National Journal, first published: 21/01/09

Auxiliary Bishop Williamson:
"None of the Jews died as a result of gas in gas chambers"

The following is an excerpt of a SPIEGEL-article (Der Spiegel, no. 4/2009, page 33):

Monsignore Williamson: "In the matter of the holocaust I associate with the revisionists. None of the Jews died as a result of gas in gas chambers."

An event which took place on the sidelines of a deaconing at the end of last year on All Saints Day can only severely damage the in any case tense relations between Catholics and Jews.

Williamson travelled to Zaitkofen (near Regensburg, Germany)  where the Society operate a seminary in a small baroque castle to make a Swedish convert, Sten Sandmark into a deacon of the Society. As his departure from the Protestant church was taken as a scandal in the far north, a Stockholm TV reporter Ali Fagan was there. After the deaconing, they both placed themselves in the chapel for an interview in front of the camera.

Talk turned to the Nazis. One sees in the film Williamson breathing in and then says he does not believe six million Jews to have been gassed.

To the surprised counter-question "Were there no gas chambers?" "I believe there were no gas chambers, yes".

Swedish TV (SVT1), Wednesday, 21 January 2009, "Uppdrag granskning" (transcript)

Auxiliary Bishop Williamson: "Not one Jew died by gassing in gas chambers."

Bishop Williamson, are these your words? "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers! It was all lies, lies, lies." Are these your words?

You are quoting from Canada, I believe, yes. Many years ago. I believe that the historical evidence, is hugely against six million Jews have been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.

But you say not one Jew was killed.

In gas chambers, I say.

So, there was no gas chamber?

I believe there were no gas chambers, yes. I think, as far as I have studied the evidence, I am not going by emotion, as far as I have understood the evidence, I think, for instance, people who are against what is very widely believed today, about quote on quote, the holocaust, I think that people, those people conclude, the revisionists, as they are called, I think, the most serious conclude, that between 200- and 300.000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in gas chambers.
You may have heard of the Leuchter Report? Fred Leuchter was an expert in gas chambers. He designed three gas chambers for three states, three of the 50 United States for the execution criminals. So he knew what is involved. And he studied what the supposed gas chambers in Germany, at some point of the 1980s, what remains of the supposed gas chambers, the crematoria in Birkenau, Auschwitz for instance. And his conclusion, his expert conclusion was, it is impossible that this could have ever served for the gassing of large numbers of people. Because cyanide gas is very dangerous. If you, let’s suppose you gas 300 people that you crowded into a chamber and you gas them. ... It is very dangerous to go in and pull out the corpses. Because one weave of gas that is trapped in the cloths will kill the person. It is extremely dangerous.
Once you have gassed people you got to evacuate the gas. To evacuate the gas you need a high chimney. If it is a low chimney the gas goes to the pavement and kills anybody walking by. You need a high chimney, forgot how high it must be. If there was a high chimney then the shadow most of the day would have fallen on the ground and the allied aerial photographers that flew over the camp would have picked the shadows of these chimneys. There were never any such shadows, there was no such chimney. In which case the Fred Leuchter testimony: "there can’t have been any gas chambers". He looks at the doors. The doors have to be absolutely airtight. Otherwise again, the gas escapes and kills the people outside. The doors of the gas chambers that they show to the tourists at Auschwitz are absolutely not airtight. They are absolutely not.

What you are saying now is, the holocaust never occurred, not in the way historians see it today.

I am going by what I am judged to be, the historical evidence, according to people who have observed and examined that evidence. I believe what they conclude, if they change their conclusion, I’ll be likely to follow their conclusion because I think they are judged by the evidence. I think that two to threehundredthousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none by gas chamgbers.

If this is not anti-Semitism, what is it then?

If anti-Semitism is bad, it is against the truth. If something is true, it is not bad. I am not interested in the word anti-Semitism. The word is very dangerous.

The Bishop [unknow what bishop] calls you an anti-Semite.

The bishop can call me what he likes. He can call me a dinosaur, he can call me an idiot. It is not a question of name calling. It is a question of historical truth. Historical truth goes by evidence and not by emotion.

There has certainly been a huge explotation. Germany has paid out billions and billions of deutschmarks and now euros, because the Germans have a guilt complex about their having gassed six million Jews. But I don’t think six million Jews were gassed. But be careful, this is against the law in Germany. You could have me thrown into prison before I leave Germany. I hope this is not your intention.