Letter to the Editor Cynthia Price Editor "The Bulletin" 1200 Commercial Street, Box 4068 Emporia, Kansas 66801 U.S.A. Dear Cynthia Price: I would like to respond to the advertisement placed recently in your newspaper by Mr Bradley R. Smith and his follow-up letter. Since Mr Smith portrays himself as being in favour of open debate on the Holocaust, I am sure he and you would welcome this letter. Mr Smith's comments about free speech and First Amendment rights are most impressive on the surface. But I would ask you to consider this. When Mr Smith's website CODOH, which ironically stands for "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust", began hosting a moderated discussion group last year, his appointed moderator, whose pseudonym is David Thomas, immediately stifled any debate from those who opposed the "revisionist" viewpoint. Meanwhile, "revisionists" were permitted to post just about anything they wanted, including personal insults. Ask yourselves why a champion of open debate insisted on a moderated discussion group and had one of his acolytes censor posts. Is this his notion of free speech, or does free speech apply only to "revisionists"? Is this "open" debate? Ask yourselves why so many of Mr Smith's associates post under pseudonyms. Are they not even convinced enough of their rectitude to identify themselves? Mr Smith talks about those who "support the taboo against open debate on the Holocaust controversy [sic]". But he doesn't choose to state what that controversy is. What he doesn't tell you is that there is no controversy about the occurrence of the Holocaust, except in the minds of a very few people like Mr Smith! And you should ask yourselves why these people invent this so-called controversy. The historicity of the Holocaust has been established beyond any doubt over the past 50 years. The seminal writing in this field, notably Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews, Gerald Reitlinger's Final Solution, Lucy Dawidowicz's War Against the Jews, and Leni Yahil's The Holocaust, to name only four, recount the horrors of the Holocaust, and do so by employing proper historical methodology. When Mr Smith states that some professors will be "critical" of his advertisement, he fails to point out that those professors are offended by the unacademic and dishonest methods that "revisionists" employ. And with good reason. You see, "revisionists" are nothing more than Holocaust deniers who try to gain respectability by assigning themselves a label that describes legitimate historical methodology. All good historians revise their theories based on the latest state of the knowledge. But "revisionists" break every one of the rules that legitimate historians follow. They discard evidence that doesn't support their preconceived notions. They distort documents and thereby change their meanings. They quote events out of sequence to construct false scenarios. They translate German to English incorrectly in order to deceive those who do not know German. And when all else fails, they claim documents, photographs, letters, testimonies, confessions, speeches are fake, extracted under torture, forgeries or that the simple words used do not mean what they say. Thus, "exterminate" does not mean "kill", "annihilate" means "evacuate", "gas chamber" means "air raid shelter" and other such foolishness. Thus, they don't just quibble about Holocaust details, as they will try to have you believe. Rather, they deny that it happened. They deny the gas chambers, the plan to kill European Jews, the number killed and all the rest. They don't revise, they deny. So, they tell us, we have this giant conspiracy to convince the world that the Jews were systematically exterminated in World War II. Mind you, they are unable to explain how this conspiracy has endured for over 50 years and not one single conspirator has confessed. President Clinton could have benefited from the same high level of secrecy! Nor have they been able to produce even one forged document, one faked speech. Ask Mr Smith who he believes is at the root of this conspiracy and why it has been perpetrated. Well, as the saying goes, scratch a denier and quite quickly, an antisemite appears. So, don't be surprised when the answer is that the Jews or the state of Israel are behind all this. I urge your readers to find out the facts for themselves. Visit Mr Smith's website and see for yourselves how they twist and distort history. Read for yourselves their attitudes towards Jews and their barely disguised admiration for Hitler and his policies. Note their implications of Jewish conspiracies. And ask yourselves this: If they are "right,, why are they reduced to placing ads in newspapers? Why did they stifle debate on their own discussion group? And why do they fear to debate the issues in an unmoderated forum, such as alt.revisionism on the Internet? I think the answers will be obvious. Sincerely yours, Gordon McFee Ottawa, Ontario Canada
		Last modified: April 22, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Gordon McFee. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: [email protected]