National Journal, first published: 02/05/2009

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

A young and brilliant historian

Hitler's War

The Leuchter Report

Irving vs Lipstadt

Jail in Austria

Irving's trip to Poland

My questions to Irving and his reply

The missing answer on question four

 David Irving’s evidence for the mass murder

Irving's death toll

The absurdities do not end

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

The case of the missing murder weapon

The diesel gas chamber story

The evolution of the extermination legend

The results of the excavations at Treblinka (1945)

The results of the archeological drillings at Belzec (1997-1999)

Sobibor or the scientific report that never was

Two important documents Irving deliberately ignores

The three Reinhardt camps were transit camps

Once a "Holocaust denier", always a "Holocaust denier"!

A warning to David Irving

An advice to David Irving

Part 9 - Sources

Jürgen Graf , April 2009

David Irving and the “Aktion Reinhardt Camps”

David Irving v. Deborah Lipstadt

After a particularly obnoxious representative of the Holocaust lobby, one Deborah Lipstadt, had reviled Irving in her book Denying the Holocaust [4], he sued her for libel. The trial took place in London in early 2000. Although Irving’s chances to win this case were next to zero from the beginning, he could easily have scored a tremendous moral victory by making mincemeat of the repulsive Lipstadt and her experts. It goes without saying that this would have required serious preparation, but in his arrogance, Irving, who was insufficiently acquainted with the “Holocaust” subject, did not deem it necessary to study the revisionist literature before the trial. I vividly remember my dismay when I read in the Swiss Jewish newspaper Jüdische Rundschau Maccabi that Irving had “admitted the existence of the gas vans”. It was quite true: Confronted with the so-called “Just document”[5] which Lipstadt’s team had presented as documentary proof for the mass murder of Jews in gas vans, Irving had declared it to be authentic, although it is a crude forgery teeming with linguistic and technical absurdities. This fake had been analysed in detail by two revisionist researchers, the German Ingrid Weckert[6] and the Frenchman Pierre Marais[7]. Since Irving can read both German and French with the greatest ease, he simply had no excuse for not knowing these exceedingly important studies.

His poor knowledge of the subject forced Irving to make several spectacular, but totally unnecessary concessions to his adversaries. In his verdict, the judge Charles Gray correctly stated:

“In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: He was prepared to concede that gassings of human beings had taken place at Auschwitz, but on a limited scale.” [8]

To Irving’s credit, it should be pointed out that he made very efficient use of Faurisson’s “No holes, no Holocaust” argument. According to the “eyewitness evidence” on which the official version of the events is based, Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 of Krematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau was used as a homicidal gas chamber where, according to Lipstadt’s expert Robert Jan van Pelt, about 500,000 Jews were murdered in 1943/1944. During the trial, Irving demonstrated that the openings in the roof of Leichenkeller 1, through which the SS allegedly dropped pellets of Zyklon B, did not exist, which means that the alleged crime could not possibly have been perpetrated. In this point, Irving scored a major triumph. Even the judge Charles Grey, who was quite hostile to Irving, honestly admitted in his verdict:

“I have to confess that, in common I suspect with most other people, I had supposed that the evidence of mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz was compelling. I have, however, set aside this preconception when assessing the evidence adduced by the parties in this proceeding.” [9]

In jail in Austria

In November 2005, David Irving imprudently visited the Zionist puppet state of Austria where he was promptly arrested for a “Holocaust-denying” speech he had made in 1989. At his trial, Irving said certain things for which we have no right to blame him: He wanted to be a free man again as soon as possible and to be reunited with his family. In his situation, most people would have done the same thing. It is quite true that numerous revisionists who were put on trial for their convictions have stood by them and paid a high price for their courage, but not everybody is a hero. For his cooperative attitude, the Austrian kangaroo court rewarded Irving with a relatively lenient sentence: He got only three years, and in December 2006, after serving one third of his prison term, he was released and allowed to return to England.

David Irving’s trip to Poland

In March 2007, I got an e-mail from David Irving who informed me that he was in Poland, where he was visiting the “Aktion Reinhardt camps.” According to German wartime documents the purpose of “Aktion Reinhardt” consisted in the confiscation of Jewish property. Without a shred of documentary or material evidence, the orthodox historians claim that the real purpose of this action was the physical liquidation of the Jews of Eastern Poland and that between 1, 5 and 2 million Jews were killed with carbon monoxide from diesel engines in three camps: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Traditional history has it that these camps were pure extermination centers where all Jews, regardless of age and health, were gassed upon arrival without registration: only a handful of strong young Jews were temporarily spared because they were needed to keep the camps running.

In his e-mail (which I unfortunately deleted) Irving must have asked me a question about Belzec because I distinctly remember that in my reply I asked him if he had read Carlo Mattogno’s book Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History[10]. He answered that he would read it later.

In addition to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, Irving also visited Auschwitz and Majdanek. Apparently he did not visit the sixth alleged “extermination camp,” Chelmno (Kulmhof). On his website[11], he published an account of his trip to Poland which struck me by its superficiality and its vagueness. It was impossible to deduce from this account whether Irving believed that homicidal gassings had taken place at Auschwitz and Majdanek. As far as the three “Aktion Reinhardt” camps were concerned, he seemed to endorse the “extermination camp” version; on the other hand, he spoke of the “alleged gas chambers” of these camps. In other words: He avoided making clear and unequivocal statements.