Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - The ICRC & Denial Duplicity
Summary: Lipstadt's "Denying the Holocaust" demolishes Kuschel's 
         contention that the Red Cross report (1948) exonerates the
         Nazis regarding the existence of death camps.
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
References: 
Keywords: ICRC,Red Cross
Lines: 150

Archive/File: holocaust/usa/lipstadt lipstadt.003
Last-Modified: 1994/01/05

In (Message-ID: ) Boris Kuschel asserts:

      In 1600 pages recorded on Concentration Camps by the Red
      Cross, there was no mention of gas chambers.

and...

      Not only this but the Red Cross and Vatican interviewed
      thousands on freed camp inmates at the end of the was and
      asked about alleged gas chambers.  The reponse was always
      the same."The detainees themselves have not spoken of
      them." Red Cross Document No.  9925, June, 1946

and...

      Not only this but the Red Cross and Vatican interviewed
      thousands on freed camp inmates at the end of the was and
      asked about alleged gas chambers.  The reponse was always
      the same."The detainees themselves have not spoken of
      them." Red Cross Document No.  9925, June, 1946

and...

      The were actaully at the camps..  there are pictures of
      them there.  The Red Cross has not claimed anything of what
      you have said.  The ICRC also complained that they could
      not send any relief parcels to Russia, while they arrived
      at German camps, with them recieving several letters of
      thanks. 

Boris, of course, not noted for accuracy in his research, hasn't
actually _read_ the ICRC report, but has instead relied upon Richard
Harewood's [in actuality, Richard Verral, British neo-Nazi] "Did Six
Million Really Die?", long a staple part of the denial diet. 

Deborah Lipstadt, to illustrate the level of scholastic duplicity
employed by deniers, addresses the ICRC report and its
misrepresentation by folks like Boris...

   "Harwood contended that the report made 'nonsense' of the
   allegation that there were 'gas chambers cunningly disguised as
   shower facilities.' He substantiated this assertion by quoting a
   passage from the report that depicted how ICRC officials inspected
   baths and showers in the camps. When they found problems they acted
   swiftly 'to have fixtures made less primitive and to have them
   repared or enlarged.' <53> This, Harwood argued, demonstrated
   conclusively that showers functioned as showers, and not as killing
   apparatus. The problem with Harwood's choice of this citation,
   which he quoted correctly, is that the passage had nothing to do
   with German concentration camps: It referred to _Allied_ camps for
   civilian internees in Egypt.<54>" (Lipstadt, 115-116)

Lipstadt then goes on to examine Boris' claim regarding care parcels:

   Harewood repeatedly asserted that from August 1942 the ICRC was
   allowed to visit and distribute food parcels to major concentration
   camps in Germany, and that from February 1943 this privilege was
   extended to all other camps and prisons.<55> Harwood claimed that
   this information was to be found on page 78 of the report's third
   volume. The page did refer to 'major concentration camps' in
   Germany but indicated that they included only Dachau and
   Oranienburg. The concession that was extended in 1943 included all
   other camps and prisons _in Germany_.<56> This meant that numerous
   camps outside Germany were not included. Moreover, the Red Cross
   acknowledged that it was limited to giving parcels only to deported
   aliens for whom it had addresses, and that many inmates, among them
   the vast majority of Jews, were not allowed to receive food parcels
   at all." (Lipstadt, 116)

The true depth of Mr. Kuschel's "research" is now clear - he hasn't
done any! This reality is driven home when Lipstadt addresses the
primary issue - did the ICRC deny the existence of gas chambers at
Auschwitz?

   "According to him [Harwood] [the ICRC report] demonstrated that the
   International Red Cross had found no evidence 'whatever' in camps
   in Axis-occupied Europe of a 'deliberate policy to exterminate the
   Jews.'<47> Harwood contended that in all its sixteen hundred pages
   the report failed to make any mention of 'such a thing as a gas
   chamber.' Though the
   ICRC admitted that Jews had suffered rigors and privations, as had
   many other wartime nationalities, 'its complete silence on the
   subject of planned extermination is ample refutation of the Six
   Million legend.'<48>

   Harwood could make this claim only by ignoring key sections of the
   ICRC report. The Red Cross was absolutely specific about the Jews'
   fate. It made reference to the Nazi attempt to annihilate them,
   observing that under Nazi rule Jews had been transformed into
   'outcasts condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny,
   persecution and _systematic extermination_.'<49> ...Most important,
   the ICRC specifically delineated how systematic annihilation was
   carried out: 'They were penned into concentration camps and
   ghettos, recruited for forced labour, subjected to grave
   brutalities and sent to _death camps_ without anyone being allowed
   to intervene in those matters.'<50> These were not the ICRC's only
   references to death camps or systematic annihilation." (Lipstadt,
   114-115)
   
It is important to understand the mechanics commonly employed by
Holocaust deniers, including the simple-minded Mr. Kuschel. When a
document like the ICRC report is examined, any quote which would, when
presented out of context, support the denial claims, is embraced like
a long lost friend. On the other hand, any quote which refutes their
claims, or even casts doubt about them, is simply ignored. This
technique is essential to the entire denial industry, since an honest
examination of the evidence absolutely destroys their position.

Lipstadt's footnotes:

<47> Harwood, "Did Six Million Really Die?", p. 24. For analysis of
     his use of the ICRC report, see Arthur Suzman and Denis Diamond,
     "Six Million Did Die: The Truth Shall Prevail" (Johannesburg,
     1977), pp. 10-13.
<48> Harwood, "Did Six Million Really Die?", p. 25
<49> "The Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross
     (ICRC) on its Activities during the Second World War" (Geneva,
     1948), vol. 1, p. 641 (italics added). The report is replete with
     numerous quotes that demonstrate that Harwood totally
     misconstrued its findings. For additional examples see Suzman and
     Diamond, "Six Million Did Die," p. 12
<50> Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 641
<53> Harwood, p.25
<54> Report of the ICRC, vol. 1, p. 594. Harwood incorrectly cited
     this passage as coming from vol. 3.
<55> Harwood, p. 25
<56> Report of the ICRC, vol. 3, p. 77.

                            Work cited

Lipstadt, Deborah E.  Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory.  New York: The Free Press (A division of Macmillan,
Inc.), 1993.

From: dzk@cs.brown.edu (Danny Keren)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Holocaust Almanac - The ICRC & Denial Duplicity
Date: 31 Jan 1994 06:36:34 GMT
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <2ii8ti$89l@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cslab6b.cs.brown.edu
Keywords: ICRC,Red Cross

A claim often made by Nazi propagandists regarding the Holocaust is
that the 1948 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) supports "Holocaust revisionism".

As usual, this is a slander and a lie, and another demonstration
of a technique which the deniers are fond of - plain lying, quoting
a person or an organization as saying something it has never said.

The ICRC report is very clear regarding Nazi atrocities; for instance,
in page 641 of vol. 1, the report states that the Jews were "outcasts
condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution,
and systematic extermination". It goes on to say "they were penned
into concentration camps and ghettos, recruited for forced labor, 
subjected to grave brutalities and sent to death camps". Another
verbatim quote is the following (in the same page):

"During the period in September 1940, when the 'Iron Guard' supported
by the Gestapo and the German SS had seized power, the Jews had been
subjected to persecution and deported to death camps".

and from vol. 2, page 514

"In Germany and her satellite countries, the lot of the civilians
belonging to this group was by far the worst. Subjected as they were
to a discriminatory regime, which aimed more or less openly at their
extermination, they were unable to procure the necessities of life".

The report includes more references to the policy of extermination the
Nazis adopted with regard to the Jews.

The deniers often make the preposterous claim that the ICRC estimated
the number of Jewish losses during WW2 as far less than 6 million. This
claim has no foundation in reality. In 22 August 1975, the central
office of the ICRC announced, regarding such assertions, that -

"The figures cited by the author of the booklet are based upon 
statistics falsely attributed to us, evidently for the purpose of
giving them credibility, despite the fact that we never publish
information of this kind".

(The booklet in question was published in 1974 by Richard Verrall,
the editor of the publication of the neofascist "National Front".
Verrall used the name "Richard Harwood". It contains the same lies
about the ICRC report which are currently repeated by Holocaust 
deniers).

The ICRC explicitly stated that it never published nor compiled any
such statistics. All references to such statistics are lies.


-Danny Keren.

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