Posted on 02/02/2010 6:44:25 AM PST by marshmallow
Richard Williamson, the Catholic Bishop soon to face trial in Germany on charges of denying the Holocaust, is apparently unrepentant, allegedly telling colleagues recently it was a "huge lie" that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
The notorious English bishop also allegedly told colleagues from his ultraconservative brotherhood that "a completely new world order" had been built on the "fact" that Jews were systematically gassed in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor.
Jews, he added, had become "ersatz saviours thanks to the concentration camps," according to a report in German news magazine Der Spiegel.
"The fact is that the six million people who were supposedly gassed represent a huge lie," it is claimed he wrote to fellow members of the Society of St. Pius X.
In a separate email, he is said to have written that "1.3 million deported people" were not gassed in the Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec and Sobibor concentration camps as historians claim, but were rather transported to the Soviet Union.
Williamson is due to face court in the southern German city of Regensburg on April 16 over allegedly Holocaust-denying remarks he made to Swedish television in January last year.
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. Williamson was on German soil when he gave the interview, though he claims he never intended his remarks to be broadcast there.
Williamson was given the chance to avoid court by paying a fine of up to 12,000 euros but decided to fight the charges instead.
The Spiegel report also revealed that fellow members of his brotherhood were deeply concerned by his behaviour, but were reluctant to cut him loose because he had laudable qualities. One priest branded him a "ticking time bomb".
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
He doesn't say that. Nobody on this planet says that.
It is a genocide, just like the Mao and Stalin and all the other historical genocides.
That would not be Willaimson's position. He denies that there was genocide directed against the Jews. In his monthly letters written while he was at the SSPX seminary in Winona, MN and which were posted on the web for ages but have since been yanked, he specifically stated that at most, a few thousand Jews perished. Further, he has stated that the figure of 6 million is not simply an erroneous calculation as a result of bad math, poor records, the confusion of war or some other historical quirk but rather an active conspiracy, designed to deliberately mislead and deceive.
He's going far further than saying that historians and governments don't know what they're talking about. He's saying that the whole thing is a lie.
He did not just “question the numbers” he has denied that it happened and invoked the typical antisemitic conspiracy theory that a “new world order” was built upon what he considers a lie.
By my question I indicated that it was not at all about the numbers; but the Nazi's actions and intent.
Their intent was the elimination of the Jewish people, and their actions were to build camps for the murder of an entire people, along with anyone else they found undesirable or inconvenient.
So really it doesn't matter to me, other than as a historic footnote, just how many they killed. Evil is not judged on a sliding scale of how ACCOMPLISHED you are in your evil deeds, but in your intent and actions.
The actions and the intent of the Nazis was to eliminate the Jewish people through whole scale factories of murder.
That is evil.
Defending it is evil.
Making excuses for it is evil.
Denying that it happened to further your own antisemitism is ludicrous, ignorant, and evil.
“How does anyone really know “how many” were killed? Did someone actually count to 6 million, or is was this an “estimate”?”
The 6 million number is an estimate but it is not pulled out of thin air. It is largely based on the following: missing Jews from post war census figures as compared to 1930s figures; Nazi records compiled in the camps, ghettos, railway deportation figures and so on. In recent years there have been some surprises: The number of Jews estimated to have been murdered in Auschwitz has been cut in half at least. This was done by the official and internationally recognized body of scholars established to study Auschwitz by the way. At the same time a French priest has done herculian work in discovering, mapping and excavating little or unknown mass graves in the Ukraine where Jews were murdered and largely forgotten for the past 60 years. Thus, we have every reason to believe the overall number of Jews killed are correct, but that the number of deaths in the camps may have been less than previously thought. More Jews may have been killed in mass shootings in the Ukraine, Russia and Beylorussia than previously thought.
Jean-Claude Pressac, who was a recognized authority on the Holocaust and no denier by any stretch of the imagination almost seemed to set the number lower each time he came out with a book or major article about it. I think his final total - before he died in 2003 - was something like 600,000 to 750,000 dead at Auschwitz. That’s a lot different than the 1.5 to 3 million number that many people claimed in the late 1940s. I think we’re going to see more revision downward for the camp totals and more revision upward for the murdered in the forrests totals.
Expressing an opinion should never be a crime and the German government is totally in the wrong about that.
However, Williamson's views are disgusting nonetheless.
You need to quit playing word games.
There was a specific plan developed by the Nazis to eliminate Jews. Do you deny that?
Yes, millions of Catholics died in the war but it was as a result of opposing the Nazi efforts in various spheres of the war, including their bid to exterminate Jews. Poland is a Catholic country, for instance, so naturally many Catholics perished there because the Germans invaded Poland, although not because it was Catholic.
I know of no specific plan hatched by the Third Reich which said that Catholics should be specifically eliminated.
Do you?
“But if the third Reich killed only three million (a figure unsupported by the evidence by the way), do you suppose that this makes them only HALF as reprehensible, only HALF as evil, or just less competent in their perfidy?”
None of the above. I guess what interests me about this is that it’s another one of those things we’re not even allowed to question.
Thanks for your reply!
Very informative!
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it somewhat flattering that SSPX has seen fit to send an apologist to the FR Religion Forum. However, I find it revolting that this apologist seems to be a Holocaust denier.
I have had the privilege of knowing a few Holocaust survivors. I have heard first hand of the horrors they endured, the lost family members, the ongoing nightmares, the sense of guilt and hopelessness — NOBODY could make this up. To deny the enormity and truly evil nature of the Holocaust is not just insulting, it is an absurdity which requires the complete suspension of the senses.
And Catholic clergy who spoke out against Nazism were sent to the camps, as were non-Catholic opponents of the regime.
There is no historical record that I am aware of which indicates that the Nazis intended to exterminate Catholics en masse from the Reich. Hitler was, of course, determined to eradicate political opposition from the Catholic Church, which is a different matter from "genocide".
Again, show me a citation on the 22 million number.
No, I would say that the animosity is directed toward Holocaust deniers in general, be they American anti-Semites, Iranian mullahs, or borderline schismatics presuming to speak for the Church.
Darn it, sometimes FR zots too soon. I was just starting to have a little fun with this maggot.
I have a personal animosity towards Holocaust-denying scumbags.
I knew it was just a matter of time, there is a big difference between some troll saying that Obama isn’t so bad and an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.
On July 2, 1988, Pope John Paul II issued the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, in which he reaffirmed the excommunication, and described the consecration as an act of "disobedience to the Roman pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the Church", and that "such disobedience — which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy — constitutes a schismatic act".
Williamson and his supporters denied the validity of the excommunication, saying that the consecrations were necessary due to a moral and theological crisis in the Catholic Church.
LOL.........looks to me like SSPX have their own issues with Williamson.
Didn't Fellay hit him with a gag order last year?
Whatever happened to that?
His episcopal consecration, like that of the other three bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, is “valid, but illicit.” In other words, he is a real bishop by virtue of the fact that Archbishop Lefebvre, undoubtedly consecrated validly himself, consecrated him among the four. However, he did so without the pope’s approval, and their consecration was therefore illicit, or “unlawful.” In the event that any or all of these bishops return to Rome, they will not have to be “reconsecrated.” They will, however, have to make some sort of encompassing profession of the Catholic Faith, insofar as they were part of a movement that has self-identified as being outside of Rome’s jurisdiction and has declared the (authentic) Catholic Church to have accreted to itself various beliefs not found in, or substantiated by, apostolic Tradition.
I knew there was some description given, I just didn’t remember what it was.
Somebody needs a come to Papa followed by a come to Jesus conversation.
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