Thursday, October 22, 2009

Halloween is almost upon us ...

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The deadline is approaching for entries to the 2009 David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge. This is our sixth year of competition, and although we have some great entries, there's still time to get yours in and win a Big Cash Prize. Make certain you get yours in now, and tell all your friends!

As we did last year, we'll be awarding $200 for the first-place entry, and $50 for the second-place entry. Entries are judged on four factors:

  1. Originality (search our site before entering),
  2. The macabre nature of the tale,
  3. Citation of the source(s) where the tale or claim has appeared, and
  4. The use of the tale in official Holocaust histories. (Receive added points if your submission was used in a court of law.)

The contest deadline is Thursday, October 30, 2009. You may enter as many times as you wish, but there will be only one winning entry per person. Each contest entry is subject to verification. The winners will be announced on Friday, October 31, 2009 (Halloween).

The prize is in honor of skeptic and founder of the Institute for Historical Review, David McCalden. Each submission becomes the property of the Holocaust Historiography Project, and may be published on this website. Please let us know if you want attribution for your submission, or if you wish to remain anonymous.

Send all questions and comments to webmaster@historiography-project.org.

Let's make David proud!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

CODOH is an Idea

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The ADL's recent publication, "Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements" casts the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) as having one member, that is, Bradley Smith. CODOH however is not an organization with members or employees. It has no National Chair, National Director, no Deputies and certainly no assistant directors!

To better understand what CODOH is, I borrow the following with slight alteration from Rodrigo Mendoza:

CODOH is an idea. CODOH is every man who has ever stood up for what he has believed in. CODOH is every man who has taken a stand when he saw injustice-- regardless of the cost. CODOH is an idea and ideas, unlike men cannot be imprisoned.

CODOH is heroes of the past both from history and from fiction. CODOH is William Tyndale shouting at the fiery stake for the Lord to open the King of England's eyes. CODOH is Dietrich Bonhoeffer hanging in Flossenbürg for standing up to a dictatorial regime. CODOH is Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr.. CODOH stood up to the Pope at the Diet of Worms and said, "Here I stand." CODOH is an artist, but it's work has been called "degenerate."

CODOH is Winston Smith. CODOH is Howard Roarke. CODOH is Guy Montag with a hidden library. CODOH will not renounce it's values and accept slavery. CODOH will stand up for the principles that we were taught as children. As Americans, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have been taught to stand up when we see injustice. We stand with David against Goliath. We stand with the Jews against the Gestapo. We stand with the Communists against the McCarthyite witch-hunt. We stand with African Americans against the Klan. We stand with the soldiers who have died for propaganda and political lies-- on the fields of Flanders, on the USS Arizona, in Korea and Vietnam and in Iraq.

Today there is no group of people more villainized and defamed than revisionists. The governments of the world stand poised to root them out, to bring an end to their "insidious" ideas. Their jails can hold men, but they cannot hold ideas. Their fires can burn books, but not ideas. Their power comes by force. Our power comes from truth and freedom. We are willing to take the chance that you too might be stirred to action. If the battle is joined, we cannot lose. Of course, this is no battle of might but rather of ideas. CODOH's fight, our fight, is for that great value which if known, will set us all free.

Who is CODOH you ask? CODOH is that value and that idea.

The ADL's storied past

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It seems that Abe Foxman’s ADL is deeply concerned with Bradley Smith and CODOH’s outreach program on American campuses and is looking to intellectually innoculate US college students against revisionist scholarship, to render them immune [read: incurious, resentful, mentally recalcitrant] to what Holocaust revisionism is really all about.

Whenever I hear or read of Abe Foxman's ADL voicing its moral outrage about one thing or another, I am reminded of what George Will once wrote of the icon of the liberal movement in the US, the late Senator Edward Kennedy, during the derailed confirmation hearings of Judge Robert Bork for the US Supreme Court: "Edward Kennedy [of Chappaquidddick infamy] finds Judge Robert Bork morally unsatisfactory."

In the same vein of irony one might paraphrase George Will thus: Abe Foxman finds CODOH’s Bradley Smith morally unsatisfactory.

As long ago as 1980, the icon of the conservative movement in the US, the late William F. Buckley Jr., opined: "Really, I wonder if anyone in the future can ever again take seriously the Anti-Defamation League."  

That was nearly 30 years ago. Since then the ADL has done a lot worse things to vindicate the low regard in which Buckley held the ADL following its decision to honor the hedonistic pornographer Hugh Hefner (see Buckley’s article copied below). 
 
For the "fun" of it, gentle reader, you might google Roy Bullock + ADL. That would be a good place to start. Take it from there.

Say, did I mention that the award the ADL gave Hef was its "First Amendment Freedoms Awards?" The "freedom" the ADL had chosen to celebrate, according to the old Yale alumnus, being that of selling "pictures of parted pudenda in order to make a dollar, a nickel of which he [i.e., ADL honoree Hugh Hefner] donates to institutions devoted to the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie. . ."

-=-=-=-=-=-=

ADL defames itself by honoring Hefner | William F. Buckley Jr. 

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat | September 19, 1980 

It is axiomatic that the village underworlder will seek the approval of the same community he systematically despoils by ostentatious public benefactions. Joe Bananas supporting the local church. Billy Sol Estes hosting a boy scout picnic. Louis B. Mayer contributing to an institution of higher learning. 

No one has practiced the art of civic diversion more prodigiously than Hugh Hefner, the founder of "Playboy" magazine and godfather of the sexual revolution. His formula was as straightforward as the advertisements in "Playboy" for sexually stimulating paraphernalia: make a lot of money by pandering to the sexual appetite, elevating it to primacy - then spend
part of that money co-seducing critics or potential critics. 

It was years ago that Harvard theologian Harvey Cox wrote an essay on "Playboy," denominating it the single most brazen assault on the female as a person in general circulation. What seemed like moments later, the same scholar found himself writing earnest essays for "Playboy"; and before long he forgot all about his mission to identify "Playboy" for what it essentially is: an organ that seeks to justify the superordination of sex over all other considerations - loyalty to family, any principle of
self-discipline, any respect for privacy, or for chastity or modesty. Sex omnia vincit, Hugh Hefner's magazine told us, issue after issue. 

Really, I wonder if anyone in the future can ever again take seriously the Anti-Defamation League. Here is an organization "dedicated to the combating prejudice and discrimination against Jews and other minorities, and to the protection and extension of our democratic system for the benefit of all Americans." "The League" the brochure continues, "works
with the various institutions of our society, public and private, religious and secular, to achieve these ends." And it is celebrating later this month its First Amendment Freedoms Awards by giving a dinner-dance in honor of - Hugh M. Hefner. 

About the honoree the ADL says, with an apparently straight face, that he "began with little more than a unique idea for a magazine" (nude women, jokes about copulation, and advice on how to seduce young girls) "and a philosophy of social change." (The "philosophy," quite simply, that the gratification of the male sexual impulse is to be achieved without any
second thought to the possible effect on a) the girl b) her family c) your family d) any code of self-restraint.)  "The empire he founded has had a far-reaching impact, not only on the publishing industry, but on the mores of American society as well."

That is correct. Any serious disciple of Hugh Hefner would not hesitate to purr anti-Semitic lovelies into the ears of his bunny, if that was what was required to effect seduction. The Anti-Defamation League has, in the past, surrendered to temptations
alien to its splendidly commendable purpose, namely to focus attention on, and bring obloquy to, acts of racial discrimination. It meddled actively in the presidential campaign of 1964, endeavoring to scare its clientele into believing that Senator Goldwater was an ogre of sorts, backed by fanatics and cravists.  Its current director, Mr. Nathan Perlmutter, is a man of high sensibility, gentle, firm, discriminating, a scholarly man long associated with Brandeis University. One notes that he is charging $250 a plate to guests who seek the privilege of joining with him to honor Hugh Hefner. 

The tawdriness of the symbolism is driven home. Even as Hugh Hefner sells pictures of parted pudenda in order to make a dollar, a nickel of which he donates to institutions devoted to the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, and of fellow pornographers to hawk their wares, the ADL raises money to combat discrimination by honoring the principal agent of the kind of selflessness that deprives racial toleration of the ultimate sanction. This sanction rests on a profound belief in the sanctity of the individual, yes, even that of the nubile girl. Take away from the struggle for racial toleration the profound spiritual commitment to the idea of a higher law, and the code against anti-Semitism becomes a mere matter of social convenience, the kind of upward mobile patter one is taught in the pages of "Playboy" to imitate, on the order of wearing Dior handkerchiefs or Gucci loafers. 

Racial toleration draws its principal strength from the proposition that we are all brothers, created equal by God. The Playboy philosophy measures human worth by bustline and genital energy. The affair will be celebrated, appropriately enough, in Hollywood, at the Century Plaze Hotel. The invitation specifies "black tie." Well, if the guests arrive wearing only
a black tie, that will be more than some of the guests wear at Hef's other parties. 

New Resource to Confront Holocaust Denial on Campus

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[From the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith]

October 21, 2009

In response to the appearance of Holocaust denial advertisements in American college newspapers, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Life unveiled a new resource to help students respond.

A new resource guide, Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements, is available on the League’s Web site and is being widely distributed throughout the United States by ADL and Hillel.

“Holocaust denial ads are not only extremely offensive, but unequivocally false,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. “This is not a First Amendment issue; newspaper editors routinely choose to accept or reject advertisements. Would editors publish ads claiming the world is flat, or that slavery never existed?”

“Holocaust Denial advertisements are an affront to truth and an insult to the memory of those who were murdered by the Nazis,” said Wayne L. Firestone, Hillel President.

The joint ADL-Hillel guide was developed in response to a series of campus newspaper advertisements placed by Bradley Smith and his Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In his 2009 campaign, Smith successfully placed advertisements in more than a dozen campus papers, with an ad most recently appearing in the Harvard Crimson.

Fighting Holocaust Denial provides historical background on Holocaust denial and a profile of Smith and the CODOH. The guide provides legal analysis of the First Amendment and newspaper advertising policies, and offers actionable strategies for responding when Holocaust denial ads are published.

ADL and Hillel recommend that editorial staffs develop and implement policies defining acceptable advertising standards, such as those maintained by the newspaper industry, which they can reference when declining hateful ad submissions.

Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements may be accessed here. For more information or to obtain a print copy of the publication, please contact the Anti-Defamation League at education@adl.org.

(YWN Desk - NYC)

Friday, October 16, 2009

Amazon Kindle Books, leading the way to darkness

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Oct. 15, 2009--10:55pm
New York City

From Michael Santamauro


Now it is all 22 of the Kindle books from Theses & Dissertations Press that is part of The Holocaust Handbook Series of 22 titles, have been banned from Amazon. This all happened today, at a slow moving process without Amazon telling me they were doing this, nor will they tell me why they did it. The softcover editions are still available. I hope this is a mistake on the part of Amazon.

When you click on the banned title it says it cannot be sold to registered Kindle users in the United States. Until last week all the millions of Kindles (E-readers) were only registered in the United States. Maybe the new international version of the Kindle is putting a block on Holocaust Revisionist books that is causing this confusion in their system.

This is the first time in Amazon's short history in selling books wirelessly with the Kindle (E-reader), that they have banned books for their content. They sell millions of books a month with their Kindle.

John Demjanjuk, a Not-So-Funny Farce About the Last Nazi

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ESQUIRE 15 October 2009

Funny thing is, he was never a Nazi, nor Ivan the Terrible, nor even German. So why now is he standing trial in Munich as accessory to 27,900 Nazi murders? Is this one last blow struck for justice for the Holocaust? Or is it a farce?

By Scott Raab


[John Demjanjuk, who] was stripped of citizenship and shipped to Israel to face his accusers — brought to justice onstage in a concert hall converted into a courtroom for a yearlong trial broadcast on Israeli television and radio, meant to remind the younger Jews never to forget the evil done to them — and heard the survivors, in simultaneous translation, identify him across all the years and miles as the Ukrainian savage so bloodthirsty, so unforgettably depraved — with a whip or a sword or a drill, it was his pleasure to maim Jews only a few moments away from being gassed — that inmates called him Ivan Grozny: Ivan the Terrible.

[….]

Demjanjuk didn't hang, of course. After five years alone on death row in Israel's Ayalon prison — where Adolf Eichmann, too, had sat, the desk jockey who saw to it that the trains groaning with doomed Jews ran on time, and who was strung up in 1962; Eichmann and Demjanjuk are the only men Israel has ever tried for the Nazi genocidal crimes — Demjanjuk presented evidence on appeal that another man, one Ivan Marchenko, was Ivan the Terrible, and that Israel was about to hang the wrong Ukrainian.

Funny thing: The Israeli Supreme Court decided to let Ivan Demjanjuk walk.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Valencia Partido Popular replaces Ricardo Costa with a holocaust denier

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By h.b. - Oct 14, 2009 - 7:03 PM

The new PP Regional General Secretary is César Augusto Asencio

The Partido Popular in Valencia has decided to replace Ricardo Costa as Regional General Secretary with César Augusto Asencio.

El País reveals that Sr. Asencio is a holocaust denier, who described the holocaust as ‘The greatest fraud in History’ in an article published in the publication, ‘Diario Información’. He described the extermination of six million Jews during the Second World War as a ‘legend’.

In the article he said that ‘a detailed study’ had shown ‘propaganda on a worldwide scale’ in the hands of the Jews, supported by countless tricked photos and documents.
He noted that the International Red Cross never mentioned the existence of any gas chambers or mass exterminations in its reports.

The political group, Iniciativa del Poble Valencia, has called for the immediate resignation of César Augusto Asencio, because of his ‘Nazi position’.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The 6th Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge.

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From the Historiography-project

Enter our 2009 Contest and Win Cash!

Send in your entries now for the 6th Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge.

Pits of boiling human fat? Human soap? Giant "death by steaming" pressure cookers? Fountains of blood squirting from the earth?

Help us find new Holocaust stories you find macabre and ridiculous.

The deadline is approaching for entries to the 2009 David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge. This is our sixth year of competition, and there seems to be no shortage of entries. Make certain you get yours in now, and tell all your friends!

Webmaster

Monday, October 5, 2009

The Taboo Against Germans at Harvard University

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This letter was copied to faculty and administration at Harvard, and to the press nationwide.
===============


President Drew Faust
Office of the President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

05 October 2009

Dear President Faust:

It is apparent that Harvard faculty supports a strategy of refusing to ask questions about WWII German weapons of mass destruction (gas chambers). It is equally apparent, by its silence, that Harvard faculty has found that it is not right to question the “unique monstrosity” of the Germans, and that they will not support Harvard students who might be disposed to a free exchange of ideas on either matter. Does the Office of the President support that taboo? I have heard nothing to suggest that it does not.

On 08 September the Harvard Crimson printed my advertisement asking why General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his Crusade In Europe, chose (chose!) to not mention the WWII German weapons of mass destruction, the “gas chambers.” The ad asked: “Why not?” The ad also asked that a professor, someone, at Harvard University provide, “with proof, the name of one person killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.”

On 09 September Maxwell L. Child, President of the Harvard Crimson, felt it necessary to apologize for having run the advertisement, saying that the text “questioned whether the Holocaust occurred” (it did not) and that it had angered many members of the Harvard community. The Crimson staff then published a letter stating “we believe this item [these questions] should never be found in the pages of a college newspaper.”

No member of the Harvard faculty attempted to answer either of my questions, and there is no evidence that any member of the Harvard faculty supported student journalists at The Crimson who had been in favor of publishing the ad. When the emails, telephone calls and letters poured in to The Crimson from on-campus and off-campus special-interest groups, Harvard faculty played out the role of “bystander,” allowing Crimson journalists to hang and twist in the wind.

President Faust: why do you believe no academic at Harvard is willing to respond to two simple questions about German weapons of mass destruction? Why do you believe Harvard faculty is unwilling to support Crimson journalists who favor a free exchange of ideas on the matter? Does the Office of the President support what appears to be a taboo at Harvard that prohibits questioning the orthodox (the State) position on German weapons of mass destruction?

Do you not think it right for Harvard students to be aware of the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower chose (chose!) to not mention gas chambers in his Crusade In Europe? That Winston Churchill, in his six-volume History of World War ll, chose to not mention gas chambers? That Charles de Gaulle chose to not mention German gas chambers in his Memoirs? That when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly only last month to proclaim that the Wannsee Protocols contained “precise” information on the extermination of the Jews, that those who produced those Protocols chose to not mention gas chambers? How “precise” does Harvard faculty believe that is? Exactly?

Perhaps you believe it is “hateful” to ask critical questions about German weapons of mass destruction. If that is so, you must view the asking of such questions as a moral issue. I see it as a moral issue myself, but from what I believe is a different perspective. I believe it is immoral to suppress intellectual freedom at Harvard, as it is to suppress it anywhere. I believe it immoral for Harvard (or any) faculty to not come to the aid of students who have opted for a free exchange of ideas and a free press. That it is immoral for Harvard faculty to exploit taboo to forbid students to question a charge of unique monstrosity routinely made against others.

Harvard faculty has the right to be skeptical of every revisionist argument that questions German weapons of mass destruction. Skepticism is not a sin. Revisionists are skeptical of the orthodox claims about German WMD and have published a good deal of material to illustrate why they are skeptical. To my knowledge, no Harvard professor has published one paper in one peer reviewed journal illustrating where a core revisionist text about German WMD is worthless. The skepticism of Harvard faculty, then, only reveals its credulity.

President Faust: do you believe it right that the Office of the President should allow and even encourage taboo to trump intellectual freedom at Harvard? That taboo should be used to forbid an open debate in student publications on the question of the German use of weapons of mass destruction? If so, how am I to distinguish a member of your faculty committed to this particular taboo from a member of a South Seas cargo cult committed to some other taboo? His trousers?

Thank you for your attention.

Bradley R. Smith, Founder
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
PO Box 439016
San Ysidro, California 92143
Desk: 209 682 5327
Email: bradley1930@yahoo.com
Web: www.codoh.com

NOTE: I will copy this letter to some of your colleagues and to others who I believe might find it interesting.