War of the Words: The
Holocaust
by Frank Scott
During an exceptionally rude introduction
of President Ahmadinejad of Iran , a
university president announced that the holocaust was the most documented event
in history. While this overstatement was in keeping with most of his remarks, it
provokes a question: exactly what do we mean when we say “the
holocaust”?
When someone is called a “holocaust denier”, what is being
denied? Confusion over those words is being used to cloud minds and threaten
another war in the middle east, once again for reasons that cannot be
substantiated in the material world but are simply political excuses to commit
mass murder.
Those who express doubt about some key aspects of the story of
nazi persecution of Jews in Europe during the
second world war are often imprisoned or face threats to their very lives. We
witnessed the spectacle of a head of state invited to speak at an American
university and introduced with the most scurrilous language imaginable, all
provoked by that leader’s alleged “denial” of the holocaust, along with his
supposed existential threat to the Jewish state of Israel. And when speaking of
one, the other must be addressed, since there is no rationale for the Jewish
state of Israel without “the
holocaust”.
There is no question about the dreadful treatment of European
Jews by the nazis, their racist persecution , their deportation from homelands
to concentration and labor camps where tens of thousands died under the most
deplorable conditions . Nor is there any question that many suffered massacres
outside of camps , whether conducted by Germans or others acting under their
rule. These things, as the crude academic claimed, are well documented. And
there is little doubt about them, except for honest questions about the actual
death toll.
But critics wonder about the centrally organized and secret plan
to annihilate all the Jews of europe , and the
use of mass extermination gas chambers to murder hundreds of thousands, or even
millions of people. No such devices were ever found, and verification of their
existence depends entirely on stories told by traumatized survivors ,
confessions made under severe stress if not outright torture, and photographs of
empty buildings or reconstructed ruins said to have once been used as gas
chambers.
Consider whether we would uncritically accept the reality of
America ’s ugly racist history of
lynching, with no more evidence than hearing stories of the horror told by
miraculous survivors, and seeing photos of trees alleged to have once had bodies
hanging from them.
Any critical person can wonder, but millions of us have
been so shocked at films of the terrible conditions of the liberated camps, and
especially the piles of emaciated dead bodies, that little thought is given to
asking how those terrible scenes of suffering and death could have had anything
to do with gas chambers, let alone crematoria. And if a plan was afoot to
secretly murder millions and cremate their bodies to remove evidence, why and
how could so many have been left plainly exposed to public view?
The near
total physical breakdown of Germany near the war’s end never
seems to enter consciousness as possible reason for some of the drastic scenes
revealed at those camps. While many German cities were devastated by bombing,
with their citizens reduced to homeless refugees often near starvation, should
we imagine that under such conditions prison camps, which were dreadful places
to begin with, would somehow be able to furnish adequate food, shelter and
medical care to all inmates?
When President Ahmadinejad referred to myth
surrounding the story, he was not denying that Jews suffered, anymore than
holocaust revisionists - who are slurred as “deniers” - make such a charge. But
they, and he, and thousands the world over who have read critical works that
barely see the light of day in the west, join in questioning vital aspects of
that story. Bigots who smear them with nasty labels are playing with words, and
in lethal fashion.
Anyone who would deny the racial madness of the nazi
ethnic cleansing of european jews might be an idiot, or simply consumed by hate.
But those who deny the right to question the existence of gas chambers or other
details of the story, and vilify those who dare to do so are either ignorant, or
more likely, driven by a more dangerous hate. Anything forbidden to be
questioned must be held suspect by thinking people, and the more that criticism
is suppressed, the more dangerous the possibilities for the world, and not just
the suppressors.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly says that whatever crime europeans
committed against Jews is no reason for the terrible persecution and suffering
inflicted upon the Palestinians, who were guilty of nothing. Most of the world
agrees with him, as do many in the west, though hardly anyone in American
politics will risk stating that obvious fact. The power exerted by the
Israel lobby is such that even when a
former president, or establishment scholars site the moral injustice and the
threat to our nation posed by one sided policies in the middle east, they are
slandered as anti Semites , the way that revisionists are smeared as
deniers.
While thousands of Jews in Iran are apparently living without fear,
thousands of Jews in America have been led to believe that
Ahmadinejad threatens them with another holocaust. That is not just irrational ,
but dangerous for all humanity. This situation is being used to help provoke a
further bloody war in the middle east, but reason must prevail over fanatic
beliefs and psychotic fears or all of us will suffer . The war over these words
and their clear meaning must not be allowed to perpetuate more injustice, and
worse, threaten a global disaster .
Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Scott.
All rights reserved.
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the author
frank scott
email: frankscott@comcast. net
Frank
Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, The
Independent Monitor, on numerous web sites and on his shared blog at:http://legalienate. blogspot. com
