From the Editor
Theodore J. O’Keefe
Recently the New York Times made it official: Revisionism has come of age in America. American historian Deborah Lipstadt has been hired by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study the Revisionists, of whom she fears “some of their positions could enter the mainstream.”
We at the Institute for Historical Review are proud of the role of The Journal of Historical Review in fostering and promoting Historical Revisionism. Since its founding in 1980, The Journal has been the world’s leading voice for bringing history into accord with the facts. And that voice is increasingly a worldwide voice.
This issue of The Journal of Historical Review features two substantial articles by European Revisionists, each of them another sturdy nail in the coffin of the extermination legend.
Italian Carlo Mattogno’s conclusion of his two-part “Myth of the Extermination of the Jews" is remarkable for its comprehensive bibliographical survey of Revisionist writings on the “Holocaust,” a survey which demonstrates beyond cavil the worldwide scope and power of Revisionist research Mattogno has also accomplished a scintillating debunking of the “eyewitness” testimony to the gas-chamber murders, laying bare the contradictions and absurdities which abound in the stories of the supposed perpetrators and the self-proclaimed survivors alike.
Mattogno’s broad overview of Holocaust Revisionism is complemented by Spaniard Enrique Aynat Eknes’s careful study of the evidence for gassings and industrial-scale cremations in the two biggest crematoriums at Auschwitz. This article, meticulously documented, copiously illustrated, is certain to become a classic of Revisionist literature, and it powerfully bolsters the findings of American gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter (the introduction to whose groundbreaking report, by Robert Faurissons appears in this issue’s “Historical News and Comment” section).
We're pleased to welcome Professor Jim Martin, dean of Revisionist historians, back to these pages, and readers new to The Journal will have a chance to sample typically acerbic Martin wit in his review of Phillip Knightley’s new book on twentieth-century espionage. Historian John Ries reviews important books on the financing of the National Socialists and on Germany’s surprisingly pro-Zionist policies during the 1930's.
In addition to Robert Faurisson’s introduction to the pathbreaking Leuchter report, mentioned above, we've translated an important interview, given by French historian and Mauthausen deportee Professor Michel de Böuard to the French newspaper Ouest-France. De Böuard, no Holocaust Revisionist but a man of courage and honor, defends the famous thesis of Henri Roques, The “Confessions” of Kurt Gerstein, which was revoked on the order of the French government (but will soon be published in English by the Institute for Historical Review).
We hope this issue of The Journal will give Professor Lipstadt some food for thought — we know it won’t make her work any easier.