James Morcan's rant against Holocaust Deniers

This essay/post is the result of the disturbing trend within some sectors of society to deny, diminish or otherwise undermine the historicity of the Holocaust. Besides the obvious groups like Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and elements of the Muslim/Christian fundamentalist communities, there is perhaps one group in the 21st Century more responsible for perpetuating the myth that the Holocaust never happened or is vastly exaggerated: conspiracy theorists.

I know this first hand as I am in many ways what can be termed a conspiracy theorist in my work as an author and independent researcher. However, I try to mainly focus on what I call “underground knowledge” - mostly factual things that have been overlooked or underreported in our mainstream media. As WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange succinctly put it: “There are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two.” In other words, I write about ideas supported by strong evidence substantiated in court cases, declassified government files and the like rather than pure speculation. Important issues, such as high finance crimes which decimate communities worldwide and media manipulation which can lead to unnecessary wars, that I believe are crucial for people to know about. Often these subjects are conspiracy fact or conspiracy reality rather than theories.

Sometimes as an author and social activist in this field, I get approached by a certain type of casual reader or amateur investigator who form a dangerous element within the conspiracy field: those who simply regurgitate ideas they read about online and attempt to debate historically-proven events like the Holocaust as if they are up for debate at all. And of course the internet is the perfect technology for bigots and haters to capture young and impressionable or otherwise naïve minds. Lately, I have been getting almost weekly emails from people who question whether the Holocaust occurred as per the history books - some of these people even include other authors. Plus, as I have written extensively about the Holocaust and its dark legacy, I also get hate mail quite often from anti-Semites.

Note that I have put my name in the title of this post not for egotistical reasons but because I, as a non-Jew, am standing up with all my being to say one thing: The Holocaust happened EXACTLY as per the history books. Period. Fact. No debate about it whatsoever.

Wikipedia's definition of this historical event summarizes what mainstream historians universally agree upon:

"The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews. Period: January 30, 1933 – May 8, 1945."

I believe the Holocaust is an extremely important historical event humanity must learn from if our civilization is to eventually survive let alone achieve world peace one day. In my opinion, all truthseekers should study how on Earth this event was allowed to occur (and "allowed" is the correct term as such genocides are never just perpetrators and victims but rather perpetrators, victims AND bystanders...).

Those who challenge the vast and indisputable historicity of the Holocaust like to state they fall into two distinct camps: Holocaust Deniers (those who say the entire crime of the Nazis never occurred and is just a result of post-war propaganda) and the more common Holocaust Revisionists (those who try to downgrade the death figures from 6 million Jews to only about 50,000 or 500,000 max). But note that the latter group like to also imply that of the tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews they claim to have (only) died, few if any of these "casualties of war" were the result of gas chambers. So essentially revisionists are still denying the Holocaust as there's really very little difference between saying 95% of the Holocaust never happened as saying 100% of it never happened.

So for the rest of this post I will only use the term Holocaust Deniers as I feel the term Holocaust Revisionists gives them far too much respect and makes them sound intellectual or even academic.

I have studied all sides of this so-called debate, read Holocaust survivors' books and watched documentary footage of the actual Holocaust, listened to recordings of Hitler's speeches and infamous Holocaust deniers like David Irving, studied WW2 history etc, etc.

And I can assure you of one thing: Holocaust Deniers always have anti-Semitism somewhere inside them. ALWAYS.

Deniers will pretend they are impartial and say they have simply discovered anomalies in historical records that they wish to report, but deep down there will definitely be a hatred of Jews (even if only a subconscious or unconscious hatred). Sometimes the anti-Semitism is very clear (e.g. David Irving, who after years of claiming he was an unbiased historian with no racial hatred whatsoever, has since made disparaging remarks against Jews and various other non-White races - see his interview with Australian journalist John Safran as one example of Irving's vile racism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rBCs...). Other times it's more like a subtle form of brainwashing that is either conspiracy based (e.g. wrongly assuming the banking elite are all Jewish or believing in the age-old myth that the Jews control the entire world) or else religious-based where certain fundamentalists (primarily in extremist forms of Christianity or Islam) believe the Jews are an inferior race or practice an inferior religion.

I've also met a lot of Holocaust survivors and seen the numbered tattoos on their arms that were branded on them by the Nazis. I have listened to the personal eyewitness accounts of these survivors and about what occurred inside the concentration camps and the various atrocities Europe-wide during WW2.


So allow me to list a few of the common myths Holocaust Deniers perpetuate:

MYTH #1: "You could not kill 6,000,000 people in those facilities in Auschwitz and the other death camps! The 6 million figure would be almost impossible to achieve, it would had to have been a hell of a meatgrinder and a superhuman work to kill such an enormous amount of people."

Firstly, 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust, six million of which were Jews, but not all were killed in the death camps (Approximately 3 million Jews are estimated to have died within the concentration camps and not all from being gassed either, many also died from being overworked, malnourished, diseased or experimented on).

Besides the concentration camps, there were Nazi death squads and Eastern European Nazi associates operating with machine guns all over Europe who rounded up and massacred Jews en masse in towns and cities (about 1.5 million are estimated to have been shot in what historians refer to as open-air killings in cities and towns all over Europe). Just research the amount of open-air shootings in Lithuania and Poland alone to see what I mean. Virtually all of which are highly documented.

Beyond Nazi and Nazi associated death squads who machine gunned large groups of Jews all over Europe outside of the concentration camps, the 6 million figure also includes about 500,000 Jews who were starved to death in ghettos in Germany and Poland during AND before the war (refer to the aforementioned definition of the Holocaust being from 1933 until 1945, meaning the death toll began 7 years before the World War began because for European Jews the war started long before Germany began its assault on the rest of the world).

Besides Jews, the other victims in the Holocaust were the Nazi's other "inferior races" or "ïnferior groups" including Roma Gypsies, Poles, Homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehova's Witnesses, Slovenes and disabled people - and these resulted in millions of additional deaths that form the 11 million people in total. It's also very interesting, if you stop to think about it, that nobody ever seems to spend much time denying the fact that all the millions of non-Jewish who were killed in the Holocaust...It's only the death of that many Jews that creates controversy...Why??? The answer is very simple: They are Jewish. That's it - it really is that simple. Had this happened to any other group of people, there would be few if any complaints whatsoever and everyone would accept the facts. Anti-Semitism is one of the most aggressive forces on the planet and always has been going right back to Biblical times...

The Nazis themselves were also meticulous record keepers and kept extensive documentation on deportations and deaths of Jews. Human rights groups have recovered much of the Nazi documentation relating to the Holocaust and have so far found the IDs for over three million confirmed Jewish Holocaust victims who died. Additionally, some documentation relating to the other five million non-Jews who died has also been recovered. This is all easily sourced in the public domain for anyone to find.

Make no mistake about it, most of the Jews living in Europe at that time were killed. About 75% of all European Jews died in fact.
There simply is zero debate on this issue and it is completely historically verified.
And the good news is you can easily prove all this to yourself (and to others) by checking out this frightening statistic:

The global Jewish population in 1939 was 15 million.
Today the global population is just under 13 million!
You can see it on the graph at the bottom of this Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_...

So that's undeniable proof of the Holocaust right there in black and white.
Because the populations of ALL other ethnic groups increase over time.
They never decrease unless there's a major famine or massive war (or an ethnic cleansing!).

So this statistic alone should be enough to silence all those who still deny many millions died in WW2. Because if any other ethnic group had a global population of 15 million in 1939 they would ordinarily be about 25-30 million in this era. So how come the Jewish population shrunk so drastically? The answer again is very simple and can be summed up in two words: The Holocaust.


MYTH #2: "The reason the real story about the Holocaust cannot ever be proven is because it is taboo. If you publicly want to discuss the numbers, depending on what country you are in, you may be arrested. Why? If this is so well documented then why not just prove it to the people to shut up the deniers. Why forbid them to show their version of facts?"

It's not a taboo to investigate the Holocaust at all. You can study it until your heart is content. If you go to Europe right now and study historical records of the Holocaust and inspect the IDs the Nazis kept as documentation of Jewish deaths you could literally spend the rest of your life studying these details and nobody anywhere will stop you - in fact you will be greatly encouraged to do so. However, your confusion of the legality issue merely lies in the fact that in certain countries in Europe like German, Austria, Poland and a few others it is illegal to promote any ideology that says the Holocaust did not happen as per the history books. It is literally written into those countries law books and is in recognition of the fact that it is the worst crime in living memory and also that there is still a tremendous amount of anti-Semites and Neo Nazis in Europe today and these countries are worried history could repeat itself. But this is in no way related to your (incorrect) assumption that this means a cover-up of the real history of the Holocaust is occurring. The proof of the Holocaust numbers is there for all to see in plain sight. Like I said, if you arrive in Europe now and say to any official in any European nation "Hi, my name is XXXXX and I would like to study the Holocuast indepth and inspect the records of those who died and all the evidence of the Holocaust," they will welcome you with open arms.

However, if some Holocaust denying, anti-Semitic, Nazi sympathizing, Hitler apologist arrives in say Germany or Austria to give a speech about why the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated or says he wants to hold a public debate about whether this historical event actually occurred, he will either be turned away at the airport or imprisoned.
Now, that's all fair enough in my books and is not unusual. For example, if I was an author and speaker who has repeatedly said African-Americans were never slaves in America's history and millions did not die in the slave trade and it's all simply propaganda, do you think US authorities would let me into the country? And would I as a foreigner be allowed to stay in the country and give such hate-filled speeches about black descendants and US citizens? No.


MYTH #3: "We now know media and governments lie and that all wars are made by propaganda. They lied a lot about Hitler, even silly things (he was a sexual pervert, he had only one testicle, he had flatulence etc). If they lied or exaggerated about such things, how can we be assured the rest of the things they told us about World War Two are absolutely true?"

Wars always have vast amounts of propaganda on all sides and certain things said about Hitler are not remotely related to how many Jews died in the Holocaust. That's like saying just because there were racist cartoons about the Japanese in WW2 that compared the Japanese to animals and even accused them of bestiality, proves they didn't kill millions throughout the Pacific.


MYTH #4: "Three million deceased Jews in concentration camps is still a huge number. If you consider that the relentless killing didn't start until some time into World War II, it would need an extraordinary effort for a single country which was already struggling on a two-front war. And the camps did not have the necessary infrastructure to kill and remove the bodies of millions of people. Germany did not have the logistics to pull off such a crime."

The Nazi regime's orchestration concerning the concentration camps was incredibly efficient (and again, all fully documented mostly by the Nazis themselves). There were 8 main camps. The highest death toll of Jewish prisoners/victims was Auschwitz at 1 million. Others had about 300,000-500,000 deaths in each. Each camp definitely had the necessary infrastructure to easily and systematically create such a death toll over the entire war. The camps were all built with railway tracks right outside the gates and German (non-Jewish) witnesses report multiple trains per day would leave and depart at each camp (sometimes even hourly trains). These trains were either constantly delivering new victims/prisoners or else bringing in supplies. And this amount of large trains continued from near the start of the war until the very end.

Now you say "it would need an extraordinary effort for a single country which was already struggling on a two-front war" which reveals another common misunderstanding. Germany should not be viewed as just a country at this point. Nazi Germany cannot be compared to modern day Germany or any other single country for that matter, because the fact is Germany had become the Third Reich by that stage. Now just think about what the Third Reich was: one of the most powerful empires in history. It had looted the riches of half of Europe (after having invaded or over-run powerhouse nations like France, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Poland etc), it was secretly receiving enormous funds from the Vatican Bank (yes, the Catholics were aware of Hitler's intent toward the Jews) and also some Swiss banks were supporting the Third Reich too. Plus, the Nazis had fascist allies like Mussolini’s Italy and even Japan from afar.

So a far better or more appropriate question to ask yourself is: "Could a regime that controls almost all of Europe's resources and wealth kill a few million defenseless Jews who nobody cared about or would defend?" The obvious answer, if you stop to think about it, is: "Yes! Relatively effortlessly!"

Even during the extremely small-scale Balkan/Bosnian wars in the 1990s in Yugoslavia there were mass graves found of ethnic killings in the tens of thousands and I think well over 100,000 were killed in those (comparatively) tiny wars in which most of it was similarly about ethnic cleansings.


MYTH #5: "Most of the Jews died in the camps due to bad working conditions, famine and diseases, which doesn't make the picture more pretty than if they were just gassed, but it does undermine the supposed history of the Holocaust."

Um, no, it does not undermine the history of the Holocaust at all. The gassings were simply one part of the deaths in the camps (again, that's another very common misunderstanding to think the 3 million who died within the camps were ALL the result of gassings). Remember, the concentration camps were not only designed to exterminate Jews. They were also the hub of the Third Reich in many ways as the Jews were a cheap or free labor force performing many duties day and night including manufacturing and all sorts of work duties that helped the regime. Nazi scientists were also conducting wide-scale medical experimentation on hundreds of thousands of Jews (horrific experiments which killed most experimentees). Starting to get the picture of how so many could have died within these camps?

Now when it comes to records of gas chambers themselves, all mainstream historians agree they are 100% verified and that a large percentage of those who died in the camps died from the result of either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B gasses. This is a good starting place for the historical facts surrounding the gas chambers: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...

Besides the assessment of historians, there have also been numerous independent scientific reports published on the gas chambers over the years, including the following examples:

Jean-Claude Pressac (1944 - 2003) - a French pharmacist who was formerly a Holocaust denier, undertook a forensic examination of the Auschwitz gas chambers in 1979. The result? He was shocked by the overwhelming evidence. In 1989 he published a book that confirmed the established view that the gas chambers were functional, killing between 631,000 and 711,000 prisoners (at Auschwitz alone).

Deborah E. Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory won the UK libel case 'Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt'. The case contained forensic examination for use of gas chambers.

One of the common claims of Holocaust Deniers involves the reconstructed gas chambers built by the Polish government after WW2 at Auschwitz as a memorial to the victims. The Nazis destroyed the original gas chambers where mass murders were committed, and the simulated gas chambers at Auschwitz have never had Zyklon-B deployed in them. Deniers frequently exploit such confusion. At Majdanek, which the Nazis did not successfully destroy, evidence of the use of Zyklon-B appears in the bluing of the concrete. Hydrogen cyanide reacts with iron compounds to form the pigment Prussian blue.


MYTH #6: "You cannot deny that Jews have a huge influence in the banking/financial world and in the media, can you?"

No I wouldn't deny Jews have a big influence in the banking/financial world and media. But I'll go much further than that. They have made an enormous mark in virtually every field known to man: from mathematics to publishing to science to medicine to economics to human rights campaigning to engineering. When you consider there are less than 13 million Jews worldwide (about half of the population of Mexico City) they are an incredible people and it's not just in this era they are world leaders - they always have been (and all that despite never having a country of their own until the mid-20th Century and being up against a mountain of anti-Semitism in every other country they have resided in). They have always been a people throughout history who have largely sculpted the world we live in. It's also hard to see how women's rights or the legal equality of races or child welfare or animal rights or environmental protection would have occurred when they did without the Jews (research history and you'll see they were even at the forefront of these movements). Even many or most of the Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish. And all this success or achievement or service to humanity or whatever you want to call it is partly responsible for the hatred and anti-Semitism as people cannot believe that any one small minority can achieve so much in virtually every field without they being corrupt or scoundrels. I mean can you imagine if say half the world's most successful people on earth came from some little known state in Brazil? That would be the equivalent. And after a while, the rest of the world would get jealous and say things like "those people from Mato Grosso do Sul are liars and cheats and are secretly controlling the world"...So besides the religious thing where anti-Semitic viewpoints thrive within fundamentalist, Far Right or extremist versions of Christianity and Islam, the success of these brilliant and community-orientated people is one of the biggest reasons the Jews have historically been hated and also partly why the Nazis wanted them gone.

Now the whole banking field is another area I have studied a lot and actually co-written a book on. And yes there are many leading Jews in this field but like I point out there are leading Jews in almost every field, so what. The Rothschilds are just one of dozens of banking clans some are Jewish but many are not Jewish. The Rothschilds are people I don't like, but the way they are held up to represent Jews in general is a joke. There are good and bad people in all races. The fact that there are many Jews in the banking sector is being used by Neo Nazis and anti-Semites in general to try to sway the uneducated to believe the Jews are the problem instead of banking assholes in general.


MYTH #7: "I am pretty sure Hitler had racist ideas and saw Jewry were his main enemy. However, his main objective was NOT to wipe out the Jews from the face of the Earth. If they had departed from Germany it would have been reasonable for him."

If you read Mein Kampf and listen to Hitler's speeches, getting rid of the Jews was a huge part of his agenda. Nazi Germany's desire for "racial purity" was very real and the concepts of the Final Solution are well documented. But did Hitler also have world domination and other wider goals not related to the Jews? Yes definitely, but that doesn't change the fact that his expressed desire to get rid of these people and expel them not only from Germany but from the ever-expanding Third Reich is all on-the-record and official. No getting around that, buddy.


MYTH #8: "I have seen various figures about the numbers of Jews who died in Europe. It's hard to know which statistic to believe! There is almost no unbiased data about this subject!"

The death tolls are estimates and cannot ever be 100% precise. Just like nobody can estimate how many exactly died in the Vietnam War (some say 3M Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans, others say 3.2M Vietnamese and 60,000 Americans). There will always be slight variances in death tolls of wars spanning entire continents, especially if you go as far back as WW2. But these slight variances are not remotely related to Holocaust Deniers who are trying to revise things (to support their hate-filled agendas) by claiming 90-100% of the Holocaust deaths (e.g. 5-6 million Jews) are some fairytale concocted years after the war. Rest assured the only books anywhere that talk about the tiny death toll numbers Holocaust Deniers believe in (i.e. thousands or hundreds of thousands instead of millions) are either Holocaust denying books written by the likes of David Irving and other anti-Semitic "historians" or Neo Nazi groups. There are no mainstream history books ever published now or anytime since 1945 that ever mention a death toll that isn't in the millions for the Holocaust. Period.

If you go beyond the death tolls from the concentration camps, and study the open-air massacres in places like Lithuana and Poland (which tens or even hundreds of non-Jews have verified as being witnesses of) you will see millions were killed in these events alone. So to believe in Holocaust denialism you have to ignore perhaps 1 million different witnesses and survivors (from Jews to Gypsies to Germans to Poles to children etc, etc) who all verify the Holocaust. These independent testimonies, as well as the Nazi's documentation of concentration camp detainees who died, all add up to the confirmed estimates of the Holocaust death toll (universally agreed upon by ALL mainstream historians as being 6 million Jews give or take a few hundred thousand either way, could be slightly more could be slightly less).

It is potentially the most well-documented crime of the 20th Century but remember to religious extremists, Nazi apologists or other anti-Semites it would never matter how much evidence you put in front of them they would always deny the Holocaust as to admit the event occurred is to stop believing the Jews are inferior to them.


For further proof, this site uses abundant evidence to successfully debunk all other arguments Holocaust Deniers raise: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holocaus...


Lastly, I'd like to add the motto of Holocaust Survivors: NEVER FORGET.

Peace,
James Morcan


P.S. For anyone else who stands against Holocaust denialism, feel free to add your voice.

P.P.S. Have also included this rant on my book/film blog site (which includes photographic evidence of the Holocaust): http://morcanbooksandfilms.com/2016/0...
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message 1: by Progressive (new)

Progressive Press James, it's not as simple and one-sided as you are taking it to be. We know for a fact that great numbers of Jews were rounded up and taken to camps, and that great numbers of them died there. But beyond these clear facts, it starts to get more blurry. There may be indications that these were primarily intended as work camps. During WW2 all the belligerent powers were short of labor, so that actually makes more sense. There are also problems with the evidence for gas chambers. Finally, a recent book (Breaking the Spell), which is based on British decrypts of German Enigma traffic during the war, finds that the German high command was trying to reduce the death rate in the camps.
Emotions are still high 70 years after the end of the war. In another 100 years, historians may take a longer and less partisan perspective.
Currently, it is not easy to get to the bottom of this. Almost all writing on the subject suffers from one-sidedness, emotional appeals, preaching to the choir, a lack of objectivity and a dearth of good, detailed evidence.


message 2: by James (last edited Feb 23, 2016 04:52PM) (new)

James Morcan Progressive wrote: "a dearth of good, detailed evidence ..."

On the contrary - the Holocaust is one of the most historically and scientifically proven incidents in history. Not to mention documented by the Nazis themselves who were meticulous record keepers.

Stop falling for the propaganda of the anti-Semites I speak of in the essay... They will always come up with pathetic red herrings and lies (e.g. British decrypts of German Enigma traffic supposedly revealing sympathetic SS leaders!) to lead you astray and deceive you... There are an infinite number of similarly pathetic red herrings of course and once Holocaust deniers are debunked on issue after issue (as they already have been on literally thousands of arguments raised over the decades), they will keep searching for more and more...Why? Because they have an agenda...and it isn't a pretty one.

As I said, if the Jews were not the main victims of the Holocaust nobody would be debating this...
They are easily one of the most hated groups of people in the world and sadly they have been recipients of many other genocides or ethnic cleansings throughout the centuries before the Holocaust.

Now get on the right side of history and stop being so gullible.

James


message 3: by Ernestine (new)

Ernestine Manowarda What precisely is the right side of history, if both wings belong to the same bird?


message 4: by James (new)

James Morcan Ernestine wrote: "What precisely is the right side of history, if both wings belong to the same bird?"

The right side of history in this instance is what is clearly right or correct or proven beyond belief. The wrong side of history in this instance is ignoring all the proof and instead believing in unfounded rumors spread by anti-Semites.


message 5: by Progressive (new)

Progressive Press Strange how so often man's inhumanity to man is committed by those who are convinced they have history on their side.


message 6: by James (last edited Feb 24, 2016 10:05AM) (new)

James Morcan Progressive wrote: "Strange how so often man's inhumanity to man is committed by those who are convinced they have history on their side."

Case in point = the Nazis.
They thought they had history (and God) on their side.

NEVER FORGET.


message 7: by Progressive (new)

Progressive Press James, I admire your passion and idealism on this issue. It reminds me a lot of the way I felt about it 40 years ago, when I knew of no alternative narrative to the mainstream, Hollywood, Zionist, or official schoolbook version. It is more complicated than that. There are Jews who oppose Zionism, there are Christian Zionists. It is not all black and white or one sided. I see a lot more shades of gray now. Look at Norman Finkelstein for instance, a Jewish author who wrote "The Holocaust Industry." I don't think he is "anti-Semitic."
None of these additional viewpoints change the fact that a terrible and unjust punishment was meted out to innocent Jews in WW2. But they were not the only victims of that war, in which tens of millions died. Why is THE Holocaust raised to the status of the Holiest of Holies? There is an agenda behind that, and as you say, it is not pretty. It is used to justify the usurpation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide against native peoples in the Middle East. It props up the entire Anglo-Zionist scheme for world domination. Thus you are going to have people inspecting it for weak spots, for a foothold in the battle against the NWO's war on humanity.
We know terrible things happened, even without exaggerating, but exaggeration is still wrong. Not only because it is inaccurate, but because it sets a standard against which new atrocities are measured. New war criminals can always say, well what we are doing is still not as bad as the Holocaust.
This alone makes it worth looking at whether all the deaths were really murders or whether many of them were indirect consequences of a bad policy and the general collapse in Germany as the war turned to defeat.
As for the German staff being kindly and soft-hearted, that is not the implication. They had production targets so they needed workers to stay alive.
Some years ago a film came out called The Patriot, about the US war of independence. In this film, British troops burn down a church, killing the congregation within. The British lodged a protest that no such incident had ever occurred. I found this quite interesting. It shows a number of things. One, that Hollywood exaggerates for sensationalist purposes. Two, are we reflecting the barbarity of our own age back on the 18th century? Has humanity actually gotten worse instead of making progress? And three. this is where I got the idea above, that exaggerating past atrocities lowers the standards. Then Americans can say, Well ok we napalmed some villages in Vietnam, or we cruise missiled some weddings in Afghanistan, but this kind of thing has always happened in war. When in fact, brutality to civilians might be more the exception rather than the rule in history. Until now!


message 8: by James (last edited Feb 24, 2016 12:30PM) (new)

James Morcan Progressive: You are bringing up all the usual BS that deniers bring up. Have heard EVERYTHING you're saying a million times before and unfortunately those who share your arguments are not the most loving people around nor the sharpest tools in the shed...
Sorry, but I'm giving it to you straight.

Zionism, the Middle East conflict, Israelis vs. Palestinians, etc, are often brought into the subject of the Holocaust - and wrongly so. Those issues not related at all to an event that happened before (modern) Israel was formed.

Calling it "The Holocaust Industry" is callous.
Think about what you're saying.

Lastly, I have no idealism on this issue - I'm not Jewish, I have no agenda, I have simply researched the Holocaust extensively and am reporting the truth. And my message includes exposing all the usual reasons the ill-informed or anti-Semites try to deny or downgrade the Holocaust.

It happened. Believe it.
There is no debate - again, if these victims were not Jewish, nobody would be trying to challenge history that is 1000% historically and scientifically proven.

And for anyone foolish enough to buy into the anti-Semitic version of the Holocuast (e.g. that it never happened, that it was exaggerated, that people are lying or exaggerating to get money, that there were no gas chambers, etc, etc, yadda, yadda, zzzzzz!) I highly recommend checking out this site which lists all the many points Holocaust deniers and so-called "Revisionists" have been proven wrong over and over and over again: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holocaus...

NEVER FORGET!!!

J


message 9: by Progressive (new)

Progressive Press Interesting.


message 10: by Ernestine (new)

Ernestine Manowarda James Morcan wrote: "Ernestine wrote: "What precisely is the right side of history, if both wings belong to the same bird?"

The right side of history in this instance is what is clearly right or correct or proven beyo..."


Then the only right thing to do is for the population not to enter into war with their governments and let the president go kill the world himself, since all war is organized crime to sell weapons


message 11: by Pam (new)

Pam The Holocaust did happen and the gas chambers were in use. There are eyewitnesses to this fact although they are rapidly dying. The reason the Holocaust is so important is that it specifically refers to the approximately 6 million Jews who were killed. Many were gassed or shot, many others died of overwork, malnutrition, diseases, etc. It is a fact that the Nazis wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish "race". WWII resulted in an additional 5 million others killed by the same processes. This does not count the military losses on all sides.

If you doubt, take a trip to Germany and Poland and see the labor camps and death camps. See the gas chambers still in existence. During the trial of David Irving, the presence of extensive use of Zyclon B was used in the gas chambers which were destroyed. He was proved to be wrong in his assertations that the Holocaust did not exist. You can still see the blue traces in the gas chamber in Auschwitz.
Visit any of the Holocaust museums around the country and in Jerusalem for the facts.

I am not Jewish; but I have studied WWII and the Holocaust extensively. I am a Museum teacher and was a Regional Educator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I have studied in Germany and Israel, I have visited many of the camps and ghettos in Germany and Poland. I have had over 500 books by various authors on the Holocaust. I have heard personal testimony from a variety of survivors. I have heard many acclaimed historians speak.

The Holocaust did occur and was planned and executed by the Nazi regime. It did include shootings, torture, starvation, working people to death, and gas chambers.


message 12: by Elisabet (new)

Elisabet Norris Progressive wrote: "James, I admire your passion and idealism on this issue. It reminds me a lot of the way I felt about it 40 years ago, when I knew of no alternative narrative to the mainstream, Hollywood, Zionist, ..."

Progressive. ...i challenge you to watch this documentary and come back to this blog and let me know how you feel about the holocaust. ...or if you still don't believe it happened.
https://youtu.be/TV-GhCX0xeE


message 13: by Edwin (last edited Apr 20, 2016 11:51AM) (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay James is right.

What do historians think? People trained in historiography, credentialled professors of historical analysis? Is there a controversy about the Holocaust? Not about the facts. No serious historian denies that the Nazis intentionally murdered roughly 5.5 million Jews, and millions of other people, mostly by shooting into pits. Nobody doubts that the Nazis gassed millions of people to death in the Operation Reinhard death camps.

Yes, there are controversies about the Holocaust. But those controversies are about interpretation - not basic facts.

For instance, over the decades, the main controversy was between the intentionalists and the functionalists. The intentionalists think Hitler intended the Final Solution from the beginning. The functionalists think the Final Solution was a contingency made possible by the direction of the war. (This argument now seems to have been solved, and the solution is along the functionalist route.)

The interpretation and lessons we learn from the Holocaust continue to develop, but the events on the ground happened and are not in dispute.


message 14: by James (new)

James Morcan Edwin wrote: "For instance, over the decades, the main controversy was between the intentionalists and the functionalists. The intentionalists think Hitler intended the Final Solution from the beginning. The functionalists think the Final Solution was a contingency made possible by the direction of the war. (This argument now seems to have been solved, and the solution is along the functionalist route.) ..."

If that is true, then why did Hitler tell a German journalist this way back in 1922 (almost two decades before the WW2 began):

“Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews."
—Adolf Hitler, 1922. (Josef Hell, "Aufzeichnung," 1922, ZS 640, p. 5, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zs/... Translation by the Nizkor Project)

p.s. I could've copied and pasted numerous other similar quotes from Hitler and other senior Nazis made before the war to show exterminating Jews was Hitler's intention from the get-go...


message 15: by Edwin (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay Hitler chose the Jews as his scapegoat from the beginning, yes. But in 1922 it would have been impossible for him or his regime to have have planned the Einsatzgruppen operations in the Soviet Union, and Operation Reinhard. It would be eleven years before Hitler was chancellor, so any 'plan' imagined by Hitler was wishful thinking

The Holocaust was only possible once Poland was occupied AND Operation Barbarossa had begun. Hence the functionalist argument. Without the preparatory "facts on the ground," the Einsatz operations and Aktion Reinhard would have been impossible.


message 16: by Edwin (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay BTW - do read all of Mein Kampf; but more importantly, read Timothy Snyder. Prof. Snyder is right at the cutting edge of Holocaust history today.


message 17: by James (new)

James Morcan Edwin wrote: "The Holocaust was only possible once Poland was occupied AND Operation Barbarossa had begun. Hence the functionalist argument. Without the preparatory "facts on the ground," the Einsatz operations and Aktion Reinhard would have been impossible.
..."


Sorry, but that's incorrect (sorry to sound like a nit-picker by the way).
The deathtoll of the Holocaust began in 1933, not when the war officially began and Poland was invaded in 1939 - check out the history of the Holocaust and you'll see it is listed as 1933-1945. So in 1933 you have concentration camps already built, you have the ghettoization of Jews (which killed 500,000). The Final Solution had already begun.

I think what you're confusing, if I may say so, is that the Nazis streamlined the method for eradicating Jews once they started invading other countries and the Third Reich took over much of Europe. For example, in 1936, the Soviets began using gas vans on radicals (not Jews, just political revolutionaries). So the Germans then started using gas vans a few years later, before eventually created gas chambers early in the war.

The infamous Dachau concentration camp was built and operational (albeit small-scale) in 1933, by the way.

And as mentioned, there are numerous other quotes by Hitler and others proving the Final Solution (the annihilation of all Jews) was the Nazi's intent long before the war.

On September 17, 2015, USA Today Network’s The Star Press reported on ‘A Voice Among the Silent: The Legacy of James Grover McDonald,’ a new documentary film that confirms it was almost common knowledge in pre-war Germany that Hitler planned to commit genocide.

The report reads, “We’ve all heard plenty about U.S. government officials who turned a blind eye during the Holocaust. But this month, Indiana residents are going to hear the little-known story of one of their own, an American diplomat who did everything he could to warn the world about Hitler, and help rescue European Jewish refugees.”

The article mentions how McDonald was a Catholic from the Midwest with no former interest in Jewish matters. But that all changed when “during a visit to Germany in 1933, he unexpectedly found himself in private conversation with the new chancellor Adolf Hitler — and became the first American to hear the Fuhrer explicitly vow to ‘get rid of the Jews’.”

McDonald then began a mission to meet and warn world leaders of Hitler’s agenda. Those leaders included President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Cardinal Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. Unfortunately, McDonald’s warnings fell on deaf ears.

The Star Press report continues, “He ran into similar obstacles during his two years (1933-1935) as the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany. During that early phase of the Nazi regime, Hitler was willing to let the Jews leave. The problem, as McDonald discovered, was that no other country was willing to receive them. He resigned as commissioner in 1935 as a protest against the failure of the international community to open its doors.

“Nonetheless, McDonald refused to be deterred. In 1938, he became chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees. Although its hands were largely tied by the Roosevelt administration’s harsh immigration policy, McDonald and his colleagues did manage to help bring more than 2,000 Jewish refugees to the United States on the eve of the Holocaust.”

What’s interesting about McDonald’s story is it remained unknown to most historians until 2003 when the discovery of missing pages from his diaries revealed exactly what Hitler told him.

As other (previously lost) eyewitness accounts verifying Hitler’s and the Nazis’ detailed plans to annihilate the Jewish people are recovered by historians each passing decade, Holocaust deniers’ attempts to defend the Third Reich against accusations of genocide become more and more feeble. No, make that more and more laughable.


“The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! ... We shall regain our health only be eliminating the Jew.” –Adolf Hitler (quoted in The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann)


message 18: by Edwin (last edited Apr 20, 2016 12:27PM) (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay James, Hitler's 1922 quote itself reveals the truth of the functionalist argument:

Hitler talks about the lurid things he intends to do to the Jews when he is in power. The very first thing he says he will do is annihilate them.

But this was not possible when Hitler came to power in 1933. In 1934, Hitler was compelled to defeat the SA because it was engaging in unrestrained street violence, and German people preferred the Rule of Law. Hitler pretended he didn't approve of racist violence in order to calm the public down. Fortunately for him, most Germans hadn't read Mein Kampf and didn't know what was in store for the Jews and other National Traitors. Those who had read it tended not to take it at face value.

The Nuremburg Laws were passed in 1935 - two years later. This wasn't the immediate annihilation Hitler promised, or even an ethnic cleansing. It was the purging of Jerws from public life. In order to murder the Jews, Hitler had to lay the legal groundwork first - or kill them somewhere the law didn't apply.

In 1938, Goebbels launched Kristallnacht across Germany. This was a PR disaster for the Nazis. The German population were frightened and destabilised by the outbreak of massive sectarian violence, and Hitler was forced to calm down the violence with another pretence of legalism and decency.

This proved to Hitler that he could NOT carry out the Holocaust in Germany. Only once Poland and the Soviet Union were invaded and their Rule of Law destroyed, could people be exterminated without legal problems.

Therefore, his intention to build rows of gallows in Munich for Bavarian Jews could never be fulfilled. Hitler's prophecy that other German cities would have their OWN gallows would also never come to fulfilment.

Hitler could not built rows of gallows in Germany. But he could in Poland - which is where Operation Reinhard took place. Hitler had to wait until the SS had destroyed the state in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine before situation gallows in Warsaw, Minsk and Kiev. Once he had destroyed the state in the Ostland, he could build as many gallows as he liked.

Here's the quote again:


“Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews."


message 19: by Edwin (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay In terms of numbers, the functionalist argument seems clear:

A German Jew stood a 1 in 2 chance of surviving the war. 50% is a horrible probability, but compare the chances of German Jews with the chances of survival where the state was destroyed:

In Poland, almost every Jew was murdered.

A Ukrainian or Belarussian Jew stood about a 1 in 20 chance of surviving the war.

Both the Polish and the Soviet theatres were necessary before the Final Solution could be implemented.


message 20: by James (last edited Apr 20, 2016 12:37PM) (new)

James Morcan Edwin, this is basically all a phraseology argument.
I'd remind you your original statement, which I replied to, was this: For instance, over the decades, the main controversy was between the intentionalists and the functionalists. The intentionalists think Hitler intended the Final Solution from the beginning. The functionalists think the Final Solution was a contingency made possible by the direction of the war. (This argument now seems to have been solved, and the solution is along the functionalist route.)"

So I trust my posts above, including the various quotes from Hitler and those who met Hitler, prove that Hitler was obsessed with annihilating the Jews many, many years before WW2. He conceived the "Endlösung der Judenfrage" ("the final solution to the Jewish Question" in German, I believe) well before the invasion of Poland etc, but didn't have the right methods or manpower etc to conduct it until the war began.

You're correct by the way about your comments that there is no way he could've conducted the Holocaust in Germany (no German concentration camps had gas chambers in them, for example).

So basically, the only issue I have is you saying that Hitler did not INTEND to annihilate all Jews from the beginning - he did and it wasn't an after-thought.

Otherwise, all good - and I'm glad you agree the Holocaust happened exactly as per the history books :)


message 21: by Edwin (new)

Edwin Stratton-Mackay James you need to take an ego break. You are pretending to know more than you do. It is not about phraseology. It is about history.

The Holocaust did not begin in 1933.

I was underlining your original post, but I now realise this was a mistake. It is obvious that you don't actually understand the Holocaust history yourself.

I think you need to actually READ those history books you tell others to read because all I am doing is condensing the actual history for your benefit, from the standard works including Hilberg, Gilbert, Longerich, Friedlander, Browning, Rhodes, Arad, Arendt, etc.

I have read all of the standard works, multiple times, AND the works of Hitler and Rosenberg. I suggest you do the same. This is the canonical history you pretend to know and tell others to learn.

It began on several dates depending on who you read. Some say it began with the Wansee Conference. Other say it began with the first non-mobile gassing of Jews at Chelmno on December 7th 1941. Most historians think it began with Operation Barbarossa.

The intentionalist/functionalist argument was put to bed more than ten years ago.

I am just condensing it for you. But it's in the books. Read them and stop being so pretentious.


message 22: by James (last edited Apr 20, 2016 02:22PM) (new)

James Morcan Edwin wrote: "The Holocaust did not begin in 1933. ..."

Wikipedia:
"The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews."
Period: January 30, 1933 – May 8, 1945

Museum of Tolerance (Simon Wiesenthal):
Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945 -- http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.a...

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL):
Overview of the Holocaust: 1933–1945 -- http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/educati...

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
First phase of the Holocaust 1933-1938 -- "In 1933, the regime established the first concentration camps, imprisoning its political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others classified as “dangerous.” -- https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-...

World History -- The Holocaust (1933–1945) -- http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A000128...

Myjewishlearning.com:
1933-1939: Early Stages of Persecution -- http://www.myjewishlearning.com/artic...


Also, I know all about the functionalism vs intentionalism debate (which has not been put to bed as you stated). However I was replying to your separate assertion or implication that Hitler definitely did not fully intend the annihilation of the Jews or the Final Solution years before WW2 - which I simply pointed out I perceive history differently. And again, that was possibly a phraseology issue in your original statement, which I pointed out as an attempt to extend an olive branch here (especially given that we both agree on the overall subject: that the Holocaust did happen!)...

Plus, I could have advised you of just as many authors/historians to read on this subject (e.g. authors like Klaus Hildebrand, Peter Kubicek, Andreas Hillgruber, Karl Dietrich Bracher and Lucy Dawidowicz to name but a few) but I wouldn't have been so patronizing to assume what you have and haven't read based off of a few of your online posts...

No ego from my end, but are you sure you don't have one? ;)


message 23: by Peter (new)

Peter Having read all of the numerous comments, I am struck particularly by the last one by Edwin. To call James Morcan pretentious is uncalled for and an insult. He has done more reading and studying than you ever will.

Further comment: many people confuse labor camps with slave labor camps. Labor camps were about labor and slave labor camps were about slavery. German labor camps were survivable, as long as you were in reasonable health. Slave labor camps resulted in the death of majority of its inmates and that was their purpose.


message 24: by Elisabet (new)

Elisabet Norris Peter wrote: "Having read all of the numerous comments, I am struck particularly by the last one by Edwin. To call James Morcan pretentious is uncalled for and an insult. He has done more reading and studying th..."

Interesting, I actually never paid much attention to the fact that there were two different types of camps.....or at least it never clicked...certain things make more sense now!

I'm glad that part made it into this discussion :)


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