[net.politics] Weisenthal's Fables

black@pundit.DEC (DON BLACK DTN 261-2739 MS: NIO/N13 LOC: POLE C6) (09/12/85)

>Newspapers are published under tight deadlines, so the NYT printing
>an "8" instead of a "0" in 10,700,000 is understandable. 

     My, my, how convenient to brush off such an embarrassing figure 
by explaining it as a "mere typographical error."  It would be under-
standable, if it weren't such an important figure coming from a 
"reliable" newspaper.  I'm sure that Mr. Arthur Sulzberger, the 
distinguished gentleman who controlled the newspaper back then, 
would have been VERY understanding about such an important figure.
I suspect heads would have rolled had it been reported incorrectly.


>Not much to build a conspiracy on... 

     I don't have to build one---Simon Weisenthal and Eili Wiesel have
already done that.  Unfortunately for them, their Holocaustian fable is 
like a wedge of Swiss cheese.  Full of holes to begin with, and after
it's been out in the sunlight too long, it begins to stink.


>Other inaccuracies: The "World Almanac" is not
>an organ of the American Jewish Committee. The "World Almanac" of 1938
>cited a 1930 survey conducted by the staff of the "American Jewish
>Yearbook" as its source. The AJY conducts such a survey every 10 years,
>although the 1940 survey contains a lot of guesswork due to wartime
>diffculties. If the AJY figures are plotted over the years, the
>resulting curve does show a loss of about 5 million in the interval
>between the 1930 and 1950 surveys (the figure of 6 million includes all
>victims murdered because of Jewish ancestry, including many who did not
>identify themselves as Jewish before the Holocaust). [Adam Reed]

     So, if the World Almanac is not a publication of the AJC, whose
publication is it?  

     What were the 1950 figures from the AJY?  And if the 1940 figures 
were so inaccurate, how can we be sure that six million Jews died?  And
how can we "plot over the years" when we have only three points, one of
which is determined to be inaccurate at best?

     Now, it's fairly obvious that at least SOME Jews died in the 
concentration camps, from starvation, disease, exhaustion, war-related
injuries, and probably some were gassed toward the end of the war.  But
there is much evidence that does NOT support the systematic extermination
of Jews.  Alleged eye-witness accounts of the operation of crematoria have 
been proven time and again to be totally inaccurate.  People who allegedly 
died in camps keep meeting each other alive and well on the streets.  
Testimony in the Ernst Zundel trial indicates that at least one of the 
"death camps" had a DANCE HALL!  And Mrs. Kitty Hart (of "Kitty:  The
Return to Auschwitz" fame) claims to have observed the operation of a 
crematorium/gas chamber while SUNBATHING ON THE GRASS!  Please do not
insult my intelligence by asking me to believe that prisoners in such camps
were given time enough off from slave labor to dance and sunbathe.

     It sounds more like privileges that would be granted to a paid
employee.


     --Don Black


dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) (09/19/85)

Before I embark on a refutation of Don Black's stupid comments,
I have one question. Does anyone - ANYONE - out there believe
the drivel in his latest posting and doubt that the Holocaust
happened? If not, perhaps we should just ignore him.

	 *	*	*	*	*

> >Not much to build a conspiracy on... 
> 
>      I don't have to build one---Simon Weisenthal and Eili Wiesel have
> already done that.  Unfortunately for them, their Holocaustian fable is 
> like a wedge of Swiss cheese.  Full of holes to begin with, and after
> it's been out in the sunlight too long, it begins to stink.

I don't know whether Don Black is truly evil or just very stupid.
"Fable", indeed. Here is a simple exercise which I leave for Don
Black and for anyone else who may doubt what happened in the Holocaust:

	Go to the nearest large city with a Jewish community
	of any significant size. On, say, a Sunday morning,
	go into the Jewish stores - delicatessens, or bakeries,
	butchers, whatever. Pick out, at random, a person over
	60 who came from Europe. (Yiddish accents aren't hard
	to spot.) Go over to that person and tell him that you
	are curious about the Holocaust and what happened.

	Do you know what you will find? The person you pick
	will have been lucky. He survived somehow. Perhaps he
	was fit and spent years at slave labour instead of
	being sent to the gas chambers. Or perhaps he was able
	to get out of Europe in time. But now, ask him about his
	family - parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins.
	He'll tell you how he only has one brother left, from
	a family of perhaps 85. Or how he's the only living Jew
	from his village, which had 250 Jews.

The sad fact is, Jews of my generation, whose parents came from
Europe after the war, do not have grandparents. Out of 3,000,000
Jews in Poland, for example, 300,000 survived - only the fittest
and hardiest.

>      What were the 1950 figures from the AJY?  And if the 1940 figures 
> were so inaccurate, how can we be sure that six million Jews died?  And
> how can we "plot over the years" when we have only three points, one of
> which is determined to be inaccurate at best?

The Germans, who are sticklers for record-keeping, kept detailed
records of transports to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
The figure of 6 million is supported by these records.
The world Jewish population went from 18 million in 1938
to 12 million in 1945. Today it's about 14.5 million.

Go to Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem which is a memorial
to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem has embarked upon a program of recording
the names of all those killed. They have THREE MILLION names so far.
Where available, they also have photographs, ID documents, etc.
Considering that entire communities were wiped out so that there
is, in many cases, no-one to list the names of those killed, this
is quite remarkable.

>      Now, it's fairly obvious that at least SOME Jews died in the 
> concentration camps, from starvation, disease, exhaustion, war-related
> injuries, and probably some were gassed toward the end of the war.  But
> there is much evidence that does NOT support the systematic extermination
> of Jews. 

And there is much evidence which does not support the existence
of Don Black. Come now.

When the Allies liberated the camps in 1945, the horrors were there
for all to see. Go pick up any newspaper of the time and read
eyewitness accounts from reporters. Both the U.S. and the British
military made films of what they found, documenting the horrible
sights for posterity. These films are available.

>	Alleged eye-witness accounts of the operation of crematoria have 
> been proven time and again to be totally inaccurate. 

Sure, Don. Is that why Ernst Zundel was convicted, UNANIMOUSLY,
by twelve unbiased, non-Jewish ordinary Canadians, of spreading
lies in his denial of the Holocaust? Zundel's defense dredged
up all of the slime who made idiotic claims about swimming pools
and dance halls at Auschwitz. The jury was convinced beyond any
reasonable doubt that Zundel was lying and that he knew he was
lying in making his claims. The evidence presented at the trial,
by those who were there and SAW the gas chambers and crematoria,
was convincing and conclusive.

>						People who allegedly 
> died in camps keep meeting each other alive and well on the streets.  

Certainly there were those who didn't know that others survived.
My father-in-law didn't find out his brother was alive for 20 years.
But tell me, what about his parents? Grandparents? Aunts? Uncles?
Cousins? They were killed at Treblinka.

> Testimony in the Ernst Zundel trial indicates that at least one of the 
> "death camps" had a DANCE HALL!  And Mrs. Kitty Hart (of "Kitty:  The
> Return to Auschwitz" fame) claims to have observed the operation of a 
> crematorium/gas chamber while SUNBATHING ON THE GRASS!  Please do not
> insult my intelligence by asking me to believe that prisoners in such camps
> were given time enough off from slave labor to dance and sunbathe.

I certainly won't. There was certainly no dance hall for the
prisoners at Auschwitz. The fact that some joker was dredged
up to make such a claim hardly rates as "testimony ... rates".
If you want to refer to the Zunel trial, I think the conviction
speaks for itself.

One final question. There is no question that there were
large and thriving Jewish communities in every country in
central Europe. Where did they all go?
-- 
{  ihnp4!utzoo  pesnta  utcs  hcr  decvax!utcsri  }  !lsuc!dave

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (09/21/85)

> Before I embark on a refutation of Don Black's stupid comments,
> I have one question. Does anyone - ANYONE - out there believe
> the drivel in his latest posting and doubt that the Holocaust
> happened? If not, perhaps we should just ignore him. [DAVE SHERMAN]

Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, it is best to show him
for what he is as often as possible:  an insecure lying flailing ignoramus
who adheres to the notion that, if HE has problems, some group (say, the
Jews, the liberals, the homosexuals, the Communists, the butchers, the
bakers, the candlestickmakers---surely his problems could never be his
own fault!) is "responsible" for it, deliberately ruining his life, the glory
of his holy country, the world at large, his sex life, etc.  It is important
to repeatedly show that his statements are about as supported by evidence as
a story by the Brothers Grimm.  Because one of the important functions of
Black's "big lie" technique is the incredibleness of the statements being
made.  People who use this technique hope that thinking people will find the
statements SO outlandish that no one could possibly believe them.  Thus they
keep saying them unencumbered by demands for proof of their lies, eventually
getting significant numbers of people to believe them.  ("Hey, nobody stepped
forward to prove this guy wrong, so maybe he IS telling the truth after all..")
-- 
"iY AHORA, INFORMACION INTERESANTE ACERCA DE... LA LLAMA!"
	Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

janw@inmet.UUCP (09/22/85)

> [  !lsuc!dave ]
> Before I embark on a refutation of Don Black's stupid comments,
> I have one question. Does anyone - ANYONE - out there believe
> the drivel in his latest posting and doubt that the Holocaust
> happened? If not, perhaps we should just ignore him.

Hear, hear ! At last. Why did no one  ask that at the beginning
of this "controversy " ?

> [The refutation, which I consider definitive, follows ]

 Thank you, Dave. *Now* can we at last heave a sigh and
remember Mr. Don Black merely as a bad dream ?

		Jan Wasilewsky