There is only One True Holocaust, and the Simon Weisenthal Center is its
messenger.
The last few days have been bad ones for freedom of speech on the subject
of WWII history, in countries like England and Switzerland, where Jewish
history is micromanaged according to the following set of axioms.
1. There can be only one True and Official Account of the Jewish peoples
suffering during WWII. This account has the Imprimatur of the Jewish
people, and is called the Holocaust.
2. Anyone who disputes so much as one punctuation mark in this official
account is a co-equal participant in all Nazi crimes against the Jewish
people.
3. All such people and anyone who defends them may be smeared, financially
ruined, lied about, sued, imprisoned, called Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites
and hate mongers, and generally hounded to the ends of earth, and
ordered to pay the multimillion dollar legal fees of their harrassers.
In Switzerland yesterday, Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, 79, was sentenced to a
year in prison for saying in a magazine article that he personally didn't
believe the accounts of mass gas chamber exterminations.
Apparently one is not allowed to have politically incorrect opinions in
Switzerland, or at least to articulate them in public.
In England today, historian David Irving lost a libel suit against an
American author who branded him a "Holocaust Denier" in a 1994 book, was
called an anti-Semite and racist by a High Court Judge, and ordered to pay
$3.2 million dollars in his opponent's legal fees.
His crime? The Jews felt he wasn't sufficiently critical of Hitler, and
he documented that most Jews at Auschwitz died of disease, rather than
from gas poisoning.
The Simon Weisenthal Center called the verdict a "victory of history over
hate."
Regardless of which historical accounts one accepts, I would think that
most people would find such monopolization of historical inquiry by a
single political interest onerous, a violation of free speech, and just
plain tacky.
Your mileage may vary.
--
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
