Anti-Zionists “Debate” Hitler’s Guilt NB: This exchange appeared on Haifa University’s “Alef” discussion list, a forum for left-wing anti-Zionists. The participants:- - Tony Greenstein is a British communist and IRA supporter who visited Baathist Syria with PLO funding and openly demands the destruction of Israel; - Yael Korin is a UCLA pathologist and Women in Black leader who mourned the death of the founder of Hamas; - Shraga Elam is a Swiss-Israeli anti-Zionist who denies Hitler’s responsibility for Auschwitz. I’ve added links and placed the messages in chronological order, while preserving the original grammar, spelling and punctuation - Webmaster. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: tony greenstein To: Shraga Elam Cc: jaz jaz ; alef at list.haifa.ac.il Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 4:29 PM Subject: [alef] Re: A hate mail using Alef address list Shraga, It goes without saying that I oppose these vile threats against you and wish you well in your endeavours and wish you well. However regarding the Irving episode, my opinion hasn’t changed. We can have a long debate about what Hitler did or didn’t know about the Holocaust. It is generally accepted that Hitler was a ‘broad brush’ leader who cared little for detail but laid down overall policy, playing off one faction of the NSDAP against another. Personally I find it inconceivable that he didn’t know and his ‘prophecies’ coupled e.g. with his diatribe with Horthy in March 1944 are pretty conclusive. Irving himself, in his failed libel action against Deborah Lipstadt, accepted that the Hitler didnt know thesis did not hold after 1943. But the debate between academics about intentionalism vs functionalism is a false one in my opinion. Firstly my reading of Hilberg is that he is not a functionalist as claimed in the Wikipedia article. No matter. Clearly the holocaust was the culmination of Nazi attempts at making Europe judenrein. When war started and the Madagascar solution, and emigration elsewhere was closed off, then logic dictated that there was only one solution. There is no evidence that Hitler was opposed to the deportations from Germany to the East. Nor is there any reason to believe that it was simply Himmler’s pet project. But regardless of the above debate, Irving has been a close associate of various British fascists and neo-Nazis such as John Tyndall for as long as I can remember. His politics have always been pro-fascist. The fact that he is a talented historian, albeit someone who distorts and mangles his sources, is irrelevant. Politically he was supporting all manner of holocaust deniers, like Ernst Zundel (at whose trial he finally came out as a HD) well before his own official conversion. There is no gainsaying that you made a bad political mistake in treating with Irving. From a socialist point of view one has no truck with such people and the fact that we may, sometimes debate with racists and Zionists in order to expose them is no excuse for the tenor of your e-mail to Irving, which was frankly laudatory. I accept that it was a mistake but it was also a gift horse to the Zionists and their hypocritical fan club. Tony Greenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Yael Korin To: tony greenstein ; Shraga Elam Cc: jaz jaz ; alef at list.haifa.ac.il Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 1:44 AM Subject: Re: [alef] Re: A hate mail using Alef address list Is there anyone familiar enough with the testimony given in Eichman trial? Whose orders did he answer to and was his understanding that it was not Hitler’s? I find it inconceivable that in a totalitarian regime as the third Reich, the very top position is not in a total control of the whole scheme. Yael -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shraga Elam elams at dplanet.ch Wed Nov 22 03:35:16 IST 2006 Yael, Eichmann said that there was a Hitler order but that he never saw it. SS General Mueller allegedly told him that there was such an order. It is a very strange situation that even somebody like Eichmann, who was very central to the “Final Solution” (he was present at the Wannsee Confernce) didn’t see a written order from Hitler. It is widely agreed that Hitler was not a very strong dictator and had no control over many things done in Germany. What I’m saying isn’t a defense for Hitler. He was a criminal even without Auschwitz. He is directly responsible for many crimes ad not only against Jews. Tony, Please bring me a single written proof and I’ll agree with you. In order to demonstrate the desperate situation of the intentionalists I’ll quote the “discovery” of a German historian called Christian Gerlach, who in 1998 found an entry in Himmler’s diary from December 18, 1941. After meeting Hitler, Himmler wrote a note saying something like “Jews are to be treated like partisans.” The whole world applauded the historian for his important “discovery” and Yehuda Bauer gave a lengthy interview about it to the Ha’aretz Supplement. I wrote a letter to the editor which angered Amnon Rubinstein. I wrote that this entry is no proof at all. First of all it doesn’t say that Hitler told Himmler so and if he did, it doesn’t talk about gassing Jews, as the partisans were shot immediately after they were caught and not gassed. But this had happened already before December and was found by the SS leadership as not effective enough as a method against Jews. I wrote that I can understand why Zionists like Bauer are so happy about this “discovery”, because if Hitler ordered the “Final Solution”, it is understood that there was no chance to save Jews and therefore the Jewish Agency leadership was not guilty of abandoning the European Jews and of sabotaging possible large scale rescue chances. As I thought that it was possible to convince Irving to stop denying the Holocaust I wrote in a polite way and stated that he was a brilliant researcher, which is a fact not noted only by myself. I thought that it was a good opening and then afterwards decided not to pursue the issue, but today I think that this was a mistake not to give it a further try. I correspond frequently e.g. with Dr. Uri Milstein, who is an absolute radical right winger, but some of his analysis of the Israeli military are brilliant and I tell him so and we lead from time to time civilized discussions. He is trying to destroy many myths around the Israeli army. His political analysis is completely rotten but his critique against the IOF is very interesting for me.  I believe that Milstein, who some right wings radicals wants to see as a leader of their revolution is much more dangerous than Irving. Shraga -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NB: For the conclusion of this “debate,” click here - Webmaster.