." [412]

The lawsuit dragged on into 1991, causing financial difficulties for the defendants and initially going badly for them. On January 16 of that year Judge Stephen E. O'Neil of the California Superior Court, adhering to the precedent set by Judge Johnson in 1981, took judicial notice of the historical "fact" that "Jews were gassed at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland in 1944". This was despite the fact that the IHR had assembled a dossier comprising over two hundred pages of "documents reflecting Revisionist research and Exterminationist concessions as to the gas chamber controversy since 1981". [413] Even worse for the Revisionists, their lawyers – Robert and Mark Von Esch – settled with Mermelstein to remove themselves from the case by agreeing to pay him $100,000 and formally apologize for having filed the IHR's 1986 libel suit against him. Additionally, they publicly stated that Jews had been gassed in Auschwitz and that millions of Jews had died in German concentration camps. [414]

Nonetheless, proceedings went considerably better for the defendant during pre-trial hearings in September 1991, and on the nineteenth day of that month they scored a total victory over Mermelstein when Judge Stephen M. Lachs threw out the malicious prosecution portion of the case because of its lack of merit. This in turn caused Mermelstein and his attorneys to voluntarily withdraw what was left of their lawsuit; their complaints of libel, conspiracy to indict emotional harm and intentional infliction of emotional distress. [415] Although he subsequently appealed Lach's decision, Mermelstein's defeat was so overwhelming that it has effectively put an end – after ten years – to his legal efforts to destroy the IHR and Revisionism in the United States.

Several points need to be made regarding this very widely publicized legal battle, which brought Holocaust Revisionism to the attention of many millions of Americans. Firstly, Mermelstein was not a solitary crusader against Revisionism, as the media has presented him. Whilst he may have initially had difficulty gaining legal representation, his first lawyer, William Cox, took the case free of charge, pro bono publico. Once he had commenced his first lawsuit against the IHR, Mermelstein also received the generous financial backing of very many Jewish organizations and individuals, [416] who saw his lawsuit as a means of destroying the Revisionist institute. Further support came from the Warsaw-based International Auschwitz Committee, which provided affidavits and documentary evidence with which to prove that Jews were gassed in Auschwitz. [417] Additionally, he had the best lawyers in the region – including for several years the very successful and highly regarded law firm Allied, Maroko, Goldberg and Ribakoff – who also worked on the same financial basis as had Cox. Among others who have given aid or support to Mermelstein are Neal Sher of the Justice Department's 'Nazi hunting' Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and President Ronald Reagan.

Secondly, Mermelstein became a celebrity because of his legal battle against the IHR. In 1981 he was flown to Israel to discuss the court case with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who expressed gratitude at the work done to combat anti-Semitism. He was described in laudatory terms in literally hundred[s] of newspapers, magazines and journals, and was even the subject of a 1991 tele-docudrama called "Never Forget" [418], in which Leonard Nimoy (TV's 'Doctor Spock') starred as Mermelstein. This made-for-television movie, which dealt only with the first year of the court case against the IHR (up to Judge Johnson's judicial notice), was made with the assistance of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the Anti-Defamation League. This perhaps explains why "Never Forget" presented Mermelstein sympathetically as an underdog and the IHR as the Nazis and anti-Semites who were persecuting him. As Tom Marcellus makes 

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412 / Quoted in Holocaust "Revisionism": Reinventing the Big Lie, p. 21.
413 / IHR Newsletter 78, February 1991, p. 5.
414 / IHR Newsletter 82, October 1991, p. 1.
415 / Ibid., p. 1-3.
416 / Heritage, February 4, 1983; L. Rolfe, "Mermelstein Closing In On Notorious Anti-Semite", B'nai B'rith Messenger, April 12, 1985; et al.
417 / Cf. the July/August 1981 issue of the Committee's Information Bulletin, which described the considerable assistance given to "Comrade Mel Mermelstein of the Auschwitz Study Foundation". This Communist publication also referred to "Comrade Mermelstein's" legal battle against "the neo-Nazi Institute of Torrance".
418 / Produced by Robert B. Radnitz. Directed by Joseph Sargent. Turner Pictures, Inc. A Nimoy/Radnitz Production, 1991.
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clear in his film review in the Journal of Historical Review [419], the sensationalistic film (like many newspaper articles) entirely misrepresented several events, including trial proceedings, and included many other events that simply never occurred.

Thirdly, the IHR suffered hostility from the media throughout the ten years Mermelstein's lawsuits were before the courts. Whenever Mermelstein achieved a success in court it was widely supported in both local and national newspapers, but whenever the IHR experienced similar successes they were almost always ignored by the media, or perhaps only reported in one or two local papers. For example, when the IHR agreed in July 1985 to give Mermelstein $90,000 in an out of court settlement, newspapers and magazines right across the nation carried the story, praising the plaintiff for his victory over "racism". But when the IHR won its stunning victory in September 1991 only a few newspapers chose to report the event, such as the Orange County Register which published a short and inaccurate article, and the Los Angeles Times, which only published a report on the outcome of the trial in its Orange County edition.

One final point needs to be made regarding the IHR's monetary offer and its consequences, and that is that no-one has managed to provide the evidence necessary to claim the money. This is probably because most right-thinking people would simply not even bother to try. Despite the massive 1981 lawsuit filed by Mermelstein (who never received the reward money), the institute announced on April 1, 1982 a new offer of $50,000 payable to anyone who could "prove that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz Concentration Camp during World War II." [420] To show that the offer was not a publicity gimmick, $50,000 was raised by appeals to subscribers and placed in a special trust fund in the Columbus Bank and Trust, earmarked for payment to a successful claimant. There were only three serious claims, one of them being from Kitty Hart, an ex-Auschwitz internee who had written two books on her wartime experiences, but none of the claimants had filled in the official claim forms adequately. Despite the institute informing them of this, they had not rectified the situation before the offer closed on December 31, 1982, rendering their applications invalid.

Thus, it has been shown that the IHR's First International Revisionist Conference in 1979 was, on the one hand, a successful and important gathering of like-minded academics, at which contacts were made, ideas and information exchanged and work coordinated. On the other hand, it was also the source of a foolish and unprofessional 'reward' offer which not only attracted to the institute a great deal of criticism from the media and the public but also thrust it into a very costly and time consuming ten year legal battle with Mel Mermelstein.


The other conferences

To February 1993 the IHR had conducted eleven successful international Revisionist conferences, one every year except for 1984 and 1987. Contrary to the claims of anti-Revisionists, the Holocaust was not the only subject discussed at those conferences. Very many different historical events and epochs were discussed, and at some conferences there were only two or three lectures on the Holocaust as opposed to seven or eight on other events. In fact, of the ninety-seven major lectures (that is, excluding dedication and plenary speeches) delivered at these eleven [...MISSING PASSAGE...] by obstacles or threats, permeate our own work while we are here." Revisionist conferences, only forty-two (or 43%) were on the subjects of the Holocaust and contemporary Holocaust Revisionism. The other fifty-five lectures were on a wide variety of historical subjects, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Boer War, India's war of independence and Pearl harbor. [421] Additionally, despite the media representing the conferences as Nazi gatherings [422], the speakers, of all political persuasions, left and right, have included numerous scholars of international repute. Amongst these are James J. Martin, David Irving and John Toland, the latter being a recipient of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

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419 / Volume Eleven, Number Two, Summer 1991, pp. 229-238.
420 / IHR Newsletter, April 1982, p. 1.
421 / Similarly, the majority of articles published in The Journal of Historical Review are on historical events and epochs other than the Holocaust.
422 / For example, see R. Eringer, "Nazi Sympathizers Meet in Secret in California", Toronto Star, September 4, 1983. Eringer referred to the 1983 conference as "a secret fascist convention staged by men in America whose aim is to whitewash Hitler".
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That does not mean, however, that IHR conference speakers have not included 'Nazis'. For example, a guest speaker at the Eighth International Revisionist Conference, held in Irvine, California on October 9-11, 1987, was Generalmajor Otto Ernst Remer. He is the former army officer entrusted by Hitler to quell the attempted coup d'état which centred around the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life. Also speaking at that conference was Dr. Karl Otto Braun, who served in Berlin with the East Asia division of the German Foreign Office, working directly under the Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. From 1938 to 1940 Braun served in Japan as a Foreign Office diplomat. He had also spoken at the sixth IHR conference, two years earlier.

Despite these two individuals formerly being supporters of Hitler's regime, their lectures did not glorify that regime or the war they participated in Remer's speech, introduced by Willis Carto and translated from German by Mark Weber, was essentially an account of the role he played in foiling the take-over plot. Braun's 1985 speech was on German foreign policy regarding East Asia, from 1933 to 1945. His 1987 speech was a detailed analysis of the very successful Sorge-Smedley Soviet espionage ring. Having personally known Richard Sorge, Braun was able to draw on his own experiences as he described the life and career of the master spy. Whilst it was apparent that neither Remer nor Braun regretted their wartime activities, their speeches were clearly not designed to glorify Hitler or his regime. They were delivered in much the same manner as a former RAF fighter pilot might address a group of air force historians. In fact, the present writer, familiar with every major speech delivered at the eleven international conferences conducted by the IHR, knows of no speech that glorified Hitler, his regime or his policies regarding Jews. The conferences, whatever else they were, simply were not Nazi gatherings.


Mark E. Weber

The Master of Ceremonies for the conferences in 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990 and 1992 was Mark E. Weber, who must be considered, because of the vast quantity and scholarly form of his work on the Holocaust and other aspects of twentieth-century history, the most important Revisionist historian in the United States. Although he has never held an academic post at the university level, Weber is fluent in German and has studied history at the University of Illinois, the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University, where he gained a Master's degree with high honours in 1977. Because of his central role at the IHR, his contribution to Revisionism in general, and because the present writer believes that he will be the most prominent Holocaust Revisionist in the 1990s, a brief overview of Weber's career to date will be given.

Weber is often denounced by anti-Revisionists as a Nazi, a racist and an anti-Semite. As evidence they point to his involvement in the late 1970s with the National Alliance, a small, radical pro-white organization headed by Dr. William Pierce, former editor of a one-time "neo-Nazi" journal called National Socialist World. [423] Indeed, in 1978 Weber did serve for a year as the News Editor of National Vanguard, the Alliance tabloid paper, and published therein many articles expressing his socially unacceptable prowhite views. [424] Unfortunately, as they have in the case of other prominent Revisionists, critics have invariably attempted to discredit Weber not by refuting his arguments but rather by focusing on his shortlived Alliance affiliation, or – even more frequently – with malicious and bigoted name-calling.

Regardless of the extent to which Weber may have modified or even abandoned the views about race he held in the late 1970s, he had not had any contact with either Pierce or the Alliance since early 1979, after an acrimonious break with Pierce. [425] More to the point, even if Weber still has unsavory racial views, his

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423 / Cf. "Mark Weber", Extremism on the Right, A Handbook, pp. 171-173; The 1989 IHR Conference: White-Washing Genocide "Scientifically": An ADL Fact-Finding Report, p. 6. Holocaust "Revisionism": Reinventing the Big Lie, pp. 9, 43; et al.
424 / Cf. "Whites on the March"; "Farmers Fighting to Survive", National Vanguard, Issue 59, 1978; "The Darkening of America", National Vanguard, Issue 60, 1978; et al.
425 / Recorded telephone interview with Mark Weber, October 4, 1991. When questioned about an autobiographical article he had written in the May 1978 issue of National Vanguard which contained a candid explanation of why he had joined the pro-white movement, Weber told the present writer that he was "basically not ashamed" of what he'd written there. However, he did express some embarrassment at being involved with Pierce, who "wanted to do nasty things to people." When questioned about Zionism, Judaism and Jews, Weber pointed out that whilst he has written critically of the machinations of political Zionism and organized Jewry, he is not anti-Jewish as such, or even hostile towards individual Jews. The present writer, familiar with Weber's principal writings from 1978 to the present day, has no reason to doubt him on this point.
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historical theses, which are scholarly in style and contain highly-developed analysis, should not be automatically discounted. They should be refuted, if possible, in a thoughtful and evenhanded manner.

Weber's first personal contact with Revisionism and Revisionists dates from a 1977 visit to England, where he spent time in Brighton with Tony Hancock, the aforementioned publisher of rightist and Revisionist books. Coincidentally, Arthur Butz happened to visit Hancock at the same time as part of a European promotion tour for The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (which Hancock had just published). Butz and Weber spent an evening together. During that visit, Weber also briefly met David McCalden, who moved to the United States in 1978 to work as the first director to the IHR (under the penname of Lewis Brandon). [426]

Weber claims that he was quite sceptical of Holocaust Revisionism at that time. It was during that 1977 visit that he first read Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die?, but that booklet actually reinforced his scepticism. Weber says that he was particularly struck by some grueling factual errors, which tended to discredit its central thesis. Some years later, as an expert witness in the 1988 trial of Ernst Zündel, a Canadian Revisionist, Weber outlined precisely those errors. [427]

In early 1979, after he had moved to Washington, D.C., Weber received a letter from Butz, who asked him to visit the National Archives to examine the wartime Allied aerial reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz, which had just been made public by the Central Intelligence Agency. [428] Butz asked him to look through the entire collection of Auschwitz reconnaissance photographs to see if there were any significant or revealing aerial photos that had not been made public. He also asked him to order and send him high quality prints of all relevant photographs. As it happened, Weber had been following the media coverage of the published photographs. Even though he had no special interest in the subject, he had been impressed by the fact that the photographs contained no evidence of mass exterminations in Auschwitz and, in fact, apparently could not be reconciled with accepted opinion on what transpired in that camp. Weber's examination, on Butz's behalf, of the original reconnaissance photos in the National Archives strengthened this view. He was disturbed at what he considered the distorted way that these photographs were portrayed in newspapers and magazines. He was also outraged that some prominent Jewish figures – like Elie Wiesel and a few important politicians [429] – openly charged that these photos proved that Allied military and political leaders not only knew that Jews were being systematically exterminated in Auschwitz, but callously refused to do anything to stop the slaughter.

Weber reasoned that if such gross misrepresentation of historical evidence was possible thirtyfive years after the fact, comparable distortion of the truth was at least very probable in the emotioncharged years during and just after the Second World War. He later raised this matter with Robert Wolfe, director of the Military Branch of the National Archives, where captured German records are held. Wolfe, himself Jewish, told Weber of his repugnance at the way that Wiesel and others misrepresented these photographs for their own purposes.

Fascinated and encouraged by what he had already learned, Weber then decided to begin a serious and in-depth investigation of this issue. He purchased a copy of Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews – generally regarded as a standard work on the subject – to look into the precise evidence presented for a German policy or programme of systematic extermination. He was at once struck by the paucity of evidence there for an extermination programme, or even for systematic mass killings in gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps. However, he was intrigued by the apparently detailed documentary evidence presented by Hilberg for mass killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories by the notorious Einsatzgruppen security police units.

With what he claims was a completely open mind, Weber then began a methodical investigation at the National Archives of the copious written reports of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen. He quickly concluded that these units had indeed killed large numbers of Jews, including civilians, but contrary to what

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426 / Ibid. Also, letter from Weber to the present writer, dated February 16, 1992, appendice[s], p. 3.
427 / Letter, ibid., appendice[s], p. 3.
428 / For details about this CIA report, see above, p. 60.
429 / Cf. Washington Post, February 23, 1979; New York Times, February 24, 1979; March 6, 1979; et al. See also K. Feig, Hitler's Death Camps, p. 368.
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Hilberg and others have insisted for years, he also concluded that the Einsatzgruppen reports themselves indicated that there was no overall German programme to exterminate Soviet Jewry. [430]

Further encouraged by what he had discovered, Weber decided to devote whatever spare time he could to researching and writing on this subject [of] his 'conversion' to the Revisionist view of the Holocaust took place over several months in 1979, during the period of estrangement and alienation from Pierce and his organization. One of Weber's last articles for Pierce 's National Vanguard (issue No. 69) reflected his new interest in this subject. Entitled " 'Holocaust' Claims Exposed as Lies", this concise and generally well-written analysis of the main arguments against accepted opinion shows his informed familiarity with the subject and with the writings of the most important Revisionists, including Butz, Stäglich, Harwood and Faurisson. Yet, reflecting the paper's unabashedly partisan and militant character, this article contained numerous anti-Zionistic
and insensitive (but not necessarily anti-Semitic) remarks about Jewish propagation of accepted opinion on the Holocaust. Weber wrote, for example:

...the Jews want both sympathy and support as a persecuted minority and continued influence and privilege as a powerful elite. They cannot have it both ways forever. Over the long run, the entire "holocaust" campaign is creating enormous reserves of hatred and bitter resentment, which will one day erupt against the Jews. Not knowing moderation, the Jews cannot and will not stop their campaign of moral intimidation until the inevitable reaction comes.

Pierce was not at all pleased with Weber's new-found interest in the Holocaust issue, regarding it as an almost treasonous deviation from the all-important work of the Alliance. Already disillusioned with Pierce for other reasons, their disagreement on this issue exacerbated an estrangement that culminated a short time later in a complete and permanent break.

In December 1979, some months after his final break with Pierce and the National Alliance, Weber published a short article in The Spotlight, entitled "Allies Used Torture to 'Prove' Jews Were Extermination Victims". [431] In this article he argued more persuasively that some of the documentary evidence offered in support of the extermination thesis at the postwar trials of alleged German war criminals was in fact fallacious, some of it even obtained by coercion or torture. For example, he described in some detail the American maltreatment of Franz Ziereis, commandant of Mauthausen, who was interrogated for six hours as he lay dying of gunshot wounds. Hans Marsalek, a former Mauthausen internee, allegedly took a statement from Ziereis just before he died, and that statement, noted Weber, totally lacks credibility. [432] Nonetheless, he concluded, it was produced as prosecution document 3870-PS at the International Military Tribunal and helped secure a death sentence for Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was hanged in October 1946.

An important factor in Weber's decision to devote himself so earnestly to Holocaust Revisionism was his meeting in 1979 with Robert Faurisson, who was later suspended from his teaching position at the University of Lyon-11 for his Revisionist views. [433] Weber welcomed him at one of Washington's airports, arranged for his accommodation in the city, and spent a good deal of time with him during his stay. It was during this visit that Weber wrote a petition in defence of Faurisson's rights of free speech and inquiry.

Within a short period, some six hundred persons signed this appeal – including Noam Chomsky, MIT professor and arguably the world's foremost linguist (who is Jewish), as well as Alfred Lilienthal, the prominent Jewish anti-Zionist historian. [434]

As already mentioned, Weber's relationship with the IHR became even closer during the 1980s. In 1984 he joined the Editorial Advisory Committee of the institute's quarterly Journal of [Historical] Review, and in December 1991 he

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430 / For more on Weber's view of the Einsatzgruppen, see: M. Weber, "My Role in the Zundel Trial", The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90, pp. 398-403; SZTR, 23-5685, 5686, 5688, 5691, 5745-54.
431 / The Spotlight, December 24, 1979, pp. 8, 9, 14.
432 / See below, p. 240, n. 4 and p. 245, n. 161. Weber's reasons for concluding that the alleged Zieries confession is absolutely worthless as historical evidence are essentially the same as the present writer's.
433 / For Faurisson's suspension, see above, p. 16, n. 23.
434 / For the text of Weber's petition, see R. Faurisson, "Revisionism on Trial", The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Six, Number Two, Summer 1985, pp. 180-181.
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moved to southern California to work for the institute. He soon became editor of both the JHR and the IHR Newsletter.

A prolific writer, Weber has published articles, reviews and essays in numerous periodicals, including Annales d'Histoire Révisionniste, Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste, Instauration, Middle East Perspective, Nation Europa, Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart and the JHR. He has possibly contributed to the JHR more frequently than any other author, beginning with an article in the Summer 1980 issue. In fact, from the beginning of 1984 to February 1993 he published therein ten major articles, four book reviews and sixteen smaller articles or essays. These writings, which almost entirely lack the insensitive stridency or partisanship of his National Vanguard days, deal with a wide range of historical issues and are by no means confined to the narrower topic of Nazi persecution of Jews.

Reflecting both a trained familiarity with primary and relevant secondary sources (including original German documents), as well as a generally sober mid judicious treatment of all the available material, Weber's articles on aspects of the Holocaust have been among the most lucid and informative to appear in the JHR, or anywhere. Because they are outstanding examples not only of Weber's work', but of Revisionist scholarship in general, two of them are discussed in some detail (as are the sources he used) in the following pages.

In the first of these, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality", [435] Weber argued convincingly that the popular image of Buchenwald as a death camp bears little relationship to reality. As he points out, the first Commandant, Karl Koch, was executed after an SS court found him guilty of corruption and the illegal murder of internees [436], a fact which contrasts sharply with the accepted view that in the concentration camps the incidental murder of internees was the norm. Koch's wife, Ilse – the infamous "Bitch of Buchenwald" - was also involved in many of his crimes, noted Weber, but was entirely innocent of the accusation that she personally selected tattooed internees and had them murdered and their skins made into lamp shades, book covers and other items. That charge (reiterated to the present day) was first advanced by the United States prosecution team at the International Military Tribunal. [437] In 1948 Ilse Koch was convicted of such crimes at a trial before a United States military court, and received a life sentence. However, General Lucius D. Clay Commander in Chief of United States forces in Europe and Military Governor of the U.S. occupation Zone of Germany, 1947-1949, carefully reviewed Koch's case and concluded that whilst she was "a woman of depraved character" the charges relating to objects made from human skin were entirely groundless. Clay commuted her sentence to four years, continued Weber, and informed the Army Department in Washington: "There is no convincing evidence that she selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins or that she possessed any articles made of human skin." [438] During a 1976 interview Clay recalled the case:

We tried Use Koch.... She was sentenced to life imprisonment, and I commuted it to four [three] years. And our press really didn't like that. She had been destroyed by the fact that an enterprising reporter who first went into her house had given her the beautiful name, the "Bitch of Buchenwald," and he had found some white lampshades in there which he wrote up as being made out of human flesh. Well, it turned out actually that it was goat flesh. But at the trial it was still [insisted to be] human flesh. It was almost impossible for her to have gotten a fair trial.... And those are the kinds of things that we had to deal with all the time. [439]

In this manner, Weber provided sufficient reliable evidence for one to conclude with certainty that the Buchenwald 'skin peeling' allegations were nothing more than wartime atrocity stories, and that the testimonies of witnesses which supported those stories were spurious.

Weber also argued that a very large percentage of the murders and atrocities that occurred in Buchenwald were not committed by SS officers or guards, but were committed or caused by the elite internee organization to whom the 

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435 / M. Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality". The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Seven, Number Four, Winter 1986-87, pp. 405-417.
436 / As evidence, Weber correctly cited the testimony at the International Military Tribunal of Günther Reinecke, August 7, 1946, IMT, Vol. XX, pp. 438, 441-442: also SS indictment against Koch, April 11, 1944.
437 / Account of Andreas Pfaffenberger, IMT, Vol. III, pp. 514-515; Vol. V, pp. 220-221, Vol. XXXII, 267-269 (and photographs, pp. 259-265).
438 / Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality", p. 406. Weber quoted Clay from the article "Clay Explains Cut in Ilse Koch Term", New York Times, September 24, 1948, p. 3.
439 / Interview with Lucius D. Clay. Official Proceedings of the George C. Marshall Research Foundation. Transcript of a videotape interview shown at the conference "U.S. Occupation in Europe After World War II", April 23-24, 1976 at Lexington, Va., sponsored by the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, pp. 37-38. Quoted in Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality", pp. 406-407. Note: After Koch was released by the Americans in October 1949 she was tried by the Germans on the same (and other) charges and received – on January 15, 1951 – a life sentence. In 1967 she hanged herself in her cell (cf. New York Times September 3, 1967).
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understaffed SS camp administrators had delegated responsibility for the day-today running of the camp.

This line of argument was not original to Weber. It was shown above that Paul Rassinier had expressed it almost thirty years earlier, in 1958. [440] However, whilst Weber did not have the first-hand experience of Buchenwald that Rassinier had, he did have access to sources that were not available to the Frenchman back in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, Weber quoted at length from a detailed U.S. Army intelligence document of April 24, 1945, entitled Buchenwald: A Preliminary Report. [441] This report, which supports in many ways the thesis of Rassinier and Weber, remained classified until 1972.

Alfred Toombs, U.S. Army intelligence chief, wrote in its short preface that the secret report was "one of the most significant accounts yet written on an aspect of life in Nazi Germany' because it "tells how the [Buchenwald] prisoners themselves organized a deadly terror within the Nazi terror." Toombs added that the report's general accuracy had been independently confirmed. [442] Because of the importance of this report, very seldomly mentioned by other historians, a relevant section will be quoted here at length:

The trustees had wide powers over their fellow inmates. At first they were drawn almost exclusively from the German criminals. This period lasted until 1942. But gradually the Communists began to gain control of this organization. They were the oldest residents, with records of 10-12 years in the concentration camps... The Communists maintained excellent discipline and received a certain amount of direction from outside the camp. They had brains and technical qualifications for running the various industries established at the camp. 

Their advances were not made without resistance from the criminals, but gradually the criminals were eliminated from power, partly by intimidation, partly with the aid of the SS. Numbers of the criminals were killed by beatings, hangings, or injections of phenol into the heart or of air or milk into the veins. The injections were a specialty of the camp doctor [Hoven], who became a partisan of the Communist faction.

Besides the top positions in the trusty organization, there were a number of key Communist strongholds in the administration of the camp. One was the food supply organization, through which favored groups received reasonable rations while others were brought to the starvation level. A second was the hospital, staffed almost exclusively by Communists. Its facilities were largely devoted to caring for members of their party.... Another Communist stronghold was the property room... Each German trusty obtained good clothing and numerous other valuables. The Communists of Buchenwald, after ten or twelve years in concentration camps, are dressed like prosperous business men.

As a result of all this, the report continued,

...Instead of a heap of corpses or a disorderly mob of starving, leaderless men, the Americans [who liberated the camp] found a disciplined and efficient organization in Buchenwald. Credit is undoubtedly due to the self-appointed Camp Committee, an almost purely Communist group under the domination of the German politic leader.... The trusties, who in time became inmost exclusively Communist Germans, had the power of life and death over all other inmates. They could sentence a man or group to almost certain death.... The Communist trusties were directly responsible for a large part of the brutalities committed at Buchenwald. [443]

The report provided several specific examples of these "brutalities". For example, Communist block chiefs (Blockältesters) constantly treated those under their authority with extreme cruelty, and "sometimes forced whole blocks to stand barefoot in the snow for hours, apparently on their own initiative." French internees were even forced by the Communist oppressors to give thousands of Red Cross parcels (Rassinier himself suffered this, as well as the pilfering of his parcels from his wife). Even worse, this camp organization was also responsible for the deaths of "large numbers" of Poles who simply refused to submit to their authority, the report stated. [444]

This U.S. Army report certainly appears to support Rassinier's claim that, contrary to accepted opinion, an elite group of internees, and not the SS, were responsible for the majority of deaths in Buchenwald (and probably other camps). 

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440 / See above, p. 31 ff. Rassinier correctly referred to this practice of limited self-administration by its German designation: Häftlingsführung (prisoner leadership).
441 / E. W. Fleck and E. A. Tenenbaum, Buchenwald: A Preliminary Report, U.S. Army, 12th Army Group, April 24, 1945. National Archives, Record Group 331, SHAEF, G-5, 17.11. Jacket 10, Box 151 (8929/163-8929/180).
442 / Ibid., p. 1.
443 / Ibid., pp. 7-9. Italics added for emphasis.
444 / Ibid., p. 7.
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The report, however, was not the only evidence Weber provided in support of this line of argument. Among the numerous other sources used, he also quoted from a report published in 1948 by a former Buchenwald internee named Ernst Federn (himself Jewish), who explained how that elite group cooperated with the SS to increase its own power and eliminate opponents and undesirables. [445] Federn also provided specific examples. On one occasion, he noted, Emil Carlebach, the leader of the Jewish section of the Communists camp organization, personally beat to death an elderly Jewish Turkish internee because he had accidentally relieved himself in the barracks.

Weber also provided evidence that Buchenwald did not have a homicidal gas chamber and was not an extermination camp. All of the sources he quoted as evidence have been mentioned above. [446] They need not be discussed again here, suffice to say that they are credible, reliable and consistent, and provide sufficient grounds for one to conclude that whilst Buchenwald was a brutal and frightful place, a gas chamber did not exist there. Regarding the claim that Jews and others were systematically exterminated in that camp, Weber argued that the numbers of persons allegedly [173] murdered there vary considerably from source to source, with some estimates being extremely fanciful. For example:

According to Elie Wiesel, the prolific Jewish writer and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, "In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day." [447] This wildly irresponsible statement is, unfortunately, all too typical of the glib rhetoric of the man who was also chosen to head the U.S. government's official Holocaust Memorial Council [see above, p. 24ff.].

The 1980 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia claimed that "more than 100,000" died in the camp. [448] The Encyclopedia Judaica put the number at 56,549. [449] Raul Hilberg, writing in the 1982 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, stated that more than 50,000 died in the Buchenwald complex." [450] The U.S. Army intelligence report of 24 April 1945 (cited above) noted that the total number of certified deaths was 32,705. [451] A detailed June 1945 U.S. government report about Buchenwald put the total at 33,462, of whom more than 20,000 died in the chaotic final months of the war. [452]

The authoritative International Tracing Service of Arolsen, an affiliate of thee International Red Cross, stated in 1984 that the number of documented deaths (of both Jews and non-Jews) at Buchenwald was 20,671, with another 7,463 for Dora (Mittelbau). [453]

While even these lower figures are regrettably high, it is important to realize that the great majority of those who died at Buchenwald were unfortunate victims of a catastrophic war, not German policy. Most of the rest were murdered by order of the Communist underground camp organization. Several hundred were also killed in Allied bombing attacks.

In one air raid against a large munitions factory near the main camp, British bombers killed 750 persons, including 400 inmates. [454]

It is apparent from the few examples given by Weber that there has been no consensus of opinion on how many people perished in Buchenwald, with some stated figures clearly being improbable or impossible. The less fanciful figures still indicate that between 20,000 and 30,000 persons died (of all causes), a terrible figure by any standards. Yet it is worth noting that even if 40,000 persons died in the camp during the last four years of the war, that would translate to an average of only twenty-seven deaths of all causes per day. Weber pointed out that there were 34,000 internees in Buchenwald in

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445 / E. Federn, "That Germany...", Harper's, August 1948. Cited in Weber, "Buchenwald", p. 415.
446 / M. Broszat in Die Zeit, "Keine Vergasung in Dachau", 19 August 1960, p. 16; G. Tillion, Ravensbrück, p. 231; K. Feig, Hitler's Death Camps, p. 231.
447 / Quoted in S. Kanfer, "Author, Teacher, Witness", Time magazine, March 18, 1985, p. 79. If murders in Buchenwald continued at the rate of 10,000 persons per day (as claimed by Wiesel) for only eighteen months of the four year period in which the Nazis were
allegedly exterminating Jews, a total of 5.5 million persons would have been eliminated in that camp alone.
448 / "Buchenwald", World Book Encyclopedia (1980 edition), Volume 2, p. 550.
449 / "Buchenwald", Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 4, p. 1445.
450 / Hilberg, R., "Buchenwald", Encyclopedia Americana (1982 edition), Volume 4, p. 677.
451 / Fleck and Tenenbaum, Buchenwald: A Preliminary Report, p. 18.
452 / Document 2171-PS, NC & A, Volume 4, p. 801.
453 / Statement by Arolsen registry official Butterweck, January 16, 1984. Fascimile in National-Zeitung (Munich), Number 18, April 27, 1984, p. 10.
454 / Buchenwald Camp: The Report of a Parliamentary Delegation (London: His Majesty's Stationary Office, 1945), p. 5; 2171-PS, NC & A, Volume 4, p. 821. Note: footnotes 447-454 directly above (and including this one) are from Weber's own endnotes. Interestingly, in a 1991 article on Thomas Hofmann (the director of the Buchenwald Camp Museum) in The Washington Post, Marc Fisher stated that in Buchenwald "the Nazis killed 65,000 prisoners through slave labor, starvation and single gunshots to the neck". However, he provided no evidence to support this extremely high figure. ("Germans Rework Buchenwald's Dual History", The Washington Post, July 22, 1991, p. A13).
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November 1943, 44,000 in April 1944, and 80,000 in August 1944 [455], that giving an average internee population over that period of 52,666. From these figures one can work out that twenty-seven deaths per day represent a daily death rate of only 0.05 percent (or two persons per thousand). One must admit that this death rate, whilst most unfortunate, is not indicative of mass murder or genocide.

Ignoring accounts of routine brutality and terrible working conditions, Weber insisted that conditions in the camp were, at least up until the months of February, March and April 1945 when absolute chaos reigned in Germany [456], not as bad as many portrayals would suggest:

Inmates could both receive and send two letters or postcards monthly. They could receive money from the outside. Inmates were also paid for their labor with special camp currency which they could use to purchase a wide variety of items in the camp canteen. They played soccer, handball and volleyball in their spare time. Soccer matches were held on Saturdays and Sundays on the camp playing field. A camp library offered a wide range of books. A motion picture theater was very popular. There were also variety shows, and musical groups put on regular concerts in the central square. A camp brothel, which employed 15 prostitutes when the Americans arrived, was available to many inmates. [457]

Weber also pointed out that from 1945 to 1949 the Soviet secret police operated Buchenwald as aconcentration camp for Germans considered dangerous or politically undesirable. To indicate just how many Germans were interned there, he noted that in September 1949, over four years after the Nazi regime collapsed, there were still 14,300 Germans held prisoner in the camp. Conditions were terrible, and, due to brutality and a lack of order and sanitation, at least 13,000 (but possibly as many as 21,000) persons died in the camp during the period it was run by the Soviets. [458] "In an act of stunning hypocrisy,"
concluded Weber, "the Communist rulers of the postwar 'German Democratic Republic' have turned the Buchenwald camp area into a kind of secular shrine" to the "victims of fascism". It has various memorials, a museum and a massive, 150-foot-high bell tower. Yet they have totally removed anything that might remind the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the camp each year of "the thousands of forgotten Germans who perished miserably during the years after the war when the camp was run by the Soviets" [459]

"Buchenwald: Legend and Reality" is clearly a meticulously-documented and thoughtfully-argued account of what actually transpired in that camp, both during and directly after the war. Weber wrongly glossed over the brutality and generally harsh conditions endured by Buchenwald internees, but provided sufficient reliable evidence for one to conclude with certainty that not only was there no gas chamber in Buchenwald but there was also no mass murder or genocide conducted there. Whereas many murders and atrocities were committed by the SS, a large number of deaths in the camp resulted from the total chaos in German society in the last months of the war in Europe. Most of the other deaths in the camp were caused by other internees, namely the Communist Camp Organization.

The second article by Weber to be analysed here is "Jewish Soap", which appeared in the Summer 1991 JHR. [460] In this short but detailed study Weber scrutinized the widely repeated allegation that the Nazis manufactured soap from the cadavers of murdered Jews. Based on a careful evaluation of all the available evidence, he argued that this lurid but remarkably durable charge was in fact nothing more than groundless wartime atrocity propaganda.

He began by pointing out that the human soap story did not even originate during the Second World War, despite the fact that it is now commonly associated with it. An almost identical allegation had been made about the Germans by the British and American press during the second half of the First

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455 / A monthly population peak of 86,000 internees was reached at the end of February 1945. Document 2171-PS, NC & A, Volume 4, pp. 832-833.
456 / For the catastrophic effects on the concentration camps of this political, economic and social breakdown in Germany, see below, p. 241.
457 / Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Regality", p. 410 and note 14, pp. 415-416. Weber cited as evidence: J. Mendelsohn, "Sources", Prologue (Washington, D.C.: National Archives), Fall 1983, p. 180; K. Feig, Hitler's Death Camps, p. 96; the testimony of Konrad Morgan, August 7, 1946, IMT, Volume XX, p. 490; testimony by former internee Arnost Tauber at Nuremberg "I.G. Farben" trial, November 12, 1947, printed in U. Walendy (ed.), Auschwitz im IG-Farben Prozess, p. 119; R. Manvell and H. Fraenkel, The Incomparable Crime (New York, 1967), p. 155; Buchenwald Camp: The Report of a Parliamentary Delegation, pp. 4-5. This writer checked those sources available to him, and agrees that they bear out Weber's conclusions.
458 / "Bis 1950: Buchenwald und Sachsenhausen", Amerika Woche, May 11, 1985, p. 3: "Im Todeslager der Sowjets", Deutsche National-Zeitung, Number 47, November 15, 1985, p. 4; See also sketches of conditions in Soviet-run Buchenwald by former inmate Dr. Heinz Möller, in Deutsche National Zeitung, Number 6, February 3, 1984, p. 5. (after Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality", p. 413- 414 and notes, p. 417) Additionally, for the recently discovered mass graves of Germans murdered in Buchenwald by the Soviets, see "Germans Rework Buchenwald 's Dual History".
459 / Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality", p. 414.
460 / M. Weber, "Jewish Soap", The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Eleven, Number Two, Summer 1991, pp. 217-227.
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World War, but was exposed as spurious almost immediately afterwards. [461] Surprisingly, continued Weber, considering that it had been universally recognized after that world conflict as being fallacious anti-German propaganda, the human soap story was revived and widely believed during the second such conflict twenty years later. Even more incredibly, he insisted, the human soap story has been very widely believed to the present day.

Even though the macabre human soap story was circulating as a in occupied eastern Europe as early as 1941, Weber was able to show that it was principally propagated by Allied – and in particular, Jewish – propagandists. Because Weber's case is so strong a section of his article (along with some of the relevant sources) will be quoted at length:

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, wartime head of both the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress, publicly charged in November 1942 [without evidence] that Jewish corpses were being "processed into such warvital commodities as soap, fats and fertilizer" by the Germans. He further announced that the Germans were "even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses" and were paying fifty marks for each body. [462]

In late 1942, the Congress Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress, editorialized that the Germans were turning Jews "by scientific methods of dissolution into fertilizer, soap and glue." An article in the same issue reported that Jewish deportees from France and Holland were being processed into "soap, glue and train oil in at least two special factories in Germany. [463] Typical of many other American periodicals, the influential New Republic reported in early 1943 that the Germans were "using the bodies of their Jewish victims to make soap and fertilizer in a factory at Siedice." [464]

During June and July 1943, two prominent representatives of the Moscow-based "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" toured the United States and raised more than two million dollars for the Soviet war effort at a series of mass meetings. At each of these rallies, Soviet Jewish leader Solomon Mikhoels showed the crowd a bar of soap that he said was made from Jewish corpses. [465]

Weber noted the consequences of this propaganda:

After the war the soap story was given important legitimacy at the main Nuremberg trial. L. N. Smirnov, Chief Councilor of Justice for the USSR, declared at the Tribunal:

"...The same base, rationalized SS technical minds which created gas chamber and murder vans, began devising such methods of complete annihilation of human bodies, which would not only conceal the traces of their crimes, but also to serve in the manufacturing of certain products. In the Danzig Anatomical Institute, semi-industrial experiments in the production of soap from human bodies and the tanning of human skin for industrial purposes were carried out." Smirnov quoted at length from an affidavit by Sigmund Mazur, an Institute employee, which was accepted as Nuremberg exhibit USSR-197. It alleged that Dr. Rudolf Spanner, the head of the Danzig Institute, had ordered the production of soap from corpses in 1943 [Note; Rabbi Wise was proclaiming the human soap story in 1942]. According to Mazur's affidavit, Dr. Spanner's operation was of interest to high-ranking German officials. Education Minister Bernhard Rust and Health Leader Dr. Leonardo Conti, as well as professors from other medical institutes, came to witness Spanner's efforts. Mazur also claimed to have used the "human soap" to wash himself and his laundry. [466] A human soap "recipe" allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196), was also presented. Finally, a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of "human soap" was submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393.

In his closing address to the Tribunal, chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross echoed his Soviet colleague: "On occasion, even the bodies of their [the Germans'] victims were used to make good the wartime shortage ofsoap." [467] And in their final judgement, the Nuremberg Tribunal judges found that "attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap." [468]

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461 / Ibid., p. 217 and note 1 on page 224, which contains as evidence a brief description of which British newspaper first published the allegation in 1917, and how readily it was abandoned in the early-1920s.
462 / "Wise Says Hitler Had Ordered 4,000,000 Jews Slain in 1942", New York Herald-Tribune (Associated Press), November 25, 1942, pp. 1, 5; "2 Million Jews Slain by Nazis, Dr. Wise Avers", Chicago Daily Tribune, November 25, 1942; New York Times, November 26, 1942, p. 16; See also the 1985 edition of Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 1118.
463 / "The Spirit Will Triumph" (editorial), and "Corpses for Hitler", Congress Weekly, December 4, 1942 (after Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 225 n. 7).
464 / New Republic, January 18, 1943, p. 65. See also the Communist New Masses editorial of December 8, 1942, p. 21. Both quoted in J. J. Martin, The Man Who Invented "Genocide" (Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1984), pp. 64-65; One of the few sober voices among all the hysteria was The Christian Century, which cautioned in a December 9, 1942 editorial: "Dr. Wise's allegation that Hitler is paying $20 each for Jewish corpse to be 'processed into soap, fats and fertilizer' is unpleasantly reminiscent of the 'cadaver factory' lie which was one of the propaganda triumphs of the First World War." Quoted in R. Ross, So It Was True (Minneapolis, 1980),p. 157.
465 / G. Israel, The Jews in Russia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975), p. 180 (after Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 225 n. 9).
466 / Smirnov statement, February 19, 1946, IMT, Volume VII, pp. 597-600. Note also Soviet allegation that soap was manufactured from the bodies of people gassed at Auschwitz: IMT, Volume Vll, p. 175. Note also Nuremberg Tribunal "human soap" documents USSR-196, USSR-264 and USSR-272.
467 / IMT, Volume XIX, p. 506; NC & A, Suppl. vol. A, p. 134. See also "Nazis' Soap Factory Used Humans, America Reports" (AP), The Sunday Star, December 9, 1945 (after Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 225 n. 11).
468 / IMT, Volume l, p. 252.
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It is worth emphasizing here that the "evidence" presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal for the bogus soap story was no less substantial than the "evidence" presented for the claims of mass extermination in "gas chambers". At least in the former case, an actual sample of soap supposedly made from corpses was submitted in evidence. [469]

After the war hundreds of cakes of "human soap" turned up around the world, continued Weber, and many museums and Holocaust memorials put cakes of this soap on public display. [470] On numerous occasions bars of soap were given Jewish funeral services and were buried in Israelite cemeteries with the required rituals. Additionally, far from diminishing in acceptance in the decades since the war, the allegation that the Nazis transformed the corpses of Jews into soap has increasingly become accepted. Scores of former concentration camp internees, as well as very many journalists and historians, have promoted the soap story. [471] Amongst the numerous examples quoted by Weber were the following two, which illustrate the extent to which the story is believed. 

Canada: The Twentieth Century, a standard history studies textbook published in 1982 and used throughout Canada in secondary schools, declared that the Germans "boiled" the corpses of Jews "to make soap". [472] Secondly, in The Anatomy of Nazism a widely circulated booklet published in 1979 by the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith, it was stated that; "The process of brutalization did not end with the mass murders themselves. Large quantities of soap were manufactured from the corpses of those murdered." [473]

The soap alleged to have been made from Jewish fat bore the initials RIF, which, according to the proponents of the human soap story, stood for Rein Jüdisches Fett ("Pure Jewish Fat"). However, as Weber correctly pointed out, the initials RIF actually stood for Reichstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung ("Reich Centre for Industrial Fat Provisioning"), a German agency responsible during the war for the manufacture and distribution of soap and washing products. RIF soap actually contained no fat at all, human or otherwise. [474] Further, Weber sarcastically commented that "it did not seem to matter [to those who adhere to the human soap story] that the letters were "RIF' and not "RJF" " [475], the initials necessary for Pure Jewish Fat. Weber noted that in recent years even many Jewish historians were beginning to concede that soap was never made from Jewish fat:

... Jewish historian Walter Laqueur "denied established history" by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality. [476] Gitta Sereny, another Jewish historian, noted in her book Into That Darkness: "The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes."[477] Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history, similarly "rewrote history" when she confirmed in 1981: "The fact is that the Nazis never used the bodies of Jews, or for that matter anyone else, for the production of soap." [478]

In April 1990, Professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University, regarded as a leading Holocausthistorian, as well as Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust centre, confirmed that

------
469 / Weber, "Jewish Soap", pp. 218-219.
470 / In 1989 the present writer himself saw in two Israeli memorial centres cakes of soap supposedly made from human fat.
471 / G. Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews (Lodz.: Central Jewish Historical Committee in Poland, 1945); S. Wiesenthal,"Nochmals RIF", Der Neue Weg, Number 21/22, 1946; M. Weinreich, Hitler's Professors (New York: Vivo, 1946); W. L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York, 1960); M. I. Dimont, Jews, God and History (New York: Signet, 1962); K. Hart, I Am Alive (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1962); A. Worth, Russia at War 1941-1945 (New York: Avon, 1965); E. Wiesel, Legends of Our Time (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968); "Poland", Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), Volume 13; L. Poliakov and J. Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener (East Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1975); J. Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben (New York: Free Press, 1978); B. Edelbaum, Growing up in the Holocaust (Kansas City, 1980); R. W. Ross, So It Was True; N. Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland (New York Columbia University, 1982); J. S. Podesta, "Nesse Godin's memories...", The Washington Times, April 11, 1983; Days of Remembrance: A Department of Defence Guide for Commemorative Observance, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, D.C., USGPO, 1988); et al.
472 / F. McFadden, et al., Canada: The Twentieth Century (Toronto, 1982), section entitled "The Holocaust". Quoted in Weber,"Jewish Soap", p. 221 and n. 23, p. 226.
473 / E. Raab, The Anatomy of Nazism (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1981), p. 20.
474 / Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 222. Cf. N. Blumental. "RIF" Yiddish Culture, June-July 1959. Cf. also "Human Fat Soap", a letter by Yehuda Bauer in Jerusalem Post International Edition, Week ending June 9, 1990, p. 19. Bauer, Israel's foremost expert on the Holocaust, wrote that "the pieces of soap inscribed R.I.F., which Jewish victims were told were made of human fat, were found to contain ordinary non-organic fats [he means not from any living creature]. RIF means Reichsstelle fuer Industrielle Fettversorgung ... and not Pure Jewish Fat, as the victims were told by the Nazis".
475 / Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 217.
476 / W. Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), pp. 82, 219.
477 / G. Sereny, Into That Darkness (London: A. Deutsch, 1974), p. 141.
478 / "Nazi Soap Rumor During World War II", Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1981, p. 11/2.
------

the human soap story is not true. Camp inmates "were prepared to believe any horror stories about their persecutors," Bauer said. At the same time, though, he had the chutzpah to blame the legend on "the Nazis." [479]

Weber was quite correct; both Bauer and Krakowski blamed the Germans for starting the human soap story. Further, (although Weber didn't mention it) Bauer even asserted that whilst the Nazis did not turn Jews to soap [480] that was just one horror "they thought about but did not have time to realize."[481] Unfortunately, Bauer provided no evidence to support this bold allegation regarding the Nazis' evil intentions. It was entirely unacceptable of these historians to blame the Germans for the soap story, insisted a self-satisfied Weber, especially as blame lies rather with individuals such as Simon Wiesenthal [482] and Stephen Wise, organizations like the World Jewish Congress, and the victorious Allied powers, none of whom has ever apologized for promoting this vile falsehood.

... The bad faith of those making this calculated and belated concession to truth is shown by their failure to note that the soap myth was authoritatively "confirmed" at Nuremberg and by their unwillingness to deal with the implications of that confirmation for the credibility of the Tribunal and other supposedly trustworthy authorities in establishing other, more fundamental aspects of the Holocaust story. [483]

Lastly, Weber alleged that the concessions some historians, including those named above, were made as a response to the "growing Revisionist challenge". "Easily demonstrable falsehoods like the soap story have become dangerous embarrassments", Weber reasoned, "because they raise doubts about the entire Holocaust legend." [484] To support this argument, he quoted a statement made by Krakowski: "Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something to use against the truth?" [485] Although not mentioned by Weber, statements by Bauer and other historians also support the view that they were backing away from the human soap story because Revisionists were picking up on such errors. For example, in his above-quoted letter on human soap in the Jerusalem Post, Bauer stated "The Holocaust deniers waiting in the wings are eager to pick up any inaccuracies we may inadvertently commit, and we should not ease their work." [486]

The evidence and arguments contained within Mark Weber's article, "Jewish Soap" allow us to form several conclusions. First, as there is clearly a total absence of reliable and plausible evidence in support of the allegation that the Germans produced soap from the cadavers of Jews (or anyone else), and as the evidence previously offered in support of that allegation is distinctly unreliable and unconvincing, one must agree that the Germans did not turn humans to soap. To their credit, even many Jewish scholars now concede this. Second, despite the efforts of several of those scholar[s] to blame the Germans themselves for spreading the human soap story, Jewish individuals and organizations appear to have been almost solely responsible for that story's acceptance both by the media and public during the war, and by war crimes tribunals after the war. Jews have also been principally responsible for the perpetuation of the story to the present day. The present writer, however, docs not find it necessary to conclude that the majority of these people sought to mislead others (as Weber intimates), and realizes that many of them may have been misled themselves. That not withstanding, it is unacceptable that historians of the Holocaust, familiar with the extremely inadequate evidence for the human soap story, have allowed such wartime propaganda to go unchallenged until recently. After the First World War the human soap story was abandoned within two or three years, but, more than forty-rive years after the conclusion of the Second World War, cakes of 'human soap' are still on public display in many Holocaust centres and museums around the world. The story is also still repeated in history books, including secondary school textbooks, and newspaper articles.

------
479 / "Holocaust Expert Rejects Charge That Nazis Made Soap From Jews", Northern California Jewish Bulletin, April 27, 1990. (JTA dispatch from Tel Aviv): "A Holocaust Belief Cleared Up", Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1990.
480 / Bauer did assert that an experimental batch of "25 kg or perhaps more of this horrible substance was made" although he also conceded that the evidence for this (almost certainly IMT, Volume VII, p. 597ff. – not cited by Bailer) was "somewhat contradictory". (Y. Bauer, "Human Fat Soap").
481 / Ibid.
482 / In 1946 Wiesenthal published a series of articles on human soap in the Austrian Jewish community newspaper, Der Neue Weg as Weber pointed out. Writing with the subjectivity and frequent exaggerations that he is well known for, Wiesenthal stated in one article: "The wrapping paper revealed with complete cynical objectivity that this soap was manufactured from Jewish bodies.... The civilized world may not believe the joy with which the Nazis and their women in the General Government thought of this soap. In each piece of
soap they saw a Jew who had been magically put there, and had thus been prevented from growing into a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein." (S. Wiesenthal, "RIF", Der Neue Weg, Number 17/18, 1946, pp. 4-5).
483 / Weber, "Jewish Soap", p. 223.
484 / Ibid., p. 223.
485 / "A Holocaust Belief Cleared Up", Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1990.
486 / Y. Bauer, "Human Fat Soap".
------

Finally, although it is entirely discredited now, plentiful evidence for the soap story was presented at the war crimes trials of the 1940s. 'Eyewitnesses' testified or gave affidavits, providing the prosecutors with specific details such as the names of those involved in the production of the soap, the places where the soap was made, chemical 'recipes' and so forth. Cakes of soap were even presented at the trials as exhibits. As Weber pointed out, the now discredited evidence for the human soap story was no less substantial than that presented at the trials in support of the allegation that the Nazis operated homicidal gas chambers. This fact in itself should dispel the notion that just because a charge was 'proven' at the International Military Tribunal or one of the lesser trials, it should still be considered proven now.

It has been shown that Weber's involvement for about a year in the late 1970s in a radical prowhite organization has been cited repeatedly by his adversaries to discredit him as a Nazi and anti-Semite. Regardless of the validity of these emotion-laden charges, the evidence suggests that Weber is a thoughtful and serious historian whose consistently well-researched and cogently-argued writings on the Holocaust and other historical topics should be evaluated on the same impartial basis as the works of any other scholar. For some years now, Weber has been working on a comprehensive work on the Holocaust issue, tentatively entitled The Final Solution: Legend and Reality. If his already-published writings are any indication, this work promises to become the definitive Revisionist text on this subject.


Other JHR articles

Many articles in the JHR make available a great deal of new information, which is
commendable, but they almost entirely lack highly-developed analysis. The authors appear to be more interested in showing off their learnedness and verbal felicity than in finding a proper balance between description and narration and analysis and explanation. As such, it is frequently difficult to determine the relevance and importance of their new information, or how they have come to terms with the complexities of their fields of inquiry. Yet several other articles in the JHR have been more erudite, and might well be seen as important contributions to the accumulated body of knowledge about the Holocaust. The nature and scope of this summary prevent even a brief survey of these articles being attempted, but it would, nevertheless, be wrong of this writer to proceed without describing and analysing one very important article.

"The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth" was written by Friedrich Paul Berg, a mechanical engineer from New York. [487] Published in the Spring 1984 issue of the JHR [488], Berg's article is a direct scientific challenge to the accepted opinion that of all Jews and others gassed by the Nazis, approximately half were killed by CO, or carbon monoxide (the others being killed by HCN, or Zyklon-B ). As almost the entire Revisionist case against accepted opinion on the Holocaust hinges on whether or not the Nazis murdered people en masse in gas chambers, Berg's detailed article must be looked at closely. His thesis is that the exhaust emissions of diesel engines could indeed have been used to conduct mass murder, but it would have been remarkably difficult and only marginally successful. It could not, in any event, have occurred in the simple manner described in detailed postwar accounts. If Berg is correct the number of Jews allegedly murdered by the Nazis must be dropped by at least one million, and doubt is cast on all other claimed gassings (such as those by Zyklon-B). Hence, Berg's obviously significant claims need to be described and analysed at length.

As Berg pointed out, CO was allegedly used to exterminate humans en masse at the death camps of Belzec, Kulmhof (Chelmno), Lublin (Majdanek), Sobibor and Treblinka, as well as in the notorious diesel gas vans operated by the Einsatzgruppen. [489] The majority of these CO victims were at Belzec,

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487 / Berg gained his B.Sc. in 1965 from the Columbia University School of Mines, after which he worked as a mechanical engineer,technical writer and environmental specialist.
488 / F. B. Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Five, Number One,Spring 1984, pp. 15-46.
489 / Cf. Document 501-PS (IMT, Volume XXVI, pp. 102-110): IMT, Volume VII, pp. 571 ff.; R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 219, 441, 442; et al. 
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Sobibor and Treblinka, where the CO was, as in the gas vans, supposedly generated by diesel engines. [490] This means, wrote Berg, that: 

approximately half of all the Jewish victims of German gas chambers were supposedly gassed with Diesel [sic] exhaust. In other words, the Diesel gas chambers are as important, at least in terms of the number of alleged victims, as the gas chambers that supposedly used Zyklon B and hydrogen cyanide. For at least several months in 1939 and 1940, Diesel engines had supposedly been used as part of the euthanasia program to kill Germans who were feebleminded or incurably ill in Germany. The experience gained from the use of Diesels for euthanasia was supposedly applied later by some of the same people involved with the euthanasia program, such as Reichsamtsleiter Viktor Brack and Kriminalkommisar Christian Wirth, to the killing of Jews in Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor in Eastern Poland.[491]

The problem with this, Berg claimed, is that regardless of its notorious smell diesel exhaust was (and still is) extremely low in poisonous CO, and is, therefore, relatively harmless. From a spark ignition engine (a normal petrol engine) one can easily get seven percent CO, but from a diesel engine one can not even get one percent of that deadly gas. [492] Thus, if the Nazis were going to kill humans with engine exhausts, they would not have used diesel engines, but would have used either spark ignition engines or the exhausts from 'producer gas vehicles' (described below).

Quoting a report by recognized experts in the field of toxicology [493], Berg was able to show that an average CO concentration of 0.4% and above (that is, more than 4,000 parts of CO per million parts of air) is the amount needed to kill people in less than one hour of continual exposure. Concentrations of 0.15% and 0.2% are considered "dangerous" over that duration, which means that "they might kill some people in one hour, especially if the people have, for example, weak hearts." [494] Concentrations lower than 0.15% are not dangerous to humans.

According to accepted opinion, the CO gassings were completed in less than thirty minutes [495], which means, noted Berg, that based on the widely accepted "Henderson's Rule" (% CO x exposure time = Constant for any given toxic effect) a CO concentration of 0.8% would be necessary to cause death. Further, following the same rule one can conclude that a concentration of 0.3% to 0.4% would be "dangerous" for half an hour of exposure. [496] To be effective, therefore, a homicidal gas chamber in which CO was the lethal agent in which death was caused in half an hour or less (as claimed) would need in average CO concentration of between 0.4% and 0.8%, with any concentrations below 0.4% being highly unlikely to cause death.

There are two types of diesel engines, continued Berg: divided combustion chamber engines and undivided combustion chamber engines. The divided chamber category is generally subdivided into precombustion chamber designs and turbulent cell designs. Neither of these divided chamber engines, either at idle or at full load, can possibly produce enough CO to kill anyone in half an hour, as the highest concentration attainable at maximum load (a fuel/air ratio of 0.055) is 0.1% from a turbulent cell diesel [497] 0.1%, Berg noted, was far below the 0.4 to 0.8% necessary to cause death.

------
490 / Cf. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 561, 562, 572; "Chelmno", Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. I, p. 284; "Belzec", Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. I, p. 175 (which describes the use of a "250-horsepower diesel engine" which was "installed outside the gas chambers to generate the carbon monoxide"); M. Gilbert, The Holocaust, pp. 425, 429; et al.
491 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", pp. 17-18. Italics in original. According to Leon Poliakov, more than one and a half million persons were killed by diesel exhaust. L. Poliakov, Harvest of Hate (New York: Schocken Books, 1979), p. 195.
492 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chamber: Myth Within A Myth", p. 24. Berg correctly based this comparison on known and proven data, as published in D. F. Merrion, "Effect of Design Revisions on Two Stroke Cycle Diesel Engine Exhaust", Society of Automotive Engineers Transactions, Volume 77 (1968), paper 6SG422, p. 1535.
493 / Y. Henderson and H. W. Haggard, Noxious Gases and the Principles of Respiration influencing their Action (New York Reinhold Publishing, 1943), p. 168.
494 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", p. 21.
495 / The example given by Berg was the 'confession' of Kurt Gerstein (see above, pp. 38-39), which docs indeed describe a diesel gassing taking thirty minutes. The authoritative, multi-volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, relates how a "gas van" at Chelmno killed Jews with CO in "ten minutes" (Vol. I, p. 284). Although the encyclopedia did not state what type of engine the gas van had, various other sources state that the vans at Chelmno were diesel powered. Therefore, one must conclude that the encyclopedia was meaning that at Chelmno diesel exhaust killed Jews in ten minutes, which is absurd in light of the duration and concentration tables Berg quoted from the analysis of CO poisoning by Henderson and Haggard.
496 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", p. 22.
497 / Ibid., pp. 26, 27. Berg based his figures on very extensive and detailed tests made from the early 1940s onwards by the United States Bureau of Mines to determine whether or not diesel engines could operate in underground mines without endangering miners. Cf. J. C. Holtz, "Safety with mobile diesel-powered equipment underground", Report of Investigations No. 5616, U.S. Dept of the Interior, Bureau of Mines (Washington: 1967).
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Additionally, an undivided chamber diesel produces "only about 0.03% carbon monoxide at idle which is not enough to cause [even] a headache after half an hour of exposure." [498] However, the CO concentrations rise as increasing loads are imposed on such an engine, and at maximum (that is, full) load the concentration is about 0.4%, meaning that at full load only it could perhaps be used to commit murder in thirty minutes. [499]

The problem is that running a diesel engine at full load for periods of half an hour at a time is extremely damaging to the engine, as Berg explained. Further, it is not simply a matter of racing an engine with the transmission in neutral, as one might at first think. That will only impose a slight load upon the engine. One could attain a greater load by letting the clutch slip and pressing on the accelerator, or by jacking up the rear end of the vehicle and applying the brakes while racing the engine. However, in the first suggested possibility the clutch would rapidly burn out and in the second, the brake linings would do the same. The only realistic way to impose a significant – but not full – load on the engine of a stationary vehicle (or a free standing engine), regardless of the risk of damage mentioned above, is to attach a brake dynamometer of some kind, or a loading device such as a generator with an electrical load. Berg argued convincingly that the use of both, whilst possible, was improbable. 

Moreover, and this is an important point, the CO emission levels of an undivided chamber diesel drop very dramatically at lower loads. Even at 80% of full load, which is generally regarded as a safe maximum for continuous operation and which occurs at a fuel/air ratio of 0.045, the CO concentration is only 0.13%, well below the level considered "dangerous" to humans. [500]

Therefore, if Berg is correct (and thus far in our analysis the evidence is in his favour) it would appear that in practice diesel engines could not produce the CO concentrations necessary to kill humans in thirty minutes or less, regardless of the fact that eyewitnesses testimonies state that they did.

Berg also provided sufficient evidence for one to conclude with confidence that the other gases or chemicals contained within diesel exhaust are not capable of killing humans in half an hour or less, although some pollutants in the exhaust, such as nitrous oxides, may cause severe long term effects (including cancer) after several months exposure. [501] He described at length the effects of carbon dioxide, and concluded that the carbon dioxide level of diesel exhaust from an engine under full load – which was about 12% – was dangerous to people with weak hearts but, if sufficient oxygen was available, was not enough to kill most people. [502]

Additionally, he claimed – and quoted several reliable scientific and engineering reports in support [503] – that for a diesel engine to provide exhaust with an oxygen level sufficiently reduced to cause death to at least the majority of persons in a sealed space (9% of volume of air), a fuel/ air ratio of about 0.040 (around three quarters of full load on the engine) would be needed. To guarantee death to all persons in such a space would require an oxygen concentration of less than 6% of volume of air, which would only be produced by a diesel if it was operated at a fuel/air ratio of about 0.048, which is close to full load. This led him to note:

From the above it should be obvious that over most of their operating ranges, Diesels discharge sufficientoxygen so that one can literally inhale pure Diesel exhaust and survive on the oxygen in the exhaust. From idle to at least 3/4 of full load, Diesel exhaust contains sufficient oxygen to sustain human life for at least half an hour. [504] 

Loads above 3/4 of full, it should be remembered, are particularly difficult to attain and maintain.

Regarding the specific use of diesel exhaust in gas chambers, Berg logically pointed out that at the beginning of an execution there would be no CO in the chamber and that as the exhaust fumes were pumped in from the diesel engine the CO concentration would "gradually rise to the level directly inside the exhaust pipe of the Diesel engine without ever being able to exceed that level."

------
498 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", p. 29.
499 / Ibid., p. 29.
500 / Ibid., p. 30.
501 /Ibid., p. 31.
502 / Ibid., p. 34. In contrast, spark ignition engines produce 12% carbon dioxide at idle.
503 / Including E. F. Obert, Internal Combustion Engines and Air Pollution (New York and London: Intext Educational Publishers. 1973); Y. Henderson and H. W. Haggard, Noxious Gases; J. S. Haldane and J. G. Priestly, Respiration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935).
504 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", p. 34.
------

[505] Once it had reached that level, the concentration would remain constant for as long as the engine was running. As noted above, the deadliest arrangement would be an undivided diesel which could give a CO concentration of up to 0.4%. If that concentration was reached and maintained during the 'constant' period, one could safely conclude that the average concentration for the "rising" period, if it did rise steadily, would be around 0.2%.

As there are no records of how long the 'rising' and 'constant' periods lasted during allege[d] gassings, Berg said, we cannot know for sure what the combined average CO concentration was over the entire half hour, although "we can be sure that it would always have been some number less than 0.4%". Moreover: 

If the "rising" period had only been of a short duration, the combined average for half an hour would be only slightly less than 0.4%. If the "rising" period had been longer, the combined average would be lower. If the "rising" and "constant" periods had each lasted for fifteen minutes, the combined average concentration for the entire half hour would be less than 0.3%. According to our previous analysis of toxic effects, 0.3% of CO (for half an hour) is only "dangerous" which means that it could have killed no more than a portion [not all, as claimed] of any group of intended victims. [ 506]

Thus, Berg makes it clear that killing humans within a short duration (half an hour or less) with diesel exhaust, whilst not impossible, was and is extremely difficult. Additionally, it could not have happened in the manner claimed by those who support accepted opinion on the Holocaust. Simply piping the exhaust from a diesel engine into a sealed space (whether it is a gas chamber or the back of a gas van), without any provision for attaining and maintaining a heavy load the engine, would have annoyed the hell out of any group of victims, but would have given them nothing more than a headache. The headache would have been due to the stench and smoke and noise but certainly not to carbon monoxide or lack of oxygen. As a method for committing mass-murder, it would have been a fiasco. [507]

Indeed, for any diesel exhaust arrangement to have been even marginally effective for mass murder a team of specialists would have been needed who were familiar with the carbon monoxide and oxygen emission curves for their particular engine. Berg argued that "such information is probably not known even today by most engineers, despite all the popular concern over pollution." [508] 
Further, the gas chamber designers would have needed to know how to constantly impose upon the engine more than 75% of full load over reasonably long periods, as operating it at any lower loads would not have produced anywhere near the required CO concentration. Yet operating it at over 80% of full load would also mean that they might "after each gassing have had to overhaul and, perhaps, replace the engine because of fouling [by solid material produced at higher loads] and damage from engine smoke." [509] So as to avoid tearing the building apart, the mounting of the engine on the floor of the building would have required a proper foundation with provision to isolate the vibrations for which diesels are well known. In fact, continued Berg, the entire undertaking – especially the fitting of equipment that would impose exactly the right load on the engine – would have "required the expertise of experienced engineers, not just ordinary auto mechanics." [510]

The all-important question Berg stated is: if any persons had been smart enough and resourceful enough to know and do all that was necessary to make a workable Diesel gas chamber, why would they have bothered to try to use a Diesel engine in the first place? For all their efforts they would have had a gas chamber which at the very worst would still have been only marginally effective at its morbid task. For all their efforts they would have had an average concentration of less than 0.4 % carbon monoxide and more than 4 % oxygen. Any common, ordinary gasoline engine without any special attachments would easily have given them ten times as much carbon monoxide at idle as any comparably sized Diesel at full load. Any common, ordinary gasoline engine would easily have given them 7 % carbon monoxide and less than 1 % oxygen. If one had tampered with the carburetor, one could probably have had as much as 12 % carbon monoxide by merely turning one small screw, namely the idle-mixture adjustment screw.

Comparing the two types of engines, with both operating at idle or under light load, the difference is even more dramatic. At idle or under light load any common, ordinary gasoline engine without any special attachments would easily have given more than one hundred times as much carbon monoxide as any comparably sized Diesel.

------
505 / Ibid., p. 35.
506 / Ibid., p. 36.
507 / Ibid., p. 37.
508 / Ibid., p. 37.
509 / Ibid., p. 37. Italics added for emphasis.
510 / Ibid., p. 37.
------

The Diesel gas chamber story is incredible on these grounds alone. However, the story becomes even more incredible when one discovers that far better sources of carbon monoxide, better even than gasoline engines, were readily available to the Germans. Those other sources did not require either Diesel fuel or gasoline. [511]

By "other sources" Berg meant 'producer gas vehicles', which he described in detail. These mostly military (but non-combat) vehicles – used by almost all European nations – burned neither petrol nor oil, but solid fuels such as coal, charcoal or wood. Most burnt wood and as such were called in Germany, Holzgaswagen ("woodgaswagons").[512] The solid fuel was first converted into a mixture of combustible gases by burning in a generator, usually mounted at the vehicle's rear. From the generator the gases were withdrawn and burned in a modified petrol or diesel engine. The combustible gas produced in this manner always contained between 18% and 35% carbon monoxide (as opposed to far less than 1% from diesels), an extremely poisonous level. Indeed, these CO concentrations were so high that even if the exhaust from a producer gas vehicle was blown into a space that was not properly sealed – such us a garage – it would be lethal. The German authorities, of course, were well aware of the highly dangerous gas produced by these vehicles, and implemented special training courses and safety procedures for the many tens of thousands of drivers who drove these vehicles daily. [513] Thus, Berg concluded, if the Germans really wanted to kill humans with engine exhaust, they would never have used "anything as idiotic as Diesel exhaust" [514] (as is claimed in Holocaust literature) and almost certainly would not even have used normal petrol engine exhaust. Rather, they would have used the extremely poisonous gas from producer gas vehicles, many of which carried, for example, supplies into the concentration camps.

Berg also provided an important "postscript". In 1983, he noted, a new scholarly work on the Holocaust was published and well received, containing evidence of a move of historians to distance themselves from the notion that the Germans killed Jews with diesel engines. In Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas ("National Socialist Mass-Murders by Poison Gas") [515], by several very distinguished Holocaust scholars, it is claimed that the engines used to produce the CO for mass execution were not diesels after all, as eyewitnesses had "mistakenly" claimed (pp. 172-174). Instead, they were conventional spark ignition engines which simply burned diesel fuel, presumably to make them more lethal than they would have been using ordinary petrol.

To Berg this new thesis was far more absurd than the ordinary diesel engine/diesel fuel claim, for the simple fact that ordinary petrol engines can not (and could not in the 1940s) run on diesel fuel, and vice-versa. Further, according to the small number of eyewitness testimonies of diesel gassings (including the most detailed and well known of them, the confession of Kurt Gerstein [516148]) the corpses were "bluish" in colour, indicative of asphyxiation (that is, oxygen depletion) and not of CO poisoning, which causes corpses to turn a distinctive "cherry red" or "pink" colour. [517] Whilst this observation – that the corpses were blue – is further evidence that the various testimonies about diesel gassings are internally inconsistent. Berg noted that this observation has been retained in the revised gassing claims advanced in Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas. This, he argued, was another major flaw of the new claims, because exhaust from a spark ignition engine (killing by CO poisoning) could only have caused the bodies to turn cherry red or pink, a fact "clearly stated in most toxicology handbooks" and "probably well known to every doctor and to most, if not all, emergency medical personnel." [518]

------
511 / Ibid., pp. 37, 38.
512 / Ibid., p. 39.
513 / Ibid., pp. 38-39. To support his claims about the producer gas vehicles Berg cited W. Orley, "Entwicklung und Stand der Holzgaserzeuger in Österreich, März 1938" ("Development and Status of Woodgas generators in Austria, March 1938"), in Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift (AZT), No. 11 (April 1939), also AZT, No. 18, from September 1940 and 1941. By the end of the war many military vehicles – including some of Germany's most formidable tanks, the Tigers – were driven with producer gas.
514 / Ibid., p. 39.
515 / E. Kogon, K. Langbein, A. Rückerl, et al. (eds.), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas: Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1983).
516 / Gerstein should have been able to distinguish between a diesel or spark ignition engine, as he qualified as an engineer in 1931 and as a certified mining surveyor in 1935. Further, he worked before the war at a materials procurement job for mining machinery. Because of his specialized background in mining and the specific job he did, he would have been very familiar with the emissions of various types of machinery used in mines.
517 / As evidence, Berg cited S. Kaye, Handbook of Emergency Toxicology Fourth Edition (Springfield: C. C. Thomas, 1980), pp. 187-188; and C. J. Poison and R. N. Tattersall, Clinical Toxicology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969), pp. 604-621. The present writer was unable to obtain the former source, but agrees that the latter supports Berg's statements.
518 / Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", p. 20.
------

In conclusion, Berg has argued thoughtfully and dispassionately that whilst it was not impossible for the Germans (or anyone else) to have conducted mass executions using the exhaust emissions of diesel engines, it would have been extremely difficult and only marginally successful, and could not have occurred in the simple manner described in postwar testimonies. His conclusions are supported by reliable and reputable engineering studies, which were based on extensive testing and research. Nothing indicates that Berg deliberately misused this evidence to support or defend any preconceived opinions that he may have had about diesel gassings. The present writer was able to check almost all the sources quoted or cited by Berg (even the German AZT reports), and can confirm that, with the exception of one inconsequential transcription error, all quotes and citations are accurate and bear out his claims. To his credit Berg wisely avoided ruling out the possibility of diesel gassings. Instead, he concluded that because of the extreme difficulties in attaining and maintaining life threatening concentrations of CO, and because far deadlier concentrations of CO could easily have been gained from ordinary petrol engines or producer gas generators (which emitted an exceptionally lethal concentration), the allegation that the Nazis killed nearly a million people with diesel exhaust must be treated with extreme circumspection. Berg told this writer that there is a way in which diesel engines could have been used for mass murder, but its method of execution is very different from that described in all sources attesting to Jews and others being murdered in diesel gas chambers and gas vans. One would have to "recirculate" the exhaust gas in the engine. As Berg explained:

The simplest way to "recirculate" is to operate the Diesel in an enclosed room, perhaps protected from damage by a chain link fence if the room is to be a homicidal gas chamber, so that the Diesel gradually or quickly, depending on the relative sizes of the room and engine, consumes all the oxygen in the room. Eventually, everyone in the room will be dead and the engine will shut itself down due to insufficient oxygen.... Basically, all one is really doing with such an arrangement is suffocating the victims rather than "gassing" them with Diesel exhaust... To use a Diesel in this way to simply burn oxygen is absurd – but, once again, not impossible. A producer gas generator in such a room would do essentially the same thing but far more effectively since it would also be adding at least 18% CO almost immediately. Even an ordinary gasoline engine would be better than a Diesel since in addition to consuming the oxygen, one would be adding at least 7% CO to the room as soon as the engine starts. As a device to burn oxygen, Diesels make little practical sense. They burn fuel at a miserly rate. For example, Diesel truck and bus drivers routinely leave their engines running for hours at a time when they are parked. The oxygen consumed is comparably low as well. [519]

Sources relating to the alleged diesel gassings do not mention the engines being in the gas chambers. On the contrary, they clearly state that pipes ran into the sealed areas from the exhaust pipes of the engines, which were close outside (or at the front, in the case of gas vans). There is also no mention of engines "recirculating" their exhausts in any way, but this is perhaps understandable: if the alleged gassings actually occurred, few eyewitnesses would have had the mechanical expertise allowing them to make sense of what they saw. They could not be expected to include details of a technical nature in their subsequent accounts.

The comprehension level of those who claimed to have seen gassings is an important issue. It may be that regular gasoline engines or producer gas generators – and not diesel engines – were used by the Nazis to commit the alleged crimes. Lacking technical expertise, some of the eyewitnesses may have mistaken these other types of engines for diesels. However, some of the clearest statements about diesel exhausts are by people – such as Kurt Gerstein – with enough engineering knowledge to recognize the distinctive noise and smell of a diesel engine. One can not simply dismiss Berg's well-argued thesis on the grounds that the sources must have all been mistaken about the types of engines they describe.

The present writer recognizes – despite his limited knowledge of mechanical engineering and toxicology – that Berg has cast considerable doubt on the sources attesting to large numbers of Jews and others being murdered in diesel gas chambers and gas vans. Historians upholding received opinion may have to search out new and more reliable evidence, as their current sources on diesel gassings – which do not attest to the use of regular gasoline engines or producer gas generators – are shown to be lacking in reliability and plausibility. However, the doubt Berg casts on these sources should not yet be seen as 'proof' that such gassings did not occur. His work is clearly the first word on the subject, and is therefore not to be ignored, but it should not be considered the final word. Before Berg's findings could be considered definitive, both they, and the evidence for the alleged diesel gassings, would have to be rigorously analysed and tested by other suitably-qualified engineers and toxicologists, preferably those with no involvement in the Holocaust debate.

------
519 / Letter from Berg to the present writer, February 25, 1992.
------

Whilst only three or four articles from The Journal of Historical Review have been described and analysed here, it has been shown that these articles – which are amongst the best JHR articles on the Holocaust – are not anti-Semitic or racist, as anti-Revisionists insist. The articles contain no evidence of deliberate falsification or racial vilification. On the contrary, they are well researched, meticulously documented, and thoughtfully and dispassionately argued. They contribute substantially to our knowledge of what did and did not happen to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis.

There have, nonetheless, been articles published in the JHR which contain racist and anti-Jewish statements. One such article is Ivor Benson's "Russia 1917-1918: A Key to the Riddle of an Age of Conflict" [520], published in the Fall 1990 issue. This article explores the role Jews played in the origins and rise of Bolshevism. Such an investigation is not, of course, anti-Jewish in itself. In fact, Benson's article, which displays his considerable knowledge of the subject, was reasonably well-written (albeit in a journalistic style) and his conclusions, although very critical of the many Jews involved in the Russian Revolution, were supported by evidence. Had he refrained from making unsustained allegations about Jewish morality or the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, one could not have found fault with his article. However, to the discredit of the JHR's Editorial Advisory Committee, which should have insisted upon their deletion [192] (which would not have weakened Benson's arguments), several such comments were present in the published article. For example, Benson wrote:

In the long haul of history what does all this mean? One fact of supreme importance emerges: The Jewish role in history has been undeviatingly destructive, the very opposite of creative. Any Jew who finds personal salvation in a creative relationship with the rest of mankind – Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Disraeli, etc. – ceases at once to be a Jew. For only they can create, making things and making them work, who can achieve a sympathetic identification with things and people, loving them for their own sake and not only as a means of gratifying an appetite for possession and power. [521]

These are not anti-Zionist or anti-Judaic statements: they are blatantly anti-Jewish, and should not be found in an academic journal. Anti-Jewish or racially prejudicial statements like this have, unfortunately, even appeared from time to time in many reputable newspapers, magazines and academic periodicals. But the frequency of their appearance in the JHR suggests either that its Editorial Advisory Committee fails to thoroughly edit articles submitted for publication or that it finds these statements agreeable and acceptable for publication.

Despite this disturbing willingness to publish the occasional anti-Jewish or racist comment, however, it would be difficult to prove that the IHR is motivated by racism or anti-Semitism. It sells numerous books by non-European scholars, including Akira Kohehi, Michi Nishiura Weglyn (both Japanese), Abdel-Majid Trab Zemzemi (Iranian), Sami Mussalam (Palestinian) and Lenni Brenner, Noam Chomsky and Simha Flapan (who are Jewish). Additionally, many JHR articles have been written by non-Americans, including Valentyn Moroz (Ukrainian), Enrique Aynat Eknes (Spanish), Michiko Hasegawa, Hideo Miki (both Japanese) and Ranjan Borra (Indian). [522] Lastly, Thomas Marcellus, the IHR's director, told the present writer that whilst no blacks have attended Revisionist conferences, several had been invited. Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, a leading Jewish scholar and anti-Zionist commentator, briefly attended the Tenth International Revisionist Conference (October 1990), and numerous other Jews have been invited. [523] At the eleventh such conference (October 1992) a well-received speech was given by David Cole, a young Jewish Revisionist.


The IHR's publication and distribution efforts

As well as publishing the quarterly JHR, the Institute for Historical Review publishes seven or eight times a year (every month except the months the JHR is

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520 / I. Benson, "Russia 1917-1918: A Key to the Riddle of an Age of Conflict", The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Ten, Number Three, Fall 1990, pp. 323-351.
521 / Ibid., p. 351.
522 / Cf. IHR Catalog of Historical Revisionist Books, Audiotapes and Videotapes, 1992 edition.
523 / Letter from Marcellus to the present writer, dated August 6, 1991, p. 2.
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published) an informal and frequently-combative eight page newsletter, called simply the IHR Newsletter. Ninety issues had been published up to February 1993, all containing commentary on new publications, new research findings and current affairs relevant to the field of Revisionist study. Subscribers to the JHR receive the newsletter at no extra cost.

The IHR is also a major publisher of Revisionist books, the majority of which are not on [the] subject of the Holocaust. By September 1982 the institute had published a new edition of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, the Revisionist 'classic' edited by Harry Elmer Barnes, and had another ten books in preparation. [524] By the end of that year three of those books were published, including Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace, edited by George Pile. Throughout the 1980s the Institute published several new titles every year – many of them being English translations of German or French Revisionist works – so that by the end of that decade it had published a total of twenty-three new titles in English. [525]

The Noontide Press actually began publishing Holocaust Revisionist books some years before the IHR, its sister company. The two most important of these books are the above-mentioned Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur Butz, and The Six Million Reconsidered, by William N. Grimstad, the book's "Research Editor". [526] The latter book, subjective and poorly researched and written, is perhaps the only major Holocaust Revisionist book which is overtly anti-Jewish. Whilst the present writer believes that no serious historical thesis – regardless of how unpalatable it may appear – should be discounted because of the author's own views on race, religion or politics, Grimstad's text is so crowded with his own (usually unsupported) opinions and racial theories that his historical theses simply cannot be considered 'serious' scholarship. Grimstad began his attack on Jews by ridiculing the Talmud, the volumes containing the legal code which forms the basis of Jewish religious law. To him the Talmud is evil and immoral:

The bloody, the sadistic, the obscene is a preoccupation of the Zionist-Talmudist "sages" and they return to it again and again, like the biblical dog to his vomit.... One could go deliriously on and on: the Talmud resembles a set of encyclopedias in size and scope. But distaste quickly sets in, and we finally have to stop and consider: how credible are claims of gigantic persecutions that have constantly through all history been made by a people whose holiest scriptures are couched in such incredible terms? In psychiatry there is a word for the mentally unbalanced condition characterized by a preoccupation with and speaking of filth: coprolagnia. Is this, perhaps, a trait of the Zionist Talmudists? Does it indicate an unhealthy compulsion, or even [194] some fundamental moral aberration? If a man chatters about raping baby girls mid the wonders of dung one minute (or subscribes to a "law" that sanctions this) and the next minute claims that six millions of his fellow Talmudists were done to death in a few months in Germany and Poland – how seriously shall we take him? [527]

To support this view Grimstad quoted numerous passages from the Talmud which would appear to the uninitiated to uphold his views. However, as would be obvious to someone with even a basic background in Talmudic studies, Grimstad quoted the passages entirely out of context and interpreted ungenerously and in a way that no Jewish readers would.

He also quoted, and misquoted, passages from the Talmud in an ill-considered attempt to prove that ancient Jews had genocidal intentions towards non-Jews ("Zion's Own 'Six Million' plans"). Even more bizarre, using Old Testament scriptures from no less than 2,000 years ago as his only evidence, he insisted that biblical Jews committed atrocities against their own children – such as offering them to the glory of Moloch, the fire god – which were at least as bad as those committed by the Nazis against Jewish children. For example:

Today, some of the most ghastly stories in The Myth of the Six Million tell of SS troopers seizing Jewish babies by the legs, dashing their brains out against walls and throwing the unfortunates into the roaring Auschwitz furnaces. Accepting for argument that the Germans did such things, it is interesting to speculate why no one repudiates or condemns the same acts by early Jews, recorded in scripture. [528]

In a lengthy chapter entitled "Jews and Organized Crime" Grimstad claimed that the leadership of organized crime in America is "full of Zionists far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population". [529] He did provide evidence for the involvement of numerous Jews in organized crime, but it should be noted that he focused only on Jews, and provided no comparable analysis of Italian or Sicilian organized crime. In fact, he avoided doing so by arguing that Jewish "underworld overlords" – who were

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524 / Cf. IHR Newsletter, September 1982, p. 8.
525 / IHR Newsletter 71, February 1990, p. 7.
526 / W. N. Grimstad, (Research Editor), The Six Million Reconsidered: Is the 'Nazi Holocaust' Story a Zionist Propaganda Ploy?, Volume One (Torrance: The Noontide Press, 1977.
527 / Ibid., pp. 27-28.
528 / Ibid., p. 42.
529 / Ibid., p. 53.
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heavily involved in the "Zionist rape of Palestine" (that is, the establishment of Israel) – invented the Italian-Sicilian gangster stereotype in the first place through their control of the film industry. Concluding that chapter, he wrote: "Finally we are left with a question: To the extent that Zionists are actively involved in professional crime, do we not have the duty to discount their claims of being innocent victims of political crimes." [530]

Another of Grimstad 's principal arguments is that Marxism/Communism is the Jewish political movement responsible for the deaths of more than sixty million people in the twentieth century. Not only were Marx and his initial supporters Jewish, he wrote, but "Above the noisy puppet stage of Communist agitation, unseen and unsuspected by the uprooted and distracted Gentile "masses," has always fluttered the bejewelled hand of the Zionist plutocrat." [531] Even the infamous CHEKA was comprised mainly of Jews, who were used to liquidate "all leadership elements of the Gentile Russia populace who offered any conceivable threat or alternative to the Bolshevik usurpation." [532] Soviet Jews were also leaders in the fields of industry and economics, continued Grimstad.

There can be no denying that a disproportionately high number of Jews were prominent in the upper ranks of government and industry in the Soviet Union, especially in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. It is also true that in the same period very many Jews were active in the leadership of the CHEKA, and then in its principal successor agencies, the NKVD and KGB. It is not anti-Jewish to investigate the Jewish role in the Soviet system. But to insist, as Grimstad did, that certain Jews have been using Marxism and Soviet Communism as part of an "international conspiracy" to establish Jewish mastery over the gentile world is, in the present writer's opinion, indicative of an extremely Judeophobic ideology. [533] This opinion is reinforced by an analysis of his above-mentioned specious arguments and conclusions on the immorality allegedly encouraged in the Talmud, on Jewish genocidal intentions towards non-Jews, and on Jews in organized crime.

His discussion of the Nazi persecution of Jews also reflects his intense Judeophobia. One of his principal reasons for doubting (and mocking) the accepted opinion that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, a large percentage of them in gas chambers, is that the majority of people who propound that opinion are Jews. Jews, in his Weltanschauung, are very difficult to believe on matters of their own oppression because they suffer from "persecution mania" [534] and have always grossly exaggerated the magnitude of their afflictions and maltreatment.

He provided absolutely no evidence to support the view that there was no Nazi policy of exterminating Jews, that there were no mass murders of Jews and others by the Einsatzgruppen, or that there were no gas chambers for committing systematic mass murder. He did, nonetheless, unprofessionally ridicule several books written by former internees because he felt that the authors lacked credibility, displayed sympathy towards Communism, or "seem[ed] to have a thing about excrement" (a charge he also leveled at the writers of the Talmud). [535] Further, he derided the way in which Jewish people commemorate the Holocaust, and even stated in one place that because "shock value of body-pile photos has waned" the pro-Zionist press has intentionally chosen to prominently display photos and stories of Jewish Holocaust commemoration services, "to impress the familiar Zionist atrocity lore on pious Christians." [536]

Thus, it is apparent that Grimstad's poorly written, Judeophobic The Six Million Reconsidered is not, despite its title, a serious re-evaluation of the evidence for and against accepted opinion on the Holocaust. Instead, it is an anti-Jewish attempt to prove that the Holocaust is just one (albeit the biggest) of the very many fabricated atrocity stories advanced by the Jewish people, who suffer from a unique persecution complex, over the last three thousand years. In any event, Jews are not victims, if we are to believe Grimstad's unsupported claims:

------
530 / Ibid., p. 63.
531 / Ibid., p. 107.
532 / Ibid., p. 109.
533 / He probably does not resent or hate all Jews. Grimstad himself insists that when he writes of the heinous activities of "the Jews" or "Zionists" he is not meaning all Jews: "Experience and observation suggest a "hardcore" of perhaps ten per cent of the Jewish
community who fully commit themselves to the mistaken projects of the ruling oligarchy. The others are more or less coerced into supporting these things". (Ibid., p. 15).
534 / Ibid., p. 139. Grimstad also refers to the Jews' "unhealthy dwelling upon the idea of their own annihilation".
535 / Ibid., p. 75. As evidence of this alleged Jewish fascination for excrement, Grimstad weakly pointed out that one ex-internee described a camp which had only one latrine for 32,000 women.
536 / Ibid., p. 82.
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they are victimizers, responsible – through their involvement in organized crime, their "rape of Palestine", and behind-the-scenes manipulation of Communism – for the deaths of tens of millions of peoples. To its discredit, the IHR sold Grimstad's unscholarly book for many years, until 1992. In 1991 it highly recommended it, describing it in its catalogue as 

a superbly written, sumptuously illustrated examination of the Holocaust propaganda – and what it is meant to hide – by a leading modern day student of Jewry.... [It] makes an excellent gift for the bright high schooler or college student, as well as a fine introduction to the darker side of the Jewish question for anyone. [537]

Although the IHR is opposed to the censorship of peoples' views (regardless of how distasteful they appear), by selling such a subjective, unscholarly and anti-Jewish book it has damaged its credibility as a 'serious' historical institute. It is not the type of book that should be promoted by an institute "interested in rehabilitating the truth" and which claims to be "non-ideological and non-partisan". [538]

The many Holocaust Revisionist titles published by the IHR itself include The 'Holocaust': Questions and Answers, by Charles E. Weber, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, by Walter N. Sanning; The Real Eichmann Trial or The Incorrigible Victors, by Paul Rassinier, The Great Holocaust Trial, by Michael A. Hoffman II; Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence by Wilhelm Stäglich, and The 'Confessions' of Kurt Gerstein, by Henri Roques. Whilst Hoffman's book (about the First Zündel trial) is subjective and decidedly unscholarly, none of these books show signs of deliberate falsification of historical evidence.

As well as publishing and distributing its own Revisionist books, the IHR distributes books and video-cassettes – of which only a minority are on the subject of the Holocaust – by other publishing companies. Amongst these are several important Holocaust Revisionist books, such as T[h]ies Christophersen's memoir and Richard Harwood's booklet, and The Leuchter Report, which is analysed at length in a following chapter. The IHR also sells Carlos Porter's lengthy Made in Russia: The Holocaust [539], a compilation of the dozens of allegedly incredible or implausible Holocaust claims advanced by the Allies – particularly the Soviets – at the International Military Tribunal. As many of these claims have been dealt with or touched upon in other places within this thesis, a critique of Porter's book is unnecessary – suffice to say that it contains photocopies and photographs of hundreds of pages of the trial transcripts and documents accepted as exhibits, allowing the reader to see for himself just how irrational some of the claims were.

The IHR, believing that the America media was presenting Revisionism in an extremely bad light and that their own publishing efforts were not effectively countering this, initiated the IHR Radio Project in early 1986. This involved Bradley R. Smith, author of the above mentioned Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist and a former editor of the IHR Newsletter, mailing out a "Radio Project press packet" (containing a brief outline of the Revisionist position on something currently in the news, such as a new Holocaust film) to hundreds of radio stations in the hope that some would invite Smith on the air to express his views. [540]

The success of Smith's radio project was remarkable. In the first eighteen months Smith appeared on almost ninety radio stations, thereby presenting Holocaust Revisionist arguments to a total audience estimated at between 4.5 million and 6 million persons. [541] In January 1988 the IHR Radio Project changed its name to the IHR Media Project, reflecting a shift in emphasis from radio shows to radio and television shows. Again Smith's effort have met with success; to date he has appeared on nearly three hundred radio programmes and on several widely-watched television shows, including The Mort Downey Show and The Jerry Williams Show.

There is no doubt that much of Smith's success is due to his own personality and skills. As a slightly overweight, bespectacled man in his sixties, with grey hair and beard, he looks more like a kindly uncle or grandfather than the neo-Nazi or fascist his opponents try to present him as. That he is not a neo-Nazi or fascist quickly becomes apparent to audiences when he candidly explains that, in fact, he has been a Libertarian (which is politically 'left') for several decades,

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537 / IHR Catalog of Historical Revisionist Books, Audiotapes and Videotapes, 1991 edition, p. 7. It is absent from the 1992 catalogue.
538 / A few facts about the Institute for Historical Review (IHR pamphlet), p. 1.
539 / C. W. Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (Historical Review Press, 1988).
540 / IHR Newsletter 38, April 1986, pp. 1, 3.
541 / IHR Newsletter 55, January 1988, p. 3.
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and as such has absolutely no regard for Nazism, fascism or any other form of authoritarian or totalitarian government. The charge of racism often leveled at Revisionists is also totally inappropriate in Smith's case, because he is married to a Mexican Indian with whom he has children. 

Smith, who is not a scholar, has a tendency to over-emphasize the importance of inconsequential details, such as, by way of illustration, a silly statement Elie Wiesel made in one of his books. Yet Smith is an articulate and persuasive speaker, with the ability to simplify complex arguments and issues so that they are understood by even the most uninformed members of his audiences. Further, despite often extreme provocation from hostile talk-show hosts, other invited speakers and members of the public – including Rabbis, members of the militant JDL and former concentration camp internees, who have abused him on many occasions – Smith has the ability to remain calm and argue dispassionately. For the IHR in particular (which has suffered from an image problem since its inception), and Holocaust Revisionism in general, Bradley Smith is the perfect spokesman.

Smith also serves as the head of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), which he and Mark Weber founded in 1987. [542] This organization operates from Smith's house in Visalia, California. It is independent of the IHR, although the latter endorses its work and supports it whenever possible. One of CODOH's principal activities is placing advertisements in university campus newspapers. These are in the form of short introductory articles challenging accepted opinion on the Holocaust, and pleas for open debate on the subject.

During the end of 1991 and the first half of 1992 Smith caused a national furor when an article he penned – "The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate" – was published as a full page advertisement in the student newspapers of numerous universities. These included, to name just the first few: the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (October 24), Duke University at Durham, N.C. (November 5), Northeastern Illinois University at DeKalb (November 11), Cornell University at Ithaca, N.Y. (November 18) and Rutgers University at New Brunswick, N.J. (December 3). At each university large protests, and denunciations from student groups and local Jewish leaders, followed the article's publication. Smith was accused of racism and anti-Semitism, despite his article containing nothing defamatory towards Jews or any other race or ethnic group. By the middle of December 1991 the controversy had attracted the attention of the national media and even one or two newspapers overseas. [543] With the exception of one article, which was well researched and relatively impartial [544], the entire media coverage was disparaging to Smith and Revisionism.


Opposition to the IHR

The response to Smith's newspaper advertisements is, however, arguably mild in comparison with the way the IHR has suffered at the hands of its opponents over the years. Whilst it is not possible to discuss in detail even the worst examples of this opposition, a few important cases will be touched on briefly. First, the institute has not only faced adversaries from outside its own ranks, but has also had to contend with efforts made to destroy it from within. In 1981 Lewis Brandon, the institute's talented but egocentric director, was forced to resign. This was because of his unprofessional handling of the $50,000 reward offer (reopening, without authority, the offer to Mermelstein after it had officially expired) and because he refused to be present on the institute's premises, merely to safeguard its property, during a JDL protest. When he left the IHR "he tried to abscond with a $4,000 check made out to himself." [545]

McCalden, as he then chose to call himself again, almost immediately set up a rival Revisionist organization, Truth Missions, and began to publish a very expensive newsletter called David McCalden Revisionist Newsletter. Almost every issue contained vitriolic attacks on the IHR and its founder, Willis Carto (whose authority he resented), which were obviously intended to draw grass roots support away from the IHR to himself. This became especially evident in July

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542 / Cf. IHR Newsletter 51, August 1987, p. 1.
543 / Michigan Daily, November 22, 1991; New York Times, November 10, 1991: Washington Post, December 21, 1991; Editor & Publisher, December 21, 1991; Los Angeles Times, December 23, 1991; Jerusalem Post Int Ed., November 26, 1991, January 25, 1992; et al.
544 / K. Bishop, "Hoping to Change Minds Of Young on Holocaust", New York Times, December 23, 1991, p. 8. Regarding the CODOH controversy, cf. IHR Newsletter 84, January 1992.
545 / Letter from Thomas Marcellus to the present writer, dated August 6, 1991, p. 2.
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1982, when the institute discovered that an employee named Nancy Sawitzky (a shipping clerk) had photocopied the entire mailing list and had secretly supplied it, with copies of other important documents, to McCalden. When confronted with what she had done, Sawitzky flew into a terrible rage and tried to assault the new director, Tom Marcellus. [546] Further, McCalden – through his Jewish girlfriend – was involved in passing some of the stolen documents to William Cox, the attorney for Mel Mermelstein, who was then in the middle of a majorlawsuit against the institute. [547]

The IHR sent McCalden a formal demand notice, dated July 19, 1982, stating that he must return the stolen mailing list and pay the institute an indemnity of $40,000 for his previous illegal use of it. Yet McCalden defiantly continued to use it, sending IHR subscribers his Revisionist publications, which continued to attack both it and Carto. It is difficult to ascertain how many subscribers McCalden 'poached' off the IHR, or what other damage he did, suffice to say that in the early years of the institute McCalden was one of its major problems. [548] Of the institute's 'external' opponents, there is no doubt that the JDL has been the most vicious. Throughout the 1980s this militant Jewish group was involved in a lengthy series of violent attacks against the IHR and individual Revisionists. Several examples from the early to mid 1980s will be given, yet these represent only the main attacks on Revisionists associated with the IHR, and do not include the many attacks on the JDL's other enemies. In January 1981 a firebomb was thrown into the front windows of the IHR, damaging a portion of the building. In April 1981 the JDL held a demonstration in front of the institute, during which an officer of the institute was thrown to the ground and assaulted. In May 1982 the home of Dr. George Ashley, a Revisionist historian, was bombed. In September 1982 the institute's front windows were destroyed by gunshots. In December 1982 Dr. Ashley's home was ransacked and damaged to the value of $20,000. In July 1984 Dr. Ashley received bomb threats, for which a JDL member was arrested. In April 1985 the car of Dr. Charles Weber, anotherRevisionist, was badly vandalized, with a note left from the JDL threatening to escalate the attacks into bombings. In May 1985 a bomb exploded at the home of Dr. Ashley. The letters JDL were spray-painted onto the footpath, and JDL leader Irving Rubin stated to the media "But its too bad Mr. Ashley wasn't blown up." In July 1985 Irving Rubin demanded that city officials in Torrance pass an ordinance "aimed at expelling" the IHR from the municipality. Rubin threatened riots if the ordinance was not passed. In almost every case mentioned, the JDL has either left proof of their involvement at the scene of the crime, or has later claimed responsibility. [549]

The worst attack of all, however, occurred in the early hours of the morning on Independence Day (July 4), 1984. The office-warehouse complex of the IHR was completely gutted by a firebomb, destroying $300,000 worth of Revisionist books (over 90% of all stocks) and another $100,000 worth of equipment, including the institute's typesetting machine. Thus, the IHR, and therefore Revisionism in America, was effectively destroyed. [550]

The institute has always exaggerated the importance of this arson, calling it at the time, for example, "the most physically destructive act of political terrorism in the history of the American Republic ... a terror raid that rang the death bell of freedom of expression in America – indeed the beginning of the end of freedom itself " [551] Yet this act of terrorism was reprehensible and deserved condemnation. Several prominent scholars did condemn the arson attack, including David Irving, who wrote that he "was deeply shocked to hear of the firebomb attack on your premises.... The inaction of the Torrance police department since then is also disturbing".

Echoing these sentiments, John Toland, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, wrote:

When I learned of the torching of the office-warehouse of the Institute for Historical Review I was shocked. And when I heard no condemnation of this act of terrorism on television and read no protests in the editorial pages of our leading newspapers or from the halls of academia, I was dismayed and incensed. Where are those defenders of democracy who over the years have so vigorously protested the burning of books by Hitler? Are they only summer soldiers of 

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546 / Ibid., p. 2. Cf. also IHR Newsletter, August 13, 1982.
547 / The IHR 1982 Annual Report, p. 2.
548 / For a detailed analysis of the McCalden conflict, cf. Dossier On A Revisionist Crank.
549 / For evidence of these JDL attacks, cf. The Daily Breeze, March 20, 1981, July 5,1984, September 21, 1984, July 31, 1985; Daily News, December 9, 1982; Tulsa Tribune, April 12, 1985; Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1985, August 20, 1985; Instauration, October 1984; The IHR 1982 Annual Report; The Zionist Terror Network; et al.
550 / Cf. The Daily Breeze, September 21, 1984.
551 / IHR Newsletter, Special Edition, August 1984, p. 1.
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democracy, selective in their outrage? I call on all true believers in democracy to join me in public denunciation of the recent burning of books in Torrance, California.[552]

However, as Toland noted, there was no condemnation from the media or important public figures. In fact, the media seemed to blame the institute itself for what it suffered, as if, somehow, it deserved to be destroyed by a terrorist's firebomb. Even the press conference held in front of the burntout building by Irving Rubin of the JDL, at which he gloated over the arson, failed to attract adverse media attention. This is a clear indication of the animosity the public and the media felt towards the IHR and Holocaust Revisionism. One might have thought that the mainstream academic community, even though it totally disagreed with what Revisionists were saying, would have spoken up for their right to say it without fear of violence. But American academia, possibly to its shame, remained silent.

Although it lost its promises, furniture, equipment, records and almost its entire stock of books and tapes (and had to postpone a major conference it had planned for September 1984) [553], the IHR managed, but only just, to recover from the Fourth of July arson attack. Nonetheless, two years later it was still experiencing major financial difficulties. This resulted, for example, in the Radio Project being suspended for three month[s] in 1987 and the four volumes of the JHR for that year not being published at all. [554] By January 1987 the institute, which at great cost had moved in March 1986 into new premises in Costa Mesa – largely through the financial support of the subscribers who responded to several IHR appeals – was $150,000 in debt. [555]

It took a few more years for the institute to reduce this debt and return to financial stability (although without contributions from supporters it would still run at a loss), but its recovery was so complete that in July 1989 the institute's director was able to state proudly:

In the five years since the Institute was devastated by arson, we have distributed more than 150,000 books, more than 4,000 audio and video cassettes, published eighteen issues of The Journal of Historical Review and 40 [sic] issues of the IHR newsletter. During this same period we have produced and distributed millions of pamphlets and promotional pieces that have been mailed around the world. [556]

The State Department, by choosing to deny entry into the nation to scheduled IHR conference speakers, embroiled itself in the controversy over the IHR and Revisionism. To give just one example of this government intervention, in 1987 the State Department denied entry to three Revisionists scheduled to participate in the Eighth International Revisionist Conference (October 9-11, 1987): 
Professor Walter Beveraggi Allende of Argentina, Ivor Benson of South Africa and Ernst Zündel of Canada. [557] Whilst it is, of course, the right of any government to deny entry to convicted criminals or dangerous political extremists, the only 'crimes' committed by these three were their perceptions and descriptions of the Holocaust according to their own understanding of the evidence.

Anti-Revisionists have also attempted to deprive the IHR of its First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, by trying to prevent several of the international Revisionist conferences from occurring at all. On one or two occasions they were almost successful. For example, only three days before the Ninth International Revisionist Conference (February 18-20, 1989) the JDL pressured the hotel in which the conference was to be held into canceling the legal contract they had signed eight months earlier with the IHR, which had at that point paid the hotel a cash deposit. [558] The JDL achieved this by intimidating the management and threatening them with protests. Luckily for the IHR, it managed to find another hotel willing, even at such short notice, to stage the conference. A legalcontract was signed and a $10,000 deposit handed over. However, less than twenty-four hours before the conference was due to open that "hotel also succumbed to pressure and cancelled its contract. 180 Revisionists, therefore, would have been without meal and conference facilities had it not been for the last minute assistance of a kind businessman. He fed the attendees in his restaurant and arranged for the conference – which was successful despite these major problems – to be held in the large basement of a

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552 / Quoted in The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Six, Number One, Spring 1985, p. 8.
553 / For the damage done in the arson attack, cf. IHR Newsletter Special Edition, August 1984.
554 / IHR Newsletter 44, January 1987, p. 6.
555 / Ibid.
556 / Official IHR letter from Thomas Marcellus to all supporters, dated July 1989, p. 2. For a detailed summary of the IHR's financial situation in 1989, cf. "Director's Corner", IHR newsletter 64, February 1989, pp. 6-7.
557 / Cf. IHR Newsletter 53, October-November 1987, p. 1.
558 / T. Marcellus, "Circuitous Suppression", The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Nine, Number One, Spring 1989, p. 118.
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local church. [559] Thus, Jewish anti-Revisionists, displaying a disregard for civil liberties, tried and almost succeeded in preventing the legal and peaceful gathering of a group of people whose views conflicted with their own. As the Los Angeles Times reported, and this is perhaps an appropriate quote with which to close this section on opposition to the IHR (and Revisionism in general):

The [Jewish Defense] League was out of touch with the U. S. Constitution in thinking that it had the right to try and stifle the constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly.... If groups or individuals can silence anyone whose opinion they don't like, everyone loses. The JDL was successful in forcing several hotels to turn away the Institute for Historical Review. But the institute was able to hold its private meeting. If it hadn't, much more than a conference would have been lost. [560]

In conclusion then, it has been shown that the IHR is a successful historical institute, which has generally operated – with the main exceptions being some foolish and gimmicky activities in its formative years – in much the same way as all other historical institutes. That is, it publishes a regular newsletter and a quarterly journal, sponsors and publishes new research, and holds international conferences at which scholars have exchanged ideas, coordinated work and presented papers. Yet, unlike all other such institutes, the IHR has been the object of a great deal of publicly-expressed antipathy. This is principally because it challenges accepted opinion on the Holocaust, an action seen by detractors as an attempt to whitewash the massive crimes of the Nazi regime. They argue that only neo-Nazis or anti-Semites would express doubts about, and demand evidence for, the Nazi gassings of Jews. Accordingly, these detractors have focused their efforts on trying to uncover proof that the IHR's staff and scholars possess preconceived opinions in favor of Hitler and the Third Reich and deliberately arrange their evidence to support or defend those preconceptions.

Discovering that some staff and scholars had these preconceptions was not too difficult for the IHR's detractors: they correctly pointed out that several people involved in the formation or management of the IHR held right-wing political views or had been involved in associations warmly disposed to Nazism (such as the National Alliance). However, they have been unable to demonstrate that all, or even a majority of, those closely associated with the IHR possess these preconceptions. They have also avoided mentioning the fact that many key IHR personnel or editorial advisors, such as Bradley R. Smith, John Bennett, Samuel Konkin III and Robert Faurisson, possess political ideologies that are entirely at variance with Nazism, racism, anti-Semitism, or any other type of
socially-objectionable 'ism'.

Further, and far more importantly, the IHR' s detractors have failed to demonstrate that those persons with preconceived feelings about the Third Reich have been led by those preconceptions to an improper or dishonest consideration of the evidence. Because few of the theses advanced by those associated with the IHR have been studied and judged according to their own merits or demerits in a thoughtful and even-handed manner, it is apparent that the institute's detractors have not really sought to establish such a causal link between the Revisionists' interests, beliefs and values, and their historical theses. In fairness to the IHR's detractors, very few of them are trained in the discipline of history and capable of challenging those historical theses. Moreover, few of them are sufficiently informed about such complex matters as truth, objectivity and bias to be able to see the issues clearly. They cannot comprehend that a person's historical theses can coincide with their interests, current beliefs or points of view, and yet still have been based on an impartial consideration of evidence.

The present writer, who has attempted to analyse the IHR and its claims about history in an impartial manner, concedes that, in general, those scholars closely associated with the institute strive conscientiously to study their objects of inquiry in an even-handed and dispassionate manner. Although it is clear that they approach those objects of inquiry with information and guiding ideas derived in large part from their own interests, beliefs and vantage points (as almost all historians do), there is no evidence of deliberate falsification of fact.

This does not mean, of course, that IHR publications are of a consistently high level of scholarship. They are not. The IHR has, to its discredit, published several articles and books containing insensitive stridency and partisanship. It has, although far less frequently, even published racist and anti-Semitic treatises. These actions reduce the institute's credibility, and leave it wide open to accusations of racism. Many other articles in the institute's journal make available a lot of new information, but lack careful presentation and highly-developed analysis. They accordingly contribute little to the accumulated body of knowledge about their objects of inquiry. Nonetheless, several other articles and books published

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559 / Ibid., p. 124. Cf. also IHR Newsletter 65, April 1989, p. 3ff.
560 / Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1989.
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by the IHR are balanced and authoritative, containing both meticulous research and well-thought-out analysis. These latter works add an appreciable amount to the accumulated body of knowledge about the events described, and should not be ignored or automatically discounted – as they are – by those scholars holding orthodox views on the past. By bringing opposing hypotheses into open confrontation with each other, and by forcing authors to consider new evidence, approaches and methodologies, these more erudite works could ultimately advance the cause of historical understanding.

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