1. A first official rectification of what the Holocaust is not.
The German Society for East-European-Knowledge, whose president Prof. Dr. Rita Süßmuth is, has brought the first feeling of insecurity in a not too convincing way.
In her May 2002 booklet she offered the contribution of a leading Spiegel-editor with the title “The number of victims in Auschwitz”. A completely different picture in it is drawn of the events in Auschwitz during the Second World War by means of the discovery of new documents.
As both respected scientists are behind it and also German public prosecutors didn’t see any criminal charge, especially no violation against § 130 of the German Criminal Code, in the publishing and distribution of this article, a new fact in German postwar-history has been created. Fritjof Meyer, the Spiegel-editor, proves with this article that
– Dr, Wilhelm Stäglich was right with his “Auschwitz myth“,
– all those have been unjustly punished who publicly questioning the monstrous number of 6 million gassed Jews,
– Fred Leuchter and Germar Rudolf rightly queried the crematoria as places of gassings,
– the statements made by camp commander Höß under heaviest torture can’t be accepted as a plausible legal basis,
– there are still uncertainties with location and number data.
Meyer says after all emphatically that “conjecturally 510 000 dead can be ascertained”, of which were “probably 356 000 murdered by gas.” (elsewhere, page 641)
Quote by Fritjof Meyer: „The actual committed genocide probably took prevalently place in the two modified farm houses outside the camp. From the first one, the “white house” or Bunker I, the fundaments have only recently been discovered.” (elsewhere, page 632)
2. The cancellations of further hallmarks
In the numerous Holocaust processes of the last three years, further criteria, which have been seen as distinctive for the Holocaust, were scrapped on behalf of judges and public prosecutors.
In an interview with German Radio on 5th February 2007, whose most important statements were recorded on 7th February in a dpa-message, one even heard and read from the Federal Minister for Justice (Lady):
„…if someone in a discussion says that he doesn’t believe in millions of Jews having been murdered, then that isn’t a punishable offense, one can discuss it”.
To a letter addressed to the Federal Minister for Justice, enquiring if she could explain comprehensibly what Holocaust is, no answer has been forthcoming. After several months an answer from a ministry with it’s many employees and in such a highly charged matter could have been expected after all.
One can conclude from the silence of the Minister only one thing: She is also not able to define what Holocaust actually means. It also couldn’t be clarified at the many processes according to paragraph 130 of the German Penal Code (§ 130 StGB) as to Volksverhetzung (“agitation of the people”), and not at all in the processes against Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel in Mannheim.
We are facing therefore all together a great riddle. A matter however for which there is no definition, which neither has a concept nor a place, can not be denied.
– It can’t anymore be Auschwitz, look at the drastically reduced number of victims,
– it neither can be the gas chambers, look at Fritjof Meyer,
– it can’t be genocide,
– also not the 6 million gassed Jews, since it has been said in court that the numbers don’t matter.
– the Federal Minister for Justice even declares that the million-fold murder of jews was up for discussion.
These criteria therefore where officially dropped. Nevertheless the Holocaust rates as self-evident, or as it lately is called, a factual prerequisite of the case.
What then is self-evident, what is this fact?
It’s also not the concentration camps, because these have and exist now in many places: at first in South-Africa, established by the English for the Boers, then with the communist revolution in Bolshevik Russia, in Poland, and now also in connection with the Patriot Act after 9/11/2001 in the United States of America. With this the singularity for the National Socialist concentration camps is being dropped. This we have learned altogether in the meantime. What means Holocaust?
Particularly Jews and Germans have now to insist that this so heavily incriminatory question is examined and clarified. As long as this doesn’t happen, it is inevitable that all prisoners according to § 130 StGB, because of denial of the not clearly defined Holocaust at this time, be released from their prisons. This is particularly urgently advised for all those, who are in a position due to their knowledge and scientific work to collaborate in the clarification of this question.
No Holocaust denier penalized with a high fine or even with jail has ever argued: against the existence of German concentration camps; that in them many human beings have perished; and that there was despotism and cruelty by individual camp commanders.
That doesn’t matter – that’s what they say at court. It involves denying of the self-evident Holocaust. But what that is, is not defined, newly defined on the basis of new knowledge.
But the least an accused could expect is a straightforward explanation which self-evident fact he was supposed to have denied in a wantonly manner.
Legal experts can’t also hide behind and appeal upon that the law of § 130 StGB is binding for them. This is by no means the case. There are explicitly committed criminal offenses of National Socialism raised. But this is exactly at issue. How, when and where has what Holocaust taken place? These questions arose ever more clearly in the numerous processes involving this paragraph. In this aspect the processes had a great importance.
3. The crucial new Knowledge
§ 130 StGB has been introduced to lay down the Holocaust as fact, to prevent any doubt about it through threat of punishment. The lawgivers thought to cement this belief with every charge of Holocaust denial, to register it indelibly into history.
However the opposite is the case. With every process: more and more contradictions arise; all evidence requests (Beweisanträge) serving the finding of truth are turned down; and reasons for the judgment get more confused and more threadbare, up to the great Jewish curse of Dr. Meinerzhagen, hurled at Ernst Zündel, so that the confusion and feeling of insecurity of each process observer is constantly increased.
There is no factual rebuttal of the revisionist’s arguments. Statement stands against statement. Even though the media hardly report anything about the process matter, every defendant however has a great circle of friends, who participate, receive knowledge of these open contradictions, and become unsettled in their judgments so far. This unsettling causes more and more citizen to openly ask critical questions, by which the increase in processes per§ 130 StGB is explained. The criminal proceedings against right-extremists – and these are almost throughout propaganda offenses – have nearly doubled in the last four years.
Therefore the reason for the general insecurity in respect to the Holocaust is to a lesser degree the revisionists themselves or their books, but the processes against these revisionists, who have nowhere contributed to the clarification of the many open questions so far.
This is the new knowledge at the beginning of the 21st century which requires urgently a resumption of these processes. The legal experts among our readers are invited to participate. It has finally to be clarified, understandably and clearly, wherein this greatest and singular crime of all times consists. What means Holocaust?
Meaning, belief, self-evidence, and factual presupposition are relics of the past with their helpless stammering. A new page in the book of the history of time will be opened. Let’s take the legacy of Prof. Dr. Raul Hilberg a few months before his death serious, that only 20% has been investigated. And let’s take to heart what the Jewish Holocaust researcher Hilberg had to say about revisionists: “One can even learn from them. They say like children: Prove it. And we have to prove it”. (Standard-interview, 9th June 2006)
That’s it exactly; it isn’t the task of judges however, but the task of historians.
What is Holocaust, whose denial is a punishable offense?
Ursula Haverbeck