Our greatest taboo should be permitted for investigation and debate

Pro says that I must prove one of two things. I choose to prove this: "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." This particular proof does not require me to argue censorship. It does imply soft censorship, that Holocaust deniers should not be given intellectual credence; we should ignore them and brand them as "fringe crazies." Soft censorship would be censorship through social censure. But it does not imply hard censorship (imprisonment). The sources my opponent cites are all Holocaust deniers. My opponent's appeal to "alternate viewpoints" is akin to saying that all of the following are "genuine intellectual pursuits": investigating Big Foot sightings/alien abductions, the 9/11 Truth movement – "9/11 was an inside job", and the moon-landing denial movement. Like all new-age fringe movements, Holocaust denial is grounded in pseudo-science. This makes it no more legitimate. == My case: The Holocaust Happened == 1) Perpetrator testimony from the Nuremburg Trials The perpetrators of the Holocaust were put on trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. Many of them were on trial for their lives. Yet, not a single perpetrator denied the Holocaust, not even as a legal strategy. "The Allies interrogated many of those [Nazis] who were still alive in preparation for the [Nuremberg] trial. None of the perpetrators denied the Holocaust. Most just tried to deflect their responsibility for the killings." [1] Of the people with the most incentive to lie, not a *single one* denied the Holocaust. This is quite telling. Rudolph Hoess, the commander of Auschwitz, testified to the process of gassing, in detail. [2] Hoess testified, "[The prisoners] were there examined by two SS medical officers as to their fitness for work. The internees capable of work at once marched to Auschwitz or to the camp at Birkenau and those incapable of work were at first taken to the provisional installations, then later to the newly constructed crematoria … The majority of them did not [know what was about to happen to them], for steps were taken to keep them in doubt about it and suspicion would not arise that they were to go to their death. For instance, all doors and all walls bore inscriptions to the effect that they were going to undergo a delousing operation or take a shower … death by gassing set in within a period of 3 to 15 minutes." [2] Hoess testified that 70-80% of the prisoners that arrived at Auschwitz were killed, while the rest were used for slave labor. [2] Hoess carried out the killings on Himmler's orders. [2] Hoess testified that he and Himmler personally witnessed one gassing procedure, from beginning to end. [2] Others all testified to the same effect. Hans Stark admitted that he was once ordered to pour Zyklon B into a gas chamber, and did so, killing 250 Jews. [3] SS private Hoeblinger admitted that it was his job to drive the prisoner's to the gas chambers; he said, "It always proceeded quietly and without them suspecting anything. It happened very quickly." [3] SS private Boeck discussed witnessing one gassing; he concludes, "After that I didn't look at my wife for four weeks." [3] There are 9 more first-hand accounts from low-level Nazis listed on this site, [3] but thousands of Nazis testified about the Holocaust during the Nuremburg trials. Not a single one denied the Holocaust. 2) Documentation The Germans destroyed a lot of their official records on the Holocaust. [1] However, many documents still survived. The Jager Report was written by a commander of the Einsatzgruppe, a mobile extermination unit, in the USSR. The report is titled "Secret Reich Business!" and consists of a five month period, in which Jager lists the date, the location, and the number of people killed. For example, he writes, "9/7/41, Wendziogala, 32 Jews, 2 Jewesses, 1 Lithuanian, 2 Lithuanian commanders, 1 Russian commander." Jager totals the numbers in each column, and then writes the grand total at the end of the report. "Prior to EK 3 taking over security police duties, Jews liquidated by pogroms and executions (including partisans): Total: 137,346."[4] There were *many* other such documents. "Report No. 51 of SS Heinrich Himmler": "Jews Executed: August, 31,246; September, 165,282; October, 95,735; November, 70,948." [5] "Letter from SS Major-General Stahlecker to SS General Heydrich": "The complete removal of Jewry from the eastern territories has been substantially attained … as a result of the execution up to the present time of 229,052 Jews." [5] When I said "there were *many* other documents," I wasn't exaggerating. "Allied prosecutors submitted some 3,000 tons of records at the Nuremberg trial." [1] That means 6,000,000 pounds (lbs) of records corroborate the Holocaust. 3) Photos/video footage The Nazis filmed a great deal of footage at the camps for potential inclusion in propaganda pieces; these videos and photos were used as evidence at Nuremburg. [1] The prosecutors used the Nazis own footage against them. [1] An hour long video, created by the Nuremberg prosecutor, uses Nazi footage and footage taken by the Americans when they liberated the camps, to show the horrors of the Holocaust. I'll give you one example. Here is *2 minutes* of footage, from 44:20 to 46:20 of all of the piles and piles of *fresh* dead at the Dachau camp. [6] 4) Survivor testimony There is a lot more survivor testimony and survivor artwork from certain camps. This is because some camps were concentration camps, used only for slave labor, some camps were combination concentration/death, and some camps were used only for extermination. [7] As you can imagine, there is little to no artwork from death camps because most prisoners only lived there for a handful of minutes. There are few survivor stories from death camps because there are far fewer survivors. Shimon Srebrnik was a rare exception: spared at the Chelmno death camp because he was only 13 years old. The Nazis took pity on him, allowing him to live in order to extract the gold teeth from people's mouths. His testimony appears here, on Youtube. [8] Sadly, his mother was not so lucky. Yad Vashem has attempted to document as many survivor stories as possible, for posterity. All in all, they have 132 survivor stories posted on Youtube, alone, including Shimon Srebnik's story. [9] Holocaust Denial attempts to argue that these Holocaust survivors are all lying. For example, the Rudolph Report, which my opponent cites, argues that there were no "death chambers"; it argues that when the Nazis referred to "gas chambers", they were always referring to delousing showers, which used the same chemical agents. However, this contradicts all eyewitness testimony of both perpetrators and survivors. And it is tantamount to calling all of these survivors "liars." By no means is my list of survivor testimony exhaustive. There were as many as 900,000 survivors, each with their own story. == A Note on My Opponent's Sources == I'll rebut specific claims my opponent makes and his sources in the next round. But a quick note: IHR, which my opponent cites frequently in his author qualifications, is the Institute for Historical Review. Oliver Kamm, who writes for The Times of London, describes them as an organization in California devoted to pseudo-science in the quest for Holocaust denial. [10] The group has many links to neo-Nazi organizations and its chief purpose is to paint Nazism in a more favorable light and deny key facts about the genocide of the Jews. [11] [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com... [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com... [7] http://tinyurl.com... [8] http://tinyurl.com... [9] http://tinyurl.com... [10] http://tinyurl.com... [11] http://tinyurl.com...