REVIEWS

Remembering history
amidst Zundel’s lies

HITLER’S HOLOCAUST: A fact of his-
tory. By Henri G. Francg. New Star
Books, Vancouver, 1986. Paper, $8.95

“Heaps of corpses were all around. I
knew that ordinary human beings could
hardly believe such things had ever
existed, and I was sure that in ten years
certainly nobody would believe it, and we
ourselves might not believe that we had
ever seen it.”

Eighteen days after the allied liberation
of Bergen-Belsen, one of about 1,000 Nazi
labor and concentration camps, British
Medical Corps Captain Dr. Mordecai
Chen described his reaction to the horror
that confronted him as he entered the
camp.

Thirty-one years after the defeat of Nazi
Germany in a war which cost approxi-
mately thirty million lives and in which
Hitler’s fascists methodically murdered
some six million Jews and four million
other European people, Ernst Zundel pub-
lished a booklet called “Did Six Million
Really Die.” His purpose was to prove
that the Holocaust never happened.

Zundel is presently awaiting a new trial
in Ontario. He ‘is unlikely to be convinced
by Henri Francq’s refutation of his lies
and distortions. But this book is not
intended for the edification of Zundel or
any of his Nazi friends. “Hitler’s Holo-
caust,” well researched and documented,
is intended to show “how and to what
extent systematic extermination of human
_ beings was carried out.” It is written in the
_ hope that younger generations may know

and never forget.

The author devotes the first chapter toa
refutation of Zundel’s booklet. He then
moves to trace the development of Nazi
policy toward the Jews, going back to
when Hitler was just a “big-mouth,” albeit
with big ideas. As early as 1920, he was
referring to the need for “‘an all-out strug-

gle to the death ... a battle against the
entire Jewish race.” This battle took the
form of “emigration” (read: expulsion)
with robbery, terror and then deportation
to death camps.

Between 1933 and 1943, according to a
report prepared by Himmler’s minister of
statistics, ““European Judaism had already
decreased by one half.” This brought
about pressure from German industrial-
ists to slow down the pace of the mass
murder only so that the fittest Jews and
Russian prisoners should continue to be
able to work in the weapons factories until
they died from starvation and exhaustion.
(Above the gate at Auschwitz a sign pro-
claimed “Freedom Through Work.’’)

Eager to cover their tracks, the Nazis
formed a special brigade in 1943 to locate
and dig up mass graves on order to dispose
of the evidence. This endeavor lasted
almost two years and meant the exhuma-
tion of more than two million corpses,
Francq notes.

The book gives a whole chapter to the
trial of Eichmann in 1961. It was he who in
1939 coined the phrase that was later to
become the code name for “this most
unspeakable crime:” the Final Solution.

The physical extermination of such vast
numbers of people caused the Nazis some
problems. For the SS executioners, faced
with so many women and children among
the “herds” of prisoners, a relatively pain-
less (for the SS, that is) method was neces-
sary. (It is estimated that of the six million
Jews massacred, a million were small
children.) Francq describes how various
approaches were tried and how finally gas
proved to be the “ideal,”’final, solution.

The book also provides a detailed des-
cription of how these acts were carried out.
A problem which the Nazis could not so
easily solve was the stench of burning

bi
Soviet Army, 1945.

flesh. It carried miles away. At night the
sky was lit up with a “hellish glow.”

At Zundel’s trial, his lawyer Doug
Christie challenged the testimony of survi-
vors and witnesses, calling them liars.
Rudolf Vrba, now a professor at the Uni-
versity of B.C., replied that he had.seen
1,766,000 people walk to their deaths in a
space with no way out. Smoke was all that
resulted. He asked Christie: ‘Would you
perhaps suggest that they are still there?”

Faced with such overwhelming, unden-
iable evidence, Francq wonders whether
Zundel and his sympathizers can be
thought of as simply sincere defenders of a
particular, though odious, set of beliefs.
“Many of the lies of the neo-nazis do not
seem even remotely intended to be con-
vincing. For whatever twisted psychotic
reasons, they appear more so to have the
objective of keeping the old wounds open
and adding whatever salt they can.”’ Zun-
del, in the eyes of Francq, seems bent on
mounting “any soapbox in order to find
one or two adherents, to slowly build a

ntration camp await liberation by the

Children prisoners at Auschwitz conce

Hitler’s Holocaust

movement which will ultimately complete
the job begun with the first holocaust.”

The case of Ernst Zundel should be seen
in the context of a move by the ruling
circles in the U.S. and their imperialist
allies to turn the clock back, to regain their
lost historical initiative, and, in denying
history, to alter it.

Hitler’s Holocaust draws upon the
mountains of evidence in the 485 tons of
captured German archival documents and
the 42-volume record of the trial of major
war criminals as well as the memories of
survivors and works by contemporary
authors. Such a thorough approach does
much to recommend this book.

All of this does not make for light or —
pleasant reading. Nonetheless, in its 255
pages there is much interesting reading for
the general reader without any previous
experience in the subject. The book comes
with a bibliography, notes, photos, several
appendices, and a glossary. :
— Tim Firth —

Irangate is “infinitely worse” than

Watergate, an expert on the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency’s manipulation of the
world’s media declared last week.

Dr. Fred Landis, who writes regularly for
the magazine, Covert Action, told a press
conference in Vancouver Feb. 20 that the
emerging scandal over the Reagan adminis-
tration’s sale of weapons to Iran — and the
channeling of funds from the sale to finance
the Contras in Nicaragua — spells the end
of the “teflon presidency.”

“I think what’s clear is that the credibility
of Ronald Reagan has pretty much col-
lapsed and I think there are going to be
investigations going on in the United States
even longer than Watergate. I think it’s like
the Tet Offensive, Watergate and the inves-
tigation of the CIA all rolled in together.”

“What’s going to be uncovered is six
years of secrecy, deception and disinforma-
tion,” Landis said, labelling the scandal
“Disinformationgate.”

Landis gave two lectures while in Van-
couver both of them on “the CIA and the
media.”

The Reagan administration is laden with
people who are masters of disinformation,
he said.

They include Michael Dean, a key figure
in the Irangate scandal who authored such
sensational and groundless stories as the
Libyan hit squad and the Bulgarian connec-

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 25, 1987

FRED LANDIS ... exposing CIA press
link in Nicaragua.
tion; former ambassador to the United
Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, whose first
book — The Strategy of Deception — was
financed by a CIA front group; and James
Buckley, head of Radio Free Europe.
Several of those people sit on the
National Security Council (NSC), which
has come to represent “the privatization of
American foreign policy,” Landis said.
Using what Landis termed ‘“Moonies”
— followers of the right-wing, convicted
criminal, Rev. Sun Yung Moon — and the

World Anti-Communist League and using —

money from, among other places, Saudi

lrangate signals end to ‘teflon presidency’

Arabia, the NSC was able to “get around”
restrictions Congress had placed on the
covert activities of the CIA.

Regarding Nicaragua, Landis said his
own “key interest” has been the CIA con-
trol of the right-wing newspaper, La Prensa.

He said the agency had been “manipulat-
ing” the paper at least since 1978, but had
taken over its editorial direction by 1981,
when the paper launched a year-long series
of articles on various “miraculous appear-
ances” of the Virgin Mary around the coun-
try. Such stories have no overt political
content, but their aim was to separate the
government from the people by painting it
as atheistic, he said.

Next, La Prensa ran a series of what
Landis called “‘grisly food stories” concern-
ing the alleged abduction and cannibaliza-
tion of children to restore an ailing
Sandinista commandant.

Landis, born in Chile and a member of a
family of American intelligence officers,
said the pattern established by the Nicara-
guan paper, which routinely opposed Nica-
ragua’s popular Sandinista government,
mirrors that of Chile’s key right-wing daily,
El Mercurio, 3

Recalling that paper’s role in promoting
the coup against Chile’s Popular Unity
government, Landis observed that in all
cases, “the ultimate idea is to blame every-
thing on the government.

“Your first stage effort is propaganda. If
that doesn’t work, then you go to psycho
logical operations . . . then you go to psycho
logical warfare, in which you have militaty
and diplomatic offensives from abroad c0™
ordinated with the internal offensives
Then, if that doesn’t work, then hey, forge
it and send in the Marines.” i

eI

Nicaragua has benefitted “enormously
from Chile’s experience, where the gover”
ment of Salvador Allende placed no restni@
tions at all on right-wing agitation, an@
allowed foreign government agents to “ru?
amok,” Landis said. i

“The Nicaraguan government knows of
this and have set up policies to make it 4
little harder to do that sort of thing. Why
should they issue the United States ‘a blank
cheque to conduct its subversion inside the!
country?” he said.

The closure of La Prensa is touted as an
example of the Sandinista government’

oppression by right wing papers and maj%

North American dailies grouped into th®
Inter American Press Association, Lan
noted. The IAPA met in Vancouver !
fall.

Landis said that virtually “every ciA
agent” on a newspaper sooner or later 2°”
on the association’s board of directol™

observing that five key agents on El Mercv"

rio became directors shortly after the coup
that killed Allende. 7”

Oe ea eT ee en