That’s a direct quote from the Catholic Bishop that Pope Benedict—former Hitler Youth, btw—just ex-ex-communicated and welcomed back into the Catholic Church.

More at Sullivan.

81 replies on ““There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies.””

  2. @50, I hear you. I’m a Jew, but I’ve always had fond feelings for Catholics. Despite the sometimes-rotten leadership of the church, the Catholics that I’ve known personally have generally been good, progressive people. I admire the church’s huge role in the social-welfare safety net (hospitals, schools, housing, drug recovery, AIDS education, economic assistance, counseling, tutoring, elder care, etc.) I think a random human being is far more likely to be impacted positvely by a Catholic charitable program than to be hurt by the ex-ex-communication of some Holocaust-denying nutball.

  3. Pope Rat is a creepy, crawly, smelly rodent…ugly in every way. Other than that, I think he’s a nice guy.

    But I have to say this to God: If this weirdo is the best you can find to lead your flock, maybe You need to pay a little more attention to things here on Earth!

  4. Also, @22:

    Historians debate the fact that millions of people (Jews, Roma, Gays, disabled) were deliberately murdered in the Holocaust to the same extent that they debate, say, the bombing of Hiroshima or the Korean war. (in other words, they don’t–there’s too much evidence). I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re just asking questions and don’t have a stake in the answer. If that’s true, I suggest you read some more about what historians know (Wikipedia is a good place to start). There are some good Holocaust education libraries online and several specifically dedicated to answering questions like yours. Also, keep in mind that with ANY major event there are going to be some conflicting/false accounts, and some details that aren’t understood. Conspiracy theorists exploit those confusions to cast doubt on the facts that ARE known. This technique can be applied to any historical event, but is usually only applied when someone has a big stake in changing the story.

  5. Bona fides: I’m a retired Catholic. But being stupid is not a sin nor is it an reason for excommunication. The Vatican ought to make clear that they don’t accept his crazy views but explain that stupidity is not grounds for excommunication. For the rest of us, why do we care? Let’s just wash our hands of this stuff and move on.

  6. Why has Auschwitz lowered the official count of the numbers of people killed there several times over the years? Auschwitz lowered the official count from about four million people killed there down to one and a half million. What happened to the other three and a half million? Do those adjusted numbers (three and a half million less than the original estimate) have any effect on the sacred and unquestionable (by pain of prison in Europe) number of SIX MILLION? If not, why not?

  7. Ive always thought that gas chambers were a ineffective way to kill people. The German had killing down to a science, just look at the massacre at Babi Yar outside of Kiev. So I understand the questioning of the existence of actual gas chambers that some commenter’s have mentioned above. But if you deny that the Nazi’s attempted to wipe out the Jews your a fucking nut. The holocaust was very real and the evidence of it is insurmountable. .

  12. @56,

    Ahem.

    Holocaust deniers would have people believe that the Auschwitz State Museum’s death toll of four million was a widely accepted idea, and that any revisions in this number should also lower the total dead from the Holocaust…

    In a quick survey of nineteen historical references (see appendix) only two listed the total Auschwitz dead at four million [7], [8] One of these, Friedman’s “This Was Oswiecim: The Story of a Murder Camp,” was published in 1946, well before more reliable estimates were available. Most list figures from 1 to 2.5 million, and they arrived at these figures in a variety of methods…

    Some quoted Kommandant Höss’s testimony (2.5 million) and others attempted to piece together how many people arrived at Auschwitz, minus any survivors, while still others used available pre- and post war census data. In fact, to find many sources that do list four million dead, one has to find books published behind the iron curtain…

    Additionally, the Auschwitz State Museum revised their figures after the fall of Poland’s Communist government.

    Why are Holocaust deniers so fucking stupid?

  16. Holy crap. I’m just done. I haven’t actually attended church since Ratzinger became pope (refuse to call him Benedict, who was a man of peace).

    @1. Yes! I certainly have. The Nazi-pope lives and it breaks my heart.

  17. @38,
    Thank you for explaining that. I’ve been really freaked out by how many frighteningly vicious, disconnected-from-reality posts I’ve seen on various blogs over the past few weeks. I’ve been wondering – are there really that many more of these people than I realized? (The answer to that is, yes, of course there are, but there are also far more sane, kind people in this country than I could have ever imagined. It’s hard to intuitively grasp the meaning and size of the word “millions”)

    It makes sense that the people who believe this toxic garbage are bringing their misinformed hate to traditionally-liberal sites at this time. Obama’s election has roused them from their undisclosed locations! Maybe this is our big chance to educate them? (Ha!)

  18. Wow, holy crap! It’s almost funny to see how many judgments are made about me from my earlier post. I’m not a fucking nazi. I’m not a nazi apologist. I’m a fucking athiest left winger from Seattle who (oh my god) happens to have a number of jewish friends, supports gay marriage, wants universal health care, voted for Obama, and loathes racism of all kinds. I just think that posts like #31 are more likely true than all this tongue wagging about the ‘undeniable’ history of the holocaust. Jesus Christ! Man, I can’t believe I get called antisemitic just because I *question* some aspect of history that has, countless times, been proven to be overblown and misunderstood. LOOK, the Nazis did terrible shit. They were RESPONSIBLE for the deaths of millions of people. OKAY?!?! Does that make you feel better?

    It’s almost scary how many people flip the fuck out at doubts about the accuracy of some of the holocaust stories. It’s like we NEED nazis to be the worst people ever on the face of the earth, so therefore every single terrible act that can be attributed to them must be accepted as truth regardless of whether or not it makes any sense.

    The gas chambers make NO sense. Deal with it. You’ve been fed a LOT of bullshit and you attack *historical* conversation with charges of anti-semitism. I did look it up, I did read about it, and it’s bullshit. I’m not racist because I think that certain aspects of the TERRIBLE shit that happened have been overblown and exaggerated.

  19. @68,

    If you really think you can authoritatively say that people didn’t die in the gas chambers, yet try and argue with a straight face that you’re really not a Holocaust apologist, there’s not much use debating with you.

    So go fuck yourself.

  20. …and just to beat a dead horse, did you decide that the historic fact that people were killed in gas chambers was “bullshit” based on information you got from the same sites that “prove” that bodies weren’t burned in the crematoriums, either?

    Oh, and the post @31 you cite neglected to point out that the Germans systematically starved a good portion of concentration camp inmates as a matter of deliberate policy.

    Nice source, that.

  23. I don’t know enough to debate this topic. Thankfully, many others have undertaken painstaking, and painful, research into that black period in human history, and so far as I can tell, that the holocaust occurred seems to be universally accepted by creditable historians. Frankly, that’s more than good enough for me.

    Having said that, revisiting the historical evidence shouldn’t incur such righteous indignation, moral outrage, or in some places in the world, legal punishment. We live in a free society (thank God) that rightly and justly permits free speech. If someone chooses to question the historical facts, by all means they should be exposed to an appropriate level of intellectual ridicule; by all means they’re political or racial motivation for the exercise should be investigated and probed (but not assumed); by all means they should bear the full brunt of academic humiliation; but they should be permitted their voice without their inquiry being conflated with the crimes they are investigating.

    “Curiosity is not anti-anything” may well be an utter moron. For all I know, he may be a nazi, an anti-semite, a racist, a fascist and a holocaust apologist, but I don’t think any of his posts, of themselves, make out that case.

    Cast him down on the basis of what he says, not what you suspect lies behind it. Unlike Nazi Germany, this is a free country after all…

  24. Steve,

    Reread his post at 22 – he said there was “no extermination program.”

    Free speech notwithstanding, if buddy said that shit in my presence he’d most likely be on his way to the emergency room and I’d be on the way to jail for assault.

    And yes, when one says that in their post it makes you – at best – a Holocaust apologist, and at worst everything else you cited.

    So fuck him twice with that rusty hacksaw.

  25. @73 I agree that people should be allowed to revisit history, and certainly ask questions. Unfortunately, people who claim that the Holocaust didn’t happen nearly alway argue that “the Jews” made it up as part of a sinister conspiracy to gain power through the world’s sympathy and good will. (sounds a lot like all the other old conspiracy theories involving evil, dishonest, cunning Jews that have been floating around Europe for about a thousand years.) In light of all the evidence of the Holocaust and the Final Solution, and the fact that it only happened 3 generations ago, it seems impossible to me that someone who studied it could REALLY be wondering about it.

    Think about what it would take to carry out a conspiracy like this, involving thousands of people telling fake but consistent stories; corroborating those with large numbers of fake photographs; secretly constructing fake extermination camps and gas chambers before the end of the war, then bombing and dismantling some of them as part of a fake cover-up; burying at some of them thousands of uncremated human remains and clothes; constructing fake records of Hitler’s speeches alluding to the Final Solution; planting fake Nazi records and memos outlining the Final Solution just for the Allies to discover; purchasing large amounts of Zyklon B from German chemical companies; forging fake Nazi deportation and death records; eliciting fake testimony from SS officials, death camp workers, and spies; forging fake pre- and post-war population census records; creating fake names and identities for millions of fake people who died; recruiting fake surviving family-members for those fake people, etc etc. It’s impossible for me to imagine any group of human beings pulling off a conspiracy like this, so I think someone could only believe that if they also believe that Jews have some kind of devilish superpower.

    To the Holocaust questioners here: do you believe the reports about what happened at Abu Ghraib? Do you believe the Armenian genocide occurred or was it an Armenian conspiracy? What about the killing fields in Cambodia? Do you believe the evidence of torture at Guantanamo, or is that an exaggerated scam?

    To @68, who says he can’t be anti-Semitic because some of his best friends are Jewish (dude, we’ve heard it before..) Have you told your Jewish friends that you believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated?

  28. @75, I know that most people who seek to deny the holocaust do so as part of a (not so) hidden agenda, but this guy didn’t strike me as being in that category. I could be wrong of course.

    I suppose what I’d prefer to see, assuming he is not operating a secret pernicious agenda, is rather than vilifying him and sending him further out into the fringe, engaging with him in a conciliatory way and bringing him back to the mainstream. I suspect that’s what Benedict was trying to do with permitting communion to the Lefebvre fascists.

  29. @64: The bishops of this church also regularly call for refusing communion to any political figure who is not anti-choice. This holocaust denier continues to make these claims, but the head honcho, former Hitler Youth member, is welcoming him back with open arms with nary a word of regret or disapproval. That’s evil.

  31. @76: thank you, I try.

    @78: I agree with you about engaging him rather than vilifying him. If nothing else, being vilified will probably make him feel like a victim if he doesn’t understand why. That’s why I spent some time in my post explaining why Holocaust deniers are generally seen as anti-Semites. And yeah, the posts here threatening violence toward him bother me also. He’s not the kind of person I would want to share a cab with, but he definitely doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

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