Archive/File: holocaust/japan marco.polo
Last-Modified: 1995/01/28

Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 19:32:44 +0200 (IST)
From: Zvi Lando 
To: nizkor@jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il
Subject: Japan Newspaper Denies Holocaust
Message-Id: 

Date:    Fri, 27 Jan 1995 11:48:15 EST
From:    SIMPSON@AMERICAN.EDU
Subject: Japanese Newspaper Denies Holocaust
 
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@admin.fhda.edu" 
 
       TOKYO (AP) -- Jewish groups are protesting an article in a
 Japanese magazine that contends the Holocaust was ``propaganda''
 and Nazi gas chambers never existed.
       The article, entitled ``There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers,''
 appeared in Marco Polo, a 200,000-circulation monthly news and
 commentary magazine published by a major publishing house, Bungei
 Shunju Ltd.
       Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon
 Wiesenthal Center, protested the article in a letter to Takakazu
 Kuriyama, Japan's ambassador to Washington, Foreign Ministry
 spokesman Terusuke Terada said Tuesday.
       The Israeli Embassy in Tokyo protested to the magazine, said its
 editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada.
       In the article, author Masanori Nishioka wrote that ``the story
 of gas chambers was propaganda, one of the psychological strategies
 used in wartime'' by the Allied forces.
       ``The Holocaust is nothing but a story which has become
 `history' after the war without being given investigation,''
 Nishioka wrote.
       Hanada defended his decision to print the article, saying
 Nishioka found evidence that standard theories about the gassing of
 Jews were wrong.
       ``It's not good for everything about a certain subject to be
 taboo,'' he said. ``Maybe Israelis and Japanese have different ways
 of thinking about that.''
       He said the article did not deny that Jews were slain but merely
 challenged how quickly the gas chambers killed large numbers of
 people.
       Japanese knowledge of Jews is often ridden with stereotypes.
 Books claiming to detail Jewish conspiracies to control the world
 are common fare in Japan and draw ire from Jewish groups.
       Last year, a book praising Adolf Hitler's election strategies
 was withdrawn after provoking outrage from Jewish groups.

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