The Arch Holocaust Denier -- and the Encouragement He Offers

In this 6-minute snippet, K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson speaks of his perception that (i) no Jews died in gas chambers, and (ii) “only” 200-300,000 Jews died in concentration camps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AezZLdBqXhg (The Youtube clip changes hyperlinks every so often, as Youtube pulls down one version, and then someone else posts it again. Just search for "Williamson and Holocaust" and variations thereon.) I publicize and share it for two reasons:

1. I have read any number of accounts and articles about the Institute for Historical Review, but I never before actually have heard someone discuss this thinking. I do not shiver or quake or get shocked by most anything, so my default reaction to this kind of thing is pure fascination. I am struck with fascination by the interview because the guy is so well spoken, so ostensibly knowledgeable. A very nice accent, sounds and lookms a bit like Commissioner Gordon on the old "Batman" TV series. Gotta trust Commissioner Gordon. I also am fascinated by the image that I never before have seen quite like this: I imagine this is what Jews in Spain saw in the 14th and 15th centuries and what Jews throughout Western Europe saw between the 12th and 15th centuries. Fascinating.

2. More importantly for me, his words give me incredible encouragement in a way he would not intend. I think of Rabi Akiva reacting to the tragic sight of the Temple Mount in ruins. While his colleagues are crying, he sees reason for rejoicing – because he looks at what they see, but from a different perspective. For thirty years, going back to my college days, in combating rabbis and Jewish Studies professors who deny the Torah’s truth, who deny that there was a Ma’amad Har Sinai because mathematical measurements make it "impossible" to validate that three million could have fit in the area, who deny that there was a Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim because "archaeological findings do not support the claim," who deny that there even was a massive Jewish presence in Egypt (only some nomadic Habiru tribe) – I have found few more compelling responses to them than this interview with K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson.

I once wrote about this: http://www.rabbidov.com/Major%20Sermons/denyingpassoverandholocaust.htm My thesis is that I believe it more anti-Semitic – more an act of Jew-hatred – to deny Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai than to deny that six million died or that Jews died in gas chambers. When you take away from me Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai, you are taking away from me everything that Jews ever had to live for: the Torah, our unique relationship with HaKadosh Barukh Hu, our role as a Mamlechet Kohanim and an Am S’gulah, our essence.

The Holocaust is not our essence. Ma’amad Har Sinai is our essence. Even when it is done soft-spoken, in scholarly tones, with mathematical charts and permutations, and maps of the Sinai Desert, and sand samples, it is the ultimate Jew-hatred. It is a scholarly amplification on Ezra Pound’s ditty: How odd/ Of God/ To choose/ The Jews. K’vod HaBishop Williamson, in these six minutes, demonstrates that anything can be denied by an intelligent, pensive, contemplative intellectual, who is well read, well studied, soft spoken, and well degreed. But, whether it is Bishop Williamson discussing gas chambers or a rabbi discounting Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim, it is ironically one-and-the-same, in terms of using secular tools of scholarship to deny the Essence. And how fitting it is that academic scholarship already is being wielded today in this way.

If Moshiach tarries, we may be assured that, in a few hundred years, the majority of the world will deny the scope of the Shoah. They will cite their math and their archaeology, their rationales and their logic. Whether coming from an Ivory Castle of Judaic Denial or from a Bishop, we need not be their pawns.