Rassinier's Attack on Hilberg and Arendt

by K. E.

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

It has been said that those who control the past control the future, for history can represent a truth, a truth some claim is many-sided. Revisionists–those who present an "alternative view" of history–maintain their endeavor is to uncover ignored or forgotten pasts that hold equal stake in the present. Modern revisionists of the Holocaust, however, have presented a dangerous threat to truth and memory with their fallacious antisemitic arguments. Also alleging to illuminate a disregarded perspective, they in actuality only circulate their antisemitic, self-interested material camouflaged as legitimate scholarship. One such Holocaust denier is Paul Rassinier, who, in an attempt to prove his theses, discredits Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg. Rassinier argues that both Arendt and Hilberg are biased and methodologically flawed. According to Rassinier, this leads them to confuse statistics and distort the truth, spreading the Jewish "Genocide Myth," the Holocaust. In actuality, Rassinier’s claims are often based completely in fabrications and misinterpretations. In addition to Rassinier’s poor understanding and deliberate misuse of both Arendt’s and Hilberg’s works, he himself engages in poor research practices that invalidate his own theories. Because Holocaust denial has grown in the past decades and is gaining notoriety, it is important to shed light on their blatant falsehoods and antisemitic motives. As Deborah Lipstadt expresses, "only by recognizing the threat denial poses to both the past and the future will we ultimately thwart their efforts,"(Lipstadt, 29).

Revisionists have never been solely concerned with the Holocaust and a false scholarship based on antisemitism. The first modern "revisionism" occurred in France, with the demand of a judicial review of the 1894 trial of Alfred Dreyfus. Since then, the word has "turned around…[and] has subsequently taken on a meaning that is at times positive, at times negative, always implying the critique of a dominant orthodoxy," ("Theses on Revisionism"). However, Holocaust revisionism has arisen not to illuminate truth or uncover suppressed information, but to disseminate antisemitic literature under the guise of academic research. The contribution of revisionists "concerns, for the most part, not the history of the war of 1939-1945, but the study of contemporary mentalities, above all since the 1960s," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 17). This revisionism "is to be found in multiple and various forms: scholarly volumes, common propaganda, mimeographed pamphlets, apparently distinguished journals, video cassettes," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins, 86) and "occurs at the intersection of various and occasionally contradictory ideologies," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins, 87). Generally, revisionists–in this case, Holocaust deniers–share many of the same principles, including the denial of a policy of extermination manifested in gas chambers and the claim that the "Genocide Myth" is Jewish propaganda. Using a basic strategy of distortion, where "truth is mixed with absolute lies, confusing readers," (Lipstadt, 2) deniers spread their own misinformation thinly disguised as legitimate research. In these respects, French denier Paul Rassinier differs little.

Born in 1906, Rassinier was one of the first Holocaust deniers, and is one of the most paradoxical. In 1922, at the age of sixteen, he joined the Communist party and was an active member; in the mid-1930s, though, he was forced to leave the organization for criticizing its ways. Rassinier continued, however, to collaborate in a communist newspaper, and was associated with the Democratic Communists. In 1934, he joined the Socialist party, and when war broke out, was part of the resistance (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust Denial in France, 31). Unfortunately, most sources of significant biographical information were penned by Rassinier himself or by his friends ("Rassinier, an Imposter"). "According to myth spread by Henri Coston after the war, Rassinier belonged to the underground movement Nord-Liberation," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 31) where he was "occupied in aiding the Jews," (Rassinier, 341); but, taking into account the sources on this information may lead one to question its complete truth.

While these early actions may seem contradictory considering his work as a Holocaust denier and antisemite, it is the next turn of events that are most perplexing. In 1943 he was captured by the Nazis and deported to the concentration camp Buchenwald and later to Dora. In these concentration camps, he "was treated as a rank and file prisoner, not a political militant," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 31). After his release in 1945, he ran for French political office as a socialist, but failed. Although previously a teacher in the French school system, Rassinier retired due to his poor health, and began writing for magazines. Interestingly, both the anarchist periodicals and the pacifist journal he contributed to were "diametrically opposed to the anti-semitic and anti-intellectual journal, Rivarol, in which Rassinier was later to publish many articles," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 32). In 1948, Rassinier published the first of his critical works concerning the Holocaust: Le Passage de la Ligne, or Crossing the Line. This book was followed by a series of pieces included in the canon of Holocaust denial, culminating in The Real Eichmann Trial (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 33). Only a few years after this final publication, Paul Rassinier died, in 1967.

As a "revisionist," he professes his purpose is "to right the wrong that was done to the German people in accusing them…of inventing mass extermination, of representing human barbarism at its worst," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 36). In his 1964 The Drama of the European Jew, Rassinier claims:

I am among those who, out of respect for my profession and submission to the moral imperatives proper to it, attach great importance to their [facts] becoming known to the public at large. I am also concerned that this very lack of information might tend to lead societies in their evolution toward impasses and catastrophes. (Rassinier, 321)

While his words may suggest his motivation stems from the importance of truthful revelation, his general arguments indicate otherwise. He endeavors to convince readers that any notion of "death camps"–such as Auschwitz–is propaganda intended to sow dissention among Western European nations. Similarly, he argues mass extermination by gassing is a common myth spread by Zionists, as is the inaccurate estimate of six million Jewish Holocaust casualties (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 32-35).

Rassinier explored these themes in his earlier works, where he denied a Nazi policy of annihilation, but defended what may be considered the individual atrocities directed toward Jews (Lipstadt, 52). In Crossing the Line and 1950’s The Lie of Ulysses, Rassinier had two main premises: the survivors had (understandably) exaggerated their camp experiences and thus distorted the truth, and that the terrors seen within the camps were caused by the "kapos" and not the SS themselves. In order to prove these theses he had to demolish the credibility of prisoner testimony, show that the camps were not uniquely German, and convert the nature of the perpetrators to benefactors (Lipstadt, 54).

In his later works, like The Drama of the European Jew, there is a discernable change in his approach; Rassinier "focuses on describing how the ‘myth of the Holocaust’ was created," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 32). His two main accusations dealt with the idea that charges of mass murder through gassings were invented "purely to serve the Zionist establishment," and that the gas chambers themselves and the number of six million dead are outright falsehoods designed to benefit "the interests of the Zionist state, Israel," (Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust, 32). Rassinier did not, however, wholly blame the survivors or perpetrators for perpetuating this Holocaust farce. Instead he admonishes the Zionists and Jewish historians and institutions as the real culprits with their faulty Holocaust research (Lipstadt, 56). One such person is Hannah Arendt, philosopher and author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, whom Rassinier criticizes for numerous reasons in his book, The Drama of the European Jew.

Born also in 1906, Hannah Arendt was raised in Germany and continued her education at the University of Marburg and the University of Heidelberg, where she studied philosophy. Although she had earlier expressed interest in the ideas of Jewishness and German nationalism in her book Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, it was not until later that she would receive notoriety for her delve into the topic. In 1933, with the early rise of the Nazi party, Arendt became actively involved in the German Zionist Organization, and did research on antisemitic propaganda. After escaping Nazi Germany and arriving in Paris, she spent much time rescuing Jewish children from the Third Reich and bringing them to Palestine. In 1941 she moved to America, and just a decade later she had published a book and gained United States citizenship ("Hannah Arendt").

Hannah Arendt was working as a journalist for "The New Yorker" when she began her series covering the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, 1961; this would become her definitive and most controversial work ("Hannah Arendt"). From 1941 to 1945, Adolf Eichmann was head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, and was "Chief of operations in the deportation of three million Jews to extermination camps," (www.nizkor.org). Joining the Austrian Nazi party in 1932, he later became a member of the SS and was directed to investigate possible methods of solving the Jewish "problem." While initially supporting the emigration en masse of Jews, after 1942 he "assumed the leading role in the deportation of European Jews to the death camps, as well as in the plunder of their property," ("Adolf Eichmann"). Although he fled to Argentina after the war, he was brought in 1960 to stand trial in Jerusalem. The highly controversial and publicized Eichmann Trial lasted from April 2 to August 14, 1961, resulting in his execution the following year ("Adolf Eichmann").

Hannah Arendt eventually compiled her articles covering the trial into the aptly titled work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which portrayed Eichmann as a "bureaucrat who did his duty and followed orders, rather than a raving ideologue animated by demonic anti-Semitism," ("Hannah Arendt"). She held the Jewish victims somewhat accountable, and even granted some empathy to the perpetrators. The viewpoints she purveys earned her fame but also criticism from an array of sources, like denier Paul Rassinier.

One of the flaws that he finds with Arendt–allowing him to disregard much of her work and her ideas–is that "Mme. Arendt is obviously a Zionist propagandist," (Rassinier, 269). The Zionists, with whom Arendt and other Jewish scholars are in cahoots, are motivated "by what Rassinier considered a traditional Jewish vice: the love of money," (Lipstadt, 56). The grounds for concocting and furthering the "Genocide myth" seems to Rassinier to be "only, purely, and very basely a material problem," (Rassinier, 214). While the monetary connection between the Zionists and the Holocaust may not be clear to everyone, it was certainly clear to Rassinier. In explaining the basis of this "swindle," he claims that:

Germany pays to Israel sums calculated on the basis of about 6,000,000 dead. In addition, since at least four-fifths of these 6,000,000 were very much alive at the end of the war and countable, she pays to those still living in other countries…substantial reparations as victims of Nazism. This means that for the enormous majority, she is paying twice. (Rassinier, 214)

Thus, it would be profitable for Jewish people to claim that more Jews were killed in the Holocaust than is really true. In this way, Hannah Arendt and her cohorts have everything to gain by asserting a false history, and can therefore not be trusted as "historians."

Arendt is not only biased because of her general relationship to the cause of Zionism, but because she is actively involved in Jewish organizations:

Mme. Arendt…was–or still is–Forschungsleiterin (Research Directoress) of the Conference on Jewish Relations, Verwaltunsleiterin (Directoress of administration) of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Stipendiatin (Fellow) of the Guggenheim Foundation… (Rassinier, 219)

Others have concurred that "Hannah Arendt does not manage to keep objectivity all the

time, her personal feelings shine through her writings," ("Review on Hannah Arendt"). For Rassinier, these associations point to a bias that is evident in her writing, and is furthered in her sources.

Rassinier also attacks Arendt for her reliance on the research of Raul Hilberg, another highly criticized individual. Hilberg is the author of The Destruction of the European Jews, whose arguments Rassinier attempts to refute in his own The Drama of the European Jews. Thus, Hilberg is indirectly related to the case of Hannah Arendt, and serves as another reason to question the scholarship of Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rassinier mainly emphasizes Arendt’s dependence on Hilberg’s statistics and figures throughout her work; when Hilberg comes up with numbers, "naturally, Mme. Hannah Arendt follows in his footsteps," (Rassinier, 343). Much of the data used in her book, Rassinier claims, "derive from what she has read in the book by Mr. Raul Hilberg, which she assimilated badly, which she dishes back to us even more clumsily than the manner in which it was given in the first place, and which she cites with the clearest and most positive avowals," (Rassinier, 269). It is true that one of the two main books relied upon by Arendt and listed in the bibliography of Eichmann in Jerusalem was Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews (Robinson, 150). In her report, she herself even claims that others could benefit from reading Hilberg, openly acknowledging her adherence to his research (Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 66).

This would not be a concern if Rassinier did not claim that Hilberg was also biased as a Zionist sympathizer and purveyor of deceptions. Like Arendt, Hilberg is involved in other Jewish organizations; "he is a collaborator in the Jewish Encyclopedia Handbooks, and, in my judgement, that fact explains everything," (Rassinier, 219). Although he does take part in such activities, Rassinier claims that Hilberg’s case is different, that because he was not directly affected by the Nazi regime, he does not have the usual reasons for becoming involved in such a project. "If…Mr. Raul Hilberg acts as though he had no idea as to whether a witness and his testimony can be regarded as creditable, or under what conditions a document should be admitted as evidence, he has only one excuse, and that excuse is dishonesty," (Rassinier, 218).

He also reprimands Hilberg for his shoddy methods of research, and consequently invalidates Arendt’s own methods for relying on The Destruction of the European Jews. Rassinier claims that "Mr. Raul Hilberg has succeeded in making his documents reveal what he wants them to reveal simply because he accepted them just as they were–that is, rewritten, picked over, and taken out of their context," (Rassinier, 220); "we can detect the playing of a little game…In this saraband of figures, anything goes," (Rassinier, 306). According to Rassinier’s analysis of Hilberg’s numbers–on which Arendt sometimes relies to make her own claims–they are often in discordance with each other and "one could advise him to agree with himself," (Rassinier, 219). What is worse is that the specialists and historians that first compile this information seem to disagree with each other as well, invalidating each other’s statistics. "This inconsistency is all a little irresponsible, and it is embarrassing that the supporting documents, which are the same for all, speak so different a language to each of those specialists," (Rassinier, 220).

This condemnation of Hilberg points to basic flaws in Arendt’s method, which comes to a head in Rassinier’s analysis of a statement in Eichmann in Jerusalem. He relates his discovery of a major discrepancy in Arendt’s work, illuminating her overall deception and use of the "numbers game." Hannah Arendt, in her report on the Eichmann Trial, "coolly informs us (New Yorker, February 23, 1963) that ‘3 million Polish Jews were massacred during the first day of the war,’" (Rassinier, 219). Rassinier points out that this is in blatant disagreement with Hilberg’s work and the work of other historians. However, this does not seem to completely surprise Rassinier, for it could only be expected from an individual as biased and conspiring as Arendt. This point seems to be the manifestation of Arendt’s dishonesty, and the willingness of she and her associates to make history speak only what they want, propagating lies concerning the Holocaust.

Like every Holocaust denier, Paul Rassinier’s points are based on some aspect of truth that has been distorted, and rely on the willingness of the reader to accept them as well-researched facts, instead of viewing them as the poorly-argued claims they really are. It seems that for deniers, "anything capable of rendering this frightening story acceptable or believable, of establishing its evolution or furnishing terms for comparison is either unacknowledged or falsified," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins, 23). When Rassinier cannot attack Arendt’s claims he attacks her personally, and where he cannot find statistical fault he creates it. While there is controversy involving Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt, a philosopher not a historian, Rassinier’s criticisms lie in poor methodology and false claims. In his work, The Drama of the European Jews, these fallacies are readily apparent and invalidate much of his effort.

Rassinier’s first claim that Arendt ought to be discredited because of her association with the Zionists is completely invalid; "Rassinier, in fact, is literally obsessed by the theme of the international Jewish conspiracy," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins, 34). It is true that Hannah Arendt was involved with the Zionist movement, and it may be that the movement even used the Holocaust to its advantage. "In the case of the genocide of the Jews, it is clear that one Jewish ideology, Zionism, exploits the great massacre in a manner that is on occasion scandalous. But the fact that an ideology has seized on a fact does not do away with its existence," (Vidal-Naquet, Assassins, 16). In fact, Arendt broke with the Zionist community after "arguing against the founding of an explicitly religious state, and for a secular state with a formal separation between church and states. She lost that debate and created enemies in the process," ("Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust").

The claim that Israel received money based on the number of dead–assuming a higher death toll would result in a greater financial reward–is also completely false:

Rassinier based his argument on a completely false premise. One must assume that he did so knowingly, given the documents he cites. The reparations Germany paid to Israel were not based on the death toll but on the cost to Israel of absorbing and resettling both Jews who fled Germany and German-controlled countries during the postwar years. (Lipstadt, 57)

Israel determined the amount it would request from Germany based on the expenditures it had made and would still need to integrate Jewish immigrants from countries that had been under Nazi control. The government of Israel estimated this figure at 500,000, which does not at all take into account the figure of six million casualties. Again, the point can be made that:

since the money the state received was based on the cost of resettling survivors, had Israel wanted to increase the amount of reparations it

obtained from Germany it would have been in its interest to argue that fewer than six million had been killed and that more had managed to flee to Israel. (Lipstadt, 57)

This myth that money was paid to Israel according to the number dead has become a strong arguing point for the deniers, but is in fact completely wrong.

Next, Rassinier "exposes" Hannah Arendt’s biases based on the fact that she was involved in Jewish organizations, and this would perhaps lead her to sympathize unfairly with the Jews and court their views. Eichmann in Jerusalem, however, was not a chronicle that was well received by the Jewish community. The reading audience seemed to be shocked that Arendt did not portray Eichmann as "radically evil," but rather her somewhat novel thesis supported his normality (Hinchman, 3). Arendt "held the victims of the Final Solution accountable for inadequate and ill-conceived political action, and offered the perpetrators a measure of empathy and an effort to understand," ("Hannah Arendt")

Instead of strengthening her ties to the Jewish community and working for them, "the storm over the book’s apparent elevation of Eichmann’s character and denial of Jewish innocence frayed whatever bonds still tied Arendt to the organized Jewish community," ("Hannah Arendt") and she was greeted with attacks and criticism. Arendt’s implied allegation "that Jewish leaders in Nazi-occupied Europe often collaborated with their oppressors in administrative and police matters, thereby unwittingly facilitating the Final Solution," (Hinchman, 3) also angered many readers and, for some, further alienated the author. In addition, some have suggested that Arendt was also influenced from the other side. Arendt had a well-known affair that might have jeopardized any preexisting Jewish slant; "her relationship with Martin Heidegger, a Nazi party member, puts her Jewish sympathies into question," ("Hannah Arendt: the Banality"). These arguments give adequate support that Arendt was not working in accordance with Jewish organizations to make the claims presented in Eichmann in Jerusalem.

In making these suggestions about Arendt–and Raul Hilberg–not only does Rassinier make huge generalizations based on speculation and not fact; he also commits a fallacy. In his attempt to invalidate Arendt and Hilberg, he commits the fallacy of circumstantial ad Hominem. This sort of fallacy in logic is one "in which one attempts to attack a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it simply out of self interest. In some cases, this fallacy involves substituting an attack on a person’s circumstances (such as the person’s religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.)," ("Fallacy"). While a person’s interests or affiliations may provide them with motives to make certain claims, the claims are still able to stand or fall on their own, regardless of the individual. In certain instances, however, it is important to suspect bias due to affiliation, as in the case of Holocaust deniers. Their own antisemitic beliefs and political agendas influence their research and claims. In order to convince others and justify their personal feelings, they must spread lies concerning the Holocaust in the format of scholarly books, articles, or journals. It would be, therefore, more relevant to examine Rassinier’s own beliefs and associations–including the current use of his work by the antisemitic groups Institute for Historical Review and Samisdat–rather than each Holocaust historian.

In addition to the ad Hominem attacks of Hilberg–used to further discredit Arendt–Rassinier tries to reveal flaws in his statistics, and the statistics of other specialists. "One of the methods Rassinier used to convince his readers that the Holocaust was a fraud was his use of the numbers game…to prove that the death tolls are not valid," (Lipstadt, 58). In The Drama of the European Jews, Rassinier gives an account of Hilberg’s faulty statistics, appearing to quote the book itself: "Mr. Raul Hilberg used to prove to us that 5,100,000 (p. 767) or 5,407,500 (p. 670) Jews were exterminated by the Germans during the Second World War," (Rassinier, 213). In another example attempting to prove Hilberg’s numbers don’t agree with each other, Rassinier states:

particularly to Mr. Raul Hilberg, one could advise him to agree with himself. On page 670 of his book, he in fact points out to us that of the 9,190,000 Jews, who he says were living in territories occupied by German armies during the war, only 3,782,500 survived, which makes 5,407,500 dead; but on page 767, by some mathematical mystery, these 5,407,500 dead become 5,100,000. (Rassinier, 219)

The mathematical mystery here lies not in Hilberg’s addition, but in Rassinier’s deliberate distortion and attempt to confuse the reader. The problem was Rassinier’s "misunderstanding" of a table in The Drama of the European Jews, and his quotation out of context. Instead of stating that he himself did the miscalculation of the table, he attributes the calculation to Hilberg, allowing the reader to assume it was Hilberg who stated them directly. This is an outright lie, repeatedly carried out by Rassinier to erroneously prove "facts" that are convenient to his thesis ("Falsifications").

This sort of numerical manipulation occurs again in a misquote of Hannah Arendt’s statement. While Rassinier quotes Arendt as stating three million Polish Jews were massacred during the first day of the war (Rassinier, 219), Arendt’s real statement differed: one estimate of the number of Jews left in Europe after 1940 "did not include three million Polish Jews, who, as everybody knew, had been in the process of being massacred even since the first days of the war," (Arendt, "A Reporter at Large," 66). "By changing Arendt’s quote to say three million had been killed on the first day, Rassinier manages to make Arendt sound not only in total contradiction to other historians but quite out of touch with reality," (Lipstadt, 59). Rassinier does, however, raise a related, valid concern–although irrelevant in this case–that historians’ numbers should differ from one another when they are dealing with the same sources. This point, though, actually works toward the credibility of their findings. For one so concerned about a Jewish conspiracy concerning the Holocaust, Rassinier should be pleased that each historian’s numbers are not identical:

Complete unanimity among historians…would itself be highly suspicious. A death toll on which all historians unequivocally agreed would raise legitimate suspicions about the independent nature of their historical research. It is precisely these differences that show that these are not "court-appointed" historians but independent researchers… (Lipstadt, 61)

As real research shows, the numbers seem to match up within an individual’s own scholarly research, but the fact that there are variances between others actually lends validity.

In addition to these blatant and willful misinterpretations and undeserved accusations, Rassinier is guilty of poor methodology and logic. While these can be understood as attempts to sway a reader and persuade belief in fabrications, it is not acceptable when passing for scholarly work. In multiple instances, Rassinier uses Arendt or Hilberg to support his own statements, after he has already discredited them. On trying to discern statistics regarding Polish Jews, Rassinier explains: "I had no accurate information…Happily, my excellent collaborator, Mme. Hannah Arendt, came forth most usefully to complete my documentation. Mr. Raul Hilberg, too, proved to be quite useful," (Rassinier, 340). Only a few pages later, Rassinier uses information provided by these "unreliable" sources: "we know, for example–even if only through the Arendt-Hilberg team–that at the moment of the arrival of the German troops in Belgium, no more than 5,000 Jews remained who had Belgian nationality…" (Rassinier, 344). To make valid claims, one cannot address or ignore information as it seems to support or disprove a thesis. By using sources and information that he had previously shown to be inaccurate, Rassinier is invalidating himself.

These examples are by no means the only holes in Rassinier’s research. He seems more than happy to point out the exact places where he relies on insufficient information. When trying to make a point about the gas chambers, he tells the reader "I am not a specialist in the use of Zyklon B…" (Rassinier, 263) "I suspect but cannot however confirm…" (Rassinier, 264) and "as far as I know…" (Rassinier, 264); these facts do not, however, keep him from making claims using the information he is not certain of. After accusing Hilberg and Arendt of not citing sources, Rassinier discusses "a certain number of facts [that] are positively known," (Rassinier, 320) and "at least one hundred…references," (Rassinier, 267) which prove his points, but whose origins remain ambiguous. Although he will refuse to accept others’ information "as being well founded," (Rassinier, 323) he seems to have no qualms about using–quite frequently–such phrases as "I have no precise facts," (Rassinier, 341), "as I remember," (Rassinier, 340), "to my knowledge," (Rassinier, 267) and "we shall assume," (Rassinier, 323). These numerous examples of shoddy research point to a false scholarship, bringing to light Rassinier’s hidden agenda based on his antisemitism.

Although Rassinier criticizes Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg for using nameless witnesses, second-hand testimony, and "untrustworthy" sources, Rassinier relies on the same sort of information he claims to detest. In specific instances in The Drama of the European Jews, Rassinier denounces Arendt for being vague, and even quotes her, but fails to cite her (Rassinier, 348, 359-60). This leaves the reader unable to review the quotes and fairly judge his claims. Hilberg is chastised for his anonymous witnesses and second-hand testimony (Rassinier, 289), but Rassinier–just a chapter earlier–used an anonymous source to counter a myriad of data and research about the gas chambers (Rassinier, 270-83). This source may as well have been a fictional character, and yet Rassinier claims to accept nothing but impeccably documented truth from the "exterminationists," or real Holocaust historians. It is interesting to note the general lack of adequate citations and footnotes throughout his work. By just perusing the footnotes, one can immediately notice they often admit to exceptions or make references to other Holocaust deniers (Rassinier, 284-5). The book’s Afterward–written by another denier--reveals the faults of the author, while simultaneously proclaiming the importance of his work; "These corrections should not discourage the reader from digging into this important volume, which is a valuable memoir of concentration camp life, as well as an insightful and often brilliant critique of the Holocaust extermination story," (Weber, 432-33). This is telling of the revisionists’ method: justify and minimize the obvious flaws, while diverting the reader’s attention and lauding the author’s work.

Paul Rassinier is just one of the Holocaust deniers whose illegitimate arguments pose a threat to history while disseminating dangerous antisemitic propaganda. Through his criticisms of Hannah Arendt–and consequently Raul Hilberg–it is possible to detect his poor logic and methods of research that only serve to illuminate his true motives. Because of their growing popularity, it is important to acknowledge the deniers and their assertions of a false history. The historian’s endeavor must include shedding light on these individuals to "expose the illusion of reasoned inquiry that conceals their extremist views," (Lipstadt, 28).

Works Cited