From smock@nizkor.org Tue Jan  6 16:47:48 EST 2004
Article: 947900 of alt.revisionism
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Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Answering DEM's "challenge"
From: Steven Mock 
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Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 19:07:17 GMT
Xref: sn-us alt.revisionism:947900

Some time ago, David E. Michael made the claim that the historical case 
supporting the veracity of the Holocaust "appears to require a fundamental 
belief in the goodwill and honesty of governments, and in particular the 
British, American and Soviet governments."  When I disputed this assertion 
and insited that he support it, Dr. Michael challenged me to prove 
otherwise.  In his words:

"You have defined your 'normative' case. You have asserted that it can be 
proven without trusting the Russian, American or British regimes. Fine. My 
challenge to you is to do precisely that."

As I had defined the "normative case" as being that "the Nazi regime 
massacred close to six million civilian Jews, many in gas chambers, through 
an intentional policy of genocide", Dr. Michael specified further that the 
burden was on me to establish:

(a) that the Nazi regime massacred close to six million civilian Jews;
(b) that the Nazi regime massacred 'many' in gas chambers;
(c) that this was not the result of random acts of violence but was through 
'an intentional policy of genocide'.

I have accepted this challenge, as these three points are indeed the very 
points that "revisionists" almost universally seek to attack, and I am 
certain that the normative historical case can be and has been constructed 
in such a way as that no pre-existing attitude towards the integrity and 
reliability of Allied governments is necessary in order to support them.

Two caveats must be reiterated from the outset:

1) No single piece of evidence I present will, by itself, prove all three 
elements of the case all at once.  I will be clear at the outset of each 
post which element(s) of the case the evidence I am citing supports, and I 
will have no patience for arguments that focus on what a given piece of 
evidence doesn't prove as opposed to what it does.

2) I can only give a sample of the available evidence.  I cannot produce 
all of it.  I will corroborate what I present to at least some degree, but 
no one, save for perhaps the top scholars in the field, has a true sense of 
the full scope of the evidence that various historians have used to shed 
light on various aspects of the Holocaust - every testimony, every 
document, every shred of physical remains, every census and so on - and how 
each piece can best be used to illuminate our overall understanding of what 
happened.  It must be understood that the best I as an amateur can do, 
given the constraints of time and patience, is to provide a sample of what 
I am personally familiar with and how it fits into the overall picture.  I 
will do my best to provide an impression of scope of what the revisionists 
have to explain away, but nothing I say or present represents the final 
word on the subject.

This is the format that I intend for my response to take:

I will produce a total of at least four posts (I reserve the right to offer 
more if I feel like it) in direct reply to this post on this thread.  Each 
of the first three will cover a seperate category of evidence: 1) 
eyewitness testimony; 2) documentary evidence; 3) physical evidence.  Each 
of these will have, at its centre, a single piece of evidence which I 
believe meets David Michael's criterea to the extent that he has explained 
them in the preceding discussion that began with message-ID: 
 (as Dr. Michael fled the 
discussion prematurely - probably, I suspect, to avoid being forced to 
either commit himself to standards I could potentially meet or to defend 
ones that were indefensibly absurd - I can only go with what he has 
articulated thus far).  But, in addition, I may, as well, bring other 
samples of evidence into each post in order to put the key piece of 
evidence into context and to show how it serves to answer and refute 
"revisionist" rationalizations and reservations relating to the 
interpretation and credibility of such evidence.

The last post will tie all of the above together with a summary of the how 
the evidence hitherto presented converges into an undeniable pattern, 
bringing the issue back to the demographic data and proving that - given 
the evidence we have at our disposal - it is impossible for any reasonable 
person following a logical argument to sincerely deny what happened to the 
Jews of Europe between 1941-45, regardless of their attitude towards the 
Allied governments.

I hope to present my first post by the end of tonight (tomorrow at the 
latest), after which its content will be open to discussion as to whether 
it has succeeded in meeting its particular burden.  Subsequent posts will 
come at irregular intervals, depending on how much attention is needed for 
discussion of the previous one, and when I feel like doing them.

Steven Mock

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