Gotcha! Part One

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. Part 6, Part 7

The following is a Holocaust affirmer meme that is meant to be a gotcha against Holocaust deniers. This might be impressive to the casual Holocaust believer because it’s a bunch of things they’ve never heard of. I’m also quite certain that people posting this in defense of the Holocaust also haven’t heard of most of these items. The easy way to dismantle this meme is to simply ask the person that posted it what about these things offers evidence of a German perpetrated genocide against Jews? You can be assured that their frantic Googling would ensue.

I’m not going to take the easy road. Instead I will address all the items on this list.

Himmler’s recorded Posen speech: I have previously covered this topic when addressing the following claim from Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDoT):

As you can see only bits and pieces of the speech are repeated by HDoT. You can read the full speech in English here. The crux of the issue is that Holocaust affirmers insist that the German words Ausrottung and ausrotten can only mean killing when referring to people. During a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt David Irving brought up this point about Ausrottung. He demonstrated how the during the time period in question the word had several meanings including uprooting, extirpation, eradication, pol. a genocide. Irving was “careful not to translate it with only one given meaning, namely a meaning specifically pre-loaded with the meaning needed to support a special hypothesis needed”. Irving also provided examples of both Hitler and Himmler’s using the word in non-murderous ways. Perhaps if the Holocaust narrative didn’t have all the problems with the lack of physical and documental evidence this speech could be interpreted in only one way, but that simply isn’t the case.

The issue of interpretation brings us to Hitler’s 1939 and 1942 Reichstag speeches. Hitler gave several reichstag speeches in 1939. On October 6th, 1939 Hitler’s speech talked about peace with France and Britain and condemned war. Hitler said that if the Western world was to be at war there could be no attempt to reach a solution to the Jewish problem. He said nothing about killing them all though.

I am going to assume that the author of the meme was referring to the speech given on January 30th of 1939. The Holocaust Encyclopedia has an article on this speech:

It took a bit of searching but I was able to find a complete English transcript of the speech, something the Holocaust Encyclopedia does not provide. I have no way of knowing is this translation is creditable, but I do know that they are Holocaust affirmers in the way that they labeled this part of the speech. Thus we can assume that the translation is done in a way to fulfill their preconceived notion.

It’s telling that the author of the meme didn’t also include the 1941 reichstag speech. In fact Hitler refers to his 1939 ‘prediction’ in many speeches. Here Hitler states the role of Jewry would be finished in Europe.

Now let us consider what this statement by historian, Joseph Billig, who by no means is a Holocaust revisionist. Unlike other Holocaust promoters he includes further context of Hitler’s speeches along with other statements made by Hitler to come to the conclusion, “We have just noted that on January 30, 1941, Hitler simply announced the liquidation of the role of Jews in Europe.” When all is taken in account it becomes clear that Hitler is talking about the ‘annihilation’ of political power and not a genocide.

As far as 1942 reichstag speech I will assume the meme is referring to the following. As you can see it’s just a repeat of the same ‘prophecy’.

Read part two where I cover Hitler’s Obersalzberg speech and the Goebbels diaries.