Robert FAURISSON February 10, 2009
Mark Weber must resign from the Institute for Historical Review
Mark Weber must resign from the Institute for Historical Review, remaining free to establish, if he wishes, a body for the struggle against what he calls "the Jewish-Zionist power". He has, in effect, recently announced in a veiled way his abandonment, if not of revisionism, then at least of the revisionist fight; he therefore no longer belongs at the head of an institute whose main job is to combat what Arthur R. Butz so rightly calls The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Weber knows that there's sometimes not too much danger in speaking out against the "Jewish-Zionist power", since even some Jews and Zionists at times attack that power as well; on the other hand, he is also fully aware that it's always highly dangerous to commit the least transgression against the Jews' and Zionists' sacred cow, their supreme taboo, i.e. their secular religion of "the Holocaust", and this is a risk he no longer wants to run.
The text he entitled "How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?" (http://www.ihr.org/weber_revisionism_jan09.html) bears the date "January 2009", with no further precision, but I suppose he finished it in late December 2008. He was stirred to write it by the ever more pressing requests I'd had to make, over quite a number of years, of the IHR's director in order to know finally whether or not he believed in the "Jewish genocide" and the "Nazi gas chambers". My first request for enlightenment goes back to April 20, 1993 (!) and the last two date from September 16 and December 2, 2008. To relate just the final one of these, it carried the following two questions: 1) Do you believe that the Germans decided and planned a physical destruction of the Jews of Europe? ("the specific crime"); 2) Do you believe in the existence and use by the Germans of homicidal gas chambers or gas vans? ("the specific weapons of the specific crime"). For fifteen years, instead of answering me frankly, Weber had piled up equivocations and evasions. I suppose that on receiving my request of December 2, 2008 he sensed that my patience had run out and that I was about to make public this stubborn refusal of his to give any clarification. He therefore had to seize the initiative and explain himself publicly on the question of revisionism. That's what he attempts to do in his text dated "January 2009" but I note that once again he tries to slip out of it. The questions I put amounted to asking: "Are you really a revisionist?" However, here he is stating that revisionism itself is hardly "relevant", which, I assume, means that it is "of no great interest". He concludes that revisionism is of course still "a worthy endeavour"; he adds nonetheless: "But there should be no illusions about its social-political relevance. In the real world struggle against Jewish-Zionist power, Holocaust revisionism has proved to be as much a hindrance as a help". That's quite a remarkable bit of news! From the very mouth of the man who's been running the Institute for Historical Review since 1995, we learn all of a sudden that said institute is henceforth going to devote itself first of all to the fight against Judeo-Zionism and that, in this new combat, according to Weber, revisionism is, in itself, just as "irrelevant" as it is "relevant". He goes as far as to add that, in the combat to which he intends to commit himself from now on, revisionism will be considered, at least in part, a "hindrance"! I'm pleased at having finally obtained in this way, from Weber in person, the disclosure of a secret he'd been keeping from us till now. Of course, he sidesteps my questions once again but at least now – though not without difficulty – I've made him take off his mask and proclaim that he is giving up the revisionist fight as such.
1. From 1979 to 1989, he gave me the impression of being a revisionist
It was in 1979 that I made my acquaintance with Weber. He'd invited me to stay at his home in Arlington, Virginia, and helped me with my research at the National Archives both in Washington and in Suitland, Maryland. At the time, he told me he'd begun work as well on "the Holocaust" and, in particular, on the aerial photographs of Auschwitz and the Einsatzgruppen. I found in him a researcher endowed with good intellectual qualities and also a man who, whilst openly showing vigorous far-right convictions, seemed without character. It even seemed that, if he so admired strength or energy, it was because he himself was weak, timorous, hesitant. In contrast, his compatriot Arthur R. Butz, whom I'd met in Paris a few years before and whom I met again that year in the United States, appeared to possess not only exceptional intellectual qualities but also solid character.
Still in 1988, Weber was apparently a revisionist; it was in that capacity that he gave evidence under oath as an expert witness at the Zündel trial in Toronto; but, in the years that followed, before the growing difficulties encountered by revisionism, he seemed to me to lose heart, which was understandable. It was at this time that he, in all honesty, ought to have got off the revisionist ship, openly and for all to see. Unfortunately, he preferred to keep his post at the IHR and, from 1995, the remuneration that came with the office of director. From then on he doomed himself to play a kind of double game. He let his subscribers and collaborators believe he was continuing in the revisionist struggle but, in reality, he was already starting to scuttle the vessel entrusted to him.
In 1989 he agreed to accompany Fred Leuchter and me in our examinations of Dachau, Mauthausen and Hartheim. He was strongly impressed by the nature of our investigation work, largely similar in method to that of police inspectors, both technical (on site) and scientific (in the laboratory). But truth compels me to say that he also, on more than one occasion, exhibited such fright that, in Germany, I thought to myself: "Here we've got a real softy of a revisionist, someone who may well abandon us should serious difficulties arise". Sometimes I've seen him go pale at the sight of our boldness and, in particular, when he happened to hear the noisy work of F. Leuchter on site; Leuchter couldn't avoid making something of a racket banging out tiny fragments from the walls of the so-called homicidal "gas chambers" with his chisel; as the pieces fell to his feet, he took the time, keeping his protective mask on, to gather them up slowly and scrupulously; had a guard come by at that instant, we could well have found ourselves under arrest. The risk had to be run but it set Weber's teeth chattering. I was embarrassed for him.
2. In 1991, in Munich, I discover his fright in the midst of the revisionist struggle
The scene is a hotel in Munich on March 23, 1991, where Ernst Zündel has made an appointment with fellow revisionists for the « Leuchter Kongress ». Personally, I had arrived from Paris where, in the Palais de Justice over the previous two days, I'd had to confront Jewish commandos who assaulted and injured a certain number of those present. I myself was hurt and, upon entering the courtroom, was also spat upon. They were two rough days, the second ending only quite late in the evening. Once out of court, I slipped into a car driven by a brother-in-law of mine who, as it happens, is an excellent driver and who, going along at full throttle, got us to Munich at 5 AM. I hadn't slept a wink all night and wanted to rest a bit in my hotel room. At 7 AM, we learn that Ernst Zündel has been arrested by the police. Weber is there. He's trembling like a leaf. He tells me there can no longer be any question of holding the scheduled conference. I object, saying the arrest of our mutual friend makes it an obligation for us to stay the course. He trembles even more and, overcome with fear, stammers out: "But, but, but, Robert, we are revisionists; we are not Zundelists!" He entreats me to drop the whole thing, saying we'll all be arrested. The tears well up in his eyes. We go down into the hotel's main salon, where confusion reigns among the revisionists. The supposed organiser of the meeting, Ewald Althans, has a rather vacant look about him; we'll learn much later that he was working for the police, who had bought him! I try to take charge of things. I declare that the conference must go ahead at all costs. I add that, since Ernst is now in jail, we must take the risk of joining him there. "Ah!", David Irving tells me, "but I have no desire at all to go to jail!" Happily, Leuchter supports my proposal. The assembly decides that the conference will be held. As the police have closed the museum where it was supposed to take place, it's outside, in front of the museum and in the cold, that we group together with our sympathisers, some of whom have travelled a very long way. The speeches will be brief, except for that of a German lawyer who gets somewhat worked up giving a long talk before a small, chilly crowd.
3. In 1993, in Washington, he states that "maybe" the gas chambers existed
It was on April 20, 1993, with a little incident in Washington, that I began to harbour doubts about Weber's revisionist convictions. He'd suggested we meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant with some people who regularly got together once a week to talk about current affairs. The Holocaust Memorial Museum was just opening. Thus the occasion came up for me to discuss the revisionist argumentation with these people. There were ten of us around the table. To start off, I wanted to have each one's opinion on the question of the "gas chambers". "Did the Nazi gas chambers ever exist?" I asked each person, one by one, beginning at my left and going on clockwise, to answer the question with a "Yes", a "No" or a "Maybe". The first four all answered "Yes". The fifth, a young woman, ventured a "No" but only half-heartedly. The sixth person at the table was none other than Weber. Twisting in his chair, he answered: "Maybe" and the others coldly answered "Yes". I announced that my own answer was: "No, definitely not", and firmly spelled out my reasons. Then, disgusted by the way Weber had deserted the cause, I barely touched my dinner; afterwards, there we were outside, he and I, walking back in silence to Georgetown and the home of Andrew Gray, our host. When turning in, I took leave of Weber with an ironical: "Good night, Mr. Maybe". The next day, he spontaneously offered his excuses, telling me he should never have answered as he did the evening before. Just then the telephone rang: a reporter from a local Black community radio station wanted to ask Weber some questions about the Holocaust Memorial Museum. And there, with the opportunity arising for him to show the extent to which that museum was amassing pure lies, notably on the "gas chambers", Weber was content merely to denounce what he called "distortions by the museum" and gave just one example of these, an almost trivial one: the story, in fact wholly untrue, of the Dachau camp's alleged liberation by Blacks. Once the conversation was over, I rebuked him for his faint-heartedness but he retorted saying that was the way to go about things, meaning that with journalists it was best to be diplomatic if you wanted to be in good graces with them. Therefore he'd talked to his journalist neither about "genocide", nor "gas chambers", nor Auschwitz, nor any of a score of other holocaustic lies. I'll note here that in general Weber is an atrocious debater, careful as he is to ingratiate himself with the opponent or the master of ceremonies, sometimes even to the point where one may wonder what side he's on.
4. From 1994 to 2002, he sinks into inaction
I could cite other anecdotes that are just as significant. Weber is man of amiable company, there's no nastiness about him and one can generally trust what he writes in the way of history. He expresses himself with caution and moderation, backing up what he says with sources and references, without seeking to show off his knowledge and in comprehensible language but also, as must be admitted, in a rather limp style, with a school-like scent to it. He lacks subtlety. Moreover, he's a waverer. And at the IHR office, spending hours on the telephone, he impedes the work of his colleagues with the volume of his endless conversations. He has never published, either in English or any other language, a book or collection of articles and, in particular, no one has yet seen the manuscript of the work he was at one time fixing to bring out under the title – a provisional one – The Final Solution: Legend and Reality. Up to a certain point I have happened to sympathise with him in view of his lot. The life of a revisionist is made up of so many trials, disappointments, repeated failures that it's hard not to subside into pessimism; at times the temptation to abandon such a perilous cause is strong. At the period in question, revisionism was of course not in a state of crisis, thanks especially to the heroic struggle of Ernst Zündel, then, much later, thanks to the unbelievable energy of Germar Rudolf, but the IHR, led by Weber, was worse and worse off. The story of the near-wrecking of our institute is too well known for me to go into it here. Try as they might, Ted O'Keefe and Greg Raven, each in his turn, found it impossible to keep things on an even keel. To begin with, Weber's inaction left them totally disconcerted. They couldn't understand either the man or his conduct. For my part, it was at the lamentable international congress of June 2002 that I grasped that, under Weber's sway, the IHR was perhaps heading towards a gradual abandonment of "Holocaust" revisionism. On July 9, 2002, Butz wrote a critique, with a title descriptively asking "Quo Vadis?", examining the mission of IHR and the implications of O'Keefe's sacking; the message was directed to IHR staff, board, and editorial advisory committee members only. In any case, that congress was the last and, subsequently, from 2003 till now, Weber was to prove incapable of organising an international conference worthy of the name. Butz finally resigned in January 2003, mainly over productivity issues, but also raising objections to the intellectual content of the Journal.
5. In 2003, I call on Weber to explain himself; he sidesteps; I submit my resignation
When I thought I sensed he might be about to give up the revisionist fight, I wanted to be clear in my own mind about it. I asked him to reply to me frankly. At first I did so gently, with delicacy, then with a certain insistence and, finally, curtly. But he went on continually dodging the issue and, invoking our long-standing friendship, said he was surprised at my questions. No longer putting up with this, I summoned him in writing to answer me clearly and briefly: did he by any chance believe in the "Nazi gas chambers" and in a policy of physical extermination of the Jews? On December 15, 2003, he ended up replying: "I do not like to say that 'the Nazi gas chambers never existed', in part because I do not regard myself as any kind of specialist of 'gas chambers', and in part because I avoid making such categorical statements (on any subject)". Shortly before he had stated on an American radio talk-show: "I do not deny the Holocaust happened."
On December 17th I therefore sent him a message asking him to remove my name from the IHR's Editorial Advisory Committee. The following day G. Rudolf, who'd received a copy of my message, told me of his full approval. He had long been a strident critic of Weber's performance. On the 19th, after informing me that he regretfully accepted my resignation, Weber sought to justify himself in a pitiful and fallacious manner on which I shall not dwell here. Other revisionists also expressed their strong disapproval of Weber's conduct. At the time Paul Grubach had not shrunk from writing: "Mark Weber is to be congratulated […]. I now understand his position, which is fine with this Holocaust revisionist […] Let it suffice to say that Mark Weber is one of the world's most important Revisionist scholars", but he was later to become disenchanted, condemning the director of the IHR in the severest terms.
6. Remarks I made to set the record straight on December 22, 2003
More of the exchange of Dec. 2003, parts of which are reproduced below, is reproduced at http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Conference/sacramento4.htm. On December 22, 2003, I sent Weber the following message:
I shall briefly sum up for you what, precisely, our recent exchange of correspondence has been. For greater clarity, I find myself obliged to emphasise certain words of this exchange, although I do not care for the practice. You will see that, contrary to what you venture to say, the letter that I sent you and made public on 17 December [2003] was neither "misleading" nor "unfair". You will also see, at the end of this reply, that you have made a monumental muddle of a text of mine of which you quote a very brief fragment; by so doing, you have been "misleading" or "unfair" or both. In conclusion, I will show that this controversy may in the end lead to a heartening prospect for the future of revisionism.
My question of 17 December was: "Tell me whether or not you SAY, as I myself have so clearly STATED for so many years, that the alleged Nazi GAS CHAMBERS and the alleged Nazi GAS VANS never EXISTED". The question was clear: it focused 1) on what you SAY or STATE, 2) on the very EXISTENCE, 3) of the alleged Nazi GAS CHAMBERS, 4) and of the alleged Nazi GAS VANS.
Instead of answering this question directly, you wrote back: "I don't believe the claims about the alleged Nazi gas chambers". That act of faith was not what I was looking for. Effectively, whereas I was waiting to see what you, as a historian, would SAY or STATE, you answered by what you DIDN'T BELIEVE. Then, you asserted that you did not BELIEVE in CLAIMS, a particularly vague word; the remark may mean that you refuse to believe certain statements concerning the said gas chambers, but not necessarily all such statements; the choice of the word "CLAIMS" may mean that you call into question certain aspects of the story of the Nazi gas chambers (their number, location, performance) but not necessarily the affirmation of their existence itself. Finally, with such a sentence you do not, as all may see, breathe a word of the "gas vans".
Noting that with so vague a sentence you had not gone into the subject, I did not feel the need to deal with it in my letter itself, but, in the accompanying message, addressed to Jean Plantin, Yvonne Schleiter and Arthur Butz at the same time as to you, I plainly told you: "I did not ask for your 'beliefs' (?) about 'claims' (?) and, moreover, you do not mention the Nazi gas vans".
Nor did I deal with your prologue regarding at once Dachau, Mauthausen, Hartheim and your "limited" knowledge of technical and chemical matters. As is my habit, I went straight to the heart of the matter and so it was that, leaving to one side everything of the order of more or less trifling preliminary remarks, I extracted from your response the lone sentence that constituted an answer, FINALLY, to the question put. And that answer was as follows: "I do not like to say that the 'Nazi gas chambers never existed', in part because I do not regard myself as any kind of specialist of 'gas chambers' and in part because I avoid making such categorical statements."
I think it useless here to run once more through the remarks that such a pitiful answer inspires me to make. It is typical of what I call "spineless Revisionism". At the 2002 conference, I protested against this form of revisionism and suggested that, in future, revisionists come out fighting. I find comical the insistence of some revisionist "researchers" on still looking into "the problem of the gas chambers". We are not about to carry on this way till the end of time killing what has already, on the commonsense level, been "overkilled". But with our "researchers" the corpse of the "Nazi gas chambers or vans" is buried, then exhumed to be put in a coffin into which one more nail is driven. The role of an Institute like the IHR ought to be to come out with a formal assertion, one requiring neither technical nor chemical expertise but rather of the simplest kind: For more than half a century, Germany's accusers have in the end revealed their inability to let us see a single specimen of the alleged weapons of mass destruction that the Nazis are said to have designed, built or used for "the Destruction of the European Jews" (Raul Hilberg).
Whatever you do, don't moan that "Given that you have not pressed me for my view on Nazi gas chambers during the past ten years or so, I don't understand why you have been pressing me on this in recent weeks". In reality, you know perfectly well that there has been this point of discord between us for quite a long time. I have reminded you of the instance at which you and I confronted one another on it ten years ago in Washington. There was also, though you seem not to remember, another instance, over the telephone, on the subject of a statement of yours during a talk-show on a Black radio station. And I am not the only one to deplore Mark Weber's shilly-shallying with regard to the gas chambers. I can recall Fritz Berg rightly complaining of your dodging the question. Carlos Porter also seems to find you are dancing around. I myself have had to approach you more than once in order to get you to respond. And now, finally, that your response is known, it is understandable why you have tried to dodge an irksome question. But, is it normal, Mark Weber, to conceal from the IHR's readers, members, dues-paying supporters that their editor perhaps refuses, to a certain degree, to BELIEVE a lie and a historic slander but DOES NOT LIKE to have to say so? How many people imagine that for the Editor of the Journal of Historical Review a proper reply to that slander is: "I do not like to say that 'the Nazi gas chambers never existed'"?
During the above-mentioned talk-show, you stated: "I do not deny the Holocaust happened but…" I immediately told you how deadly wrong it was to make such a CONCESSION to The Big Lie and Defamation. You retort now that in 1991 I myself declared: "Revisionists do not deny the genocide and the gas chambers". There you make a fine muddle. I said then, on the contrary, that by the acceptance of the word "deny" an untoward CONCESSION was made to the liars. I give you below the full text of my remark, which was published under the altogether unambiguous title "AFFIRMATION, NOT DENIAL":
A reminder: Revisionists do not deny the genocide and the gas chambers. This is a MISCONCEPTION. Galileo didn't deny that the earth was stationary; he AFFIRMED, at the conclusion of his research, that the earth was not stationary, but that it rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. In the same way, the revisionists, after concluding their own research, AFFIRM that there was no genocide and no gas chambers, and that the "final solution of the Jewish question" consisted of the removal of the Jews from Europe – by emigration if possible, and by deportation if necessary. – The revisionists strive to establish what happened ; they are positive while the exterminationists doggedly continue to tell us about things which didn't happen : their work is negative. – The Revisionists stand for the reconciliation of the antagonists in the recognition of what really happened. (Robert Faurisson, The Journal of Historical Review, January-February 1999, p. 21,http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n1p19_Faurisson.html ).
In other words, I make with that remark the opposite of a CONCESSION. In a general way, not only do I expose the enthusiasts of the Big Lie for what they are, but I also refuse to borrow their least turn of phrase. The revisionists must show themselves to be candid, unbending and without CONCESSION. The time for CONCESSIONS is over […] It is pitiful when the head of an institute of revisionist studies is reduced to confessing: "I do not like to say that the Nazi gas chambers never existed". It is regrettable that he should have concealed that attitude up to now and that only my insistence on getting an answer on the subject made him come out with it. It is a pity that, seeking to vindicate his position, he wrongly accused me of having been "misleading and unfair". It is lamentable that in the dispute with me he should bring up a text of mine whose meaning he distorts to the point of turning it entirely around.
But it is heartening to see that I am now far from alone in denouncing a revisionism that has had its day and in advocating a new revisionism, more clear-cut, straightforward, vigorous and able, for a start, to put it to the upholders of the Big Lie that "The best proof that your Nazi gas chambers and your Nazi gas vans did not exist any more than your Jewish soap, your lampshades of human skin and so much other nonsense of a vile war propaganda is that, more than fifty years after that war, your 'scientific experts' are, more than ever, unable to show them to us".
This new revisionism, which demands character, calls for young and spirited men.
7. In 2008, his progressive abandonment of revisionism is confirmed
In 2007, Fritz Berg, Bradley Smith and some other revisionists again asked Weber to explain himself, but to no avail.
On August 16, 2008, Weber gave a talk near Baltimore entitled "In the Struggle for Peace and Justice: Countering Jewish-Zionist Power" (http://www.ihr.org/other/aug08weber.html). Not for an instant did he mention the number one weapon of that power, that is, the lie of "the Holocaust"! I exhibited my surprise and asked him to provide some enlightenment. He did not answer. I wrote him again. On September 2 he sent me an answer that wasn't one. I wrote to him yet again with my request. Then it was that he answered me with the following two sentences: "In my presentation at the conference on August 16, I did not speak about 'the Holocaust' because that was not the subject or the point of my address. When Dr. Siddique invited me to the conference, he asked me to give an address similar to earlier ones that he himself had heard or read." The latter sentence informs us, incidentally, that this hadn't been our conference speaker's first such skirting of the question: as one can see, he had already in the past deliberately adopted the practice of excluding from his talks all trace of any dispute of "the Holocaust". I then replied: "Pitiful. It was a point of your address. Obviously. Necessarily. In the first place why did you [till now] avoid giving me those 'explanations'?"
On September 9, 2008 Weber published "A Zionist Smear: The ADL Attacks an Islamic Peace Conference". On the 16th, I consequently sent him the following new request for clarification:
More than ever I need some clarification about your position on "the Holocaust". I am not the only one seeking this clarification.
On reading your September 9, 2008 piece "A Zionist Smear: The ADL Attacks an Islamic Peace Conference", anyone, I suppose, would infer that, for a certain man called Mark Weber, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was not a "Holocaust denial organization" and that it was even a "smear" to say such a thing. To say such a thing would be "at variance with the facts", indeed "completely at variance". In that text M. Weber considers himself a "responsible scholar of twentieth century history" and seems to consider that the IHR is an entity made up, partly or wholly, of other such responsible scholars (Faurisson being one of them?). He also seems to define "the Holocaust" as "the [– definite article –] great catastrophe [– in Hebrew, "Shoa"? –] that befell European Jewry during World War II". Then M. Weber points out that, in his recent talk outside Baltimore, he mentioned the deaths of Jews during that great catastrophe in quoting from a speech by someone else to the effect that "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million". In doing so, M. Weber, who is a responsible scholar, seems to think it worthwhile to mention that assertion and those figures without criticising them in any way.
Mark, as you'll surely have noticed, I've used the word "seems" so many times because I need some clarifications. In order to get them, I request that you let me put a few questions:
1 - Do you believe that "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million"?; if not, please tell me what your own opinion is concerning both the word "killed" and the figures of "six" and "twelve million".
2 - Do you believe that the Germans decided on and planned a physical destruction of the European Jews? ("the specific crime").
3 - Do you believe in the existence and the use by the Germans of homicidal gas chambers or gas vans? ("the specific weapons of the specific crime").
Please, make an effort really to address these questions and, for example, please avoid coming down with arguments such as: "How is it that you've waited till now to ask such questions?" or: "But, Robert, the IHR website is publishing papers like yours!" In our recent exchange on the matter, your replies were not clear and my last message was left unanswered.
So that you don't believe I am alone among the revisionists in thinking there is a real problem with your being the head of a revisionist publication or website, allow me to tell you that, before drafting this very message, I asked a few people whether they had the slightest idea what your exact convictions were on the core of "the Holocaust". One of these was Ted O'Keefe. Let me quote him here (with his express permission), from September 15, 2008:
By now I've received and read all of your emails on the latest with Mark. I agree that he has shamefully sidestepped the questions of whether the Holocaust as defined by the Jews took place, and the importance of the Holocaust imposture in the Jews' propaganda and policies.
As I made public in 2002, Mark has long been impotent to advance the program for which the IHR was founded and sustained.
I can now add that by his lawyerly evasions and cowardly omissions he continues to squander what's left of the IHR's intellectual and moral capital, and to betray the sacrifices made not only by revisionists such as you and Ernst Zuendel and Germar Rudolf, but also by the numerous supporters of the Institute over the years.
8. Is he taking us for fools?
On September 23, 2008 I received in the mail a sheet with the IHR letterhead signed by Weber and entitled "A Productive Summer". It was a letter calling for donations. Rarely can such a misnomer of a title have been seen anywhere. The text told of talks, interviews, meetings, shows, broadcasts but all bearing no relation to the "Holocaust" lie. It reported on a "memorable IHR meeting on June 14 [2008]", but the only two participants at that meeting were Irving and Weber. The former told of "his harrowing arrest in Austria, his sensational trial in Vienna, and his 13-months' imprisonment there. He also spoke about wartime Germany's harsh treatment of Jews, presenting a view of 'the Holocaust' similar to the one he laid out years ago in the first edition of his book, Hitler's War." However Irving has never in his life really disputed "the Holocaust" and especially not in the first edition of that book of his; he is at the very most but a "reluctant revisionist", often changing his mind on a matter that he at times admits to not having studied; he sometimes even happens to utter abominations on the subject of the German people that are worthy of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. As for the other speaker, himself, Weber wrote: "In my talk, I took aim at the American national mythology about World War II. I spoke about two new books about the war, by Patrick Buchanan and by Nicholson Baker, praising them as important antidotes to the familiar, much propagandized portrayal of the conflict." Here it's seen that on this occasion Weber did not bring up what was always the IHR's raison d'être and primary vocation: the revising of the "Holocaust" myth.
9. A lie to end with?
In January 2009, then, he published the bit entitled "How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?", of which I've already said a few words in the beginning lines of this article. Just about every paragraph of the piece, a typical Weber text in its style, would call for some severe remarks and rectifications. I shall refrain from making any, however, and dwell on one point and one point alone where it seems to me I've caught Weber in the act, an act of dishonesty. He wrote:
A major reason for the lack of success in persuading people that conventional Holocaust accounts are fraudulent or exaggerated is that – as revisionists acknowledge – Jews in Europe were, in fact, singled out during the war years for especially severe treatment.
This was confirmed, for example, by German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in these confidential entries in his wartime diary:5
Feb. 14, 1942: "The Führer [Hitler] once again expresses his resolve ruthlessly to clear the Jews out of Europe. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. Their destruction will go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness."
March 27, 1942: "The Jews are now being deported to the East from the Generalgouvernement [Poland], starting around Lublin. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely, and there's not much left of the Jews. By and large, one can say that 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is carrying out the operation, is proceeding quite judiciously, using a method that is not all too conspicuous. The Jews are facing a judgment which, while barbaric, they fully deserve. The prophecy the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in the most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters."
April 29, 1942: "Short shrift is being made of the Jews in all eastern occupied territories. Tens of thousands of them are being wiped out."
No informed person disputes that Europe's Jews did, in fact, suffer a great catastrophe during the Second World War. Millions were forced from their homes and deported to brutal internment in crowded ghettos and camps. Jewish communities across Central and Eastern Europe, large and small, were wiped out. Millions lost their lives. When the war ended in 1945, most of the Jews of Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and others countries were gone.
Given all this, it should not be surprising that even well-founded revisionist arguments are often dismissed as heartless quibbling.
We've read correctly: according to Weber, during World War II "millions [of Jews] lost their lives". What right has this man of ours to come out with that estimate in figures? Where exactly in the holocaustic literature is any proof of what he puts forth here to be found? Where, in his own writings, had he ever said and proved it?
But that's not all. His exploitation here of those excerpts from Goebbels's diary is stupefying. The Propaganda Minister's comments bear the stamp of a National-Socialist propagandist's phraseology, and are on the subject of events in which he had no personal part, no direct responsibility and of which he, in Berlin, had merely heard talk. In Toronto in 1988, during the second Zündel trial, Weber, at his end, had above all stated that according to him there was "a great doubt about the authenticity of the entire Goebbels diaries", and had insisted on the fact that the contents of the March 27, 1942 note were particularly suspect. These were his very words under oath:
The later entry, which I think is the 27th of March [1942], is widely quoted to uphold or support the extermination thesis. It is not consistent with entries in the diary like this one of March 7th, and it is not consistent with entries at a later date from the Goebbels diaries, and it is not consistent with German documents from a later date. […] there is a great doubt about the authenticity of the entire Goebbels diaries because they are written on typewriter. We have no real way of verifying if they are accurate, and the U.S. Government certified, in the beginning of the publication […] that it can take no responsibility for the accuracy of the diaries as a whole. […] I think again it is worth mentioning that the passage of the 27th of March is inconsistent with the passage of the 7th of March and the one from April, and I don't remember the date exact (Transcript, p. 5820-5821). Goebbels had no responsibility for Jewish policy. He wasn't involved in that. He was the Propaganda Minister. He was involved only to the extent that there were Jews in Berlin and he was responsible for Berlin (p. 5822-5823).
How can Weber today invoke a wholly doubtful document and, in that document, a passage that is particularly suspect? Is it because at some time between 1988 and 2009 he completely changed his mind on these points? If so, when did he ever advise us of the change, and what were the reasons for such a turn-around?
10. A sorry case
In former times I'd have taken the trouble to write to Weber in order to put these questions to him but experience has taught me, as one can see, that he's a man who shirks requests for explanation, or else cheats in his answers.
Destiny has just punished him for such behaviour. It was in December 2008 that Weber wrote his "How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?" In that text, he dared to assert that these days "the Holocaust imagery of the 1940s is less potent because it's less relevant", adding that, from now on, "Holocaust revisionism cannot play a central role" or even, as we've seen above, that "Holocaust revisionism has proved to be as much a hindrance as a help". However, hardly had Weber written those words when "Holocaust" revisionism was to make a spectacular return onto the world stage. It was, in fact, at the very end of December 2008 and in January 2009 that there hatched what historians may perhaps one day see as the start of a revisionist revival. Preceded by the Dieudonné affair and followed by the Abrahamowicz affair, the Williamson affair, whatever its eventual conclusion, will have brilliantly highlighted that "Holocaust revisionism" is very much alive and that the grounds on which the religion of the alleged Nazi gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews stands are extraordinarily weak. There was a way to reply publicly to Mgr Richard Williamson: it was enough to show us on television a single gas chamber or a single document allowing all to see just what such a weapon of mass destruction might look like. However, he has not been answered with any photograph, technical drawing, document or anything of the kind. Instead, he's been deposed, had insults heaped upon him, told to go to hell, threatened with legal proceedings and prison, put on notice to confess his error. But the height of his enemies' misfortune and, for the traditionalist Catholic he is, an irony of fate as well, is that if ever he did fall to his knees before the new Inquisition, he would immediately remind everyone of Galileo, the man whom science and history ended up acknowledging to be right despite his abjuration. Even if he wound up losing, Richard Williamson would thus have won, and history along with him.
As for M. Weber, he has disgraced himself. He has proved that he possesses neither the clear-sightedness, nor the will, nor the courage needed to lead, at the head of the IHR, the tough struggle that today has started up again so forcefully, that of "Holocaust revisionism". He must therefore resign from the IHR.
Stumble This!
The head of one of the world's most prominent Jewish advocacy groups has accused Rush Limbaugh of making "borderline anti-Semitic comments" by linking Jews to banking.
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