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David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt Libel Trial in London England
Part Three - January 26--27, 2000
Dates and sources are listed at the end of each respective report
Writer: Auschwitz Lacked Gas Vents
London-- A British writer disputed historically-accepted witness accounts that thousands were poisoned to death at Auschwitz, saying on Wednesday, Jan. 26, that the crematoriums at the notorious Nazi concentration camp had no openings to introduce gas.
David Irving, 62, is suing American academic Deborah Lipstadt in the High Court over her 1994 book, ``Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,'' which he says maintains he denies the Holocaust and distorted statistics.
Irving has outraged Jews and other Holocaust survivors by saying the Holocaust has been exaggerated and by challenging the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths under Adolf Hitler's regime. He is the author of several books on the academic fringe, including ``Hitler's War.''
Lipstadt, holder of the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, and the publishers, Penguin, deny libel.
Under British law, a libel claimant only needs to prove that his reputation has been damaged. Truth is not necessarily a defense.
Irving said researchers who photographed the collapsed roof of Auschwitz's Crematorium Two -- destroyed by the Nazis as Russian troops approached -- found no holes for inserting gas.
But Prof. Robert van Pelt, a historian who gave evidence for Lipstadt and Penguin, cited ``massive amounts'' of witness accounts, photos and the drawings of a sonderkommando, a Jewish inmate selected to work at the crematoria that proved the camp was used for mass murder.
He referred to several photos, including one taken by an SS man in February, 1943 which showed openings on the new roof of Crematorium Two that he said fed deadly Zyklon B pellets into the crematorium.
Irving has addressed neo-Nazi groups in Austria and Germany. In 1992, German authorities fined him for claiming the historically-accepted accounts of German gas chambers was British ``propaganda.'' He is banned from Germany, Canada and Australia.
Source: Associated Press, Jan. 26, 2000
No poison supply at Auschwitz, says Irving
London -- Eyewitness evidence of the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz was "totally demolished" because there were no holes in the roof through which to insert poison, historian David Irving told the high court today, Jan. 26. Mr Irving, the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, who is seeking libel damages for being called a "Holocaust denier", said that his theory "blows holes in the whole gas chambers story".
He said that a number of "revisionist" researchers had entered the ruins of Crematorium Two at Auschwitz, in which Holocaust historians say 500,000 died, and photographed the collapsed underside of the roof [see Website picture above] -- but found no holes.
"I do not accept that the Nazis in the last frantic days of the camp, when they were in a blue funk, would have gone around with buckets of cement filling the holes that they were going to dynamite."
Mr Irving, who is representing himself, made the comments during his cross-examination of Professor Robert van Pelt, who has said that there was a "massive amount of evidence" of the camp's use for mass extermination. Prof van Pelt has said that the gas chambers were first dismantled and then dynamited when the gassings stopped in November 1944 as the Russians advanced.
Giving evidence for American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books, who are fighting Mr Irving's action, he says that the evidence for gassing included eyewitness accounts, photos and drawings from memory of a sonderkommando -- a Jewish inmate selected to work in the crematoria.
He referred Mr Justice Gray to a photo taken by an SS man in February 1943 which showed openings above ground on the newly completed roof of Crematorium Two with a kind of cover on top of them. The defence case is that these projections were from four introduction columns through which Zyklon B pellets travelled.
Mr Irving, who says that the gas chambers were only used to de-louse corpses and objects, claimed that the picture was taken in December 1942 during building works and that the objects on the roof were drums containing sealant.
Prof van Pelt also relied on an aerial photo taken by the Americans in the summer of 1944 which showed "four dots" on the roof of Crematorium Two. He said that this showed very clearly that there were "introduction devices" on top of the building.
Mr Irving questioned the authenticity of the photo and said that whatever the dots were, they were too big for the purpose put forward by the defence.
Prof van Pelt also cited the drawings, undertaken in 1945-46, of surviving sonderkommando David Olere, which showed openings for the introduction of the pellets into the gas chamber at Crematorium Three in Auschwitz. Olere, he said, was a "very experienced draughtsman and painter" who had a good visual memory and was a credible witness.
Mr Irving is suing over Prof Lipstadt's 1994 book, Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory. Accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a falsifier of history", he depends on a 1988 report by a man called Fred Leuchter, who had taken samples from ruins at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never homicidal gas chambers there.
Mr Irving says Prof Lipstadt's book has generated "waves of hatred" against him.
Mr Irving said that the defence's "so-called" eyewitnesses were a relatively small number for the large proposition at stake. Apart from that, he added, there was not "a single document of any credible worth" which explicitly set out the defence case in all the "hundreds of thousands" of papers in the Auschwitz museum and the Moscow archives.
He submitted that his position on the Holocaust was justifiable and not perverse.
He went on to question Prof van Pelt's reliance on the evidence of sonderkommando Henryk Tauber which included descriptions of gassings in Auschwitz's crematoria.
He said that some of Tauber's accounts "test a reasonable historian's credulity" and "should be open to more than normal scrutiny". He questioned the validity of Tauber's evidence as he had wrongly asserted that four million had died at Auschwitz.
Prof van Pelt said that he considered that Tauber was "an absolutely amazingly good witness... I find his power of observation very precise and don't have any general reason to doubt his credibility as a witness".
Mr Irving suggested that at the time of his evidence Tauber would have been furnished with drawings and documents by the interrogating Polish authorities.
Source: Press Association of London, January 26, 2000
Gas chambers 'that never were'
Witness evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz was "totally demolished" because there were no holes in the roof through which to insert poison, the historian David Irving told the high court yesterday.
Mr Irving, the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, who is seeking libel damages for being called a "Holocaust denier" and a "falsifier of history", said that his theory "blows holes in the whole gas chambers story".
"Revisionist" researchers had entered the ruins of crematorium two at Auschwitz, in which Holocaust historians say 500,000 died, and photographed the collapsed underside of the roof - but found no holes.
"I do not accept that the Nazis in the last frantic days of the camp, when they were in a blue funk, would have gone around with buckets of cement filling the holes that they were going to dynamite."
Mr Irving, who is representing himself, was cross-examining Robert van Pelt, who has said that there was a "massive amount of evidence" of the camp's use for mass extermination.
Prof van Pelt has said that the gas chambers were dismantled and then dynamited when the gassing stopped in November 1944 as the Russians advanced.
Giving evidence for the American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, who are fighting Mr Irving's action, he says the evidence for gassing included witness accounts, photographs and drawings from memory of a sonderkommando - a Jewish inmate selected to work in the crematoria.
He referred Mr Justice Gray to a photograph taken by an SS man in February 1943 which showed openings above ground on the newly completed roof of crematorium two with a cover on top of them. The defence case is that these projections were from four introduction columns through which Zyklon B pellets were passed.
Mr Irving, who says that the gas chambers were only used to de-louse corpses, claimed the picture was taken in December 1942 during building works and that the objects were drums of sealant.
Prof van Pelt also relied on an aerial photograph taken by the Americans in the summer of 1944 which showed "four dots" on the roof of crematorium two. He said that this showed clearly that there were "introduction devices" on top of the building.
Mr Irving questioned the authenticity of the photograph and said the dots were too big for the purpose put forward by the defence.
Source: Manchester Guardian, January 27, 2000
The Growing Assault on the Truth of Absolute Evil
Those who would deny it twist testimony, disbelieve evidence and dismiss the obvious.
By Michael Berenbaum
In a London courtroom, British writer David Irving is suing Deborah Lipstadt, author of "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," for calling him a Holocaust denier.
"I do not deny the Holocaust," he said. "I merely redefine it." Irving's "redefinition" includes that there was no killing of Jews in gas chambers and that Adolf Hitler did not order, and perhaps for a time did not know of, the "Jewish problem's" Final Solution--the Nazi name for the Holocaust.
How could this happen? After all, documentation of the Holocaust is vast. The killers have never denied the crime. The Germans kept meticulous records, and massive documentation exists in the archives of many countries. Aerial surveillance, photographic evidence, intelligence intercepts and even the archeological remains of the sites reinforce the documents.
They all tell the story of the evolution of Nazi genocide, from the infamous Nuremberg laws to the introduction of segregation, economic confiscation and apartheid, to the mobile killing units that killed bullet by bullet, person by person, and ultimately to the gas chambers at death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka--assembly-line death factories.
Throughout the years, survivors of the Holocaust have bore witness in memoirs, audio and video testimony and at trials. The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has videotaped more than 50,000 survivors in 33 languages in 57 countries. These eyewitnesses reiterate the story of the Holocaust, testimony by testimony. The perpetrators, too, have told their stories in diaries and letters, memoirs and trial testimony.
Yet how, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, can the Holocaust be denied? A series of techniques are employed:
* If there is any conflict in testimony, the entire testimony is negated, not just the issue in dispute. So, for instance, if there are discrepancies between survivors' accounts, or minor factual errors, all testimony is discarded as worthless. To deniers, perpetrator testimony is equally worthless, the fruits of coercion.
* If historians dispute information, then all positions in the debate are equally credible. Raul Hilberg, the dean of Holocaust historians, has conservatively estimated the Jewish dead at 5.1 million. The eminent German historian, Wolfgang Benz, has argued that 6.1 million Jews were killed. If two such eminent historians can be at odds, then a figure of less than 1 million Jewish dead can also be put forward as credible.
* Documents are taken out of context, misread, misinterpreted or mistranslated. An example from the Lipstadt trial: Irving had claimed that he discovered irrefutable documentary proof that Hitler had ordered a halt to the murder of Jews. Under cross-examination it became clear that the document in question was an order given by SS chief Heinrich Himmler to halt the killing of one trainload of Jews from Berlin. Half-truths are stretched to cover a myriad of falsehoods.
* Dubious experts draw conclusions with bizarre methods. A new "definitive test" is made, and the conclusion reduces all previous knowledge to rubble. Thus, the "definitive scientific tests" of the gas chamber walls for the residue of the gas Zyklon B are bandied about as proof that no gassing took place in the gas chambers. A recent documentary film, "Mr. Death," has exposed the test as unscientific and the expert as a fraud.
There is soft-core and hard-core denial. Soft-core denial is the refusal to face the evil of the Holocaust, the search for the happy ending or the good that can mitigate the overwhelming evil of the what took place and thus protect us from the difficult fact that educated, cultured and civilized people can commit the most heinous crimes.
The Holocaust forces a confrontation with absolute evil. It denies the consolation of triumphant goodness. It is about atrocity, not tragedy. In the end, what we will learn will never be equal to the price that was paid for such knowledge.
Hard-core denial is more pernicious, more evil. The motivation of some survivors is political. Hitler gave fascism a bad name. If the magnitude of the crime can be diminished, then fascism can enjoy new prominence.
Other deniers are anti-Semitic. If the Holocaust is a hoax, then the most outrageous fantasies of the anti-Semites are true. Jews could be seen as controlling the archives of many countries, the judiciary, the media, the Swiss banks and German corporations, and Italian insurance companies that have come forward to settle past claims. The leaders of more than a score of countries will gather in Stockholm this week to advocate education about the Holocaust as an antidote to racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance and as a tool for teaching the values of human dignity, not just history. They, too, must be under Jewish control.
How serious is the problem? A Roper Poll that found that 20% of Americans believe it is possible that the Holocaust did not happen was withdrawn as unscientific. Its question was ambiguous. A new Roper Poll indicated that 8% of all Americans are prone to Holocaust denial, a far more marginal phenomenon but still of considerable concern. For if the Holocaust is denied while the eyewitnesses are among us, what will happen after they are no longer?
Ignorance of the Holocaust is more pervasive and the challenge of education and documentation is more important. Thus, the outcome of the conference in Stockholm will overshadow whatever occurs in the London courtroom.
Michael Berenbaum is the Former President of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and Director of the Research Institute of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Source: L.A. Times, January 28, 2000
Wiesel Urges Germany to Ask Forgiveness
"...Mr. Wiesel concluded by urging (the German) Parliament to pass a resolution formally requesting, in the name of the German people, the forgiveness of the Jewish people for the crimes of Hitler. 'Do it publicly,' he said. 'Ask the Jewish people to forgive Germany for what the Third Reich had done in Germany's name...'No people,' he said, 'ever inflicted such suffering as your people on mine in such a short period. Until the end of time, Auschwitz is part of your history and mine."
Source: N.Y. Times, Jan. 28, 2000, P.A3
Holocaust chronicler scolds Germans
Nobel peace laureate calls on the nation to atone for its crimes as it dedicates a memorial to Jewish victims
Berlin -- In a direct and emotional speech to parliament Thursday, Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel held Germans accountable for the murder of 6 million Jews --- including his 8-year-old sister. ..He emphasized that the Nazis were Germans --- and the very mention of "Germans" once inspired darkest fears.
"No nation, no ideology, no system has ever inflicted brutality, suffering and humiliation on such a scale, on any people, as yours has on mine in such a short period," Wiesel said.
With German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and other leaders sitting directly in front of his podium, Wiesel repeatedly used the word "you" when he referred to the perpetrators --- the German people ... "
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 28, 2000
Holocaust chic
There's no business like Shoah business. Now (England's) New Labour (party) wants to get in on the act
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
When that not-very-good dramadoc called Holocaust was showing in 1978, a survey of American high-school children found that many of them believed "Holocaust" to be a Jewish festival, like Hanukkah or Purim. That bleak memory comes back with the news that we are to have an annual Holocaust day, "a day when the country reflects on the terrible and evil deeds in the world," in the words yesterday of Tony Blair.
This is the latest episode in a strange story: not of that appalling event itself, but what has become of it since. For more than 10 years after 1945 there was a period of "denial", when the extermination of the European Jews was undiscussed to a degree which is now hard to believe. Events, notably the Eichmann trial and Israel's 1967 war, when it was thought that there would be a second Jewish catastrophe, changed our consciousness. Today, the Holocaust holds the centre of our attention, with varying consequences. One was the war crimes bill. One old man has been prosecuted, another escaped to Australia, and a third who stood accused has just died.
Then there is the increasingly weird libel action at the High Court, in which David Irving is suing an American historian. Before the last election the idea of a "Holocaust denial law" was floated with Tony Blair's approval. Had it become reality, it is possible that writers like (allegedly) Irving would face criminal prosecution.
Most striking of all is the boom in Holocaust museums. Washington's museum, where the mechanics of mass-murder are made into what Ian Buruma calls "a rather-too-pretty shrine", with cattle trucks and victims' shoes tastefully lit. There are now such museums in hundreds of American cities, all part of what Peter Novick calls, in the title of his important new book published next month, The Holocaust in American Life. Another museum is in Berlin, and there are plans for one in Manchester.
To sceptics, all of this is "the Holocaust industry", or Holocaust chic, or even "Shoah business" (there's no business like ...). Those are harsh phrases, but not unjust when one thinks of the worst examples. Ours is an age when a Taiwan restaurant can decorate its walls with pictures of camp inmates, and when, at the last Olympics the coach of the French synchronised swimming team could announce a new routine "inspired by the Holocaust". What's so curious about Holocaust consciousness is that timelag. To put it in perspective, imagine that it was the late 1950s, the age rock'n'roll, "never had it so good", Sputnik and beatniks. And then imagine that, at that time, there was a hue and cry to prosecute men for crimes committed during the Boer war. That is the same distance of time as between now and early 1940s, when the great murder took place.
Perhaps there was a case for a memorial day in the immediate shadow of the murder, but why nearly 60 years' afterwards? There is, one must say, something painfully (Prime Minister Tony) Blairite about the idea. It reeks of gesture politics, form rather than substance, words - "terrible and evil" - rather than action. Perhaps Blair thinks Holocaust day will be a consolation to those fleeing tyrannical per secution here and now, who will be denied refuge by his government's asylum bill.
Some writers on this subject have warned of a possible antisemitic reaction. If these things - war crimes bill, denial law, holocaust day - were unarguably just, then calculations about malign side-effects would be irrelevant. But that is not the case. Nor is it the case that critics of those laws were racist bigots (or alternatively "self-hating", for the Jewish critics).
And it is not true, either, that only crypto-antisemites, or timorous assimilationists, or Trotskyite anti-Zionists, dislike the whole tenor of "Shoah business". Whatever else Isaiah Berlin was, he was an acutely conscious, self-affirming Jew and Zionist. And, in the words of his biographer Michael Ignatieff, "he actively despised the Holocaust industry and kept his distance from rhetorical invocations his people's horrible fate".
So did Chaim Bermant, the writer and columnist for the Jewish Chronicle, who died two years ago. He had grown up in a Latvian shtetl, and "could speak with certainty of 22 members of my own family who were done to death". And yet he too despised the industry. He disliked the fashion for Holocaust museums, which gives "a perverse view of Jewish experience, perpetuates Jewish fears, and has a pernicious effect on Jewish life". He criticised both the war crimes bill and the proposed denial law, and would have been contemptuous of Blair's Holocaust day.
So might Primo Levi, the noblest witness of Auschwitz, whose name is often invoked by toilers in the industry, but who deplored the very word "Holocaust". He had no illusions that human nature had been changed for ever, that it would "not happen again", or that his own great books would rid the world of what Tony Blair mawkishly calls terrible and evil deeds.
"I never like this expression Holocaust," Levi used to say. "It seems to me inappropriate, it seems to me rhetorical, above all mistaken." That is not a bad description of Holocaust day.
Source: The Manchester Guardian, January 27, 2000
Auschwitz Document "Shows Genocidal Use" Court Told
An internal Auschwitz document which ordered that building plans for the crematoria at the camp were to be kept secret showed that they had been "committed to genocidal use", the High Court heard today (Jan. 27).
The existence of the "house order", dated May 5, 1943, emerged during historian David Irving's cross-examination of Auschwitz expert Professor Robert van Pelt, who is giving evidence for the defence in Mr Irving's libel action over claims that he is a "Holocaust denier".
Prof van Pelt told Mr Justice Gray that the first trial gassing in Crematorium Two -- where ultimately 500,000 people were to die -- took place in March 1943, with nearly all the crematoria in operation by May. During 1944, he added, there were seven gas chambers in use at the camp.
Mr Irving, who accepts there were gassings on a limited basis but denies the existence of "factories of death", said that the order covered blue-prints for the crematoria.
It read: "It must be pointed out that we are concerned here with works that are connected with the war economy and are to be kept secret. In particular, plans for the crematoria are to be kept under the strictest surveillance..."
It said that in connection with the building works, a responsible construction leader had to give instructions to the prisoner inmates on the spot and that the original plans were to be kept "under lock and key".
Mr Irving asked if the professor could see "no harmless reason" for such a regulation. Prof van Pelt said: "I can't see what the problem would be so it's remarkable that the crematoria seem to be designated here with a particular type of internal security clarification."
He added: "The Germans certainly had reason to be ashamed of the homicidal use of the buildings ... the date is May 5, 1943 - revealing that by this time all these buildings had been committed to genocidal use."
He speculated that once this happened, someone must have decided that any leak of the information to the outside world must be prevented. He said it was known from eye-witness testimony that a Czech female member of the camp resistance did steal some plans in 1944 and smuggle them out.
Prof van Pelt agreed that none of the blue-prints showed any modification to create holes in the roof necessary for the introduction of cyanide into the chambers. Mr Irving, who says that the apparent lack of such holes means that genocidal gassing did not occur, said that he would abandon his action tomorrow if the Auschwitz authorities would agree to clear the rubble from the ruined crematoria and find the holes.
Such a move, he said, would thwart neo-Nazis who currently benefited from the existence of doubts over the gas chambers. Prof van Pelt said that the condition of the site was such that it was unlikely that one would find an intact slab to inspect.
Mr Irving, the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, is seeking damages over American academic Deborah Lipstadt's 1994 book, "Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory."
Accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a falsifier of history", he depends on a 1988 report by a man called Fred Leuchter, who has taken samples from ruins at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never homicidal gas chambers there. Mr Irving says Prof. Lipstadt's book has generated "waves of hatred" against him. The hearing was adjourned until Monday, Jan. 31.
Source: LineOne News, Jan. 28, 2000
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