Frequently Asked Questions

We humbly admit that we are no fans of the disorganized and slightly infantile documentation fashion called 'FAQs'. But we know when to pay tribute to our time and when not.

This very useful colection of questions on 'holocaust' history has been compiled by the Institute of Historical Revisionism (IHR), California.

This version has been formatted and annotated by Vistas Revisionistas.

Holocaust Revisionism Frequently Asked Questions

Institute of Historical Review (IHR)

1. What is historical revisionism?

As more facts about past events come to light, it becomes necessary to re-evaluate them taking the new information into account. All history is constantly being reviewed. It is a natural process. It is an important process. The only way to judge the future is to accurately compare current trends and events to those of earlier times. It has been said that the good thing about experience is that one can recognize a mistake when it is made again. So it is with history, the sum of recorded human experience. Historical revisionism is the process of changing the human record so that it more accurately represents events as they actually occurred.
Often there is resistance to the process of bringing history in accord with the facts. The reason for this is history is not simply a record of events, but is also a resource from which a world view is drawn. A re-examination or re-evaluation of important historical events can be viewed as a threat to the political status quo and to interests upon whose power partially rests the established view of these events. It has also been said that historians have the power to upset everything. Vested interests take a dim view of having everything upset.

Source: "A few facts about the Institute For Historical Review." pamphlet / IHR

2. What is the Holocaust?

The Holocaust, or Shoah, is the term used to label the fate of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis during World War Two. It is a broad term used to cover all events involving Europe's Jews usually between 1933 and 1945, and especially during the six year period between November 1938 (Kristallnacht) and November 1944 (alleged Himmler order to stop the Final Solution program) . Six extermination centers are said to have been established between 1941 and 1943 by the Nazis in Poland for the purpose of killing Jews and "other minorities." The number of Jews killed by the Nazis during this period is generally estimated to have been six million.

"The Holocaust" : An all-encompassing neologism used in reference to the (alleged) extermination of European Jews by the Nazis during World War Two. Use of the term in this context presumes the following:

(1) The Nazis implemented and succeeded in a premeditated plan to destroy (not resettle) European Jewry,

(2) Approximately six million or more Jews perished as a result, and

(3) A majority of these were killed by use of poison gas (Zyklon B) [and internal combustion engine exhaust] in gas chambers built for the purpose of taking human life. [...]

Source: "Worldwide Growth and Impact of 'Holocaust' Revisionism" - IHR Special Report 1985

3. Do revisionists 'deny the Holocaust'?

The phrase "Holocaust denial" was invented by a Holoscribe named Deborah Lipstadt who occupies the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Its purpose is to imply Holocaust revisionists are not rational in their opinions. Dr. Lipstadt believes the current view of the Holocaust cannot be questioned and debate on the topic cannot be tolerated. To this end she created the epithet "Holocaust denier." Revisionists are skeptical of postwar testimony of gas chambers at the Nazi concentration camps and are of the opinion the six million figure is a baseless exaggeration.
It is not a matter of denying anything. The issue is whether this emotionally charged and politically important event can be examined critically. Researchers--some professional, some amateur--have been questioning aspects of the Nazi extermination story since the war ended fifty years ago. The evidence has been difficult to obtain, but in the last twenty-five years enough has been gathered to conclude the gas chamber story is definitely false and the Nazi program to kill the Jews is a myth.
The problem that has arisen is established political interests have done their best to suppress this research and prevent the evidence to support these startling conclusions from being presented to the general public.

Source: Lipstadt, Irving, Butz, Faurisson, Mattogno, Others.

4. What aspects of the Holocaust do revisionists believe to be supported by evidence?

Here is a summary of what happened to the Jews:

Before the war, the Nazis encouraged emigration of German Jewry. Laws were instituted and governmental pressures were brought to bear to make life more difficult for Jews in many professions which Jews came to dominate in the Weimar Republic. The "Ha'avara" or transfer agreement was reached with Zionist leaders to facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. Emigrating Jews very often were forced to abandon much of their wealth when they left Germany.
After the defeat of France, a plan was discussed by the Nazis to remove the Jews from Europe to the French colony on Madagascar. This plan was soon dropped in favor of a resettlement plan which transferred Jews into ghettos and work camps inside Soviet territory following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. This was to be the first stage toward the ultimate creation of a Jewish homeland after the war.
As the Germans invaded and the Russians retreated, large shifts in population occurred in eastern Europe. This shift went from west to east. Tens of millions of people were involved. Many were forcibly deported into the Russian interior. Others willingly accompanied the Communists as the Red Army retreated eastward. General Gehlen estimated in his memoirs that a third of the population in the areas the German army was to occupy was evacuated eastward ahead of the German invasion.
Since Jews were viewed by many eastern Europeans as willing accomplices of the Communists who had occupied the area in the years and months preceding the German assault, pogroms occurred after the retreat of the Red Army and prior to arrival of the German army. Many of these assaults on local Jews were in reaction to the murdering of political prisoners by the Soviet police as they prepared to retreat.
These events left areas of eastern Europe, now occupied by the German Wehrmacht and under Nazi administration depopulated.
The Nazis took the situation as an opportunity to remove Jews eastward into the areas abandoned during the Soviet retreat. Jews were assembled at train terminals and deported to ghettos and concentration camps established for them in the east. Some Jews were not deported, however, due to the fact their work was considered too important to the German war effort.
A result of the tremendous movement of people many families and communities were scattered and people lost contact with one another. Many of these contacts were not reestablished after the war due to a multitude of reasons the greatest of which were the splitting of Europe in two after the war and the establishment of the state of Israel.
Guerrilla groups were formed to fight the Nazi occupation. A campaign of sabotage and assassination by these groups was countered by repression on the part of the occupiers in the form of the Einsatz groups. The Einsatzgruppen fought the partisans in ways which included reprisal shooting of civilians. Jews were believed to make up the majority of partisans. They were also the people targeted for reprisals. These reprisals took several forms which included the shooting of hostages or their deportation to ghettos and concentration camps.
During the summer of 1942 a major typhus epidemic swept the Nazi concentration camp system. The most severely affected camp was Auschwitz camp in Poland. The epidemic continued for many months. Crematories were built in some of the concentration camps as part of hygienic measures established to fight the epidemics. The fumigant Zyklon B was used to exterminate the typhus-bearing body louse which spread the disease. The total number of Jews and others who died in the camps is not known, but the total is probably in the hundreds of thousands.
As the Germans suffered military reversals in 1944 and 1945, the Nazis took many who were in labor camps with them as they retreated westward. Others were left behind. As this happened, tens of millions of people were again uprooted as civilians abandoned almost everything in an effort to escape the approaching Red Army. The migration in 1941-42 was eastward. In 1944-45 it was westward.
In the beginning, Europe's Jewish communities were concentrated in eastern Europe. By the end of the war, Europe's Jews were still in eastern Europe, but the communities were shattered. Tens of millions of people, particularly Germans and Jews were left homeless by the war. As a result, millions of Jews emigrated. Many settled in Palestine. Many more moved to North America. Others settled in Australia, South America, and South Africa.
The war was a boon for the Zionist movement. The Holocaust become the founding myth of modern day Israel. As such it became an excuse for behavior of the Israelis which would have been inexcusable. It also became the excuse for billions of dollars in aid and "reparations" being sent to Israel from Germany and the United States even though Israel did not exist during the war and its citizens were not subject to Nazi repression. Much of the aid the new Zionist state was to receive was for the purpose of resettling European refugees who did not want to go there, but had little alternative at the time.

Source: A. R. Butz -1976; Solzhenitsyn -1973; Walter N. Sanning 1983; Dr. Wilhelm Staeglich -1986; Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint 1972; Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess 1991; Alfred M. De Zayas 1989; Carlo Mattogno 1994; George W. Robnett 1968; Segev 1994

5. What aspects of the Holocaust do revisionists believe to be unsupported by evidence?

While there is no universal agreement on many aspects of WWII and the Holocaust, one might be classified as a Holocaust revisionist if one is skeptical of the following:

Hitler ordered the extermination of the Jews in writing , orally, or through mental telepathy.
The Nazis cremated 1,500,000 to 4,000,000 bodies at Auschwitz/Birkenau in less than two years using between 30 and 52 single-body crematory ovens and were able to keep it all a secret until late 1944 despite the fact Auschwitz was a major bombing target photographed by American planes throughout that year.
The Nazis were able to destroy all documentation of the extermination program before the total German surrender in mid 1945. This despite the fact all German secret codes had been broken by the British and many SS communications had been intercepted by them.
The Nazis settled on a plan which called for allocating scarce rail stock to transport hundreds of thousands of people halfway across Europe only to kill them when they could have killed them locally and used the rail cars for the war effort.
The Nazis used Diesel engines as a source of carbon monoxide for their gas chambers.
The Nazis designed Zyklon B gas chambers without ventilation systems or gas delivery equipment for killing people.
The Nazis dug deep pits in a marsh and were able to burn bodies in them.
The victors in a war are qualified to sit in judgment over the vanquished and able to dispense justice thereon.
Former political prisoners and common criminals are sources of accurate information regarding their jailers.
Victims don't lie and have no interest in vengeance.
The Holocaust is a uniquely evil event which is unexplainable and can be equated to no other.
Jews should be able to claim special moral authority due to having been the victims of persecution.

Source: A. R. Butz -1976; Dr. Wilhelm Staeglich -1986; Carlo Mattogno 1994; Deborah Lipstadt 1993; Robert Lenski 1989; Pressac 1988; Ball 1992

6. Wasn't the Holocaust proven at the war crimes trials?

No. The NMT and IMT set out to prove nothing. The crimes themselves were never an issue. The courts took judicial notice of the crimes. This means the crimes were assumed to be true based purely on the allegations. No proof was needed. The war crimes tribunals also suspended the normal rules of evidence. They accepted into evidence documents, hearsay testimony, and other material which would never be accepted in anything other than a sham court.
The point of the tribunals was to demonstrate the moral authority of the new world powers. In demonizing the Nazi regime through these trials England, France, The United States, and the USSR secured their positions as the occupiers of Germany and justified the annexation of German territory along with the expulsions of millions of Germans into the dismembered rump Germany.
Allied plans for the future of Germany at that time included the de- industrialization of Germany. The standard of living was to be the lowest in Europe. The economy was to be agrarian despite the fact it being the most densely populated nation on the continent.
In this context, it had to be shown to the world and the Germans themselves that they were evil and deserved the horrendous treatment they were to receive. The country was to be "de-Nazified" and reduced to the point where Germany could "never threaten world peace again."
Since the nature of the war crimes trials was purely political, nothing that went into them or came out of them should be taken at face value.

Source: A. R. Butz 1976; Alfred M. De Zayas 1989; Dr. Wilhelm Staeglich 1986; Carlos Whitlock Porter 1988

7. Didn't the Nazis themselves admit there was a program to exterminate the Jews?

Because the war crimes courts took judicial notice of the crimes, pleading innocent on the basis the crime did not occur was not an option. The strategy of many defendants was demonstrate non-involvement or distance themselves from the alleged crime. Backbiting and finger- pointing were also common. In order to save their lives, the accused placed blame on others- particularly people who were either dead, or had evaded capture by the Allies.
The jailers of the Nazis used torture and threats of torture to obtain many confessions. Sometimes threats against the prisoners' families were made. For some, like Rudolf Hoess, sleep deprivation was used to get them to sign confessions.
The contents of confessions such as those by Hoess and Kurt Gerstein are enough to simply throw them out as evidence. They contain internal contradictions, absurdities, and facts that are verifiably false.
Nevertheless most high Nazi officials who survived to be tried disputed the charge that the final solution to the Jewish question involved their elimination though mass murder . Julius Streicher stated he believed it was technically impossible to kill that many people and simply did not believe it was true or even attempted.

Source: A. R. Butz 1976; Henri Roques 1989; Dr. Wilhelm Staeglich 1986; Carlos Whitlock Porter 1988; Dietrich Ziemssen 1952; John Sack 1993; Adrian Priessinger 1994; Dr. Robert Faurisson JHR Vol. 7 No. 4 1986-87 Mark Weber JHR Vol. 12 No. 2 1992.