Mencken's bathtub hoax: media and the holocaust

[Hotzenplotz]

This is only indirectly related to the Holocaust, but I think it's of interest because it gives an idea of the relation between mass media and holocaust.

In 1917 H.L.Mencken published an article about how the bathtub was introduced in the States. Supposedly doctors attacked it for being dangerous to health, etc. The story was quite detailed but completely fictitious, and although Mencken never repeated it and 9 years later confessed it was a hoax, it is being reproduced until today.

http://www.legalunderground.com/2004/02 ... athtu.html

The hoax was intended to show that Americans will believe everything they read.

Mencken never made any effort afterwards to spread his story and even confessed it was a hoax... now compare to how the holocaust is pushed by all kinds of individuals and bodys and any kind of critique is considered anti-semitic, and it becomes obvious how it can be that everyone believes falsehoods.

In Germany, I still read every other day of gassings even in concentration camps where it is accepted by now that there weren't any. Those journalists aren't lying - they just copy from each other. And people believe it because it's in the newspaper and reproduce it elsewhere...

Hotzenplotz

[steve]

The hoax was intended to show that Americans will believe everything they read.

The simple fact is, people are herd animals. With few exceptions, people will believe their authority figures.
I'll go even farther. If it was clearly stated every night on the evening news that there were no gassings, no attempt at jewish genocide, in other words, the Big H is a lie, then the average person would start to 'believe' that. However, even then, they would not get angry. They would only get angry if the message was delivered in such a way that they were 'told' to get angry. In other words, the average dunce not only must be told what to believe, but also how to feel.

I have been engaged in many discussions/arguments over this obscene lie. I get furious and dumbfounded at just how blind and stupid, (yes! stupid!) the average person is. Completely incapable of being reasoned with if it goes against the grain. Complete sheep. I am glad my life does not depend of convincing these fools.

When I first got into this topic 6 years ago, I admired all those brave revisionists out there for facing such almost impossible odds. And all done on principle. Bravo to them.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Those journalists aren't lying - they just copy from each other. And people believe it because it's in the newspaper and reproduce it elsewhere...

You can see that with the 6 million number. The accepted authority on the general holocaust story is Raul Hilberg, and since his book The Destruction of the European Jews came out in 1961, he's put the number at 5.1 million.

40 years later, they're still using the 6 million figure.

Even scholars go along. There's a book out there called "The 7th million."

[Iggy]

The Seventh Million does not allege that more than six million Jews were killed. It is about the first million Israeli citizens and the effect of the Holocaust on them.

It's a good book. Dr. Rimland has cited it in Zgrams in the past.

[steve]

Iggy,

I don't think Carto is saying "The Seventh Million" claims more than 6 million. What Carto is saying is, the term, 'Seventh Million', tacitly implies 6 million were killed , as opposed to the The High Pope Hilberg's figure of 5.1 million. (If the official number of jews killed was 3 million, for example, the title would have been, "The Fourth Million".)

[Iggy]

In (slight) defense of the exterminationists, they do not consider Hilberg's (or Reitlinger's -- whose numbers are even lower) numbers to be correct. They commonly claim that Hilberg low-balled the figure for Russia. Hilberg is no longer considered the last word on the Big-H. In fact, I'm not sure he ever really was, what with the sheer number of other major texts on the subject (Davidowitz, Gilbert, etc.).

[Hannover]

Hilberg is no longer considered the last word on the Big-H. In fact, I'm not sure he ever really was, what with the sheer number of other major texts on the subject (Davidowitz, Gilbert, etc.).

Then who is considered the last word? "Sheer number of major texts"? What would those be?

- Hannover

[Iggy]

I gave two examples of major texts, Davidowitz and Gilbert. There's Wyman, Van Pelt and Dwork, Browning, the list goes on.

Who's the last word? I have no idea. What's the last word? Six million, apparently.

[Hannover]

Do they say '6,000,000'?

- Hannover

[Iggy]

Yes, they do. And they all come after Reitlinger and Hilberg.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi Iggy, Glad to hear your viewpoint. You being on the forum could add some new ideas and views.

Iggy wrote

I gave two examples of major texts, Davidowitz and Gilbert. There's Wyman, Van Pelt and Dwork, Browning, the list goes on.

You didn't give examples of major texts, you gave last names. Did Wyman write a comprehensive history on the entire holocaust or even part of it? I don't think so. He's written about Hillel Kook and how the holocaust came to be known in America.

Iggy wrote:

Yes, they do. And they all come after Reitlinger and Hilberg.

Gilbert's book came out in the 70's or 60's didn't it? What we're talking about are historians who wrote a history of the whole holocaust. I think the difference between Hilberg and others, which I've heard Faurisson mention is that other historians go as far as to devote pages to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and thus the Palestinian connection to the holocaust. You can imagine how absurd a revisionist would find this. It's such an outrageously transparent and self-serving lie, that Hilberg looks level-headed in comparison.

We know that Nuremberg had a line of reasoning to come up with 6 million that is based on obviously bogus Soviet documents, such as 4 million killed at Auschwitz. We know that Ben Hecht's February 1943 Readers Digest arrival at 6 million is bogus as well (He simply added what he thought were the populations of the various countries, though even exterminationists will say that 100 percent of Jews were not killed in Europe. I believe they say two thirds were.)

Iggy, could you tell us how some of these supposedly more prominent historians in the exterminationist community come up with 6 million? What their reasoning is for that number?

[Iggy]

The most common source I've seen cited for the "six million" (actually in most books 5.8 million) is an Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry.

I've never been able to find this Commission outside of these books, however.

You're right about Wyman, it appears. So I'll retract his name. Davidowitz's book is called The Abandonment of the Jews. Van Pelt and Dwork's book is called Holocaust, as is Gilbert's and Leni Yahil's. There are all general histories of the Holocaust and they all make some mention of the 5.8 million figure.

I'll do a Google search on "Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry" and see what I can find.

[Iggy]

Got the name wrong: It's the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and it was a Zionist project that reported on the death figures of the Big-H to convince Truman to approve of Israel.

That's funny, huh?

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

I think you're on the road to revisionism Iggy, and if so we'll be gaining a good new mind.

[Hotzenplotz]

We know that Ben Hecht's February 1943 Readers Digest arrival at 6 million is bogus as well (He simply added what he thought were the populations of the various countries, though even exterminationists will say that 100 percent of Jews were not killed in Europe. I believe they say two thirds were.)

Hi Carto,

I found something interesting when I was looking for more information on Ben Hecht. Do you have the arctile he wrote in February?

What I found is this:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?la ... d=10007040

In March 1943 a play by Ben Hecht was staged that said

In Lublin, five hundred of our women and children were led to the market place and stood against the vegetable stalls we knew so well. Here the Germans turned machine guns on us and killed us all.[...] There are four million Jews surviving in Europe. The Germans have promised to deliver to the world by the end of the year, a Christmas package of four million dead Jews. And this is not a Jewish problem. It is a problem that belongs to humanity [...]

(click on the video)

It's a play, but I think it's meant to be true.

Also:

First, [Ben Hecht] used his own experience as a journalist to craft a series of full-page newspaper advertisements. One of them, which read "For Sale To Humanity 70,000 Jews Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 A Piece" (New York Times, February 16, 1943, p. 1), brought the Holocaust to public attention.

He found that his previous contacts in the press and in Hollywood could be used to the advantage of the delegation that represented the underground Irgun, the military arm of the Revisionist Zionist movement.

Straight from the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Maybe Hecht's activism started the holocaust-myth. But how the hell could he have known in 1943?