By John Wear
Abstract
The
genocide of European Jewry by National Socialist Germany is considered by many
to be the most thoroughly documented event in human history. Tens of thousands
of books, magazine, and newspaper articles have been written and numerous
criminal trials have been conducted to document the mass extermination of
European Jewry. The crimes of Germany against Jews are considered to be so
uniquely evil that the term „the Holocaust” has been invented to describe the
alleged genocide of European Jewry. I have been asked the questions: „Why was
the Holocaust story invented? Who benefits from this falsification of history?”
This article will answer these questions.
Justification for War with Germany
World
War II was by far the bloodiest and most destructive war in human history. Many
people wondered whether all of the death and destruction caused by the war had
been necessary.
The
so-called Holocaust was used by the Allies to demonize Germany and prove that
their war effort was necessary to defeat such an evil nation.
With
the liberation of Ohrdruf, Buchenwald and Dachau by the American army and the
liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British troops, large groups of Western
observers confronted the horrors of the German camps for the first time. The
gruesome scenes of huge piles of dead bodies and emaciated and diseased
surviving inmates were filmed and photographed for posterity by the U.S. Army
Signal Corps. Prominent newsmen and politicians were flown in to Germany to see
the harrowing evidence at the camps for themselves. The horrific scenes in the
German camps were used by the Allies to justify their participation in the war.[1]
Jewish
historian Robert Jan van Pelt writes:[2]
„To the Allies, the discovery of the camps
proved a final justification of their war effort. In 1940, Churchill had
proclaimed that a Nazi victory would bring „a new Dark Age made more sinister
by perverted science.” The liberation of the camps proved that Churchill had
not exaggerated the danger. And even though Auschwitz had been liberated by the
Russians, the English and Americans heard many stories about that camp.”
Establishment of Israel
The
Holocaust story has also been used to justify the creation of the State of
Israel. Simon Wiesenthal writes:[3]
„The creation of Israel was the only
possible and the only correct reaction to Auschwitz. There had to be a country
in the world where the Jews were the landlords instead of tolerated guests, a
place of refuge in the truest meaning of the word, even for Jews who live in
other countries.”
David
Ben-Gurion stated at the beginning of World War II that the war should end by
giving the Zionists their own state. After the war, Ben-Gurion and other
Israeli leaders said that the Holocaust had proven once again that the only
solution to the Jewish problem was an independent state in Israel. David
Ben-Gurion again mentioned during Adolf Eichmann’s trial that the Holocaust
happened because Jews did not live in their own country.[4]
Israeli
historian Tom Segev explains why the Holocaust story is so important to Israel:[5]
„Israel differs from other countries in its
need to justify – to the rest of the world,
and to itself – its very right to exist. Most countries
need no such ideological justifications. But Israel does – because
most of its Arab neighbors have not recognized it and because most of the Jews
of the world prefer to live in other countries. So long as these factors remain
true, Zionism will be on the defensive. As a justification for the State of
Israel, the Holocaust is comparable only to the divine promise contained in the
Bible: It seems to be definitive proof of the Zionist argument that Jews can
live in security and with full equal rights only in their own country and that
they therefore must have an autonomous and sovereign state, strong enough to
defend its existence.”
Tom
Segev further writes:[6]
„The demonization of Nazism and its
mythologizing, in general, were also necessary since the Holocaust served as
the main justification for the creation and existence of the State of Israel.”
Justification of Israeli Violence
There
were at least 33 massacres of Palestinian villages during Israel’s „War of
Independence.” Zionist forces were larger and better equipped than their
opponents, and by the end of the war over 750,000 Palestinians were ruthlessly
expelled from their homes.[7] As Tom
Segev writes:[8]
„Israel was born of terror, war, and
revolution, and its creation required a measure of fanaticism and of cruelty.”
Entire
cities and hundreds of villages in Israel were left empty and repopulated with
new Jewish immigrants. The Jewish immigrants numbered 100,000 in April 1949,
most of them survivors of the so-called Holocaust. The Palestinians lost
everything they had and became destitute refugees, while the Jewish immigrants
to Israel stole the Palestinians’ property and confiscated everything they
needed.[9]
The
Holocaust story has been repeatedly used to justify Israel’s aggression against
its neighbors. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin justified the demolition
of an alleged Iraqi nuclear facility in June 1981 with the words:[10]
„We must protect our nation, a million and a
half of whose children were murdered by the Nazis in the gas chambers.”
Before
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, Begin told his cabinet:[11]
„You know what I have done and what we have
all done to prevent war and loss of life. But such is our fate in Israel. There
is no way other than to fight selflessly. Believe me, the alternative is
Treblinka, and we have decided that there will be no more Treblinkas.”
A
few weeks after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Begin stated that after the
Holocaust the international community had lost its right to demand that Israel
answer for its actions. Begin declared in the Knesset, „No one, anywhere in the
world, can preach morality to our people.” A similar statement was included in
the resolution adopted by Begin’s cabinet after the massacres in Palestinian
refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut.[12]
By
the late 1980s there was hardly a day when the Holocaust story was not
mentioned in one of the Israeli newspapers. Such constant exposure encouraged
many Israeli soldiers to plan ways to exterminate the Arabs. According to
Israeli education-corps officer Ehud Praver, „too many soldiers were deducing
that the Holocaust justifies every kind of disgraceful action.”[13]
German Guilt
The
so-called Holocaust has also been effectively used to induce guilt in the
German people. As British historian Ian Kershaw writes:[14]
„Decades would not fully erase the simple
but compelling sentiment…‘I am ashamed to be German.’”
Friedrich
Grimm, a renowned German authority on international law, was shown samples of
new leaflets printed soon after the war in German to be distributed by the
Allies throughout Germany. Describing German war crimes, the leaflets were the
first step in the reeducation program designed for Germany. Grimm suggested to
an Allied officer that since the war was over, it was time to stop the libel.
The Allied officer replied:[15]
„Why no, we’re just getting started. We’ll
continue this atrocity campaign, we’ll increase it till no one will want to
hear a good word about the Germans anymore, till whatever sympathy there is for
you in other countries is completely destroyed, and until the Germans
themselves become so mixed up they won’t know what they’re doing!”
The
Allied campaign to make Germans feel guilty concerning the so-called Holocaust
has been highly successful. German guilt is so powerful that it has caused the
German government to make enormous reparations and offer humble apologies to
the Allies. Millions of German expellees have paid reparations to survivors of
the German concentration camps even though these German expellees had their
land and personal possessions stolen from them.
James
Bacque writes in regard to German feelings of guilt:[16]
„Guilt pervades Germany like a religion. It
is the ‘Canossa Republic,’ penitent in pain before its judges. Guilt is so
powerful that it has caused the Canossa Republic repeatedly to deny any
intention of reclaiming sovereignty over the eastern lands, although it is a
well-established UN principle that no government has the right to waive the
claims of individuals to their property. Nor may it impede their right of
return to their former homeland.”
Allied Crimes Against Germans
The
Holocaust story has also been used to cover up and ignore Allied crimes against
Germans after World War II. German deaths after the war can be divided into
three groups of people. The first group is the German prisoners of war (POW) in
both Europe and the Soviet Union. The second group is the German expellees, and
the third group is the Germans already residing in Germany. While no one will
ever know exactly how many Germans died from 1945 to 1950, it is certain that
the deaths far exceed most traditional estimates. The great majority of these
deaths were caused by the lethal policies imposed by the Allies against Germany
after the war.
A
conservative estimate of German deaths in the Allied POW camps is 1.5 million.
This includes over 517,000 POW deaths in the Soviet Union, 100,000 POW deaths
in Yugoslavia, Poland and other countries, with the remaining POW deaths in
U.S. and French camps. The Germans who died in these Allied POW camps suffered
miserably from exposure, disease and slow starvation. This well-documented
Allied atrocity is still denied by most historians today.
Probably
a minimum of 2.1 million German expellees died in what was supposed to be an „orderly
and humane” transfer. The estimate of 2.1 million German expellee deaths is
acknowledged to be valid by most traditional historians. Notable authorities
have estimated a much higher number of German expellee deaths.[17]
An
estimated 5.7 million Germans already residing in Germany died from the
starvation policies implemented by the Allies after the war. James Bacque
details how this 5.7 million death total is calculated:
The
population of all occupied Germany in October 1946 was 65,000,000, according to
the census prepared under the ACC. The returning prisoners who were added to
the population in the period October 1946-September 1950 numbered
2,600,000 (rounded), according to records in the archives of the four principal
Allies. Births according to the official German statistical agency,
Statistisches Bundesamt, added another 4,176,430 newcomers to Germany. The
expellees arriving totaled 6,000,000. Thus, the total population in 1950 before
losses would have been 77,776,430, according to the Allies themselves. Deaths
officially recorded in the period 1946-50 were 3,235,539, according to the UN
Yearbook and the German government. Emigration was about 600,000, according to
the German government. Thus, the population found should have been 73,940,891.
But the census of 1950 done by the German government under Allied supervision
found only 68,230,796. There was a shortage of 5,710,095 people,
according to the official Allied figures (rounded to 5,700,000).[18]
The
sum of 1.5 million German POWs, 2.1 million German expellees, and 5.7 million
German residents equals the minimum estimate of 9.3 million Germans who died
needlessly after the war. This is far more Germans than died during the Second
World War. Millions of these Germans slowly starved to death while the Allies
withheld available food. The majority of these postwar dead Germans were women,
children, and very old men. Their deaths have never been honestly reported by
the Allies, the German government, or most historians. Instead, all we ever
hear about is the alleged genocide of European Jewry
Allied Guilt and Apathy
The
Allies have also been declared guilty of not doing more to prevent the
so-called Holocaust. Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt writes:[19]
„A real antipathy toward Jews certainly
affected the Allied response. While no one among the Allies or in the press
wanted to see Jews killed, virtually no one was willing to advocate that steps
be taken to try to stop the carnage. Many Allied officials in positions of power
in London and Washington were tired of hearing about Jews and even more tired
of being asked to do something about them even though there were steps that
could have been taken.”
Elie
Wiesel writes in regard to the Allies’ failure to rescue European Jewry:[20]
„It almost seems as if both diplomats and
statesmen spent more time inventing reasons not to save the Jews than trying to
find a way to save them.”
U.S.
Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush have all made
statements that the United States will never again fail to act to stop
something as evil as the genocide of European Jewry. At the dedication of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, President Bill Clinton
spoke in a similar vein:[21]
„For
those of us here today representing the nations of the West, we must live
forever with this knowledge: Even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew
into indisputable facts, far too little was done.”
Michael
Goldberg says in regard to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:[22]
„The museum stands as a grim reminder that
for all its purported ideals, America nevertheless turned its back on Jews
fleeing Hitler…Hence, the museum’s recalling what happened to Jews in the past
may move Americans and their national policymakers in Washington to support
Israel in the present, lest in the future, the same fate lie in store for Jews
again–and the same moral failure await Americans once more.”
President
Barack Obama affirmed on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of
Dachau:[23] “…we fervently vow
that such atrocities will never happen again” and „History will not repeat
itself.”
Of
course, President Obama forgot to tell his audience that most of the inmates at
Dachau died of natural causes. Obama also conveniently failed to mention that
the single biggest atrocity that occurred at Dachau was the mass murder by
American troops of 520 German guards on the day Dachau was liberated.[24]
Reparations to Jews
German
guilt for the so-called Holocaust has resulted in massive reparations being
paid to Holocaust survivors and the State of Israel. German reparations to Jews
were discussed from the beginning of World War II. Tom Segev writes:[25]
„The idea [of reparations] seems to
have been in the air from the time the war started, apparently sparked by the
punitive reparations payments imposed on Germany at the end of World War I.
Ben-Guiron received a memorandum on the subject as early as 1940. Berl
Katznelson spoke of it publicly toward the end of that year. By December 1942,
there was already a private organization in Tel Aviv called Justicia that
offered to help Nazi victims draft compensation demands.”
Hatred
of Germans in Israel was intense after the war. Many advocated a special law
barring Israelis from all social contacts with German citizens. However, since
most Israelis felt that the Germans owed them massive reparations for the
so-called Holocaust, Germany and Israel began negotiating reparations on March
20, 1952. The Luxembourg Agreement was reached six months later and committed
the German government to paying massive reparations to Holocaust survivors.[26]
Nahum
Goldmann said in a 1976 interview that the Luxembourg Agreement „constituted an
extraordinary innovation in the matter of international rights.” Goldmann also
boasted that he had obtained 10 to 14 times more from the Bonn government than
he had originally expected.[27]
Millions
of Jews eventually received personal compensation for their pain and suffering
in the so-called Holocaust. The German federal government as of 1998 had paid
reparations to Israel and Third Reich victims of about $61.8 billion. In
addition, Germans had paid many additional billions in private and other public
funds to wartime forced laborers.[28] German
reparations to Israel and Jews continue to this day.[29]
Jewish Solidarity
The
Holocaust story is described by many Jewish leaders as a uniquely evil event.
An example of this view was expressed by Abraham H. Foxman when he was the
National Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith:[30]
„The Holocaust is something different. It is
a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near
successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God
Himself. It is an event that is the antithesis of Creation as recorded in the
Bible; and like its direct opposite, which is relived weekly with the Sabbath
and yearly with the Torah, it must be remembered from generation to
generation.”
Michael
Goldberg confirms that the Holocaust story has become a religion to many Jews:[31]
„As the Holocaust has become many
contemporary Jews’ master story, so, too, its perpetual observance has become
their paramount Jewish practice, its veneration their religion. And as with any
organized church, this Holocaust cult has its own tenets of faith, rites, and
shrines.“
Israelis
are obsessed with the history and heritage of the Holocaust. A 1992 study of
Israeli college students found that close to 80% of those asked identified with
the statement, „We are all Holocaust survivors.” The so-called Holocaust has
become a way for secular Jews to feel connected to their Jewish heritage.[32]
The
Holocaust, which is remembered ritually through the observance of Holocaust
Remembrance Day, is a major means of creating solidarity among Jews. While some
Jewish communities experience conflicts among Orthodox, Conservative, and
Reform Jews, they set aside their differences and join together to remember the
so-called Holocaust. Any truth in Judaism’s slogan of „Jews Are One” manifests
itself ritually on Holocaust Remembrance Day.[33]
Conclusion
The
alleged genocide of European Jewry has been used to justify the Allied war
effort, to establish the State of Israel, to justify Israeli violence against its
neighbors, to induce guilt in both Germans and the Allied nations, to cover up
and ignore Allied crimes against Germans, to allow Jews to receive massive
reparations from Germany, and to create solidarity in the Jewish community. The
extreme importance of the Holocaust story in advancing Zionist/Jewish interests
ensures that this falsification of history will continue in the future.
Notes
Van Pelt, Robert Jan, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the
Irving Trial, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 165.
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Ibid.
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Wiesenthal, Simon, Justice Not Vengeance: New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1989, p. 224.
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Segev, Tom, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust,
New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 82, 185, 330.
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Ibid., p. 514.
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Ibid., p. 480.
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Weir, Alison, Against Our Better Judgement: The Hidden History of
How the U.S. was Used to Create Israel, 2014, p. 58.
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Segev, Tom, op. cit. (note 4), p. 63.
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Ibid., pp. 161f.
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Ibid., p. 399.
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Ibid.
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Ibid.
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Ibid., pp. 407,
412.
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Kershaw, Ian, Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis, New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2000, p. 840.
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Tedor, Richard, Hitler’s Revolution, Chicago: 2013, p. 263;
the German original can be found in Grimm, Friedrich W., Politische
Justiz, die Krankheit unserer Zeit, Scheur, Bonn1953, S. 146-148; also
in idem, Mit offenem Visier, Leoni: 1961, pp. 248f.
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Bacque, James, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians
under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, 2nd edition,
Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks, 2007, pp. 175-176.
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Ibid., p. 124.
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Bacque, James, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians
under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, 2nd edition,
Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks, 2007, pp. 115-116.
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Lipstadt, Deborah E., Beyond Belief: The American Press & the
Coming of the Holocaust 1933-1945, New York: The Free Press, 1986, p.
277.
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Wyman, David S., The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the
Holocaust, 1941-1945, New York: The New Press, 2007, p. x.
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Ibid., pp. 342f.
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Goldberg, Michael, Why Should Jews Survive?: Looking Past the
Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995,
p. 55
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http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Obama-vows-never-again-on-70th-anniversary-of-liberation-of-Nazis-Dachau-camp-400570.
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Buechner, Howard A., Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger,
Metairie, LA: Thunderbird Press, Inc., 1986, pp. 5, 29, 96-97.
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Segev, Tom, op. cit. (note 4), p. 104.
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Ibid., pp. 190f.,
227, 233.
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„West Germany’s Holocaust Payoff to Israel and World Jewry,” The
Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 1988, p. 245.
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„Germany Has Paid Out More Than $61.8 Billion in Third Reich
Reparations,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 17,
No. 6, November/December 1998, p. 19; for a more recent figure see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Wiedergutmachungspolitik#Summe, listing a total of 73.422 billion Euros
(some 100 billion dollars) as of the end of 2015.
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ADL on the Frontline,
January 1994, p. 2.
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Goldberg, Michael, op. cit. (note 22), p. 41.
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Segev, Tom, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 513, 515f.
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Goldberg, Michael, op. cit. (note 22), p. 50.
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