History Forum / General / What If / April 2005

This is an amazing post from another forum and is an example of the
research done by revisionists.  

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His name is Ben Hecht. By the time he wrote the following Reader's
Digest article in late 1942 (estimate) making the clairvoyant
prediction of the imminent death of 6 million Jews, 69 Hollywood
movies had been made from his scripts. (note A) A poster named "Paul
Der Cherusker" mentioned a February 1943 Reader's Digest article in a
thread called "Another early use of the 6 million figure." I obtained
the Reader's Digest issue and typed it in here by hand! It's not
anywhere else on the web. In fact, besides Cherusker, no one has ever
mentioned this article on a website before except to sell a copy of
the issue on EBay. The article must have been written in late December
1942 or earlier, since Reader's Digest would have had a cut-off date
for articles. Hecht gives the 6 million figure, and then proceeds to
give the most absurd causes of deaths. An interpretation of that is
that they got the number down, but didn't have the method right. Katyn
might have showed them that all death examples like Hecht's myriad
listings, would leave a trace and witnesses (He repeatedly mentions
the Nazis hanging Jews by belts outside the Jew's own kitchen window!)
Enter the gassing story. Also notice the 6-10 references to the Jews
not having a state of their own. Hint, hint!

Most revisionists agree there was no master plan for the holocaust
story, however inasmuch as there was, Ben Hecht would have to be
considered along with his later teaming up with Hillel Kook. I'll
write more on this later.

A note on Reader's Digest. It had a HUGE readership in America, and
later in the whole world. Their angle, (as pathetic as it is) was
taking articles from other publications and "condensing" them, meaning
editing them down so that the articles are smaller. This article was
taken and condensed from the publication The American Mercury but in
this unusual case, the article came out at the same time in both
publications. (Feb. 1943.) I obtained the original American Mercury
article, and have added notes to where a phrase or paragraph was taken
out, and included it in the note. Take a look at the notes because
it's kind of interesting what was "edited out." Here the "condensing"
is very "Raul Hilberg-style" in that the editor took out the more
unbelievable parts! Yet plenty was left in as well. The American
Mercury had a second article about the destruction of the Jews,
written by the editor himself, which was even more outlandish. I guess
lying to the public is o.k at times of war.

Reader's Digest was not Jewish-owned. And stood as is own publishing
empire just outside of New York City (in Chappaqua) almost in contrast
to New York City media; similar to how Disney stood as it's own empire
just outside of Los Angeles (in Anaheim.)
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Reader's Digest February 1943. Page 107-110:

Who will Speak for the Jews?
Remember Us
Condensed from The American Mercury
Ben Hecht

When the time comes to make peace, the men of many countries will sit
around the table of Judgment. The eyes of the German delegates will
look into the eyes of Englishmen, Americans, Russians, Czechs, Poles,
Greeks, Norwegians, Belgians, Frenchmen and Dutchmen. All the victims
of the German adventure will be there to pass sentence --all but one:
the Jew.

There are two reasons for this.

First is the fact that the Jews have only one unity--that of the
target. They have lived in the world as a scattered and diverse folk
who paid homage to many cultures and called many flags their own.
Under attack they have achieved falsely the air of "a race," "a
people" and even "a nation."

The Germans have animated the myth of the Jewish menace beyond any of
their predecessors and have tried to prove their case by presenting
the world with a larger pile of Jewish corpses than has ever before
been introduced into the ancient argument.

Despite this unity which death has given them, the peace will reveal
that the Jews were a diversified and harmless political nobody who had
in common little more than the rage of the Germans. They have no
country to represent them at the judgment table.

The second reason why they will not be represented is even more
practical. Outside the borders of Russia, there will not be enough
Jews left in Europe to profit by representation were it given them.
They will have been reduced from a minority to a phantom.

There will be no representatives of the 3,000,000 Jews who once lived
in Poland, or of the 900,000 who once lived in Rumania, or of the
900,000 who once lived in Germany, or of the 750,000 who once lived in
Hungary, or of the 150,000 who once lived in Czechoslovakia, or of the
400,000 who once lived in France, Holland and Belgium.

Of these 6,000,000 Jews almost a third have already been massacred by
Germans, Rumanians and Hungarians, and the most conservative of the
scorekeepers estimate that before the war ends at least another third
will have been done to death.

These totals will not include Jews who died in the brief battles of
the German blitzes; nor those who figure in the casualty lists of the
Russians. Of the 3,000,000 Jews in Russia, more than 700,000 have
entered the Soviet armies and fought and bled on all the valorous
battlefields of the Muscovites. These are the lucky Jews of Europe and
are not to be counted in the tale of their nightmare.

The millions who were hanged, burned or shot did not die dreaming,
like the valorous Greeks, Dutchmen, Frenchmen and Czechs, of
abasements to be avenged and homelands to be restored. These great
sustaining powers in the human soul are unknown to the Jews. When they
die in massacre they look toward no tomorrow to bring their children
happiness and their enemies disaster.(1) For no homeland is ever
theirs, no matter how long they live in it, how well they serve it, or
how many of its songs they learn to sing.(2)

When plans for the new world are being threshed out at the peace
conference, when guilts are being fixed and plums distributed, there
will be nothing for the Jews of Europe to say to the delegates but the
faint, sad phrase, "Remember us."(3) (4)

The dead of many lands will speak for justice, but the Jew alone will
have no one to speak for him. His voice will remain outside the hall
of judgment, to be heard only when the window is opened and the sad
plaint drifts in:

"Remember us. In the town of Freiburg in the Black Forest two hundred
of us were hanged and left dangling out of our kitchen windows to
watch our synagogue burn and our rabbi being flogged to death.(5)

"In Szczucin in Poland on the morning of September 23, which is the
day set aside for our Atonement, we were in our synagogue praying God
to forgive us. All our village was there. (6) Above our prayers we
heard the sound of motor lorries. They stopped in front of our
synagogue. The Germans tumbled out of them, torches in hand, and set
fire to us. When we ran out of the flames they turned machine guns on
us. They seized our women and undressed them and made them run naked
through the market place before their whips. All of us were killed
before our Atonement was done. Remember us.

"In Wloclawek also the Germans came when we were at worship. They tore
the prayer shawls from our heads. Under whips and bayonets they made
us use our prayers shawls as mops to clean out German latrines. We
were all dead when the sun set. Remember us.

"In Mogielnica, in Brzeziny, in Wengrow and in many such places where
we lived obeying the law, working for our bread and offering harm to
no one, there also the Germans came with their bayonets and torches,
debasing us first and then killing us slowly so they might longer
enjoy the massacres.(7)

"In Warsaw in the year 1941 we kept count and at the end of 12 months
72,279 of us had died. Most of us were shot, but there were thousands
of us who were whipped and bayoneted to death on the more serious
charge of having been caught praying to God for deliverance. Remember
us.

"In the seven months after June 1941 there were 60,000 of us massacred
in Bessarabia and Bukovina. There were more than that killed in Minsk.
We hung from windows and burned in basements and were beaten to death
in the market place, and it was a time of great celebration for the
Germans.

"Remember us who were put in the freight trains that left France,
Holland and Belgium for the East. We died standing up, for there was
no food or air or water. (8.) Those who survived were sent to
Transnistria and there died of hunger slowly and under the watchful
eyes of the Germans and Rumanians.(9)

"We fill the waters of the Dnieper today with our bodies, thousands of
us. And for a long time to come no one will be able to drink from that
river or swim in it. For we are still there. And this too, is held
against us, that we have poisoned the waters with our dead bodies.

"Remember us who were in the Ukraine. Here the Germans grew angry
because we were costing them too much time and ammunition to kill.
They devised a less expensive method. They took our women into the
roads and tied them together with our children. Then they drove their
heavy motor lorries into us. Thousands of us died with German military
cars running back and forth over our broken bodies.

"Remember us in Ismail when the Rumanians came. For two days they were
busy leading all the Jews to the synagogue. We were finally locked
inside it. (10) Then the Rumanian Iron Guards blew us up with
dynamite. (11) (12)

"In Ungheni, Rumania, the Germans accused us of crimes against the
police. Three thousand of us were tried. The Germans followed us into
our homes. They had been forbidden to waste bullets on us. We were old
and unarmed but it took them two days to club us all to death with
their rifle butts and rip us into silence with their bayonets. (13)

"Remember, too, those of us who were not killed by the Germans but who
killed themselves. Some say there were 100,000 of us, some say
200,000. No count was kept. Our deaths accomplished little, but it
made us happy to die quickly and to know that we were robbing the
Germans of their sport."

These are only a few of the voices. There are many more and there will
be yet more millions.

When the German delegates sit at the peace table, (14) no sons or
survivors or representatives of these myriad dead will be there to
speak for them. And by that time it will be seen that the Jews are
Jews only when they fall under German rifle butts, before German motor
lorries, and hang from German belts out of their kitchen windows. (15)
Once dead, it will be seen that the Jews are left without a government
to speak for their avenging and that there is no banner to fly in
their tomorrow.

Only this that I write--and all the narratives like it that will be
written--will be their voice that may drift in through the opened
window of the judgment hall.

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The first page of the article has an inset about the author. Here it
is:

BEN HECHT, author and dramatist, started his career as a newspaper
reporter. From 1914 to 1923 he worked for the Chicago Daily News,
spending two of those years as chief of the Berlin bureau. Meanwhile
he had begun to write books--fiction, nonfiction and plays. He became
one of a well-known group of Chicago literary people which included
Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser and Carl Sandburg. In 1928 he
collaborated with Charles MacArthur in writing the hit play, The Front
Page, the first of several successful plays and movies this team has
produced. Among Mr. Hecht's books are 1001 Afternoons in Chicago,
Count Bruga and A Book of Miracles. His motion pictures include The
Scoundrel (with MacArthur), Scarface, Topaze and Wuthering Heights.

NOTES

Note A
Go to imdb.com and look up "Ben Hecht" to see his scriptwriting
credits.

1. American Mercury original version had this sentence here: "They
cannot gather strength out of any terrestrial past or future."

2. American Mercury original version had a footnote here. Which at the
bottom of the page said

In proportion to their numbers, there were more Jews who died in the
first World War defending the Kaiser's Germany than there were
Germans. The Jewish Soldier Cemetery outside Berlin, unless it has
been plowed up and turned into a concentration camp, is witness to
this.

3) The American Mercury original version has "Remember Us!" with an
exclamation point, which the Reader's Digest editors decided to
repeatedly remove when this phrase appears throughout the article.

4) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

They will have only one political statement to offer and that will be
that the manner of their dying must remain one of the measures of the
German soul.
There will be wagon loads of savants on both sides, of economists, of
metaphysicians, philosophers and financiers to plot the remaking of a
world.

5) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

In Mannheim and Hindenburg, the Germans drove us all into our burning
churches where we knelt and prayed and died while they sang their
German song outside,

Break the skulls of all the Jews
And future glory win.
Proudly will our banners fly
When Jewish blood runs from our sabre.

6.) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

our bakers, millers, harness-makers, our students, wives, mothers and
sisters and every child that was old enough to pronounce the name of
God.

7) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

"In Lublin, five hundred of our women and children were led to the
market place and stood against the vegetable stalls they knew so well.
Here the Germans turned machine guns on us and killed us all. But this
was not as bad as in other places, for here we died quickly.

8.) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

Of the twenty thousand who made that trip, only a few hundred were
taken alive from the boxcars.

9) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

"In Kiev no Jew young or old was left alive.

10) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

The doors and windows were sealed.

11) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

and threw torches at those of us who were not quite dead.

12) The American Mercury original version had the following paragraph
here:

"In Odessa, the Germans led five thousand of us out into the country
roads. We were mostly old men, old women and children --some too old
and some too young to walk. Above our heads the Germans flew their
bombers and dropped their bombs on us. The German officers yelled to
us that we should be proud for we were serving Germany by helping
their fliers improve their marksmanship. But their marksmanship was
good. Of the five thousand, none of us remained alive.

13) The American Mercury original version had the following paragraph
here:

"In Riga, a thousand of us arrived on a transport from Germany as
conscripted laborers. We had been traveling in sealed compartments for
days without food. The Germans in Riga unlocked our compartment and
looked us over. The Germans in Riga decided we were too weak to be of
any use in their factories. They put us into large wagons, sealed the
wagons and drove us into the fields and dynamited us. None of us was
left alive. Remember us who were workingmen.

14) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:

with their monocles restored to their pale eyes,

(15) The American Mercury original version had the following passage
here:
http://www.yourforum.org/revforum/viewtopic.php?t=1830
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