NP Re: Willing Executioners?

[davemarc]

From: <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Willing Executioners?

jbor quotes:

> http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/crazygoldie/BIRN.html

***

Those of us who continue to be concerned about Holocaust revisionism/denial
might be
interested in perusing the rest of this www.vho.org website cited in
jbor's post. As Caliper wrote at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Holocaust_denial/Archive_1: "I'd sooner
trust Richard Nixon's blog."

>From http://www.vho.org/About.html: Germar Rudolf has been publishing
revisionist material since December 1996. Until spring of 1998, this
activity was done under the umbrella of the Belgian Foundation Vrij
Historisch Onderzoek, VHO (Free Historical Research). During these
activities, Rudolf acquired the Internet domain www.vho.org in September
1997, which became the largest revisionist website worldwide under Rudolf's
aegis.
Because the Foundation Vrij Historisch Onderzoek was increasingly victimized
by persecution and censorship due to their controversial historical
publications, Germar Rudolf established his own company Castle Hill
Publishers in early 1998 in the English town of Hastings. He also detached
the website www.vho.org from the Foundation Vrij Historisch Onderzoek in
order to prevent any intrusion by Belgian authorities and in order to
legally protect his Belgian colleagues at VHO.
In 1993, Dr. Robert Countess established the American publishing company
Theses & Dissertations Press as a division of the non-profit organization
Belfort Loewe Project, Inc. T&DP was dormant until it employed Germar Rudolf
as responsible editor in 2000. It then started publishing its ambitious
series Holocaust Handbooks. Since summer of 2002, Theses & Dissertations
Press is a division of Castle Hill Publishers, serving as an outlet of
English language revisionist books.

>From the profile of Rudolf at the revisionist website
http://www.revisionists.com/revisionists/rudolf.html: This brilliant,
German-trained chemist re-examined Auschwitz, Birkenau and other
installations and buildings, testing rocks, soil and other physical samples
for traces of Zyklon B. Following the pioneering work of Fred Leuchter, he
put the final nail into the coffin of the Auschwitz story. Even though he
did scientific work and was utterly apolitical, Rudolf's home and office
were raided, computers seized etc. He was charged and tried in Germany for
not believing in the standard Auschwitz story. As a scientist, he found the
"gassing" claims to be scientifically untenable and, therefore, absurd. A
modern day Galileo, Rudolf was found guilty and convicted because he refused
to renounce scientific facts and his own scientific tests and findings. He
was facing jail when he went into exile with his young wife and two babies.
He now edits and publishes devastating refutations of the Allied Propaganda
claims in a German-language journal. The Holocaust Enforcers are dogging his
steps, and he faces endless hassles and trials, should the "German" vassal
authorities ever get a hold of him. Zündel expert witness in chemistry in
the Munich trial in 1991 -- disallowed by the judge at the request of the
prosecution.

***

As Goldhagen himself acknowledges, his work is not above criticsm. As for
Birn's criticisms, I understand that the professor mocked at vho.org as
"crazygoldie" wrote a substantial refutation of many of them. As Max Frankel
wrote in a mixed New York Times review of Birn and Finkelstein's book (he
favors Birn over Finkelstein) at
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/reviews/980628.28fran.html:

Birn has apparently tracked down all of Goldhagen's sources and contends
that many could easily support conclusions opposite from his. She mocks his
claim to have revised all previous writing on the Holocaust and says he
''only caters to those who want simplistic answers to difficult questions,
to those who seek the security of prejudices.''

For this assault, Birn and her original British publishers earned
Goldhagen's formal threat of a libel action, as well as a richly annotated
rebuttal, ''The Fictions of Ruth Bettina Birn,'' which has been splayed
across the Internet. The relish with which Goldhagen and his critics parse
each other's every phrase and footnote guarantees many more rounds of
battle.

***

d.