FOR READERS who would like to read more about the emotionally-charged controversies surrounding the Holocaust, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust has a website with a great deal of material. Here is the site’s statement of purpose, signed by Bradley R. Smith, Santiago Alvarez, Rodrigo Mendoza, and David Thomas:

The aim of this site is to promote intellectual freedom with regard to this one historical event called “Holocaust.” It is our belief that this will in turn help advance the concept of intellectual freedom with regard to all historical events. We find it vulgar beyond belief that Americans would spend more than half a century condemning the “unique monstrosity” of the Germans when we have not yet learned to condemn our own, or to even recognize it.

CODOH is not a membership organization and is not affiliated with any political party or political group. It is not the purpose of CODOH to prove the Holocaust “never happened,” or that European Jews did not suffer a catastrophe during the years of the Hitlerian regime. Those who try to convince you it is want to muddy the waters. While we no longer believe the gas chamber stories (we used to very much believe them) or the “genocide” theory, we remain open to being convinced we are wrong.

We understand perfectly well that the Hitlerian regime was anti-Semitic and persecuted Jews and others. We understand many peoples, European Jews among them, experienced unfathomable tragedies in Europe during World War II. Nevertheless, to be clear, we no longer believe the German State pursued a plan to kill all Jews or used homicidal “gassing chambers” for mass murder during the years of World War II.

For some seven decades the homicidal Nazi gas chambers have been at the heart of the Holocaust narrative. In the literature, the two have been absolutely inseparable. It’s tempting to say: “No gas chambers, no Holocaust.” But too often it can be—has been—misleading, particularly to those who are just becoming acquainted with revisionist arguments. It is misleading because it suggests that, if there were no gas chambers, the Jews of Europe did not suffer a tragedy at the hands of the Hitlerian regime. They did.

While it is true that Third Reich Germany was criminally responsible for the death of large numbers of civilians, so were the major Allied powers, particularly the Soviets, the British, and the Americans. But much “eyewitness” testimony about Nazi atrocities against Jews and others is demonstrably false, and it appears that all such eyewitness testimony about homicidal Nazi gas chambers is false. It is wrong to bear false witness against others—most of us were taught to understand this when we were children. False testimony against anyone, including Germans, together with those who promote it, should be exposed to the light of public scrutiny.

The attempt to identify every call for open debate about the gas chamber controversy with anti-Jewish sentiment is juvenile. Those who protest that it is more important to be sensitive to “survivors” than truthful to the historical record represent a world view that has no place in Western culture.

We are willing to be convinced we are wrong about any or all of this. We are willing to be convinced it is hateful to weigh the evidence for and against any historical narrative whatsoever. We are willing to consider the possibility that the university and the press in America are justified in their efforts to suppress a free exchange of ideas about the Holocaust or any other matter. We are even willing to discuss the idea that intellectual freedom itself corrupts public discourse when it involves the gas chamber controversy.

We are not willing to remain silent, however. We will be heard.

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