The truth is out there. But so are the lies.

The deniers have fair wind on the internet

The lies about the Holocaust lives
(by Else Christensen)

A simple search on the internet leads to thousands of websites where the holocaust and the extermination of people during the Second World War are denied. It’s declared that there have never been any gas chambers and the number of dead is exaggerated. But even the deniers’ most hardy myths are easily destroyed with facts.

Just before his suicide in 1945 Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, maintained obstinately that the Jews of Europe died by natural causes in the concentration camps – by infectious disease.
Himmler’s words became the foundation on which the first holocaust deniers built their theories on. The Frenchman Paul Rassinier, one of the deniers’ pioneers, asserted in his book Le Passage de la Ligne (To pass over the line) from 1948 that it surely occurred a few isolated murders or gassings but that they where performed by extremists and where not Nazi politic. “Never at any point had the authorities concerned within the Third Reich any intentions to give order that – and nor did ever give any order that – the Jews where to get exterminated”, Rassinier asserts.
Since Rassiniers book was published the conspiracy theories has only grown stronger and stronger. All over the internet myths which try to deny the Nazis’ mass murders flourish. The conspiracy theories can look convincing but the truth is that they are contrary to all scientific and historic facts.
That the holocaust in fact did happen has been confirmed by testimonials from thousands of survivors, by SS-guards and not in the least by the hundreds of thousands official documents that the Nazis did not have time to destroy before the war was over.
One of the most widespread myths among the holocaust deniers is that the basement in the Birkenau crematory can not have been used as a gas chamber, since the doors went inwards and would not have been able to be opened if the room was filled of dead people. This argument however is built on the earliest architectural blueprints for Crematory II in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in which the doors actually was planned to be opened inwards. Later drawings, however, show with all desirable clarity that the door was changed so that it opened outwards. The change was made in close connection with the decision to build gas chamber in the crematory in 1943. But the holocaust deniers choose to disregard all later architectural drawings, just like they ignore for instance the fact that the Nazis ordered gas-proof doors for the crematory.
In the beginning it was only the most fanatic, or gullible, who listened to the deniers, but in the middle of 1970’s the followers started to change their tactic. The deniers of the new time used an academic way of writing, footnotes and references to acknowledged scholars and institutes. Many of them showed of academic titles, of which some – but not all – where fake. Now the argumentation consisted of complicated chemical and technical analyses, and different connections were based on, among other things, false documents – everything with the purpose to convince the reader that the extermination of the Jews never happened.
In the constantly growing internet the deniers has got ever increasing possibilities to spread their theories on a number websites. But the sites always bear the mark of the deniers: details which have been taken out of content to give a seemingly obvious support for false myths.

Statement:
Zyklon B is a delousing agent and does not suffice to kill people with. If the Nazis really had decided to exterminate the Jews they would have used another gas.
Fact:
The terrifying truth is that Zyklon B actually seems to be more effective on humans than on the lice which it was supposed to extinguish. Humans die within 5 – 10 minutes after being gassed with a concentration of only 300 ppm (parts per million).
Lice, on the other hand, are cold-blooded animals with much lower metabolism and do not die until after several hours at an exposure of up till 16 000 ppm. Another advantage of Zyklon B was that the gas already was being used in the camps and therefore easily could be bought in without it arousing suspicions.

Statement:
The crematories were built to burn the people who died a natural death, for example during typhus epidemics. What some say are gas chambers are in fact just morgues.
Fact:
Many prisoners in the concentration camps did die of typhus and other contagious diseases but not so many as it would justify the number of crematory ovens that the Nazis installed in, among others, Auschwitz.
The rooms wish the deniers call morgues could also be warmed up, which would be totally unfitting if they where supposed to hold dead bodies. With the help of the heating system the gas chambers held a steady temperature of 26 – 27°C, the temperature in with Zyklon B is most effective.

Statement:
The Nazis can’t have used Zyklon B in the crematory buildings. The combination of the poisonous gas and the heat from the ovens would have caused violent explosions.
Fact:
It is true that big quantities of the gas Zyklon B in the air together with the heat of the ovens would have caused a violent explosion in the crematories. But scientific examinations shows that the great quantities of concentrated gas that was needed to kill people in the gas chambers was 200 times less than what was needed to cause an explosion. Even if the Nazis would have overdosed the gas substantially the quantities would still have been too small to cause an explosion.

Statement:
The number of Jews who died in the holocaust is greatly exaggerated. At the most 200 000 – 300 000 died – and that of natural causes.
Fact:
Scientists estimate that between 5, 5 and 6 million Jews was murdered in the holocaust. The myth that “only” 200 000 died is taken from the study “General Psychologus” written by an unknown author, Alexander Scronn. The name is most likely a pseudonym and the book was published in 1965 in Brazil – a land where a lot of German Nazis lived after the war. Scronn says that his numbers is based on facts from The International Red Cross.
Scronn’s statements have many times been denied by The Red Cross. Despite this, the deniers still use Alexander Scronn as a witness for the truth.

Statement:
One cremation takes one hour, so it would be impossible to burn 1. 1 million people during the three to four years in which the crematories in Auschwitz – Birkenau was in operation.
Facts:
This statement is a classis among deniers who consistently compares the Nazis’ burning of corpses with regular cremation. Normally the purpose is to give the relatives a fine and uniform ash after the dead, and because of that the oven must be turned off between every cremation so that the ashes from different corpses do not get mixed up.
The Nazis used methods wish mostly reminds of industrial mass burning. If the oven constantly is filled with new corpses it will reach considerably higher average temperature. Furthermore, a lot of the time goes to burn the torso. The Nazis new about this, and however horrible it may sound prisoners in the so called Sonderkommando were ordered to beat on the torso on the burning corpses with iron bars. The survivors have told how they stirred among the corpses. With that the cremation time in the ovens was prominently shortened.

Statement:
Hitler did not know about the holocaust, and the extermination was not the government’s idea.
Fact:
The statement that Hitler was not guilty of the holocaust was latest presented by the British, self-taught historian David Irving. But the hatred of the Jews was the foundation for Hitler’s whole politic: “When I come into power will the extermination of the Jews be my first and most important task”, said Hitler already in 1919 to the journalist Josef Hell.
During the war the executions and later also the gassings were strictly supervised and inspected by both Hitler and Himmler. As a rule the Führer gave all his orders orally and only to a few people at a time, and because of that there are no written orders with Hitler’s signature on them. But among others has Rudolf Höss, commandant on Auschwitz, in a testimony said that he before the mass extermination was called to a meeting with Himmler in Berlin. Himmler said to him: “The Führer has given the order of the final solution about the Jews. We, the SS, are to carry out that order. The existing extermination centres in east is not capable of accomplishing the planned big actions. I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose.”

Statement:
If prisoners had actually been gassed with Zyklon B there should have been clear marks of prussic acid on the walls. The scientists have found none.
Fact:
Even if the theory is right, the statement is wrong for several reasons. First and foremost, the concentrations and quantities of gas that was used were way too small, and the time of exposure was too short. Normally the gas was in the gas chambers for only 20 – 30 minutes at the most – which, according to the experts, is not enough for it to leave deposits.
Furthermore, the members of the Sonderkommando – the Jews who worked in the crematories – have told how both walls and floors in the gas chambers were scrubbed thoroughly after every execution. The cleaning was necessary, because according to SS-men and the Sonderkommando the chambers where besmeared with among other things blood, urine and excrements. In the year of 1944 the Nazis blew up the gas chambers when they evacuated Auschwitz. Since then the ruins has been partly under water for many years and the remains of the gas have been washed away in greater extent than in for example the delousing rooms which the deniers often use as a comparison. Despite this has scientific examinations at several occasions confirmed that there is in fact traces of Zyklon B in the walls that are left of the gas chambers.

The memory dies slowly
Historians estimate that in the whole world there are to this day still 350 000 people left who survived the holocaust. The youngest of them are soon 70 years old and it is only a question of time before there won’t be anyone left who experienced the cruelty of the Nazis.
105-years old survivor Leopold Engleitner still writes books about his life and more and more victims who earlier lived anonymous lives now choose to tell their stories before it is too late. Their stories are immortalized in newspapers, books, movies and on the internet. Here the descriptions lay side by side with the myths of the deniers. While the survivors slowly disappear their children and children’s children found a worldwide network to keep the memories alive.
In several countries, among them Sweden, the victims of the holocaust are honoured every year with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 27th of January – the date when the Russians liberated the people in Auschwitz.

I know this doen't have anything to do with bookbinding but I think it is a really important subject. We CAN NOT allow the truth to be forgotten.
I only translated this article. It is written by Elise Christiensen and it is printed in Världens Historia (History of the World) number 2/2011 wish is published by Bonner Publications.

Jag vet att det här inte har någonting med bokbindning att göra men jag tycker att det är ett väldigt viktigt ämne. Vi FÅR INTE glömma vad som faktiskt hände.
Jag har bara översatt den här artikeln. Den ursprungliga texten är skriven av Else Christensen och kan hittas i tidningen Världens Historia nummer 2/2011 som publiseras a Bonnier Publications.

Världens historia: http://varldenshistoria.se/
Bonnier Publications: http://www.bonnierpublications.se/default.asp?page=77

A new blog

ENLISH:
I thought that I should start a new blog where I can post pictures of books I'm working on, dates of fairs and events I will be attending and let you know what other things is going on in my workshop. It is also so that those of you who doesn't wish to become members on Etsy still can buy books from me.
I will write everything here in both english and swedish. So if there is something you can't understand just read on and you will probably find it further down.
I hope you will enjoy following my work here and don't hesitate to ask me if there is something you wonder or of you wish to comision a book from me.
Have a great day
/Martine


SVENSKA:
Jag tänkte att jag skulle starta en ny blog där jag kan lägga upp bilder på böcker jag jobbar på, datum för marknader jag kommer vara med på och låta er veta vad annat som är på gång i min verkstad. Det är också så att de av er som inte vill bli medlemar på Etsy ska ha en möjlighet att köpa böcker av mig.
Jag kommer att skriva allting här på både engelska och svenska. Så om det är någonting som ni inte förstår fortsätt bara att läsa så hittar ni det säkert längre ner på sidan.
Jag hoppas att ni ska tycka om att följa mina project här och tveka inte att fråga om det är någonting ni undrar eller om ni vill beställa en bok av mig.
Ha en fantastisk dag
/Martine