SHOULD
FREE SPEECH ALLOW HOLOCAUST DENIAL?
January
11, 2007
Michael
Smerconish
'IF WE REALLY want to know the truth about history, we need
to allow freedom of speech."
So I was told by David Duke in an interview three weeks ago
via a scratchy connection from Tehran. He was in Iran to participate in Mahmoud
Admadinejad's Holocaust conference.
I've followed Duke's career and find his repeated
condemnation of Israel and its supporters to be abhorrent. And I knew that
accepting an invitation to interview the former Klan Imperial Wizard would
cause a stir. But I was willing to speak to him because I was on the verge of
visiting the most deadly of all Nazi extermination camps, and I wanted to hear
what a self-described revisionist had to say.
The fringe represented by Duke argues that laws in Europe
prohibiting Holocaust denial inhibit an analysis that could otherwise reveal
the Holocaust to be a historical exaggeration that exists to justify the
legitimacy of Israel. No Holocaust, or exaggerated description? Then there's no
justification for the creation of the state of Israel in the minds of these
few.
Now that I'm back from my visit to Auschwitz, I find that I
agree with Duke that Europeans should be free to debate the Holocaust, but not
for reasons he would agree with. Having seen the ghastly evidence, I believe
it's far easier to defeat the deniers with fact and logic rather than risk
fostering the skepticism that comes from making those views illegal. It is
through the clash of truth and falsity that the truths of the Holocaust are
most readily seen.
A grim trip to the killing fields
My trip had been planned for nearly a year. I'm one of a
half-dozen Philadelphia friends, three Jewish, who regularly travel after New
Year's to historic sites.
We began in Berlin at the Wannsee villa where, on Jan. 20,
1942, 15 officials of the Third Reich plotted the "final solution."
In their meeting room, we read the protocol written by Adolf Eichmann that set
forth the plan to murder European Jews.
Then we visited Track 17 in the fashionable Grunewalt
section of Berlin, at the former station that was the point of departure for
Jews from the area being sent to the camps. Listed next to the tracks are the
dates, number of passengers and destination of the railcars.
Next stop: the other end of those tracks, in Poland.
On a raw, dark, rainswept day, we spent four hours walking
the grounds of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
We saw it all. At Auschwitz I, we walked through the
infamous gate ("Work Brings Freedom"). We toured the surviving
crematorium. We saw the ghastly displays of human hair, personal effects,
suitcases, even shoe polish, all confiscated from the prisoners who'd packed in
haste under the ruse of "resettlement." Also there: empty canisters
that held pellets of Zyklon B, the agent used to exterminate human life in the
crematoriums.
At Auschwitz II-Birkenau, we stood on the platform where
Jews were divided between those who were to be immediately gassed and those who
would live for, at least for a while. We also surveyed the ruins of crematorium
II, the most prolific of the death machines, largely destroyed by the Nazis in
an effort to hide their crimes against humanity.
Outlawing the denial?
The critical question: If the evidence of the Holocaust was
right before my eyes, should all argument to the contrary be outlawed? Close to
20 nations say yes, and ban Holocaust denial. Austria only recently released
historian David Irving, imprisoned for this very crime. Our guide was one of
many who believe those laws justified. She thinks they're a safeguard for
properly educating future generations about what occurred.
I agree, we must ensure the understanding of future
generations. But I don't see these laws as a way to do it. Banning Holocaust
debate would be like America disallowing argument on the wacky 9/11 Internet
conspiracy theories.
There are many credible-looking Web sites that have become
clearinghouses for rumor and innuendo about the attack on the Pentagon. A
missile, some argue, not an airplane. (What then happened to American Airlines
Flight 77 and its passengers?)
The most effective way of dealing with such propaganda is to
discredit it point by point, not to make it unlawful, which runs the risk of
fueling skepticism. Popular Mechanics did so exquisitely in both magazine and then book form.
It should be the same with Holocaust revisionists. The way
to combat their mindset is with total openness and a climate of candor about
all aspects of World War II. That includes providing full access, even to those
locations that run the risk of cultivating morbid curiosity.
In Berlin, we stayed in the Hotel Adlon at the foot of the
Bradenburg Gate. The concierge provided me with a walking tour map of the
neighborhood. Included were both the Reichstag, home of the German Parliament,
and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. Missing, however, was any
reference to what's beneath a nondescript parking lot just 100 yards behind the
hotel: Hitler's bunker.
Not until the World Cup came to Germany last year was there
any sign to note the significance of the spot where Hitler killed himself as
Russian troops stormed the Reichstag. That too is the wrong response to a
hideous chapter of German history. Not only should the location of the bunker
be noted, it should be unearthed and opened to the public.
We need the bunker reality
Those were my views upon arriving back home. But my
reflection wasn't over.
I then had the chance to question one of the world's
foremost historians, Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill
and author of "Auschwitz and the Allies" and "The Holocaust: A
History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War." I asked him if
he thinks Holocaust denial should be against the law.
"This is a very difficult question," he said. He
attended almost every day of the trial that convicted David Irving, "and I
heard from the mouth of the Holocaust denier the most terrifying racism and
anti-Semitism. I thought to myself, if this person is allowed to spread his
word to ignorant audiences or audiences who want to be prejudiced, that's a bad
thing.
"So when the Austrian government imprisoned him for his
denial, I thought, 'Well, he knew the law, he broke the law, and the Austrians
have a right to feel that this is something inflammatory and wrong.'
"I think every country has the right to its own laws...
As you say, free speech is tremendously important in our society, and debate
and argument, and I'm all for that. I'm all for every Holocaust denier being
able to speak in a forum where there's someone who is going to challenge him or
her. At the same time, countries like Poland know that Holocaust denial,
anti-Semitism, racism take on a life of their own."
I told Gilbert that I believe we give credibility to the
minute number of deniers by not allowing that kind of dialogue. I worry that
there will be a level of skepticism in future generations who'll ask why we're
able to debate anything but that.
"I think the key word is dialogue," Gilbert said.
"I'm totally in favor of every Holocaust denier being able to speak,
provided he or she allows there to be a dialogue. I'm willing to travel the
world or get up at the crack of dawn in order to be present at such a debate.
And many other historians, Jews and non-Jews, will do the same. So that's fine.
"And the other thing I feel... is that Holocaust denial
is really quite a minor thing. I mean it has its fling on the Internet; it has
its few adherents who travel everywhere, as they did to Ahmadinejad's
anti-Holocaust conference - they made a pathetic showing actually there.
"I think that what is important is the amount of
material about the Holocaust, much of that you'd have seen in the Auschwitz
bookshop, published by Auschwitz itself: records, diaries, the enormous number
of superb memoirs... These things are available, they're taught in school.
American schools have a very good record mandating Holocaust teaching."
I told Gilbert about my Berlin experience and suggested that
the Fuehrerbunker be opened to the public. He agreed.
"When I traveled around Europe with my students about
10 years ago, and I wrote a book about that called 'Holocaust Journey'... I was
myself astonished, and I mentioned in the book, that there wasn't a plaque
there. I'm glad to hear there is, albeit only a small one...
"There should be complete transparency and the bunker
should be open for the world to see...
'SO LET THE bunker be open, let it become a place of
pilgrimage, if you like, and a place of learning, as so many Holocaust sites
are today."
Finally, I shared all this with a close friend who lost
family in the Holocaust. We discussed whether free speech should exist on the
issue of Holocaust denial.
He was unsure. But he acknowledged that laws banning
Holocaust denial are probably an insufficient blanket to put out that fire.
Michael Smerconish can be heard
weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.