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Bradley R. Smith
PO Box 439016
San Diego CA 92143
T & F 858 309 4385
E-mail: es21hcoc@telnor.net
On the Web: (www.codoh.com/org)
20 September 2000
Chancellor John Silber
Office of the Chancellor
Boston University
147Bay State Road
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Dear John:
I have your Open Letter to Colleges and Universities in which
you address some of the issues raised in the text of my advertisement
"Holocaust Studies: Appointment With Hate?" So that your academic
associates have access to my reply, I have posted this communication
on the World Wide Web at
http://www.codoh.com
During the 1999-2000 academic year my ad ran in some eighty
student newspapers at colleges and universities around the country,
which suggests that some half-million students and faculty had
access to it.
I take seriously your condemnation of my ad as "false propaganda
- a violation of civil discourse - a repudiation of learning
[comparable to] flat earth theory - a jumble of "vicious lies"
and some other nonsense. If a university president and chancellor
such as your self can be wrong, or half-wrong, or wrong-headed
about most everything he writes in response to such texts, the
problems dividing American students from the professorial class
in this country are even more serious than I had supposed.
It may be that one reason the text of my ad is so troublesome
for you is that I failed to communicate clearly what I was trying
to say. I wouldn't have thought everything would have to be
spelled out as if I were speaking to a child, but with regard
to the Jewish holocaust story and the professorial class, that
appears to be exactly what I do have to do, so I will do it
here. Please be assured that I wish the best for you, and for
your little friend, Boston University professor Elie Wiesel.
In your Open Letter you write:
The advertisement begins by misunderstanding the idea of
the university. It is not merely to promote intellectual
freedom, but also to promote intellectual responsibility
in the pursuit of truth.
Please refer to my text. I write that "one ideal of the university
is to promote intellectual freedom." I did not write that the
idea of the university is "merely" to promote intellectual freedom.
See how I wrote "one?" How I did not write "merely?" It makes
something of a difference, or don't you think so?
Not having attended university, I might be wrong about this.
(I graduated from John C. Fremont High School in South Central
Los Angeles in 1947 - maybe you've heard of South Central -
the place where they have the riots? I realize I am addressing
a professional academic and that you are probably interested
in my credentials.). Nevertheless, I think "merely" would imply
only one, while "one ideal" would imply that there might be
more than one. Two, perhaps? Three?
I do not want to imply that you intentionally misread my
text. You're a busy professional, you probably tossed off your
response with your left hand one morning over coffee and bagels.
But when you posted your Open Letter on the World Wide Web condemning
my ad, you did not provide the URL to the text of the ad. Those
who read your Open Letter then do not have easy access to my
ad. Some students will take the time to search for it to see
if you're giving me a fair shake - or if you are not. Some who
do search will find it, some will not. Maybe this courtesy slipped
your mind. Perhaps you will correct this oversight? However,
let's move along.
You write:
...anyone who cares about the truth is under an obligation
to think twice before offering a platform to those who systematically
lie by denying the Holocaust. Those lies are at the heart
of the advertisement submitted by Mr. Smith...
Well, my ad does not state that I "deny the Holocaust." Take
another look at the text. It just doesn't say that, does it?
I have many questions to ask about the Jewish holocaust story.
I am skeptical, to put it mildly, of many of the accusations
of unique monstrosity made about German behavior during World
War II. That's not "denying the Holocaust.". That's expressing
doubt about stories I doubt, particularly stories that accuse
Germans of a unique monstrosity. Should I do anything less?
Is it immoral to argue for the innocence of Germans where you
have reason to doubt their guilt? Skepticism on the university
campus is a good, not an evil. Belief is not an evil, either,
but it is merely belief. Let me clear up something for you.
In my ad I do not supply my definition of what I believe the
Jewish "holocaust" was. In your condemnation of my ad, you do
not define what you believe it was. I'm going to fill in my
part of this blank for you here.
The Jewish holocaust story is a war story, John. It's put
together from an immense and still growing collection of individual
war stories. Like every other war story, some of it's true and
some of it isn't. See? It's not an all or nothing affair. Students
do not have to eat the entire enchilada the way our Elie Wiesels
have peddled it for half a century, just because the professorial
class has swallowed it whole. Students have the right to their
own integrity.
Here we come to the main thrust of your Open Letter. You
charge that I have libeled Nobel Peace Prizewinner, former concentration
camp inmate, and notorious fraud, Elie Wiesel. In the ad I write
ironically about Elie Wiesel as an "eyewitness" authority and
as an "authority" on hate. My language is ironic because I find
Elie to be a false eyewitness and a promoter of hatred for Germans
and others.
You are particularly troubled by my use of a direct quote
from Elie's book Legends of Our Time. Wiesel's use of Legends
in the title of this book is significant in ways that your professional
peers have been reluctant to recognize. I'm here to encourage
them to take charge of their professional lives with regard
to this one subject. In my ad I write "Elie Wiesel has won the
hearts and minds of Holocaust Studies professors with his counsel
on how to perpetuate a loathing for Germans. I quote directly
from Elie:
Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone
of hate“healthy virile hate“for what the German personifies
and for what persists in the German." (Legends of Our Time,
"Appointment With Hate," NY, Avon, 1968, pp. 177-178.)
I write: "Students understand the implications of this statement
when brought to their attention, while their professors appear
not to. Perhaps if we change one word in Elie Wiesel's sage
advice, it will focus their attention:" That is:
Every Palestinian, somewhere in his being, should set apart
a zone of hate “ healthy virile hate “ for what the Jew
personifies and for what persists in the Jew.
Many professors, including many Jewish professors, have been
outraged by this little exercise. You appear to be outraged
by it. So far, however, no Palestinians and no Palestinian professors
have communicated their outrage to me, which I find difficult
to understand. Surely, those Palestinians who belong to the
professorial class have about the same moral and ethical concerns
as do Jewish professors and those from Texas. Or are we to presume
that ethics on the university campus generally are, and should
be, an expression of ethnic identification?
You write:
The quotation cited by Smith doesn't even support his libel.
In the quote, Elie Wiesel does not say that every Jew "should
set apart a zone of hate -- healthy virile hate" for Germans.
Rather he said they "should set apart a zone of hate --
healthy, virile hate -- for what the German personifies
and for what persists in the Germans." As the Nazi generation
has passed from the scene, what Germans personify and what
persists in the Germans has changed. What Germans personified
in 1945 is not what a different generation of Germans personify
today.
I'm willing to be convinced that you are right about this,
and that I am wrong. A hatred for Jews is one thing, shall we
say, while a hatred for what the Jew personifies and for what
persists in the Jew is something very different. Is that how
you would put it? Does it appear ironic to you that while the
Nazi generation has "passed from the scene," the "Zionist generation"
that co-existed with the Nazi generation and cooperated with
it in significant ways, and which at the close of World War
II directed the invasion and conquest of Palestine, the destruction
of Palestinian culture, the creation of millions of Palestinian
refugees, and built a Jewish settler state on Palestinian land,
did not pass from the scene at all but still flourishes today?
What part do you believe the policies of that generation of
Zionists play in the hatred so many Palestinians feel for Jews
today, and how do you distinguish their hatred of Jews from,
say, their hatred for what "the Jew personifies," or for "what
persists in the Jew?"
If anyone can explain this distinction, without causing those
who read it to slap their legs and emit loud guffaws, I should
think that you would be that man.
You write:
Smith writes, "Elie Wiesel claims in All Rivers Run to the
Sea, ÂI read [Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason
in Yiddish.'" Smith continues, "Kant's Critique has not
been translated into Yiddish. Here again, EW did not tell
the truth." But selections of Kant's Critique of Practical
Reason had been translated into and published into Yiddish
in pre-war Warsaw - I have a photocopy of the title page
before me as I write. After the passage of 50 years, Wiesel
misnamed the Critique he had read in 1945, but his minor
slip hardly justifies Smith's claim that "EW did not tell
the truth."
Frankly, I did not know that a chapter from Kant's Critique
of Practical Reason was published in Yiddish in pre-war Poland.
Always glad to learn something new. It turns out that others
also know about it. For example, Norman Finkelstein, author
of The Holocaust Industry, knows about it. He was chatted up
by Salon recently and fills in some of the blanks here (http://www.salon.com)
- see how I give the URL? - and this is part of what Professor
Finkelstein has to say on the matter.
Wiesel claims to be a Kant scholar. He says that when he
was a teenager, girls were running away from him because
all he could do was talk about Kant - what was published
in Warsaw in 1929 was Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason."
One chapter, 60 pages. - Everybody agrees on that. There
is no dispute. The "Etik" comes from Kant's "Critique of
Practical Reason." Confusing the two Kant books is like
a Tolstoy scholar having read one chapter of "Anna Karenina"
and confusing it with the whole of "War and Peace." That's
ridiculous.
Perhaps you should get Elie on the horn and ask him what's
going on here. Perhaps you already have. What did he say? I'm
all ears. Elie himself is remarkably reticent on the matter.
In your Open Letter you write:
Smith writes. "EW claims that after Jews were executed at
Babi Yar in the Ukraine, 'geysers of blood' spurted from
their grave for 'months' afterward." Wiesel's words are
these: "Eye witnesses say that for months after the killings
the ground continued to spurt geysers of blood. One was
always treading on corpses." Nowhere did Elie Wiesel claim
to see geysers of blood, only that he heard these reported.
Once again, I agree with you. Elie does not claim to have
seen these "geysers of blood" with his own eyes -- he only forwards
the story as if it were true.
Well, if we are going to go with that standard of public
story telling (which is inherently a charge of unique German
monstrosity), I have a story for you about how Jews murder Christian
children and drain their blood to use in cooking matzoh balls.
Remember that one? Jewish patriots call it a "blood libel":
Now, I admit up front that I have not seen such an event with
my own eyes -- but -- I have heard it reported by others. Using
the standard you and Elie Wiesel use, I suppose you guys would
find it ethically correct for me to forward the Christian-blood-for-matzoh-balls
story to Boston University students as if it were true.
I'm not like you guys, however. I would find it unutterably
vulgar to forward such a story if I could not demonstrate that
it were true.
Or - maybe you are going to argue that there really were
"eyewitnesses" to Elie's grotesque geysers-of-blood-months-after-the-Jews-were-buried
gossip, and that this gossip can be demonstrated to be fact.
Is that how I should take it? I kind of hope so. It would be
immensely comic to discover that the chancellor of Boston University
has been taken in yet one more time by his little buddy in the
humanities department.
You write:
[Smith] reports that Elie Wiesel claims that he was liberated
from Dachau, from Buchenwald and from Auschwitz. That is
contrary to fact. Elie Wiesel wrote in Night that he was
liberated from Buchenwald, and he has never claimed anything
else. Newspapers occasionally get facts wrong, and Smith
bases his claim about Wiesel not on Wiesel's writings but
on newspaper reports. From these erroneous accounts, Smith
claims that Wiesel is not a credible witness.
Again, I agree that Elie wrote in Night that he was liberated
from Buchenwald. I agree that newspapers occasionally get facts
wrong. But when you write that the newspaper accounts reporting
that Elie claimed to have been liberated from Auschwitz and
from Dachau are erroneous, you do not tell us what evidence
you have that those two reporters were wrong in what they wrote
about what Elie said. If you do have such evidence, let's have
it. And why do you think that Elie has not publicly pointed
out these errors of fact so that readers of the New York Times
and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency would not go on believing
he said what they reported he said?
Are reporters for the JTA so unprofessional, such amateurs,
and have such tin ears that they would mistake "Dachau" for
"Buchenwald?" What is the JTA, a professional news service or
a refuge for the comprehension impaired? Does the JTA have children
for editors? Is it possible that there is or ever has been one
Jewish editor at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who has not followed
the Elie Wiesel story for the past ten years - the last thirty
years -- who is not aware that Mr. Wiesel was liberated at Buchenwald?
Is there one print editor in any great city in America who has
not seen the famous photo where Elie is posing for photographers
in someone else's bunk at Buchenwald- the photo that has been
reprinted endlessly all over the world?
Who are we kidding here? Who are we trying to kid? The New
York Times reporter mis-heard "Auschwitz" for "Buchenwald?"
I believe they would have printed a correction of such a stupid
blunder -- if it had been sent them by this Nobel Laureate.
What do you think the New York Times is - chopped liver?
You write:
Elie Wiesel was invited by the President and Chancellor
of Germany to speak in Berlin on January 27, 2000, the day
of the remembrance of the liberation of Auschwitz. - In
that address Wiesel commented favorably on Germany's support
of Israel, on Germany's compensation for the victims of
the Third Reich, and on Germany's recent initiative in compensating
those who were used as forced laborers.
I have no doubt whatever that Elie Wiesel, along with the
rest of those who speak for the Holocaust Industry, and those
who have profited so greatly from the creation of the Israeli
State upon the ruins of a destroyed Palestine, look "favorably"
upon the billions of marks that have flowed into Israeli coffers
- to say nothing of the hundreds of billions that have flowed
to the same place from the US taxpayer and now from one European
nation after another - all of which is being paid by the labor
of people who were children or who were not yet born during
WWII.
As a matter of fact, isn't that really rather the point of
it all? The whole Holocaust Industry scam? Influence? Then money?
Then more influence, more money? If it isn't about that - that
is, about power, what is it about? Remembering? If it is, I
have a suggestion that would be a great boon to the Jewish people.
Forget it!
In the final paragraph of your Open Letter to Colleges and
Universities, which compresses into a few words the entirety
of the message in your careless letter, you write:
What is the motivation and purpose of Mr. Smith and his
CODOH? Why do they find it personally important to deny
the Holocaust and to abuse and denigrate Professor Wiesel?
Isn't it relevant to ask? Bradley R. Smith and his Committee
for Open Debate on the Holocaust are a travesty and a repudiation
of all that a university should stand for when falsehood
is disseminated and truth is suppressed.
Re motivation: I suggest you let this one go. None of us
knows what the motivation of the other is, and when we look
closely at our own motives we find each one to be a maze of
complexities. Do you think I would bother to consider seriously
the roots of your motives for having chosen to defend a man
who is a demonstrable liar and fraud? I'm 70 years old. I don't
have enough time left to get into a morass as deep as that one.
I would have thought you would understand about motive. I thought
you were a philosopher.
I wonder what you think the "Holocaust" was? Have you just
gone along with the journalists, who have gone along with the
professors, who have gone along with the big money people in
the Holocaust Industry? Did you believe for forty years, for
example, that four millions were murdered by the Germans at
Auschwitz? When the camp authorities removed their "four-million"
plaque and said it was only about "one million" (Yehuda Bauer
had mentioned publicly that revisionists can count) did you
just stop believing the four million figure and start believing
the new one-million figure? Or did you know all the time that
it was not four million - and chose to remain silent? Did you
ever comment publicly on the contemptible role the professorial
class played in the Auschwitz four million charade? Or did you
consciously choose to remain a "bystander" on this one?
You have charged that I am a liar. You have not demonstrated
that I am. Even if you were able to show that I am factually
wrong about something in the ad, and you have not, it does not
follow that I am a liar. You know that, I know you know that,
but it looks like you thought you could get away with saying
it anyhow because you're a university chancellor and I'm - what?
-- a simple writer with no position, no wealth, and no influence.
I don't know what your motives were for deciding to write something
so careless and empty on such an important issue, but I suggest
you take a run at trying to figure it out. It might change your
life.
Re the suppression of truth: to put it simply, I have not
suppressed truth, and your reckless, self-serving letter does
not demonstrate that I have.
My suggestion is that you ask yourself why the Boston University
fraud you want to defend is unwilling to speak for himself.
In case this question baffles you, I will suggest an answer.
He does not need to. He has men like you who have trained yourselves
to accept at face value any stupidity he utters.
Just for a lark, why not ask Elie Wiesel about the New York
Times story where he relates how he was hit by a taxicab and
flew "an entire block" (200-plus feet) down Broadway. Another
error, I suppose, on the part of a NYT reporter who meant to
write something entirely different -- maybe that rag is chopped
liver after all (a friend suggests that Professor Wiesel should
be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Flying).
I will be glad to discuss the "eyewitness" testimony of Elie
Wiesel, as well as his obvious Germanophobia, at any reasonable
public forum you choose.
Sincerely,
Bradley R. Smith
President John Silber's letter condemning CODOH's Holocaust
Studies ad can be seen at:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/codoh/silber-letter-01.shtml
CODOH's Holocaust Studies ad:
http://www.codoh.com(info)/ads/adsholostudies.html
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