Our greatest taboo should be permitted for investigation and debate

This debate will be about whether or not there is significant justification for free speech and inquiry pertaining to a particular historical event. Of the various taboos present in Western and European society, discussion of the Holocaust is often regarded as the most significant. It being part of the curriculum for nearly every school in America and abroad, it is no wonder why this event has such a major impact on us, particularly when we hear details of the oppression that occurred during this time. But what exactly is the Holocaust, to most people? Six million Jews were killed, indiscriminately, and primarily in gas chambers by the order of Adolf Hitler who had an ambition to exterminate all Jews because he believed them to be an inferior race. Most of us would agree that there is little debate to this-- but what if there were? How would we know? Currently, open debate on this issue is illegal in 13 European countries and is condemned by various institutions, elsewhere. Should open debate on any historical issue be made illegal and chastised, in perpetuity? The primary justification for such an impediment on free speech is that any inquisition into the extent of intended malevolence on behalf of the Germans may be regarded as antisemitic. Certainly, there are antisemites who would not hesitate to belittle Jewish suffering for any reason, but does an inaccurate or partially exaggerated account of such a significant historical event not potentially also reflect as racism except, in this case, against the Germans? To justify such a claim, I would need to demonstrate significant evidence that might, with scientific and empirical credibility, provide a sustaining platform against specific details of the mainstream storyline. With respect to victims of the era, it is important to consider all possibilities. Below are listed a comprehensive forensic investigation by advanced chemist Germar Rudolf, a statistical population analysis by former UN Statistician Professor H. Hankins and a critique by Dr. Robert Faurisson, all of which will be subsequently addressed: The Rudolf Report: . http://vho.org... Professor Hankins: . http://www.ihr.org... Dr. Faurisson's "Impact and Future of Revisionism": . http://www.ihr.org... To be aware of any potentially guiding bias, despite being irrelevant to empirical evidence, let's consider each of the authors cited above: According to IHR, Professor Hankins: "Besides being a renowned sociologist and historian (at one time president of the American Sociological Society and editor of the American Sociological Review), Hankins was an expert demographer with a world-wide reputation. He was a fellow and president (1945) of the American Population Association, a member of the American committee of the International Population Union, the National Committee for Planned Parenthood, the editorial board of Birth Control Review, and the Association for Research in Human Heredity. He was the author of Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician, The Racial Basis of Civilization (a liberal book of 1928 attacking the Nordic supremacist sentiments then in vogue), An Introduction to the Study of Society, and a contributor to many other books, including Biology in Human Affairs, Contemporary Social Theory, and History and Prospects of the Social Sciences. " Similar redeeming qualities can be observed in Dr. Faurisson: "Robert Faurisson is Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, he was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. After years of private research and study, Dr. Faurisson first made public his skeptical views about the Holocaust extermination story in articles published in 1978 and 1979 in the French daily Le Monde. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in several books and numerous scholarly articles. .. " Germar Rudolf is also a well-established scholar: ". .. studied chemistry at Bonn University, where he graduated in 1989 as a Diplom-Chemist. From 1990-1993 he prepared a PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State research in conjunction with the University of Stuttgart. Parallel to this and in his spare time, Rudolf prepared an expert report on chemical and technical questions of the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz, the The Rudolf Report. Even though this book on Auschwitz was scientific in nature and utterly apolitical . .. in 1994/1995 he was charged and tried in Germany for his expert report. As a scientist, he found the 'gassing' claims to be scientifically untenable [but was charged with 'disturbing the peace' and 'hate speech']. Rudolf was found guilty and convicted to 14 month imprisonment. As a result, the University of Stuttgart denied him to pass his final PhD exam. " Despite the lengthy list of qualifications and observably academic intent of the works published by these authors, Rudolf and Faurisson are among the dozens of scientists, researchers and historians that have been persecuted for a controversial stance on the Holocaust; simply for stating academic observations that there has been no evidence of buildings that could have functioned as 'gas chambers', that 6 million is a number of Jewish casualties much greater than what would have been possible according to any reliable population data, that there was never any credible documentation nor spoken intent of an 'extermination plan' and that there were significant political motives for the storyline we've seen propagatated throughout recent history. In addition to the pursuit of intellectuals, the widely-accepted account of the Holocaust has led to billions in reparations from Germany to Israel (the newly-founded Jewish nation) by which Palestinians have suffered a great deal as a result of post-war UN initiatives influenced by the Holocaust storyline. Furthermore, any critique of the modern social influence of Jewish organized interest groups of any nature is inherently villified by the notion that Jews have faced an indisputable genocide in recent history. This leads to a social bias against uniform criticism (and, therefore, equal treatment) of all mankind. Burden of proof lies on my opponent to show one of the following: 1) That evidence in favor of the mainstream account of the Holocaust is too conclusive and consistent for dissenting opinions to be regarded as genuine intellectual pursuit. 2) That free speech, in this regard, will contribute to an overall greater amount of social distress than dissenters remaining silent. Notes: - "Holocaust" is generally in reference to the time period of Jewish internment under German rule during WWII. - Standard debate conventions apply. - Focus less on semantics/technicalities, more on relevant argumentative content.