Arthur Butz MSc (MIT), PhD (Minnesota), professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University in Illinois, wrote a groundbreaking technical and historical analysis and refutation in his book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (1977).

He gives a wonderful example of the seemingly endless contradictions and ironies evident throughout the entire ‘official’ historiography of the Holocaust.

He quotes Martin Gilbert’s ‘long and copiously annotated study’ Auschwitz and the Allies:

‘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.’ (p 340).

He compares this with the contention of Walter Lacquer in his ‘shorter but also copiously annotated study’ called The Terrible Secret (1980). Lacquer 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 [German-controlled Poland] and were bound to hear’, etc. (Lacquer p22-25).

Butz says, ‘I have no quarrel with such observations, as I have made them myself, and on the basis of essentially the same considerations [Butz (1977) pp87f, 92ff].. ..Now the reader of Gilbert, Lacquer 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 gassings at Auschwitz and (b) mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been concealed from the world for any significant length of time. The reader.. should assume both claims to be true: There was no information of mass gassings at Auschwitz during the relevant period, and mass gassings could not have been kept secret. Therefore, there were no mass exterminations at Auschwitz.’ (Butz, Context and Perspective in the ‘Holocaust’ Controversy, in the Journal of Historical Review Winter 1982 pp385-386.).

‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of “living Holocaust survivors” at nearly a million’ (extract from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso, London and New York, 2000, p.83).

Googling “holocaust survivor” supplies 1,710,000 items

And see Wikipedia article: List of Holocaust survivors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_survivors – quote:
“There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe and went on to achievements of great fame and notability. Those listed here were, at the very least, residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived until the end of the Holocaust (and the war). The majority of these people survived incarceration in the Nazi concentration camps, but that is not strictly necessary for the purposes of this list…”

Statement by Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus
University of Ulster, December 5, 2005:

“I’ve checked out the six volumes of Churchill’s Second World War and the statement is quite correct – not a single mention of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ’six million’ Jewish victims of the war.

Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; Churchill’s Second World War totals 4,448 pages; and De Gaulle’s three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages.

In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ’six million’ Jewish victims of the war.”

Wiesel has been one of the most prominent spokesman for the very sizeable group of people known as Holocaust survivors. [According to Norman Finkelstein of the City University of New York in his book The Holocaust Industry published in the year 2000, ‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million’ (p.83)]. Wiesel has chaired the US Holocaust Memorial Council and has been the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Peace Prize…

Time Magazine, March 18 1985:

‘How had he survived two of the most notorious killing fields [Auschwitz and Buchenwald] of the century? “I will never know” Wiesel says. “I was always weak. I never ate. The slightest wind would turn me over. In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day. I was always in the last hundred near the gate. They stopped. Why?”

Compare this with Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993), under ‘Buchenwald’:

“In World War II it held about 20,000 prisoners.. Although there were no gas chambers, hundreds perished monthly through disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings and executions.”

Have a look at a typical account by one of the seemingly endless number of survivors: Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys: a woman survivor’s true story of Auschwitz (Granada/ Ziff-Davis, 1947, 1972).

The blurb on the cover of the book quotes the New York Herald-Tribune: “Passionate, tormenting”. Albert Einstein, the promoter of the US construction of the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is quoted as offering “You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten speak.”

According to Lengyel, ‘After June, 1943, the gas chamber was reserved exclusively for Jews and Gypsies.. Three hundred and sixty corpses every half-hour, which was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes, made 720 per hour, or 17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift. And the ovens, with murderous efficiency, functioned day and night. However, one must also reckon the death pits, which could destroy another 8,000 cadavers a day. In round numbers, about 24,000 corpses were handled each day. An admirable production record, one that speaks well for German industry.’ (Paperback edition, pp80-81). [No trace of any remains of or in ‘death pits’ has been found.]

This implies almost 100,000 corpses per four working days, or a million in 40 days, or six million in 240 days (eight months).

Could this claim be a misprint?

Kitty Hart, in spite of her name a Jewish survivor born in Poland, fully confirms these figures:

‘Working around the clock, the four units together could dispose of about 18,000 bodies every twenty-four hours, while the open pits coped with a further 8,000 in the same period.’ (p 118; Return to Auschwitz – paperback edition by Granada (1981, 1983).

According to the cover blurb, ‘The subject of the award-winning Yorkshire television documentary of the same name.’ ‘Both engaging and harrowing…an important addition to the growing holocaust literature, very little of which conveys so courageously both the daily torment and the will to survive’ – Martin Gilbert, The Times.

Martin Gilbert, indefatigable Jewish campaigner on behalf of the ‘Holocaust’ and biographer of Winston Churchill, adds to the rich flavour and makes his own numerical claims, certainly not without chutzpah:

In his book Auschwitz and the Allies (1981) he states

‘The deliberate attempt to destroy systematically all of Europe’s Jews was unsuspected in the spring and early summer of 1942: the very period during which it was at its most intense, and during which hundreds of thousands of Jews were being gassed every day at Belzec, Chelmo, Sobibor and Treblinka.’ (p.26).

If we assume a minimum figure of 200,000 per day, this amounts to say a million a five-day working week, or 6 million in six weeks, and this does not include the truly awe-inspiring claims for Auschwitz put forward by Hart and Lengyel with Gilbert’s blessing.

Thank you for taking the time to check out my links, and for sharing your informative comments. Far be from me to take anything that Commentary publishes as gospel. The reason I linked to Chang’s article was because I thought it gave a succinct summary of how the Japanese government has stretched Article 9 to the extent that it has become practically meaningless. Of course, Chang thinks that’s a good reason to get rid of it altogether, whereas I, like you, believe that Article 9 should be made more meaningful. I too would like to see other countries adopt Article 9s, but only if they actually prevent their governments from supporting a “phony war on terror” under the guise of “peacekeeping.”

Best regards,

Maidhc

Article 9 was not “imposed” upon Japan.

Instead Prime Minister Shidehara conceived of the Peace Clause. This is well known among Japan scholars – Klaus Schlictmann has a new volume out detailing this history but his finding is not new.

The myth that Article 9 was a U.S. creation has been promulgated by ultranationalists and U.S. militarists who want to overturn the Peace Clause. They think that this false history undermines its legitimacy.

Also Article 9 is not meaningless, according to many. The Peace Clause prevents Japan from joining other nations (US is #1) that manufacture and push weapons. Many believe it has helped put the brakes on japan’s mlitarization. it also serves as a powerful symbol for Japanese citizens and others around the world as the ultimate ideal in institutionalizing the concept of peace and outlawing war. Since World War II, Japan––which has a tragic track record of violent international agression–has not gone to war and has not killed a single person in war-related violence. Given Japan’s Meiji and wartime history, this is a miraculous transformation.

The journal I write for, Kyoto Journal, has an issue dedicated to the Global Article 9 Movement coming out this month. Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire nominated the Movement for a Nobel Peace Prize. The goal is not only to encourage nations towards disarmament but also to encourage the “culture of peace.”

Despite the U.S. imposition of its “Reverse Course” policy which supported putting (unindicted) war criminals back into positions of power resulting in a multi-generational legacy of ultranationalism in Japanese LDP politics, Japan has truly achieved a “culture of peace” at the grassroots level:

• The majority of Japanese citizens don’t romanticize or glamorize war and militarism as Americans do.

• Japanese people don’t encourage the establishment of public military schools as is happening in the U.S. (especially in Chicago under the leadership Arne Duncan, who is now Obama’s education secretary).

• Japanese people know the horrors of nuclear warfare and are the world leaders in witnessing against anti-nuclear weapons activism.

I spent much time facing and learning about Japan’s wartime history, in an attempt to understand my heritage. Even after many years, I can’t believe what the wartime Japanese government did in Asia: to people in Nanking, to people forced to speak Japanese and bow before State Shinto shrines, to Bataan Death March prisoners (including an American cousin of mine who survived, but died at age 40 from health problems during this period), to POWs, to Korean & Chinese slave laborers, to military sexual slaves, and to many Japanese people who spoke out against the war (Toyohiko Kagawa for one), to Japanese children turned into forced laborers to take the place of young men sent to war, to the Tokyo Firebombing orphans (they were caged and treated like animals), to Okinawans, and so much more.

After such a history, I can understand the words “Never Again” in the Japanese Constitution, and so I object to the opinion that Article 9 is meaningless. We need to honor its Japanese supporters and work for the establishment of more Article 9s in other countries.