Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
vant episodes will seem to have simpler interpretations than we see or at any rate
emphasize. While we can, of course, not see things as posterity will, we can at
least attempt to see the subject from a higher perspective. This will not only help
our future reputation, but will also help us avoid getting tripped up on details in
current controversy.
We can start by asking just what will draw posterity’s attention as extraordinary.
It will not be “exterminations” of Jews, as there were none. It will also not
be the German program of expulsion of the Jews. There will of course be some interest
in that program, just as today there is interest on the part of the historians in
all sorts of past episodes. However, that German program was in its essentials far
from unique, the Jews having been expelled from the Jerusalem area in the second
century and from Spain in the fifteenth, to mention only the most famous two of
many expulsions. The German program may seem deplorable, but it will not seem
extraordinary.
What will seem unique is the establishment in Western society of the “Holocaust”
legend, its exploitation past the point of sanity, its challenge from unconventional
quarters of a few decades later, and it subsequent overthrow. One implication
of this, perhaps for the revisionists at once instructive and deflating, is that
revisionists will themselves be objects of historical scrutiny, i.e. we are part of the
historical process that posterity will see, not merely its pioneering investigators.
I believe they will see us that way mainly because of our tendency, explanations
for which have already been given, of getting entangled in details while bypassing
or downplaying the observations that, it will seem, should have been both
obvious and conclusive.
A specific illustration. In order for something to be “obvious,” it ought to be
figuratively before our very noses. Let us look at two of the recently published
and widely discussed books in support of the extermination legend, namely
Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert (biographer of Winston Churchill) and
The Terrible Secret by Walter Laqueur (Director of the Institute of Contemporary
History, London, and editor of the Journal of Contemporary History). The two
books look at the subject from similar perspectives and cover much of the same
ground.
At the end of his long and copiously annotated study, Gilbert writes: 510
“Between May 1942 and June 1944, almost none of the messages reaching
the west had referred to Auschwitz as the destination of Jewish deportees, or
as a killing centre. Nor had the name of Auschwitz made any impression on
those who were building up what they believed to be an increasingly comprehensive
picture of the fate of the Jews.”
On the other hand, early in this shorter but also copiously annotated study,
Laqueur explains that mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been concealed,
noting that Auschwitz was “a veritable archipelago,” that “Auschwitz inmates
[…] were, in fact, dispersed all over Silesia, and […] met with thousands of
people,” that “hundreds of civilian employees […] worked at Auschwitz,” and
510
M. Gilbert, p. 340.
391