Is the Holocaust best understood through fiction? That was the theme of a recent revue of Ruth Franklin’s novel, Higher Truth appearing on the Jewish internet journal Tablet. The revue provided a setting for an unlikely week-long exchange between Holocaust denier Michael Santomauro and me. I contacted Michael before submitting this article and he agreed to allow his name to appear but asked, “please reference me as a Holocaust Revisionist -and an amateur one at that.” A degree of humility that likely allowed for our extended discussion.
Continue readingRaul Hilberg
An interview with Robert Faurisson
An interview with Professor Robert Faurisson at the Guest House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, December 13, 2006.
Continue readingRaul Hilberg, pioneer scholar of Holocaust, dies
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Raul Hilberg, who spent more than half a century researching the Holocaust, has died at 81 of lung cancer, the University of Vermont said on Tuesday.
Continue readingThe French anti-revisionist law
The French anti-revisionist law dates from July 13, 1990. It is known by various names: “Gayssot law,” “Fabius-Gayssot law,” “Faurisson law,” “lex Faurissonia,” or “article 24bis” (of the law of July 29, 1881, on press freedom). It provides for a prison sentence of up to a year as well as a maximum fine of €45,000 for anyone who publicly disputes the reality of one or more “crimes against humanity” as defined and ruled on, essentially, by the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg in 1945-1946. In addition to the prison sentence and fine there can be an order to pay damages to Jewish or other associations as well as the heavy costs of having the decision published in the media: finally, the courts may order the confiscation of any work material, along with books and papers, seized by the police.
Survivor
YOU NEVER SEE THE SCARS. But she talks about them once in a while and you see them in your mind’s eye — smooth white burn marks on her flesh, old as the Holocaust.
Continue readingAnother Holocaust liar
Survivor’s story raises some doubts
- Area Jewish groups question her details in Holocaust account
The great pretenders
In April 1998, the cover of The Jewish Journal featured the person who called himself Binjamin Wilkomirski. Naomi Pfefferman (“Memories of a Holocaust Childhood,” April 24, 1998) compared his writing — his one and only book, called Fragment” — to that of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. During an emotionally filled performance at a Beverly Boulevard synagogue, Wilkomirski was accompanied by a lady who called herself Laura Grabowski. Both claimed to be soul mates who, at long last, were reunited survivors of Dr. Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz.
Continue readingDenial denial
“Senior editors at … publishing houses still welcome me warmly as a friend, invite me to lunch in expensive New York restaurants and then lament that if they were to sign a contract with me on a new book, there would always be somebody in their publishing house who would object.” Thus the English historian David Irving, famous for his histories of Nazi Germany. He made these remarks last week in the opening statement to the lawsuit that he has brought against Penguin Books and Prof. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University.
Continue readingCrimes of the Holocaustologians
In 1977, the Israeli scholar Yehuda Bauer offered a heartfelt warning “against the creation of ‘Holocaustology’ and the careerism of ‘Holocaustologians.”‘ At first glance, Bauer’s warning seems peculiar. After all, what could be more honorable and more important than the study of the systematic murder of 6 million Jews — a study undertaken for the purpose of preventing such an act in the future? In the past 20 years, Holocaust studies has become a glamorous and exciting field for American academics, as money from Steven Spielberg and others earmarked for Holocaust studies is flowing like cheap wine all across the world. The Holocaust, the most unspeakable event of the modern age, has become a career for some folks — the source of their livelihoods.
Continue readingHolocaust book sparks fresh controversy
- From ‘Mein Kampf’ to Auschwitz