Why there is so much excitement about
Holocaust Denial and to whom the HD is dangerous? Who were
the first Holocaust Deniers?
Shraga Elam
These questions are now more relevant
considering the uproar around the recent Holocaust
conference in Iran. Hardly so much attention would have been
paid to deniers of the earth circulating the sun.
The common explanation, if not to say
excuse, is that the Holocaust deniers are Judeophobes, with
the prime example of Iran, which desires to achieve a
nuclear bomb in order to destroy Israel.
Without getting into a detailed
discussion about the nuclear issue, it is important to
remember a fact that is not widely known: Iran can already
hit strategic targets in Israel that are located in densely
populated areas today, and thus might create damage that is
no smaller that an A-bomb. E.g., a study of the Israeli
Institute of Technology, the Technion, stated that a direct
hit at the huge ammoniac container near Haifa may cause the
death of 100-200 thousands persons. The Israeli engineer,
Shabtai Azriel, who has been warning for years against such
a danger, drew attention to the fact that the A-bomb dropped
over Nagasaki caused the death of "just" 70,000 people.
We can therefore argue that today a
Balance of Terror or Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) already exists between Iran and Israel. In spite of the fiery
declarations Iran does not attack Israel and thus proves
that the possession of an A-bomb does not necessarily change
the situation. Just like the situation during the "Cold War"
there is an urgent need to build better mechanisms that will
prevent a terrible "accident".
For the time being Holocaust denial is
an act damaging mainly the persons committing something so
despicable and those who profit most out of it are what
might be called the priests and prophets of the Holocaust
religion and Israel. They take advantage of every chance in
order to recycle their merchandise, with the result of
actually causing it to rot because of the overkill and
abuse. It seems that the Holocaust religion and the
Holocaust denial, like Siamese twins, need each other and
both prevent a secular and factual historiography of the
Nazi Judeocide and its implications.
The present conference in Teheran and
especially the participation of Neturei Karta caused severe
damage to the critical position towards the abuse of the
Nazi Judeocide. This occurred because the participants
helped to blur the borders between legitimate criticism
against the Holocaust Religion and a racist stance.
The Holocaust Religion sanctifies and
sustains various axioms unnecessarily, e.g. the figure of
six millions which creates the false impression that an
allegedly smaller number of victims would reduce the moral
impact of this Judeocide.
There is no doubt that most if not all
the present Holocaust deniers are Judeophobes. Still,
without intending to justify their repulsive point of view,
it is important to point out that among the first Holocaust
deniers were leading currents among the Zionist Jewish
community (Yishuv) in Palestine during the Nazi era. This
means that the denial in real time was not just a denial in
the framework of a theoretical historical debate but had
direct and very significant implications upon rescue
activities, or rather the lack of them. This kind of denial
had fateful outcomes that found their results in the
attitude towards the Nazi Judeocide victims.
For example, the daily Davar (of the leading Labor party
MAPAI) on March 17, 1942 responded to reports about
Hungarian soldiers returning from the front who had told
about the massacre of 250,000 Jews in the Ukraine:
"The irresponsible informers add
themselves to the killing of Jews. They accept every rumor;
they look persistently for every bad message, for every
deadly number and represent them to the readers and
newspapers in a blood- chilling form and content… We know
how reliable the testimonies of certain soldiers returning
from the front are and how they boast about their great
deeds in killing people and especially Jews… Take it easy,
informers and newspapers, in pouring Jewish blood into your
lines."
The paper Hatzofe, from the Zionist
religious movement on March 18, 1942, went even further:
"We have commented several times on
the pathetic habit practiced by several papers of the
country to inflate every bad rumor about pouring blood of
Jews, to exaggerate the number of dead and to surround them
with a black frame; this in order to blacken the blackness
and increase the impression. What for? Don't we have enough
problems in Israel? Is
there not enough blood of Israel [of Jews] that has really
been poured everywhere? Do we have to add to that
exaggerations and embellishments? Will the informers and
newspapers listen? Will they learn a lesson?"
Though these reports did not refer to
extermination with gas and there are even many persons who
try to find explanations and excuses for this cruel
attitude, it was unacceptable even from a pure journalistic
professional point and this was not an isolated incident of
rejecting information about extermination of Jews and its
denial. We are talking about a structural systematic failure
and not just about a restricted singular flop.
Very symbolic is the slap that the head
of the Jewish Agency's Immigration Department, Eliyahu
Dobkin, got from a woman who returned in November 1942 with
other Palestinian Jews from Poland and reported the
Judeocide. Dobkin, as a representative of the whole Zionist
community, truly earned that slap because he dared to claim
that the woman was lying. Dobkin, an actual minister in
the pre-state government, positioned himself thus in a place
much worse than that of David Irving.
More than just a simple denial is
embodied in the declaration of the most important Zionist
leader David Ben-Gurion: "Of course we have
information about those things [the Judeocide], but this
issue is not a central factor of the Yishuv's reality."
Very indicative is the moving cry from
Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel that remained without a
serious answer. The original Weismmandel letter exists in
the archive of Nathan Dror-Schwalb, who served as a Zionist
representative in Geneva during WWII:
"Though we told you several times
what is really happening, is it possible that you believe
murderous criminals more than you believe us, the murdered
persons – is it possible? The blessed G_d will open your
eyes and will give you the right to save those still alive
in the last hour."
In another letter Weissmandel wrote: "You
are cruel, you are murderers because of your cruel silence
and inactivity."
The low priority for rescue activities
given by the Jewish Agency, the sabotage of serious rescue
plans and the shameful treatment that the survivors received
after WWII and until today, build the worst kind of denial.
All those denying, blurring or justifying this serious
crime negate their moral justification to condemn
Ahmadinejad and his nasty friends.
Shraga Elam
Zurich/Switzerland
Shraga Elam is a journalist and the
author of several critical publications about the role of
Jewish organizations and Switzerland during the Nazi era.
This is a modified version of an article
published originally in the Israeli website News First Class
(NFC), December 17, 2006
http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/003-D-19457-00.html?tag=17-24-25
