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Bradley R. Smith; The Real Hoax

by A. A.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 2001)

© Elliot Neaman / PHDN
Reproduction interdite par quelque moyen que ce soit / no reproduction allowed

Bradley R. Smith is not a name that brings fear to the hearts of men or women around the world. Many people have no idea of who is he or why someone would want to write about him. To these people I can only say that he would like you a lot. He would delight in your ignorance because that is all the opening that he needs.

Smith, no matter what he at times claims, is a Holocaust denier. He did not start out thinking this way. He once was just as blind as he sees the rest of the world currently being.

In his book Confessions Of A Holocaust Revisionist Smith describes how he came to realize that the Holocaust was a hoax. In the preface Smith admits that he has "never been interested in intellectual work...experience and sensibility are easier. . ." for him. He continues on, in the first chapter, to tell about how despite this fact he feels drawn to write about the truth. His conversion experience started on the mezzanine of the Bonavernture Hotel in Los Angeles in 1979. A man had handed him a flyer, a photo copy of an article by Robert Faurisson entitled "The Problem of the Gas Chambers," and while at first he was embarrassed to receive it he did not immediately throw it out. Later when he had returned to his apartment he read the article. In it Faurisson points out that soon after the war many of the camps that were thought to have gas chambers were proved not to. This revealed to Smith the path of denial.

To his way of thinking, and also Faurisson’s, the fact that some of the gas chambers thought to exist did not calls the existence of any gas chambers into question (Shermer and Grobman 61). This was the first of Smith’s enlightening moments, "Faurisson was a turning point for me, a milestone, a sudden opening (Smith, Confessions 25)." He now looked at the world in a whole new light.

In his mind there is a conspiracy going on all around us. This was confirmed for Smith after having read just part of Arthur R. Butz’s book The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century. In that book Butz claims that The Destruction of the European Jews, by Raul Hilberg, was fraudulent because it relies to heavily on the eye-witness testimony of Jews. Butz then challenged Hilberg to prove his case with additional evidence. Hilberg responded with silence (Shermer and Grobman 61).

For Smith this silence became the greater issue. There was something wrong with this silence. The fact that no one was responding to The Hoax only further confirmed the thoughts in Smith’s head. Something was obviously being covered up, there could be no other explanation.

In the early 1980s he decided to start writing to show others the truth that he had seen. Unfortunately for Smith his autobiographical writings did not generate the attention that he was hoping for. So, in 1984 he approached the directors of the Institute of Historical Review (IHR), Tom Marcellus and Willis Carto. That is when the IHR agreed to back Smith’s publication, Prima Facie, and it’s distribution to over 4,000 journalists in the United States. Once more his plans hit a snag when the journalists did not react as he had hoped. "It was interesting...to discover that professional journalist in this country had no interest whatever in questioning the orthodox Holocaust story, even when the research was mailed to them free each month (qt. In Anti-Defamation League 12)." After several more years with IHR and several more failed endeavors, including a radio project and a couple of cable television appearances, Smith teamed up with Mark Weber, also of the IHR, to launch the Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust (CODOH). In 1988 CODOH adopted what they call the campus campaign.

The campus campaign was started by a wealthy Nebraska business man, William Curry. In November of 1986 he sent $1,000 to the Daily Nebraska, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student newspaper, to run a full page advertisement denying the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. He then sent an additional $5,000 to pay for a speaker to come and present Holocaust revisionist perspectives during the conference on "The Abandonment of the Jews." The student run newspaper turned down his advertisement and the school administrators rejected his offer of turning their conference on the Holocaust into a debate on the subject. Upon Curry’s death in 1988 the Smith realized that it was his duty to take over the crusade to save college campuses from the hoax.

In the years since CODOH took up the campus campaign they have found a better way of getting in the paper. Smith, now approaches the editors of a university and makes it appear as though the Holocaust is not the central issue. He uses the guise of free speech to convince people to let him place his advertisement. Elliot Neaman, a professor of history at the University of San Francisco(USF), was moved to explain this to the readers of the Foghorn, USF’s student newspaper, when Smith attempted to place an advertisement in that newspaper. Neaman explains:

...Smith has framed the debate in terms of "political correctness," the assertion that "liberal" ban the discussion of certain topics that challenge the purported multi-cultural, feminist, pluralist consensus of liberal white America. Student newspaper editors are thus confronted with the difficult task of rejecting the denier ads under a cloud that they are stifling free speech. (6)

Smith wants people to think that his rights, freedom of speech, are being violated.

As deniers try to become more mainstream they realize that they need to disassociate themselves with those that came before them in this field. Smith does this by bringing up the First Amendment repeatedly. He wants to draw the focus more to this part of his argument thus making his pseudo-academic style is not quite so obvious.

To the attentive reader, the most helpful thing in seeing the holes in Smith’s argument is the CODOH’s home page. As the web page loads you will noticed the wallpaper that had been chosen for it. It is unusual in that it is not just a standard pattern of line and color, instead it is the repeated image of Don Quixote and his servant Sancho Panza (Smith "Home page"). This may not make any sense at first but if you have read Don Quixote then understanding is about to dawn. Smith sees himself as a Don Quixote of sorts. Quixote believed himself to be a knight and went around saving people and having various other adventures. In this way Smith can draw parallels to his own life because he sees himself as liberating us with the truth about the Holocaust.

There is one more parallel that Smith probably did not even considered when choosing Quixote as his counterpart. Whenever a setback occurred Quixote blamed it on the magic of an evil enchanter he believed to be his nemesis. Similarly, Smith blames many different people, calling them the "Thought Police," for preventing the real facts of the Holocaust to be known. He attempts to expose the "Thought Police" several times through out his advertisements.

Smith’s advertisements vary in content ranging from the "Jewish Soap" myth to listing several unsubstantiated claims of cover-up. His essays appear in the form of full page advertisements in university newspapers across the country. Where they are not printed Smith still has a small triumph by claiming that this is against the First Amendment. This usually leads to at some media attention, furthering his cause without him having to pay a dime for it.

This is typical of Smith’s method of convincing people by confusing the issue. The First Amendment actually reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This in no way requires that a newspaper print everything sent into it. It only prohibits the Government from preventing a newspaper from printing a story. It would be one thing if he was not able to put out his own pamphlet or publish a book because the Government prohibited this type of writing, this is not the case. Newspapers and publishers turn down people for publication every day.

When the accusations of anti-Semitist are brought forth Smith simply brushes them aside as muddying the issue. As proof that he is not in the least anti-Semitic he offers the fact that his ex-wife and two former step-sons are Jewish. In fact he was part of their bar mitzvah, so obviously he cannot be called anti-Semitic. Smith sees it as not him but the Jews who are trying to divide everyone because we do not believe all the same stories (37).

Most of the advertisements that have been placed in, or attempted to be placed in, newspapers are written by Smith himself. The exception is the essay/advertisement ‘Jewish Soap’ which was written by Mark Weber. Smith instead writes an introduction to the essay to help explain what is being said, just in case the reader can not figure this out on their own.

It is in this introduction that he quotes a Roman legal principle "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" which Smith himself translates into "False in one thing, false in everything." His interpretation on this is that if one thing that a witness says is wrong then everything that the witness says must also be wrong.

Any decent historian will tell you that you cannot rely solely on eye-witness testimony. Smith is not making a revolutionary statement here. Historians do not, nor have they ever, base the facts on these testimonies alone. They couple them with blueprints, letters written at the time, photographs, some the Nazis took themselves, and other war documents. It is only by combining this testimony with other evidence that history can be written. The real scholars of the Holocaust have never used just eye-witness testimony to find facts.

When historians use these other sources they also make sure to note what they are and all other pertinent information in their work. This is something that Smith fails to do regularly. In fact many of his advertisements do this several times.

In "The Holocaust Story: How Much Is False? The Case For Open Debate" Smith has a section dedicated to the photographs that were taken. In this particular section he mentions newsreels that were taken of inmates at Buchenwald, Cachau, and Bergen-Belsen upon their release. The newsreels reveal the "... internees walking through the camp streets laughing and talking. Others show joyful, well-fed internees throwing their caps in the air and cheering..." Smith turns this into further proof of a conspiracy when in the very next paragraph he asks the reader:

"You haven’t seen those films and photographs, you say? Why do you think that is? Does it suggest to you questions about the camps that are not politically correct to ask?"

He mentions these newsreels in "The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate." Smith suggests that he has personally viewed these photographs and films but he never said where he got them from. Actually he never even comes right out says that he has seen them, just that they exist and are being kept from the rest of the world for motives that can only be described as questionable.

There is also the advertisement offering $100,000 to anyone who can convince a national network to air David Cole’s documentary on Auschwitz where Cole interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper. Smith once again uses deception to manipulate an ignorant reader by referring to Cole as a Jewish scholar. David Cole is Jewish but what qualifies him as a Jewish scholar? By definition a scholar is someone who has done an advanced study in a particular field. Cole has no degree certifying that he has studied Judaism in-depth. The only "research" that Cole has done is this documentary.

Smith also calls Cole’s video an "...authentic documentary, not a Hollywood movie..." This is most likely regarding Steven Spielberg’s movie Shindler’s List which Smith mentions in his advertisement "Holocaust Studies: Appointment With Hate?" as a form of "hate" itself.

Smith makes several comments about what hate is "Holocaust Studies: Appointment With Hate?" He bases the essay around a what he sees as the problems with Elie Wiesel and his story. Smith quotes Wiesel’s Book Legends of Our Time trying to show that Wiesel is preaching hate. The quotation used is "Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate—for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German (142)." He follows the quotation telling how "Students understand the implications of this statement when brought to their attention" when their professors seem not to. If this was the full work that Wiesel had written then it would unquestionably be a statement of hate. By quoting only a minute part of Wiesel’s book and not telling what came before Smith changes the meaning of the words.

To tell it accurately he should have included more of the text so that the average reader could grasp the full meaning. The sentences preceding the quotation put a whole new spin on the message being delivered by Wiesel:

Perhaps, had we learned to hate more during the years of ordeal, fate itself would have taken fright. The Germans did their best to teach us, but we were poor pupils in the discipline of hate. Yet today, even having been deserted by my hate during that fleeting visit to Germany, I cry out with all my heart against silence. (142)

This is not a message of hate. In actuality it is Wiesel regretting that the Jewish people did not have enough hate for the Germans to stop what was being done to them. It is anger that there are still some who will not speak out against what happened to them. With the right information students really can understand the full implications of the statement.

In the majority of the advertisements that are posted on the CODOH’s web page Smith mentions how every other historical issue can be debated except one—the Jewish Holocaust story. This is by far the piece of his argument that Smith feels is the most meaningful, or at least worth repeating. It is also one of the most illogical of his arguments. Historians debate issues within history all the time. There are several things about history itself that are not debated. No one debates about if the institution of slavery existed in America. It is just a known fact that it happened. Likewise historians do not debate about if the Holocaust happened, they debate the things that are not so solid, like the exact number who died.

Smith is very deliberate in his writing making statements that sound plausible at first. It takes a little more than just one look to see where his argument is lacking. He places his advertisements in college newspapers because he sees that audience as more "open" to his argument. College students are still forming their beliefs about the world and have not had a chance to learn more about what is going on. They were not alive to witness the controversy first hand, they do not have the experience of life to teach them about the Bradley R. Smith’s of the world.

Works Cited

Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Plume Books, 1994

Neaman, Elliot. "The Holocaust: Nothing to Debate." The Foghorn. February 26, 1998: 6

Shermer, Michael, and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2000

Smith, Bradley R. "$100,000 Offer." April 5, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com/campus/CP50KAD.html>

Smith, Bradley R. Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist. Los Angeles, California: Prima Facie, 1987

Smith, Bradley R. "Home page." April 4, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com>

Smith, Bradley R. "Holocaust Studies: Appointment With Hate?." April 5, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com/ads/adsholostudies.html>

Smith, Bradley R. "The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate." April 5, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com/ads/adsdebate.html>

Smith, Bradley R. "The Holocaust Story: How Much is False? The Case for Open Debate." April 5, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com/ads/adscasefor.html>

Smith, Bradley R. "The ‘Human Soap’ Holocaust Myth." April 5, 2001.
<http://www.codoh.com/ads/adssoap.html>

Wiesel, Elie. Legends of Our Time. San Francisco, California: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.


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