Answers to the 66 Questions of Holocaust Deniers

Answers to the 66 Questions
of Holocaust Deniers

The following material comes from Nizkor, an extraordinary site devoted to combatting Holocaust deniers. The original version is filled with hyperlinks to other material on Nizkor, which we either had to recode or remove to avoid bad links from the JVL. We chose to remove them, so we urge those interested in more careful study of this topic to use the link to Nizkor to take advantage of their detailed information on specific individuals and arguments. The original also had extensive links to the deniers' web sites. We chose not to include them here for two reasons: first, not all the links worked and second, we prefer not to encourage visits to those sites. Nizkor's philosophy is to make both sides available to all and let the reader draw their own conclusions. We do not believe there are two sides to the question of whether the Holocaust occurred. Anyone wishing to see the deniers' sites can use the links provided by Nizkor. Finally, before printing this document, be forewarned that it is very long.

The Institute for Historical Review, or IHR, publishes many small pamphlets designed to misinform people about the Holocaust. One of the most-persistent has been a pamphlet called "66 Questions And Answers About the Holocaust," or simply "66 Q&A."

This pamphlet neatly summarizes many of the most common arguments used by Holocaust-deniers. Refuting these 66 claims strikes directly at the core of Holocaust-denial.

What follows is a point-by-point refutation of its half-truths and untruths. The full text of the original pamphlet is included, with the IHR's questions and answers reproduced unaltered.

Ernst Zündel's publishing house, Samisdat, has distributed an earlier version as recently as November 1995, which we will occasionally refer to as the "Samisdat" version for lack of a better name. We are currently only in possession of the first page of this, and it skips quite a few questions, so we don't know how much we're missing. We are also not sure exactly when it was written, but its answer to question 22 refers to a united Germany, which places it in the 1990s. Updates will come as we learn more, of course.

In any case, the various revisions that have been made have rarely made the pamphlet any more truthful. This is not surprising, because the aim of the pamphlet is not to educate but to mislead. Where the revisions are noteworthy, we will comment upon them.

If our treatment seems tedious, consider yourself lucky: years ago, the IHR used to publish one hundred and twenty Q&A about the Holocaust. We have been unable to obtain a copy of that older pamphlet, so for now we resign ourselves to critiquing the abridged version. Remember as you're reading this that there were 54 other Q&As that were not good enough to make their final cut!

Finally, for another good antidote to the "66 Q&A," we suggest two documents put out by the Simon Wiesenthal Center: their "Responses to Revisionist Arguments," and their "36 Q&A" (which are unrelated except for the similarity in format).

The IHR's Questions & Answers

Nizkor’s Responses

1. What proof exists that the Nazis practiced genocide or deliberately killed six million Jews?

The IHR says (original, Samisdat, and revised versions combined):

None. The only evidence is the postwar testimony of individual "survivors." This testimony is contradictory, and no "survivor" claims to have actually witnessed any gassing. There are no contemporaneous documents and no hard evidence whatsoever: no mounds of ashes, no crematoria capable of disposing of millions of corpses, no piles of clothes, no human soap, no lamp shades made of human skin, no records, no credible demographic statistics.

Nizkor replies:

Lie piled upon lie, with not a shred of proof.

This is as good a place as any to present some detailed evidence which is consistently ignored, as a sort of primer on Holocaust denial. It will make this reply much longer than the other sixty-five, but perhaps the reader will understand the necessity for this.

Let's look at their claims one at a time:

Supposedly the only evidence, "the postwar testimony of individual survivors."

First of all, consider the implicit conspiracy theory. Notice how the testimony of every single inmate of every Nazi camp is automatically dismissed as unconvincing. This total dismissal of inmates' testimony, along with the equally-total dismissal of the Nazis' own testimony (!), is the largest unspoken assumption of Holocaust-denial.

This assumption, which is not often spelled out, is that the attempted Jewish genocide never took place, but rather that a secret conspiracy of Jews, starting around 1941, planted and forged myriad documents to prove that it did; then, after the war, they rounded up all the camp survivors and told them what to say.

The conspirators also supposedly managed to torture hundreds of key Nazis into confessing to crimes which they never committed, or into framing their fellow Nazis for those crimes, and to plant hundreds of documents in Nazi files which were never discovered until after the war, and only then, in many cases, by sheer luck. Goebbels' diary, for example, was barely rescued from being sold as 7,000 pages of scrap paper, but buried in the scattered manuscript were several telling entries (as translated in Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, pp. 86, 147-148):

February 14, 1942: The Führer once again expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. 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 procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.

Michael Shermer has pointed out that the Nazis' own estimate of the number of European Jews was eleven million, and sixty percent of eleven million is 6.6 million. This is fairly close to the actual figure. (Actually, forty percent was a serious overestimate of the survival rate of Jews who were captured, but there were many Jews who escaped.)

In any case, most of the diary is quite mundane, and interesting only to historians. Did the supposed Jewish conspiracy forge seven thousand pages to insert just a few lines? How did they manage to know Goebbels' affairs intimately enough to avoid contradictions, e.g. putting him or his associates in the wrong city at the wrong date?

As even the revisionist David Cole has admitted, revisionists have yet to provide a satisfactory explanation of this document.

Regarding postwar testimony from Nazis, were they all tortured into confessing to heinous crimes which they supposedly did not commit? This might be believable if only a few Nazis were captured after the war, or maybe if some had courageously stood up in court and shouted to the world about the supposed attempt to silence them. But hundreds testified regarding the Holocaust, in trials dating from late 1945 until the 1960s.

Many of these Nazis testified as witnesses and were not accused of crimes. What was the basis for their supposed coercion?

Many of these trials were in German courts. Did the Germans torture their own countrymen? Well, Holocaust-deniers sometimes claim that the Jews have secretly infiltrated the German government and control everything about it. They prefer not to talk too much about this theory, however, because it is clearly on the lunatic fringe.

The main point is that not one of these supposed torture victims -- in fifty years, not one -- has come forth to support the claim that testimony was coerced.

On the contrary, confirmation and reconfirmation of their testimony has continued across the years. What coercion could have convinced Judge Konrad Morgen to testify to the crimes he witnessed at the International Nuremberg Trial in 1946, where he was not accused of any crime? And to later testify at the Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt, Germany, in 1963-65? What coercion was applied to SS Doctor Johann Kremer to make him testify in his own defense in 1947, and then, after having been convicted in both Poland and Germany, emerge after his release to testify again as a witness at the Frankfurt trial? What coercion was applied to Böck, Gerhard Hess, Hölblinger, Storch, and Wiebeck, all former SS men, all witnesses at Frankfurt, none accused of any crime there?

Holocaust-deniers point to small discrepancies in testimonies to try to discredit them. The assumption, unstated, is that the reader will accept minor discrepancies as evidence of a vast, over-reaching Jewish conspiracy. This is clearly ludicrous.

In fact, the discrepancies and minor errors in detail argue against, not for, the conspiracy theory. Why would the conspirators have given different information to different Nazis? In fact, if all the testimonies, from the Nazis' to the inmates', sounded too similar, it is certain that the Holocaust-deniers would cite that as evidence of a conspiracy.

What supposed coercion could reach across four decades, to force former SS-Untersturmführer Dr. Hans Münch to give an interview, against the will of his family, on Swedish television? In the 1981 interview, he talked about Auschwitz:

Interviewer: Isn't the ideology of extermination contrary to a doctor's ethical values?

Münch: Yes, absolutely. There is no discussion. But I lived in that environment, and I tried in every possible way to avoid accepting it, but I had to live with it. What else could I have done? And I wasn't confronted with it directly until the order came that I and my superior and another one had to take part in the exterminations since the camp's doctors were overloaded and couldn't cope with it.

Interviewer: I must ask something. Doubters claim that "special treatment" could mean anything. It didn't have to be extermination.

Münch: "Special treatment" in the terminology of the concentration camp means physical extermination. If it was a question of more than a few people, where nothing else than gassing them was worthwhile, they were gassed.

Interviewer: "Special treatment" was gassing?

Münch: Yes, absolutely.

And what supposed coercion could reach across four decades, to force former SS-Unterscharführer Franz Suchomel into giving an interview for the film Shoah? Speaking under (false) promises of anonymity, he told of the crimes committed at the Treblinka death camp (from the book Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 1985, p. 54):

Interviewer: You are a very important eyewitness, and you can explain what Treblinka was.

Suchomel: But don't use my name.

Interviewer: No, I promised. All right, you've arrived at Treblinka.

Suchomel: So Stadie, the sarge, showed us the camps from end to end. Just as we went by, they were opening the gas-chamber doors, and people fell out like potatoes. Naturally, that horrified and appalled us. We went back and sat down on our suitcases and cried like old women.

Each day one hundred Jews were chosen to drag the corpses to the mass graves. In the evening the Ukrainians drove those Jews into the gas chambers or shot them. Every day!

Ask the deniers why they shrug off the testimony of Franz Suchomel. Greg Raven will tell you that "it is not evidence...bring me some evidence, please." Others will tell you that Suchomel and Münch were crazy, or hallucinating, or fantasizing.

But the fantasy is obviously in the minds of those who choose to ignore the mass of evidence and believe instead in a hypothetical conspiracy, supported by nothing but their imaginations.

That total lack of evidence is why the "conspiracy assumption" almost always remains an unspoken assumption. To our knowledge, there has not been one single solitary "revisionist" paper, article, speech, pamphlet, book, audiotape, videotape, or newsletter which provides any details about this supposed Jewish/Zionist conspiracy which did all the dirty work. Not one.

At best, the denial literature makes veiled references to the World Jewish Congress perpetuating a "hoax" (in Butz 1976) -- no details are provided. Yet the entire case of Holocaust-denial rests on this supposed conspiracy.

As for the testimony of the survivors, which the "revisionists" claim is the only evidence, there are indeed numerous testimonies to gassings and other forms of atrocities, from Jewish inmates who survived the camps, and also from other inmates like POWs. Many of the prisoners that testified about the gassing are not Jewish, of course. Look for instance at the testimony of Polish officer Zenon Rozansky about the first homicidal gassing in Auschwitz, in which 850 Russian POWs were gassed to death, in Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 154:

Those who were propped against the door leant with a curious stiffness and then fell right at our feet, striking their faces hard against the concrete floor. Corpses! Corpses standing bolt upright and filling the entire corridor of the bunker, till they were packed so tight that it was impossible for more to fall.

Which of the "revisionists" will deny this? Which of them was there? Which of them has the authority to tell Rozansky what he did or did not see?

The statement that "no 'survivor' claims to have actually witnessed any gassing" is clearly false; this was changed to "few survivors" in later versions, which is close to the truth.

But we do not need to rely solely on testimony, from the survivors, Nazis, or otherwise. Many wartime documents, not postwar descriptions, specifically regarding gassings and other atrocities, were seized by the U.S. armed forces. Most are in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; some are in Germany.

Regarding the gassing vans, precursors to the gas chambers, we find, for example, a top secret document from SS Untersturmführer Becker to SS Obersturmbannführer Rauff (from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 1946, Vol. I, pp. 999-1001):

If it has rained for instance for only one half hour, the van cannot be used because it simply skids away. It can only be used in absolutely dry weather. It is only a question now whether the van can only be used standing at the place of execution. First the van has to be brought to that place, which is possible only in good weather. ...

The application of gas usually is not undertaken correctly. In order to come to an end as fast as possible, the driver presses the accelerator to the fullest extent. By doing that the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation and not death by dozing off as was planned. My directions now have proved that by correct adjustment of the levers death comes faster and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully.

And Just wrote of the gas vans to Rauff, on June 5, 1942, in a letter marked both "top secret" and "only copy". This is a horrific masterpiece of Nazi double-talk, referring to killing as "processing" and the victims as "subjects" and "the load." (See Kogon, Nazi Mass Murder, 1993, pp. 228-235.)

Since December 1941, for example, 97,000 were processed using three vans, without any faults occurring in the vehicles. ...

The normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meter. The capacity of the larger special Saurer vans is not so great. The problem is not one of overloading but of off-road maneuverability on all terrains, which is severely diminished in this van. It would appear that a reduction in the cargo area is necessary. This can be achieved by shortening the compartment by about one meter. The problem cannot be solved by merely reducing the number of subject treated, as has been done so far. For in this case a longer running time is required, as the empty space also needs to be filled with CO [the poison exhaust gas]. ...

Greater protection is needed for the lighting system. The grille should cover the lamps high enough up to make it impossible to break the bulbs. It seems that these lamps are hardly ever turned on, so the users have suggested that they could be done away with. Experience shows, however, that when the back door is closed and it gets dark inside, the load pushes hard against the door. The reason for this is that when it becomes dark inside, the load rushes toward what little light remains. This hampers the locking of the door. It has also been noticed that the noise provoked by the locking of the door is linked to the fear aroused by the darkness.

Slip-ups occurred in written correspondence regarding the gas chambers themselves, some of which, fortunately, escaped destruction and were found after the war. A memo written to SS man Karl Bischoff on November 27, 1942 describes the gas chamber in Krema II not with the usual mundane name of "Leichenkeller," but rather as the "Sonderkeller" "special cellar."

And two months later, on January 29, 1943, Bischoff wrote a memo to Kammler, referring to that same chamber as the "Vergasungskeller." (See Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, pp. 223, 227.) "Vergasungskeller" means exactly what it sounds like: "gassing cellar," an underground gas chamber.

Holocaust-deniers turn to Arthur Butz, who provides a specious explanation for the Vergasungskeller: "Vergasung," he says, cannot refer to killing people with gas, but only to the process of converting a solid or liquid into gas. Therefore, he says the "Vergasungskeller," must have been a special room where the fuel for the Auschwitz ovens was converted into gas -- a "gasification cellar."

There are three problems with this explanation. First, "Vergasung" certainly can refer to killing people with gas; Butz does not speak German and he should not try to lecture about the language. Second, there is no room that could possibly serve this function which Butz describes -- years after writing his book, he admitted this, and helplessly suggested that there might be another building somewhere in the camp that might house a gasification cellar. Third, the type of oven used at Auschwitz did not require any gasification process! The ovens burned solid fuel. (See Gutman, op. cit., pp. 184-193.)

So what does the term "gassing cellar" refer to? Holocaust-deniers have yet to offer any believable explanation.

An inventory, again captured after the war, revealed fourteen showerheads and one gas-tight door listed for the gas chamber in Krema III. Holocaust-deniers claim that room was a morgue; they do not offer to explain what use a morgue has for showerheads and a gas-tight door. (See a photograph of the document, or Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation, 1989, pp. 231, 438.)

A memo from the Auschwitz construction office, dated March 31, 1943, says Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, 1971, pp. 207-208):

We take this occasion to refer to another order of March 6, 1943, for the delivery of a gas door 100/192 for Leichenkeller 1 of Krema III, Bw 30a, which is to be built in the manner and according to the same measure as the cellar door of the opposite Krema II, with peep hole of double 8 millimeter glass encased in rubber. This order is to be viewed as especially urgent....

Why would morgues have urgently needed peepholes made out of a double layer of third-of-an-inch-thick glass?

The question of whether it can be proved that the cyanide gas was used in the Auschwitz gas chambers has intruiged the deniers. Their much-heralded Leuchter Report, for example, expends a great deal of effort on the question of whether traces of cyanide residue remain there today. But we do not need to look for chemical traces to confirm cyanide use (Gutman, op. cit., p. 229):

Letters and telegrams exchanged on February 11 and 12 [1943] between the Zentralbauleitung and Topf mention a wooden blower for Leichenkeller 1. This reference confirms the use of the morgue as a gas chamber: Bischoff and Prüfer thought that the extraction of air mixed with concentrated prussic acid [cyanide] (20 g per cu m) required a noncorroding ventilator.

Bischoff and Prüfer turned out to be wrong, and a metal fan ended up working acceptably well. But the fact that they thought it necessary demonstrates that cyanide was to be routinely used in the rooms which deniers call morgues. (Cyanide is useless for disinfecting morgues, as it does not kill bacteria.)

Other captured documents, even if they don't refer directly to some part of the extermination process, refer to it by implication. A captured memo to SS-Brigadeführer Kammler reveals that the expected incineration capacity of the Auschwitz ovens was a combined total of 4,756 corpses per day (see a photograph of the document or Kogon, op. cit., p. 157).

Deniers often claim that this total could not be achieved in practice (see question 45). That's not the point. These crematoria were carefully designed, in 1942, to have sufficient capacity to dispose of 140,000 corpses per month -- in a camp that housed only 125,000. We can conclude that massive deaths were predicted, indeed planned-for, as early as mid-1942. A camp designed to incinerate its full capacity of inmates every four weeks is not merely a detention center.

Finally, apart from the abundant testimonies, confessions, and physical evidence of the extermination process, there is certainly no want of evidence of the Nazis' intentions and plans.

Here are just a few examples. Hans Frank’s diary (from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 1946, Vol. I, pp. 992, 994):

But what should be done with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled down in the 'Ostland' [eastern territories], in [resettlement] villages? This is what we were told in Berlin: Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in the 'Ostland' nor in the 'Reichkommissariat.' So liquidate them yourself.

Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain the structure of the Reich as a whole. ...

We cannot shoot or poison these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures, which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation....

That we sentence 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally.

Himmler's speech at Posen on October 4, 1943 was captured on audiotape (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. XXIX, p. 145, trans. by current author):

I refer now to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of those things that is easily said: "the Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it."

The extermination effort was even mentioned in at least one official Nazi court verdict. In May 1943, a Munich court wrote in its decision against SS-Untersturmführer Max Taubner that:

The accused shall not be punished because of the actions against the Jews as such. The Jews have to be exterminated and none of the Jews that were killed is any great loss. Although the accused should have recognized that the extermination of the Jews was the duty of Kommandos which were set up especially for this purpose, he should be excused for considering himself to have the authority to take part in the extermination of Jewry himself.

And Hitler spoke quite clearly in public on no fewer than three occasions. On January 30, 1939, seven months before Germany invaded Poland, he spoke publicly to the Reichstag (transcribed from Skeptic magazine, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 50):

Today I want to be a prophet once more: if international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevation of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

By the way, this last phrase is, in German, "die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa," which German-speakers will realize is quite unambiguous.

In September, 1942:

...if Jewry should plot another world war in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples in Europe, it would not be the Aryan people which would be exterminated but Jewry...

On November 8, 1942:

You will recall the session of the Reichstag during which I declared: if Jewry should imagine that it could bring about an international world war to exterminate the European races, the result will not be the extermination of the European races, but the extermination of Jewry in Europe. People always laughed about me as a prophet. Of those who laughed then, countless numbers no longer laugh today, and those who still laugh now will perhaps no longer laugh a short time from now.

There are many other examples of documents and testimonies that could be presented.

Keep in mind that the IHR#&146;s answer to "what proof exists?" is "none." It has certainly been demonstrated already that this pat answer is totally dishonest. And this is the main point we wish to communicate: that Holocaust-denial is dishonest.

We continue by analyzing the remaining, more-specific, claims about what evidence supposedly does not exist.

"No mounds of ashes" is an internal contradiction. In an article in the journal published by the same IHR that publishes these Q&A, the Journal's editor reported that a Polish commission in 1946 found human ash at the Treblinka death camp to a depth of over twenty feet. This article is available on Greg Raven's web site.

(Apparently some survivors claimed that the corpses were always thoroughly cremated. Because uncremated human remains were mixed with the ash, the editor suggested that the testimonies were false. Amazingly, he had no comment on how a twenty-foot layer of human ashes came to be there in the first place. Perhaps he felt that to be unworthy of mention.)

There are also piles of ashes at Maidanek. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, ashes from cremated corpses were dumped into the rivers and swamps surrounding the camp, and used as fertilizer for nearby farmers' fields.

"No crematoria" capable of disposing of millions of corpses? Absolutely false, the crematoria were more than capable of the job, according to both the Nazis' own internal memos and the testimony of survivors. Holocaust-deniers deliberately confuse civilian, funeral-home crematoria with the huge industrial ovens of the death camps. This is discussed in much detail in the replies to questions 42 and 45.

"No piles of clothes"? Apparently, the IHR considers piles of clothes to be "hard evidence"! This is strange, because they do not deny the other sorts of piles found at Nazi camps: piles of eyeglasses, piles of shoes (at Auschwitz, Belzec, and Maidanek), piles of gold teeth, piles of burned corpses, piles of unburned corpses, piles of artificial limbs (see Swiebocka, Auschwitz: A History in Photographs, 1993, p. 210), piles of human hair (ibid, p. 211), piles of ransacked luggage (ibid, p. 213), piles of shaving-brushes (ibid, p. 215), piles of combs (ibid), piles of pots and pans (ibid), and yes, even the piles of clothes (ibid, p. 214) that the IHR claims do not exist.

Perhaps the authors of the 66 Q&A realized that it was dangerous for them to admit that these piles were hard evidence, because then they would also be forced to admit a number of other things as "hard evidence." Perhaps this is why they removed this phrase from the revised 66 Q&A.

If items were not generally found in mass quantities, it is only because the Nazis distributed them to the German population. A memo on this was captured, revealing that they even redistributed women's underwear.

"No human soap"? This is true, but misleading. Though there is some evidence that soap was made from corpses on a very limited experimental scale, the rumored "mass production" was never done, and no soap made from human corpses is known to exist. However, there is sworn testimony, never refuted, from British POWs and a German army official, stating that soap experiments were performed, and the recipe for the soap was captured by the Allies. To state flatly that the Nazis did not make soap from human beings is incorrect.

"No lamp shades made of human skin?" False -- lampshades and other human-skin "ornaments" were introduced as evidence in both trials of Ilse Koch, and were shown to a U.S. Senate investigation committee in the late 40s. We know they were made of human skin because they bore tattoos, and because a microscopic forensic analysis of the items was performed. (A detailed page on this is being prepared.)

"No records"? This is nonsense (which may explain why this claim was removed from the "revised" versions of the 66 Q&A). True, extermination by gassing was always referred to with code-words, and those victims who arrived at death camps only to be immediately gassed were not recorded in any books. But there are slip-ups in the code-word usage that reveal the true meanings, as already described. There are inventories and requisitions for the Krema which reveal items anomalous with ordinary use but perfect for mass homicidal gassing. There are deportation train records which, pieced together, speak clearly. And so on. Several examples have been given above.

"No credible demographic statistics"? This is the second internal contradiction -- see question 2 and question 15. The Anglo-American committee who studied the issue estimated the number of Jewish victims at 5.7 million. This was based on population statistics. Here is the exact breakdown, country by country:
   Germany -                       195,000
   Austria -                        53,000
   Czechoslovakia -                255,000
   Denmark -                         1,500
   France -                        140,000
   Belgium -                        57,000
   Luxemburg -                       3,000
   Norway -                          1,000
   Holland -                       120,000
   Italy -                          20,000
   Jugoslavia -                     64,000
   Greece -                         64,000
   Bulgaria -                        5,000
   Rumania -                       530,000
   Hungary -                       200,000
   Poland -                      3,271,000
   USSR -                        1,050,000
   
   Less dispersed refugees        (308,000)
   
   Total number of Jews killed   5,721,500
(This estimate was arrived at using population statistics, and not by adding the number of casualties at each camp. These are also available -- for instance, a separate file with the ruling of a German court regarding the number of victims in Treblinka is available. The SS kept rather accurate records, and many of the documents survived, reinforced by eyewitness accounts).

Some estimates are lower, some are higher, but this is the magnitude in question. In an article in CMU's student newspaper, the head of CMU's History Department, Peter Stearns, is quoted as saying that newly discovered documents -- especially in the former USSR -- indicate that the number of victims is higher than six million. Other historians claim not much over five million. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust uses 5,596,000 as a minimum and 5,860,000 as a maximum (Gutman, 1990, p. 1799).

In summary:

"Revisionists" often claim, correctly, that the burden of proof is on historians. The proof, of course, has been a matter of public record since late 1945, and is available in libraries around the world. The burden has been met, many, many times over. You've just seen a brief presentation of some of the highlights of that immense body of proof; much more is readily available.

To even argue that the Holocaust never happened is ludicrous. To claim straight-faced that none of this proof even exists is beyond ludicrous, and it is a clear example of "revisionist" dishonesty.

2. What evidence exists that six million Jews were not killed by the Nazis?

The IHR says:

Extensive forensic, demographic, analytical and comparative evidence demonstrates the impossibility of such a figure. The widely repeated "six million" figure is an irresponsible exaggeration.

Nizkor replies:

First of all: in the answer to this question, they claim to have "extensive evidence" to prove that something did not happen. Yet Holocaust-deniers often claim that they do not have to prove anything because, as they say, "it is impossible to prove a negative." Greg Raven has said this at least twice: once implicitly, and once explicitly:

We also note in passing that they ask me to prove a negative, which is impossible.

It is possible to prove a negative, of course, but since none of the "evidence" is given here, it is impossible to respond definitively to this absurd claim. "Forensic evidence " is probably a reference to the fraudulent "Leuchter Report," of which a detailed analysis has been written.

What is this about "demographic evidence"? Didn't they just say in question 1 that "no credible demographic statistics exist"? Another internal contradiction.

"Analytical and comparative evidence" could mean anything. We invite any "revisionist" to explain what this means and to present some of this evidence, and we promise to address it on this page if they do so.

3. Did Simon Wiesenthal once state in writing that "there were no extermination camps on German soil"?

The IHR says (original):

Yes. In Books and Bookmen, April, 1975 issue. He claims the "gassings" of the Jews took place in Poland.

The IHR says (revised):

Yes. The famous "Nazi hunter" wrote this in Stars and Stripes, Jan. 24, 1993. He also claimed that "gassings" of Jews took place only in Poland.

Nizkor replies:

Wiesenthal's 1975 letter to the editor said:

Because there were no extermination camps on German soil the Neo-Nazis are using this as proof that these crimes did not happen [...]

How ironic that he was not only correct, but that those very words were later misused in the manner he described.

Both answers are correct in themselves: Wiesenthal did indeed indicate in 1975 and in 1993 that there were no extermination camps in what is now Germany. Innocuous as the change seems, it does lead the reader to assume that the most recent statement is some kind of admission that the Holocaust was much more limited than has been maintained and that the truth is finally coming out. Statements like Wiesenthal's are in fact the basis upon which deniers claim that their pressure is forcing the truth out of reluctant historians.

The truth is that historians, and others like Wiesenthal, have attempted repeatedly over the years to dispel several myths about the Holocaust: the mass production of soap made from human fat is a good example.

Another misconception which they have tried to dispel is that the bulk of the extermination of the Jews took place within Germany itself -- or, more properly, within the "Altreich," the prewar boundaries of Germany. While there were indeed gas chambers and homicidal gassings in the Altreich, they were on a much smaller scale than the gassings in the camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, such as Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Kulmhof/Chelmno, Maidanek/Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. About three million people, almost exclusively Jews, were gassed to death in those camps. Camp gassings in the Altreich probably claimed the lives of only a few thousand people, almost certainly under ten thousand. Aside from "small-scale" gassing in places like Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Neuengamme, and Ravensbrück, it was largely confined tothe "euthanasia" program, which did claim the lives of over a hundred thousand people, mostly non-Jews.

The Nazis had at least two good reasons for building the death camps outside of Germany. First, they were easier to conceal from the German people. Given the chaotic wartime conditions in the territory surrounding the Altreich, they were easier to conceal in general.

Second, the vast majority of murdered Jews came from conquered territory to the east and south -- why go to extra trouble to ship them back into Germany? (See the statistics at the end of question 1.)

What is not given any recognition by the deniers is that the latest "admission" by Wiesenthal is exactly what respectable historians have been saying for the past 45 years, starting perhaps with the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History in 1950. This selectivity amounts to nothing less than lying by omission and innuendo.

4. If Dachau was in Germany and even Simon Wiesenthal says that it was not an extermination camp, why do thousands of veterans in America say that it was an extermination camp?

The IHR says:

Because after the Allies captured Dachau, thousands of G.I.s were led through Dachau and shown buildings alleged to be gas chambers, and because the mass-media widely, but falsely, stated that Dachau was a "gassing" camp.

Nizkor replies:

In the sense that tens of thousands of people were starved to death and sporadically killed in it, yes, Dachau was a death camp. The term "extermination camp" should probably not be applied to Dachau, because that is generally taken to mean one of the large camps in occupied Poland where mass gassings were performed (see question 3).

What is not in question is that the gas chamber did exist. The Allies captured the memo sent from Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Dachau to Himmler, which read (see Kogon et al., Nazi Mass Murder, 1993, p. 202):

As you know, the same facilities [gas chambers] have been built at the Dachau concentration camp as at Linz Hartheim]. Whereas the "invalid transports" end up in certain chambers anyway, I ask whether we cannot test some of our various combat gases on specific persons who are involved in the action. Up till now there have only been animal tests or accounts of accidental deaths in the manufacture of these gases. Because of this paragraph, I have sent this letter marked "Secret."

An American reporter made a movie showing the gas chamber very soon after the camp's capture, showing how it was labelled "Brausebad" ("showers") despite having no shower facilities.

The question of whether the gas chamber can be proved to have been used has not been definitively answered. Some historians say that there is no question: it was never used. Some say that the question is still open. It comes down to two testimonies: that of a British officer named Payne-Best who says he heard Dr. Rascher speak of gassings, and that of Dr. Franz Blaha, who testified under oath to experimental gassings. For more information, see Kogon et al., op. cit., pp. 202-204, and Blaha's testimony in Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1947, vol. V, pp. 167-199.

Holocaust-deniers, of course, only present the point of view which says that it was never used. They often quote from a 1960 letter written by the director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History), in Munich (see Die Zeit, August 19, 1960, p. 16):

No Gassing in Dachau

Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed.

The letter of course confirms that mass gassing did take place in the larger camps. Holocaust-deniers don't like to mention that part. They also don't like to mention that, since 1960, the Institut has performed more research and has come to a new conclusion. They now say:

...a gas chamber was established [in Dachau] in which...a few experimental gassings were undertaken, as more recent research has confirmed.

Finally, the "mass media," for the most part, states the facts: that Dachau was used for gassing on a very small scale. Whether the term "gassing camp" is appropriate would probably depend on context. If the IHR can present a cite in which a newspaper or magazine has printed an inaccuracy, let them do so. It won't be the first time, nor the last, that something was erroneously printed. If Holocaust-deniers think errors in newspapers help prove that the Holocaust did not occur, they are obviously deluded.

5. Auschwitz was in Poland, not Germany. Is there any proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz?

The IHR says:

No. A reward of $50,000 was offered for such proof, the money being held in trust by a bank, but no one came up with any credible evidence. Auschwitz, captured by the Soviets, was extensively modified after the war and a mortuary was reconstructed to look like a large "gas chamber." It is now a big tourist attraction for the Communist Polish government.

The IHR says (revised):

No. Auschwitz, captured by the Soviets, was modified after the war, and a room was reconstructed to look like a large "gas chamber." After America's leading expert on gas chamber construction and design, Fred Leuchter, examined this and other alleged Auschwitz gassing facilities, he stated that it was an "absurdity" to claim that they were, or could have been, used for executions.

Nizkor replies:

Regarding the $50,000 reward offer: it was paid, to the last cent (actually $90,000), to Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor who took the IHR to court. Here is the statement made by the judge:

The Honorable Thomas T. Johnson, on October 9, 1981, took judicial notice as follows:

Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944

and

It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.

The IHR complains that they were not given a chance to dispute this fact, but then the American court system is not meant to be a place for people to try to prove crackpot theories. No "credible evidence" was produced because there was no call for it -- a courtroom is not the place to rehash the work of historians over the last half-century.

Besides, "credible evidence" means only what Holocaust-deniers want it to mean. Michael Shermer, in an open letter, has offered to take the IHR up on a similar offer, but only if they precisely define ahead of time what they will accept as evidence. He has received no reply. (In fact, to date, his letter has not even been printed.)

After this trial, both Mermelstein and the IHR sued each other for libel, but both decided not to go to court. The Holocaust deniers claim this is a "stunning victory" which "nullifies the result of the first trial." Nonsense: the two were unrelated, and the second trial would have had nothing to do with the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

As with most legal proceedings, the details get quite complicated. Great detail, including copies of several official documents, is available in the FTP archives.

Regarding Fred Leuchter’s fraudulent "Report," a separate FAQ is available.

6. If Auschwitz wasn't a "death camp," what was its true purpose?

The IHR says (original):

It was a large-scale manufacturing complex. Synthetic rubber (Buna) was made there, and its inmates were used as a workforce. The Buna process was used in the U.S. during WWII.

The IHR says (revised):

It was an internment center and part of a large-scale manufacturing complex. Synthetic fuel was produced there, and its inmates were used as a workforce.

Nizkor replies:

True to some extent. Auschwitz was a huge complex; it had ordinary POW camps (in which British airmen were also held, and they testified of atrocities in the nearby extermination camp). Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, was the largest camp, and the gas chambers were there. Auschwitz III, or Monowitz, was the industrial manufacturing plant.

Many prisoners were indeed used for forced labor in Auschwitz. But the "unfit" -- meaning the elderly, the children, and most of the women -- were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

In its revised answer, the IHR states that "synthetic fuel" was produced there, not Buna. This is more accurate. By war's end, not a single ounce of rubber had been produced at the Buna camp.

It's a tactical error on their part to admit this, however, because in question number 40, they state that it was impossible to burn corpses because there wasn't any fuel. Yet they admit that there was a fuel-synthesis plant just a few miles away. It did produce fuel, and in fact was an Allied bombing target for that reason. Another internal contradiction.

7. Who set up the first concentration camps, and where and when?

The IHR says:

The first use of concentration camps in the Western world was apparently in America during the Revolutionary War. The British interned thousands of Americans, many of whom died of disease and beatings. Andrew Jackson and his brother -- who died -- were two. Later the British set up concentration camps in South Africa to hold Afrikaner women and children during their conquest of that country (the Boer War). Tens of thousands died in these hell-holes, which were far worse than any German concentration camp of WWII.

Nizkor replies:

Irrelevant to the issue of the Holocaust, except for the last sentence, which is an absurdity. Even Holocaust-deniers have to admit that hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in Nazi camps -- see their answer to question 36. Another internal contradiction.

The IHR wishes to whitewash the Nazis' crimes by comparing them to other evils. We will not take part in this moral relativism, but will merely present the historical facts about the Nazis and let the reader make up his or her own mind.

8. How did German concentration camps differ from American relocation camps which interned Japanese-, German- and Italian-Americans during WWII?

The IHR says (original and revised):

Except for the name, the only significant difference was that the Germans interned persons on the basis of being a real or suspected security threat to the German war effort, whereas the Americans interned persons on the basis of race alone.

Nizkor replies:

Irrelevant to the issue of the Holocaust, and untrue. The phrase "the Germans interned persons on the basis of being a real or suspected security threat" could be true -- if one were to acknowledge that every Jew was a suspected security threat simply by virtue of being Jewish.

For example, a 1942 report from Himmler to Hitler lists three categories under "Bandenverdaechtige" -- suspected members of the opposition. Under "captured," there were 19,000. Under "executed," there were 14,000. And under "executed Jews," a third of a million. A photograph and a transcription of this document is available. By the way, that's a third of a million Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen in just four months in late 1942.

The claim that there were no significant differences is of course a lie. The Americans did not starve millions of people to death, did not force their imates to work under brutal conditions, and did not send them to gas chambers if they were "unfit" to work.

9. Why did the Germans intern Jews in concentration camps?

The IHR says:

Because the Germans considered Jews a direct threat to their national sovereignty and survival, and because Jews were overwhelmingly represented in Communist subversion. However, all suspected security risks -- not only Jews -- were in danger of internment.

The Samisdat version says:

Because the Germans considered Jews a direct threat to their national sovereignity and survival. Jews were overwhelmingly represented in Germany in communist subversion. On a per-capita basis, Jews were over represented in key government and commercial positions and professions. However, all suspected security risks -- not only Jews -- were in danger of internment.

Nizkor replies:

All the Jews were Communists or risks to national security? And the Jews of other countries, such as Poland? And the homosexuals, and the gypsies? This is Nazi propaganda of the worst kind reincarnated. The statement about Jews being "overwhelmingly represented" in "Communist subversion" and in the wrong "professions" is an exact echo of antisemitic Nazi propaganda.

The fact is that the Nazis used such propaganda to justify the slaughter of every Jew they found behind the advancing Eastern front, and in every other country they overran: millions of them, men, women, and children.

Holocaust-deniers, by the way, admit that hundreds of thousands of Jews, including women and children, were shot in the eastern territories. (See next question.) The Nazis claimed it was justified because of the wartime conditions. To find the same justifications turning up again, fifty years later, is, in our opinion, horrifying.

10. What extensive measure did world Jewry undertake against Germany as early as 1933?

The IHR says:

An international boycott of German goods.

The Samisdat version says:

On March 24, 1933, International Jewry declared war against Germany and ordered a world-wide boycott of German goods simply because the German government had removed Jews from influential positions and transferred power back to the German people. The boycott order and the Jewish "war" against Germany were reported in world media and broadcast everywhere. Phony stories of German "death camps" circulated before WWII. The Germans, as a result, had every right to lock up Jews, as prisoners of war, wherever and whenever they were found between 1933-45!

Nizkor replies:

This boycott happens to be the exact same thing referred to in the next question, except there it's referred to as "declaring war on Germany."

Why did the IHR describe this single action twice with different words? Something fishy is going on here.

The boycott of German goods was undertaken in response to various Nazi atrocities, including a planned Nazi boycott of Jewish goods and services.

But the IHR just conveniently "forgot" to mention this.

Note the blatant antisemitism in the Samisdat Ernst Zündel) version. Never mind the gas chambers and the extermination effort, never mind that six million died. Just ask yourself if the Nazis had "every right" to send Jewish infants to camps with little food, no sanitation, and rampant typhus epidemics, where they died like flies? Were those Jewish babies "prisoners of war"?

Even "revisionists" must admit that this slaughter occurred. The Holocaust-denier David Irving describes a 1944 Himmler speech (Skeptic magazine, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 50):

"If people ask me," said Himmler, "why did you have to kill the children too, then I can only say I am not such a coward that I leave for my children something I can do myself." ... I agree, Himmler said that. He actually said "We're wiping out the Jews. We're murdering them. We're killing them." ... He is talking about solving the Jewish problem, about having to kill off women and children too.

Did a newspaper story in 1933 give the Nazis "every right" to do this?

(Irving claims in that interview that because Himmler had not mentioned specifically how many Jews were being killed, that therefore it is not evidence for the Holocaust.)

11. Did the Jews of the world "declare war on Germany"?

The IHR says (original):

Yes. The world media carried the headlines, "Judea Declares War on Germany."

The IHR says (revised):

Yes. Newspapers around the world reported this. A front-page headline in the London Daily Express (March 24, 1933), for example, announced "Judea Declares War on Germany."

Nizkor replies:

"World media"? "Newspapers around the world"? One British newspaper is cited, talking about a planned economic boycott.

A transcript of the article is available. The next paragraphs after the headline were:

A strange and unfortunate sequel has emerged from the stories of German Jew-baiting.

The whole of Israel throughout the world is uniting to declare an economic and financial war on Germany.

Hirtherto the cry has gone up: "Germany is persecuting the Jews." If the present plans are carried out, the Hitlerite cry will be: "The Jews are persecuting Germany."

The fact that this "Hitlerite cry" has been echoed four decades later by Holocaust-deniers should surprise no one. (See question 62 for information about various deniers' views on Hitler.)

In sum, this question and answer is a cheap trick to make it seem as if "the Jews of the world" started the "war" against Germany, instead of the other way around. The word "war" means many things. In this case it meant planning to apply economic pressure.

But the IHR and Zündel want you to think it was a real declaration of war. How many divisions of troops did "Judea" have? How many tanks? How many planes? How many artillery shells?

The fact is that Germany started the real war, World War II, and started it by overrunning Poland with planes, bombs, tanks, and millions of infantrymen. To compare this to a planned economic boycott is ludicrous, but typical of "revisionist" trickery.

Besides, this is an internal contradiction. Their answer to question 54 states that "the Germans maintained cordial relations with the Zionist leadership." War is not a cordial relation. They should get their story straight.

12. Was this before or after the rumors of the "death camps" began?

The IHR says:

Nearly six years BEFORE. Judea declared war on Germany in 1933.

Nizkor replies:

Economic "war," as noted in the reply to question 11.

Here's an internal contradiction: in the answer to question 10, the Samisdat version claims that the "death camp phony stories" were "circulating" in 1933.

And here's another internal contradiction: in the answer to question 54, the IHR states that "the Germans maintained cordial relations with the Zionist leadership." War is not a cordial relation.

Here are some statements and actions of Nazi leaders, years before the shooting war broke out in 1939:

1919: Hitler writes in a letter:

... Everything that makes the people strive for greater things, be it religion, socialism, or democracy, merely serves the Jew as a means to the satisfaction of his greed and thirst for power....

Rational antisemitism, by contrast [to emotional antisemitism] must lead to a systematic and legal struggle against, and eradication of, what privileges the Jews enjoy over other foreigners living among us. Its final objective, however, must be the total removal of all Jews from our midst.

1924: Hitler writes Mein Kampf while in prison, regretting that Germany did not gas influential Jews during World War I.

1932: Hermann Goering speaking on behalf of the Nazi Party (not yet in power) tells an Italian reporter in an interview that the Nazis need to defend themselves against the Jews by forbidding intermarriage, expelling Jews in Germany of Eastern European descent, dismissing native German Jews from all jobs, honorary position or capacity that the Nazis deem they might exert their "destructive, antinational or international influence."

In the same white paper that the Nazis reprinted this interview they said that they would set the synagogues aflame, close the murderous band of Jews up in Ghettos and prisons, and hang them from trees (July 13, 1932, Stellung der NSDAP [NSDAP = Nazi Party.])

1932, summer: Nazi faction in the Prussian (Weimar) Parliament demands dismissal of actors and artists not of German descent, a ban on the Jewish ritual method of slaughtering animals for food, and the expropriation of property belonging to East European Jews residing in Germany.

1932, July 31: Goebbels writes an article in the newspaper Der Angriff calling for a pogrom against the Jews.

1933, January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany.

1933, March: Nazi opponents arrested and imprisoned in the first concentration camps.

1933, March 13: Hitler establishes the Ministry of Information and Propaganda under Goebbels.

1933, March 23: Hitler signs into law "The Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich", giving Hitler the authority to abolish all regional parliaments within Germany.

1933, March 31: Hans Kerrl, Commissar of the Prussian Ministry of Justice and Hans Frank, Commissar of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, announce that all Jewish judges and prosecutors were to take an immediate leave and that Jewish lawyers and notaries would no longer be permitted to work [in their provinces; same dictum spreads to other provinces shortly thereafter].

The "66 Q&A," and most denier propaganda, always seek to make issues cut-and-dried. They present one curious fact out of context and hope to convince the reader that he needs to know no more. But after some of the context is restored, the curious fact often reveals itself to be no more curious than anything else happening at the time.

These are just the public, known anti-Jewish actions and writings before the Jewish boycott in 1933. The actions and writings became more pronounced and violent as time went on. Hitler became more and more explicit, until he stated publicly on January 30, 1939:

Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

He repeated this sentiment at least twice more, publicly, during the war, and he was not alone in doing so.

13. What nation is credited with being the first to practice mass civilian bombing?

The IHR says:

Great Britain -- on 11 May 1940.

Nizkor replies:

The town of Guernica in Spain was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

But what does this have to do with the Holocaust?

It is true that the Allies had massively bombarded civilian population -- as had the Germans. Does the fact that atrocities were committed against the Germans mean they did not commit any themselves? Some weird logic.

The last few questions may only have hinted at it, but the IHR does openly suggest elsewhere that the imprisonment of European Jews was justified. See their Web page, The Encampment of the Jews: Might It Have Been Justified?

14. How many gas chambers to kill people were there at Auschwitz?

The IHR says:

None.

Nizkor replies:

Wrong, as usual; no evidence, as usual.

There were five "Kremas," each containing, among other things, an extermination gas chamber and furnaces to cremate the victims. The first was converted from its original use. The remaining four were designed as gas chambers from the start.

(For completeness' sake: a talented and well-respected amateur researcher by the name of Pressac believes that the two largest Krema were originally designed to be morgues and were switched over to gas chambers very early in their construction. He is in a minority of one in this belief.)

Two other extermination installations were called "Bunker I" or the "little red house" and "Bunker II" or "the little white house."

And again for completeness' sake: the first gassing was performed in the basement of Block 11, and there was also a sixth Krema which never got beyond the very early planning stages.

Recommended reading: The Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Gutman et al., pp. 157-245.

15. How many Jews were in areas that came to be controlled by the Germans before the war?

The IHR says (original):

Fewer than four million.

The IHR says (revised):

Fewer than six million.

Nizkor replies:

Didn't they just say in question 1 that there were "no credible demographic statistics"?

About three million in Poland, a million in Hungary, more than a million in the area of Russia occupied by the Nazis, and many, many more all over Europe. According to the Nazis' own figures given in the Wannsee Protocol, there were eleven million Jews in occupied Europe in 1942. See the reply to question 1.

Note also that if real historians had changed a Holocaust-related estimate from six million to four million or vice versa, the "revisionists" would be repeating it and citing it as proof that historians are changing their story and don't have any real figures to back up what they say. But when the revisionists change their own figures by two million, they don't raise much of a fuss, it seems.

16. If the Jews of Europe were not exterminated by the Nazis, what happened to them?

The IHR says:

After the war Jews of Europe were still in Europe, except for perhaps 300,000 of them who had died of all causes during the war, and those who had emigrated to Israel, the United States, Argentina, Canada, etc. Most Jews who left Europe did so after, not during, the war. They are all accounted for.

Nizkor replies:

This is ridiculous. It would imply that about 5 million missing Jews have emigrated to these countries after WW2. This is not supported by reality, not by a long shot. Most Jews in these countries came before WW2. In Palestine, for instance, there were 370,000 Jews in 1936, and 590,000 in 1947. There were 5.54 million Jews in America at 1939, and about 6 million today. There are about 6 million missing European Jews, and they are not accounted for -- except by the German camps.

Interestingly, the famous "revisionist" David Irving has recently made a surprising admission in a radio interview. Totally out of the blue, he stated that he now believes that as many as four million Jews died in concentration camps during the war.

17. How many Jews fled to deep within the Soviet Union?

The IHR says:

Over two million. The Germans did not have access to this Jewish population.

Nizkor replies:

What counts is how many Jews remained. See question 18.

18. How many Jews emigrated prior to the war, thus being outside of German reach?

The IHR says:

Over a million (not including those absorbed by the USSR).

Nizkor replies:

Yes, but more then six million remained. There were about eleven million Jews in Europe in 1937, by the Nazis' own estimates given in the Wannsee Protocol.

19. If Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, why did the commandant, Rudolf Hoss, confess that it was?

The IHR says (original):

He was tortured by Jewish interrogators in British uniform, as one of them has subsequently admitted.

The IHR says (revised):

He was tortured by British military police, as one of his interrogators later admitted.

The Samisdat version says:

Time-honored methods were used to get him to tell his captors what they wanted to hear.

Nizkor replies:

Wait a minute! The story gets more and more vague with each revision.

What exactly did this torturer admit? The IHR's first claim was that the interrogaters were Jewish operatives wearing (phony) British uniforms. If one of these interrogators supposedly admitted this, why did the IHR change things around and make these phony Jewish operatives into real British military police?

The real answer is that this claim of "Jewish interrogators in British uniform" appears nowhere else in Holocaust-denier literature. This claim appears only in the "Q&A." There is no evidence whatsoever to support it.

In other words, someone just made it up. Later, someone else decided they'd better quietly drop the whole thing. How many of the other 65 Q&A are similar? We can't know, because they don't provide any evidence to back any of them up.

Regarding the Höss confession:

We must consider all information in context. There are numerous other testimonies which confirm the essential facts of Höss' confession. There are captured documents which speak very clearly of gassing and mass shooting. The list goes on and on; for just a few examples, see the answer to question 1.

Deniers depend very heavily upon Hoess supposedly being coerced and fed a story. But they only have two pieces of evidence:

A lurid book by one Rupert Butler called Legions of Death. Butler tells of seeing Hoess beaten when he was first found. He makes no mention of the interrogators being Jewish agents in British uniform, of course.

And most importantly, Butler's version of what happened contradicts the deniers' hypothesis that Hoess was fed a story. Butler's book nowhere mentions Hoess being given a particular story to tell, it simply says Hoess was beaten.

A piece of hearsay that is supposedly contained in a secret document which the "revisionist" Robert Faurisson is not at liberty to reveal. (And even if it were revealed, it would be the first time the deniers ever accepted hearsay as being valid...)

(See footnote 2 of Mark Weber’s essay, titled "Let's Hear Both Sides" on Greg Raven's web site and " Different Views on the Holocaust" on Ernst Zündel's web site.)

On this pair of flimsy excuses, the deniers dismiss and ignore Hoess' confession, his testimony, his memoirs, and everything else he said and wrote about the gassings and the extermination program. Excerpts from his testimony and memoirs are available.

20. Is there any evidence that it was American, British, French, and Soviet policy to torture German prisoners in order to exact confessions before the trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere?

The IHR says:

Yes. Torture was extensively used to produce fraudulent "evidence" for the infamous Nuremberg trials, and in other postwar "war crimes" trials.

Nizkor replies:

No doubt there were some cases of mistreatment. Some Allied soldiers were so shocked with what they saw in the camps that they reacted with violence, but this is not a serious factor in the overall picture. This is a long way from a policy of torture inflicted to extract confessions.

As was asked in the reply to question 1: what torture or coercion could possibly reach across decades to convince a Nazi to continue testifying about the horrors of the Holocaust in the 60s, 70s, and 80s? What torture or coercion was being applied to Nazis while they awaited trial in German courts?

Try this experiment:

Email Greg Raven, the head of the IHR, at ihrgreg@kaiwan.com. Ask him:

whether he thinks that individual acts of Allies brutalizing Nazis would count as evidence toward a policy of torture.

what evidence he has to prove that "it was American, British, French, and Soviet policy to torture German prisoners in order to exact confessions."

whether he thinks that individual acts of Nazis murdering Jews would count as evidence toward a policy of extermination.

whether he considers Himmler's speech of October 4th, 1943 to indicate a Nazi policy to exterminate Jews:

"The Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it."

Send a Cc of your email to webmaster@nizkor.org, and ask Mr. Raven to do the same.

21. How does the "Holocaust" story benefit the Jews today?

The IHR says:

It removes them from any criticism as a group. It provides a "common bond" with which their leaders can control them. It is instrumental in money-raising campaigns and to justify aid to Israel, totaling about $10 billion per year.

The Samisdat version also adds:

The "big-H" story is designed to shame the Gentile: "Poor Jews! How they do suffer!"

Nizkor replies:

This argument borders on insanity. The US was one of the leading forces in exposing the Holocaust. Did the US invent the Holocaust, so it could later give Israel money?

How about the former Soviet Union? Holocaust-deniers claim that most of the supposedly-forged Holocaust evidence was forged there. One of their more popular books is Porter's The Holocaust: Made in Russia. Yet the Soviet Union was traditionally the enemy of Israel, supporting and arming its enemies.

And who says the memory of the Holocaust is the reason the US gives money to Israel? There were -- and still are -- important strategic reasons for the US to support Israel and to lend its even greater support to Egypt.

Finally, where does the $10 billion per year figure come from? This is a vast exaggeration, as may be seen in the following tables:
                 Aid to Israel            Aid to Egypt
Year               in billions             in billions

1988                    $1.831                  $3.480
1989                     1.902                   2.085
1990                     4.377                   4.977
1991                     2.028                   2.478
1992                     4.746                   2.539
1993                     2.886                   2.734

Total (six years)      $17.770                 $18.293
Source: Readers Digest Almanac and Yearbook. (Egypt was the largest recipient during that period, with Israel second).
         Total funds given to Israel,
           1945 to 1984, in billions

Grants                       $13.751
Loans                        $11.756
Loans still owed              $9.360
The totally-baseless $10 billion figure has been quietly removed from the revised "66 Q&A." The insulting comment about how the Jews are controlled by their leaders was also struck out. The even-more insulting sarcastic comment about how the Jews "do suffer" is apparently thanks to Ernst Zündel.

22. How does it benefit the state of Israel?

The IHR says:

It justifies the billions of dollars in "reparations" the State of Israel has received from West Germany (East Germany has refused to pay). It is used by the Zionist/Israeli lobby to control American foreign policy toward Israel and to force American taxpayers to put up all the money Israel wants. And the annual ante is growing each year.

The Samisdat version says:

It justifies the more than $65 billion dollars in "reparation" the State of Israel has received from Germany. It is used by the Zionist-Israeli lobby to control American foreign policy toward Israel and to force American taxpayers to put up all the money Israel wants. The annual ante is growing each year.

Nizkor replies:

No reparations are paid for persons killed by the Nazis. Reparations are paid only to survivors for lost property and suffering. Obviously, if reparations were the primary motivation, it would be in the interest of survivors to minimize, not to maximize, the death toll.

Without wanting to get into an argument about modern politics, we will simply point out that there are obvious reasons why it is in the United States' national interest to support Israel. If the IHR rejects this, and thinks that only a tragedy like the Holocaust can explain the amount of aid Israel is receiving, perhaps they would like to explain why Egypt gets more (see question 21).

23. How does it benefit many Christian clergymen?

The IHR says:

It correlates with the Old Testament idea of Jews being the persecuted "Chosen People." It also keeps the Israeli-controlled "Holy Land" accessible to the clergy.

Nizkor replies:

Perhaps some clergyman can comment on this.

24. How does it benefit the Communists?

The IHR says:

It hides the extent of their own war mongering and atrocities before, during and after the war.

Nizkor replies:

Historians, and indeed the general public, are well aware of Communist atrocities. Those atrocities, terrible as they are, are irrelevant to the facts of the Holocaust.

25. How does it benefit Britain?

The IHR says:

In the same way it benefits the Soviet Union.

Nizkor replies:

Irrelevant moral relativism.

26. Is there any evidence that Hitler ordered a mass extermination of Jews?

The IHR says:

No.

Nizkor replies:

Of course there is. Himmler, Eichmann, Höss, and others have said that the orders for the genocide came directly from Hitler.

Consider that Hitler received in December 1942 a report from Himmler stating that 363,211 Jews had been murdered in August-November 1942. This was just one of many reports from the Einsatzgruppen, who had the job of exterminating the Jews and anti-Nazis behind the eastern front. A photograph and the text of the report are available.

Or consider a phone log from Hitler to Himmler, in which Hitler ordered "no liquidation" of a particular trainload of Jews, because they wanted one suspected passenger questioned. If Hitler did not know of the liquidation process, how could he have ordered it stopped in this one instance? (Ironically, David Irving used part of this phone log out of context to indicate that Hitler was trying to put a stop to the extermination program. Of course, this was before Mr. Irving changed his mind and decided that there never was any extermination program, much less that Hitler knew about it.)

From Höss’ memoirs (Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 1959, p. 205):

In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer-SS [Himmler], directly by his adjutant's office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received me without his adjutant being present and said in effect:

"The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order."

Eichmann's final speech to the court, after being sentenced to death, included