Thursday, October 4, 2007
David Irving is defending himself from his fellow deniers for actually warming to the idea that the Nazis (though not Hitler, no, never Hitler) may have intentionally mass-murdered some Jews (previous: David Irving Ready to Goose-Step Into the Future): Holocaust Deniers Rankled by Their Standard Bearer’s Revisions
A famed Holocaust denier is revising his revisionist thinking — and the move is opening up a rift among his fellow travelers.
David Irving, who was released from prison last December in Austria after being convicted of Holocaust denial, recently announced that he is rethinking his position on the fate of European Jews during World War II. Irving now concedes that a mass slaughter of Jews may have occurred.
In a series of interviews, including one with the Forward, Irving outlined his new beliefs. After his release, he said, he discovered in a volume of trivial Nazi communiqués a memo from SS major Hermann Höfle that refers to “S,” “B” and “T” — code, Irving claims, for the concentration camps Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka. He said he is 80% sure that the document is genuine and that no other piece of Holocaust evidence has seemed as legitimate.
“This is the only one,” Irving said. “If [the document] is genuine, it refutes the view of the revisionists that nothing happened.”
Irving’s current conclusions still lie far from those of mainstream Holocaust scholars. He believes that around 2.4 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, that Auschwitz was not a death camp and that SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the murders behind Hitler’s back...
...Irving confirmed that he has made many new enemies in the revisionist community and kept old ones.
“I’ve received a number of e-mails from around the world,” Irving said. “They’re not very happy with me at all.”
Among the unsympathetic is Michael Santomauro, who runs the revisionist Web site Reporters Notebook. “[Irving] is a flip-flopper on the Holocaust,” Santomauro said. “I think he’s positioning himself to sell more books.”...
...One of Irving’s main allies in the United States is Mark Weber, director of the revisionist Institute for Historical Review. Weber countered the claim that Irving is simply engaged in a publicity stunt.
“Those people who are disappointed that Irving has switched [sides] shouldn’t be, because he’s always been ambivalent,” Weber said, adding that Irving’s current stance marks a return to the way he was thinking when he published “Hitler’s War” in 1976.
Irving agrees with this interpretation of his trajectory.
“You must not think that I’ve done anything to rehabilitate myself,” he said...
