The Importance of Holocaust Revisionism, a Reply …
Posted By admin on July 13, 2015
In the past two weeks, Veterans Today has published three pieces on Holocaust revisionism by Alan Hart, and one set of reflections by Jim Dean and Paul Eisen. Any discussion of this topic is welcome, given its central importance in American life today.
However, Hart, in particular, perpetuates some false and misleading ideas about the matter, and thus a reply is called for.
Let me begin with a few points that Hart has correct. There are, in fact, three essential elements to the event called the Holocaust:
(1) intention to mass murder the Jews, by Hitler and the Nazi elite;
(2) the use of gas chambers; and
(3) the 6 million deaths.
If any one of these three should undergo substantial revision, then, technically speaking, we no longer have The Holocaustat least, not in any meaningful sense. (Broadly speaking, of course, any mass fatality is a holocaust.) Holocaust revisionism contends that, not one, but all three of these points are grossly in error, and thus that The Holocaust, as such, did not occur. Obviously, this is not to deny that a tragedy happened to the Jews, nor that many thousands died, directly and indirectly, as a result of the war. But the conventional account is an extreme exaggeration.
Harts treatment of these issues is woefully inadequate. On the first point, he claims that the Nazis did indeed have a program of mass murder, and that they deliberately and systematically implemented itbut only after the British abandoned their commitment to Zionism in May 1939. And yet, he offers no evidence that this was a major turning point in German policy. I am unaware that any such evidence exists.
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The Importance of Holocaust Revisionism, a Reply ...
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