Note: All opinions are those of Pat Schwind only, & not those of anyone else at Impact Mortgage Network.
We had a real debate re: The Holocaust: History's Greatest Genocide or Outright Hoax? I’d asked dozens of Jews in the last year to “please handle this for me”, or at least provide some ‘back up’! A few did ‘show up’, but it was really just ‘amateur me’ vs. Holocaust Denier Friedrich Paul Berg”, a true academic. Most of the debate, dealt with the specific issue of ‘Gassing’. Volumes have been written on just that subject, which can be very broad in itself. We still had 17 people there at 12 noon! I had to duck into the corner booth at 11:30 to work on a deal.
Before I recap, I must address something that’s been “stickin’ in my crawl” since I started the research for this project, ~ a year ago. I’m so sick & tired of people, mostly Jews, telling me “How dare you debate this subject!” Folks, just because it’s “all been decided” in your mind, means nothing to lots of the world, & the White Supremacy – Denier movements are “on steroids” today. “Skeptics” magazine founder & co-author of “Denying History” (2000; p. 16 – 17), Michael Shermer, says WE MUST STAND UP to the deniers, with real facts & tangible evidence, not just slogans & name calling. If we don’t, they eventually win.
Friedrich Paul Berg, ("Fritz"), has been studying the Holocaust for decades. Revisionists always say they don’t hate Jews, & Fritz did a good job trying to hide it, but I think those folks just don’t like Jews. If not for a profound dislike for certain people, for the wrong reasons, many of these people are prob’ly “nice guys”. If not for a couple of comments that "showed his true colors", I think that a real panel of academic judges, using true debate analysis techniques, would have given the win to Fritz. As it was, I think that most people who believe as I do, the "Traditionalists", thought I won "hands down". In reality, I'd say "not at all".
The revisionists in the crowd thought that Fritz won w/o doubt. No wonder; he did a great job for his cause, by having a very well prepared "slide presentation", that rivals some of the best "power-point" shows I've ever seen.
So who won? Hell if I know. But it literally "drained me". I was simply exhausted (mentally), by the time I had to "duck out" (into a corner booth, to talk biz with a friend). I felt like I do after I use my butchered Spanish to deal with Hispanic folks, for an hour or two. (I always have some fluent translator, usually some "joven" (teen) child or niece/nephew.) I was simply "wiped out" at the end, at least in terms of my ability to adequately fend off more charges of "it's just a hoax".
Let's start the wrap up by summarizing briefly, the basics of the two competing arguments. Most traditionalists believe that ~ 6 million Jews & 5 - 10 million other "pure innocents", were systematically murdered by the Nazi's, starting in the late 1930's. The "others" were not armed "soldiers" in an army officially "at war" with Germany, but consisted of gentile (non-Jewish) leaders & members of labor unions, opposition political parties, & various underground organizations, along with boat loads of Gypsies, religious leaders, homosexuals, college professors & other intellectuals, "trouble makers" of various sorts, & just a lot of poor unfortunates who just wouldn't "get with the program", or simply "got in the way" somehow.
Furthermore, most traditionalists believe that ~ half of the Jews murdered, died by systematic "gassing", which occurred in the 6 major "extermination camps", equipped with gas chambers & crematoria: Auschwitz, Majdanek (aka Lublin), Chelmno (aka Kulmhof), Treblinka, Sobibor & Belzec, all of which were in the captured territories of Poland. The gas used was either diesel exhaust, or cyanide gas fumes produced by "Zyklon-B" pellets.
They also believe that there were 17 major "concentration camps", that did not have gas chambers, but in which perhaps a million or more Jewish victims alone died of exposure, disease or starvation, along with perhaps a million or more "others". These are called "work camps" by the revisionists: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Flossenburg, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler, Stutthof, Ravensbruck, Hinzert, Riga, Herzogenbusch, Vaivara, Kauen, Warsaw, & Mauthausen.
Note: Shermer & Grobman in "Denying History", 2000, pg. 168, produced a confession of the camp commandant of Mauthausen, in which he stated that the camp did in fact have a crude "make shift" gas chamber. Also, revisionists claim that Auschwitz & Majdanek were really huge "hybrid" camps, that actually had gas chambers, but the main purpose was for "forced labor" only, with no intention to exterminate anyone.
Traditionalists believe that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of smaller "concentration camps", & lots of "specific actions" involving no real "camp" at all, but which resulted in the murder of hundreds, sometimes thousands of innocents. To his credit, Fritz admitted that there were "ten thousand" (10,000) such "camps" &/or "Aktions"! However, he believes "nobody died intentionally" at any of these places!
Traditionalists believe that most of the murders resulted from a coordinated & systematic plan on the part of the Nazis, discussed & finalized at the famous "Wannsee Conference", (eventually approved by Hitler although he was not "in attendance"), held in a Berlin suburb, in January of 1942.
Personally, I believe most of this, except that the number of Jews murdered was really in the 4 to 5 million range, not 6.
The revisionists, often called "deniers", believe that the Holocaust was not "the most documented event in human history", but was the greatest Hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, by Zionists, to create sympathy for an official state for the Jews, (Israel), & establish an "industry of Jewish victimology".
They admit that millions of people were "rounded up & put behind barbed-wire", but that this was a necessity on the part of Hitler's regime, because the Jews were traitors & socialists, & were going to undermine the German government, & eventually turn the nation over to Joe Stalin. It's very common to hear from deniers, that "the Jews deserved whatever happened to them, because they were traitors, but there was never any intention to murder anyone."
They say that after WWII started, the Germans needed "forced labor", because the nation was under attack from both without, by the Allies, & from the Jews within. They claim that there was no plan to kill anyone, and specifically, no Wannsee Conference, even though historians have seen the actual ("original") "minutes" of the meeting, taken by Adolf Eichmann!! "Rounding up" the Jews was just a convenient method of keeping an eye on the enemy within, & get a "two-for-one", in the form of the forced labor from these traitors.
They deny that gas chambers were used to kill anyone, but were used instead to "delouse" clothing, shoes, blankets & railroad cars, used by the inmates, (via "Zyklon-B", producing cyanide gas), in order to kill vermin (rats, mice & roaches), that carried the typhus bacteria. The only inmates who died from anything but "natural causes", were "simply the unfortunate victims of disease & starvation, in the last year of the war, because the Allies had 'strafed' the transportation lines so bad, that food & medicine could not be shipped anywhere in Germany or its conquered territories. So these people died right along with the ("real") Germans, and had it no worse than the average German citizen."
The "final numbers" on the death toll, (of Jews & "others" combined), according to most deniers is really in the quarter to a half million range!! And "of course they deserved it!.... They were traitors!" Deniers point to all the "survivors" still alive in 2003 -- 1.1 to 1.2 million -- ("per Jewish sources" Fritz said), & then extrapolate back-wards using expected mortality rates for normally healthy populations, to conclude that "there's no way 6 million Jews died in the War, if there's still over a million left in 2003".
I countered that his methodology was possibly flawed, since many "survivors" aren't Jews at all, which severely limits the validity of such extrapolation. But I wish I had a real expert there to handle that one better. It really deserved a much better rebuttal than I provided.
The deniers claim that "nobody dies from the exhaust of diesel engines", & if the Nazis really wanted to gas anyone, they had a much more lethal & efficient means to do so, with the readily available "producer (Holzen) gas", (made from wood chips & charcoal), which they used to power all types of machinery & vehicles, since soon after the end of WWI.
And if all these millions died, where are the bones & mass graves? They deny the fact that anthropologists & forensic historians have in fact found scores, (perhaps hundreds), of mass graves, & quite often, to "cover their tracks" in the face of impending defeat in the final stages of the war, many mass graves were quickly exhumed by the Nazis, the bodies burned in huge bonfires, & the bones "sifted" from the ashes, to leave less evidence of the madness.
Fritz's first picture in the slide show was of a mass grave at one of the major death camps, showing hundreds of emaciated corpses. His point was supposed to be that when anyone dies, they look bad, even at nice clean hospitals in America. I countered that I've been to lots of (pre-funeral) "viewings", & visited many dying people in hospitals, & I've never seen anyone who looks like a starved victim of Nazi evil, even "on their death bed", or in the casket.
The only images that "come anywhere close", are pictures of "POW's" at other concentration camps in history, e.g. Andersonville in the US Civil War, Bosnians & Croats in Serbian camps in the 1990's, or Allied soldiers in Japanese camps in WWII. To make a healthy human shrivel up to ~ half their normal body weight takes a concerted effort over a period of time. Most "sick people" die way before they get to that point, from the other deleterious effects of disease.
Fritz claimed that in his book "Crime Doctor", US Army doctor Charles P. Carson, "after performing hundreds of autopsies at more than one major so-called death camp, could not find one camp victim who died from gas inhalation." This is supposed to support the notion that "nobody died in gas chambers". I said that I could not respond adequately to that claim because I was not familiar with the book, the author, or the methodology involved.
(That's why I wanted a real expert to handle the debate in the first place!) But I stated that I really didn't care if even one victim died from "gassing", since it's the shear number of murders that I feel is significant, not so much the method used.
I then stated that the Nazi's really did not need to use gas at all to kill any one individual: "After somebody stands around in the snow & mud for a while, when almost naked, with virtually no nutrition or medical care, & then suddenly gets crammed into a box like sardines, with almost no room for fresh air, you don't need to pump any gas into the chamber. The people will soon die of what might look like "natural causes", when in fact they'd most likely be perfectly healthy, if not for the Nazis dragging them out of their homes & offices, & throwing them out into the elements, with virtually no food, clean water, or protection from the elements!"
But reason falls on deaf ears, when the real basis for someone's argument justifying genocide, is that the victims were the "bad guys", & "deserved it anyway".
I tried to use more "generalist" arguments, versus Fritz's reliance on the specifics of the gassing issue. I quoted Michael Shermer briefly, ("Denying History", pg. 33), to explain that the reason we know that the Holocaust happened & was as bad as most scholars believe, is due to the "convergence of evidence", including ...."Written documents....Eyewitness testimony....Photograghs & films.....The camps themselves....(& finally) Inferential evidence."
Each category has a number of elements. One of the most incriminating forms of evidence is the shear volume of confessions from former SS guards, officers & camp commanders. Of course Fritz countered, as do all deniers, that these confessions were coerced via torture. I responded: "I admit that the Nuremberg Tribunals were a travesty of justice, especially by American standards,& I don't doubt that a number of confessions, perhaps a majority, were coerced. But that doesn't mean the information derived wasn't true, even though I detest the means by which it was derived!"
I then referenced some passages from "Denying History" (pg. 137), about SS Unterscharfuhrer (Sergeant) Perry Broad, who was a guard at Auschwitz from 1942 until the camp was liberated in January of '45. He was captured (5-6-45) by the Brits, & then worked for them (while in prison), as an interpretor. While in this position, he wrote a memoir about the "use of gas chambers as mechanisms of mass murder by gassing."
This memoir is quite detailed, & is backed up by many other confessions of Auschwitz officers, such as Rudolf Hoss, camp commandant from 5-20-40 to 11-11-43; ("Denying History", pg. 139). Broad was released in late '47. "In April, 1959, Broad was called to testify at a trial of captured Auschwitz SS members & acknowledged the authorship of the memoir, confirmed its validity, & retracted nothing"; (pg. 137). So I told Fritz: "Broad was not lying & not tortured in 1959. If he were, it would have been an international scandal."
Fritz had no valid reply, stating that "if Broad had recanted, (in '59), it would have been a self imposed death sentence", but did not explain how. When I pressed the issue, he came back with, "...Perry Broad is an interesting case,...you can't believe it happened that way....." Ahh, the standard line you hear often from deniers: "this is all a hoax"
He then said that I am "part of a monstrous hoax", & should be ashamed of myself. Furthermore, "America has nothing to be proud of in WWII! The Americans mercilessly fire bombed thousands of innocent people in Hamburg & Dresden. Why don't we see any pictures of that atrocity?"
I replied that war crimes by any party are wrong, & America is not without its own "skeletons", particularly regarding treatment of innocent civilians, (especially women), & captured POW's also. A member of the audience & I both brought up the fact that General Patton advocated rape as an instrument of war, to terrorize a population. I even agreed with Fritz, re: "rape was part of a Soviet soldiers job description." (My words, not his).
(Patton was such a sick man. But the military often thrives on the acts of psychos!! Anybody remember Vietnam?? Most people don't know that the Japs were trying to sue for peace, (1945), when we Nuked "em! OUCH!! Not gonna read that in your high school history book. Harry Truman said that "if we had not won WWII, we'd be on trial for War Crimes!")
But just because the Allies could be hideous & brutal at times, does not mean that what the Germans did to the Jews, & all the "others", was justified.
Again, I really don't care so much if it was 3 or 6 million Jews, or if anybody was gassed. I've met 6 "survivors" (all Jews I believe), & I believe their gut retching stories. I believe the pictures taken by the camp inmates (via cameras they smuggled into the camps with them, while under orders from the Nazis to "take clothing for a few days"), because the same (corroborating) pictures were taken by Nazi guards & officers.
I've read a number of books, & seen a bunch of documentaries & presentations on the subject. I subscribe to the "Barnes Review", which should be called "The Journal of Jewish Hatred"; it was required reading for a "reading group" I fell into, in late '08. I got kicked out after 7 strait (once a month) meetings, because the core members got tired of me calling them "crazy" & "Jew Haters". But I'm glad I get it, because it really gives one an idea of how "warped", otherwise intelligent people can be.
But one of the biggest reasons I believe the Holocaust happened, is that as a child, I lived around lots of people (in Baltimore in the 60's & early 70's), who hated all kinds of people. I rode a school bus with proud card carrying members of the Junior KKK. The people who hated Jews were the same folks who hated Blacks, & Puerto Ricans, & Catholics.
We were Catholics, & my folks stood up for the Blacks & Jews. In 1960, we took a family of Mexicans (from San Antonio, Tx), into our home for a week, while one daughter was inducted into a novitiate program, (Sisters of the Sacred Heart), with a sister of mine. These people spoke no English, & must have been "field hands", they were so DARK!! Darker than ~ half the "Black" folks in Baltimore at the time! I was 4 years old & had no idea how dangerous that was at the time. We were called "Nigger Lovers". My folks wore it like a badge of honor!
Then "the Troubles" started heating up in Ireland a few years later, & my mother, being half Irish, half Scottish, taught us to hate the English. Then Martin Luther King got killed a few years later, & my dad drove a Metro Bus thru some real "war zones" in the heart of Baltimore, at night (to earn extra dough), while the horizon was literally "on fire". So he got a little uptight about Black folks.
Many of my brothers, & some nephews, (I got a ton of 'em), became somewhat racist; some claim it's due to military experience with poor Blacks who "had a chip on their shoulder". Hmmmmmmmm? If I were a Black man, I'd be a terrorist. (If anything happens to Marie, I might have to consider it. This Mortgage gig often blows big time!)
The point is that even intelligent people, given enough stress, can do totally whack stuff. Germans (& many other people in Central & Western Europe), had a history of virulent "exterminationist anti-semitism", being preached from the pulpit, by both Catholic & Protestant clergy, for centuries before anybody ever heard of Adolph Hitler. (Check out the first few chapters of "Hitler's Willing Executioners", Daniel Goldhagen, 1996. I like Goldhagen; Fritz calls him a "congenital liar".)
The Germans were, like so many groups over much of Europe, battered by the bad luck of a cold climate, poor harvests, "Black Plague" & other periodic epidemics, & worst of all, "Religion in Action", (per historian James Burke, in his fascinating historical series, "Connections".)
When the king or duke or bishop can't explain why the life of the average yeoman, serf or soldier is so wretched, they look for somebody to blame. It's often the witches, or immigrants, or "those people", or much of the time in history, the Jews! It's real convenient to hate Jews, & easy, if you're not a Jew, because they're so "different", prob'ly speak another language, go to church on a different day than Sunday, eat "funny foods", dress a little weird, sing strange songs....etc.
It's convenient to hate Jews, because there's so few of them, they "rarely put up much of a fight." And if you defeat them, you get all the cool stuff they amassed from being so dog gone thrifty & efficient. They can make a guy down right jealous. Especially if he's unemployed, & not getting any "regular action".
Then you get a bunch of rich old white guys who mess up the world with lots of war, & the subsequent debts & economic ruin war causes, & suddenly, "WOW, we gotta real catastrophe on our hands!" Time to blame somebody.
The Treaty of Versailles put the screws to the Germans something ferocious, to placate the French for what the Prussians had done to France in the 1880's. This crushed the German economy & spirit. So they responded by hyper-inflating their currency, to lessen the damage of their war reparations. But this only sent their economy into a greater tailspin, as the German Mark became a joke currency, worth more as wall paper than a medium of exchange. A true economic meltdown hit the nation, & unemployment soared along with the price level. The country was desperate for a miracle.
Along came a charismatic, Messianic man, who had the confidence of George W. Bush, & an army of "Brown Shirts" willing to beat their way into power, at all costs, even if it meant the destruction of the Republic that Germany had forged from a series of individual kingdoms. He promised full employment, national values, a restoration of German pride, a stable currency, & a great future. Only a couple of hitches:
1) Break the Versailles Treaty: stop reparations, start the arms industry again, build up a massive military; and
2) Get rid of the "undesirables" like the mentally retarded, "seriously crippled or infected", "disease ridden", repeat offenders, trouble makers,...& especially, the Jews!
Average Germans loved the guy, & in January, 1933 they gave his Nazi party enough votes in the Reichstag (Parliament), that he was made Chancellor (Prime Minister).
The Holocaust was able to evolve into the massive killing operation it was, because it "got warmed up" years before Kristallnacht (11-9-38), starting with the opening of Dachau (a "work camp"), in March of '33, & the sterilization of thousands of the mentally retarded, & diseased criminals, starting in '34. The killing of these segments of society, along with other trouble makers, began in 1939. First with overdoses of sedatives, then by gassing. But the secrecy could not be sustained, so Hitler signed an order terminating the euthanasia program in August of 1941, after ~ 200,000 people were murdered; ("Denying History", pg. 124, 125 & 273).
Just like a person is not born evil, they have to be molded & shaped by their environment, choices & circumstances to end up that way, the average "good German" wasn't a "born killer", "champin' at the bit" to go kill Jews the day they joined the Hitler Youth Movement. Such desensitized took many years, generations really, until the average German eventually came to a point at which killing was just the next logical step. If you went to a church where the minister or priest is equating Jews with the devil, and your teacher at school feels the same way, & lots of people in your family feel the same way, eventually even "nice guys" can get psyched to do some horrible things. The Germans did just that. It was the Holocaust, and we have overwhelming tangible evidence that it really did happen.