That first thing that changed your mind

[Archie]

It should be noted that in South Africa there were many people that were pro-German and there was already some disbelieve in the narrative. But there was/is also a larger Jewish Community that pushed the issue, as well as many Colonials that were pro-British and pushed the issue as well.

Hektor, I didn't know you were South African.

South Africa isn't a country I ever associated with Jews much before. But I then I saw an old Mark Weber article about the Boer War that talks about the gold and diamond interests there going back a long time. And then I heard about how several of the Communist anti-apartheid activists like Joe Slovo and Denis Goldberg were Jewish. I also once met an orthodox Jew from South Africa who had relocated to America.

Usually with the discussion of Jewish demographics, the only places talked about are Europe, Israel, and America.

[Hektor]

It should be noted that in South Africa there were many people that were pro-German and there was already some disbelieve in the narrative. But there was/is also a larger Jewish Community that pushed the issue, as well as many Colonials that were pro-British and pushed the issue as well.

Hektor, I didn't know you were South African.

South Africa isn't a country I ever associated with Jews much before. But I then I saw an old Mark Weber article about the Boer War that talks about the gold and diamond interests there going back a long time. And then I heard about how several of the Communist anti-apartheid activists like Joe Slovo and Denis Goldberg were Jewish. I also once met an orthodox Jew from South Africa who had relocated to America.

Usually with the discussion of Jewish demographics, the only places talked about are Europe, Israel, and America.

Yes, there was a larger Jewish community in South Africa. And they had a presence in many towns. They were also very active in leftist politics for quite a while. Ironically they also got a Revisionist book banned in the 1970s: "Did six million really die":

This paper is part of a larger dissertation exploring Holocaust Memory in South Africa during apartheid and in its aftermath. It focuses on the years 1974-1978 and examines the Jewish Board of Deputies' (SAJBD) struggle against the publication of Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (1974) that appeared in the local ultra-rightist monthly South African Observer. The British Holocaust denier Richard Verrall wrote the booklet under the nom de plume of Richard Harwood, and it was widely distributed around the world. Alongside analyzing the booklet's global resonance, I examine its South African reception in 1975 and the reactions to SAJBD's appeal in June 1976 claiming that the booklet is 'undesirable' under the Publication Act No. 42 of 1974. Trials were conducted against the publication of the booklet's 1980 edition in Canada (1985) and Germany (1991). However, it was under apartheid South Africa that the booklet was banned in its 1974 edition. Moreover, as the appellants withdrew their appeal, the SAJBD decided to publish the evidence collected during the trial preparations in the book Six Million Did Die- the Truth Shall Prevail (1978). The cultural separation among all social groups was the essence of apartheid, and I argue that this case is one of the several cases, which demonstrates how the deeply oppressive apartheid's censorship acts enabled the Jewish community to preserve Holocaust memory. Moreover, I argue that although Holocaust denial was a relatively marginal phenomenon, it became a powerful engine for Holocaust memory distribution within South African white society.
https://www.academia.edu/31470415/Apart ... _the_1970s

Would be interesting to look into all the court documents there again. And possibly interview trial participants that are still alive. I recall a Flemish doctor in Pretoria that seemed to have something to do with this on the publishers side. Mind you, the book was banned based on legislation that banned hate against an ethnic group inside South Africa. Can't recall that the same standard was ever applied to Holocaust propaganda. It seems in some cases that kind of "hate crimes legislation" only works in a one way street. That's an issue on top of the dubiosity of banning literature dealing with historical matters.

I recall one historian (presently jailed in connection with another political matter) that told me that South African historians didn't take the Holocaust story seriously. That must have been during the early 1980s - so they may have had those trials against the Harwood-book in mind. But I think the issue had become a hot topic in South Africa as well, given its relationship with Zionist Israel and the frequent comparisons of the National Party with the NSDAP. The NP did indeed have a wing at an early stage that was sympathetic to NS-Germany during WW2, based on their dislike for the English who burned down their farms and let their families die in concentration camps, mind you. Of course you also got some people in South Africa that were sympathetic to Jews based on a form of Christian Zionism that viewed Jews as in an ahistorical light as "Volk van God". The reach of the SAJBD agitation would however been more in the English community that was pro-British anyway and also had a need for the Holocaust as a justification for the Union of South Africa's participation in WW2. How one Smuts managed to get a majority in parliament to vote for declaration of war is still a riddle to me, given that South Africa had no beef with Germany or the Axis at all. The ambitious Jan Smuts may have had a motive in the sense that this was an opportunity for him to achieve some grandeur. Ironically his party (Vereenigde Party) lost elections in 1948 to the National Party after which it declined. Today it's often misrepresented as being opposed to Separate Development/Apartheid. In fact the Verenigde Party's leader Jan Smuts did hold a lecture in Oxford which quite thoroughly outlines exactly that model of policy (Parallel Development):
https://archive.org/details/JanSmutsNat ... gApartheid

[Hannover]

It should be emphasized in this thread that ALL Revisionists are former Believers.

In summation, Revisionists are just the messengers, the absurd impossibility of the 'holocaust' narrative is the message.

- Hannover

[Otium]

There was never one thing that did it for me. I just never had much care about the sanctity of the Holocaust narrative in the first place. I've never been surrounded by it my entire life, nor had I ever given it any thought beyond the occasional reference I would hear or see in movies or television. I used to like war films, so you could imagine that I've seen a few - Saving Private Ryan, Inglorious Bastards, Boy in Striped Pyjamas - are the three that come to mind.

But I'd never thought about the deeper political message or cared at all about which side was which.

If you were to ask me how the Jews were killed 4-5 years ago, I would've told you that they died in gas chambers when the gas came out of fake shower heads.

I distinctly remember a time no less than 4 years ago when I was wandering around my highschool at lunch time with some friends. One of them brought up that there are "conspiracy theorists" who believe that the Holocaust never happened. I remember that this offended me, not because I was morally outraged because the memory of the Jews was being threatened - or some such nonsense - but because such a claim appeared to me as a blatant denial of common sense. I recall my only response being that the Holocaust had to have occurred because I'd seen the pictures of the dead bodies at Auschwitz (although the pictures I saw were probably from Belsen, or Dachau, not Auschwitz).

This was all I needed to convince myself that it was real at the time. I had never been taught in school about the Holocaust, nor had I ever really been interested in National Socialism until I got more into politics in 2016. At this time I was an anti-islamist civic nationalist type of person with latent white nationalist sympathies which I tried to pretend were ignorant and wrong. My anti-islamism was really just a proxy for the fact that it angered me to see these brown men running around Europe killing white men, women and children in the name of their barbaric death cult parading around as a "religion".

In these circles it was uncommon to find Holocaust "Deniers", but like any group of people you can meet online, there are always going to be eccentrics who believe some stuff that don't accord with the mainstream, either due to mistrust of the current system that exceeds that of others, or because they just so happened to have a varied interest in issues that are controversial.

If you're involved in politics in any way, the spectre of "The Nazis" is always going to be invoked in some way or another. The group of people I was associating with were "sceptic" Liberals who just didn't like political correctness for the most part. All were still anti-Nazis as you might expect - one of their favourite things to do was compare Islam to the Nazis in order to make claim to a moral argument against more militant leftists. So discussing the Nazis wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

In a few such occasions I remember being told a variety of things, although these things were only said in my presence and not directly to me, as I was with a group of people talking over google hangouts. One such thing I heard was that Hitler initially ordered the Jews to be deported to Madagascar. This fact, which I didn't bother verifying, absolutely astonished me. How was it possible that the evil Hitler, who explicitly (I thought) wanted to kill the Jews, would be content just to let them leave Europe? This was the first instance I can recall that really shifted my perspective.

Outside of this I only ever heard a hand full of comments sceptical about the Holocaust from a friend of mine at the time who would occasionally piss off some other "sceptics" on Twitter for questioning the physical possibility of how the Holocaust was to have been achieved. To him, Gas Chambers were illogical, it would've been better to just use bullets for the sake of efficiency and expedience. This argument made a lot of sense to me at the time, but I ultimately thought that there had to be some way he was wrong, so I continued believing in the Holocaust narrative because it was simply easier than trying to refute it. Especially when it angered so many people which I always knew.

After this in late 2016-17 I watched David Coles Auschwitz video and that basically convinced me. Then I would occasionally visit CODOH and watch snippets of David Irving speeches, one of these was the popular video "David Irving Debunks the Holocaust in 3 minutes". After that I watched a terrible video that was using a robot voice to debunk the Holocaust in "14 minutes". This video was so convincing to me that I downloaded it.

Dabbling in Holocaust Revisionism was just something I did from time to time, and it had very little to do with Jews. When I learned about the Jewish Question, and became a white nationalist in 2017, I no longer had so much of an aversion to Hitler, nor could I just accept what Jews had to say about him. The Holocaust at this point was obviously rubbish and whenever I would wish to learn more I would lurk on these forums.

In mid-2017 I basically considered myself a National Socialist, but avoided the label because I wasn't sure. I wanted to read about the Third Reich to understand whether it was something I could identify with and not feel guilty. In hindsight this is the wrong approach, but I will not address it here. In late 2017 or in January 2018 I read the 50 page book "A Squire's Trial" which turned me into a National Socialist, because for the first time I'd found a political worldview laid out for me that fully confirmed all of what I'd felt inside. It was bizarre how accurately it addressed me concerns about the world and my view about peoples and groups.

Eight months later in August 2018, after much more reading I joined CODOH to engage in discussions about the Holocaust and various other issues, mainly I planned on just asking questions. Later on of course I now answer many questions and post my own threads. It was by doing this that I'm more convinced than ever that the Holocaust is nothing but a narrative that serves political interests, particularly those of Jews (both left and right) and opportunistic goyim that want to try and use the Holocaust for their own political benefit.

[Lamprecht]

ALL Revisionists are former Believers

Not all. Some of the very first revisionists or "deniers" were in the concentration camps. They didn't believe in the "Holocaust" story because they were there and didn't see anything of the sort!

"On the question of whether the SS members recognized the destruction of Jewry as an aim of the leaders, 1,593 out of 1,637 affidavits which mention this problem state that the Jewish problem was not to be solved by killing..."

- IMT Proceedings, vol. 21, p. 368
viewtopic.php?t=12287

History professor Paul Rassinier is often labelled the "Father of holocaust denial" and he was part of the French Resistance during WWII. German soldiers physically assaulted him and broke his jaw during his interrogation. Rassinier, like Josef Ginsburg, were concentration camp prisoners during WWII. Somehow, they were part of "The Holocaust" but they didn't even realize it

Thies Christophersen was stationed at Auschwitz and authored the book "The Auschwitz Lie" - rejecting the allegations of homicidal gas chambers. He stated:
"During the time I was in Auschwitz, I did not notice the slightest evidence of mass gassing"

Fritz Frenzel, Hermann Hagerhoff, and Walter Otto (Auschwitz camp guards) as well as Ernst Romeikat and Theodor Grewe (Auschwitz administration of inmate property) made similar statements. Even Hoess's adjutant, Robert Mulka said the same thing! They didn't see any gassings.

At the Nuremberg tribunal, Judge Powers stated that fewer than 100 people knew about this alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews. How could something like this happen without the people involved ever realizing what is going on?

[Hannover]

Hannover wrote:
ALL Revisionists are former Believers

Lamprecht:

Not all. Some of the very first revisionists or "deniers" were in the concentration camps. They didn't believe in the "Holocaust" story because they were there and didn't see anything of the sort!

A bit picky I suppose, but if they never believed in the first place then they were not Revisionists, as in nothing to revise.

- Hannover

[Archie]

One such thing I heard was that Hitler initially ordered the Jews to be deported to Madagascar. This fact, which I didn't bother verifying, absolutely astonished me. How was it possible that the evil Hitler, who explicitly (I thought) wanted to kill the Jews, would be content just to let them leave Europe? This was the first instance I can recall that really shifted my perspective.

Now that you mention it, that one also threw me for a loop. Even just the idea that the Nazis waited until 1942 to decide on "the final solution" did not at all fit my original school boy understanding of it. Or the thing about Himmler "calling it off" in late 1944. We're told they wanted to genocide all the Jews and that this was a fundamental part of the ideology. But when they have to get specific they end up saying it was this gradual thing that depended on the circumstances of the war.

The story that's presented to the general public is that Hitler tried to kill all the Jews because of raw genocidal bloodlust. But then you read the "serious" books and they are forced to take a more equivocal position and this is especially pronounced with their retreat toward so-called "functionalism." I never could buy the "functionalist" version and it seemed clear to me that functionalism was just an attempt to save a story that was falling apart.

[Hektor]

....
Thies Christophersen was stationed at Auschwitz and authored the book "The Auschwitz Lie" - rejecting the allegations of homicidal gas chambers. He stated:
"During the time I was in Auschwitz, I did not notice the slightest evidence of mass gassing"

Fritz Frenzel, Hermann Hagerhoff, and Walter Otto (Auschwitz camp guards) as well as Ernst Romeikat and Theodor Grewe (Auschwitz administration of inmate property) made similar statements. Even Hoess's adjutant, Robert Mulka said the same thing! They didn't see any gassings.

At the Nuremberg tribunal, Judge Powers stated that fewer than 100 people knew about this alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews. How could something like this happen without the people involved ever realizing what is going on?

Robert Mulka did say even more, even on court record: He did no knowledge of those things at all.
https://archive.org/details/FranzRuprec ... ozessMulka

[Otium]

One such thing I heard was that Hitler initially ordered the Jews to be deported to Madagascar. This fact, which I didn't bother verifying, absolutely astonished me. How was it possible that the evil Hitler, who explicitly (I thought) wanted to kill the Jews, would be content just to let them leave Europe? This was the first instance I can recall that really shifted my perspective.

Now that you mention it, that one also threw me for a loop. Even just the idea that the Nazis waited until 1942 to decide on "the final solution" did not at all fit my original school boy understanding of it. Or the thing about Himmler "calling it off" in late 1944. We're told they wanted to genocide all the Jews and that this was a fundamental part of the ideology. But when they have to get specific they end up saying it was this gradual thing that depended on the circumstances of the war.

The story that's presented to the general public is that Hitler tried to kill all the Jews because of raw genocidal bloodlust. But then you read the "serious" books and they are forced to take a more equivocal position and this is especially pronounced with their retreat toward so-called "functionalism." I never could buy the "functionalist" version and it seemed clear to me that functionalism was just an attempt to save a story that was falling apart.

Precisely.

Even the way the story as it is currently operating to explain Hitler's personal involvement isn't what you'd expect from an apparently "pathologically minded" anti-Semite with "genocidal intent" as Kershaw asserts. Nor does the story account for any of Hitler's claimed megalomania in having to control such important operations. In this instance of the genocide of the Jews, Hitler supposedly only ever gave winks and nods:

Finally, his (Christopher Browning's) own personal explanation of a “policy of the extermination of the Jews” was the same as Hilberg’s. Everything was explained by the “nod” of Adolf Hitler. In other words, the Führer of the German people did not need to give any written or even spoken order for the extermination of the Jews. It was enough for him to give a “nod” at the beginning of the operation and, for the rest, a series of “signals.” And that was understood!

The First Zündel Trial (Castle Hill Publishers, 2020), Pp. 17

It appears that even in the official story, that Hitler cared so little about the Jews that he didn't allow himself to have a hand in it. He was apparently only contented to know that it was happening while letting other people come up with how it was to be achieved. Hitler, as Longerich (and the rest of course) like to claim, he just "radicalised" policy towards the Jews so that it would create an incentive for a hyper-violent reaction on part of the right people for the job to carry out the ill-fated task. Herein, supposedly, lies Hitler's personal guilt. Without ever having to actually show any evidence that Hitler knew about this alleged operation that was supposedly so close to his heart. It's astonishing, much more so than I think anyone, even revisionists, give it credit for.

This aspect needs to be driven home to more people. That even in the official narrative, Hitler becomes a side character as a culprit for his guilt in having perpetuated the Holocaust "indirectly". It's insane. If we were to believe what these people say about Hitler, then the question needs to be answered. How could Hitler possibly have allowed such an important "plan" go ahead without his direct involvement?

[Atigun]

I read Yankel Wiernik's book, "A Year in Treblinka". It didn't take long before I came to the realization that, "This be horse frocky". First thing I noticed was his claim of being whipped and beaten continually with rifle butts while he was on corpse carrying duty. I've done a stint of soldiering and I know that striking someone over the head with a 8-9 lb rifle with a steel butt-plate isn't really any different from hitting someone with a 8-9 lb sledge hammer. Unconsciousness or death is the likely result. It's not something that after receiving such a blow you just go merrily on your corpse carrying way.

The dragline (excavator, digger) that could exhume 3,000 bodies at a time and dig and stockpile 10X25X50 meter graves was more obvious horse frocky. (Yes, I'm a fair operating engineer) Lots of other things such as the hermetically sealed gas chamber with the exhaust from a tank engine turned into it and culminating in him being shot by a guard while escaping and the bullet penetrating his clothes but bouncing off his body.

[excavator, digger photo from ‘Surviving Treblinka’, by Samuel Willenberg.

caption: “crane lifting corpses destined for cremation”.
“Corpses”? - added by Moderator 11/6/20]

By the end of the book, Wiernik had convinced me that the holocaust was indeed a hoax and a lie. How anyone can claim to believe such drivel is utterly beyond me.

[borjastick]

I read Yankel Wiernik's book, "A Year in Treblinka". It didn't take long before I came to the realization that, "This be horse frocky". First thing I noticed was his claim of being whipped and beaten continually with rifle butts while he was on corpse carrying duty. I've done a stint of soldiering and I know that striking someone over the head with a 8-9 lb rifle with a steel butt-plate isn't really any different from hitting someone with a 8-9 lb sledge hammer. Unconsciousness or death is the likely result. It's not something that after receiving such a blow you just go merrily on your corpse carrying way.

The dragline (excavator, digger) that could exhume 3,000 bodies at a time and dig and stockpile 10X25X50 meter graves was more obvious horse frocky. (Yes, I'm a fair operating engineer) Lots of other things such as the hermetically sealed gas chamber with the exhaust from a tank engine turned into it and culminating in him being shot by a guard while escaping and the bullet penetrating his clothes but bouncing off his body.

[excavator, digger photo from ‘Surviving Treblinka’, by Samuel Willenberg.

caption: “crane lifting corpses destined for cremation”.
“Corpses”? - added by Moderator 11/6/20]


By the end of the book, Wiernik had convinced me that the holocaust was indeed a hoax and a lie. How anyone can claim to believe such drivel is utterly beyond me.

Well said Atigun. If there was a Tick button here I would have ticked it in support of your comments.

By extension the whole Treblinka story is bunkum. Treblinka has always shone brightly as the obvious weak link in the chain so to speak. Other camps have stuff going on that makes it somewhat easy for the hoaxers to do their hoaxing. Treblinka is one of few camps that is famous enough to stand up and be counted and every time 'they' take a peak it catches them out. Caroline Sturdy Colls is the most obvious culprit here.

If Treblinka didn't happen, and it didn't, then surely the whole holocaust story is exposed as just that, a story.

[PrudentRegret]

I read Yankel Wiernik's book, "A Year in Treblinka". It didn't take long before I came to the realization that, "This be horse frocky". First thing I noticed was his claim of being whipped and beaten continually with rifle butts while he was on corpse carrying duty. I've done a stint of soldiering and I know that striking someone over the head with a 8-9 lb rifle with a steel butt-plate isn't really any different from hitting someone with a 8-9 lb sledge hammer. Unconsciousness or death is the likely result. It's not something that after receiving such a blow you just go merrily on your corpse carrying way.

The dragline (excavator, digger) that could exhume 3,000 bodies at a time and dig and stockpile 10X25X50 meter graves was more obvious horse frocky. (Yes, I'm a fair operating engineer) Lots of other things such as the hermetically sealed gas chamber with the exhaust from a tank engine turned into it and culminating in him being shot by a guard while escaping and the bullet penetrating his clothes but bouncing off his body.

By the end of the book, Wiernik had convinced me that the holocaust was indeed a hoax and a lie. How anyone can claim to believe such drivel is utterly beyond me.

Well said Atigun. If there was a Tick button here I would have ticked it in support of your comments.

By extension the whole Treblinka story is bunkum. Treblinka has always shone brightly as the obvious weak link in the chain so to speak. Other camps have stuff going on that makes it somewhat easy for the hoaxers to do their hoaxing. Treblinka is one of few camps that is famous enough to stand up and be counted and every time 'they' take a peak it catches them out. Caroline Sturdy Colls is the most obvious culprit here.

If Treblinka didn't happen, and it didn't, then surely the whole holocaust story is exposed as just that, a story.

On the Skeptic Forum, Nick Terry recently took the position in a discussion with me that Holocaust Revisionists have not established that the truth of Treblinka is even important:

'Revisionists' have incidentally yet to articulate in detail and in convincing depth why the number of victims of Treblinka actually matters, other than to annoy and offend Jews and others with their trolling....

So please, explain to me why the death toll at Treblinka matters. The Jews of Warsaw deported in the Great Deportation of the summer of 1942 are still dead somewhere, even if you could prove, which you can't, that fewer than the documented number died en route to or on arrival at Treblinka, which is the last known place they are documented as reaching.

I was at first shocked when I read Nick Terry make these statements but then I was not. He clearly does not believe the Official Treblinka narrative, he just doesn't think the truth of it matters. Even if the conventional Treblinka narrative of 700,000 - 900,000 murders and open-air cremations were proven false, it wouldn't meaningfully change their perception of the Holocaust. We have already seen how the Holocaust industry has taken the all-but-official revision of Majdanek from "extermination camp" to "labor camp" in complete stride. It wouldn't surprise me if the Holocaust myth is just as strong 100 years from now, but Treblinka is relegated to the status of Majdanek in importance in Holocaust historiography.

Of course, this creates an enormous problem of trust for me. If Nick Terry doesn't think the number of victims of Treblinka actually matters, how can I trust his position on what happened at Treblinka? If the truth of what happened at Treblinka doesn't matter in assessing the Holocaust narrative, then surely the truth of nothing matters. They therefore cannot be trusted to advocate for the truth on any issue pertaining to the Holocaust, because the truth of those matters does not impact their broader agenda. I am not surprised this is how they operate, I am only surprised they have admitted it.

Reading Nick Terry's comments, it is clear the "Official Narrative" is trying to segue "the Holocaust" from its place as a singular, bizarre, black swan event in human history to to asserting its similarity to other 20th century genocides. That is a smart move by them, because the more "singular" this event is in history the less likely it becomes barring enormous amounts of evidence that do not exist. Asserting its similarity to other events mitigates this problem. So Holocaustians are going to be happy to drop the "uniqueness" claim about the Holocaust even though that "uniqueness" claim is one of the only true parts of the Holocaust grand narrative.

I think even if Treblinka were debunked, it wouldn't change public perception of the Holocaust. They are clearly trying to reform the narrative to be less sensitive to the completely impossible claims made about Treblinka.

I think what happened is that Muehlenkamp was enlisted to bring the allegations of Treblinka within the realm of physical possibility. He did his very best, making extremely generous assumptions to his agenda every step of the way but still could not do it. That must have been an eye-opener to them, and I am willing to bet money that none of them believe the official narrative of Treblinka, but their underlings still do.

The truth of the Treblinka narrative definitely matters to me. Hearing Nick Terry state the truth doesn't matter only emboldens the obvious conclusion: that the absurd claims made in the Treblinka narrative are false.

[Merlin300]

I grew up being fed Holocaust propaganda, particularly William "the Liar" Shirer's garbage parroting of Nuremberg documents.

I visited Auschwitz Camp with some friends and walked through the exhibits. The props appeared obviously bogus.
I noticed that there was housing for tens of thousands of detainees.

I got my hands on an analysis of Auschwitz main camp by Dietlieb Felderer and my doubts grew.
On a second trip to Birkenau, I climbed into the "gas chamber" at Krema II through one of the "Zyclon induction vents."

I found 2, one small and one obviously chipped in through the concrete and asphalt to gain entrance to the room below. I went through it.
It was obvious that the room was designed as a morgue and could not have been used for repeated mass gassings.
Pressac's book Technique and Operation had the blue prints and plans and confirmed that the "gas chambers" of Auschwitz
could not have been used as such. (Excluding the "Bunkers," which no longer exist about floor level.)


At that point, the whole tale unravelled...mysterious orders to start or stop mass murders, millions of disappearing bodies,
a very low level of deportation from France (5% of French citizens), Italy, preferential treatment of German Jews married to "Aryan" spouses.
The list goes on.

[Waldgänger]

For me, there was no First Thing. It has been a process that began in humanity and continues in humanity. I must write this as a story, as it affects me very strongly and there are very few people I may tell it to.

When I discovered Antony Beevor's book "Stalingrad" at age 15, my eyes lit up. I was too young to have a fully-formed opinion about the Holocaust narrative or the War. I had started to admire German uniforms and fighting prowess; I had heard the 6 million number; I had seen the infamous photos and reels of naked bodies being bulldozed into pits in camps. Nothing more.

I became a WWII devotee after "Stalingrad". I spent many years learning all about the course of the War in Europe. What intrigued me was the manner in which Beevor highlighted the humanity of the 6. Army. Everything I learned about the War from that time onward was coloured by this fundamental datum: that the men of the 3. Reich were not machines, not "The Hun", nor brainwashed Jerry, Fritz, Heine, Demons, or Evil Itself. They were men. Just men.

The reason this became important is that I avoided studying the Holocaust in-depth until earlier this year. I focused solely on the War as war, as struggle, as heroism. One sees Schindler's List and other such propaganda, of course. One is told to despise; never to be neutral, let alone to admire. One is taught to feel, not to think. Ironically, my strong feeling about these men has been the decisive factor in rejecting the narrative.

The Covid lockdown here gave me time. I discovered CODOH. First, I read the conventional narrative arguments. Then Codoh. Then back-and-forth as different issues arose. I decided to spend some weeks reading everything. I kept returning to one conclusion, as question: do human beings act like this? Can human beings act like this? Even the most barbaric savagery of the Communists, of Rwanda, of Islamic terrorists -- these do not compare to the gas chambers. The industrial efficiency, the "work-a-day", "punch-clock", assembly-line inhumanity, is inconceivable.

This is precisely the problem: the conventional narrative has so dramatised the story that it has become too inhuman. Theatre. Opera. We must have faith that, nearly every day for more than 2.5 years, men could climb onto a roof and impersonally gas 2,000-6,000 people by mere process. The more I read this Spring, the more I thought: "these are real men, not bogeymen or demons? How is this possible?" Even coming from the depths of the neurotic mind that is Jewish culture (which, after all, takes a very dark view of mankind), it seems an unbelievable fantasy.

This is the power of the Holocaust as cautionary tale: either as anti-German bigotry, or as warning to all mankind. "You, too, can become a monster beyond credibility". It is believed because it is unbelievable, they say. But the monsters are so vivid, so fantastical, that they have made a fatal error. No man can be such a monster. Its uniqueness as event exposes its unreality; a work of propaganda about unreal moon-men and ghosts.

A drama film, "Conspiracy", was released in 2001 by HBO, depicting the Wannsee Conference. When I first saw it in perhaps 2008, I was astonished by the detached bureaucratic cruelty of the men. It made sense, in context, that the characters would constantly question how it was possible that this could work. How obfuscating the "evacuation" language was. How Eichmann kept turning towards his stenographer and shaking his head to indicate that a spoken statement should not be recorded. Then, years later, I discovered Codoh and realised: of course these script elements are present. Every one of them is a cope for the fact that the actual Wannsee Conference was a boring non-event and contained nothing juicy or incriminating. This was a turning point also.

Although this process is vague, and not a Moment of Truth, I feel it is realistic to speak this way. My love for what it means to be Man rendered these stories unbelievable. It is a sensus fidelium, not rational. If you want a single dramatic conversion idea, I would say it was the moment I began to realise the impossibility of cremating so many people in the space of 2.5 years, probably. Or, a close second place, learning how plausible Typhus-as-epidemic is to describe so many lost relatives and friends never seen again.

Regardless of moments, CODOH was instrumental.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi Waldganger,

I had something similar to that after I was a denier. When I learned what 'sonderkommando' meant, (Jewish men enlisted to kill other Jews at Auschwitz) and had seen the footage of Filip Müller and Dario Gabbai, and thought almost ethnographically that no group of men would kill their own people day in and day out. Added to this is that the sonderkommando went through the newly arrived luggage, where they talk about all the food they had access to: usually the literary trope 'can of sardines' but me knowing that had it happened, knives, guns would also have been occasionally in the luggage. And me thinking "there's no way 'men' would do that." Then it goes from disbelieving the story and muttering "no way would this have happened" to being comical: Finding out they worked largely unsupervised. Seeing on maps basically woods right next to krema II that they could have revolted and gone into, and the notion, lol, that the sonderkommando FINALLY revolted when they thought they might get put in the gas chamber themselves. At one point the lack of chivalry just hits the funny bone.