Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
the WRB report, and in 1984, he published an article relating to the WRB report
(and particularly to Rudolf Vrba) and Hungary. 641
Conway was overdue for criticism. In his 1967 article, Kulka had not criticized
Vrba’s 1964 book, but by 1985, Holocaust revisionism was in full vigor. Kulka
scolded Conway for being willing “to accept uncritically and as fact Vrba’s distorted
statements “ and complained that Vrba’s “contradictory and problematic
statements [have been] misused […] to prove that the [WRB] report was a distortion
and that the description of the gas chambers in Auschwitz were simply a figment
of the imagination.” 642
I would have thought that, as a result of his admission in 1985 that his book
was not true, Vrba would have been finished as a player in the traveling Auschwitz
show. However, it is a sad commentary on the present state of public controversy
that the silly thing was actually reissued in 1989, with certain supplements,
under the title 44070: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century. 643 It appears that
the original text, with all its inanities, was reproduced in this new edition. There
were also additions as appendices. The part of the WRB report attributed to
Wetzler and Rosenberg is reproduced, there is an appendix on “trials of Auschwitz
SS-officers,” there is an essay by Vrba on the economic aspects of the German
persecutions of the Jews, a short vita of Vrba (not mentioning “Rosenberg“),
and an essay by Conway, drawing from and supplementing his 1979 article.
Nowhere in the new edition is there an attempt to correct, explain, or apologize
for the inanities and factual errors in the original edition of the book or for Vrba’s
1985 admission that the book was only “an artistic picture,” that is, not true.
Conway does not hint at any problems or at any of the criticism he received for
his gullibility with respect to Vrba. He does not apologize for his implicit endorsement
of a book that all sides, including Vrba, have told him is not true. It
seems that he will not or cannot learn. Nor will the publishers of “Holocaust” literature
learn; there seems to be an assumption among them that critical examination
of this literature is unnecessary. They seem quite willing to slap between covers almost
anything as long as criticism is confined to relatively esoteric writings.
In 1990, Vrba was squabbling with Raul Hilberg, Shmuel Krakowski of Yad
Vashem, and Yehuda Bauer over numbers exterminated. 644
Conclusion
To return to Pressac, his blindness to the implications of the WRB report is the
rule for his whole work. I have heard revisionists speak as though Pressac’s work
is a respectable historical effort. The basis for this is easy to see. Having the support
of influential people eager to help, Pressac was able to make available to the
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“Der Auschwitz-Bericht von April 1944,” Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 8, 1981, pp. 413-442.; “Der Holocaust
in Ungarn. Neue Kontroversen und Überlegungen,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte,
Vol. 32, No. 2, 1984, pp. 179-212.
E. Kulka in Jewish Social Studies (Fall 1985), cited above, pp. 304, 306 (note 45).
R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1989).
IHR Newsletter, No. 74, July-August 1990, p. 3. Source cited: JTA dispatch in Jewish World
(Broward, Florida), March 9-16.