Holocaust Revisionist Released From Austrian Prison

After languishing in an Austrian prison for thirteen months for expressing his views, Holocaust Revisionist David Irving has been released. As Germar Rudolph, another Revisionist, fights for his freedom in France and Ernst Zundel serves out his twenty-year term in Germany, Austria appears to have relaxed it's grip on the controversial historian. With his release we should really consider the ramifications of the precedent set with the jailing of revisionists.



No matter what you think of his ideas, this man should never have been imprisoned.

We start down the slippery slope to dictatorship when we start locking people up for expressing their points of view.

The recent rash of imprisoning those that question the Holocaust and burning their published works is eerily reminiscent of Nazi-era Germany.

In the words of George Orwell:

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. ... Is it true about the gas ovens in Poland?

codoh.com...

Book burning is usually followed by people burning.

At present Irving remains detained in an "immigration prison".

Members of various Jewish organisations world-wide are demanding that he serve out his time and that he be re-arrested on fresh charges.

Related News Links:
www.timesonline.co.uk

www.Spiegel Der

[edit on 20/12/2006 by Beelzebubba]

[edit on 20-12-2006 by UM_Gazz]

I honestly did'nt know before I first heard about this, that it was
illegal to state your views on somethimg in the western world.

I mean I thought we were beyond such things.

I don't care if the holocaust happened or not (I do believe it
happened, though I think the numbers are'nt correct), all people
should be able to express there views freely, regardless of what
that view is, and not be worried about being attacked or jailed.

In many European countries, merely questioning the numbers of the Holocaust victims is enough to treat you as a criminal and have you serve time in prison.

What I dislike is that any questioning of the Holocaust, whether what groups were sent to the camps, what numbers of groups, or the number of victims that died, automatically labels a person as a "Holocaust-denier," as if they are portrayed as having denied any of the Holocaust occurred. I never once questioned the number of victims, but reading stories like these makes me wonder why it is so important that everyone remain devoid of any speculation or questions about the Holocaust. I don't know, something just doesn't seem right. No other event in history has this much protection from those who question it.

I can see an almost similar movement occurring in present days, regarding the events of 9/11. It's almost socially taboo now to question the events surrounding the attacks, causing conspiracy theorists to be viewed as anti-American by those who do not want to question the government.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by DJMessiah]

The reason it's illegal is to protect the entire industry that is set up to exploit global guilt surrounding those who died in the Holocaust. The anti-holocaust discussion laws are designed to safeguard the aura of 'super tragedy' or 'unparalleled tragedy' that us Westerners are engrained with.

If it were to become common knowledge that things such as the Auschwitz death toll was officially revised downwards from 4 million to 1 million by a team headed by an Israeli scholar, thus slashing by half the "6 million dead" figure in one fell swoop, the entire cloak of untouchability surrounding Zionism would evaporate.

This global guilt has to be upheld so as to cover the tens of billions of dollars of 'guilt money' that Western nations send in aid to Israel annually regardless of the fact that it is the 14th richest nation in the World.

They cant have any questioning of anything outside of "6 million Jew's killed on purpose" because, like a loose thread on a sweater, the entire myth would come unravelled.

No-one called Ditlieb Felderer a "Holocaust Denier" when he revised the number of Jehovahs Witnesses that died in the camps. A number that decreased from 60,000 to a mere 200. A number that has since been accepted as fact.

It was only when Felderer expanded his research and was a witness for the defence in the 1988 trial of Ernst Zundel that people began to brand him an "anti-semite" and a "Holocaust Denier".

As we speak another Revisionist is currently fighting for his freedom.
Germar Rudolph is currently going through the system in the Mannheim District Court.

German scholar Germar Rudolf has authored, edited and published numerous academic articles, brochures, books, and magazines in the German and in the English language both in his native Germany and abroad. He is the owner of a university-press-style publishing house that focuses on detailed scientific and archival studies of well-defined historical topics. He is lauded as an academic of high standards by many professors from around the world. Yet the German authorities want to imprison him exactly because of his scholarly success, for his ground-breaking academic writings. They intend to imprison him for at least five years, if not even ten years, and they have ordered to confiscate all of his property.

Rudolf’s crime: he did and does not obey a German penal law that forces everybody to parrot the official version of a detail of German history. You may wonder what detail that may be, but to be sure: It does not matter, because a government that prescribes the writing of history by penal law is dictating to its citizens what to think, and that is the exact definition of a dictatorship. Period.

Link

Originally posted by DJMessiah
In many European countries, merely questioning the numbers of the Holocaust victims is enough to treat you as a criminal and have you serve time in prison.
...........

The point is simple, there are nazis nowadays claiming that Hitler never ordered any Jewish people to be murdered. Most of these people who want to deny what happened in the holocaust, happen to be Nazis themselves, and they want more persecution of Jewish people, this time trying to deny anything or eveything if possible of what happened to the races these criminals find as "inferior."

Sorry deniers, but the numbers of jewish people killed has been corroborated with records of the Nazi regime, and the estimates are between 5 -7 million Jewish people murdered. The Nazis also murdered millions of other people which were considered a minority and part of the "lesser races".

What Nazis nowadays, which quite a few are trying to hide who and what they really are, just want to deny what happened so they can continue with their sadistic ideas of persecuting people, once again Jewish people.

BTW, trying to link this to "9/11" is amusing to say the least"....

[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Has anyone actually stopped to think what is the point of trying to deny in what ways Jewish people were killed when there were movies taken by German officers, and there are witnesses both Jewish and Germans who were not Jewish who have testified as to what happened?....

The anwser is simple, these "holocaust deniers" even when claiming they just are trying to "revise the numbers" want to find any and every reason to "deny what the holocaust was all about", Nazis trying to exterminate people who they saw as inferior. The Nazi movement is not dead, and they now try to bring more hatred to the world on one of the people they tried to exterminate.


[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
The point is simple, there are nazis nowadays claiming that Hitler never ordered any Jewish people to be murdered.

Had the arrested man been a Nazi, your statement would hold true, but that's not the case. The individual is a scholar and historian who wanted to research into the numbers, and yet he was arrested for questioning them. I don't see how researching the numbers results in the "persecution of Jews."

Sorry deniers, but the numbers of jewish people killed has been corroborated with records of the Nazi regime, and the estimates are between 5 -7 million Jewish people murdered.

I'm interested, can you show us your source?

BTW, trying to link this to "9/11" is amusing to say the least"....

So you're denying that there is a such social taboo set on those who question the events of 9/11?

[edit on 28-12-2006 by DJMessiah]

Yeah those sadistic Germans!

Seriously, who are the germans persecuting nowadays? Nobody! There are very few WWII soldiers still alive. I think they have faced persecution from the international forum long enough. The people guilty are dead. Don't take it out on their kids.

Originally posted by DJMessiah
I'm interested, can you show us your source?

Most statistical breakdowns I have seen list the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The estimates vary from around 4.1 to 6.0 million, with more recent research supporting an even higher figure. Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews gives a detailed breakdown of Jewish deaths. It is estimated that another 5-6 million non-Jews (Gypsies, homosexuals, prisoners of war - especially Russians - were killed during the Holocaust period.

www.holocaust-history.org...

If you scroll down in that same link you can read the following.

Historians are able to agree on the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust within about a ten percent margin of error because of the convergence of a large amount of evidence. This evidence includes records on the number of people sent to the larger death camps, which were built and used primarily for Jews; reliable demographic studies of the number of Jews in Europe before and after the war; and progress reports from death camps and from organized killing squads in the conquered territories. There is more variance among estimates of the non-Jewish death toll because there is less data to go on. There is no census data on homosexuals, for example.

Excerpted from above link.

As for stories from German officers who were there and were part of the people who gased Jewish people as well as other "undesirables".

I Only Gassed Them

Erich Gnewuch testifies about gassings in Nazi-occupied USSR, 1942-3 [Quoted in "Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas", edited by E. Kogon, H. Langbein, and A. Rueckerl, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 57-9]

On orders from my department, I too drove a gas-van from Berlin to Minsk. These vans had been constructed with a lockable cargo compartment, like a moving van...
I was detailed with the gas-van to about twelve convoys of arriving Jews. It was in 1942. There were about a thousand Jews in each convoy. With each arrival I made five or six trips with my van. Some of the Jews were shot. I myself never shot a single Jew; I only gassed them...
A ghetto operation took place in the autumn of 1943. I was put into action only once with the gas-van. I made three trips with it to the execution site. I gassed about 150 to 180 people.

www.mtsu.edu...

Originally posted by DJMessiah
So you're denying that there is a such social taboo set on those who question the events of 9/11?

Noone of the "9/11 movement" has been put in prison because of whatever theory they believe in... noone....

You have to seriously be a dishonest person to claim "this is the same thing"... You are just trying to bring attention to "your own theories about 9/11 with claiming it is the same as what happens to holocaust deniers".


[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by arius
Yeah those sadistic Germans!

Seriously, who are the germans persecuting nowadays? Nobody! There are very few WWII soldiers still alive. I think they have faced persecution from the international forum long enough. The people guilty are dead. Don't take it out on their kids.

And tell me arius...where did I blame all Germans as to what happened in the holocaust?....

Notice that I said Nazis.....There are Nazis in Germany, there are Nazis in the U.S. there are Nazis in pretty much every major city in the world..... I wasn't trying to diss out all Germans, as some people these days seem to want to do with Jewish people.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by DJMessiah

Had the arrested man been a Nazi, your statement would hold true, but that's not the case. The individual is a scholar and historian who wanted to research into the numbers, and yet he was arrested for questioning them. I don't see how researching the numbers results in the "persecution of Jews."

Really?....

David Irving is not only a history revisionist who has tried to claim, among some other things, that the deaths of German people from air raids in Dresden was from 100,000 and 250,000. He later on claimed the figure was 50,000-100,000, when records have shown the deaths were between 25,000-35,000.

Every book of his paints Hitler as a good man who has been wrongly accused, he has counted, and still counts as friends former survivers of "Hitler's inner circle", such as Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer, and that's not counting every other holoccaust denier friend of his.

Every book of his has tried to revision history and claims the Nazis and Hitler were good, rational and intelligent people, and the blame lies with the coalition...

He has denied that there were any gassing done to Jewish people when several German officers and other survivors have corroborated what the Nazis did.... yet you want to claim he is not a Nazi?....


[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Here is some information about Irving.

Irving's credentials as a historian have been discredited as a result of controversy surrounding his Holocaust denial and misrepresentation of historical evidence. He served a prison sentence in Austria from February to December 2006 for Holocaust denial, and is barred from entering Germany, Austria, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. [1] During an unsuccessful libel case Irving brought against American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 1998, a British court found that he is "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism." The judge also ruled that Irving had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Muaddib
The anwser is simple, these "holocaust deniers" even when claiming they just are trying to "revise the numbers" want to find any and every reason to "deny what the holocaust was all about", Nazis trying to exterminate people who they saw as inferior. The Nazi movement is not dead, and they now try to bring more hatred to the world on one of the people they tried to exterminate.

Don't lump people into one group.

I honestly don't think the numbers are correct, however that does'nt
mean I am denying the holocaust happened, we have enough
adequate proof to prove that many many people died.

I am not a nazi. neoNazi or anything like that, I believe all to be
equal, so don't assume I am racist or whatever.

Originally posted by iori_komei

Don't lump people into one group.

I honestly don't think the numbers are correct, however that does'nt
mean I am denying the holocaust happened, we have enough
adequate proof to prove that many many people died.

I am not a nazi. neoNazi or anything like that, I believe all to be
equal, so don't assume I am racist or whatever.

And tell me, what makes you think that "the numbers are not correct"? Do you have any "factual evidence to make you believe the numbers are not correct"?

So where is this "evidence" that makes you think the numbers are not "correct"?

This man, Irving, among others, want to deny that there were gas camps, when we have witnesses who were/are Jewish and many others who were just German people trying to help Jewish people, as well as SS officers and other German soldiers who say these things happened.

We have videos taken from the SS which shows these camps and some of the things that happened there. Not only that but this man wants to claim Hitler was a good person who did some things because of the coalition but he didn't want to kill jewish people...

Being an apologist for nazis and having people who were part of Hitler's regime and helped on the atrocities that they comitted makes Irving among others a Nazi.

As for someone like yourself claiming the "numbers don't add up" I want to see where this information comes from, because honestly the evidence points to the contrary to such a claim, hence there must be some hidden motive for your belief unless oyu can provide some factual evidence to back your claim.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
And tell me, what makes you think that "the numbers are not correct"? Do you have any "factual evidence to make you believe the numbers are not correct"?

So where is this "evidence" that makes you think the numbers are not "correct"?

I'm not trying to prove I'm right, I'm making the point that you can
be a questioner of the numbers, and not be a holocaust denier.

This man, Irving, among others, want to deny that there were gas camps, when we have witnesses who were/are Jewish and many others who were just German people trying to help Jewish people, as well as SS officers and other German soldiers who say these things happened.

Well, he can deny whatever he wants, does'nt make him right, but
why should'nt he be able to state his beliefs?

I don't agree with him by the way, the existance and use of the gas chambers, perhaps not the ones popularised in media, is absolute.

Not only that but this man wants to claim Hitler was a good person who did some things because of the coalition but he didn't want to kill jewish people...

Well, considering good and bad are subjective terms..
I don't consider Hitler to be a good person in anyway, though I will
admit he was intelligent, a good strategy deviser and a charismatic
leader.

As for someone like yourself claiming the "numbers don't add up" I want to see where this information comes from, because honestly the evidence points to the contrary to such a claim, hence there must be some hidden motive for your belief unless you can provide some factual evidence to back your claim.

I have no evidence, hence why I don't claim that I'm right.
There is no hidden motive, it just does'nt seem correct to me.

Though to be clear, I think that the number of jewish people who
died was more around 3-4million, again I have no evidence, it's
just a feeling of sorts.

Originally posted by iori_komei
.................
I have no evidence, hence why I don't claim that I'm right.
There is no hidden motive, it just does'nt seem correct to me.

Though to be clear, I think that the number of jewish people who
died was more around 3-4million, again I have no evidence, it's
just a feeling of sorts.

Oohh...I see...my bad, I thought you had some data to back your claim...all you have is just a "feeling" the numbers are not right.... gotcha...

[edit on 29-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
And tell me, what makes you think that "the numbers are not correct"? Do you have any "factual evidence to make you believe the numbers are not correct"?

So where is this "evidence" that makes you think the numbers are not "correct"?

Why wouldn't people dispute the numbers? Mauddib, show us your "factual evidence" to support your claim that the numbers are indeed correct. You can't because it doesn't exist. If it did exist no one except neo-Nazi's would be questioning it now.

Let's look at the case of Auschwitz for example. It was deemed as an unquestionable fact that four million people (Jews and non-Jews) died there as the result of extermination. This was accepted as fact for many years.

In 1989 this "fact" was disputed by noted Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer as a "deliberate myth." After purporting the number to be between 2-4 million, Bauer scaled it down to 1,600,000 (of which, he states, 1,350,000 were Jewish).

Why is Mr. Bauer, the Director of the Division of Holocaust
Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of
Contemporary Jewry, insisting that far fewer people,
including far fewer Jews, died at Auschwitz than is commonly
reported? "A historian's first duty is to tell the truth," Mr.
Bauer said. And in this case, the truth is horrible enough.
Exaggerating the number of dead at Auschwitz, he said, "would
only be grist for the mills of the deniers of the Holocaust."

"They can add, you know," he said. The four million figure,
combined with the known deaths elsewhere, would result in a
total number of Holocaust victims well above the approximate
figure of six million that has long been established by
different methods, including a comparison of European Jewish
population statistics before and after the war, he said.

Among Holocaust historians, Mr. Bauer said, the larger figures
"have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn't reached
the public and I think it's about time that it did." Mr. Bauer
contends that Polish Communists and nationalists alike
promoted the larger figures to serve a political purpose,
casting both Jewish and Polish losses in such huge numbers
that the distinction between the fate of the two groups was
blurred.

Link

The Auschwitz State Museum in Poland, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Center stated in 1990 that perhaps 1 million people died at Auschwitz. They have since upgraded the number to between;

1.3-1.5 million people were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Link

This claim is in contrast to Yehuda Bauer's count which factors in other causes of death:

Five years ago, he said, research by the French Jewish
historian Georges Wellers had established that approximately
1.6 million people were gassed, executed by other means,
tortured to death or were victims of starvation or disease at
Auschwitz. According to these findings, about 1.35 million
were Jews. There were 83,000 Polish victims, 20,000 Gypsies
and 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war. An additional 150,000
Poles were imprisoned at Auschwitz, then shipped elsewhere
where many, although not the majority, died.

French Historian, Gerald Reitlinger cites the number of Jews that died at Auschwitz to be even lower, between 800,000 and 900,000.

800,000 to 900,000 persons according to the historian Gerald Reitlinger (1953)

Link

Fritjof Meyer contended that the count was lower again; 500,000 or 510,000 persons (Jews and non-Jews).

Although not "factual" evidence, these examples do show the numbers being in a constant state of flux, even outside of Revisionist circles. They are as "factual" as your cited link to The Holocaust History Project.

...when we have witnesses who were/are Jewish and many others who were just German people trying to help Jewish people, as well as SS officers and other German soldiers who say these things happened.

Pivotal evidence at Nuremberg was supplied by Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss. Evidence that was produced via torture. So much of the "Höss Confession" has been disproved that his entire statement is worthless. Höss said this concerning his confession;

"Certainly, I signed a statement that I killed two and half million Jews. I could just as well have said that it was five million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession can be obtained, whether it is true or not."

I don't think anyone here is disputing the horrors of places like Auschwitz, and I disagree with much of Irvings work. But I don't contend that he should have been robbed of his freedom of speech.

Why quibble over numbers if we agree that horrible things happened under the Nazi's? The numbers are of vital signifigance. Scholar and author, Norman Finkelstein's book; The Holocaust Industry shows how huge sums of reparation money is misused and that deserving recipients aren't getting a dime.

Raul Hilberg, most distinguished historian on the Nazi holocaust and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, comments on the first edition of The Holocaust Industry:

"When I read Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry , at the time of its appearance, I was in the middle of my own investigations of these matters, and I came to the conclusion that he was on the right track. I refer now to the part of the book that deals with the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough."

Link

Of course Finkelstein has been branded a neo-Nazi, even though his parents were both Holocaust survivors.





[edit on 29/12/2006 by Beelzebubba]

First of all, I think i clearly mentioned that some people are trying to use "numbers" to dismiss the holocaust.

But now that you mention the numbers at Auschwitz, lets actually excerpt some information about the numbers cited..

How many people died at Auschwitz?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Foner's Spotlight article made the following assertions regarding the number of people killed at the camp:

Like most Americans, since his youth Cole had been instructed in the "irrefutable fact" that homicidal gassings had taken place at Auschwitz. The number of those so executed - also declared irrefutable - was 4.1 million.
Then came the Leuchter Report in 1988. This was followed by a "re-evaluation" of the total deaths at Auschwitz (down to 1.1 million). As a budding historian - and a Jew - Cole was intrigued.

Previous to 1992, anyone who publicly doubted the 4.1 million "gassing" deaths at Auschwitz was labeled an anti-Semite, neo-nazi skinhead (at the very least). Quietly, because of revisionist findings, the official figure was lowered to 1.1 million. No mention of that missing 3 million.


Foner's assertions are simply not true; although it is correct to note that the Polish Communist government did claim that four million people were exterminated at Auschwitz, historians (Feig, Reitlinger, Hilberg, et al.) have never supported that figure. Consider the estimates provided by Buszko at the end of his article on Auschwitz, which appeared in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust:

Of the 405,000 registered prisoners, 65,000 survived
Of the 16,000 Soviet POW's, 96 survived
Various estimates suggest 1.6 million were murdered
Buszko's article, and the above estimates, appeared in the 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia, which clearly puts the lie to Foner's comment that "anyone who publicly doubted the 4.1 million .. " figure "previous to 1992..." was "...labeled an anti-Semite...". Buszko is not only a Jewish historian, but Polish as well.
Leon Poliakov, the author of the well-documented "Harvest of Hate," which was, we note, first published in 1956, provides the following information, which clearly demonstrates that Foner's contention, cited above, is an outright lie:


After some thirty months of intense activity, the Auschwitz balance sheet showed close to two million immediate exterminations (this figure can never be fixed exactly), (8) to which one must add the deaths of some 300,000 registered prisoners - Jews for the most part, but not entirely - for whom the gas chamber was only one of any number of ways by which they might have perished. (Poliakov, 202)
(8) In his affidavits, Hoess spoke of two and a half million, 'a figure set officially,' he wrote, under the signature of [Eichmann], in a report to Himmler. This figure has been accepted by several authors, and it appears in the verdict at the trial of the major war criminals. However, there is no reason for accepting without question the statistics attributed to Eichmann, which may err on either side.

Adding the number of victims to those deported from different countries gives a lower figure, although we have little data, for example, on the number of Polish Jews sent to Auschwitz. An approximate figure in the neighborhood of two million seems closer to the truth." (Ibid.)

www.nizkor.org...

Some people are just trying to dispute numbers, to bring doubts into the holocaust. People like Irving want to claim there were no gasing of Jewish people, and that it was not the fault of Hitler, but the fault of the coalition to what happened to these people. That is the whole point and that is why people like Irving are "disputing numbers."



[edit on 29-12-2006 by Muaddib]

Some more informaiton from that same link i gave above.

Feig also provides evidence of the false nature of Foner's comment when she notes that:

Höss testified that the Tesch directors could not help but know of the use for their product because they sold him enough to annihilate two million people.'

Feig's book was published in 1981
According to Snyder, Adolf Eichmann reported to Himmler, in 1944, that four million had been killed in the camps, and another million had been shot or killed by mobile units. (Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. 1989) Eichmann's report, which referenced all the camps (most of which were in Nazi-occupied Poland), may have been the source of the Polish Communist government's figures. (Snyder is a Professor of History at the City College and the City University of New York.)

During the war crimes trials, Höss was was asked if it was true that he had no exact numbers because he had been forbidden to compile them, and he agreed. He also agreed that Adolf Eichmann had told him that that more than two million people had been exterminated there. (von Lang, 120)

The Institut Fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, provided the following capsulated paragraph about Auschwitz in a March, 1992, letter of inquiry. (See auschwitz IFZ.report)

www.nizkor.org...