The Rt Hon Nicky Morgan,
Secretary of State for Education,
Department for Education.
Dear Ms Morgan.
A number of us are concerned about the teaching of ‘The Holocaust’ in British schools, which at present more resembles indoctrination, and diverges from centuries of British tradition in that pupils are not allowed to doubt anything: or indeed, examine any primary-source data. They appear in these classes to be banned from forming their own opinions.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance website has advised teachers that:
"Care must be taken not to give a platform for deniers… or seek to disprove the deniers’ position through normal historical debate and rational argument.” What are here called ‘deniers’ are a sizeable group of people who have carefully examined the evidence and who have thereby come to adopt a differing narrative.
The British HET (Holocaust Education Trust) document, advising on the teaching of Key Stages 3 and 2S, says:
‘Teachers should confront any expression of such ideas [of Revisionists], drawing attention to the clear historical evidence, much of it produced by the perpetrators themselves …’ We suggest to you, that The Holocaust is properly covered in religious studies lessons because it is a modern religion; it is incorrect for the HET to allude to ‘the clear historical evidence’ because there does not really exist any of a reliable nature: as more and more people are coming to believe.
The HET advises consulting orthodox websites such as
http://www.holocaust-history.org but we respectfully suggest that the British Revisionist website
http://www.whatreallyhappened.info should also be consulted, to assist pupils in making up their own mind. On this website we have posted the complete text of the British WW2 decrypts from the German labour-camps, as given in English, and we suggest that pupils should be allowed to inspect these, as to whether or not they can see any trace of ‘the Holocaust’ going on in the camps from the decrypts. Jews are alluded to as one category of inmate among several and the great endeavour to get useful industrial labour out of these inmates is described.
We find inappropriate and misleading the way your recommended sources focus almost exclusively upon Jews in the labour-camps, whereas they were only a minority there, at most 40%: there were more Poles and Russians in most of the camps, the decrypts indicate. Thereby you are giving a very one-sided view. Jewish mortality in those camps was not proportionally more than for the other inmates – we suggest to you, that the mortality data shows this.
For deaths in Auschwitz, the most reliable possible source ought surely to be, the bulky, three-volume
The Death Books of Auschwitz, containing all the data seized by the Russians when they liberated the camp. These record more Catholic than Jewish deaths, and could British students possibly be allowed to discuss this matter?
The HET-recommended website
http://www.holocaust-history.org starts off by alluding to Anne Frank. She and her father were sent to Auschwitz, where her father fell ill and was treated in the hospital there, and recovered. Before the camp was liberated in 1945 Anne was moved Westwards to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where she succumbed to typhus. None of her family were gassed. Could pupils perhaps be allowed to debate and discuss, whether or not this story endorses ‘the Holocaust’ as generally depicted – rather than one of harsh camps, disease and privation?
Concerning the mandatory business of sending British pupils to visit Auschwitz (you have sent 13,000), please note our concern that they are not being taken to see the swimming-pool in that camp, (now reconstructed) built by the inmates in 1944. Why not? We are concerned, that they are taken through the alleged human gas chamber, without being advised that this is a postwar touristic construct, built by Stalin in 1946 (as acknowledged by the Auschwitz Museum on their website). Huge amounts of cyanide were used in the German labour-camps, many tons of it, from 1942 onwards, and we respectfully suggest that pupils should be taken to see the chambers where it was actually used: viz., the delousing chambers eg at Birkenau, whose walls are still blue from all that cyanide seventy years ago. These were used for delousing mattresses and clothing to combat the typhus epidemics.
It does seem a shame for pupils to be taken all that way and not see the gas chambers. Your DfE is here being unduly influenced by gas-chamber deniers, i.e people who wish to ignore the hygienic, normal functioning of zyklon in the German labour camps, in favour of their hallucinatory story of big human gas chambers: the evidence for which cannot be found.
Your Department gives two million a year to the HET. Next time you meet its delegates, we suggest you ask them a simple question: can they provide you with a single document indicating any German intent to exterminate Jews, or plan to do so, or any record of such happening? You may find the silence rather deafening.
We recommend a more science-based approach to Holocaust education, for example, explaining to pupils that bodies of people gassed with cyanide end up as a bright shocking pink, whereas no-one ever recorded seeing a pink corpse in the WW2 German labour-camps. That might aid the development of reason and logic in pupils; which is unlikely to happen if you give them Holocaust doctrine.
In Mediaeval times a priest could compel adherence to a single narrative, and dissidents would be ethically damned or excommunicated. Is not your department promoting just such a Mediaeval approach, where differing views are forbidden and dissidents get ethically-damned with the ‘Nazi, Nazi’ incantation? Would not a more pluralistic approach be more in line with modern educational objectives?
If you want to just bin this note and ignore our plea, then let us merely point out, that whenever Holocaust articles appear in the media these days, where web-comments are then posted, at least half of these are normally sceptical. I suggest you cannot continue ignoring this forever. Would it not be safer for you, to adopt the normal procedure of British education, allowing diverging views and objective examination of sources of a historical event to be taught and expressed in the classroom?
Signed:
N.B. the textbook ‘Breaking the Spell: the Holocaust Myth and Reality’ by N.Kollerstrom may be suitable for UK schoolteachers on this topic.
