Yikes! I'm a Holocaust Denier!

From Jayne Gardener's excellent "Blood Is Thicker Than Water":

When my children made mistakes while they were growing up, especially if those mistakes had unpleasant consequences for them, I often reassured them that it was okay, that some lessons just seemed to need to be learned the hard way. Truer words were never spoken.

One lesson I learned recently is that if you're going to broach "the Jewish question" with someone, don't start with the Holocaust. I know, I know! I should have known better, in fact, I did know better. I just couldn't seem to hold myself back.

I was having lunch with my sister as I have been doing every Monday for the past 20 years. In the course of our conversations during that time, we have covered just about every topic under the sun. Husbands, children, movies, books, the weather, politics, our gardens, her boss.....you name it, we've discussed it. But on this particular occasion we found ourselves talking about the Holocaust.

Now, my sister knows that I read a lot of the Holocaust books growing up, including Anne Frank's Diary, Rudolph Vrba's I Cannot Forgive as well as more than a few others, plus she knew that I had seen all the movies. I remember talking to her in depth about Schindler's List after we had both seen it at the movies just as we had talked quite a lot about the Holocaust after we had seen the television miniseries by that very title back in the 70s.

I first remember learning about the Holocaust in the early 60s when the news was full of details about the capture and subsequent trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann for his "crimes against humanity." I remember asking my mother what it was all about and she explained it to me. I recall being horrified by the details and my mind boggled trying to picture 6 million people suddenly gone from the planet in such an inhumane and ghastly manner.

Since then I had read as much information as I could find on the subject and often did papers on it from various angles for History class in high school. I read the books and I watched the movies and I cried. When I was 17, I started a relationship with a Jewish boy that lasted the better part of 5 years and he and I would often talk about what had happened to the Jews of Europe. No one was more of a believer than I.

Anyway, I digress.

I believe the subject came up this time because my sister and her husband had just returned from a vacation in Europe. They had visited one of the Holocaust memorials and she was describing it to me as I glanced through her photograph album of the trip. We began talking about the Holocaust as we had many times before but this time, unbeknown to her, I no longer shared her view of it, having learned what I believe to be the truth from reading a lot of the so-called historical revisionist sites online.

My "awakening," to steal the term from David Duke, began a few years ago when I had questions concerning the Holocaust for which I could find no good answers. I started going to different sites online [like this one?] dealing with the issue and with each word I read I experienced a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a dawning, creeping horror of realization that, in all likelihood, I had been mislead, most likely deliberately. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. But I couldn't deny the ring of truth in my discoveries and gradually, over weeks and months, I came to accept what I believe to be the truth. I had indeed been lied to.

I sat and listened patiently to my sister for as long as I could before I felt I was about to explode and then, even though my internal voice was shouting "Don't Say It!" I heard the words come out of my mouth. "I don't think we've been told the truth about the Holocaust."

There it was, hovering in the air between us, like a bullet forcefully ejected from the muzzle of a gun, unable to be called back. I had arrived at the edge of the precipice and like a fool, I had jumped.

I watched as a look of sheer disbelief crossed her face, her eyes narrowing as she stared at me as though she was just seeing me for the first time in her life and wasn't at all pleased with what she saw.

"What?" she finally sputtered out, looking at me as though I were a creature to be pitied. "You can't possibly mean that."

"I'm afraid I do mean it," I responded. "I've spent the last two or three years reading everything I could lay my hands on regarding the Holocaust and I think we've been lied to.

"Oh come on, Jayne," she said in her most patronizing voice. "We've all seen the pictures."

"Of course we have," I told her. "And we've been lied to as to what they represent. Jews were interned by the Germans just as we interned the Japanese but unfortunately the rail lines in Germany were bombed, stopping the flow of supplies....plus there was a typhus epidemic.....many Jews died of either starvation or typhus, but not by gassing......at least there's no conclusive evidence of that."

"Stop it," she said, an angry look crossing her face. "Let's just drop it. This is very upsetting for me."

"It just doesn't add up," I continued, forgetting that retreat is sometimes the greatest form of valor. "To have killed that many people in that manner in such a short time is simply not possible. The Nuremberg trials were a joke.....people were executed simply on so-called eye witness testimony......confessions extracted by torture......It makes no sense. They are jailing people for disagreeing with the official version. Doesn't that prove they're hiding something?"

"Just stop it!" she repeated. "I don't want to have this conversation. It upsets me."

"It's upsetting for me too, I replied. "I've had to rethink everything I learned about the Holocaust. Do you think I wanted to believe what I've come to believe? Learning this has been very disturbing for me, but I've done the research and I'm convinced. We've been lied to and if you listen to at least part of what I have to say I think you'd see where I'm coming from."

"Stop it," she said, her face visibly tinged with an angry red color. "This is just too upsetting for me and I love you. I don't want to fight."

"Fine," I said. "It's upsetting you. It upsets me too. But this is silly that we can't even talk about it. Are there any other periods in history we can't talk about or is this the only one?"

"Maybe it is silly," she replied with a cold, steely glare. "But it upsets me and I am done talking about it. I can't believe you of all people..........you dated a Jewish man for five years....how can you?"

Perhaps I shouldn't have, but I dropped the subject and tried to direct it toward lighter things. But I was hurt, deeply hurt. I can admit that. What my sister was basically telling me was that she would rather believe that I am a horrible person than to even conceive of the notion that Jews might have lied about and/or exaggerated the Holocaust to a political or financial end.

I had been tried, judged and convicted in her eyes without even being allowed to make my case. This is how good the brainwashing has been. This is what has been achieved by all the books, movies, museums and television programs ad nauseum that have led most people to believe in the hyperbolic and in some cases totally fallacious view of the treatment of Jews by the Germans in the second World War.

I had been allowed no legal representation, no plea of innocence, no fair hearing. Nothing. I was condemned simply because I uttered the most horrid of words. "I think we've been lied to about the Holocaust." I had committed the unpardonable sin, one that was unforgettable and unforgivable. I stood condemned.

In the weeks that have passed since that day, my sister and I continue to meet over lunch when our schedules permit but there is a palpable difference in our relationship. I feel wounded, disappointed and yes, angry, that my own sister is not open-minded enough to even listen to what I have to say and she is disappointed in me (and probably disgusted by me) because I have decidedly and unequivocally stated out loud that I believe the Holocaust did not happen in the way in which the history books have claimed.

My own sister. The one with whom I shared a room for the first fifteen years of my life. The one who told me the facts of life. The one who stood up for me when I got married.

They say blood is thicker than water. I used to believe that.

But then, I used to believe a lot of things [like Santa Claus and the official versions of JFK's assassination and 9/11?].

P.S. How many people can relate to this story? I hope more and more. And more and more people will notice that their Jewish friends aren't willing to come to the truth of the matter with them. None came with me on the truth of the matter of JFK's assassination, 9/11, Iraq or Israel. I haven't met one that will acknowledge or admit to the overwhelming, and obvious, amount of Jewish control and influence in this country.