Hayward Thesis discussion continues

Letter from Dr Barry Kirkwood

NZ Listener, October 4, 2003

A master's thesis topic and supervisor must first be
approved by the head of the relevant university department.
The student then carries out the work under supervision. An
external examiner (usually suggested by the supervisor) is
then appointed. An internal examiner (usually the
supervisor) and the external examiner then write reports on
the thesis, and suggest a grade. Although the student bears
final responsibility for the work, to gain a pass it must
have satisfied both the internal and the external examiners.
In the case of a thesis reaching an unusual or controversial
conclusion, Hume's Principle applies: extraordinary claims
require extraordinarily strong evidence. I have not read
Hayward's thesis, but if it denies or minimises the
Holocaust, and lacks adequate evidence and argument to
support the case, then the examiners have erred, and their
error was not detected. Hayward, as the student under
supervision, has minimal culpability.

How could this system failure have come about? A weakness in
the process is the possibility of a closed loop, whereby the
supervisor, the student and the external examiner share a
common ideology. New Zealand universities need a tighter
system, with graduate studies committees vetting all theses.
The Hayward thesis attracted attention because the
conclusions are politically and intellectually unacceptable.
Of far greater public danger are the downstream consequences
of the spate of intellectually feeble and morally deranged,
politically correct theses that have been churned out by New
Zealand universities over the last decade or so.

Barry Kirkwood PhD
Retired senior lecturer in psychology, University of
Auckland

Open letter from K R Bolton

29 September 2003 [The Listener appears a week before

it's imprinted published date, hence Bolton's earlier date.]


Dear Dr Kirkwood

I hope you will forgive the intrusion of sending this
letter to your residence, since the columns of The Listener
have become overcrowded with the banal bitchings of
academics; and of course Mr Zwartz is guaranteed space since
to do otherwise would suffice to incur the accusation of
'anti-Semitism'.

You state that you have not read Hayward's thesis, but then
seem to be assuming that his conclusions are flawed, and
that his examiners have therefore erred.
I have read Hayward's thesis. I have also read his addendum
retracting his conclusions, the Canterbury Working Party
Report and Dr Fudge's article.
Hayward's thesis has been incorrectly referred to
repeatedly as 'revisionist'. This is inaccurate. It is a
study on the literature of revisionism. Hayward is

 critical of the literature throughout.

However, what has condemned him as supposedly having

revisionist tendencies is that he concedes that revisionists

 are not universally in error, and that orthodox proponents

 of the 'Holocaust' are not universally plausible.

On virtually any other subject this approach would surely

 be lauded as objective. However, when it is the 'Holocaust'

being considered this amounts to a religious heresy, and Dr

Fudge seems eminently suitable to treat the subject of Hayward's

 problems according to his own expertise on heresies.

Do you not find it odd that both Orange and Jensen
concurred in grading Hayward's thesis with an A+ with First
Class Honours? Not only do they both comment on Hayward's
skilful handling of evidence, but even the Working Party
praises Hayward's ability.

You mention the possibility of a shared ideology between
Hayward, Orange and Jensen. Surely this would imply some
type of conspiratorial collusion between 'holocaust
revisionists'? It would be difficult to justify that
conclusion.

From what I've read, and this includes the
assessments of Orange and Jensen on Hayward's thesis, there
is no indication to believe that they assessed the thesis
with any ideological preconceptions.

You state that extraordinary conclusions require
extraordinary evidence and argument. The main problem for
Hayward seems to have been that he offered any conclusions
at all which, from what I've read, is apparently
inappropriate for a Master?s thesis(?).

Hayward summarised the revisionist literature and in his

description found that some has merit. This conclusion has

been sufficient for Hayward to be marked as a revisionist

with implications of neo-nazism and anti-Semitism. Since

Hayward's background is Jewish and pro-Zionist, and his

interest in revisionism stems from a decidedly anti-revisionist

bias, with him having written articles in Australian and New

Zealand Jewish periodicals against revisionism, his changing

attitudes towards revisionist literature as he progressed in his

study were surely not arrived at lightly.

As for the evidence of revisionism, from reading the
thesis, Hayward was obviously most impressed by the
examination of Auschwitz undertaken by Fred A Leuchter,
America's foremost authority on execution technology,
including execution with cyanide gas. In 1988 Leuchter
prepared an expert report for the 1988 Zündel trial in Canada.
This involved obtaining brick and other samples from the
alleged homicidal gas chambers and the delousing facilities
at Auschwitz.

A laboratory in the USA tested the samples.
The samples taken from the alleged homicidal gas chambers
were found to be devoid of traces of cyanide residue while
those from the delousing facilities were as one would
expect, high.

The conclusion was that the alleged homicidal
gas chambers had not been exposed to Zyklon B. Leuchter as
an engineer and expert on execution technology also offered
the opinion that the buildings supposedly used as homicidal
gas chambers were not adequate for the purpose. Leuchter had
no personal axe to grind but, like Hayward and many others,
his reputation was destroyed.

Leuchter's findings have since been replicated by three
further studies. The most significant is that of certified
chemist Germar Rudolf, who had his Ph.D. candidature at the
Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, revoked, solely

because of his study, which was undertaken as an expert report

for the German courts (which in turn was sufficient to have

 him sentenced to jail).

Hayward retracted his conclusions, claiming that 'new
evidence' had invalidated Leuchter. However, since Hayward
refuses to reveal what the 'new evidence' is (and both
Fredrick Töben and I have challenged him on this) his
retraction must be regarded as merely trying to appease the
NZ Jewish Council et al.

Since as you state extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence, the extraordinary evidence in favour
of the 'Holocaust' is yet to be forthcoming.

The trials of alleged war criminals have relied mainly on

eyewitness accounts, which are contradictory, but which are

not allowed to be challenged in court. In Germany for e.g.

a defence lawyer can be prosecuted for defending a revisionist

client 'too vigorously'.

Germar Rudolf was rejected as an expert
witness for example, on the basis that the 'Holocaust' is a
matter of 'common knowledge' and is given judicial notice.
This 'judicial notice' is not only accorded in Germany and
Austria, but also in Canada, the USA and elsewhere.

Therefore evidence contrary to the orthodox version is
inadmissible. What type of justice is that? How can the
truth be arrived at objectively?

There are several questions I have previously asked in the
Listener and elsewhere, which have never been answered,
other than with irrelevant comments about relatives dying at
concentration camps etc.:

(1) How is the evidence for the 'Holocaust' qualitatively
any better than that used to 'prove' Germans bayoneted
Belgian babies and crucified Canadian soldiers to barn doors
during World War I?

(2) Originally it was claimed that all German concentration
camps were extermination camps where inmates were 'gassed'
with Zyklon B (although early versions refer to 'steam
chambers', electrified metal plates and a pedal machine that
hits inmates over the head). Camp personnel were tried and
condemned on the basis of supposedly irrefutable documents
and eye witness testimony claiming that gassings took place
at Dachau and elsewhere. Then during the 1960s, as the
result of revisionist questioning, (mainly that of French
Socialist MP, resistance hero and Dora and Buchenwald inmate
Prof. Paul Rassinier) it was finally conceded that no
gassings had taken place other than at the camps in Eastern
Europe. How is the supposed evidence of gassings at the
camps in Poland qualitatively any better than the bogus
evidence in regard to the camps in Germany and Austria?
(Some Israeli citizens are still claiming their relatives
were 'gassed' at Dachau and are asking the German government
about reparations).

(3) The Soviets 'proved' that the Germans were responsible
for Katyn, and German soldiers were actually tried and
executed for this crime by the Soviets. Considering that
much of the supposed evidence for the 'Holocaust' originated
from the USSR (including lampshades of human skin etc) how
is the Katyn evidence qualitatively any better than the
evidence the Soviets provided for the Nuremberg and other
trials?

If somebody, somewhere, can provide hysteria-free answers to
these questions, I'll revise my revisionism.

As a psychologist, I venture to suggest that the aberrations
and hallucinations involved in much eye-witness testimony
(e.g. flames emanating from crematoria chimneys, blue
cyanide fumes visibly hovering over the corpses in the gas
chambers, gas chambers being entered to clear out bodies
without the use of ventilation or gas masks and protective
clothing) would provide you with a wealth of material,
somewhat similar to the eye-witness accounts of the Salem
Witch Trials

Yours sincerely

K R Bolton

NEWS FOLLOW-UP

An Austrian neo-Nazi and Holocaust revisionist has been sentenced

by a Vienna court to one year in prison, with another two years

suspended. Wolfgang Fröhlich, 52, is notorious for claiming it was

 impossible for the Nazis to have killed six million Jews because

 the gas chambers were too small. The court said it took into

 consideration his "multitude of incriminating acts" and the long

period of time over which they were committed. An engineer by

training, Fröhlich used to be an MP for Jörg Haider's far-right

Freedom Party.

At the Toronto Zündel Hearing on 23 September 2003: 

"... After questioning Mr. Zündel about a series of personalities,
Public Prosecutor, Mr. MacIntosh, after each name, would ask,

 "like you, he was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler?"

Finally, Ernst Zündel shot back:

"Mr. MacIntosh, you have Hitler on the brain. I do not."