[Email address and header removed]
To: [email protected]
From: Dr Joel Hayward
Subject: http://www.nizkor.com/ftp.cgi/people/h/hayward.joel
Sender: kmcvay
Status: O
Hello Nizkor,
It has come to my attention that you now have a “page” on me. That’s fine,
of course, but it might be more useful and fair if it contained the
statement explaining my position on the Holocaust and antisemitism that I
have posted on my homepage. Please post it on your page on me
. Thank you.
The URL to my homepage statement is:
http://members.tripod.com/~WhitelightNZ/Hayward-11.html (page does not exist)
The statement reads as follows:
I have NO connection to racist organisations or individuals
Their efforts to present me as somehow being supportive of their activities
really annoy me!
A statement by Dr Joel Hayward
In response to several ill-considered e-mails received since posting my
homepage to the web I would like to state something that, as a scholar with
no political or ideological axes to grind, I had considered obvious (and
therefore unnecessary of mention):
My academic interest in Wehrmacht operational history and my decision to
write a book on Adolf Hitler’s effectiveness as a military commander do not
stem from admiration for Hitler or from a desire to rehabilitate his
reputation, much less to deny his cruelty to Jews and others. I am
certainly pleased that the Allies soundly defeated his Third Reich.
I also wish to state that I am NOT affiliated or involved with individuals
or organisations that seek to rehabilitate the Nazis and/or attack Jews and
others. I deplore the views of those people.
I am aware that several of those people have used my name or reprinted
articles from my homepage — or quoted from a thesis I once wrote on
Holocaust historiography when I was a young Master’s student with
relatively little experience of the historian’s craft — in a pathetic
attempt to add academic credibility to their anti-Semitic campaigns.
So let me say, once and for all, I do not deny the Holocaust! I do not
adhere to conspiratorial views that Jews somehow “invented” the Holocaust
in order to gain reparations and to finance the State of Israel. I consider
those claims baseless and anti-Semitic.
To be more specific, I state emphatically my rock-solid belief, based on
extensive archival research and a thorough reading of published sources,
that European Jewry did indeed suffer a ghastly Holocaust. They suffered
dreadfully during the 1930s and especially during WWII, when Germans and
others maltreated, enslaved and murdered (including by gassing) great
numbers (and I have no doubt that MILLIONS died). Hitler and his regime
caused those deaths and therefore deserve our condemnation.
My own opinion about race and culture, for those who may be interested, is
easy to express: I do not believe that race or culture determines moral
attributes. I do not believe that ANY race or culture is better or worse
than another. Moreover, I believe that we should treat racism like
pornography. That is, we should take a zero-tolerance stance and
demonstrate that we will NOT accept it in our communities.
—————————————-
Dr Joel Hayward,
Senior Lecturer in
Defence and Strategic Studies,
School of History, Philosophy and Politics,
Massey University,
Private Bag 11-222,
Palmerston North,
New Zealand
