Newsletter No 396

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                     July 2008
                                                                    No 396

A Right-of-Reply

Does that sound familiar, dear history reader? If not, remember how the so-called right-wing magazine Quadrant advertises itself with the slogan: I never read Quadrant because I don’t like it. We all know the first victim of war is truth. John Pilger said, “The first victim of war is bad journalism”. I say, “bad journalism is, if you quote your opponents out of context”.

It seems Hal G P Colebatch, a ‘history writer’ for Quadrant and contributor to The Australian, loves just doing that.

Let’s have a closer look at Colebatch’s story in the May 2008 edition of Quadrant, ‘Manning Clark’s antisemitism’, which is published with a prominently centred capitalised and framed ARGUMENT. It is not at all clear with whom he is arguing and what the argument is all about.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no argument at all, but there is only an attempt by Colebatch to prove that Manning Clark was: 1. A closet Nazi; 2. An open commie; 3. A mad Brit hater; 4. An antisemite, which in Manning’s case means hating Ashkenazi-European Jews, who are not Semites at all. In regard to Colebatch non-argument argument let me make the following points here:

1. If you are not in command of the German language, never quote in German. Colebatch, of course, does that and then out of context. He cites a passage out of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and at p 93 he writes: ‘Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “…fand man, wie de Made im faulenden Leibe, oft ganz gelendet von plotzlichen Lichte, ein Judlein – one found like the maggot in the foul corpse, often quite dazzled by the sudden light, a Jewboy!” This is what Colebatch should have written. It is not “de Made” but “die Made”; it is not “gelendet” but “geblendet”; it is not “plotzlichen” but “plötzlichen”; it is not “Judlein” but “Jüdelein”, which does not necessarily refer to a “Jewboy” but could also be a “Jew girl”.

2. Colebatch continues at p 95: “So Hitler’s unprovoked butchery of Poland … .” In this instance Colebatch shows that he has, like most writers of fiction-faction history a selective memory also known in Australia as the Carmen Lawrence syndrome. She was the former Western Australian politician who could to the best of her knowledge not remember certain matters that led to a suicide of a female lawyer.

Whoever says that Hitler’s 1 September 1939 attack on Poland was unprovoked, does not know what he or she is talking about, or deliberately distorts historical facts in order to repeat the victor’s version of history: ‘We the good because we won, you the bad and the ugly because you lost’. It makes you wonder where Colebatch read/studied history.

Just for the record here: Poland was, of course, not the innocent victim of World War Two. It did not agree to the Danzig rail and road corridor connecting Germany with the so-called ‘Free City of Danzig’. Poland did not work together with Germany in order to administer the City of Danzig as was laid down in the dictated rules of Versailles that Germany accepted under duress by the victors powers at the end of World War One. Poland had cultural, economic and a non-aggression treaty with Hitler’s Germany, but at the same time behind the German’s back, Poland signed secret military pacts with France and Great Britain. They made it clear to Poland that the price for protection against alleged German, but not Russian, aggression was: “that under no circumstances must Poland come to a peace agreement with Germany because as we all now know not only Stalin but also Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war against Germany in order to neutralise its economic competition. Already in 1935 Churchill made it clear by saying that Germany must be destroyed. Mr Colebatch should read the book The Hitler-Hess Deception by British historian Martin Allen. Between 1936 and 1944 Hitler made more that 40 disarmament and peace offers towards Churchill and Roosevelt. All of them were dismissed by the western allies.

May I also point out that Poland had its own imperial ambitions under its leader General Pilzutzki, who in 1920-21 attacked the then young and militarily weak Soviet Union and successfully carved out a large area of Soviet Russia, which was annexed and incorporated into the Polish state, known as East Poland. The Poles lost that territory again to Russia after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Poland’s 1939 military and political plans were clear. It was the famous Polish March to Berlin and the result should have been the incorporation of eastern Germany, namely East and West Prussia and Silesia and Middle Germany, the former German Democratic Republic. All that should have become a part of Greater Poland, right up to the River Elbe.

Poland’s policy towards its German minorities was also overshadowed by atrocities before the beginning of World War Two. Tens of thousands of innocent German civilians, who were Polish citizens, were driven out of their homes and fled to Germany. The ones who failed to escape Poland were partly slaughtered in a most beastly way.

There was also a large support within the Polish Roman Catholic Church to drive out the ethnic minorities within Poland. The Bromberg Blood Sunday stands here as an ugly example of Polish ethnic cleansing. As we all know, but Mr Colebatch conveniently forgot here, there is always cause and effect in history.

3. Colebatch continues his attack by focusing on the Adelaide Institute and my writings. At page 96-97 he again quotes out of context about an article I wrote about Manning Clark, which was not only published in the Adelaide Institute newsletter but on other Internet websites as well.

In an ironic attack on the Adelaide Institute he questions the historical competence and academic integrity by describing it as “a well known centre of learning”. Of course it is clear here that this was not meant to be a compliment but the usual smear we have become used to when our opponents run out of arguments because they are dictated to by the tyranny of political correctness in order to guarantee their own professional survival.

My challenge to Colebatch is to ask his editor at Quadrant, Keith Windschuttle, to publish my whole Manning Clark article, if he dares, and then we can talk about truth in history.

Regarding the Shylocks in Black, let me make the following point here: The problems with the Gentile and Jewish Shylocks concentrated within the parasitic tribes of Wall Street, the City of London and other usury and speculation madhouses world-wide, is that they are not happy with their pound of flesh, they want ours too! As Meir Amshel Rothshild told one of his complaining customers in Frankfurt, Germany, who said: “All my money is lost”. Rothshild replied: “No Sir, Your money is not lost, it only belongs to somebody else now - me!”

So, here we go again. Foolish people never learn from history – have they forgotten the Wall Street Mantra: “Jesus saves, Moses invests”. I rest my case but certainly would welcome your reply.

Sincerely –

David W Brockschmidt.

Communication from the German Government to the British Government, Handed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador (Sir Neville Henderson) at 11:20 A.M., September 3, 1939

The German Government have received the British Government's ultimatum of the 3rd September, 1939. They have the honour to reply as follows: -

1. The German Government and the German people refuse to receive, accept, let alone to fulfill, demands in the nature of ultimata made by the British Government.

2. On our eastern frontier there has for many months already reigned a condition of war. Since the time when the Versailles Treaty first tore Germany to pieces, all and every peaceful settlement was refused to all German Governments. The National Socialist Government also has since the year 1933 tried again and again to remove by peaceful negotiations the worst rapes and breaches of justice of this treaty. The British Government have been among those who, by their intransigent attitude, took the chief part in frustrating every practical revision. Without the intervention of the British Government - of this the German Government and German people are fully conscious - a reasonable solution doing justice to both sides would certainly have been found between Germany and Poland. For Germany did not have the intention nor had she raised the demands of annihilating Poland. The Reich demanded only the revision of those articles of the Versailles Treaty which already at the time of the formulation of that Dictate had been described by understanding statesmen of all nations as being in the long run unbearable, and therefore impossible for a great nation and also for the entire political and economic interests of Eastern Europe. British statesmen, too, declared the solution in the East which was then forced upon Germany as containing the germ of future wars. To remove this danger was the desire of all German Governments and especially the intention of the new National Socialist People's Government. The blame for having prevented this peaceful revision lies with the British Cabinet policy.

3. The British Government have - an occurrence unique in history - given the Polish State full powers for all actions against Germany which that State might conceivably intend to undertake. The British Government assured the Polish Government of their military support in all circumstances, should Germany defend herself against any provocation or attack. Thereupon the Polish terror against the Germans living in the territories which had been torn from Germany immediately assumed unbearable proportions. The Free City of Danzig was, in violation of all legal provisions, first threatened with destruction economically and by measures of customs policy, and was finally subjected to a military blockade and its communications strangled. All these violations of the Danzig Statute, which were well known to the British Government, were approved and covered by the blank cheque given to Poland. The German Government, though moved by the sufferings of the German population which was being tortured and treated in an inhuman manner, nevertheless remained a patient onlooker for five months, with our undertaking even on one single occasion any similar aggressive action against Poland. They only warned Poland that these happenings would in the long run be unbearable, and that they were determined, in the event of no other kind of assistance being given to this population, to help them themselves. All these happenings were known in every detail to the British Government. It would have been easy for them to use their great influence in Warsaw in order to exhort those in power there to exercise justice and humaneness and to keep to the existing obligations. The British Government did not do this. On the contrary, in emphasising their obligation to assist Poland under all circumstances, they actually encouraged the Polish Government to continue in their criminal attitude which was threatening the peace of Europe. In this spirit, the British Government rejected the proposal of Signor Mussolini, which might still have been able to save the peace of Europe, in spite of the fact that the German Government had declared their willingness to agree to it. The British Government, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the unhappiness and misery which have now overtaken and are about to overtake many peoples.

4. After all efforts at finding and concluding a peaceful solution had been rendered impossible by the intransigence of the Polish Government covered as they were by England, after the conditions resembling civil war, which had existed already for months at the eastern frontier of the Reich, had gradually developed into open attacks on German territory, without the British Government raising any objections, the German Government determined to put an end to this continual threat, unbearable for a great Power, to the external and finally also to the internal peace of the German people, and to end it by those means which, since the Democratic Governments had in effect sabotaged all other possibilities of revision, alone remained at their disposal for the defence of the peace, security and honour of the Germans. The last attack of the Poles threatening Reich territory they answered with similar measures. The German Government do not intend, on account of any sort of British intentions or obligations in the East, to tolerate conditions which are identical with those conditions which we observe in Palestine, which is under British protection. The German people, however, above all do not intend to allow themselves to be ill-treated by Poles.

5. The German Government, therefore, reject the attempts to force Germany, by means of a demand having the character of an ultimatum, to recall its forces which are lined up for the defence of the Reich, and thereby to accept the old unrest and the old injustice. The threat that, failing this, they will fight Germany in the war, corresponds to the intention proclaimed for years past by numerous British politicians. The German Government and the German people have assured the English people countless times how much they desire an understanding, indeed close friendship, with them. If the British Government hitherto always refused these offers and now answer with an open threat of war, it is not the fault of the German people and their Government, but exclusively the fault of the British Cabinet or of those men who for years have been preaching the destruction and extermination of the German people. The German people and their Government do not, like Great Britain, intend to dominate the world, but they are determined to defend their own liberty, their independence and above all their life. The intention, communicated to us by order of the British Government by Mr. King-Hall, of carrying the destruction of the German people even further than was done through the Versailles Treaty is taken note of by us, and we shall therefore answer any aggressive action on the part of England with the same weapons and in the same form.

http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/RESOURCE/document/BRIT.htm

The energy crisis is causing worry. However, Iran, which possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, wishes to exploit them better, with our help, and sell us the products, a procedure that would lead to a marked softening of worldwide petrol, diesel, fuel oil and gas prices. A good many nations have an eye on this great potential wealth and would be apt to respond favourably to Tehran’s business proposals. But the United States has decreed the boycott of Iran and, up to now, the world’s policeman has generally been obeyed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can make all the proposals he likes: he still finds himself considered a criminal. His request for a collaboration that would let him fully re-equip the country’s drilling, production and processing operations is refused. He goes so far as to suggest that countries using the single European currency pay in euros and no longer in dollars, but to no avail. People turn their back to him. Some threaten him. Even the Pope refuses to receive him. In many countries, his embassies and diplomatic staff are deprived of contact with the local authorities and foreign delegations; they have ended up with pariah status. One may well ask oneself where such radical behaviour towards the Iranians ever originated and why the international community acts so obviously against its own economic interests.

Three grounds are usually brought up to explain this policy of boycott and open hostility:

1. the Iranian president is perhaps trying to arm his country with nuclear weapons;

2. It seems he wants to exterminate the Jews in Israel;

3. He holds the extermination of the European Jews during the Second World War to be a myth. The first two grounds do not make much sense; only the third is serious and, for that reason, instructive.

In reply to the first ground, it’s fitting to observe that if Ahmadinejad’s accusers possessed the slightest evidence that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, such evidence would long since have been brandished before the world; however, up to now, they have supplied no real evidence and, in any case, if Iran had a nuclear bomb at her disposal, she could not launch it towards a geographic zone populated by as many Palestinians as Jews; her bomb would kill or maim both populations without distinction.

The second ground rests on the absurd manipulation of a text. Ahmadinejad has had and continues to have ascribed to him an incendiary statement according to which the Jewish State is to be “wiped off the map”, words taken to mean the extermination of the Jews in Israel.

Actually, he had merely repeated in 2006 Ayatollah Khomeyni’s 1979 declaration that “the regime [in Persian, “rezhime”] occupying Al Qods [Jerusalem]” would one day “vanish from the page of time”. Ahmadinejad took care to spell out his phrase by specifying that, if all the inhabitants of the land of Palestine – Moslems, Jews and Christians – had the right one day to vote freely and opt for a regime of their choice, the Zionist regime would disappear from Palestine just as, for example, the Communist regime disappeared from Russia. The Western media, as a whole, have reported neither the exact wording nor the explanation.

The third ground is the true one: if the Iranian president causes so much fear, it’s owing to his revisionism. He has wielded the sole weapon that can deeply worry the Jewish State and its ally, the United States. He possesses what I’ve called the poor man’s atomic weapon. In the findings of historical revisionism he effectively holds a “device of mass destruction” that would kill no-one but could neutralise Israel’s number one political weapon: the Great Lie of the alleged Nazi gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Europe’s Jews. Raised in the religion of the “Holocaust”, the peoples of North America and Europe generally believe in this Great Lie and see Ahmadinejad as a heretic; thus they dare not defend any policy of rapprochement with Iran, or call for a lifting of the boycott, although therein lies the only chance of seeing their energy costs decrease. Doubtless some of these peoples’ leaders desire an understanding with Iran, but they back away at the prospect of being criticised as accomplices of the new Satan, of the “denier”, the “negationist” who “kills the Jews once again by denying their death”.

The news of the international “Holocaust” conference in Tehran (December 11th - 12th 2006) rang out like a warning shot. By no means reserved to revisionists, that conference was open to all. Confrontation of opposing views was allowed, and it took place. The rout of the antirevisionists was dramatic. And President Ahmadinejad, already fully apprised of revisionist argumentation, was thus able to restate that the “Holocaust” was a myth. Bush, Blair, Chirac, who know nothing of revisionism, responded by making a terrible fuss. As for the Israelis, they are aware of the Jewish authors’ utter inability to answer revisionist arguments on the scientific level; they now uphold their Great Lie only with Elie Wiesel-style fake testimony or cinematic guff in the manner of Claude Lanzmann, when they don’t resort to novels, drama or even sham museum exhibitions like those at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington; they have therefore seized the occasion to draw up a bill in the Knesset that would let the State of Israel demand that any revisionist, wherever in the world he might be, be delivered to its own courts! When there’s no proof to show, the cudgel is used.

The Zionists and their friends are getting more and more alarmed at the diffusion of revisionism over the Internet. They make many attempts, cynical or veiled, to strengthen Internet censorship but, up to today at any rate, they have not yet achieved their aims. Throughout the Western world repression of revisionism is worsening, but it’s all a waste of effort so far. The holocaustic propaganda and Shoah Business grow ever more deafening, but henceforth they tend to annoy or tire people.

Revisionism has long been an intellectual adventure, experienced by a certain number of academics, researchers and various other persons ready to sacrifice their lives or their tranquility for the defence of historical truth, and of justice. Today, revisionism is becoming, on the international plane, a noticeable bone of contention; it is asserted by some and violently denounced by others, and is present even in certain political or economic altercations. It is destined to play no small role in the endless crisis in the Middle East as well as in the current energy crisis. For the powerful, it will constitute a threat and, for others, a way out. In any case, the times when revisionism could be treated with contempt or quite simply ignored are decidedly past.

The controversial pictures reveal key figures in the Nazi leadership relaxing at a resort, singing, reclining on deck chairs and posing for happy snaps – all at a time when the killings at nearby Auschwitz were on the rise.

From May till July 1944, around 350,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed to death.

The album is an extremely rare find as very few photos of Auschwitz are known to exist.

It was picked up in Germany at the end of WWII by an American soldier. Now an old man, he anonymously donated it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum last year.

The album was the property of Karl Hoecker, the 2IC of Auschwitz. Also seen in the photographs is Rudolf Hoess, the founder of the concentration camp, and Dr Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death”.

Reporter/Camera: MICHAEL MAHER

__________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT

Sixty three years down the track after the Second World War, you'd think there was nothing left to discover about the horrible Holocaust. Recently, however, via the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, a photo album has come to light that adds a chilling new chapter to what we unfortunately already know about the goings-on in places like the notorious concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. "Nazis at play" is a bit hard to get the mind around, but here's Michael Maher with just that.

REPORTER: Michael Maher

These are the men and women who ran Auschwitz - a hell on earth, the most notorious death camp the world has ever known. The photographs were taken at a nearby resort in the summer of 1944, when the slaughter was at its height. This was the summer that confirmed Auschwitz’s place in the annals of evil.

REGINA SPEIGEL, AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR: You know, you look at these pictures, they look almost like normal people. They are...they’re devils. They are something in human flesh because how you could sit there and know what's happening to people there and enjoy.

REBECCA ERBELDING, U.S. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM ARCHIVIST: December 2006, I received a letter in the mail. This gentleman, who requested to remain anonymous, wrote to the museum and said he had World War II-era photographs in his possession that he felt we might be interested in. He believed the pictures - and he wrote in his letter - that he believed the pictures to be taken in and around Auschwitz, Poland. And I was quite doubtful of this, actually, because very few people actually have photos of Auschwitz. However I requested some more information from him. And he said, "Can I just send you the album that I have?" and I said, 'Sure,' um, so, the beginning of January 2007, an album arrived on my desk, Federal Express, and I opened it up and there was a photograph album clearly marked "Auschwitz 21 June 1944".

It was found in Germany at the end of the war by an American soldier. The album belonged to Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commander of Auschwitz.

REBECCA ERBELDING: His job was to know everything before the commandant did and to make sure things ran smoothly for his boss. The other jobs he had was he supervised a team of women known as Helfereinnen and they were elecommunications specialists. They were in charge of all communications inside and out of the camp, so every time a transport came in - a group of Jews came in on a train - they would be in charge of saying "this many people came in", this number were selected for forced labour and this number were selected for the gas chambers", and he would sign off on that before it was telegrammed to Berlin. So he absolutely knew everything that was going on.

I think the most chilling thing is the time period that this is taken. These are not random officers who are at this resort. This is the peak. This is the A-team. This is people who were brought in specifically for the summer of 1944.

JOE WHITE, HOLOCAUST HISTORIAN: By this point, at least in terms of Birkenau's killing capacity, it reached its apex. And the killing capacity was so expanded that for body disposal they were beginning to use open-pit cremation beyond the crematories.

REBECCA ERBELDING: In those photographs I recognised Dr Josef Mengele and so once we saw him then we knew the album was truly something really special because, as we knew, there weren't any - supposedly - any photographs of Mengele taken in the camp.

Mengele, known as 'the Angel of Death', conducted heinous medical experiments on women and children. In perhaps the most remarkable photograph in the album, here he stands amidst a gallery of leading Nazi killers at a singalong.

REBECCA ERBELDING: The front row of the album, to me, is the most interesting because it’s the hierarchy. But they're all in a row. They’re all lined up. They’re all smiling and laughing at this singalong at the end of one of the most horrific periods of murder in one place in human history. It’s astonishing, the photograph.

JOE WHITE: Besides Josef Mengele, whose face is quite well-known, probably the most important person that I recognized was Rudolf Hoess, who was the founder of Auschwitz as a concentration camp.

A year after first viewing them, researchers at the Holocaust Memorial Museum are still finding new clues in these rare photographs.

JOE WHITE: Look at this guy. Take the cap off.
REBECCA ERBELDING: I think you're right.

Not long after this picture was taken, Regina Spiegel, an 18-year-old Polish Jew, was deported to Auschwitz.
REGINA SPIEGEL: All these wrinkles - old age isn’t even nice to the tattoos. It looked to me like a fountain pen and they just jabbed it out, and sometimes people would ask me, "Did it hurt?" I said this was the least of our problems. We had other problems. This was the least of our problems.

There were no singalongs in Regina’s world - only a deep, dark abyss from which she thought she’d never emerge. Just how dark that abyss was can be seen in the only other Auschwitz album known to exist - the Lily Jacob album was named after the woman who discovered the photographs, including this one of her younger brothers, murdered a short time later.

REBECCA ERBELDING: It’s really impossible to look at one without really looking at the other. This is what was actually going on in Auschwitz. This is the reality of the situation, not this world of fun.

In a remarkable coincidence, the photographs in both albums were taken at the same time.

JOE WHITE: The album was created by the SS for SS purposes. It was created, presumably, to document what a selection process looked like from the beginning until just to the antechamber of the gas chambers.

Between the middle of May and the beginning of July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz. 80% were selected for death upon arrival. These women and children, unbeknown to them, are taking their last steps towards the gas chambers.

REGINA SPIEGEL: When they told us to go into the showers, that - so help me God – I will never forget. I was the first and I pushed myself in because I figured maybe they are burning us. Might as well do it to me first, so I don’t hear anyone else scream. And, of course, I came out wet, minus my hair, and of course that’s when they put my number on. But that was Auschwitz for me.

REBECCA ERBELDING: I really think the album in the coming years will be of great interest to people who study the psychology of genocide and the psychology of perpetrators, because it's really astonishing that they can do this. The blueberry pictures, in particular - those pictures were taken on a day where transports were coming into Auschwitz, 20 miles away, and people are pretending to cry in these images, that they don’t have any more blueberries to eat. I mean, the duality of this is astonishing.

So I think the album also raises questions of bystander - you know, are these girls as guilty as the people putting the Zyklon B in the gas chamber? They're at Auschwitz, they know what's going on - where does guilt fall?

The images seared into Regina’s mind are of the family, friends and neighbours these men sent to their deaths.
REGINA SPIEGEL: I could see their haunted faces. And you know the funny thing? When they took them away, they didn’t beg them for mercy, because they knew there was no mercy. But they turned around to us when we were still standing on the side and said, "Please remember us. Remember us." Because nobody likes to go into oblivion, not to be remembered.

REBECCA ERBELDING: And that's one of the things that's really difficult about this album and raises so many questions, because they don’t look evil in this album. They look like normal people, like you and I. And how does a person get to that point where that mass killing is socially acceptable and morally acceptable to a person? It’s very difficult and I think that this album just raises that question even more than it's already been raised by the Holocaust itself.

____________

Editor: NICK O’BRIEN

Producer: KIM CAMBERG

Original Music composed by VICKI HANSEN

Photos courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline//happy_nazis_548648

Have Your Say: What's your opinion of the new photographic exhibition of Nazis at Auschwitz?

_____________________

Fredrick Töben comments:

1. In 1996 van Pelt/Dwork stated in their book Auschwitz: From 1270 to the present, at p. 363-64, that Krema I at the Auschwitz I-Stammlager was symbolically representing what happened at Krema II, Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

2. In 2002 Fritjof Meyer stated that gassings only occurred outside of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in two alleged farm houses called Bunker I and II.

3. Gitta Sereny in 2001 stated that Auschwitz concentration camp was NOT a death camp.

4. The above authors are so-called 'respectable' mainstream historians.

5. Aerial photos taken during 1944 show no evidence of burning pits nor roof vents for gas insertion.

6. After the Ernst Zündel 1988 Toronto trial the 4 million death figure was revised. This meant that the 20 plaques at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the 4 million figure were removed and replaced a few years later with the figure 1.-1.5 million deaths. This did not change the overall 6 million death figure. Why not?

7. Also, famed late Holocaust historian Prof Raul Hilberg stated under oath that there existed no written Hitler Orders that began the extermination process. Up to that time he had written in his book - The Destruction of European Jews - that two written Hitler Orders existed. He went on to state in court that " aw ink and a nudge" started the extermination process. This is absurd as anyone working within a bureaucracy can attest - nothing moves unless a written order comes from the top.

8. After the 1988 Zündel Trial, Prof Alan Dershowitz decided that no more Holocaust survivors would enter a witness stand because their stories would nto stand up to rigorous cross-examination.

9. From this date on all legal moves in western democratic countries used Discrimination laws to silence those individuals who refuse to believe in the Jewish Holocaust-Shoah, thereby eliminating the testing of evidence.

So mote it be.

NEIL MAYDOM FROM MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA SAYS: 11:16:27 AM Thursday, 12th June, 2008

One can't help wondering if this report was really about raising the temperature of anti-German feeling to support Israel's plan to have a $100 billion second bite at the reparations gravy train. Norman G Finkelstein, a 'moderate Jew, has written a book called The Holocaust Industry. The title is self-explanatory. The photos shown in the report could have been WWII pics of people in uniform from any country. They appear to have been used to justify a superimposed narrative but, in themselves and compared with the photos of what the Holocaust Survivors are doing in Palestine, they are proof of nothing.

RESPECTNJUSTICE4ALL FROM SYDNEYPITY SAYS:

11:30:07 PM Wednesday, 11th June, 2008

When it comes to “mans inhumanity to man” why not something more topical? ? Instead of focusing on Jewish victims 60 yrs ago how about talking about how extremist Jewish people have slaughtered, terrified and driven non-Jewish people off their lands in Israel/Palestine since that time? Why not focus on how extremists Jews are treating non-Jews in the lands they are presently militarily occupying and, their neighbouring lands. Why not instead a story that can do some genuine good?

The ongoing argument between Israel and Germany over new Holocaust compensation claims has taken another turn after Germany officially refused to negotiate with the Israeli government over payments for survivors.

For more than half a century, the Jewish Claims Conference has been responsible for dealing with the German government over compensation claims made by victims of the Holocaust. In 1965, Germany signed a treaty agreeing to pay individual victims; survivors had to file their claims before 1969. Since then, Germany has paid out over €63.2 billion -- including €1.5 billion in direct payments to the Israeli government.

But recently Israel, where the majority of the world's Holocaust survivors now live, has found itself with a growing bill for the care of elderly survivors. Many of them emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union long after the deadline for making claims was past. Israel says the costs for their care far outstrip Germany's past payments.

Israeli Minister of Pensioners' Affairs Rafi Eitan met with the German ambassador to Israel, Harald Kindermann, in December to demand that Germany take a series of steps to address the shortfall.

The response was swift. Germany came back with a decisive nein, refusing to negotiate with the Israeli government over compensation claims. Officials suggested that, seeing as the multi-national Jewish Claims Conference had been responsible for coordinating claims for the last 56 years, opening up talks with individual countries would set a bad precedent.

The quarrel has opened a deep divide between the JCC and the Israeli government. Eitan has accused the JCC of denying Holocaust survivors of millions of euros.

The JCC, in turn, has accused the Israeli government of letting survivors down. In the last decade, JCC official Seev Faktor says, the JCC "is the only organization that has helped deserving survivors in Israel in any meaningful and lasting way."

agc/spiegel

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2C1518%2C523846%2C00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,523846,00.html

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:

Holocaust Compensation: German Minister Says No to Renegotiating Payments (11/23/2007)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,519274,00.html

Six Decades after WWII: Massive Holocaust Archive Opens to the Public (11/29/2007)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,520371,00.html

Extra Payments for Survivors?: Germany 'Willing to Discuss' New Holocaust Reparations with Israel (11/15/2007)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,517538,00.html

New Wave of Shoah Claims: Holocaust Groups Demand More Compensation from Germany (11/07/2007)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,515984,00.html

16 May 2008

On 30 April 2008 we met with Prof. Flaig in a Rostock wine cellar to discuss critical aspects of our present Erinnerungskultur – cult of remembrance – and the politics of history. Here we are releasing the first part of this discussion, and we are also posting commentary at the end of this article.

With regards to commentary, we have to follow the guidelines limiting expression of opinion in Germany.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: Prof. Flaig, several months have passed since you were the topic of lively discussions in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In retrospect, how do you judge those events?

Prof. Flaig: First of all, let me express my gratitude to you for allowing the debate to take place in this open format.

However I must confess that the controversy surrounding the debate did not particularly affect me at the time and still does not do so.

In my view we are dealing here with a Debattenunkultur (culture of phony debate) that is causing fundamental disruptions in our ability to conceptualize, both historically and intellectually.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: Just what do you mean by that?

Prof. Flaig: An intellectual schism took place in the areas of historiography and political discussion in the 1990s -- a schism whose extent is poorly understood. We are now dealing with a grotesque complementarity of scientific relativism in the context of “linguistic turn” and moral fundamentalism in the public realm. Both these monsters are now marching in lockstep, which is wreaking havoc with German intellectual life.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: Perhaps we should briefly define “linguistic turn.”

This is an expression borrowed from philosophy that refers to a change in modern thinking: it treats systems of thought as reflexes of language and culture.

In other words: we can no longer reliably use language as an instrument to describe the world.

Now it is the other way around: the subjects and their related thoughts have become the products of a cultural Sprachspiel (word game.)

Is this explanation compatible with your understanding of “linguistic turn?”

Prof. Flaig: Yes.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: And what does this have to do with the cult of remembrance as it relates to the case of Auschwitz?

Prof. Flaig: I’ll explain it to you. With the “linguistic turn,” the phenomenon of relativism has now invaded the natural sciences.

{Translator: Do not confuse relativism with relativity!}

During the Enlightenment, science enabled us to comprehend what was objective and irrefutable intersubjectively - between the various disciplines. Today, however, most scientists, like laymen, are doing nothing except playing Sprachspiele - word games.

Basically, it makes no difference what one thinks today. Every kind or mode of thought is equally valid, since it is nothing but an expression of cultural identity. This attitude is destroying the very basis of science. If there is nothing objective to be debated, what is the point of discussion? If we accept that differing methods of comprehending the world are all equally valid, then it is as valid to practice voodoo as to study atomic physics.

In this mode of nonargumentative debate, scientists can inform each other what they are thinking at the moment, maybe over coffee and a sweet roll, but they no longer have any binding criteria to consider one thesis with more convincing than any other.

And now this infectious scientific relativism has spread to the “Auschwitz Case.” However, “Holocaust” concerns the foundations of our ethical understanding of ourselves. According to the concept of “linguistic turn,” human rights are just a game, a play of words. The general public does not accept this idea, however.

Fortunately an openly acknowledged, publicly held moral fundamentalism has so far held the last lines of defense. Considered in this light, the articles critical of me that appeared in the Ostsee-Zeitung at the beginning of the year should be interpreted differently.

In those articles, a moralized (and therefore depoliticized) public opinion was subconsciously defending itself, not against me, but rather against the consequences of its own unspoken premises. Where Auschwitz is concerned we have to oppose relativism precisely because it is taking over everywhere. When someone begins arguing differentially we find that moral relativism is behind such arguments.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: If we understand you correctly, you are saying that scientifically and historically as well as publicly there is no such thing as unprejudiced open debate concerning “Holocaust.”

Prof. Flaig: That is true.

In my view this moralistic fundamentalism developed in the 1990s and has taken the place of rational argument, step by stop. Of course we must clarify our relation to “Shoah,” but this “Shoah Discourse” has now attained enormous dominance.
This development began with the Historikerstreit (“Battle of the Historians”) during the 1980s. Jürgen Habermas’s ideas forced scientific debate onto the platform of public moralizing.

Today I must confess that I too did not protest against that, and so in this regard I am my own victim. It was grotesque how they dealt with the problems of “Revisionism” and increasingly slandered historians such as Ernst Nolte.

It is the core concept of the Enlightenment that mankind expands his knowledge of the world step by step on the basis of rational and objective argumentation. Since we are all prone to error, science by definition has to progress through one mistake after another.

Whoever intends to pursue science critically and without prejudice in the spirit of the Enlightenment must be constantly challenging and testing his knowledge. He must be prepared to revise it when this becomes necessary. Revisionism per se is a large part of the core substance of the Enlightenment.

When the scientific process of revising history is placed under a general cloud of suspicion, scientists no longer have opportunity to evaluate arguments in accordance with objective criteria.

Even worse, persons with intellectual interests – the heart and soul of the Renaissance and Enlightenment on account of their open and objective quest for truth and justice -- lose their respected position in society.

In the intolerant culture of “politically correct stupidity” as Rainer Paris calls it, the intellectual simply ceases to exist. And why is this? It is because in moralistic debates we no longer have to justify our arguments. Argumentation itself has been debased: moralizing makes all arguments equally good and equally bad.

Even worse: moralizing creates a new hierarchy that is radically anti-intellectual. The Gutmenschen (do-gooders) are at the top of this hierarchy, and the winner of the debate is the person who screams most loudly about his moralistic superiority.

ENDSTATION RECHTS: Does that mean that you are speaking out against Section 130 of the Penal Code that criminalizes expressions of doubt concerning “Holocaust?”

{TR: How’s this for a loaded question?}

Prof. Flaig: Oh no, I’m not doing that at all.

There are significant differences between Revisionists and Revisionists. Some Revisionists are motivated by the quest for truth, which is completely legitimate. Specifically, researchers must be allowed to discuss numbers. For example, at the beginning of the 1990s, a plaque was displayed at Auschwitz that enumerated four million (Jewish) victims.

However, this allegation did not withstand scientific investigation. In the 1960s the Jewish “Holocaust” researcher Raul Hilberg had estimated the number at slightly over one million. This has nothing to do with moral relativization of atrocities committed at Auschwitz.

On the contrary, such research is necessary so that the monstrous events can be explained as a process brought about by technical, logistical, infrastructural, organizational, political, demographic, ethnic and ideological considerations (to name just a few.)

Without explanations there can be no science. However, scientific “explainability” requires that all details must be open to discussion and debate, without exception. Otherwise a realm of “unexplainability” is created in the same undesirable way as was done by the inquisitions of the various religions.

Is the “Holocaust” any less bestial because “only” one million persons lost their lives at Auschwitz? Whoever is not prepared to discuss these questions openly and objectively is not only deviating from scientific guidelines, he is playing into the hands of the neo Nazis. There is nothing more damaging to the “culture of remembrance” than to refuse rational argumentation and not correct obvious errors.

Such refusals make it much easier for Revisionists of the other sort to dismiss “Holocaust” as fantastical propaganda.
Because of the Revisionists of this other sort, who are not concerned with truth but are rather attempting to erase past events, I am thankful for the existence of Section 130 of the Penal Code.

Paragraph 130 is society’s last line of defense against the delegitimization of all claims to truth. This delegitimization is supported by cultural relativism that is based on the “linguistic turn.”

That is the reason why I demanded additional legislation against “denial of genocide” last spring in the Greifswalder student magazine “Moritz”. I specifically mentioned the genocide committed against the Armenians there. I did so with heavy heart because in the long run, even such laws as these will not be able to preserve the truth.
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Readers Commentary:

“This is an interesting and balanced presentation of E. Nolte and the Battle of the Historians.

However, Prof. Flaig contradicts himself when he advocates more stringent censorship.

Sine ira et studio we must be allowed to discuss and investigate intellectual and historical questions without fear of having to drink the bitter cup!”

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WASHINGTON — A key House panel plans to scale back a bill that would allow Holocaust survivors to sue European insurers for unpaid claims and force the companies to publish the names of all policyholders during the Nazi era.

The measure, known as the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act, has divided some in the Jewish community, pitting survivors who believe the companies haven't paid enough against leaders who say the legislation threatens years of official negotiations for restitution and would undermine American credibility.

Sponsored by two Florida lawmakers, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat, the original bill would allow Holocaust survivors or their heirs to sue European insurers in American courts, and it would require companies to create a registry of policyholders with the U.S. Department of Commerce. In a statement last month, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said Holocaust victims had "waited too long for fair and honest treatment by life insurance companies."

Five prominent Jewish organizations wrote lawmakers of their opposition to the bill, including the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International, and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. They noted that the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, established and recognized by the federal government in 1998, had already succeeded in securing more than $300 million in insurance claims, in addition to more funds for home care and other social service benefits for survivors worldwide.

The House Financial Services Committee will consider the bill today, and the panel's Democratic chairman, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, plans to scrap the registry requirement and limit the lawsuits that survivors can bring, House aides told The New York Sun yesterday.

The aides said that although several Jewish groups praised the changes, they remained opposed to the bill.

A Holocaust survivor who is treasurer of the Claims Conference, Roman Kent, said in an interview that advocates of the bill were well-intentioned but misguided. "They thought — and many of them still think — that what they are doing is good for the survivors. This I think is absolutely wrong," he said. Supporters of the bill had overstated the potential for additional unpaid claims, he said, and opening the gates for lawsuits that would leave survivors mired in years of expensive litigation. The legal standards for restitution would be much higher than those agreed upon during official negotiations with the insurers.

The bill, Mr. Kent said, "would do tremendous damage to 99.9% of survivors."

http://www.nysun.com/national/holocaust-survivors-bill-to-be-toned-down/80617/