Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
the WJC reminded the British, as Soviet forces were approaching Lvov, that there
were “still a considerable number of Jews” in the Lvov area and that we should issue
“a fresh and emphatic warning to the Germans” and also speed up the work of
rescuing Jews from Nazi occupied territory (obviously to proceed to Palestine, as
the WJC made clear by its wartime statements). 529 In the opinion of the WJC, the
murdered Jews were still there.
Jewish newspapers in the west, while occasionally publishing massacre claims,
clearly thought the claims exaggerated greatly and tended to contradict themselves
in their statements. For example, the allegedly well-informed leftist Jewish
“Bund,” in its publication The Ghetto Speaks for October 1943, spoke of the
“struggle linking the Polish and Jewish masses.” In their opinion, too, the murdered
Jews were still there. However, apart from such specific incidents, it is admitted
that even after the Allied declaration of December 17, 1942, the first official
claim of “extermination,” “there was no forceful, unequivocal response by
American Jewry, including the JDC.” As a rule, “the Jews themselves did not
really press very hard for rescue, and their propaganda for Palestine often seemed
stronger than their concern for immediate steps to save their brethren.” 530
The historical record thus shows that, apart from their occasional public claims
of “extermination,” the Jewish bodies outside occupied Europe conducted themselves
as if there were no exterminations, as is most clearly shown by their failure
to undertake to warn the European Jews and by the nature of their real efforts (e.g.
in connection with Palestine).
The Allies
Allied governments and their officials did not act as though they believed
the extermination claims, and their intelligence services never produced any
information corroborative of the claims.
In connection with the actions of Allied governments and their officials we can
say that (a) the declarations of the governments in relation to “extermination”
were inconsistent, equivocal, and unconvincingly timed, (b) no concrete measures
were taken to interfere with deportations of Jews or with whatever was happening
in the camps, and (c) incidents involving leading officials show that they did not
believe the claims.
Among relevant declarations of governments, perhaps the best known is the
Allied declaration of December 17, 1942; this was unequivocally worded, although
very much lacking in specific details. However, it seems unconvincingly
timed. According to the legend, exterminations outside Russia are supposed to
have been in progress for almost a year. Moreover, this date also marked the first
unequivocal Soviet charge of “extermination,” although such a program was allegedly
in operation there since June 1941. This makes the belated Soviet statement
particularly incredible, as “there is every reason to assume that the Soviet
authorities were from the beginning well informed about all important events in
529
530
M. Gilbert, p. 181.
Laqueur, pp. 183-186; Bauer, pp. 188-193, 403.
397