Denial as a factor in Holocaust belief

Jakob Wendel speaks with reporters in the courtroom where he is testifying against Reinhold Hanning for the murder of 170,000 Jews. I couldn't discover whether he is a Jew but it's certainly possible.

By Carolyn Yeager

ON FRIDAY, March 11, a 92 year-old professional liar-witness named Jakob Wendel (ethnic roots uncertain) testified in a German court to things that cannot possibly be true. He said that defendant Reinhold Hanning had to have known that Auschwitz was an “extermination camp” because “I was there for two years (1942-44) and anyone who was there for that length of time knew what was happening there.” Wendel and Hanning were both SS guards at the camp but had never crossed paths.

This type of testimony is no more than an opinion, so Wendel went on to describe how, from his post in a watchtower, he saw trains pulling in and the people inside being marched off in the direction of the “gas chambers”. It just so happens that the people were going to showers and life-saving de-lousing procedures that were located where the fictitious “gas chambers” are claimed to have been. [Recall the false allegation of gas chambers disguised as shower rooms – this is how it got started.]

The truth is Jakob Wendel never saw a homicidal gas chamber in his life, so to make his testimony more convincing he claims to have seen “bodies being driven towards the crematorium ready for burning” and adds that he even saw guards throwing Zykon-B crystals in the chambers filled with men, women and children. This last should disqualify Wendel as a witness because it has been shown conclusively that none of this ever happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but more – this kind of testimony does not in any way convict Reinhold Manning. It's only shameless propaganda allowed in German courtrooms for “holocaust” guilt reinforcement.

Reinhold Manning's defense is that he did not work in Birkenau and did not see or have anything to do with the “gas chamber/crematoriums.” Jakob Wendel does not place Manning in Birkenau, nor does he explain (from the Daily Mail story I read) how he saw these alleged chambers from his watchtower at the railroad landing. 

Wendel was convicted and served time in Poland after the war, presumably for being an Auschwitz guard. Does this make him immune to further prosecution in Germany? From his pictures, he looks to be part Polish or Czech and, if so, that helps explain his willingness to turn against the Germans to whom he at one time pledged allegiance. [See the Freedom Day speech of Heinrich Himmler to understand something of the intricacies of the Polish-German relationship at that time.]

So I hope you are asking, as I do: Why are there people like this Wendel who give false testimony about a comrade in the same boat as himself over something that happened almost three-quarters of a century ago? My wondering led me to recall my own holocaust belief and my reaction when someone I liked and thought quite intelligent told me it never happened. I immediately dismissed such an idea as nonsense. I was surprised that my friend should believe such a nutty thing, yet had no wish to discuss it. I think my response is typical of others who have no reason to question the holocaust story – they have “no dog in the fight” as it's popularly stated -- so they simply don't want to. As I remembered and kind of re-lived that moment, I recognized my response as a classic case of denial.

Everyone's heard of denial; it's popularly used as a reason that people ignore problems in their lives until its too late. So let's take a look at denial as it applies to holocaust belief and seek to answer the question of why people don't react positively to Holocaust Revisionism.

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Denial is a mental-emotional conditioned reflex in socialized human beings in which one refrains from noticing something as reality due to an unspoken deference to a subliminal group agreement. All of us are subject to denial and have no doubt experienced it. It is so widespread a human trait that it could even be considered normal behavior. But despite its common occurrence, it manifests a distortion of reality that is more acceptable to the perceiver than the actual reality. It results in a false perception of what is taking (or has taken) place.

I am not talking simply about avoidance [for example, procrastination], lying or moments of cowardice. Real denial is not a conscious decision at all. It begins as an intention transmitted within a group in which membership is organic, as in a family. But the syndrome can exists in various other – and even very large – groups of unrelated people who, however, have something in common.

In the case of a family, one is from birth part of a family system in which the most powerful elements are the parents. If one of the parents or children has a problem that both parents never speak of, the children respond to that "message" of the parents to the extent that they will not even recognize a problem. Of course, at some level they do, but they “pretend” (are “convinced,” sort of like under hypnosis) that the family situation is perfectly normal. The “problem” may be obvious to outsiders, but the family members do not take notice or ever speak about it. And even if they might feel uncomfortable at times, excuses come to mind, reasons that things are the way they are. It also happens that when a traumatic event takes place, the mind can go into complete denial temporarily in order to hold off facing the horror until the mind is more able to handle it. But that is not what we are dealing with here; we are dealing with a form of group collusion based on a need to conform to the group.

In regards to Holocaust believers, a taboo against doubting the holo narrative is understandably present in Jewish families, but it has gone much further and become an overall societal taboo for non-Jews. This has mainly been accomplished by control in the classroom where White guilt gets promoted along with distorted history and holocaust lessons. Both parents and children get it through political leaders, television and movies. As a national family, we are all “children” deferring to the powerful government, church and media “parents." We repeat only what is allowed by our “parents.”

So when it comes to holocaust, it works like this: When a typical indoctrinated person hears or reads an expression of doubt about the sacred narrative, their automatic impulse is to brush it off as something weird, uninformed and/or not serious. They refuse to take it seriously, their mind simply closes to it as though that is the only possible reaction one could have. It's not a conscious decision; it is a conditioned reflex. That's why it's tough to reach people, because they won't allow themselves to think about it. An automatic rejection takes place.

This leads me to think that persistence in chipping away at that denial is the best approach. Persistence is the most likely to pay off.

That is, the more the Denier is confronted with the taboo topic by 1) a person they respect, and 2) a point or points that cannot be refuted (such as the impossibility of parts of the sacred narrative ... and this was something my friend in the past did not and probably could not do, as it was like 1975) – that in time the denial can be breached. It's a matter of getting the person used to the idea that there might be things they don't know, and that it is not disloyal to simply hear what they are. This will work only with those who are truly in denial, not for the politically-or-racially-motivated “believers” who don't care whether what they're saying is true or not.

Understanding our own denial, and the denial of others, can be a big advantage in winning “believers” over to a more critical attitude on “Holocaust.” And we know that once one starts down the critical path, there is only one place they can end up, in all honesty – as a revisionist.