The following article has been submitted on H-Holocaust the 6th june 2001. It was not posted by the moderator. It is posted here because Mr. McNamara has considered that, since he saw no answer, his points had been accepted, which was not the case.

The context of this article must be set: Christopher Hitchens has recently (as june 2001) served three Holocaust deniers' lies in his LA Times review of a book about Holocaust denier David Irving having sued Deborah Lipstadt in order to impair *her* freedom of expression...

I have extensively proven my point in previous articles:

http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010528
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b and
http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010602

Mr. McNamara has answered this last article in an amazing way, evading every one point that I made. My answer to his evasions were not posted on the H-Holocaust list by the moderator, which I understand and will not comment further. His work on H-Holocaust is most precious and appreciated.

What follows is this unseen answer as I posted it on the 6th june 2001. I only introduced direct links in the given URLs.

Hello,

Concerning the first part of Mr. McNamara message, I answered him privately and will not bother the readership with this answer.

As for the rest: I am appaled. Mr. McNamara is supposed to answer what I previously wrote (http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010602).

But he cultivates the art of not answering to what I wrote. Once more, let it be clear that this article won't bring anything to the reader except some examples in the art of sophistry.

But once again some record has to be set straight.

Mr. McNamara had served us the old Holocaust deniers fraud stating that "significant revision downward of the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca. 1 million".

As I had explained: the western historians had never bought the communist figure of 4 millions. In 1991, Poland, put down the Auschwitz plaques, stating that there had been "4 millions victimes from all over europe". In 1995 they put new plaques stating that 1,5 million people (90% of whom where jewish) had been murdered there. This was *not* a "significant revision" as far as serious, and non communist, historians were concerned. Poland had just accepted a figure close to what historians had written for decades. Only deniers present that as beeing a "significant revision". Anybody familiar with deniers litterature knows that. This was already explained in my previous article.

I had wrote:

> >
> > Well, well, well!
> >
> > Surprise!
> >
> > How is it that *you* now serve a watered down form of a lie
> > promoted by Holocaust deniers?
> >

To which Mr McNamara answers:

> I don't think I qualify as a Holocaust denier as I think I have
> made clear that the Nazi's implemented a policy to systematically
> eliminate the Jewish people by the use of poisin gas in gas
> chambers. There is no doubt that extermination camps existed.
>

Yes.

> In relation to Auschwitz and the 4 million who died there I admit
> to not knowing what it is you are asking of me.

Well Mr McNamara, reading what I wrote would have been a good start. You served us a presentation that came straight from Holocaust deniers' propaganda.

> But my non-expert
> understanding is:
>
> The number of people murdered at Auschwitz is "...[A]ccording to
> the Polish historian Francizek Piper, at least 1.1 million people
> had been murdered in Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were Jews."
> This source is available online at:
> http://www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1942-1945/1945/chronolog _1945_5.html.

So what? That's what I wrote in my previous article. It happens that *once* communism was put away, polish historians could do serious works about numbers and publish them. But the number *the* polish historian who studied that question came to was about the same number that has been known by most western historians for decades.

More than that: Polish historians must have long known that 4 millions was a propaganda number, because in 1949, Dr Josef Kermisz, from the jewish historical commission in Poland, wrote that this commission estimated the number of victims in Auschwitz to about 1,5 million (Josef Kermisz, "Le musée Juif à Auschwitz", in Les Juifs d'Europe, 1939-1945, Éditions du Centre, Paris, 1949, p. 164)

Does Mr McNamara think *I* bought the 4 million figure?

> In "Nazi mass murder : a documentary history of the use of poison
> gas" edited by Eugen Kogan ...[et al], (Yale : 1993) -originally
> published in German 1983 - the (then) most recent figure cited
> for the least number of victims is given at 1.33 million and
> Georges Wellers is credited with the scholarship for studies
> leading to that conclusion (Kogon : 1993:173).

I do give the exact references of Wellers article in one of the URLs I gave... Wellers is a western historian. Hilberg had given a 1 millions figure since 1961.

I had written:

> > There was *no* such thing as a "significant revision downward of
> > the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz from 4 million to ca. 1
> > million". What I mean is that Holocaust deniers pretend that
> > there was one but they try to confuse the fact that the Auschwitz
> > polish administration acknowledged, in 1991, the western
> > historiographical estimations.

Mr McNamara answers:

> In relation to the figure of 4 million victims this would revise
> the number downward by 2.67 million. Therefore, 1.33 would be
> 0.33% of the figure first given.

You meant 33%.

> In any person's language this is
> a significant reduction based as you said on Western scholarship
> methodology.

No. There would have been a "significant reduction" if the majority of historians had bought the 4 millions figure, which they did *not*.

The 1991 move of polish officials was an event that cannot be integrated in the Holocaust historiography which had been mostly aware of the right figure (or its scale) for decades.

The 4 millions figure did not belong to the Holocaust historiography, but to the political communist propaganda that tried to "de-jewish-cize" Auschwitz.

> The Holocaust debate

There is no "Holocaust debate".

> has become somewhat
> "Americanized" whereas you prefer the communist approach. That is
> a question of methodology. And thus source material. You have
> your preferences for citations.

I don't underdand that charabia. *If* Mr. McNamara suggests that *I* bought the communist figures, he is wery wrong.

> Richard R. Evans has written: "And of course it is not Holocaust
> denial to point out, as has been known at least since the
> post-war publication of the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, the
> Commandant of Auschwitz, that the best estimate for the number of
> victims of gassing there was slightly in excess of one million,
> not the four million that has sometimes been claimed." source:
> http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/moevans.html

Yes.

But claming that there was a "significant revision from 4 millions to 1" comes straight from Holocaust denial propaganda, because in the *relevant* historiography, there was never such a revision, because *for* decades, the right approximate number had been known.

In what language do I have to write?

Now, Mr. McNamara will try to come back to the fact that Christopher Hitchens had served a Holocaust deniers' lie, about there beeing no gas chamber "on the German soil".

I wrote an extensive analysis of that lie in a previous article (http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b)

> On Auschwitz's place within "Greater Germany" the original name
> was in Polish as it was part of Poland. Its annexation to
> "Greater Germany" was illegal. It was always Polish. Neither of
> Mr. Jacob or us would argue about the violation if international
> law by such an annexation. There was no referendum for the Poles
> to vote to give the region to Hitler.

Maybe you should read my article on that subject: http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b

Obviously, you did not read it. Had you read it, you would have seen that Auschwitz does not belong to the treated subject.

I had written:

> > About the fact that Hitchen's stated that there was no gas
> > chamber on the German Soil, which is a lie....

Mr. McNamara answers:

> If this refers to Auschwitz see above;

No. See http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b

> but if it's Dachau on
> German soil, see below.

I am appaled. Does Mr McNamara believe that the only concentration camp in Germany was Dachau?

> Dachau's place in the history of concentration camps.
>
> "Dachau was not planned as an extermination camp; its prisoners
> were shot trying to escape or died of hunger, disease, and
> exhaustion, under torture or as victims of pseudoscientific
> experiments. Source: Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York:
> Macmillan).

So what? Dachau was not an industrial killing center. Nobody, in the H-Holocaust discussion about Hitchens serving Holocaust deniers' stuff, ever wrote that it was.

> Eugon Kogon states (Cambridge : 1993), it is stated that: "It has
> not yet been conclusively proved that killing by poison gas took
> place at Dachau." However, it then states some accounts to
> indicate how gas may have been used. But visitors are alerted to
> the fact that it "has not been proved that the gas chamber on
> site was ever used". (Kogon : 1993:204). Does that answer your
> question on gas chambers within Germany?

There was a gas chamber in Dachau. There is no absolute certainty that it was used (though the historiographical concensus seems to be that it was). See: http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/

But there *was* a gas chamber in Dachau. Hitchens wrote the contrary. That was a lie he could only have burrowed from Holocaust deniers.

And the main point that Mr. McNamara has been unable to adress is that Ravensbrück, Neuengamme and Orianenbourg-Sachsenhausen were in Germany and were equiped with gas chambers. And Christopher Hitchens has written that there were no gas chambers on German soil. This was a lie burrowed from Holocaust deniers.

I have explained that quite thorougly in a previous article (http://www.phdn.org/hnet.php?gk20010530b) Mr. McNamara must not have read.

In french, we call that a "dialogue de sourd" (a dialogue of the deaf).

My previous conclusion remains: Hitchens served 3 Holocaust deniers' lies and manipulations. He made a vicious and unjustified attack against eyewitnesses. You did not aknowledge any of these and you served a watered down form of a Holocaust deniers falsification.

I still do not find our exchange very fruitful.

Regards,

Gilles Karmasyn