Open Letter
A standard Web site is next to impossible to use for continuing dialogue,
far too many delays and cumbersome procedures. DvdThomas
of the
Since Nizkor initiated contact with the Zündelsite on
September 1st,
1995, we have been subjected to numerous insults and lies, directed
both at Nizkor and at its volunteers personally. We find their tactics
to be very unprofessional.
For the most part, we have ignored the attacks, because the issue is
not us personally. And the issue is not the Nizkor organization. The
issue is the facts of the Holocaust, and the denial of those facts.
Recently, however, the Zündelsite has
publicly written
a lie which Nizkor cannot ignore: the lie that we are
"backpedalling" from a "debate" on the Holocaust.
The truth is that this "debate" is a figment of Mr.
Zündel's imagination. Nizkor is more than willing to educate Mr.
Zündel in an appropriate forum such as
alt.revisionism.
But we refuse to spend tremendous effort compensating for the technical
deficiencies of an inappropriate forum such as the world-wide
web, because we feel our effort is best spent on researching and
presenting the facts of the Holocaust.
The bottom line is that we have spent many hours researching and
professionally presenting the facts, for the benefit of those who wish
to seek them
(http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/
and elsewhere on our web site).
The Zündelsite has spent many hours preparing
propaganda to promote Mr. Zündel's self-declared martyrdom
and his publications -- and attacks on their "enemies"
(See their web site).
The difference in priorities is obvious.
We have written this open letter to explain our position, and to show
that the Zündelsite's staff will lie when it benefits them. We
would have been happy to leave the latter topic undisturbed, except that
we feel a line was crossed when we were
accused
of "backpedalling."
We ask the reader to consider what motivation the Zündelsite
might have in announcing a "debate" that never existed, so
that they could later
announce
that Nizkor was "backpedalling."
We want to get away from the mudslinging
We feel it necessary to at least provide some background of the many
errors and insults which the Zündelsite has printed about us.
Documenting these is not our preferred task; we prefer to document the
facts of the Holocaust (which is why this open letter is over a week
late -- we've been busy).
The Zündelsite's insults and errors include the statements that:
We have patiently corrected most of these errors
(September 11th,
October 7th,
elsewhere). Many were corrected in Ken McVay's open letter of
September 16th
-- an open letter which Ernst Zündel has failed even to
acknowledge. Is that how he plans to conduct the "debate" he
speaks of: ignoring his opponents' corrections?
In fact, to our knowledge, the Zündelsite has failed to
acknowledge any of these corrections, much less apologize.
Since the first day, Nizkor's position has been clear: we think it
better to cross-link opposing web sites than not, but we do not
consider cross-linking "debate." We've explained our
reasoning before, but we'd like to make it perfectly clear.
The term "debate" implies some sort of order. One
envisions, for example:
And, importantly:
A quick visit will verify that, as expected, none of these are present at the
Zündelsite. There is no framework of factual arguments, because
there are no factual arguments. There is also no evidence, but if there
were, no standard of citation for it has been established. There is no
agreement on what constitutes evidence. The entire page is ad
hominem attacks and self-serving propaganda.
There is no record of what's been said. That page has changed at
least three times since it first appeared. Nizkor cannot take on the
responsibility of archiving the entire Zündelsite so that we can
catch them in the act of "self-revisionism."
Most importantly, responding to opponents on the web is a
time-consuming, difficult, technical operation. Text cannot simply be
typed; it must be formatted with special HTML codes. Adding appropriate
links to pages requires complex codes. Putting up many links is
time-consuming, more so when the linking is to another site, even more
so when the other site has not agreed to keep its pages static.
To
paraphrase
Ingrid Rimland, the webmaster at the Zündelsite,
maintaining a web site is like flying a 747. And, as Nizkor
replied,
trying to engage in debate on the web would be like trying to
dogfight in 747s.
They want to call our cross-linking and their propaganda the first
round of "debate." We reject that term: cross-linking is
cross-linking, no more. If they want debate, they are welcome to contact
us on
alt.revisionism,
where responding is easy and an archive is automatically kept.
Until they appear in that forum, or another similarly appropriate one, they are
expressly requested to stop using Nizkor's name in their announcements
of "debate."
Nizkor has referred to the linking as linking, from the beginning in
September (September 1st) up to the present. We have expressly rejected the term
"debate" several times, for the reasons just given. The
Zündelsite could not possibly have misunderstood our meaning.
Fearing such a misunderstanding, Nizkor wrote them on January 15th:
Don't you dare take our request that you
reciprocate a simple cross-link, and turn that into some sort of
backing-down from this "Great Electronic Holocaust Debate"
that you've invented out of thin air! (emphasis in original)
Incredibly, they responded by doing just that.
On January 18th, the Zündelsite decided that they would suddenly
"discover" that we referred to cross-linking as cross-linking.
Furthermore, they decided that they would interpret this discovery as a
backing-down from previous months (when we'd been saying
exactly the same thing). They did not contact us beforehand, choosing
instead to
announce
publicly:
If you looked out of the window and saw somebody backpedalling
furiously, that was the Nizkor crowd. ...
Here is what happened, in a nutshell. "...Debate? What debate?
Did you say debate? I didn't say debate! Did anybody say debate? We
merely talked of linking..."
Nizkor has in fact been patiently explaining that cross-linking was
all we wanted, and that "debate" was an inappropriate term,
since September. Thorough documentation of this lie, with references to
our correspondence from September 1995 to the present, is available at
http://www.nizkor.org/features/z-open-letter/lie-about-position.html.
Recently, they have also put up
a web page
stating that "the Nizkor people now choose to call it
'linking'" (emphasis ours). They write on
another page
that "there was total agreement on the merits of a debate,"
and go on to say:
In fact, by mid-January, Jamie McCarthy of Nizkor tried to distance
himself from ever having wanted a "debate" in the first place.
Big Brother apparently convinced him that he merely talked of
"linking."
In short, they continue to repeat the lie -- and they are doing so
without telling us. Tracking their lies is shooting at a moving target.
This is a good example of why we consider the web to be unsuitable
for "debate."
And again, we ask the reader to consider why the Zündelsite
would advertise a "debate" that never existed, so that they
could later announce that Nizkor was "backpedalling." Is this
the action of an honest organization that has nothing to hide?
Nizkor's position remains the same as it has always been. We remain
committed to discussing the Holocaust in appropriate forums. We are used
to being lied about and insulted by our ideological opponents, and we shall
not let it interfere with our objective of exposing and refuting what
they have to say about the Holocaust.
If the Zündelsite wishes to enter the ongoing discussion, they
will be added to the list of people and organizations that see their
claims about the Holocaust refuted, on a daily basis, on
alt.revisionism.
We also remain committed to cross-linking our web pages to others'
web pages, wherever it is appropriate to do so.
We will also continue to ask the Zündelsite to cross-link their
web pages to ours, wherever it is appropriate to do so. However, we
harbor no illusions that this cross-linking, by itself, constitutes a
"debate."
We invite the Zündelsite to respond to our 66 Q&A, or any
other pages at our site, as best they can, and we will cross-link to
them. If we have the time and resources, we may respond to
their response, and ask them to cross-link to us. And so on.
But we will waste no more time on futile discussion. We realize and
expect that the Zündelsite will continue to tell lies about us. We
shall ignore such lies as best we can. From looking at their site, one
might reasonably conclude that their interest lies solely in the
promotion of Ernst Zündel, self-declared martyr. Until that
changes, we find it unnecessary to comment further.
Readers interested in the facts of the Holocaust, and a refutation of
Holocaust-denial, may wish to browse Nizkor, starting perhaps with the
66 QAR.
We have asked the Zündelsite to cross-link all of their web pages
which mention "debate" to this page, and to make the readers of
their Zündelsite-grams aware of this open letter. As of February
4th, they have refused to do so -- please see our
documentation
of the refusal process.
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This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
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Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
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and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.
To visitors to Ernst Zündel's "Zündelsite"
Committee
for the Open Debate On the Holocaust
Overview
A History of Distortion
and settle down to science and reason...
The Zündelsite, September 2nd
Nizkor's Position on Debate
The Lie about Nizkor
Where Do We Go From Here?