Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORY5Otto D. Kulka, “Die deusche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die‘Endlösung.’ Tendenzen und Entwicklungen 1924-1984,” in: Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 240(1985), pp. 599-640, esp. pp. 617ff.6Inflated numbers can be coerced, as it was indeed the case with Höss. (Kommandant in Auschwitz.Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss. Ed. by Martin Broszat, Munich (dtv)1963, pp. 149, 167.) Already from this results the necessity of scientific revisions with regard tothe widespread opinion about Auschwitz. In the book Streitpunkten (Berlin-Frankfurt 1993) Istated: “Such an assertion cannot be invented, but it can all too easily be exaggerated” (p. 310).7Cf. “Historikerstreit.” Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischenJudenvernichtung, Munich 1987. My article “Vergangenheit, die nichtvergehen will” (“A past that refuses to pass,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 6, 1986)can be found on pp. 39-47.8I give only a single example from the most recent past for the lacking disposition of this schoolto reproduce trains of thought without gross distortions or to grant their opponents sincere motives:In my interview with the [newsmagazine] Spiegel of 3 October 1994 (no. 40, pp. 83-103)I stated that the fact that the adjective “humane” was used both by other National Socialists aswell as primarily by Hitler with regard to the “punishment” of the Jews convinces me morethan anything else of the reality of the gas chambers. The subsequent question typical of theSpiegel was whether I really considered it more humane to be gassed in a Nazi concentrationcamp rather than starved to death. I rejected this objection and stated that this is evidently aperversion of the term “humane.” That did not prevent one of the authors of the anthology Antisemitismusin Deutschland edited by Wolfgang Benz to carry this underhanded insinuation furtherstill by claiming that I had described the gas chambers as a “humane killing method.”(Daniel Gerson, “Der Jude als Bolschewist. Die Wiederbelebung eines Stereotyps,” in: Antisemitismusin Deutschland. Zur Aktualität eines Vorurteils, Munich (dtv) 1995, pp. 157-180, p.176).9It is a curious fact that a compilation of important witness accounts has been prepared only bythe revisionist side: Jürgen Graf, Auschwitz. Tätergeständnisse und Augenzeugen des Holocaust,Würenlos (Switzerland) 1994. The same author has also written with utter conviction andmoral indignation the popular presentation: Der Holocaust-Schwindel. Vom Werden undVergehen des Jahrhundertbetrugs, Basel 1993. If one takes the Deutsche Manifest as a comparison,which was anonymously published on 8 May 1995, then it becomes apparent that differentlevels have to be distinguished within revisionism as well: the inflamatory, the populist anda third, which presumably has to be called “scientific.”10Peter Longerich (ed.), Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden. Eine umfassende Dokumentationdes Holocaust 1941-1945, Munich-Zurich 1989, p. 69.11Wolfgang Benz, Antisemitismus in Deutschland (see note 8), p. 135; Artur Brauner et al.,“Wider das Vergessen, denn wie sollte man vergessen,” in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,May 6, 1995.12Eberhard Jäckel, Jürgen Rohwer, Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildungund Verwirklichung, Stuttgart 1985, p. 12.13Ibidem, p. 147.14Ibidem, p. 190.15Ibidem, p. 170.16Ibidem, p. 187.17This sentence by this reputable U.S.-Jewish historian, which by now has been quoted frequentlyby revisionists, stems from his book Der Krieg als Kreuzzug. Das Deutsche Reich, HitlersWehrmacht und die “Endlösung,” Reinbek 1989, p. 362, which is unique within the entire scientificliterature about the final solution due to its lack of source references. See my review inthe Jahrbuch Extremismus & Demokratie, 2nd vol. 1990, pp. 335-339.18New York 1989, p. 475.19Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes, Munich-Zurich1994, p. 202. In the original French edition of 1993, p. 148, slightly higher figureswere given (630,000 and 775,000, respectively).20London-Nairobi, 1985.21Cf. Benz (note 8), p. 130.22Bernd Naumann, Auschwitz, Berichte über die Strafsache gegen Mulka und andere vor demSchwurgericht Frankfurt, Bonn 1965, pp. 511, 530f.284