Shoah

Quotes
If the Holocaust story went on the way it was going, said Burg, there would never be a sincere relationship between the Jews and the Germans. The Zionist leaders would see to that. Burg had told Zündel that films such as Holocaust and Shoah were fortifications of a falsification of history, made for the purpose of showing Germans why they had to pay and that the paying would go on for another few generations. (25-6851, 6852) [Joseph G. Burg] The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel -- 1988

It would seem that while he was being interviewed for Shoah Mr. Bomba forgot about how slippery the floor is supposed to have been in his little gas chamber. It seems he forgot how it slanted steeply in the direction of the chutes. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bomba forgot to mention the chutes. If Lanzmann had read the literature even superficially he would have been aware that Bomba was leaving a few things out of his story. As Lanzmann claims he worked for ten years on Shoah, I'm going to guess that Lanzmann is aware of Auerbach's description of the Treblinka gas chamber and chooses to ignore it. Abraham Bomba, Barber of Treblinka by Bradley R. Smith

Claude Lanzmann, maker of the Holocaust film "Shoah," is incensed at Pressac. He says that the entire contents of this new book are already "tremendously well known," except for the gas detector document that, he adds, certainly will not convince the revisionists. He says that revisionism is a catastrophe, in both the common sense of the word as well as in the philosophical sense, that is, a change of era. He thinks that Pressac is in fact a revisionist who uses the material and physical arguments of a Faurisson. (See Le Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30.) [1994 Review] Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book by Robert Faurisson

One of Claude Lanzmann's most prominent witnesses was Henryk Gawkowski, seen in the film Shoah dressed in his driver's uniform, wearing a cap and driving an engine as he had during the war years when he transported trainloads of Jews from Warsaw to Małkinia, and then to Treblinka. In a re-enactment scene, he leans out of the cabin door and, running a finger across his throat, he directs that gesture towards the space formerly occupied by the Jews as a sign that they were about to be killed.
    I came upon Gawkowski in Małkinia, where he was born in 1922. In the mornings, our question and answer sessions went smoothly enough, but in the afternoons, under the influence of alcohol, he became an endless talker, incapable of replying coherently to questions. He went on about everything as if he had seen it all. He did not recall Lanzmann's name. Possibly, though, Lanzmann had, as is his habit, introduced himself under some assumed name, arrogating academic titles to boot.[2] All the same, he spoke with fond remembrance of the film's director, a Frenchman who, as he let us know, had supplied him with such fine "Spanish wines".
    One morning, while he was reciting stories that he had plainly read and not lived, I interrupted Gawkowski to put to him, point-blank, a question that would topple the whole edifice of his boastings and regurgitations of what he had taught himself. I asked him: "But then, were you aware of taking all those Jews to their death, day after day, and over a period of nearly 15 months?"
His reply burst forth: "No, of course not!"
I asked him at what moment he became aware of such killings. Answer:
"After the war."
    In other words, to take up the parable of the American revisionist Arthur Butz, Gawkowski was another one of those who, at the time, had not seen "the elephant." He had neither seen it, nor heard it trumpet, but a good while later had become convinced that, in this particular corner of Poland, a monstrous pachyderm had, for nearly 15 months, secretly haunted the area, spreading terror as it went. Enough to make one think that "the elephant" was magical, unless it were only a mirage! [1988] Treblinka: An Exceptional Guide By Dr. Robert Faurisson

In his book Pietà, Swedish Professor Georg Klein told of a conversation he had with Rudolf Vrba in 1987. Klein was a Hungarian Jew who had experienced the persecution of the Jews during the war, but he had no knowledge of mass extermination. In 1987, Klein talked to Vrba about the nine-hour film Shoa, produced by Claude Lanzmann a few years before.
    The topic of Vrba’s experiences at Auschwitz naturally came up, since Klein was a Holocaust survivor, too. Klein asked Vrba whether his colleagues knew about his experience during the war. At first, Vrba didn’t answer the question. But later, with a sarcastic smirk, he mentioned that one of his colleagues had gotten really excited upon unexpectedly seeing Vrba in Lanzmann’s film. The colleague, of course, wanted to know whether Vrba’s statements in the film were really true. Vrba’s answer was to the effect that: “I do not know. I was just an actor and I recited my text.” R: To which his colleague commented as follows: “Most extraordinary! I did not know that you were an actor. Seeing that, why was it said that the film was made without actors?” At this revelation, Klein was speechless and refrained from asking any further questions. In his book, he says he will never forget Vrba’s mocking smirk. L: In other words, Vrba isn’t just a witness using “poetic license,” he’s just a bald-faced liar.
    L: Well, Georg Klein only repeats what Vrba told him. But if Vrba was a liar, how do we know whether what he told Klein was true or not?
    R: Once a liar, always a liar…
    L: So if Claude Lanzmann gave Vrba a “script” to repeat, what does this tell us about the credibility of the other witnesses in Lanzmann’s film?
    R: Alright, now therefore to our next example of deliberate lying which I would like to mention, and that is, in particular, the greatest liar of them all – Claude Lanzmann. Perhaps you recall his strange statement that he would destroy any material or documentary proof of the existence of the gas chambers, if any such proof were ever found (see p. 179). Let us have a look at this case of apparent irrationality.
    As already mentioned, Claude Lanzmann created a monumental work with his 9½ hour film Shoah, in which he attempted to refute the revisionists. The film consists exclusively of interviews with witnesses. Some of these witnesses were former SS men. According to Lanzmann, several of these SS men only agreed to be interviewed on the condition that the interview was not to be recorded.
    He is then said to have recorded these interviews using a hidden camera. One of the SS men allegedly taken in by this trick was Franz Suchomel, said to have been active as an SS Unterscharführer in Treblinka. An analysis of Suchomel’s testimony shows that what he states cannot be true,931 but let’s leave that aside here. I would prefer to examine Lanzmann’s claim to have filmed this interview with a camera hidden in a bag. When you look at this interview, you note the following:
– Suchomel often looks directly into the camera throughout long passages;
– the camera is always correctly aimed and focused;
– when both of them look at a diagram of the camp, the diagram is held up to the camera; the camera then enlarges the pointer and follows it exactly as it moves across the diagram.
    L: But that is impossible, if the camera was hidden in a bag!
    R: Well, not unless both people knew that the camera was there.
    L: So Lanzmann is just taking the movie-goer for a ride.
Just so. But even worse: as early as 1985, in an interview, Lanzmann admitted to paying all his German witnesses the sum of 3,000 deutschmarks, after which the witnesses had to sign a pledge to keep quiet about the payments for 30 years. But money alone was not enough. To get witnesses to come forward at all, he invented a “Research Center for Contemporary History,” with fake letterheads from an “Académie de Paris” and fake identity documents in the name of “Claude-Marie Sorel,” “Doctor of Historical Scholarship.” In 2004, he even bragged about this before school children:
    “And then I paid them. No small sums, either. I paid them all, the Germans.”
    R: Let’s sum up: the “novelist” Vrba, who must have “known what was expected of him,” was given a “script” by Lanzmann, telling what to say! Question: what did the other “witnesses” receive during the making of the film Shoah? And what did the former SS men receive (perhaps in addition to a “script”)?
    Answer: large bribes to make them testify the way Lanzmann wanted them to.
    And what was the alleged purpose of the “documentary film” Shoah?
L: To tell the truth!
R: Correct. But the “truth” doesn’t need a “script,” and you don’t buy the “truth” like a whore.
L: Maybe not, but what they tell in that movie could still be true.
R: Hypothetically yes, but what is the probability of it? The actors’ credibility is so profoundly destroyed that I wouldn’t take anything for granted what they want me to believe about the Holocaust without independent corroboration. And now to my last example of lies. Sometimes it is quite simple to expose a liar. The case of Rudolf Kauer proves this. A former inmate of Auschwitz, he admitted that he lied when he accused former Auschwitz personnel of beating a Polish girl on her breasts with a bullwhip, ripping one breast off. “I lied,” he said, “That was just a yarn going about the camp. I never saw it.” Which proves that not all of those who spread rumors and clichés as their own experience are unaware that they are untruthful. Lectures on the Holocaust by Germar Rudolf