What is Holocaust Revisionism Essay Example for Free

What is Holocaust Revisionism Essay The term â€Å"holocaust denier† is applied to those who prefer the terms â€Å"revisionism† or â€Å"revisionist. † Holocaust historians avoid using it to describe themselves and revise the aspects of the Holocaust. Holocaust historians in the revisionism belief that in Germany there was a breakout of typhus carried by lice and other diseases that spread throughout the camps and by having to treat camps with pesticide zyklon was the main reason there were causes of death. In that theory, it hadn’t anything to do with the extermination of the Jews nor was there even camps but were all evacuated or shut down which there wasn’t any evidence found. During the war the Jews were moved to Eastern Europe and were allegedly exterminated and not in Germany or Western Europe. Around 1940, the Germans were only one of the several involved in moving and the Soviets deported Jews out of Poland and entered to occupied West Germany. A Holocaust Revisionism Historian would have you believe there was no significant evidence of extermination. The claim of the legend is that there were no technical means provided for the specific task of extermination, and that means originally provided for the specific task of extermination, and that mean originally provided for other purposes did double duty in improvised arrangements† (The Journal of Historical Review, 2pp). Holocaust deniers ignore the evidence and insist that it was a myth. That it is because â€Å"Jews spread this myth as part of a grander plot intended to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and now to gander continuing support for the state of Israel† (Lipstadt, pg. 27). Holocaust Historian Revisionism argues that evidence showed no proof of Hitler having signed a document ordering the Holocaust, documents were forged and language in the documents were completely misrepresented. Holocaust deniers make out uncertainty of exact number of deaths. They like to point out what is called the â€Å"other side of the issue† and make debate of an illegitimate historical fact. In the United States where it ensures freedom of speech and that it’s not against the law to make denial of the Holocaust, however countries such as Germany and France criminalize the denial of the Holocaust and have banned any Nazi publications. The assertions of Holocaust deniers play no role in genuine historical debates. Holocaust denial is really about anti-Semitism and irrational politics, not history or justice† (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007). 2. A complete anti-Semitism statement made from writer Dan Gannon in an article published in 1994 entitled â€Å"Schindler’s List Exposed as Lies and Hate† which he makes a comment about the movie. â€Å"Commander Goeth shooting inmates from the front balcony of his house were complete fabrications and deliberate lies† (Gannon, 1994). In Gannon’s opinion the movie itself is fabricated for example, the camp is rebuilt and is surrounded on a steep hill and not visible where any outsiders can see any inmates. Commander Goeth is shooting working inmates in the camp. Therefore, the camp being visible through wire fences, commander Goeth couldn’t have shot inmates from the balcony as the house is at the bottom of a hill where you can’t see into the inmate’s camp. The camp’s location was next to a city called Cracow on a major highway and is visible from hundreds of houses in 3 surrounding villages. Most exchanges and conversations, and all events are based on the detailed recollections of Schindler Jews or Schindler himself and of other witnesses† (Keneally, 1982). Historical methods are facts that events can be proven by using evidence. The facts lead to analysis and interpretation. Revisionism is nothing more than an act of â€Å"revising† something that already exist or mostly applied to historical events. Revisionists investigate, analyze, and revise their conclusions based on facts or revise the facts based on their conclusion. They in other words, defend a conclusion whether or not the facts support it. Revisionists argue that the entire holocaust was a conspiracy theory because survivors lied, evidence by the Nazi’s was falsified, photographs and films were fraudulent. Revisionist stand on, if any survivor evidence can be shown to be wrong it should be dismissed. â€Å"History is the recorded narrative of past events, especially those concerning a particular period, nation, individual, etc. It recounts events with careful attention to their importance, their mutual relations, their causes and consequences, selecting and grouping events on the ground of their interest or importance† (Funk Wagnall, p. 599). Anti-Semitism criticizes Jews as a group and culture or hatred for the Jews as people. â€Å"Anti-Semites, however, progress over that critical step beyond dislike to pathology, hating Jews for being Jews† (Volknian, Watts, pg. 10). When the term â€Å"anti-Semitism† is casually used to silence those who are critical of the government of Israel and its policies. The revising of the Second World War is a work in progress by Russian and Germany or known as the Russo-Germany conspiracy that wants the world to know that the Holocaust is propaganda. However, Red Army propagandist blamed the German army for crimes committed by the Soviets. The murders of six million Jews have become a subject of topic from the Revisionist, modern revisionism dates back from the First World War during this time where every globe was affected. Allied propaganda phased in where its mastery showed the images of horrifying atrocities. The majority of the atrocities accredited to the Germans and their allies were admitted by the politicians and journalists who fabricated them to have been falsifies. Within a decade Western and European countries proclaimed that Germany and its allies did not bear guilt on starting the war. In the 1940’s, Jews and communist condemned and spoke out against the unconceivable crimes the Germans had done. The extermination of millions of Jews in the camps were reported that victims were steamed, baked, electrocuted, gassed, eaten away by quicklime, starved, shot, buried alive, mauled by wild beasts, subjected to sadistic experiments, and injected with lethal chemicals or germs. What made prove of the Holocaust war crime were the Nuremberg trials during the 1950’s, in the trial where ex-Nazi war criminals admitted they had plan to exterminate the Jews. Repeated statements and speeches testified the planning to kill the Jews as an answer to annihilate all Jews by Nazi control. The six million figure estimate the number of Jews murdered, some evidence based on the estimates on demographics or any records. The approximate estimate 4. 8 to 6 million. The known trial in history where German war criminals were tried by judges from Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Twenty-two German officers were tried for conspiracy, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. It was best suggested that Nazi war criminals convict themselves by their own words. When the Nazi’s had destroyed almost all historical records, allied armies captured millions of documents and submitted 3,000 tons. Records of proud Nazi documentations of the invasion of World War II and graphic images of humiliation against Jews and other civilians and mass murder. The photographs represented powerful unforgettable visual evidence and which also included the â€Å"Stroop Report† an appendix of albums of photographs that documented the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Stroop’s forces captured 55,000 Jews and killed at least 7,000 and sent 7,000 to the Treblinka killing center. A number of these images were transmitted to American news agencies and in other countries, where it helped to inform the world of the horrors of Nazism. â€Å"It is this convergence of evidence, along with the documentary, scientific and photographic evidence, that is the most damming to the â€Å"revisionist† position† (The Holocaust History Project, 2006). Camps such as Treblinka, Belzec, Sobinor and Chelmno were indeed death camps for the purpose to murder Jews. Only about 7 Jews survived the Belzec extermination camp and 550, 000 were killed as it was also Himmler’s plan of action. There was â€Å"selection† process of which Jews would be murdered and which would work and then be murdered. SS doctors would inspect Jewish inmates as to where they’ll be able to work. 4. Zyklon B was the help of the extermination, although used to exterminate pests but preferably to exterminate Jews. The evidence that proved the death camps were Nazi documents, photographs, and statements that were given by survivors and Nazi officials. The bodies at the death camps were cremated, burned on open pits or buried, depending on the camp and what of the situation. A good testimony forms evidence. Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Hoess made testimony to what he witnessed during his capture by the British. Allies received information from several Jewish escapees. Forensic examinations prove large areas of ashes, body parts and remains. Chief Waffen-SS Kurt Gerstein recollected the gassings at Treblinka and saw 10,000 Jews gassed in two days. Revisionist, however claim there was no such evidence of murders at Belzec and Treblinka. They therefore claim that either the figures are wrong, or the Holocaust, meaning the deliberate extermination of millions of Jews, cannot have happened† (World Almanac, pg. 289). Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel and survivor of the Holocaust has also been the founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council since the 1980’s, a tribute to Holocaust survivors. A professor at Boston University for much of his life has worked on behalf of oppressed people and defender of peace and human rights all over the world. Wiesel has been attacked on his views of what he witnessed in Holocaust camps as â€Å"holocaust deniers† claim that Wiesel and the Jewish Organization would assisnate those who tell the truth about the holocaust hoax and that their lies would be exposed. Wiesel is considered by â€Å"holocaust deniers† as a false witness who has told propaganda lies. Wiesel describes what he witnessed at Auschwitz of burning flames in a ditch were victims bodies were found. In Buchenwald, 10,000 persons were sent to their deaths each day. â€Å"Ellie Wiesel passes for one of the most celebrated eyewitnesses to the alleged Holocaust. Yet in his supposedly autobiographical book Night, he makes no mention of gas chambers. He claims to have witnessed Jews being burned alive, a story dismissed by all historians. Wiesel gives credence to the most absurd stories of other eyewitnesses. He spreads fantastic tales of 10,000 persons sent to their deaths each day in Buchenwald† (Faurisson, 2005). In Night, Wiesel describes his experiences and emotions of the oppression of the Nazis and the roundups of his family and neighbors in the Romanian town of Sighet where people were deported in cattle cars to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Between 1940 – 1945, Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auswitz when he was age 15. His mother and younger sister were the first to vanish without a trace, he, his two older sisters, and father were transported to Buchenwald where his father died. Wiesel talks about the mental and physical anguish that he and his fellow prisoners experienced and the death march from Auswitz Birkenaw to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. In 1958, he wrote the book Night which has been translated in 30 languages and sold millions of copies. 5. Auschwitz has come to symbolize the greatest crime in human history† (Rudolf, Pg. 3). Yet the greatest and bloodiest genocide in which tens of millions were murdered or imprisoned. As the Russo-Germany preparation began in the 1920’s have unleashed genocide and annihilated Eastern Europeans from the 1930’s and into the 1940’s. Germany did not act alone in the Second World War as they jointed with the Soviets to invade Poland in 1939. Two countries that were neutral in history. The Holocaust has been an endless subject amongst philosophers, theologians, litterateurs, and historians. To dig up and investigate in more than half a century annihilation of millions of Jews by the Third Reich. Germans believe that the mass murders were carried out by the Soviets. Forensic research is what Revisionist called the search for material evidence in demand for such evidence is more decisive than eyewitness testimony or documentary evidence. Conspirators make the accusations of hundreds of Nazis were tortured into confessing crimes they never committed or to put the blame on other fellow Nazis and to implicate hundreds of documents in files that were never found until after the war. A number of Jewish scholars who admit that the evidence is in itself underprovided. The question remains of the photographs that were taken of dozens of piled emaciated bodies that a denier would claim that the photo does not tell the truth of what it actually shows but questions were the people gassed or starved? Did they face the typhus epidemic or starved due to a lack of food? Indeed, the victims were of German women and children killed by bombing raids and the pictures were passed off as dead Jews. Evidence that supports this that Allied soldiers collected the bodies of Germans and brought them to be photographed. At camp Belsen, Nazis did not make it a policy to feed prisoners. Other questions remains, could the Vatican have known about the executions of millions of Jews? Some evidence claims the Vatican would have been in position to know and would have done something about it. Although, some sources says the Nazis hatred for the Catholic church had executed many clergymen in Poland and other establishments. Revisions evidence would suggest that the amount of six million bodies would provide tons upon tons of ashes and there is no evidence of any large depositories of ashes. However, some sources would disagree that the bodies were incinerated and some were burned in mass graves and had been exhumed. The ashes had been dumped in fields and rivers, and surprisingly the means to be used as good fertilizer by Auschwitz farmers in their fields. Some sources range that there were about 300,000 to 500,000 or more than 3,000,000. In Auschwitz the proximity is 1. 3 million victims and in Treblinka about 800,000 victims. â€Å"The only evidence is the postwar testimony of individual â€Å"saviors. † This testimony is contradictory, and no â€Å"survivor† claims to have actually witnessed any gassing. There is no contemporaneous documents and no hard evidence whatsoever: no means of ashes, no crematoria capable of disposing of millions of corpses, no pile of clothes, no human soap, no lamp shades made of human skin, no records, no credible demographic statistics† (Zundel, pg. 7). 6. Revisionists fail to investigate the mass murders of the Holocaust, which they only could rely on substantial forensic evidence of past crimes and if they don’t consider the research for what really took place in Auschwitz then how could there be a realistic conclusion if they simply hold it up as a myth.