Warren B. Routledge - Elie Wiesel Saint of the holocaust
A critical biography
Introduction
The present study seeks to accomplish several goals simultaneously. Written both for non-revisionists interested in learning more about Holocaust revisionism and its relationship to the Jewish Holocaust Story of World War II, as well as revisionists of various information levels, the work does not presume any prior knowledge. Its first objective is to provide the reader with a general, introductory overview of the revisionist movement, including its main arguments, key players, and historiographical achievements. The study covers the period from the 1960s to the year 2010, and its purpose is not only to bring forth new revisionist arguments and information, but also to summarize and contextualize the accomplishments of the leading revisionist scholars. The terminus date of 2010 was selected because the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century corresponds roughly to a half-century of revisionist activity. The book’s second goal is to tell the story of the emergence and blossoming of Holocaust revisionism within the context of Elie Wiesel’s life and career.
His name has become synonymous with the Holocaust, and not a few people have called him the “Holocaust High Priest.” Indeed, the vast majority of Holocaust devotees (both Jews and non-Jews) look upon him as a holy man of sorts, in part because of his supposedly miraculous survival at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, but also because of the key role he played in the founding of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
An additional benefit of this approach is that, by telling the revisionist story in the context of Wiesel’s career, I have been able to add the theme of “Catholic- Jewish Dialogue” to the mix. This is so because Wiesel’s greatest benefactor from the very beginning of his career was the French Catholic novelist, man of letters, and Nobel Prize winner François Mauriac (1885-1970). Mauriac “discovered” Wiesel, helped him to get his first book, the supposedly autobiographical La Nuit (1958), published in Paris, and wrote a flattering review of it when no one else seemed interested in it. He also had a very close personal attachment to Wiesel until his death in 1970.Their relationship is connected to another of the present study’s themes: the problematic and at times abusive relationship that has existed between the various international Jewish organizations and media outlets on the one hand, and the men who served as Pope of the Catholic Church from Pius XII to Benedict XVI. In exploring this latter theme, I document and analyze the subversive role played by various Catholic “Holocaustians.” Such men and women, nominally Catholics, often advance their careers in Zionist media or academic environments by claiming, without proof and to various degrees, that Pius XII and the Catholic Church as a whole somehow bear “guilt” for the Holocaust. It is a very cynical and mendacious game, but it pays quite well. The discussion of their activities, coupled with the surrender of the popes to the Zionist agenda, adds further insight into the reasons for the incredible and unprecedented decline of the Catholic Church over the past half century in every imaginable way.
While Holocaust revisionism is a truly international movement in which citizens of many nations are involved to varying degrees, the special focus here is on revisionism in France and the United States. In France, Professor Robert Faurisson has been the unquestioned leader in the effort for the past four decades. In the U.S., however, there has been a succession of actors over the years. From the emergence of Professor Arthur Butz in the 1970s, to the Institute of Historical Review in the 1980s and beyond, to the work of Bradley Smith and his Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) for the past thirty years, many hands have lent themselves to this work. With regard to Elie Wiesel, Carolyn Yeager’s blog site, “Elie Wiesel Cons the World,” has played an enormous role in recent years by bringing to light a great deal of valuable information about Wiesel. I hope that her work, and that of other revisionists, will continue to flourish.
This study is divided into three main sections. The first contains four chapters dealing with the Mauriac–Wiesel relationship and the genesis of his novel Night, while the second section’s two chapters offer a close critical reading of Wiesel’s novel. In the third section, I seek to combine my unauthorized biography of Wiesel with an overview of the development of historical revisionism in the U.S. (and to a lesser degree in Europe), from the appearance of Night in English in 1960 to 2010. These themes are presented chronically in order to give the reader a sense of how far revisionist arguments have advanced in a mere half-century of activity, as well as to document the inability of the Holocaustians to rebut them. I have also woven into this narrative the related issues of the abandonment of Pius XII by the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, and the negative reaction among many Jews to both Wiesel and the Holocaust narrative in general. While this ambitious, but focused, narrative might seem disjointed at times to some readers, it does adhere to this general outline and seeks as much as possible to avoid repetitions.
Revisionism - PDF
