HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ~ WHAT'S BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN?

One of many shrines to the Holocaust

By Mark Weber

Since the late 1970s “Holocaust Remembrance” has become ever more important in the United States and many other countries. The campaign to remember the Holocaust ~ often defined as the genocidal killing of six million Jews in Europe during the Second World War ~ includes numerous commemorative events, education courses in many schools, and a stream of motion pictures, television specials, books and magazine articles.

This year, the memorial was as big as the honouring of the troops at the Cenotaph for Canadian troops on Nov.11. And they still touted the 6 000 000 dead and laid a wreath. When I was young this was not done. Only in the last year or two has this event become televised and treated so religiously. This creation of the myth only really began to kick into gear after Lyndon Johnson, Jewish, became US President. One "survivor" actually brought out the false bars of soap to a group of children in Grade 5. This particular hoax was admitted to be just that ~ a hoax.

Across the United States, prominent political and civic leaders participate in annual Holocaust commemoration ceremonies. A number of countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy, officially observe a yearly Holocaust Remembrance Day. In November 2005 the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution introduced by Israel to designate January 27 as an international Holocaust remembrance day.

Every major American city has at least one Holocaust museum or memorial. Worldwide there are more than 250 Holocaust museums and memorials, most of them in the US and Europe. [1]

The largest is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which is run by a taxpayer-funded federal government agency, and draws some two million visitors yearly. Huge and spacious for 6 million dead.

Meanwhile for the 80 000 000 killed by the Jews and others in WW2, a 10 foot statue on a busy street!

The public is continually reminded of Jewish suffering during World War II. Between 1989 and 2003 alone, more than 170 films with Holocaust themes were made. [2]

In many American and European schools, and in all Israeli classrooms, a focus on the wartime suffering of Europe's Jews is obligatory. [3]

Yehuda Bauer, a prominent Holocaust specialist who is a professor at Hebrew University in Israel, observed in 1992: “Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with em­pathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture. Hardly a month passes without a new TV production, a new film, a number of new books of prose or poetry dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating.” [4]

Tim Cole, a history professor and prominent specialist of Holocaust studies, writes in his book Selling the Holocaust: “From a relatively slow start, we have now come to the point where Jewish culture in particular, and Western culture more generally, are saturated with the 'Holocaust’. Indeed, the ‘Holocaust’ has saturated Western culture to such an extent that it appears not only centre stage, but also lurks in the background. This can be seen in the remarkable number of contemporary movies which include the 'Holocaust’ as plot or sub-plot.” [5]

How did the Holocaust come to play such a large role in America? “A good part of the answer,” writes Jewish scholar Peter Novick, “is the fact… that Jews play an important and influential role in Hollywood, the television industry, and the newspaper, magazine and book publishing worlds.” Anyone who denies that this is a major factor behind the “massive attention” given to the Holocaust in the US media, he adds, “is being naïve or disingenuous.” [6]

Control the media and you control the minds of the nation!

Exploiting the Holocaust

What’s behind the Holocaust remembrance campaign? Whose interests does it serve?

It is, of course, fitting and proper to remember victims of genocide, war and oppression. But Holocaust remembrance is not, as its supporters claim, a noble effort motivated by sincere concern for humanity. Instead, this relentless campaign is an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is designed to further Jewish-Zionist interests.

On the occasion of the opening of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Mall in Washington, noted Jewish author Melvin Jules Bukiet called the Museum a “statement of raw power,” and added:

“It’s not Jewish tragedy that’s remembered

on the Mall this week;

it’s Jewish power to which homage is paid.” [7]

The Holocaust Remembrance campaign encourages sympathy and support for Jews and Israel. It helps to justify America's massive and on-going support for Israel, and to excuse otherwise inexcusable policies of the Zionist state. Among Jews it strengthens a feeling of group solidarity and promotes a sense of community purpose.

It also reminds average Jews that they are at the mercy of the dark forces of the goyim and must send money into Jewish Holocaust organizations. It reinforces in the mind of the ordinary Jew, that he must stick with his own kind and never forget these horrors, and also that this Holocaust, among all the others, is the only one of importance in the world due to the "special status" of the jew in God's eyes.

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, writes in his bestselling book, The Holocaust Industry, that “invoking The Holocaust” is “a ploy to delegitimize all criticism of Jews.”

He adds: “By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure... Organized American Jewry has ex­ploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies.” [8]

Paula Hyman, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: “With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves.

The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy.” [9]

This view is echoed by another Jewish scholar, Tony Judt, who is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University: [10]

“The Shoah [Hebrew term for Holocaust] is frequently exploited in America and Israel to deflect and forbid any criticism of Israel . Indeed, the Holocaust of Europe's Jews is nowadays exploited thrice over: It gives American Jews in particular a unique, retrospective ‘victim identity.

SHOAH is what was promised to the Palestinians during the high rhetoric stage of the last massacre.

It allows Israel to trump any other nation's sufferings (and justify its own excesses) with the claim that the Jewish catastrophe was unique and incompa­rable; and (in contradiction to the first two) it is adduced as an all-purpose metaphor for evil ~ anywhere, everywhere and always ~ and taught to schoolchildren all over America and Europe without any reference to context or cause.

This modern instrumentalization of the Holocaust

for political advantage is

ethically disreputable and politically imprudent.”

In Israel, says Tom Segev, a prominent Israeli journalist and author, the Holocaust has become “an object of worship.” Moreover, he writes, “the 'heritage of the Holocaust,’ as it is taught in [Israel’s] schools and fostered in national memorial ceremonies, often encourages insular chauvinism and a sense that the Nazi extermination of the Jews justifies any act that seems to contribute to Israel’s security, including the oppression of the population in the territories occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War.” [11]

Amira Hass, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, is even more blunt. Writing in a leading Israeli daily paper, she says: [12]

"Israel has turned the liquidation of Europe's Jews into an asset. Our murdered relatives are being enlisted to enable Israel to continue not giving a damn about international decisions against the occupation.

The suffering our parents endured in the ghettos and concentration camps that filled Europe, the physical and mental anguish and torment that our parents were subjected to every single day since the `liberation,’ are used as weapons to thwart any international criticism of the society we are creating here.

This is a society with built-in discrimination on the basis of nationality, and the discrimination is spreading on either side of the Green Line. This is a society that is systematically continuing to banish the Palestinian nation from its land and usurp its rights as a nation and its chances for a humane future."

The great lesson of the Holocaust, says Israel prime minister Ariel Sharon, is that Jews must “always remain vigilant and trust no one but ourselves. Jews can only rely on themselves.” Young Jews, he adds, “have the duty to bequeath the lesson, memories and stories, to underscore the importance of the existence of the Jewish state.” [13]

No Similar Remembrance of Non-Jews

Non-Jewish victims of genocide, oppression and war do not merit the same consideration as do Jewish victims of the Holocaust. There are no comparable museums, memorials or solemn ceremonies to commemorate, for example, the vastly greater number of victims of Soviet and Chinese Communism.As historians acknowledge, the non-Jewish victims of Soviet Russian dictator Joseph Stalin greatly outnumber the Jews who perished as a result of Hitler’s policies.

Robert Conquest, a prominent scholar of twentieth century Russian history, estimates the number of those who lost their lives as a consequence of Stalin’s policies as “no fewer than 20 million.” [14]

Authoritative estimates of the number of Chinese who perished as victims of killings, repression, starvation and forced labor under the Communist regime of Mao Zedong range from about 30 million to more than 60 million. [15]Americans are trained and encouraged to “know” that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis in World War II.

But few Americans, even well-educated ones, have any idea of how many Russians, Poles, Chinese or even Americans lost their lives in that global conflict.Estimates of the number of Chinese who lost their lives as direct and indirect victims of Japanese aggression and occupation during the 1930s and 1940s range from about ten million to more than twice that number. The Chinese government has put the figure at 35 million. [16]

Abandoned chinese baby during siege by the Japanese.

During the years 1885 through 1908, an estimated five to eight million Africans perished in the Congo as direct and indirect victims of the brutal policies of the Belgian colonial authorities. These deaths were the result of widespread killings, starvation, exhaustion and exposure. [17]

'Holocaust Denial' Laws

In some countries special “Holocaust denial” laws stifle free and objective discussion of the Holocaust issue.

In Israel, Germany, France, Austria and a few other nations, it is a crime publicly to “play down,” dispute, “whitewash,” or “deny” the Holocaust. No other chapter of history is protected by law in this way.

Even factually accurate statements that violate “Holocaust denial” laws are punished. Over the years, many individuals in those countries have been fined, imprisoned or forced into exile for disputing Holocaust claims.

Ernst Zundel, currently serving in a German prison for merely questioning numbers.

'God's Chosen'

The Holocaust is often treated with reverence, and as a central event of world history. For many Jews, says Rabbi Michael Goldberg, a Jewish author and religious leader,

the “veneration” of the Holocaust has become a new religion.

“And as with any organized church,” he adds, “this Holocaust cult has its own tenets of faith, rites, and shrines.” [18]

The Holocaust remembrance campaign reflects an arrogant view of Jews as a special and superior people. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League ~ one of the most influential Zionist groups ~ has declared:

“The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God's chosen children and, thus, on God himself. It is an event that is the antithesis of Creation as recorded in the Bible; and like its direct op­posite, which is relived weekly with the Sabbath and yearly with the Torah, it must be remembered from generation to gen­eration.” [19]

Jewish death and suffering do not deserve to be venerated more than the death and suffering of non-Jews. The Holocaust remembrance campaign deserves scorn, not support, because it is a one-sided effort that serves narrow Jewish and Israeli interests and bolsters Jewish-Zionist power. (Guilt enables the Zioists to get away with more and also demand even more money in reparation from Germany)

Notes

1. A. Barkat, “Yad Vashem Was the First, And Now It’s The Latest,” Haaretz (Israel), March 15, 2005
( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/552062.html ).

2. D. Sterritt, “The one serious subject Hollywood doesn’t avoid,” The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 22, 2002 ( http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1122/p13s01-almo.html ).

3. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: 1999), p. 207.

4. Quoted in: David Cesarani, ed., The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (Routledge, 1994), pp. 305, 306.

5. Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust (Routledge, 2000), p. 2.

6. P. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (1999), p. 207. See also pp. 11-12, 208.

7. Melvin Jules Bukiet, “The Museum vs. Memory: The Taming of the Holocaust,” The Washington Post, Sunday, April 18, 1993, p. C3. Quoted in: P. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (1999), p. 330, n. 104.

8. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (Verso, 2003), pp. 37, 52, 149.

9. Paula E. Hyman, “New Debate on the Holocaust,” The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 14, 1980, p. 79.

10. Tony Judt, “Goodbye To All That?,” The Nation (New York), Jan. 3, 2005, p. 17.

11. Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: 1993), pp. 513, 517.

12. Amira Hass, ”Using the Holocaust to ward off criticism,” Haaretz (Israel), March 16 (or 21?), 2005.

13. Leonard Fein, “Too Young to March?,” Forward (New York), May 13, 2005, p. 8; "Israel marks Auschwitz liberation,” BBC News, Jan. 27, 2005 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4212079.stm );
"Sharon: Never Forget Nazi Killers,” CNN News, May 6, 2005
(http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/05/holocaust.day/ ).

14. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), p. 48.

15. S. Courtois, and others, The Black Book of Communism (Harvard Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 4, 463-464; D. Southerland, “Repression’s Higher Toll,” The Washington Post, July 17, 1994, pp. A1, A22, A 23; Richard L. Walker, The Human Cost of Communism in China. A study of the Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate (1971).

16. “Dispute over mission stalls Japanese war museum,” The Palm Beach Post, May 21, 1995, p. 22A (from The New York Times); Sam Jameson, “WWII Apology Fails to Find a Voice in Japan ,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1995, p. A12.

17. Adam Hochschild, “In the Heart of Darkness,” The New York Review of Books, October 6, 2005, pp.39-42; Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1999); A. Roxburgh, “Belgians Confront Colonial Past,” BBC News, March 9, 2005 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4332605.stm ).

18. Michael Goldberg , Why Should Jews Survive? : Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), p. 41.

19. A. Foxman, “Schindler’s List ~ The Meaning of Spielberg’s Film,” ADL On the Frontline, January 1994, p. 2.

About the Author

Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). In March 1988 he testified for five days in Toronto District Court as a recognized expert witness on Germany's wartime Jewish policy and the Holocaust issue.

THE HOLOCAUST SOAP HOAX

By Mark Weber

One of the most lurid and slanderous Holocaust claims is the story that the Germans manufactured soap from the bodies of their victims. Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterward, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second. [1]More important, this accusation was "proved" at the main Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, and has been authoritatively endorsed by numerous historians in the decades since. In recent years, though, as part of a broad retreat from the most obviously untenable aspects of the "orthodox" extermination story, Holocaust historians have grudgingly conceded that the human soap tale is a wartime propaganda lie.

In their retreat, though, these historians have tried to dismiss the soap story as a mere wartime "rumor," neglecting to mention that international Jewish organizations and then Allied governments endorsed and sanctioned this libelous canard.

Wartime rumors that the Germans were manufacturing soap from the corpses of slaughtered Jews were based in part on the fact that soap bars distributed by German authorities in Jewish ghettos and camps bore the impressed initials "RIF," which many took to stand for "Rein jüdisches Fett" or "Pure Jewish Fat." (It did not seem to matter that the letters were "RIF" and not "RJF.") These rumors spread so widely in 1941 and 1942 that by late 1942 German authorities in Poland and Slovakia were expressing official concern about their impact. [2]

According to a Polish source quoted in a secret wartime U.S. Army military intelligence report, for example, the Germans were operating a "human soap factory" in 1941 at Turek, Poland. "The Germans had brought thousands of Polish teachers, priests and Jews there and after extracting the blood serum from their bodies, had thrown them on large pots and melted off grease to make soap," the intelligence report added. [3]

Macabre "Jewish soap" jokes became popular in the ghettos and camps, and many non-Jews on the outside came to believe the story. When trains loaded with Jewish deportees stopped temporarily at rail stations, Poles reportedly would gleefully shout at them: "Jews to soap!" [4]

Even British prisoners of war interned at Auschwitz in 1944 testified later about the wartime rumors that corpses of gassing victims were being turned into soap there. [5]In spite of its inherently incredible character, the soap story became an important feature of Jewish and Allied war propaganda. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, wartime head of both the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress, publicly charged in November 1942 that Jewish corpses were being "processed into such war-vital commodities as soap, fats and fertilizer" by the Germans. He further announced that the Germans were "even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses," and were paying fifty marks for each body. [6]

In late 1942, the Congress Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress, editorialized that the Germans were turning Jews "by scientific methods of dissolution into fertilizer, soap and glue." An article in the same issue reported that Jewish deportees from France and Holland were being processed into "soap, glue and train oil" in at least two special factories in Germany. [7]

Typical of many other American periodicals, the influential New Republic reported in early 1943 that the Germans were "using the bodies of their Jewish victims to make soap and fertilizer in a factory at Siedlce." [8]

During June and July 1943, two prominent representatives of the Moscow-based "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" toured the United States and raised more than two million dollars for the Soviet war effort at a series of mass meetings. At each of these rallies, Soviet Jewish leader Solomon Mikhoels showed the crowd a bar of soap that he said was made from Jewish corpses. [9]

After the war, the soap story was given important legitimacy at the main Nuremberg trial. L. N. Smirnov, Chief Counselor of Justice for the USSR, declared to the Tribunal:

"The same base, rationalized SS technical minds which created gas chambers and murder vans, began devising such methods of complete annihilation of human bodies, which would not only conceal the traces of their crimes, but also to serve in the manufacturing of certain products. In the Danzig Anatomical Institute, semi-industrial experiments in the production of soap from human bodies and the tanning of human skin for industrial purposes were carried out."

Smirnov quoted at length from an affidavit by Sigmund Mazur, an Institute employee, which was accepted as Nuremberg exhibit USSR-197. It alleged that Dr. Rudolf Spanner, the head of the Danzig Institute, had ordered the production of soap from corpses in 1943. According to Mazur's affidavit, Dr. Spanner's operation was of interest to high-ranking German officials.Education Minister Bernhard Rust and Health Leader Dr. Leonardo Conti, as well as professors from other medical institutes, came to witness Spanner's efforts. Mazur also claimed to have used the "human soap" to wash himself and his laundry. [10]

A human soap "recipe," allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196), was also presented. Finally, a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of "human soap" was submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393.

In his closing address to the Tribunal, chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross echoed his Soviet colleague: "On occasion, even the bodies of their victims were used to make good the wartime shortage of soap." [11] And in their final judgment, the Nuremberg Tribunal judges found that "attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap." [12]

It is worth emphasizing here that the "evidence" presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal for the bogus soap story was no less substantial than the "evidence" presented for the claims of mass extermination in "gas chambers." At least in the former case, an actual sample of soap supposedly made from corpses was submitted in evidence.

After the war, supposed Holocaust victims were solemnly buried, in the form of soap bars, in Jewish cemeteries. In 1948, for example, four such bars wrapped in a funeral shroud were ceremoniously buried according to Jewish religious ritual at the Haifa cemetery in Israel. [13]

Other bars of "Jewish soap" have been displayed as grim Holocaust relics at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Stutthof Museum near Gdansk (Danzig), the Yivo Institute in New York, the Holocaust Museum in Philadelphia, the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne (Australia), and at various locations in Israel. [14]

Numerous Jews who lived in German ghettos and camps during the war helped keep the soap story alive many years later. Ben Edelbaum, for example, wrote in his 1980 memoir Growing Up in the Holocaust: [15]"Often with our rations in the ghettos, the Germans had included a bar of soap branded with initials R.J.F. which came to be known as "RIF" soap. It wasn't until the war had ended that we learned the horrible truth about the bar of soap.

Had we known in the ghetto, every bar of "RIF" soap would have been accorded a sacred Jewish funeral in the cemetery at Marysin. As it was, we were completely oblivious to its origin and used the bones and flesh of our murdered loved ones to wash our bodies."

Nesse Godin was transferred from a ghetto in Lithuania to the Stutthof concentration camp in the spring of 1944. In a 1983 interview, she recalled her arrival there: [16]

"That day they gave us a shower and a piece of soap. After the war we found out the soap was made out of pure Jew fat, Rein Juden Fett, marked in the initials on the soap that I washed with. For all I know sometimes maybe there was a little bit of my father's fat in that soap that I washed with. How do you think I feel when I think about that?"

Mel Mermelstein, the former Auschwitz inmate who was featured in the sensationalized April 1991 cable television movie "Never Forget" (and who sued the Institute for Historical Review and three other defendants for $11 million), declared in a 1981 sworn deposition that he and other camp inmates used soap bars made from human fat. It was an "established fact," he insisted, that the soap he washed with was made from Jewish bodies. [17]

Renowned "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal repeated the soap tale in a series of articles published in 1946 in the Austrian Jewish community paper Der Neue Weg. In the first of these he wrote: [18]

"During the last weeks of March the Romanian press reported an unusual piece of news: In the small Romanian city of Folticeni twenty boxes of soap were buried in the Jewish cemetery with full ceremony and complete funeral rites. This soap had been found recently in a former German army depot.On the boxes were the initials RIF, `Pure Jewish Fat.' These boxes were destined for the Waffen-SS. The wrapping paper revealed with completely cynical objectivity that this soap was manufactured from Jewish bodies. Surprisingly, the thorough Germans forgot to describe whether the soap was produced from children, girls, men or elderly persons."

Wiesenthal went on:

"After 1942 people in the General Government [Poland] knew quite well what the RIF soap meant. The civilized world may not believe the joy with which the Nazis and their women in the General Government thought of this soap. In each piece of soap they saw a Jew who had been magically put there, and had thus been prevented from growing into a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein."

In another article he observed: "The production of soap from human fat is so unbelievable that even some who were in concentration camps find it difficult to comprehend." [19]

Over the years, numerous supposedly reputable historians have promoted the durable soap story. [20]

Journalist-historian William L. Shirer, for example, repeated it in his best-selling work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. [21]

Leading Soviet war propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in his postwar memoir: "I have held in my hand a cake of soap stamped with the legend 'pure Jewish soap', prepared from the corpses of people who had been destroyed. But there is no need to speak of these things: thousands of books have been written about them." [22]

A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, Canada: The Twentieth Century, told students that the Germans "boiled" the corpses of their Jewish victims "to make soap." [23]

The Anatomy of Nazism, a booklet published and distributed by the Zionist "Anti-Defamation League" of B'nai B'rith, stated: "The process of brutalization did not end with the mass murders themselves. Large quantities of soap were manufactured from the corpses of those murdered." [24]A detailed 1981 work, Hitler's Death Camps, repeated the soap story in lurid detail. While noting that "some historians claim that the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor," author Konnilyn Feig nevertheless accepted the story because "most East European camp scholars ... validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from humans are displayed in Eastern Europe ~ I have seen many over the years." [25]

New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier repeated the tale at the opening ceremony of the largest Holocaust meeting in history. In his invocation to the "American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors," held in Washington in April 1983, the Rabbi solemnly declared: "We remember the bars of soap with the initials RJF ~ Rein jüdisches Fett, Pure Jewish Fat ~ made from the bodies of our loved ones." [26]

In spite of all the apparently impressive evidence, the charge that the Germans manufactured soap from human beings is a falsehood, as Holocaust historians are now belatedly acknowledging. The "RIF" soap bar initials that supposedly stood for "Pure Jewish Fat" actually indicated nothing more sinister than "Reich Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning" ("Reichsstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung"), a German agency responsible for wartime production and distribution of soap and washing products. RIF soap was a poor quality substitute that contained no fat at all, human or otherwise. [27]

Shortly after the war the public prosecutor's office of Flensburg, Germany, began legal proceedings against Dr. Rudolf Spanner for his alleged role in producing human soap at the Danzig Institute. But after an investigation the charge was quietly dropped. In a January 1968 letter, the office stated that its inquiry had determined that no soap from human corpses was made at the Danzig Institute during the war. [28]

More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur "denied established history" by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality. [29]Gitta Sereny, another Jewish historian, noted in her book Into That Darkness: "The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes." [30]

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history, similarly "rewrote history" when she confirmed in 1981: "The fact is that the Nazis never used the bodies of Jews, or for that matter anyone else, for the production of soap." [31]

In April 1990, professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University, regarded as a leading Holocaust historian, as well as Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, confirmed that the human soap story is not true. Camp inmates "were prepared to believe any horror stories about their persecutors," Bauer said. At the same time, though, he had the chutzpah to blame the legend on "the Nazis." [32]

In fact, blame for the soap story lies rather with individuals such as Simon Wiesenthal and Stephen Wise, organizations like the World Jewish Congress, and the victorious Allied powers, none of whom has ever apologized for promoting this vile falsehood.

Why did Bauer and Krakowski decide that this was the appropriate time to officially abandon the soap story? Krakowski himself hints that a large part of the motivation for this "tactical retreat" has been to save what's left of the sinking Holocaust ship by throwing overboard the most obvious falsehoods.In the face of the growing Revisionist challenge, easily demonstrable falsehoods like the soap story have become dangerous embarrassments because they raise doubts about the entire Holocaust legend. As Krakowski put it: "Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something to use against the truth?" [33]

The bad faith of those making this calculated and belated concession to truth is shown by their failure to note that the soap myth was authoritatively "confirmed" at Nuremberg, and by their unwillingness to deal with the implications of that confirmation for the credibility of the Tribunal and other supposedly trustworthy authorities in establishing other, more fundamental aspects of the Holocaust story.

The striking contrast between the prompt postwar disavowal by the British government of the infamous "human soap" lie of the First World War, and the way in which a similarly baseless propaganda story from the Second World War was officially endorsed by the victorious Allied powers and then authoritatively maintained for so many years not only points up the dispiriting lack of integrity on the part of so many Western historians, but underscores the general decline in Western ethical standards during this century.

The "human soap" story demonstrates anew the tremendous impact that a wartime rumor, no matter how fantastic, can have once it has taken hold, particularly when it is disseminated as a propaganda lie by influential individuals and powerful organizations.

That so many intelligent and otherwise thoughtful people could ever have seriously believed that the Germans distributed bars of soap brazenly labeled with letters indicating that they were manufactured from Jewish corpses shows how readily even the most absurd Holocaust fables can be ~ and are ~ accepted as fact.Notes

1. During the First World War, the London Times was apparently the first Allied paper to report (in April 1917) that the Germans were boiling down the bodies of their dead soldiers to make soap and other products. See: Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: 1975), pp. 105-106. This story was quickly picked up by other papers and widely circulated in the British and American press. In 1925, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain admitted that the "corpse factory" story had been a lie. See: Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (New York: 1929), pp. 102, 111-112; Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1988), pp. 8-9.
2. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: 1985), pp. 966-967; Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1980), pp. 54, 82, 145, 219; U.S. State Department document 740.001 16 (from 1943), facsimile in Encyclopaedia Judaica (New York and Jerusalem: 1971), vol. 13, pp. 759-760; Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe (London: 1979), p. 169; A September 1941 German Einsatzgruppen Security Police report from the Ukraine mentioned equally baseless rumors, reportedly spread by Jews, of a supposed Soviet biological warfare plague bacteria bomb. Even some German soldiers believed the stories. (Ereignismeldung UdSSR, No. 80, Sept. 11, 1941, p. 9)
3. Secret U.S. Army military intelligence report No. 50, April 27, 1945. National Archives, National Records Center (Suitland, Maryland), RG 153 (JAG Army), Box 497, Files 19-22, Books I and II, Entry 143.
4. Nachman Blumental, "RIF," Yiddish Culture, Vol. 21, June-July 1959. (Monthly of the Yiddish Culture Association). Apparently published in Israel in Hebrew. A German translation of the original essay was obtained by Ditlieb Felderer through the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem. I am grateful to him for a copy.
5. Douglas T. Frost affidavit, July 16, 1947. Nuremberg document NI-11692. Trials of the War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals (NMT "green series"; Washington, DC: 1949-1953), Vol. 8, p. 624; As noted below in footnote 10, this rumor was authoritatively "confirmed" at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
6. "Wise Says Hitler Had Ordered 4,000,000 Jews Slain in 1942," New York Herald-Tribune (Associated Press), Nov. 25, 1942. pp. 1, 5; "2 Million Jews Slain by Nazis, Dr. Wise Avers," Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 25, 1942; The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1942, p. 16; See also: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1985), p. 1118.
7. "The Spirit Will Triumph" (editorial), and "Corpses for Hitler," p. 11, Congress Weekly (New York: American Jewish Congress), Dec. 4, 1942.
8. The New Republic, Jan. 18, 1943, p. 65. See also the Communist New Masses editorial of Dec. 8, 1942. p. 21. Both quoted in: James J. Martin, The Man Who Invented 'Genocide' (IHR, 1984), pp. 64, 45; One of the few sober voices among all the hysteria was The Christian Century, which cautioned in a Dec. 9, 1942, editorial: "Dr. Wise's allegation that Hitler is paying $20 each for Jewish corpses to be 'processed into soap, fats and fertilizer' is unpleasantly reminiscent of the 'cadaver factory' lie which was one of the propaganda triumphs of the First World War." Quoted in: Robert W. Ross, So It Was True (Minneapolis: 1980), p. 157.
9. Gerard Israel, The Jews in Russia (New York: St. Martin's, 1975), p. 180.
10. Smirnov statement, Feb. 19, 1946. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT "blue series"; Nuremberg: 1947-1949), vol. 7, pp. 597-600. Note also Soviet allegation that soap was manufactured from the bodies of people gassed at Auschwitz: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 7, p. 175; Translation of USSR-197 and other Nuremberg Tribunal (IMT) references to the human soap story in: Carlos Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (1988), pp. 73, 85-86, 121-124, 126, 128, 159, 368-377; Note also Nuremberg Tribunal "human soap" documents USSR-196, USSR-264, and USSR-272; We are grateful to Mr. Carlos Porter for his diligent research of the Nuremberg Tribunal's treatment of the "human soap" story.
11. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 19, p. 506; Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (NC&A "red series"; Washington, DC: 1946-1948), Suppl. vol. A, p. 134. See also: "Nazis' Soap Factory Used Humans, American Reports" (AP), The Sunday Star (Washington, DC), Dec. 9, 1945, p. B-11.
12. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 1, p. 252. Facsimile reprint in: Carlos Porter, Made in Russia (1988), p. 159.
13. Pierre Joffroy, "Anne Frank Martyre," Paris Match, No. 394, Oct. 27, 1956, p. 93.
14. R. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1985), p. 967 (n.27); N. Blumental, "RIF," Yiddish Culture, June-July 1959 (cited above); Rabbi Yaakov (Jacob) Riz runs the Holocaust Museum at 1453 Levick St., Philadelphia. See his letter in the Jewish Press (Brooklyn), July 10, 1981, p. 42; Udo Walendy, Adolf Eichmann, Historische Tatsachen No. 18 (Vlotho: 1983), p. 24; Gary Tippet, "Real-life chamber of horrors," The Sun (Melbourne), Feb. 7, 1984.
15. B. Edelbaum, Growing up in the Holocaust (Kansas City, Mo.: 1980), pp. 217-218.
16. Jane S. Podesta, "Nesse Godin's memories...", The Washington Times, April 11, 1983, pp. 12B, 13B.
17. M. Mermelstein deposition, Los Angeles, May 27, 1981, official transcript, p. 40. (Case No. C 356 542)
18. S. Wiesenthal, "RIF," Der Neue Weg (Vienna), Nr. 17/18, 1946, pp. 4-5.; See also: S. Wiesenthal, "Seifenfabrik Belsetz," Der Neue Weg, Nr. 19/20, 1946, pp. 14-15, and: S. Wiesenthal, "Nochmals RIF," Der Neue Weg, Nr. 21/22, 1946. p. 2; These articles are also cited in: M. Weber, "Simon Wiesenthal: Bogus 'Nazi Hunter'," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90, pp. 444-445 [and in: M. Weber, "Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent 'Nazi Hunter'," The Journal of Historical Review, July-August 1995 (Vol. 15, No. 4), pp. 10-11, 15.]
19. S. Wiesenthal, "Nochmals RIF," Der Neue Weg (Vienna), Nr. 21/22, 1946, p. 2.
20. Some published works claiming that the Germans manufactured soap from human corpses: "Poland," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), Vol. 13, pp. 761-762 (Photo caption: "A German soap factory near Danzig"); Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941-1945 (New York: Avon, 1965, pb.), p. 918; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Days of Remembrance: A Department of Defense Guide for Commemerative Observance (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1988), p. 18; Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland (New York: Columbia Univ., 1982), vol. 2, p. 457; Max Weinreich, Hitler's Professors (New York: Yivo, 1946), p. 200; Leon Poliakov and J. Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener (East Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1975), p. 165 (photo caption); Gershon Taffet, ed, Extermination of Polish Jews (Lodz: Central Jewish Historical Committee in Poland, 1945), p. 96 (photo caption); Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben (New York: Free Press, 1978) p. 126; Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History (New York: Signet, 1962?, pb.), p. 382; Gizelle Hersh and P. Mann "Gizelle, Save the Children!" (New York: Everest, 1980), p. 210; Robert W. Ross, So It Was True (Minneapolis: 1980), p. 158; Kitty Hart, I Am Alive (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1962), p. 105; See also: Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time (New York: Holt, Rinehard and Winston, 1968), pp. 174-175; H. Kamm, "Elie Wiesel's Hometown," The New York Times, Dec. 9, 1986, p. A9; The soap legend is repeated on a Holocaust memorial erected in 1990 at Miami Beach, Fla., See: M. Bell, "Holocaust Memorial," Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, Jan. 28, 1990, p. G2.
21. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: 1960), p. 971 (note) [or page 1264 of the 1962 softcover edition].
22. Ilya Ehrenburg, The War: 1941-1945 (Cleveland: World, 1965), p. 30.
23. Fred McFadden, et al., Canada: The Twentieth Century (Toronto: 1982), section entitled "The Holocaust."
24. Earl Raab, The Anatomy of Nazism (New York: ADL, 1979), p. 20.
25. Konnilyn G. Feig, Hitler's Death Camps (New York: 1981), pp. 200-202, 479 (n. 19)
26. This writer was present at the opening ceremony held at the Landover, Md., Capital Center, on Monday evening, April 11, 1983. Schneier was Rabbi at Park East Synagogue, New York City. The crowd of some 15,000 was later addressed by President Reagan.
27. N. Blumental "RIF" Yiddish Culture, June-July 1959 (cited above). See also: R. Faurisson, "Le savon juif," Annales d'Histoire Revisionniste (Paris), No. 1, Printemps 1987, pp. 153-159, and, D. Felderer, "Human Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1980, pp. 131-139; Dachauer Hefte: "Die Befreiung" (Dachau), Heft 1, Dec. 1985, p. 111 (n. 7).
28. Erich Kern (Kernmayer), Meineid Gegen Deutschland (1971), pp. 152-163. See also: Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung (Munich), March 29, 1991, pp. 3, 9.
29. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1980), pp. 82, 219.
30. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (London: A. Deutsch, 1974), p. 141 (note).
31. "Nazi Soap Rumor During World War II," Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1981, p. II/2.
32. Bill Hutman, "Nazis never made human-fat soap," The Jerusalem Post - International Edition, week ending May 5, 1990; "Holocaust Expert Rejects Charge That Nazis Made Soap From Jews," Northern California Jewish Bulletin, April 27, 1990. (JTA dispatch from Tel Aviv.) Facsimile in: Christian News, May 21, 1990, p. 19; "A Holocaust Belief Cleared Up," Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1990. Facsimile in: Ganpac Brief, June 1990, p. 8.
33. "A Holocaust Belief Cleared Up," Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1990.

About the author

Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). For nine years he served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review.

THE OTHER ISRAEL ~ TED PIKE

Compiled after 15 months' filming and editing, this fast-moving, professional video documentary by Ted Pike will give you a unique education on the inner teachings of Judaism and the talmud. It also discusses the origins of so-called anti-semitism. Ted delves into the current teachings of the Jewish faith which are painstakingly copied verbatim and passed along from Rabbi to Rabbi. These are the teachings that the Jews are to live by as found in the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar and the Jewish encyclopedia. He discusses about the state of Israel and why all the bloodshed as well as the domination of the banking and media sectors here and abroad by Jews.