The Destruction of the European Jews first appeared in 1961 and was reprinted unchanged in 1967 and 1979. In 1985, a “revised and definitive” edition with a few changes followed. Amazingly, the voluminous work was not published in German until 1982, and then only by a small publisher (Olle and Wolter in Berlin). It was called Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. We will use the three-volume edition published May 1997 by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag in Frankfurt, based on the “definitive” English version of 1985.
Hilberg’s study on the ‘Holocaust’ claims to be the unrivalled best and most exhaustive work of its kind.
Our investigation will concentrate on the following points:
– What proofs does Hilberg provide that the NS regime planned the physical destruction of Jews living in its area of control?
– What proofs does Hilberg provide for the existence of extermination camps, that is, camps erected solely or partially for the murder of Jews and provided with killing gas chambers for this purpose?
– What proofs does Hilberg provide for the figure of close to 5.1 million which he claims is the number of Jewish victims of National Socialist policy?
There will be no discussion on the persecutions and deportations of Jews during the Second World War nor on the suffering of Jews in camps and ghettos, which are doubted by almost nobody: Hilberg’s work rests on incontestably solid source material here. The mass shootings of Jews behind the eastern front are a different matter. It is not disputed by anyone that shootings took place; what is in dispute by Revisionist researchers is the extent of these shootings as claimed by Hilberg and other orthodox historians. On this point too we will examine critically the numbers of victims Hilberg claims and the sources he has used.
In short, we will attempt to determine whether Hilberg’s great work on the ‘Holocaust’ deserves the scholarly merit it lays claim to or must be found lacking.
Author(s): Jurgen Graf
Series: Holocaust Handbooks Volume 3
Edition: 2nd Edition
Publisher: Castle Hill Publishers
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 356
Tags: holocaust, revisionism, raul hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, gas chambers, exterminationism
I. Introduction
II. General Remarks
1. Consistent Ignoring of Opposing Theses
2. No Photos, No Description of the Homicidal Gas Chambers and Gas Vans
3. Discrepancy between the Title and the Contents of the Work
III. Remarks on the First Volume
IV. The Lack of Documents on Annihilation Policy and its Consequences for Orthodox Historians
1. “No Documents Have Survived”
2. Intentionalists and Functionalists
3. Raul Hilberg’s Errors and Confusions
a. Was There the Ominous Hitler Order or Not?
b. “No Special Agency… No Special Budget”
c. The Myth of the Code Language
d. Hitler Quotation as ‘Proof’ for the Mass Murder
e. Two Irresolvable Problems
f. “An Incredible Meeting of Minds”
V. The Massacres behind the Eastern Front
1. The Initial Situation
2. Hilberg’s Version of German Jewish Policyin the Occupied Soviet Territories
3. On the Likelihood of Hilberg’s Description
a. The Claimed Numbers of Victims of the Einsatzgruppen
b. The Refugees Drifting Back into the Cities
c. The Purpose and the Course of the Ghettoization
4. No Valid Evidence for the Claimed Approximately 1.2 Million Murdered Jews behind the Eastern Front
5. Hilberg’s Documentary Evidence
6. Hilberg’s ‘Affidavits’ and other Witness Evidence
7. Hilberg’s Invented ‘Shooting of Baltic Camp Inmates’
8. What Really Happened to the Jews in the Occupied Soviet Territories?
VI. The Deportations
1. The Initial Situation
2. The Purpose of the Deportations: Labor Deployment versus Extermination
3. Hilberg’s Invented Mass Shootings in Galicia
4. As Sheep to the Slaughter…
5. People ‘Gassed’ in Auschwitz Turn up in Stutthof
VII. The Killing Centers
1. The Initial Situation
2. Hilberg’s Imaginary Number of Victims of the ‘extermination camps’
3. Killing Weapons and Removal of Corpses in the ‘extermination camps,’ as Told by Hilberg
a. The ‘Pure Extermination Camps’
b. Majdanek
c. Auschwitz-Birkenau
d. The Holocaust Pope with the Healthy Stomach
4. Hilberg’s Method: The Revaluation of all Values
a. Hilberg’s Star Witnesses
b. Hilberg’s Favorite Jewish Witness: Filip Müller
5. Hilberg’s Description of the Annihilation of the Jews in the Light of Technology and Toxicology
a. Diesel Motors as a Killing Weapon
b. Removal of Corpses in the ‘Pure Extermination Camps’: Case Study Bełżec
c. Zyklon B as a Killing Weapon
d. The Practical Course of the Gassings in Crematories II and III in Birkenau, as Told by Hilberg
e. The Claimed Incineration of Sometimes 10,000 Corpses Daily in Birkenau
VIII. Hilberg’s Statistics on Jewish Victims: Anatomy of another Fraud
1. The ‘Three Categories of Victims’
2. Hungary
3. Poland
4. The Soviet Union
5. Summary
IX. Hilberg’s Debacle at the First Zündel Trial
X. Conclusions
The Opponents
Sources
Index of Names
Holocaust Handbooks
Section One: General Overviews of the Holocaust
Section Two: Books on Specific Camps
Section Three: Auschwitz Studies
Section Four: Witness Critique
