Did the Holocaust Really Happen?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. If you’re new to the program, in this first segment we’ve been going through Dave Hunt’s book A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy. And last week, we focused in on some of the particulars that led up to and were part of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered throughout Europe.

Dave, the thing that’s most shocking in the minds of those who can’t fathom such a thing taking place in a civilized society is the fact that the Holocaust can’t be attributed only to Hitler and to his thugs but most of Europe contributed to this really unspeakable horror by supporting Hitler’s anti-Semitic plans.

Dave:  Of course they did. In fact, before Hitler there were centuries of anti-Semistism. There were pogroms in Russia; there was hatred expressed in various ways, but no one organized it like Hitler. He organized it, and they went along with it, as I think as we mentioned last week. Villages and towns were only too happy to get that sign up there: Judenfrei! To have signs that Jews couldn’t ride on the buses and they couldn’t sit in the park. They were only too happy that Jewish professors lost their jobs. They were thrown out of the universities. Einstein fled. Otherwise he would have gone down in the Holocaust.

Tom: And Dave, it’s interesting to look at the dates of some of these things: 1925: Hitler writes Mein Kampf.

Dave: Yeah.

Tom: And you have the rhetoric there, the anti-Semitic ideas, thoughts, concepts were all presented…

Dave: He lays it out very clearly that war is going to break out. Chamberlain didn’t pay attention to that. And that war would be the end of the Jewish race.

Tom: Dave, out of that, you know, one of his concepts, as I mentioned…Aryanism. That is, you know, the racial superiority of the…particularly from his perspective, of the Germanic or Nordic stock—I mean, this is White Supremacy.

Dave: He didn’t look like much of a specimen himself. And of course, they began the sterilization of undesirables, and of course, the gypsies suffered a great deal as well. They were exterminated in Germany. But Hitler had in mind, as you mentioned, the purification of the race, and they were going to reproduce this Aryan race—he was very much into Nordic myths: Valhalla, the gods, the lie of the Serpent. He sent expeditions to Tibet; the SS was involved in occult initiations, and he was really an occultist, relying upon this kind of power, and it looked pretty good for him. At the beginning, it really moved; it was astonishing what happened. Of course, Hitler was not as successful, and his Blitzkrieg was not as rapid as the conquest of the Muslims over the world. They beat everybody, from spreading an empire in a matter of decades—a few decades—from China to France.

Tom: Yeah, and part of the fuel of that was anti-Semitism, which we’ve been talking about. Dave, also, just one other point about Aryanism, as you know, I’m a Buckeye, okay? And there was a Buckeye…

Dave: You’d better explain to people what that means.

Tom: Well, this was…

Dave: That’s Ohio State…

Tom: Everybody knows that, Dave, The Ohio State University. But what I’m getting at here is there was a young man from Ohio State who went to Germany and really disproved Aryanism, and that was Jesse Owens in the Munich Olympics.

Dave: Yes. Oh, he was from Ohio State?

Tom: That’s right. Just a little point I want to throw in there.

Dave: Hitler wasn’t very happy with that.

Tom: He wasn’t happy at all. At all! In 1935—keep going along this line—the Nuremburg Laws were set forth by Hitler, in which Jews—these were laws! You know, a civilized country—they make laws that Jews can no longer be citizens; they’re forbidden to fly the German flag; marriages of Jews to Aryans…you know, you can’t have a mixed race here; you can’t stain the race, so those are forbidden.

Dave: Of course, the popes had done the same thing, centuries before…

Tom: Right...

Dave: And by the way, no Jew can even be a…can even enter Saudi Arabia today, and no Jew can be a citizen of Jordan. So if this was so horrible, what Hitler did, why do we allow a recurrence of this again in Muslim nations?

Tom: Because we…Dave, we forget about history. And that’s why I want to go over some of the particulars here. Something that you alluded to…let me quote…

Dave: Well, there’s also something called “oil” over there, and we don’t want to offend these people.

Tom: You would expect humans in civilized countries—they would be civilized…they would act that way. But I want to quote you—again, I mentioned 1935, the Nuremburg Laws, these laws that were accepted by the society, and then promoted….

Dave: Tom, I interrupt you again. You talk about civilized. I remember seeing the cartoon recently of a couple of monkeys talking and saying, “Well, those humans claim to be descended from us. Well, yeah? Look at the way they murder one another, they torture one another, they divorce one another, and they’re not even respectable to one another? They may descended from something, but they ain’t descended from us,” says the monkey. (Laughing) So—civilized? Wow!

Tom: Yeah. We see men act…animals act naturally, but there’s no explanation except the heart, this evil heart—the evil in the heart. In Frankfurt, on the day of the first Aryan law, German Jewish teachers were forbidden to teach in the universities, German Jewish actors to perform on the stage, and German Jewish musicians to play in concerts at Berlin University. Notices appeared: “Our most dangerous opponent is the Jew,” and the expulsion of Jews from universities was rapid and total. Germany [I’m quoting from your book, A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy; you say] Germany had responded positively to the first step and each step that Hitler introduced.” And he couldn’t really have pulled it off without that kind of support, could he?

Dave: No, he couldn’t. He could not do this alone. But, Tom, you look back and you wonder, Why didn’t Jews just get out of there? Well, where were they to go? To immigrate to the United States you had to have permits. You had to be accepted. To go…where were they going to go? Down to the so-called Promised Land? Well, England was administering that, supposedly, under the Declaration of Principles, 1922—we’ve talked about that —of the League of Nations, predecessor of the UN. And the Balfour Declaration, and England was administering this—to make this a national homeland for the Jewish people. The whole world recognized that it belonged to them. And instead, they kept Jews out. They cut the quota way down to very few each month. And they let in Arabs, masses of Arabs, thousands of Arabs—these people who today claim they’ve been there from time immemorial. No, they’re recent immigrants, some of them. Some of them have been there, but most of them are recent immigrants. But where was the Jew to go?

Tom, sometimes I think: What would it have been like to have been a Jew in those days? Suddenly, professors—brilliant people, some of them Nobel prize winners—out of the university. They’ve lost their position. They’ve lost the approval of society. They’re now no longer accepted from being upstanding citizens and leaders in the community. You know, the movie actors, the musicians—now they are despised. What are you going to do about this? Anti-Semitism is so horrible. It is satanic. That’s the only way you can explain it. Because Satan has to wipe out the Jews.

Tom: Yeah. Dave, as you said, it just defies reason, logic; it’s stunning in the turnabout here. For example, throughout Europe, they had myths that had been around forever. The business that the Jews for their rituals and so on—they’re going to take the blood of children—Christian children, and so on, and these things were so erroneous—so far-fetched. But it fueled the mentality at the time.

One of the things that really is shocking to me—I may have mentioned it last week—again, back to the Nuremburg Laws, which Hitler created in order to…not to suppress but destroy the Jews.

Dave: And the Germans accepted it very willingly.

Tom: Now, you have a…Germans are known for their scientific abilities—I mean, this is a bright people, sharp.

Dave: The most educated people in the world at that time.

Tom: Right. Now listen to this: “Those who murdered Jews could not be punished because they were simply carrying out orders.” This is what the judges were saying in the courts.

“Those who raped Jews, however, were expelled from the party and turned over to civil courts—not for rape but for having violated the Nuremburg racial laws, which forbade sexual intercourse between Gentiles and Jews.”

This is nuts! This is insane.

Dave: It is, Tom. It’s wicked, and let me explain it again: Satan must destroy the Jews. The Messiah was coming through the Jews. If he could have destroyed them, no Messiah. But even now, when Christ has defeated Satan on the Cross, if he could wipe out the Jews, he’s won his battle with God, because the Bible is filled with promises —God has sworn He would protect these people; bring them back into their land in the last days; and there Christ would return to reign over them. So, there’s no Second Coming! Christ can’t return to this earth to destroy Antichrist if the Jews don’t exist. Now you don’t have to think about it too much. It’s very simple. This is anti-Semitism, and just as Hitler found people willing to go along with him, so Satan finds many people today only too willing to go along with this. And in our universities, I mean, from Berkeley to Princeton—anti-Semitism—I mean, the things that are being said and the things that are being done, horrible actions against Jewish organizations and so forth. As you know, there’s an anti-Semitism that is on the rise all over the world.

Tom: Yeah. And Dave, in the plight of the Jews, where were they going to turn? In many cases, they turned to—what should be the standard of morality of those who would understand the wrongs that are being done? The church, and in particular in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church. I want to quote you the perspective: this is in particular Slovakia, okay? It says, “When the Jews still thought that expulsion meant relocation, a Slovakian bishop retorted, ‘This is not just expulsion. They will slaughter all of you together. And this is the punishment you deserve for the death of our Redeemer. You have only one hope. Convert to our religion, and then I will act to have the decree canceled.’

Now the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia, here’s a quote from him: “There is no such thing as the blood of innocent Jewish children. All Jewish blood is guilty, and they must die. This is the punishment that awaits them for that sin.”

Dave, it’s no wonder that the Jews, looking at Christians, this is what they identify with. Of course, it’s written in their hearts and minds, but this isn’t biblical Christianity.

Dave: Of course not. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the book. Another one of the reasons for our video, Israel, Islam, and Armageddon—we must explain to Jewish people: these were not Christians. The Crusaders were not Christians. The Catholics are not real Christians when they engage in persecution and killing of Jews and make these statements. If someone wants to investigate this for themselves—and by the way, I don’t know how many…we have a Yad Vashem in—not only in Jerusalem, but now we have the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and I have not been there yet.

Tom: But we’ve visited Yad Vashem…

Dave: Yes, in Jerusalem. I’ve been there several times. You can’t walk through there with a dry eye. They have documentation after documentation. Of course, there are scores of books: one I would recommend is The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert. You’ve got 828 pages of testimony backed up with 66 pages of notes and sources…

Tom: But, Dave, what about other books that say it’s never taken place?

Dave: Yes.

Tom: The Truth of Auschwitz and The Auschwitz Myth.

Dave: Tom, these people have an agenda, and they have tried very hard and they have twisted the facts. But look, you had about 6,000 survivors of the death camps—some from Auschwitz, some from Bergen-Belsen, and some from other places, and they—they are witnesses…they testify of what happened. And in fact, in June 1981 more than 6,000 Holocaust survivors from around the world gathered in Jerusalem to look up long-lost friends; to find acquaintances, and to see who was alive and who had gone. There were over 3,000 survivors of Auschwitz itself that gathered June 22, 1995, at ceremonies commemorating the 50^th anniversary of its liberation. Most of them had never met one another, yet their independent testimonies tell the same story. They didn’t all get together and make this up.

Tom: Dave, but you make an interesting point, particularly with regard to the books that I just mentioned that deny that the Holocaust took place, the mistake of Christopherson and Staglich is apparently a sincere one—in what way?

Dave: Well, when they were there, there were neither gas chambers nor crematoriums in Auschwitz, but they were in nearby Birkenau. However, I mean, we’ve got testimony of doctors—for example, the diary of another German, Dr. Johan Kremer—he was brought to Auschwitz as a physician, and he was present for the first time at a special action at 3 AM, and he says, “By comparison, Dante’s Inferno seems almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp.”

Questioned after the war, he testified: “These mass murders in 1942 took place in small cottages situated outside the Birkenau camp in a wood. The cottages were called bunkers in the SS men’s slang. All SS physicians on duty in the camp took turns to participate in the gassings, which were called Sonderaction [special action]. My part as physician at the gassing consisted in remaining in readiness near the bunker in case any of the SS men should succumb to the poisonous fumes. When the transport with people who were destined to be gassed arrived at the railway camp, the SS officers selected from among the new arrivals persons fit to work, while the rest, old people, all children, women with children in their arms, and other persons not deemed fit to work, were loaded onto lorries and driven to the gas chambers. I used to follow behind the transports till we reached the bunker. These people were first driven into the barrack huts where the victims undressed and then went naked to the gas chambers. The SS men kept people quiet, maintaining that they were to bathe and be deloused.”

Tom: So the point here is there weren’t loud riots—anything that might catch anybody’s attention. These people were just tricked into quiet death.

Dave: But Tom, yeah, but Tom, you could smell the burning of human flesh for miles.  And the citizens all around, they had just had to look the other way. They knew what was going on, but if you protested—why would you protest to save these Jews, who were the “offscouring of society.” You didn’t want them anyway. Besides that, you were getting jobs that they had, so if you protested, you’d be in the death camps with them. That’s an unbelievable situation.

But, Tom, we have a similar thing going on today in Sudan, as you know. The Muslim government of the North, Khartoum, has killed over 2 million. And we offer a video on that: Sudan, the Hidden Holocaust. And the world is turning their eyes elsewhere. No one—there’s no outspoken proponents of stopping this. I don’t hear any protests at Berkeley, UCLA, Princeton, Harvard, University of London. Why aren’t these people who supposedly stand for human rights—why aren’t they concerned about that?

So it’s very similar to what happened during the Holocaust. The world knew it.

Tom: Dave, that’s why we’re talking about it. And some people are upset that we’re even bringing this to their attention. Why would that be? Because the same thing could happen.

Dave: It is happening in Muslim countries.

Tom: And it’s tragic. Absolutely tragic. And if we miss it, we’re in trouble.

Dave: Well, Tom, I don’t think we should let the Catholic Church escape its responsibility in this. You know that the popes were the first to put the Jews in ghettos, and then in Rome, they destroyed all the synagogues except one—they were allowed to have one. The Jews had to wear special clothing or a yellow star or a special hat.

Tom: Well, the term “ghetto,” which we understand today—that’s where it originated. Had to do with segregating the Jews.

Dave: Right. And they were periodically killed. Of course, the Crusaders slaughtered them all the way across Europe on the way to the Holy Land, as they call it. Chased the Jews into the synagogue in Jerusalem and set it ablaze. In one city in Germany, about 800 Jews fled, you know, ahead of the slaughter from the Crusaders to the bishop’s palace. And he put them in a large audience chamber that he had there—about 800 of them were in there. And he said, “Well, I can protect you if you will convert to the Catholic Church. Then I can protect you.” And he closed the door. He gave them, you know, “Think it over.” And it was like Masada all over again. When he finally opened the door, blood everywhere. Fathers had killed their wives, their children, and then themselves. Not one of them was going to be converted to Catholicism.

It’s like, I think of the natives in South America when they were threatened with death if they would not convert—by the Catholic priests! And I remember one of the victims that we have a record of: he asked the priest, “Well, if I convert, I go to heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Well, who’s in heaven? People like you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I don’t want to go there.” And he accepted death rather than be converted.

It’s horrible, but the pope says, “Oh, we’ve apologized for that now.” In fact, the pope never apologized for what the Church did. He apologized for the sins of the sons and daughters of the Church, but not for what the popes did, and the Church leaders did, and they were the ones who ran this.