Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Work in Progress

I've finished the first draft of rather a lengthy essay on Reichskristallnacht, and since I intend to publish it at the Holocaust History Project Web site rather than in a peer-reviewed publication (where I'd be relinquishing the copyright in most cases), I'm presenting my first draft online for those interested in having a peak. The first two paragraphs are here. If you're interested, read the whole thing.

A standard argument by Holocaust deniers is that, while they do not believe that there was an organized plot by Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews of Europe, that gas chambers were used to this end (among other methods), or that the number of fatalities was nearly six million (and perhaps more), they "[do] not deny the tragedy that the Jews suffered in World War II" (Kulaszka). However, as time has gone on, this gambit has been dropped, so much so that there are self-styled "revisionists" unwilling to admit that any innocent Jew died at the hands of the Nazis. Falling into this camp of Holocaust deniers are such apologists as Friedrich Paul Berg, Carlos Whitlock Porter, and the godfather of American Holocaust denial, Willis Carto.

This sort of denial had always been embraced by the most extreme elements within the Holocaust-denial movement. However, "mainstream" deniers are engendering it more and more. One such Holocaust denier is Jonnie A. Hargis. Posting on March 5, 2007, to the Web-based discussion forum of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) as "Hannover," Hargis cut and pasted a twenty-year-old essay by Ingrid Weckert on Kristallnacht and commented that this was "a more accurate account of Kritallnacht [sic]."

Read more!

1 comment:

Please read our Comments Policy