Announcing the winners of our 2nd Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge! First place goes to Charles Krafft, second place to William Comer, and honorable mention to Simon Gilford. In one respect, though, the real winner was Germar Rudolf, who was named by each of our winning contestants as the person to whom the prize money should be sent. So, Germar's legal defense fund is $250 richer, thanks to these three fine gentlemen. Of course, it didn't seem right to send Germar money without remembering Ernst Zundel, so we're kicking in an extra $250 for Zundel's defense fund, too.

This is the last day for entries for the 2nd Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge. We've already received some great entries, but if yours is good enough, who knows? If you can't get your submission in by October 30, 2005, don't worry -- there's always next year. We'll be announcing the winners on Halloween (October 31, 2005).

Germar Rudolf's main website (www.vho.org) has details about Germar's arrest, and -- thanks to Art Butz -- updates about how he's doing, and what you can do to help. If you're interested in Germar Rudolf the man, check out www.germarrudolf.com.

President Introduces History & Civic Education Initiatives. Remarks of the President on Teaching American History and Civic Education Initiative.

The Rose Garden September 17, 2002.

[Begin quote] In the last year, in this last year of American history, we have witnessed acts of sacrifice and heroism, compassion and courage, unity and fierce determination. We have been reminded that we are citizens with obligations to each other, to our country, and to our history. These examples are particularly important for our children. Children reflect the values they see in their parents, and in their heroes. And this is how a culture can be strengthened and changed for the better.

During the last year, our children have seen that lasting achievement in life comes through sacrifice and service. They've seen that evil is real, but that courage and justice can triumph. They've seen that America is a force for good in the world, bringing hope and freedom to other people. In recent events, our children have witnessed the great character of America. Yet they also need to know the great cause of America. They are seeing Americans fight for our country; they also must know why their country is worth fighting for. [end of quote]

Life as a Revisionist seems to give me a different perspective on things than most personages of power and influence in our society. At a time when the President of the United States was citing "history" as a reason to invade Iraq, I was citing history as a reason not to invade Iraq. Most Americans agreed with Mr. Bush.

Innocent abroad

PunditGuy's blog for October 18, 2005, describes his recent visit to Dachau. It's a pretty scary place, according to him, but he was prepared:

I haven’t studied much of the history of the Holocaust. I have visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, I’ve been to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and yes, I’ve watched Schindler’s List.

After some other comments, he gets to the heart of the matter:

I focused on two places. The Crematorium and the maintenance building. On my way to the Crematorium building, I couldn’t help but think about all of the people who lived here, worked here, suffered here and died here.

Walking just outside the camp and through a gate, I came upon this building. It looks rather plain actually, but it was nothing ordinary at all. It was here that tens of thousands of people died.

There is only one picture showing the Dachau Crematorium in operation. It was taken illegally by a prisoner, but it survived and is now the single representation of the horrors that occurred here. There are two rooms inside this building that are the most difficult to visit in the entire camp. The first is the gas chamber. And the second place is the room containing the ovens. No one talks much in here. There really isn’t a whole lot to say. It’s mostly a place to reflect. A place to remember. A place which must never exist again. In the back of the Crematorium, you’ll find this memorial. It was here where the ashes of thousands of those killed at Dachau were dumped by the Nazi SS.

Unless my memory is faulty, neither Anne Frank or Schindler's List had anything to do with Dachau. That leaves the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as the source for the canard that there was a homicidal (what Robert Faurisson would call a "Nazi") gas chamber at Dachau. Bradley's been to the USHMM and maybe he can chime in, regarding what they say about the Nazi gas chamber at Dachau, but two possibilities suggest themselves to me.
First, the USHMM does leave visitors with the impression that there was a Nazi gas chamber at Dachau. For what it's worth, they appear to be trying to square the circle on this issue. Its website states:

There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings.

If they were more forthright, it would of course state that there is no credible evidence that there was a Nazi gas chamber at Dachau, as virtually no serious historian now maintains that there was such a construct there.

Second, PunditGuy has become so steeped in Holocaust "knowledge" from the media's daily pounding of the Holocaust drum that he no longer knows why he knows what he thinks he knows about the Holocaust, and turning to the high priests of the Holocaust myth is not the way to get straight information.

Ironically, this type of muddled thinking seems worse among the "elite" such as PunditGuy (my dictionary defines "pundit" as "an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public"). If you ask the average person about Dachau or the Holocaust, you get pretty vague answers. Most persons just don't care. But self-appointed experts -- hey, they've seen Schindler's List! -- cling to Holocaust falsehoods as if they were life itself.

The 'lessons of the Holocaust'

I don't know how I missed it when it first came out, but I recently came across the Guardian's 2003 article on Chinese workers in Israel (excerpts posted here), and it got me thinking again about that phrase, "The lessons of the Holocaust."

I've never understood what that means, "lessons of the Holocaust." It doesn't seem to mean that each group should have its own country where the members of that group can run things to suit themselves (except for Israel, of course!). It doesn't seem to mean that each of us should arm himself against governmental and other inimical forces. It doesn't even seem to mean that we should treat each with dignity and respect: As implied by this article, Israel imports foreign workers to displace Palestinian workers, and then transfers its hatred of Palestinians to their new surrogates.

I know there are thousands of other instances wherein that "light unto the nations" behaves brutally toward others, including those in its midst, and I'm not singling out this article to give short shrift to the more serious examples. But seeing how poorly Israel has learned the lessons that Jewish leaders constantly harangue non-Jews to study, it appears to me that "the lessons of the Holocaust" is actually a newspeak term that translates to "the weapon of the Holocaust." This weapon is to be wielded only by Jews, as many non-Jewish pretenders have painfully discovered.

NSA report calls Holocaust 'deniers' scholars

The normally super-secret National Security Agency (a.k.a. NSA, a.k.a. No Such Agency) has issued a report, Eavesdropping on Hell, which refers to Holocaust revisionists as scholars. Report author Robert Hanyok mentions the Journal of Historical Review, which he describes as a "forum for that faction of scholars and researchers." In a footnote, Hanyok characterizes the Journal's publisher, the Institute for Historical Review, as "a loosely organized scholarly association" that promotes "a revisionist or denial viewpoint about the Holocaust."

As you can imagine, the usual suspects are apoplectic that a report put out by a branch of the Israeli-occupied U.S. government would treat Holocaust revisionists as humans, let alone as scholars.

There's a full account of the furor over this characterization here.