Holocaust just a story: Collins
By Gordon Clark, Staff Reporter
Right-wing columnist Doug Collins came out of the closet yesterday and
denied the Holocaust occurred.
“I don’t believe in the gas-chamber story,” he said. “I don’t believe
the six-million figure.”
Collins, whose columns for the North Shore News are being reprinted by
a prominent anti-Semitic group in the U.S., claimed only one million
Jews died – of starvation and disease and not in gas chambers.
“I don’t believe there was a systematic organization to eliminate the
Jews,” he said in an interview.
“If they had a definite plan to wipe out the Jews, why did so many
survive?”
Collins said he doesn’t consider himself anti-Semitic or a neo-Nazi
but added that “I can’t say some of my best friends are Jews.”
Several of his columns have been reprinted in the journal of the
Institute for Historical Review. The Newport Beach, Calif.,
organization is described by Nazi-fighters as a cornerstone of the
U.S. neo-Nazi movement.
The group’s publications include The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,
The Auschwitz Myth and Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine?
“It is the headquarters for the Holocaust-denial movement,” said
University of B.C. history professor Christopher Friedrichs.
“No serious historian would waste his time debating whether (the
Holocaust) took place. It’s like asking if the First World War took
place.”
Said Ken McVay, the Vancouver Island man who fights Nazi propaganda on
the Internet: “It’s sort of hitting the big time of racism by
associating with these guys.”
“The motive behind it goes back to Hitler-cleansing. They want fascism
to become respectable. To become respectable you must get rid of the
Holocaust.”
Collins said he is not a member of the IHR, but attended one of its
conventions in 1990 to speak about his experiences as a Second World
War prisoner.
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor of the North Shore News, said he had
no idea the IHR was reprinting Collins’ work.
The group claims it reprinted three columns – The Story Keeps
Changing, The Zundel Affair, A National Disgrace and Something to
Remember – with the newspaper’s permission.
“No one has asked me if they can reprint it,” Renshaw said.
Collins said News publisher Peter Speck allows his work to be
reprinted anywhere.
Said Dr. Robert Krell, president of the Vancouver Holocaust Centre
Society for Education and Remembrance: “It saddens me that in this day
and age of accessible factual information that what happened is
distorted for other means. We do not have to look far in our wold
today to see the evidence of renewed racist assaults and genocides.”
=30=
Lines: 74
Reprinted with the knowledge of the Vancouver Province:
Last-Modified: 1994/10/05
Source: The Vancouver Province, October 5, 1994 (A5)
(Southam News)
