Feb. 15, 2005

To the DAILY NORTHWESTERN:

I am writing concerning Prof. Butz and what I have heard is a Holocaust Denial brou-ha-ha at Northwestern. I have heard about this issue only through others and hope that my comments are pertinent to the issue.

First, I would say that as long as it is not permitted to conduct thorough forensic testing on the bone fragments in the soil at the concentration camps, questions about how the prisoners died will remain. Thorough testing might well indicate whether death was caused by cyanide gas.

As long as scholars such as Dr. Butz risk defamation and the ruining of their careers for questioning certain aspects of the Holocaust, questions will remain.

Despite what many students and professors at Northwestern probably believe, there are valid questions concerning what actually happened in the Holocaust.

To take just one of many examples: It is taken as fact that Hitler ordered the extermination of the Jews, but even this indisputable ‘fact’ is open to question.

Jewish Holocaust-historian Raul Hilberg wrote in the 1961 edition of his study, The Destruction of the European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the destruction of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the second shortly thereafter.

But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book published in 1985. As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted, in the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler order for the "Final Solution" have been systematically excised.

Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were not made and orders were not given.

But the crucial point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally tons of German documents after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence of a wartime extermination order, plan or program.

In conclusion, I would ask this question: Do you think that any budding historian at Northwestern who had the temerity to press the above point would be granted tenure?

Frank Messmann