Letters in response to Listener article, 9 November 2002

 

Denial of denial

Letters: Denial of denial, Listener, 9 November 2002                             

Guilt by association is a nasty tactic. Nonetheless, I’ll swat that aside for a moment and address some of my ‘obfuscation’ alleged in ‘In Denial’ (November 2), which, by the way, contains nothing new, and certainly nothing not seen by the Working Party two years ago.

But first let me make one thing clear: Vincent Orange (with whom I still have occasional email correspondence) is a warm and kind man — a true gentleman — and an outstanding military historian. He, too, has found the last two or three years difficult, I believe that, like me, he did his best to be honest and accurate all those years ago. He doesn’t deserve this vilification.

Now, to the main claims. It would have been fair journalism to point out the following:

1.  My meeting with Robert Countess took place nine or so years ago, when I was in Alabama on a prestigious scholarship with the US Air Force. Countess was then a minor figure in the Holocaust controversy, and I knew almost nothing about him. He offered to take me to meet the family of my athletics hero, Jesse Owens. I jumped at the offer (who wouldn’t?), and Countess kept his word. My day at the Owens house is a wonderful memory. I even supplied the Listener with photographs of me with the Owens family as evidence.

2. I declined David Irving’s request to testify for his defence at his 2000 trial in London, and I also turned down a similar request from a Canadian revisionist, Ernst Zündel, a few years earlier. I want no part in the debate.

3.  As a gesture of goodwill to the concerned Jewish community, I gave my large and expensive collection of Third Reich books, sources and microfilms (including rare first editions of obscure German texts) to the Mazal Research Library in the US, a center that counters anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

4.  I received one bad review for my book Stopped at Stalingrad. The one that the Listener quoted from was the only bad review it received. All others, and the book was widely reviewed internationally, were glowing. The book is in its third printing and is considered the standard work on the Stalingrad airlift. It is used in many staff colleges and university defence studies courses as a set text.

5. In the years since I wrote my controversial thesis I have had around one million words published, yet not one sentence denies the Holocaust. I have several new books out soon, none of them on a remotely related topic.

My favourite military commanders (my professional ‘heroes’, if you like)  are Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. They pre-dated the Nazis — not one of whom features in my list of favourites — by one-and-a-half centuries, and were ‘good guys’, not ‘bad guys’.

I’m certainly not an extremist. I am an ordinary liberal and democratic New Zealander. How I came to attract more publicity two or three years ago than criminals and gang leaders is still beyond my comprehension.

I have received worse treatment, and had my freedom and privacy violated to a worse degree, than my alleged ‘crime’ warrants. I did not rob a bank; I wrote a thesis. I regret that I hurt people, and have apologised often on my own initiative, but this character assassination has to stop. I have to be able to move on in life without further smears. I am not a ‘story’; I am an average Kiwi man with a loved and loving family. We deserve the same privacy and freedom from hassles that every other citizen gets.

Dr Joel Hayward, Palmerston North.

It is with disgust that I read of the further smears and attacks levelled at Dr Joel Hayward, who was a senior lecturer at Massey University until he could no longer cope with the anguish he felt..

His truth-twisting opponents seem to want to portray his as responsible for, or involved in, almost every controversy regarding Jews in the country. They seem to hate him with undisguised ferocity. This reflects badly on the New Zealand Jewish Council.

I had the pleasure of being in Dr Hayward’s stimulating, informative classes and have known him for several years. He is the best lecturer I have ever studied under. I can confirm his popularity among students, many of whom share my disgust at his treatment. They miss him at Massey and think the university suffered a great loss when he resigned.

Dr Hayward is a helpful, honest and sensitive man. Even when the controversy over his thesis erupted a few years ago, and students could see that it was taking a toll on his health and nerves, he remained a dedicated and inspiring lecturer. His books and articles are highly regarded around the world.

Dr Hayward is certainly not a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier, anti-Semite or right-winger. He has always demonstrated  tolerance and cultural kindness in classes and in person. He deserves to be left alone to rebuild his life and career.

Kelly Badman, Palmerston North

I am the author of a book debunking the claims of Holocaust deniers and a member of  The Holocaust History Project (http://holocaust-history.org), an organisation that fights Holocaust denial. I have read Dr Hayward’s Masters thesis as well as the report issued by Canterbury University. I fully endorse the report’s findings and agree with Dr Richard Evans’ critique of the supervision, or lack thereof, that Hayward received.

However, the article omitted two key points that I brought to the attention of its author, Philip Matthews, whom I contacted at the request of Dr Hayward. First, much to the consternation of Holocaust deniers, Dr Hayward has issued a public apology for his thesis. It may be found at http://www.holocaust-history.org/hayward/index.shtml. Second, Dr Hayward made a valuable contribution to the Project of documents dealing with the Nazi era. This material helps us to continue to fight against the lies and distortions of deniers.

Dr Hayward also assisted me in obtaining key information for a study I published refuting Pearl Harbour revisionism. He does not even accept Pearl Harbour conspiracy theories, much less the more mendacious claims of Holocaust deniers.

I have corresponded with Dr Hayward off an on over the past three years and know that he has been trying to sever his ties with the deniers, despite what the deniers themselves may be claiming. Like the Mafia, Holocaust deniers never like to let go — a lesson that Dr Hayward has learnt the hard way.

A current prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan, as was a former highly respected justice of the Supreme Court, the highest court in the US. The Klan is a racist and terrorist organisation that has plagued the US for over 100 years. Both of these individuals regretted and apologised for their association and were able to make valuable contributions to American democracy. Surely if a US senator and Supreme Court justice can be allowed to live their lives in peace after denouncing the Klan, everyone can grant Dr Hayward the same consideration.

John C Zimmerman, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Philip Matthews replies: Nowhere in the story is it suggested that Joel Hayward is “responsible for, or involved in, almost every controversy regarding Jews in the country”. This is paranoid and persecutionist. I will leave it to the New Zealand Jewish Council to confirm whether or not they hate Hayward “with undisguised ferocity”, but this comment seems to have the same thinking behind it.

It is unfortunate that the detail that Hayward met Robert Countess in Alabama in 1994 was omitted, but it doesn’t change the fact that Hayward was circulating his thesis (and another student’s) to Holocaust deniers within a period during which he has claimed to have had no contact with them. Nor am I convinced that “Countess was then a minor figure  in the Holocaust controversy and [Hayward] knew almost nothing about him”, given that Countess was acknowledged among the sources and experts in Hayward’s thesis — which was completed, remember, in 1993.

It’s worth adding that Countess was so inspired by the theses that Hayward presented to him that he established a company — Theses & Dissertations Press — with the express intention of publishing both of them. That company’s website (tadp.org) says that “neither thesis was published for various reasons of logistics and constraints of time”. However, the company has gone on to become one of the leading Holocaust denial presses.

Hayward did not need to send the Listener photos of himself with the Owens family — that visit was never doubted in the story.

Regarding John Zimmerman’s letter, it was clear that Hayward has publicly apologised. Zimmerman also endorses Richard Evans’ thorough and incisive report on Hayward’s thesis, although, in correspondence with me, he went further than simply blaming the supervisor, as he does above. “Evans was right on the money about the thesis,” he wrote. “Having read the thesis I know it constitutes Holocaust denial.”

 

Fredrick Töben comments: When the heat was on him, Dr Joel Hayward  was quick to label me an antisemite, etc. and his reference to his poor health tended to neutralize my desire to fend off his attacks on my person. He even rang me up after my release from the German prison and expressed his concern for my wellbeing. I even stated publicly that Hayward had the right to change his mind, this being a normal revisionist characteristic. But I did demand of Hayward that morally he owes the Revisionists a detailed justification as to what caused him to change his mind, i.e. what new information was it that made him change his mind. This material has not been made public.

 For the sake of completeness, I would like to state the following, something I have mentioned in my book: The pressure on Revisionists is tremendous, and Joel Hayward , among other things, did receive death-threats — and it involved the Israeli embassy in Auckland. He therefore had to make his recantation appear as realistic as possible.  Unfortunately my request that he detail the reasons on which he based his change-of-mind remains unanswered. But I can still  empathise with him, that he loves his wife and children above all else. During 2000, while we spent time together in his office, every few minutes his wife would ring through to enquire how he was. Perhaps she thought that I had evil intentions upon her husband.

Professor Robert Faurisson made the pertinent comment about pressure. If Revisionists have to endure a lot of stress and pressure, think about the pressure, for example, the US president has to endure from the Zionist lobby. I think we are all realistic enough to know that this battle about getting the true story of the ‘Holocaust’ out into the wider world is a life and death struggle. It is not for the fainthearted. And a Revisionist who still has a wife and young children is perhaps foolish to risk all.

I have been given a rather friendly reminder via our court system not to doubt the ‘Holocaust’ and not to question the details of the murder weapon. I am complying with that court order to the best of my ability.

The most important thing is to lose one’s fear of fear, but unfortunately we are moving closer and closer to what prevailed in the eastern European countries and in the former Soviet Union until the collapse: a general hush, a shroud of modesty and serenity, befitting those who live cautiously, pervaded socialist societies. Public offices were all guarded, something we did not see in western countries until recently.

So what is happening today is actually a transference of the fear factor that operated in the former communist countries onto the once vibrant democratic western world. Through their work, Revisionists are at the forefront of sensing this negative fear-driven development. Hayward himself clearly alludes to it in the Matthew interview where he addresses the loss of academic freedom.

Joel Hayward, like David Cole before him, has done his job, and we must respect his silence with the proviso that he does not attack Revisionists. For example, his comment about not attending the Toronto Zündel trial as an expert witness can be regarded from his view-point and also from the perspective as expressed by Professor Faurisson.

The critical point of it all is this: Hayward’s thesis still stands, as does Germar Rudolf’s report. Legal and social sanctions have been imposed to discourage others from reading this material, but we all know that the Internet is our weapon of mass instruction. Individuals will make up their own minds, and dissent according to their personal sense of urgency that surrounds the “Holocaust’. 

One final point, John C Zimmerman ( I always muse how many prominent Jews have such good German names!) claims the Mafia does not like to let go. I thought he was referring to the anti-Revisionists who will simply not let Hayward go. Revisionists have moved on, and some don’t even look upon his work as important. But I would rather deal with the Mafia than with anti-Revisionists such as Zimmerman. Why? The Mafia has a code of honour, something the anti-Revisionists lack. 

 

From an www.aaargh.org collaborator: 12 November 2002

I see the result, quite interesting. The only thing to add is the hypocrisy of this Zimmermann. He launched an offensive against  aaargh, trying to represent, as a lawyer based in Las Vegas, several  people, including Hayward, to demand that texts written by them be  removed, under threat of suing the providers. This is a mildly  effective way, as providers are known to shy away and are easily  frightened, specially American ones.

In order not to antagonize  access providers in the US, aaargh removed several items, including  the Hayward's thesis.

But, unbeknown to both Zimmermann and Hayward, the actual content of  the thesis is still available on the site under a different title, What is Holocaust Revisionism About?, and a different author's name, Josip B. Balsamo, the name of a strange character in Alexandre Dumas novels: http://aaargh-international.org/fran/livres/BALSA.pdf   

I think you can reveal it as a funny trick, but the removed material  has been posted on several places which have been closed down for other reasons. It is like a guerilla fighting between the oppressive-repressive guardians of an official truth and the freedom fighters who keep moving to survive and win the battle at the end.

Hayward is a coward but Revisionists do not blame cowards because they know what the pressure can be.

Bing goes Hayward’s Ghost

In the following Fredrick Töben sums up what has become known as the Hayward thesis affair. At the end of this essay there appear three newspaper/magazine articles that update the controversy. Anyone wishing to follow up particular aspects of this controversy can do so by searching the Internet.

1. Introduction

In December 2000, the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, thought it had pleased New Zealand’s Jewish lobby by going to extraordinary lengths to accommodate a complaint lodged against the university. The Jewish community lodged a complaint because in 1993 Canterbury had awarded to one of its students a masters degree that dealt with the ‘Holocaust’. Now seven years later, Canterbury published its Report By The Joel Hayward Working Part, wherein a written apology to New Zealand’s Jewish community almost took precedent over the maintaining of its own academic integrity.

The small but vociferous New Zealand Jewish lobby had taken great exception to the granting of an MA with First Class Honours, to Joel Stuart Andrew Hayward for his thesis on revisionism, thereby making so-called ‘Holocaust denial’ a ‘respectable’ branch of academic study. The dogmatists could not let this happen. For them the academic ideal consists of nurturing self-authored taboo topics that bolster and uphold their own fragile intellectual bankruptcy, where a regard for objective knowledge is discarded and despised.

2. Background

The early so-called warning signs that something was going on in academia, which could damage Jewish-Zionist interests, were sounded eight years earlier. On 5 May 1992, a group calling itself ‘Opposition To Anti-Semitism Incorporated’, Christchurch, sent a letter of complaint to the University of Canterbury’s Registrar, Mr A W Hayward.  Therein the president, Kingsley N McFarlane, details a discussion the group had with Joel Hayward, and cite Hayward’s reporting that his supervisor, Dr Vincent Orange in November 1991 had stated to Hayward, “OK! I agree there were no gas chambers!”

On 25 May 1992, Professor and head of the History department, W David McIntyre, advises the Registrar:

“Further to our conversation on the phone about Joel Hayward’s MA thesis and the persecution that he has been subjected to … I think it important that the University reply blandly but firmly to these people as the interference they have attempted is intolerable. Indeed, the inclusion of the quotation about the conversation with Vincent Orange in the letter to you was probably illegal since it was taken from a tape which was illegally filmed and is the subject of an injunction.”

[Appendix I, in: Report By The Joel Hayward Working Party, December 2000, University of Canterbury.]

This courageous stand against Jewish blackmail was also adopted by the External Examiner’s Report, written by Waikato University History Department’s Professor John H Jensen. Dated 15 April 1993 it states:

‘This study is a brave attempt to deal in a cool and critical fashion with one of the most emotional and political issues of our century. The candidate is to be congratulated on his courage in undertaking it. Nevertheless I have tried to deal with it as I would deal with any thesis, ignoring its political implications, and concentrating and concentrating on the skillfulness or otherwise with which the writer has carried out his responsibilities as an historian.”

[Appendix M, ibid.]

Hayward’s Chief Supervisor, Professor Vincent Orange, Reader in History at the University of Canterbury, in his assessment of 23 March 1993 hits a raw nerve with anti-Revisionists when he states in his report:

‘Hayward’s thesis is that the Nazis did not attempt the systematic extermination of Jews during the Second World War. In particular, he finds the evidence that gas chambers were built and used for this purpose unconvincing. His argument for and against this key point is based on a detailed, careful study of documentary, oral and scientific evidence. He may, of course, be mistaken, but in my judgment his case is nowhere flawed by improper use of evidence or extravagant language. More positively, he earns credit for adopting a scholarly approach to matters that most historians have flinched from investigating. For example, how many human beings can be packed into a particular space and how long does it take for a body to be wholly consumed by fire?’

[Appendix L, ibid]

That the thesis would become contentious had been expected by Hayward. As early as 1991 Hayward had written an article on Holocaust Revisionism in New Zealand for the Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs journal, Without Prejudice. Hayward’s article was titled: ‘The Thinking Man’s Anti-Semitism? Therein Hayward clearly focuses on the political aspect of Revisionism, and is quite critical of British historian, David Irving, and France’s Dr Robert Faurisson for their attempt to deny the Nazi genocide of six million Jews.

Yet two years later, after having submitted his thesis in 1993, Hayward requests that his thesis be embargoed for three years. Although this is an unusual request by any academic who thrives on the ‘publish or perish’ maxim, Professor Vincent Orange approves the request.

It is little wonder Hayward was in panic mode because the final chapter of his thesis states:

“A careful and impartial investigation of the available evidence pertaining to Nazi gas chambers reveals that even these apparently fall into the category of atrocity propaganda.”

In 1996 Hayward requests another extension to the publication of his embargoed thesis until 1 January 1999, and again it is granted.

At the beginning of October 1998, Hayward sent his original thesis to Adelaide Institute for photocopying, with the comment that it may be used in any way. Copies were made and distributed to all Associates. A copy is also handed to the Commissioners, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, hearing the complaint laid by Jeremy Jones against both Fredrick Töben and Olga Scully.

Also in October 1998 Joel Hayward even contemplates being a witness in the Toronto Zündel trial. The dilemma facing him was the worry that he may say something helpful for the defence, for example his view that Revisionism “can promote anti-Semitism (although I naturally don’t think that it does in its own right).”

[Email from Hayward to Töben, dated 5 October 1998.]

Dr Robert Faurisson anticipated this in one of his perceptive comments. Hayward’s opinion, says Faurisson, “is that the Revisionists are right BUT THAT THEY HAVE NO HEART AND DO NOT CARE DISTRESSING THE JEWS. He believes in Babi Yar and all sorts of stupid things. His testimony could be very harmful in a ‘Human Rights’ ‘tribunal’ since that kind of ‘tribunal’ thinks that ‘truth is no defence’. Hayward could even be the ideal witness for the prosecution: Zündel is all the more dangerous since he is right!”

[Letter dated 16 October 1998, from Faurisson to Zündel.]

Faurisson also advised Fredrick Töben

“… there is nothing confidential, at least today, with this thesis since I see that in 1996 I purchased my own copy. Hayward asked me for the money (because of the photocopy), got it and never asked me to keep all this secret. He asked me my opinion about his thesis. I sent him my draft and asked him two questions:

1. “Would it be right to say that, for you, at the beginning of 1993 the revisionists were generally right as reason is concerned but wrong as sentiments are concerned?”
2. I heard you were from Jewish descent; is that right? 

I asked those questions on 24 August, 18 November and 27 November. I told him that, being overworked, I need first his answer to my first question to go and read carefully his thesis. He sent me finally a rather rude answer but without addressing my two questions. Faurisson also pointed out that Hayward’s thesis “seems also to say that the revisionists tend to distress Jewish people. If he really says so, what are his arguments and, anyway, is this the role of an historian? … Ignores that there is absolutely no physical violence from the Revisionists against the Jews.”

[Letter dated 18 October 1998, from Faurisson to Töben]

In the December 1998/January 1999 issue of the New Zealand Jewish Chronicle, a report appears headed ‘NZ connection to Internet incitement case’. It states “Evidence submitted by Dr Töben days before the hearings included a 500-page Master’s thesis on Holocaust revisionism by New Zealand Canterbury University student, Joel Hayward.” 

When in 1999 Hayward makes another request to have his thesis embargoed for another period, the University of Canterbury refuses and invites Hayward to add an addendum to his thesis, which he does. (In essence the two-page Hayward Addendum states that his thesis contains ‘several errors of fact and interpretation’.)

[Appendix B, ibid.]

Hayward also writes a letter to the New Zealand Jewish Chronicle, which is published in its February 1999 edition at p.7. Among other things, he states:

“… First, Dr Fredrick Töben violated my rights as an author by presenting a copy of my 1993 Masters of Arts thesis to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in Sydney. He did so even after I had expressly forbidden him – in writing on October 17 – from reproducing or distributing my work in part or in whole … I have no involvement in the ferocious debate between Holocaust Revisionists and their opponents. I find it distasteful and refuse to be drawn into it. As a scholar I am much too busy; as a person I am much too sensible. I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr Jeremy Jones, Executive Vice-President, Executive Council of Australian Jewry.”

Hayward goes further into damage control. In a letter dated 8 December 1999, headed ‘Strictly Confidential’ and addressed to Canterbury’s Vice Chancellor, Hayward states, among other things:

“Toward the end of 1998 an Australian racist named Dr Fredrick Tobin (sic), who has just completed a prison term in Germany for Holocaust denial, attempted to present a copy of my thesis to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in Sydney as proof that the Holocaust did not happen. I immediately wrote to the HREOC and asked them to withdraw the thesis from their proceedings. They kindly agreed to do so.”

[Commissioner Cathleen McEvoy, now dean of the law faculty, University of Adelaide, never informed Fredrick Töben of this Hayward communication. Nor did Hayward forward a copy of his letter to Töben, though he did send an Email requesting that Töben stop using his thesis.]

Graeme Wake, Dean of Postgraduate Studies, and Professor of Applied Mathematics at Canterbury responds in a letter dated 3 May 2000 (with a hand-written note ‘Today’s date January 2000 sent’):

“We share your distaste for the actions of racist persons like those you mention. Nonetheless it is incumbent on us, as a premier research University, to maintain open access to scholarship produced, and accepted for, a research degree. To act otherwise could lead to accusations of a cover-up and compromise us in other ways. So we have sought another alternative (which we broached with you by telephone).

In the interest of all, and especially the victims of the Holocaust, the University invites you to write a (brief) addendum to the thesis. This would presumably state your more recent views and insights on this topic and summarise results of any post-1993 scholarship which might point to different conclusions than you made originally … it would further strengthen the stand against the likes of Dr Fredrick Tobin and his ilk.”

On 15 December 1999, Hayward writes a letter to Greg Raven of the IHR:

“Thank you for notifying me about this ratbag’s attempt to post my old MA thesis on the Internet. I appreciate your kindness. Truly. I succeeded in having the server company delete my thesis after this mysterious person posted it last time, and I will try this method again.”

[From: http://aargh-international.org/engl/hay/hayindex.html. For an account of the Hayward File it is well worth reading Serge Thion’s comprehensive treatment of the moral and intellectual problems raised by Hayward’s behaviour and failure of moral nerve.]

Also in 2000, Professor Dov Bing comes on to the scene. A political science lecturer at Hamilton’s Waikato University, Dr Bing broadcasts the fact that Hayward had distributed his thesis to Faurisson, Irving and Töben.

The New Zealand Jewish Chronicle of April 2000 whips up a storm that is picked up internationally. Hayward apologises to New Zealand’s Jewish community:

“I stuffed up. The conclusions are wrong … without doubt, around six million Jews perished during World War Two. They were murdered by Nazis and their allies. The perpetrators used a range of methods, including gas chambers, shooting, physical exhaustion and starvation, to carry out this monstrous crime.”

K R Bolton, a New Zealand observer of the controversy sums up the 89-page and 29 appendices Working Party Report thus:

“After some five months and $200.000 a tribunal of eminent persons reached conclusions so predictable and cliché-ridden that a fiver and a day spent over a cuppa could have reached the same result.

The Party found that Dr Joel Hayward, now an eminent military historian and lecturer in his own right, did not merit an MA with First Class Honours from Canterbury University for his 1993 thesis: The Fate of Jews in German Hands: an enquiry into the significance of Holocaust Revisionism.

Upon seeking legal advice, the Working Party was unable to revoke the MA Hons. Degree, which had been demanded by the New Zealand Jewish Council because it could not be demonstrated that Hayward had acted dishonestly. However, the opinion was that Hayward did not merit such honours. The Working Party found that although Hayward had demonstrated superior abilities as a researcher and had put together his thesis with exceptional skill, his conclusions were flawed. He should not have offered an opinion as to which side of the Holocaust debate, revisionism or orthodoxy, was correct on the weight of evidence. Also, a particularly contentious point was that Hayward’s thesis was three times longer than required … What irked the Jewish Council was that by awarding the Hayward thesis First Class Honours, this appeared to give academic legitimacy to holocaust revisionism …The Working Party was only required to consider if Hayward had acted dishonestly and therefore whether his MA Hons should be revoked. It found that he had not. It offered that Hayward was not required to render an opinion on the evidence in the Holocaust debate and that the thesis was too lengthy. What the Party should not have done is indulged in a large amount of unfounded criticism of revisionists and revisionism, on the basis of comments supplied by and for the Jewish Council. Outside submissions were not accepted …Despite the recommendations of two reputable New Zealand scholars the thesis ‘did not deserve the highest accolade’, and therefore the opinions of two acclaimed and experienced New Zealand academics are trashed in favour of Jewish ethnocentrists and their ally, a less than dispassionate Professor Evans from England.”

[In: Western Destiny, February 2001, Issue #23.]

This same Professor Richard Evans was the so-called ‘expert witness’ at the 2000 London Irving-Lipstadt trial. Evans is professor of German history at Cambridge University.

Things began to quieten down a little for Hayward.

3. A detour covering similar grounds

While the University of Canterbury had its problems caused by the New Zealand Jewish community’s representatives with their particular ‘Holocaust’ obsession, Waikato University attended to its own as well. The Jewish community had sniffed out a right-wing extremist who had been accepted into the university’s doctoral program.

“Berlin-born Hans-Joachim Kupka was accepted to study the role the German language played in contemporary New Zealand – a field which critics said would have meant his having to interview German-speaking Holocaust survivors. Kupka, the former deputy chair of the Bavarian branch of the extreme right-wing Republikaner Party, withdrew his candidature in the wake of the controversy.”

[Australian Jewish News, 5 January 2001.]

The restless paranoid Jewish community leaders would not let things be and demanded that the university investigate and apologise – which it did.

4. Updating the old issue with a new one

On 9 October 2002 Waikato University releases its report A Review of the Case of Hans Joachim Kupka, available at http://unipr.waikato.ac.nz/news/kupka-report.shtml. The Report, prepared by Mr Bill Renwick, details the University's handling of the Kupka case.

The Waikato Times, the regional newspaper ran the story and Professor Dov Bing  weighed in heavily. However, generally there was not much community interesting the Kupka affair and observant individuals realized the alleged hysteria had been artificially whipped up by the leaders of the Jewish community. It seems that this displeased Bing somewhat.

And so he issues a Press Release and sends it to the WaikatoTimes, and journalist Lester Thorley turns it into an article that is published on 23 October 2002.

Essay was revisionist: professor

By Lester Thorley
A Waikato University professor believes he has uncovered a Holocaust revisionist thesis at Canterbury University.

Waikato political science professor Dov Bing, who led Jewish academic outrage during Waikato's Kupka Holocaust denial affair, wants answers from Canterbury over the history thesis Judgment On Nuremberg, by Steven Eaton.

It was produced one year after the 1993 Hayward thesis, which attracted worldwide attention for its conclusion that the Nazis did not systematically exterminate Jews in gas chambers.

Prof Bing said the Canterbury theses had been hailed on an Alabama, US, Holocaust revisionist website. The Theses and Dissertations Press home page says it started in 1994 in response to "the reception of two unpublished masters theses in history from a foreign university".

The company says its aim is to publish views which are "suppressed" elsewhere.

Mr Eaton's thesis, which argued the 1945 Nuremberg war criminal trials were illegal, was part of an honours masters degree. He credits Joel Hayward: "who first introduced me to Nuremberg and it is to him that I owe my enthusiasm for the subject".

Prof Bing said, "Holocaust revisionism, especially when it enters the halls of academia, is a matter of considerable public interest."

A 2000 investigation into Hayward's paper led to Canterbury's apology to the Jewish community for accepting a "seriously flawed thesis". A working party said standards had "slipped on just one occasion".

Canterbury's chancellor Dame Phyllis Guthardt said yesterday the Hayward case was investigated fully.

"From the university's point of view the matter is closed."

Canterbury would not investigate Mr Eaton's thesis unless there was clear evidence of fraud or dishonesty in his work.

Waikato professor John Jensen, who has since left, was the external marker for Hayward's work, which was given an A+.

Canterbury would not name Mr Eaton's external marker, but said it was not Prof Jensen.”

As this item mentions the Hayward affair, it becomes relevant for the press in Christchurch, and the Canterbury Press’s Amanda Warren elaborates and fabricates that the Eaton thesis is actually on Dr Robert Countess’ website, when this is not a fact because Countess does not have a website.

Canterbury University is under fire after claims that a second thesis by one of its students is being used by the Holocaust denial movement.

The thesis, by Steven Eaton, was supervised by Dr Vincent Orange who supervised Joel Hayward's controversial thesis questioning key aspects of the Holocaust.

Dr Hayward's thesis sparked an international outcry and prompted the university to conduct an investigation into whether he should have been awarded a first-class masters degree.
Mr Eaton's thesis questions the validity of the Nuremberg trials, conducted by the Allies after World War Two, to punish German war criminals. His thesis concludes that "the Allies evidenced scant regard for the system known as international law", and their disposal of major Nazi war criminals was an "arbitrary exercise of power".

Mr Eaton, whose masters degree in history with first-class honours was confirmed in May 1994, argues that in 1945 no law existed to give the Allies the legal right to punish Nazis to the full extent. In his thesis acknowledgements, Mr Eaton thanked Dr Hayward for introducing him to the Nuremburg trials. "It is to him that I owe my enthusiasm for the subject," he wrote.

An international law expert at the University of Canterbury, Alex Conte, said Mr Eaton's thesis was not the first to question the Nuremberg trials.

Mr Eaton's thesis has been seized upon by a well-known Holocaust denier, the Rev Dr Robert Countess, who posted details of it on his website.

Waikato political science professor Dov Bing yesterday said it was one of the base tenets of the Holocaust denial movement that the Nuremberg trials had no standing in international law and that German war criminals were falsely convicted.
Canterbury University could have prevented this latest controversy if it had identified other theses involving Holocaust denial, Professor Bing said.

The university's Chancellor, Dame Phyllis Guthardt, said it would be a huge undertaking to re-examine old theses. "There is no suggestion of an investigation into the Eaton thesis. There is no evidence of fraud or dishonesty, there had been no criticism of it, and it had never been embargoed or withheld." She did not believe a shadow had been cast on other history theses written in the mid-1990s. Dr Orange did not return The Press' calls and Mr Eaton could not be found.”

Adelaide Institute’s call to the University of Canterbury yielded the following response from a source that did not wish to be named, though the speaker met Fredrick Töben in 2000:

“The Hayward thesis is behind us. The Eaton thesis is on the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. It is not a Holocaust issue. The issue at any university is the freedom to research … with sensitivity.”

[See the university’s response: http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/search/intro.htm

5. The latest on the Hayward Affair

The above Press article spawns the following in New Zealand’s premier Radio and Television magazine, Listener, 2-8 November 2002, but actually printed on Friday, 25 October 2002.

It bills the following article on its front page as:

SPECIAL REPORT: HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND THE NZ CONNECTION

  For the serious historian, an endorsement from David Irving is worse than no endorsement at all. In April 2000, a high-profile libel case in the High Court in London confirmed to the wider public something that historians had long suspected: that, far from being an impartial chronicler of Hitler and the Third Reich, Irving had deliberately twisted and misrepresented historical records to support his dubious and harmful arguments. Those aligned with Irving call themselves ‘Holocaust revisionists’. Others know them better as ‘Holocaust deniers’.

‘Holocaust deniers,’ wrote the trial’s expert witness, Cambridge University historian Richard Evans, in a report later that year, “are engaged in the politically motivated distortion of the past through the tendentious manipulation of evidence, in order to support their preconceived view that there were no gas chambers, no programme of extermination, no six million dead Jews.”

What would those in the Jewish community say to those who wonder why denying a historical event should be such a big deal? “I would say, imagine what it’s like to be Jewish and on the receiving end,” says David Zwartz, president of the New Zealand Jewish Council. “In all the years that I’ve been involved with this sort of thing, the people who have spoken the loudest about the rights of freedom of speech have been the least likely to be affected by any abuses. They’re not in a position of really understanding what that freedom of speech is doing to people.”

Irving brought the case himself, suing Penguin over an otherwise obscure 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, by American scholar Deborah Lipstadt. It proved to be his downfall. His requirement to pay Penguin’s costs has bankrupted him. His Mayfair flat (estimated to be worth  £750,000) was seized in May by “the enemy”.

In late September, the Listener found him in Key West, Florida. It was late afternoon and he had just finished a game of tennis. He was considering a return to the UK — the often-bitten, never-shy Irving is threatening to take on Richard Evans over bis account of the trial, published in the US as Lying About Hitler and in the UK as Telling Lies About Hitler.

Irving’s conviction that he is in the right has only increased — just as it does for many who believe themselves to be persecuted. And a leading piece of ammunition is a 1993 MA thesis awarded first-class honours by the History Department of Canterbury University. It is titled The Fate of the Jews in German Hands and it is by Joel Stuart Hayward. It builds towards the startling conclusion that “the weight of evidence supports the view that the Nazis did not systematically exterminate Jews in gas chambers”. It cites Irving’s notion that the Holocaust is “the biggest propaganda offensive that the human race has ever known”. It repeats the deniers’ fiction that 95 percent of ‘orthodox’ Holocaust historians are Jewish, and therefore have an agenda.

“Hayward wrote a very good thesis on revisionism,” Irving says with confidence. “It was very fair and objective. He got the story virtually correct and I think that it still holds. In about 10 years, people will look back and say that he got the story as correct as anybody could, on the basis of the available evidence.”

The Listener reached Hayward at his home in Palmerston North. Initially, he seemed rather less keen than Irving to hear from the media, although he did then talk for more than an hour off the record and also agreed to answer questions by email, supplying more than 3000 words of answers in one night.

Did he get the story “virtually correct”, as Irving says? “I was not correct,” he replies. “I made errors of fact and judgment. I still regret those and have apologised for them …I wish I could turn the clock back … I also absolutely hate the fact that these people wish to use my academic credibility to bolster their work, which commonly has anti-Semitic objectives. I detest anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.”

Irving: “Hayward came under very heavy attack from vested interests who have big financial interests involved.” Does he think that Hayward only recanted under pressure and still believes in his conclusions in private? “I don’t know what his private views are. All I know is what he wrote in his master’s thesis. And I’m familiar with the books that he’s written and his general reputation as a historian. And the fact that he’s upset people with the money to throw around to cut him down to size just confirms to me that he’s probably right.”

German historian Christian Leitz, of Auckland University’s History Department, believes that the academic credibility that Canterbury bestowed in Hayward was “a heaven-sent opportunity” for the likes of Irving. The deniers were not slow in exploiting it. Although Irving no longer hosts the thesis on his own website, he offers instructions on how to find it (anyone with basic Internet skills can find it in a minute). It is also hosted by other ‘revisionist’ sites and is still circulated by such Holocaust deniers as Adelaide-based Fredrick Toben and Robert Countess, in Alabama.

“We’re powerless to do anything about it,” Zwartz says. “Even if it is discredited, it’s in circulation and probably will be for all time.”

“Hayward has to confront that risk,” Leitz says. “It is, after all, the only academic thesis that really deals with Holocaust denial in a rather dubious way that has been passed by an institution. You could argue that part of it is a summary of different crackpots around the world, but you can see how he gets drawn into it.”

It’s not as though Hayward wasn’t warned. In January 1992, Lipstadt wrote to Hayward, who was then researching his thesis, that “I certainly hope you do not fall” into the trap pf taking the deniers seriously. Hayward includes that comment in a footnote. Might that inclusion of that embarrassing quote have had a subconscious motivation? Hayward’s attitude to the deniers over those years was marked by internal conflict and strange inconsistencies.

The official version of the Hayward story, as it broke in 2000, was that Hayward was, in 1992, a 28-year-old history student researching an MA under the supervision of military historian Dr Vincent Orange. Hayward claims that, due to his own inexperience, he fell for the arguments of Holocaust deniers, including Irving, but after he completed the thesis he had no further interest in them. He went on to write a PhD on the Nazi siege of Stalingrad, published as a book called Stopped at Stalingrad, and took up a position teaching at Massey University. He was young, he “stuffed up”, he regrets it.

Other puzzling aspects of the Hayward story were explained as mere youthful eccentricities. Such as the fact that he added the Hebrew ‘Joel’ to his name by deed poll and, depending on who you talk to, claimed either Jewish parentage or more remote Jewish ancestry. And the fact that he formed a university group called Opposition to Anti-Semitism (OAS) and then fell out with it. And the fact that, after completing his thesis, he placed a five-year embargo on it — a decision that has still gone unexplained by both Hayward and Orange.   

Canterbury was also warned about the leanings of Hayward’s thesis. A Jewish member of the OAS wrote to university authorities in 1992 with hard evidence of the attitude s that he was forming. The warning went unheeded. A transcript of an OAS meeting in 1992 reveals that Hayward recites nearly every tenet in the denier’s book before the other, incredulous OAS members: there were no gas chambers, the Holocaust is a propaganda trick, and so on. He adds that his net project, his doctorate, will be the authorized biography of David Irving (both Irving and Hayward maintain to this day that they have never met or even spoken to each other). More alarmingly still, Hayward claims that he has also convinced Orange that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that Orange was so excited by the breakthrough that he proposed a public lecture based on Hayward’s research. Was this Hayward’s delusion? Possibly, but it’s a fact that Orange awarded the thesis first-class honours and still stands by the high mark.

An article by Waikato University professor Dov Bing in the New Zealand Jewish Chronicle in early 2000 broke the news about this unbelievable thesis.

Hayward announced that he had attached an addendum, pointing out is mistakes and apologizing for them. Canterbury set up a working party that found fault with the system of supervision, flaws in the thesis and ethical issues in the way in which Hayward “undertook to provide copies of his thesis to at least two informants”. The working party added that the thesis did not deserve the high mark that it received in fact, it should have been revised and resubmitted. But the university could not take the crucial final step and strip Hayward of the degree because there was no evidence of “dishonesty” and nor can the case be re-opened, the university says, unless there is new, credible evidence.

In other words, the working party found that Hayward did his best, but simply read the wrong books and talked to the wrong people. It was an honest mistake. End of story. Hayward still holds to this. “Without trying to deny my own responsibility for some of the problems, I do believe that I was somewhat let down by the overall system at Canterbury,” he writes. “The working party concluded that I was not at fault as a student, but that my university and department didn’t watch out for me adequately … The topic was too contentious for an inexperienced master’s student.”

However, in the two years since the working party met, more information has emerged about Hayward that makes that naivety look less tenable.

Consider Hayward’s position on Irving. To the media in 2000, Hayward said that he had always rated Irving highly as a military historian, but has been shocked to learn, as a result of the trial, of his anti-Semitic and racist prejudices (infamously, there was the rhyme that Irving taught his young daughter to recite: “I am a Baby Aryan/Not Jewish or Sectarian? I have no plans to marry an/ Ape or Rastafarian”).

Hayward’s public statements seem to support this: in the 1993 thesis, Hayward takes Irving seriously and finds no anti-Semitic attitudes. In a letter posted to a WWII online discussion group in 1998, he wrote that he couldn’t find any serious flaws in Irving’s methodology nor any examples of the “deliberate falsification of evidence”, therefore dismissing books such as Lipstadt’s as “weak and unpersuasive, reflecting the author’s own biases”. But here, unlike the thesis, Hayward starts to see doubts about Irving’s racial attitudes, and the person whose biography he had longed to write is now “an unpalatable person”.

He adds, however, that he would be happy to host Irving at Massey, if he lectured on Nazi war leadership, rather than the Holocaust or race policy. “Only because he is no specialist in them, not because of my personal feelings.”

The Canterbury working party may have been convinced by this intellectual progress, but was apparently unaware that, in February 1991, Hayward published a piece in the New Zealand Jewish Chronicle that completely contradicted the thesis he was then researching. Hayward somehow acquired knowledge that he did not have until a decade later: Irving is a “Holocaust denier … [who] openly admires the Nazi regime”. In an emotional torrent, Hayward writes that Irving is the most “gifted” modern historian, yet he is also the one who he “despises” the most. Any attempt he makes at spreading his vile arguments must be opposed,” he writes. Hayward is identified as the secretary of OAS. He even provides the illustration, which is his own drawing of “Irving at work” — at a desk with a picture of Hitler on the wall, a Nazi flag and a Nazi uniform in the closet.

So, did Hayward write a piece for the Jewish Chronicle, in 1991 that identified Irving as an anti-Semite? “I don’t know if I did or not,” he replies. “But I did once write many articles for the Jewish Chronicle, so I may well have. Certainly, even as an undergraduate, I used to think that he disliked Judaism, Zionism and organised Jewry.”

Really? A central argument in Hayward’s thesis depends on the Holocaust deniers, including Irving, being free of anti-Semitism and therefore seeming objective, as Evans has noted. In 2000, Zwartz asked Evans to review Hayward’s thesis. Evans was then fresh off the Irving trial and his report was damning, identifying biases, errors, superficialities: ”He accepts the Holocaust deniers’ arguments without taking into account the detailed criticisms that have been levelled at them; and he presents them as politically neutral scholars despite the fact that he has read, or consulted , work which proves them to be otherwise. This can hardly be described as a balanced approach.”

 Like other observers of the Hayward case, Evans was interested in the Jewish question. Besides, Hayward sometimes presenting himself as Jewish, the Jewish Chronicle identified the OAS as a ‘majority” Jewish group, and Hayward did not identify himself as a gentile — most readers would have assumed that he was Jewish. Certainly, it was in Hayward’s interest to seem Jewish. “The belief that Hayward was Jewish evidently played an important part in persuading [Orange] to accept the topic that Hayward proposed,” Evans wrote. The anti-Irving vitriol may have been part of a disguise.

What of Hayward’s claim that he had no further interest in the Holocaust deniers after completing the thesis? This also looks shaky. Hayward has said that he turned down an offer to speak at Toben’s ‘revisionist’ conference in Adelaide in 1998, where his thesis was praised by Countess as “a noteworthy and courageous study that shows the seriousness of revisionist scholarship”.

Irving claims that he invited Hayward to speak at his conference in the US in 2000, and that Hayward only turned him down because of the attention that his thesis attracted that year. Hayward, however, writes, “I have not been invited in recent years, and have no contact, even by email, with even one single revisionist. None of them even has my email address.”

But further revelations about Hayward and Orange have emerged from within the deniers’ own camp. Last year, Countess published an article about Hayward — whom he calls ‘My friend Stuart” — in a far-right historical journal. It was illustrated by a photo of Hayward firing a gun during a visit to Countess’s property in Alabama. Countess adds that he introduced Hayward to two other prominent Holocaust deniers — Mark Weber and David Cole — and that Hayward  presented Countess with a photocopy and CD of his thesis, Orange’s examiner’s report and another, more recent Canterbury thesis, by a history student named Stephen Daniel Eaton. This thesis, titled Judgment on Nuremberg, was a reconsideration of the Nuremberg war trials (it is a plank of Holocaust deniers that the confessions of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg are not reliable). That it was also supervised by Orange was enough for Countess to say, with obvious admiration, that Canterbury had nurtured a “favourable climate” for Holocaust denial.

How does Hayward remember Eaton’s thesis? “I never read his thesis, do not know what it argued or what grade it received,” he writes. “I was never his tutor, and I had no influence over his choice of topic or his eventual conclusions.” Yet, in his acknowledgements, Eaton put it differently. “It was Joel Hayward who first introduced me to Nuremberg and it is to him that I owe my enthusiasm for the subject,” Eaton wrote. “I also owe him thanks for his scrupulous proofreading and criticism of this text.”

And how does Hayward remember that afternoon with Countess? Well, he happened to be in Alabama and Countess heard that he was around [Hayward does not explain how Countess knew he was there] and asked if he would like to meet the family of Jesse Owens. Hayward was thrilled at the opportunity. Along the way, they fired guns at Countess’s place. Hayward claims never to have seen any photos, but he remembers vividly that “it was in a backyard, in midwinter with me wearing a multi-coloured ski jacket.

“I have fired many weapons and, as a defence studies academic, I always take any opportunity to learn about weaponry. What’s wrong with that? I fired at a block of wood, not a person. And it wasn’t at any paramilitary or far-right training camp. I’m surprised, though, that no one’s accused me of being at Waco.

While at Massey University, Hayward taught modern German history. Lecture notes supplied to the Listener by a former student show that, in 1999, Hayward was teaching so-called ‘orthodox’ history and Holocaust denial as equally valid. This is the “false equivalence” — giving valid and spurious arguments equal weight — that Evans condemned in his review of the thesis.

It is also understood that Irving’s book Hitler’s War, which proposed the myth of Hitler not ordering the Holocaust, was on the reading list, along with Arthur Butz’s notorious The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jews (Evans: “The Nuremberg trials were a frame-up in Butz’s view, and the myth of the Holocaust was propagated after the war by the Jews for their own advantage”). When Dov Bing sought a copy of the reading list, he says, Hayward claimed variously to have lost it, not have one in his study at the time and that it was intellectual property. “Why wouldn’t a respectable academic want to supply a copy of readings that was made available to 100 students each year?” Bing asks.

Even Hayward’s post-thesis research has been seen by some to contain biases. In a review of Stopped at Stalingrad in the Times Literary Supplement in October 23, 1998, Omer Bartov, professor of history at Brown University, noted that “even today some historians remain under the spell of the German rhetoric of the period”: Bartov was amazed that Hayward described both General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s subservient operations chief, and General Kurt Zeitzler, the army’s Nazi chief of staff, as “honourable men”, and accepted Field Marshall Erich von Manstein’s assertion “that he was merely ‘a professional soldier’, while in fact he issued some of the most notorious racist orders of the war as early as 1941”.

Hayward knows this review well. Two weeks after it appeared, he posted, on the same WWII online forum where, only days before, he had posted his praise of Irving and criticism of Lipstadt, an assessment of Bartov. “He comes from the viewpoint that any discussion of Germans at war should include strident condemnations of their Nazi atrocities, etc,” Hayward wrote. What is this ‘viewpoint’? Perhaps, Bing has wondered, Hayward means that Bartov is Jewish.

“I have never adored Hitler, and have never owned a bust or wall photos or plaques of him,” Hayward writes, describing as “utter mischievous rubbish” rumours that he had photos of Hitler in his office at Massey near photos of himself in similar poses.

“I had a picture of me in Nuremberg, taken in 1994, as I did of me in Colmar and Strasbourg in France. I have traveled very widely, after all. The picture I have displayed most often in my office over the years was actually of me at Tel Arad in Israel. So, does this now prove I wish I were Moshe Dayan (a great general by the way)?

“Let me be clear: Hitler was a creep. He was a misanthropic, murderous tyrant who manipulated his nation into war and despicable criminal barbarism. He gets no praise from me whatsoever, even though, as a military strategist, I can recognise that he made some innovative and effective strategic decisions. I add that he also made some hopeless amateurish blunders.”

Hayward resigned from Massey University in June, without any fanfare. He has not gone on to any other institution. He says that he is living on his savings, developing his abilities as a writer of fiction and poetry (he submitted one, with his answers, about Jesse Owens) and enjoyed watching videos and Coronation Street and going for walks along the Manawatu River with his wife and two daughters. Although two years have passed since the attention of the media and the working party, he left Massey “to recover my shattered emotional health after suffering a nervous breakdown caused by acute stress and depression about this dreadful saga”. In a Press story in 2000, he also alluded to a breakdown, and again to Auckland’s University’s Leitz last year. The reference usually comes with a sense of persecution.

“I received literally scores of abusive letters and threats, including death threats,” he writes. “I must add that I received worse treatment, and had my freedom and privacy violated to a worse degree, than if I had committed an armed robbery.

“I also wanted to find a new career, one that would free me artistically and creatively. I no longer believe that all staff within New Zealand universities care about freedom of enquiry and expression. Many teachers encourage extreme political correctness and the conformity of ideas and they discourage free thinking. But that’s also typical of wider Western society, isn’t it? I’m a liberal democrat, so freedom is important to me. Maybe that’s why I feel so sad about what I see bas the decline of academic freedom in New Zealand. And of course I’m talking generally, not about my own painful circumstances.”

For all the confusions and obfuscation in Hayward’s account, it seems that the person who is really being protected by Canterbury’s unwillingness to strip Hayward of his master’s degree is Orange. He joined Canterbury’s staff some 40 years ago and, now in his late sixties, will retire at the end of this year. For other academics, the Hayward saga has been a black mark in his career. It was Justice Gray at the Irving trial who said, “No objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz.” It was Orange who did just that.

“The onus is on the supervisor to make sure that a young student, doing a contentious topic, doesn’t get pulled in a certain direction,” Leitz says. “In most institutions, this would have been the end of somebody’s career. “I still feel that this is a case where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in terms of choice of topic, choice of supervision, the individuals involved, the choice of external examiners.”

After finding the thesis to be “tendentious, biased and dishonest”, and having “no doubt” that it constituted Holocaust denial, Evans extended his criticism to the supervision: “No competent examiner anywhere would have passed it …More serious still, if anything, is the scandalous incompetent level of supervision.”

All through 2000 and 2001, Orange repeatedly refused to comment about Hayward and maintained that position with the Listener. However, he changed his mind on the even of publication and released a previously confidential letter written to Canterbury’s chancellor on April 20, 2001 (“Hitler’s birthday!” Orange notes). Here, Orange admits to letting Hayward down as a supervisor. “I now know, as a result of the most intense, protracted and (I am sorry to say) generally hostile scrutiny that any half-MA thesis has ever received, that he made some serious mistakes,” he writes. “I also know that I failed to offer him adequate supervision during most of 1992, while I was on leave. And yet: how much of Joel’s apprentice work has withstood that intense, protracted generally hostile scrutiny!”

Elsewhere in the 14-page letter, Orange refers, usually ominously, to “Mr Zwartz and his associates”, whom he sees as “not ‘men of probity’ “. He describes Evans’s report as hostile and often incorrect, which is a point of view not shared by most experts, including Leitz — “Evans has an impeccable reputation,” Leitz says.

Orange adds that, unlike the working party, he sees nothing improper in his friendship with Hayward. Ten years after the thesis, they remain close.

The person officially designated to speak for Canterbury is registrar Alan Hayward (who is not related to Joel), “I myself wouldn’t use the word ‘embarrassment’, “ he says, in regards to the university’s image. Although the university did apologise in 2000, the working party proposed that the university could make further amends by sponsoring, for example, a Holocaust memorial lecture, “We haven’t actually gone down that path, “ Hayward says, although he believes that one new course reflects a heightened sensitivity. “There is a summer course being offered on Jewish-Muslim relations and the whole question of Israel and Palestine.”

Not quite the same thing. “We thought that the university was not very serious about our concerns,” says Zwartz. Like Zwartz and others Evans believes that the degree must be withdrawn — only this would send a clear signal. Zwartz hopes that the formal replacement for recently departed vice-chancellor Daryl Le Grew — due to be announced in the new year — may be finally in a position to make such a move.

There is a precedent. Evans cites the case of Henri Roques, a protégé of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who had his ‘revisionist’ doctorate revoked in 1986 by the French Ministry of Higher Education. Evans’s report concluded: “Allowing a work of Holocaust denial to appear with the imprimature of a university gives it scholarly credibility. In the present case, this has also been exploited by anti-Semites and political extremists seeking to argue for the validity of Holocaust denial. If a degree is awarded to a candidate who is subsequently found to have plagiarized his or her work, or who has systematically violated the canons of scholarship which the degree is intended to certify and endorse, then it is reasonable to ask the university in question to withdraw recognition of the degree originally awarded. This indeed happened in the case of Henri Roques. It should happen in the case of Joel Hayward, too.”       

29 October 2002,

Dear Editor

That there is still outrage about the Joel Hayward thesis several years on, Listener November 2, 2002, indicates the intolerance of those who have a vested interest in perpetuating war era propaganda. If the World War I allegation that the Germans bayoneted Belgian babies served the interests of Zionism and Israel we would no doubt also continue to be bombarded with that myth.

Dr Hayward’s thesis, which I have read, amounts to a review and assessment of Holocaust revisionist literature and its development. It weighs the merits of revisionist literature, and on virtually every page finds errors with it. However, what has the Holocaust propagandists enraged is that Hayward also found some justification for the revisionist questioning of the many strange allegations relative to the Holocaust.

Where Dr Hayward errs is in his retraction appended to the thesis, in which he states that he subsequently found the Leuchter Report, the first forensic examination of the alleged Auschwitz gas chambers, was erroneous. The material he cites as repudiating Leuchter was known to him prior to his writing the thesis, as shown in some of his pervious articles. Rather than being repudiated, Leuchter’s findings have been replicated, chemical analysis showing that the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz do not have sufficient traces of ‘Prussian Blue’ residue from Zyklon gas.

The allegations concerning mass gassings are as credible as the testimony and documents that accused the Germans of the Katyn massacre. I would ask, what of all the documents, testimony and confessions relating to the gassings supposed to have taken place at the camps in Germany and Austria, such as Dachau, which were finally conceded during the 1960s not to have taken place? Why are the same allegations regarding Auschwitz and other work camps in Eastern Europe considered any more credible?

Mr Zwartz of the Jewish Council pontificates about the hurt done to Jews when such oddities are questioned. What of the hurt done by this Blood Libel to the Germans, increasingly to other Europeans and even the Vatican, and of course to the Palestinians?

K R Bolton  

Fredrick Töben responds to the NZ Listener: editor@listener.co.nz

Right of Reply to Philip Matthew's 'In Denial', 30 October 2002  

Dear Editor

Permit me briefly to respond to your staff member's five page article in the Listener, November 2-8 November 2002.

1.   After Hayward asked me to remove his thesis from our website, I did: www.adelaideinstitute.org

2.   It is a pity that Philip Matthews did not even bother to ring me about this matter. The tone in which he references our 'revisionist' conference indicates his deep-set prejudice to open and free enquiry. Such a matter has a lot to do with mental maturity.

3.   Matthews fails to point out that Justice Gray left an opening in his otherwise condemning judgment: he had not read the Rudolf Report and David Irving had failed to submit it. To date no-one has refuted the findings of The Rudolf Report that support the Leuchter Report's findings.

4.  Putting all the hot air aside because talk is cheap, there is just one challenge that needs to be taken up, and Dr Robert Faurisson throws it out to the world. He invites anyone to show him the murder weapon, as is the sensible thing to do in any murder enquiry:

To date this challenge has been met by verbal abuse and legal restraints, as is being suggested by Professor Dov Bing. Bing's authoritarian mindset is a shame to academia, and Hayward is right in lamenting the demise of free enquiry at New Zealand's universities.

Bing is a disgrace to the world academic community (as is Professor Evans) because as a Zionist he is someone who supports the apartheid-racist state of Israel. That in itself is a shame for which Bing should hang his head in shame.

5.   Finally, a German historian, Fritjof Meyer, has written a long article in a publication wherein he claims that Auschwitz-Birkenau's, Krema II, was not a gas chamber, but that the gassings occurred at two farmhouses outside the perimeter of the concentration camp. Irving had expressed this view at his trial.

Of course, Dr Faurisson would vehemently disagree and claim that Irving is not a revisionist because he wants to have it both ways. Faurisson says you cannot say a woman is half pregnant, and so you cannot say "limited gassings took place" when there is no evidence to prove this claim that any gassings at all took place.

6.   Professor Evans knows he is the liar and his dialectic tricks will help save him for a little longer, as will the legal protection he enjoys. But truth will out in time - and Revisionists don't care about winning or losing battles. They seek clarification without threats of consequences. Revisionists work without any social protection because they embrace the factual truth of a matter, no matter how contentious. Revisionists do not fear death and are not intimidated because we only get one go at living on this earth!

Although I do not know Professor Orange, from his adopted stance I can guess he is a man of principles, and a man whose moral and intellectual courage and integrity remain intact and for that I salute him. He obviously does not suffer from a failure of moral nerve. And perhaps you ought to be congratulated for running the article.

Sincerely

Fredrick Töben

6. Conclusion.

Whenever a former Soviet-controlled country joins NATO, then it is required to pass before the joining date a specific law that outlaws ‘Holocaust’ denial. Poland passed a law in January 1999, and in April of that year it was permitted to join NATO.

The pattern has repeated itself, all for the well being of the 1500 families that control the thriving business enterprise called NATO, and of course for the ‘memory of the victims of the Holocaust’.

New Zealand is as yet not going down this road, not yet. But the Jewish lobby’s attempt to stifle debate on matters ‘Holocaust’ indicates it is well on its way. Outright ‘Holocaust’ denial is as yet not on the New Zealand legal books, as is the case in Australia where the 17 September 2002 Federal Court of Australia judgments in Jones v Scully and Jones v Töben has enshrined in law a European-style ‘Holocaust denial’ law, albeit without criminal sanctions.

New Zealand is focusing on academia to reign in dissident thinkers, the road that Germany walked along in 1983 when Göttingen University withdrew its doctorate conferred upon Justice Wilhelm Stäglich during the 1950s for having written in 1977 the classic: The Auschwitz Myth. France has done likewise. Switzerland and Austria have not, as yet!

A call to New Zealand’s well-known current affairs TV program Paul Holmes, indicates that a general interest in the matters raised by the Listener article seems not to warrant a specific program on the Hayward affair, so according to producer Vicky Poland.

It remains to be seen whether Professor Dov Bing will let matters rest.  

Fredrick Töben

Adelaide

1 November 2002

Addendum 31 October 2002

Holocaust uproar student apologises
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3001864&msg=emaillink
31.10.2002

A German student at the centre of a controversial Holocaust denial case at Waikato University has apologised to the Jewish community and university staff. Hans-Joachim Kupka, who is in his early 50s, offered his apology from his home in Germany after reading about a report on the case released this month after a two-year investigation. Mr Kupka, who was a New Zealand citizen, left Waikato in June 2000 after allegations that he denied the Holocaust during internet chatroom debates.

The chatroom comments were unrelated to Mr Kupka's doctoral thesis on the use of German in New Zealand, but academics feared he would contact Jewish migrants who survived the Holocaust - the systematic killing of Jews in the 1940s. The Jewish community considered this a clear breach of university cultural safety protocols. The report, by former Education Department head Bill Renwick, criticised the university's handling of Mr Kupka's 1999 enrolment and found that he was clearly a Holocaust denier.

By email, Mr Kupka said: "It has never been my intention to hurt anybody with my internet postings. They were never intended to be racist, anti-Semitic or Holocaust-denying. Some of these postings have been quoted out of context, others have been cited incompletely." Mr Kupka apologised to the Jewish community for any statement which might have hurt them, and to university staff. "What more can I do?" he wrote. He believed that up to 90 per cent of the Renwick report could be disputed, and he had been continually labelled a Holocaust denier or Neo-Nazi.
- NZPA

Fredrick Töben comments:

Another good man apologises for what?

"The Jewish community considered this a clear breach of university cultural safety protocols." That's a new one! More to come, no doubt. Hayward was right in bemoaning the state of moral and intellectual enquiry declining within western culture. In whose interest is all this? In whose interest is it that the western world is attacking Islam via that ;'terrorism' imperative coming from the USA? Just asking.