H -°, L 22° | Tomorrow: 
H 23°, L 4°Michael Schwalb, b.1901; Rachel Brat, b.1910; Szlomo Gross, b.1920; Avram Curitki, b.1895; Chana Zommer, b.1915; Frymed Due, b.1896; Jchiel Rubinstein, b.1912; Eljasz Jurysta, b.1912; Podlaski, b.1942; Chaja Bialostocki, b.1919; Jakob Keitl, b.1884; Julijus Flachs, b.1904; Yakov Gelbert, b.1912; Mindla Polska, b.1904; Mosze Sztajn, b.1912; Rachel Grynszpan, b.1900
These 16 names are from Yad Vashem’s Israeli Holocaust Memorial database of Holocaust victims. In order to place a name in the database, the surviving family and friends of the exterminated must fill out a page of testimony. If the Holocaust did not happen, are millions of people inventing lost loves ones and mourning mere fantasies?
This is exactly what Bradley Smith of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust contends. Bradley Smith recently attempted to place his hateful advertisement in college newspapers across the country. The Badger Herald, unlike the vast majority of other college newspapers, accepted the advertisement under the guise of free speech.
Newspapers, however, are supposed to be protected by free speech; they are not required to protect it. I, too, believe if raving neo-Nazi idiots want to blabber on about pseudo-scientific bullshit, then the First Amendment protects their right to do so. What the First Amendment or a commitment to free speech does not require, however, is that a serious student publication allow an ad that makes a mockery of every Jew whose family tree has been whittled down to a pathetic twig due to Nazi extermination.
The Badger Herald accepted the advertisement when other college newspapers did not, knowing this media circus would unfold. They knew their message boards would light up with Holocaust deniers masquerading hateful lunacy as a thirst for knowledge and they knew other UW students and faculty (like Biddy Martin) would rightfully attempt to combat such bigotry.
The Badger Herald did not accept the advertisement to protect the First Amendment, but rather chose the pornography of controversy over journalistic and moral standards. The Badger Herald let its message boards and advertisement page turn into purveyors of hate speech for a little publicity. The paper should be held accountable for holding raving reproachful lunacy in the same regard it does rational, fact-based arguments.
This publication has shamed itself. On links starting with www.badgerherald.com, Holocaust deniers from around Madison and the country are coming together to promulgate anti-Semitism on this paper’s message board. When people spewing hate speech could not find a place in legitimate dialogue, The Badger Herald lent its hand to those anonymously posting cowards.
The Badger Herald, by accepting that advertisement, placed this column one click away from Holocaust denial. Therefore, it seems imperative that the column end with the greatest piece of truth Holocaust deniers cannot refute. The Jews of Europe are all but extinct. In Poland, before 1939 there were 3.5 million Jews; now that number is a paltry 25,000. The world Jewish population before the holocaust was 15.3 million, and after 65 years of healing and recuperation the world Jewish population is still below that level, standing at 13.2 million. Much of world Jewry vanished, and not into thin air, but rather into open air pits of bullet riddled corpses and suffocating gas chambers filled with Zyklon B.
I call on Bradley Smith, the hateful bigots who take up The Badger Herald message board and Holocaust deniers everywhere to tell me where these people went.
Max Manasevit ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in philosophy.
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Shut up! Shut up! Everybody! Stop beating a dead horse!
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“I call on Bradley Smith, the hateful bigots who take up The Badger Herald message board and Holocaust deniers everywhere to tell me where these people went.”
They were all indeed murdered. What the murderers and Holocaust deniers should fear most is that someday those victims will be back. And there will be nowhere for the murderers and Holocaust deniers to hide from them.
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Max- Thank you so much for finally saying what every Jew on this campus has been waiting to hear from the Badger Herald. There still has been no formal apology, which I strongly believe is not too much to ask, but some staff members demonstrated at last Thursday’s discussion that they are just too arrogant for that. I urge you to educate your coworkers as to why accepting this advertisement is so atrocious, and why they should be ashamed for keeping it up this long. I’m disgusted that my tuition dollars go towards supporting this publication, but I feel better now knowing that there are people like you on staff, who will hopefully lead your very misguided coworkers towards better future decisions.
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Your tuition dollars do not go toward supporting The Badger Herald.
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Tuition dollars DON’T go to supporting the Herald. They’re a fully independent newspaper, so get your facts straight.
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Checking
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Newspapers, however, are supposed to be protected by free speech; they are not required to protect it. I, too, believe if raving neo-Nazi idiots want to blabber on about pseudo-scientific bullshit, then the First Amendment protects their right to do so. What the First Amendment or a commitment to free speech does not require, however, is that a serious student publication allow an ad that makes a mockery of every Jew whose family tree has been whittled down to a pathetic twig due to Nazi extermination.
Max, nowhere has anyone (to the best of my knowledge) contended that the Badger Herald’s motivation for printing the ad was to “voice both sides” of the Holocaust. But, I would argue against your contention that it is not imperative for those of us who advocate freedom of speech to not accept the ad. True, it does make a mockery of the reality of the Holocaust, but if we act as you propose and actively silence these Holocaust deniers, whom do we muzzle next. I would submit that we cannot and should not forcibly muzzle people with whom we disagree. It may be aggravating and at times painful, but that’s the price we pay for truly having freedom of speech.
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Max:
It appears to be understood by the entire faculty and administration at UW that it is morally wrong to question any part of the Holocaust narrative. You appear to believe that it is morally wrong. The core element of the Jewish Holocaust narrative is the charge that Germans used WMD (gas chambers) to kill millions of innocent, unarmed Jews. When you list the 16 names above are you suggesting that perhaps one of them was killed in a German homicidal gassing chamber at any camp whatever? If you are suggesting that is so, I would want to ask you to provide proof for that charge. Is it immoral for me to ask this of you? Please understand that a few people filling out “a page of testimony” proves nothing whatever. I’m certain you understand that. Simon Wiesenthal, for example, may have filled out hundreds of pages of “testimony,” yet it is acknowledged that he was a serial liar. I have asked several thousand academics if they could provide the name, “with proof, of one person killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.” Not one has attempted to answer the question. Max, there may be something here that you do not fully understand, given the cultural envviornment in which you move. Is that not possible? For myself, I’m willing to be convinced that I am morally wrong to question the taboo against questioning any part of the Holocaust narrative. At the same time, my sense of things is that taboo is forwarded by those who most believe they benefit from it.
—Bradley
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My only response to you Bradley is this. As a history major, I have seen the images of the holocaust. I have heard the testimony of the General Patton, Eisenhower, and many others. I have heard the testimony of hundreds of the 101st Airborne and the Third Army. You may not believe Jewish people because you have a bigoted perspective on the Jewish people. I’m a decedent of Germany, son of a farmer, believer in Christianity, and I tell you, you can deny the Jews all you wish but I will believe a soldiers who gave up a life at home to fight abroad, over your unsupported attacks on history every day. And if you don’t believe Americans, ask the French, the Soviets, the British, the Canadians or even the Germans themselves. Six billion people verses a few history revisionist like you. To the Jewish people as a German I ask for your forgiveness, the terror you suffered can not be forgotten for those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
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Thank you Tyler, I wholeheartedly agree. It is absolutely disgusting for people who are as bad as the Nazis themselves to say the things they do. It is ignorance at its purest level.
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Is it possible that the vocal group who want the ad pulled don’t want university students, whose job it is to seek out the truth, to be persuaded by this ad to conduct their own research in the Holocaust to determine which side it telling the truth? Also the attacks against the Badger are warning other student newspapers not to accept similar ads in the future for risk of being similarly attacked.
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Is it possible that the people who complain about people wanting the offensive ad pulled in the name of letting the students question what happened are themselves bigots, antisemites, and Holocaust revisionists? I think it is.
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It is excellent to have an anonymous forum for such disputes. Imagine where we would be if Thomas Paine had been forced to add his name and address to Common sense. It seems certian to me that the British would have killed Mr. Paine if they had the chance. Thank you for providing the forum.
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Max,
I’m French so nowhere near you, but in the name of free speech I’d like to say a word in answer to your recent column in the Badger Herald for I’ve been following at a distance this storm-in-a-teacup advertisement of Bradley Smith’s.
I read your column and understand your point but really don’t think you understand Mr Smith’s point. Neither he nor his ad has denied that the holocaust happened. Both were simply calling for an open debate. And that is his point, it seems to me.
Can’t truth withstand questioning?
Derrick
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Response to Thomas Bryant - you, like every other person in the US, has seen images of the dead and dying camp prisoners. These pictures were taken at the end of the war at camps in Germany, not the ‘death camps’ in Poland. The prisoners died of disease, primarily typhus, caused by overcrowding and lack of supplies and medicine. You can see a recent report here …. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-25-holocaust-archive_x.htm
Do you understand that this is not evidence of a Nazi policy to exterminate Jews? Had the Nazis had such a policy, the Jews in the camps would have been long dead when the Brits/US arrived.
Now, here’s where it gets a little twisted - the Nazis did everyhing in their power to combat typhus. They deloused clothing in special rooms using a commercial insecticide, Zyklon. These delousing rooms became the ‘homicidal gas chambers’ of the holocaust. Life saving measures on the part of the Nazis were twisted into a method of mass extermination. See documentation here …
www.holohoax101.com
Study the matter a bit. You will be shocked, I guarantee.
The question - ‘where did they go?’ is disingenuous. The Nazis kept extensive records, these records are stored at Bad Arolsen, and are used to trace persons. However, they have been closed to non-establishment researchers. The people asking the question ‘where did they go?’ are still hiding the data.
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Bradley,
You don’t even have respect for the people you try to manipluate. You once said: �I don’t want to spend time with adults anymore. I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled.� Thank you for wasting the $75 you paid for your ad in the Badger Herald, ironically that money is being donated by the Badger Herald to Holocaust awareness. I think we proved that we are not “superficial” nor “empy vessels” here in Madison. You gave us a platform to show newspapers and students across the country a way to successfuly combat your lies and hate forever. Thank you for the opportunity.
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What is the Holocaust? Is that chapter of history so sacrosanct it is not subject to review? If no one defines the Holocaust, then of what does Holocaust denial consist? How can one protect oneself from straying into the realm of thought crime if the crime itself is not defined?
When I went to high school, lo these many years ago, I was taught the Nazis turned Jews into soap and lamp shades. Years later, come to learn this is not the case at all—not according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Presumably, it’s no longer Holocaust denisal to deny the soap and lampshades atrocity.
How about the six million? May one dispute that canonical figure? Until 1990, the memorial plaque outside Auschwitz claimed 4 million died there. It now reads 1.5 million. May one suggest fewer than 6 million Jews died in light of the revised number of victims at Auschwitz? May one go as low as 5 million Jewish victims and not be guilty of thought crime?
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Obviously the numbers were overstated, but it does not understate the severity of the crimes committed all over Europe. These were not only Germans, but Poles, Hungarians, and many Eastern Europeans who participated in the slaughter.
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“Obviously, the numbers are overstated”? If it’s so obvious, why is it a thought crime to mention it? Why is it a thought crime, for that matter, to question whether Germans used gas chambers as Weapons of Mass Destruction to carry out the act in whatever numbers?
It wasn’t just the Germans who did it? A wide cross-section of Euro-Christian tribes committed the heinous act? How about the 20 million Christians slaughtered in the gulags of the Soviet Union. Who was responsible for that atrocity? Would it be a thought crime—or merely impolite—to mention the murderers were overwhelmingly Jewish Bolsheviks?
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Every people has a story. The Christians have a story: they believe the Son of God became man, walked the earth, suffered, died and rose from the dead for our salvation. Millions of Christians have met a martyr’s end to bear witness to this Truth.
Remarkably, millions of people dispute this Truth. It hurts my feelings that they do. Yet I would never accuse the Resurrection deniers of immorality. I would never apply pressure on a newspaper not to publicize their views. Least of all would I demand that governments fine or imprison the deniers for engaging in hate speech.
But that’s me. I’m a fanatic that way.
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Max Manasevit’s article is just more Jewish-style guilt trip being on laid on innocent Americans for something we never did. After the crime is alleged, then the investigation must begin. This is America, let us have American-style FREEDOM to question this incredible and fantastic story of “The Holocaust”.
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” To the Jewish people as a German I ask for your forgiveness, the terror you suffered can not be forgotten for those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. ”
First off, there is no need to apologize. Germans born after 1940 had no part in the war and share no blame for the results of the war.
Should I apologize to the blacks in America because a few slave traders in the 1700’s kidnapped their relatives and killed 90% of them while shipping the other 10% here to work rice plantations. Heck no.
Additionally. 99.999% of Jews alive today were born after the war or never set foot in a camp.
Lastly, It is clear from a reading of history, one could argue the plight the Jews suffered at the hands of the Germans was their own fault. They declared war on Germany in 1933, but that is never taught or mentioned.
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As a Holocaust survivor myself, I am deeply offended that the Herald would publish such vile hatred from a man who should be in prison for even questioning any aspect of the Holocaust. He questions the gas chambers as though they are some kind of myth? I will speak personally to let everyone here know that I myself was marched into a gas chamber not once but four times and miraculously survived each time by hiding under the piles of dead and dying (I am not the only one who survived in such a way). The horrors of the Nazis should never be allowed to return and anyone who questions the word of God’s Chosen people should be put on trial for hate crimes!