Customer Reviews

Holocaust Denial : Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies

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John Zimmerman earns my praise for this strong and compelling book, which expertly analyses the key arguments and sources of Holocaust revisionists.

I rate this book above Professor Lipstadt's and others because it deals carefully, systematically and judiciously with EVIDENCE. Even though Zimmerman admits that he's not an historian by profession, he has done a fine job.

This is probably the best book of its kind.

I only wish Zimmerman had written it earlier. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

In this scholarly, well-researched, and well-documented volume, Professor Zimmerman has demonstrated himself to be thoroughly familiar with the primary and secondary source materials of both the Holocaust and Holocaust-denial. What distinguishes this work from other excellent books on the same subject (such as Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust) is Zimmerman's careful and scientific refutation of their major arguments, including those put forth by Arthur Butz, David Irving, Carlo Mattogno, and Walter Sanning.

Aside from Zimmerman's own historical and demographic research, added bonuses are the appendices, which contain a report by the Institute for Forensic Research in Cracow (which destroys the chemical claims of the so-called "Leuchter Report"), and a report by photo analyst Carroll Lucas on 1944/45 aerial reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which demolishes claims (such as those by John Ball) that negatives and/or photographs have been tampered with.

I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript prior to its publication, as I have known Professor Zimmerman for several years due to our joint work with The Holocaust History Project &.... I highlyrecommend it. ....

Most Nazi mass gassings were supposedly carried out with the carbon monoxide in the exhaust from diesel engines. John C. Zimmerman who fervently believes this myth included various false arguments and claims on page 155-56 (footnote 12a) about the work of holocaust revisionist Friedrich Paul Berg:

"..., Berg ignored one of the original studies on diesel fumes which shows that the emissions can reach lethal concentrations under the right conditions. John Holtz and M. A. Elliot. 'The Significance of Diesel Exhaust Gas Analysis' 63 Transactions of ASME (1943) 97-105. The authors were able to run two large diesel engines under various loads and fuel ratios. They didn't have any problem making the exhaust highly lethal -- with up to 6% carbon monoxide. The adjustment of the engine to increase the fuel ratio was a trivial process in order to attain the level of toxicity. However, the authors also demonstrated that exhaust is lethal even at normal operating mode -- 2.5% oxygen and 12% carbon dioxide -- without having to adjust the engine. Also , they did not report any damage to the engines as Berg claimed would happen when a diesel engine ran under those conditions. "

Berg ignored nothing as his website proves. Holtz and Elliot according to their 1943 essay certainly were able to run their engines under "various loads and fuel ratios" given the elaborate and expensive "power unit" they had available to them. That "power unit" included an electric brake dynamometer rated at 45 HP with which Holtz and Elliot controlled the engine. There was no "adjustment" or "tuning" of the diesel engines as Zimmerman and some others have claimed. To "tune" a diesel engine is actually a kind of technical absurdity since diesels do not have carburetors. Brake dynamometer arrangements capable of imposing loads of several hundred HP as would have been needed for the engines, for example, of 550-HP Soviet T-34 tanks (supposedly used according to some holocaust claims) would have been extremely expensive--and are still extremely expensive today. But, nothing even remotely comparable has even been suggested for any of the Nazi gassings. There is simply nothing in the claims of "eyewitnesses" to suggest that the engines, except for Chelmno, ran under anything other than "idle" conditions--that is to say "without any load at all."

The Chelmno gassing claims are an exception. Those gassings were supposedly done while the trucks were in motion and presumably operating under the resulting loads on the engine from driving through the countryside. For the alleged "gas van" gassings in the Soviet Union as described in the show trials of Kharkov and Krasnodar in 1943, the homicidal vehicles were first parked to allow the exhaust gas to be redirected into the compartment holding the intended victims. The diesel engines would have been operating at the very worst at merely "fast idle" which yields hardly any carbon monoxide. The claims of the Soviets that victims' bodies were examined "spectroscopically" seem preposterous. Actual autopsy reports have been unavailable in the west and, no doubt, for good reason. At least the Soviets got the supposed color of the corpses right. They claimed the corpses were RED based, no doubt, on many years of gassing their own citizens with CO in vans equipped only with gasoline engines. In western trials, the courts did not even get that right.

"Hey folks, let's just use that little old VW gasoline engine without any brake dynamometer. Why not?" Using a "power unit" to load up a diesel engine just to get a few per cent of CO and/or reduced oxygen would have been totally absurd and insane. The holocaust story is a monstrous hoax as more and more revisionist research, including my own at my website, clearly proves. Nazi gassings never happened! Professor Zimmerman should stick to accounting.

The actual essay by Holtz and Elliot is "The Significance of Diesel-Exhaust-Gas Analysis." Transactions of the ASME, Vol. 63, February 1941. http://www.vho.org/GB/c/FPB/dieselanalysis1.png

Professor John C. Zimmerman's book, HOLOCAUST DENIAL: DEMOGRAPHICS, TESTIMONIES AND IDEOLOGIES, is a valuable contribution to an increasingly embattled arena of academic endeavor, Holocaust Studies. I've been surprised at the frequency, intensity and ingenuity of attempts to deny the Holocaust as a fact of history and am gratified to see all the research Zimmeran has conducted and collected in this book.

This is not light reading. It's heavily footnoted, thoroughly documented and enhanced by valuable appendices.

In a way, that brings me to my only criticism of the book. It's neither an integrated narrative nor is it organized as a quick reference.

That, however, is a small price to pay for all the solidly researched information Professor Zimmerman manages to pack into this tome. He appears to be fully aware of the methods used by those who seek to deny the Holocaust and the organization of his material seems to constitute sort of a responsive brief for those willing to engage them.

For example, I'm a history buff and have been stymied by deniers who throw Walter Sanning's "demographic studies" at me. Who's he and what's his research got to do with the Holocaust? Zimmerman reveals that Sanning is penname and that his real identity is unknown. So are his real qualifications and Zimmerman's careful analysis of his book shows that he cherry-picked, distorted and invented facts to support his controversial thesis that most of the Jews thought to have been killed in the Holocaust (5 to 6 million according to Professor Saul Friedlander's authoritative study NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS) had emigrated before the Nazis advanced East. Sanning's book is a work of stealth denial and its specific arguments are difficult for most non-professionals like me to refute.

Zimmerman guides the perplexed history buff through these clever obfuscations. That's increasingly necessary because professional historians generally refuse to debate Holocaust deniers because it tends to lend an undeserved aura of respectability to them. I understand that and, to a degree, I sympathize with it, but it leaves duffers like me hard-pressed to engage the increasingly strident deniers with any degree of success.

I could always return to my previous practice of ignoring them, but that leaves them un-hindered when they pretend to be historians seeking the "real truth" about the past. They can be quite persuasive and influential unless you have resources like Professor Zimmerman's book to help set the record straight and show the befuddled the error of the deniers' ways.

There are online resources which have some of this information, but not in the depth and detail Zimmerman presents it. If you're interested in the Holocaust, you will encounter those who deny it and not all of them are flaming Nazi wannabees or obvious crackpots or kooks. Some of them appear to be intelligent, well-read, well-spoken people "in search of the truth." If you have Zimmerman's book, you'll have the truth you'll need to keep them from burying the historical fact of the Holocaust in an ocean of pettifoggery.

I wish it was organized in a more convenient reference-style format and I wish it said what Professor Zimmerman is a professor of because he mentions that he's not a historian. Even so, this is a valuable contribution to the field of history and to the defence of the historical record.

Buy it while it's still available. If you're the least bit interested in the Holocaust, you'll be glad you did. I gave it five stars.