AUSCHWITZ LIES - Holocaust Handbooks

DENYING EVIDENCE 241
This is exactly what I have done in this chapter, demonstrating on the one
hand the total historical inconsistency of the theories proposed by the authors
and re-establishing, on the other hand, the historical truth on the basis of documents.
3. “Convergent Documentary Evidence” of the Holocaust
3.1. The Definition of the “Holocaust”
If we want to express correctly the theses of revisionism, then we must,
first of all, give a correct definition of the “Holocaust.” In this respect, the authors
write:
“When historians talk about the ‘Holocaust’, what they mean on the
most general level is that about six million Jews were killed in an intentional
and systematic fashion by the Nazis using a number of different
means, including gas chambers. According to this widely accepted definition
of the Holocaust, so-called Holocaust revisionists are in effect denying
the Holocaust, since they deny its three key components – the killing of six
million, gas chambers, and intentionality.” (p. XV)
This definition is acceptable, with the restriction that the essential factors
are the gas chambers and the intentionality, that is, the planned and systematic
assassination of Jews as such. The numerical aspect is less relevant because –
as a principle – the six million do not demonstrate the reality of a planned extermination
carried out in gas chambers. As the authors correctly say, but with
a different meaning,
“whether it is five or six million is central to the victims, but from the
point of view of whether the Holocaust took place it is irrelevant.” (p. 174)
What counts is not the number of victims but whether they were killed according
to a governmental plan involving mass extermination in gas chambers.
I will come back to this question in chapter 3.4.
3.2. The Liberation of the Camps
However, the authors then go on and act as if they had forgotten their definition
and toss into the kettle of the Holocaust anything they can put their
hands on.
Thus, on p. 173, after having reported G.M. Gilbert’s description of the
“Nazi leaders’ reactions to a film of concentration camps liberated by Americans,”
they declare:
“This raw description at the Nuremberg trials of some Nazi leaders’
shock and horror at the scope and scale of the Holocaust gives us some indication
of just how far beyond belief the mass murder was even to the
perpetrators.”