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Given that we've already had our bit of Holocaust "revisionism" this early in the week, I thought I'd share some interesting, trivia, I guess that I recently learned of in that community.
I am given to understand that the most "mainstream" source of Holocaust revisionism is an organization called the Institute For Historical Review (IHR). They appear to be a pretty standard research organization in some ways, publishing papers and web articles and holding conferences and such. While they do not claim to be solely dedicated to the subject, they sure publish a good bit of material that's highly critical of Jews and their influence on the world, the history of the Holocaust, and apologetic towards the Nazi regime. I understand them to be the original source of many of the standard Holocaust denier talking points involving such things as "resettlement in the east".
It turns out that, way back in 2009, the director of the IHR, one Mark Weber, published an article titled "How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?" in which he basically admits that the mainstream historical view of the Holocaust is accurate. He hasn't really changed his mind that much - no indication of some cabal "getting to him" somehow. Rather, he now takes the position that while "Jewish-Zionist power is a palpable reality with harmful consequences for America, the Middle East, and the entire global community", the Holocaust basically happened the way it's described, but it's not really that important of a factor in "Jewish Power" and it's not a good use of their time to attack it. Here's a pull quote that I think is representative of the basic point he's making:
There's also a 30 minute video interview with one Jim Rizoli, a considerably more enthusiastic Holocaust denier, in which he expresses basically the same view and goes on in more detail about a few points. IMO, he comes off as pretty calm and reasonable, while Rizoli comes off as rather unhinged and obsessed.
I think I agree with him in the sense that, if you wanna try and make a point about the role and influence of Jews in today's society, go ahead and make it, but quibbling over the details of exactly what happened to how many in the Holocaust is pointless.
I'm not too well versed in the revisionist position, I just know stuff I've seen on 4chan's politics board over the years, but wasn't the argument against the holocaust that Jews did die in camps, but they weren't gassed or purposely executed? From what I recall, they claimed that Jews died from starvation and typhus after supplies to the camps got cut when the Germans started losing the war, and that the gas was used to try to stop the spread of typhus by delousing clothes.
The problem with this is that the majority of Jews in question "disappeared" in 1942 - 43 which was well before German infrastructure began falling apart.
I don't see how it's a problem, anyone taken to the camps would "disappear" when they were imprisoned, not when they died.
When people were kept in concentration camps, they were recorded as such. The Nazis kept records of inmate population at places like Auschwitz and Dachau which makes sense because you want to have a good idea of the size of your labour pool.
What happened in 1942 - 43 is that the Polish General Government was cleared of Jews. As surviving documents attest, 2,000,000 were deported to three camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. These camps were not like Auschwitz or Dachau, they were tiny little outposts in the Polish countryside, not big enough to accommodate ten thousand prisoners, let alone the hundreds of thousands they received. After this point these Jews disappear from Nazi documentation and from history. Revisionists want to claim that these camps were 'transit' centers by which the deportees were resettled in the "Russian east" but the problem is that there is no evidence, testimonial, physical, or documentary for the massive logistical effort that such a resettlement would have entailed. The paper trail ends at Treblinka, so to speak. That's what I mean by "disappear." It's well-documented that these people wound up in these places, but after that there's only a gaping hole in the historical record. Unless you account for the hundreds of testimonies from guards and prisoners at these places identifying them as extermination camps, and the huge quantities of human ash found by more recent archaeological investigations.
Alright, that actually makes sense.
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