SADLY, THE HOLOCAUST IS ALL TOO REAL

The Sunday Independent
March 15, 2009
South Africa

AK MIA’S letter of March 8, "Holocaust figure of six million dead is
made up", refers.

After millions of Jews were either killed in the gas chambers or
shot by the Germans and their collaborators, a few hundred thousand
survived.

It is not the figure of six million dead that is miraculous – as Mia
sneeringly alleges – but that there were any survivors at all. Those
survivors tended to return to their previous homes after liberation
in the usually forlorn hope that members of their families would do
the same.

When hardly anyone else came back, they were left with the question:
Where are they? Hence the term Holocaust.

How does one arrive at the figure of six million? The vast majority
of victims came from Europe. They would have had to participate in
periodic census takings, listing their religion.

A village that had housed a Jewish population of, say, 60 percent
would be without Jews next time the census came around. The estimate
of six million was accepted by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 based
on Nazi records.

According to most research, some eight to 10 million Jews lived in
Nazi-controlled parts of Europe, prior to the Holocaust.

The estimated death toll per country is horrifying. Below is the
number of Jewish dead per nation.

Netherlands – 100 000; Lithuania – 140 000; Germany – 142 000; Romania
– 270 000; Hungary – 550 000; Russia – one million; and Poland –
three million.

In addition, 250 000 Gypsies were murdered for not being Aryans.

It has been estimated that there were 20 000 concentration and labour
camps holding 18 million inmates, most of whom were Jewish. Twelve
million of those men, women and children were murdered.

Records were kept in nearly all the camps.

Seven death camps were established to gas and cremate human beings.

The largest death camp, Auschwitz, was designed and equipped to
"process" people at the rate of about 10 000 to 15 000 a day.

So efficient was this death factory that 7 000 men, women and children
could be gassed and cremated within a few hours upon arrival.

This left no time for counting and recording, but the train schedules
have survived, proving how many people arrived on any one day. And
where are those people?

I am sure that the above cannot be too complicated for AK Mia to
understand.

Why would countries such as France, Germany, Poland, Austria, the
Netherlands and Israel legislate that denial of the Holocaust or
aspects thereof is a criminal offence? Because the perpetrators were
recognised as murderers and those who supported them by denying the
atrocities had to be of a hate-filled and/or criminal disposition
as well.

When a university lecturer in France loses his job for opining that
9/11 was a joint US/Israeli operation and Mia quotes this individual
in support of his fantasies then I begin to understand the legislation
against such hate-driven lies.

The Holocaust is recognised the world over for the atrocity that
it was.

Many of the details are known – much will never be known. Why should
Mia express doubts about it?

The answer may lie in the following quotation: "There are people,
who for reasons of their own deny genocide, whether that committed
by the Nazis against the Jews or by the Ottoman Empire against the
Armenians. The most common reason is a desire to rehabilitate the
perpetrators and to mock the survivors and their descendants."