WARNING: It is illegal to publicly agree with the argument below in France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and many other countries. It is a further offense to suggest that these laws are the result of Jewish political power.

 

Excerpt from: Context and Perspective in the 'Holocaust' Controversy, ARTHUR R. BUTZ

(Presented at the IHR's 1982 Revisionist Conference)

 

…. In order for something to be "obvious" it ought to be figuratively before our very noses. Let us look at two of the recently published and widely discussed books in support of the extermination legend, namely Auschwitz and the Allies by Sir Martin Gilbert (biographer of Winston Churchill) and The Terrible Secret by Walter Laqueur (Director of the Institute of Contemporary History, London, and editor of the Journal of Contemporary History). The two books look at the subject from similar perspectives and cover much of the same ground.

 

At the end of his long and copiously annotated study, Gilbert writes:[7]

 

"Between May 1942 and June 1944, almost none of the messages reaching the west had referred to Auschwitz as the destination of Jewish deportees, or as a killing centre. Nor had the name of Auschwitz made any impression on those who were building up what they believed to be an increasingly comprehensive picture of the fate of the Jews."

 

On the other hand early in his shorter but also copiously annotated study Laqueur explains that mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been concealed, noting that Auschwitz was "a veritable archipelago," that "Auschwitz inmates ... were, in fact, dispersed all over Silesia, and ... met with thousands of people," that "hundreds of civilian employees ... worked at Auschwitz," and that "journalists travelled in the General Government and were bound to hear," etc.[8]

 

I have no quarrel with such observations, as I made them myself, on the basis of essentially the same considerations.[9] Now the reader of Gilbert, Laqueur, and Butz can make a very simple determination. He is being told that (a) in the period May 1942 to June 1944, those interested in such matters had no information of mass exterminations at Auschwitz and (b) mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been concealed from the world for any significant length of time. Since he is hearing the same story from both sides then, by a process of inference necessary to those who want to form an opinion but do not have the time or means to become historians, he should assume both claims true. There was no information of mass exterminations at Auschwitz during the relevant period, and mass exterminations at Auschwitz would not have been kept secre! t. Therefore, there were no mass exterminations at Auschwitz.

 

The conclusion is inescapable and requires only elementary logic. It is comparable to the syllogism: "I see no elephant in my basement; an elephant could not be concealed from sight in my basement; therefore, there is no elephant in my basement."

 

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance (first U.S. edition) or Historical Review Press, Brighton (second British edition), 1977.

Martin Gilbert,  Auschwitz and the Allies, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1981.

Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1980.

 

7. Gilbert, 340.

8. Laqueur, 22-25.

9. Butz, 87f, 92ff.