Holocaust denial is now illegal in Russia

Russian president Vladimir Putin has just signed a law which will make it a criminal offense for a Russian citizen to “deny facts recognized by the [Nuremberg] international military tribunal that judged and punished the major war criminals of the European Axis countries…”

You can read the full story in this news report:  http://jpupdates.com/2014/05/05/holocaust-deniers-russia-now-face-prison-time/

This quote is from the news article, cited above:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill making attempts to “whitewash Nazism” punishable with hefty fines and prison sentences, the Kremlin press service said Monday.

“The Federal Law makes it a criminal offense to deny facts recognized by the international military tribunal that judged and punished the major war criminals of the European Axis countries, approving the crimes this tribunal judged, and deliberately spreading false information about the Soviet Union’s activities during World War II,” the Kremlin press service said in an English-language statement, according to Russian media.

In my humble opinion, it is completely and totally stupid to base a law on “facts” that were “recognized” at the Nuremberg IMT. As almost everyone in the world knows by now, the verdicts at Nuremberg were based on lies told by prosecution witnesses, and on numerous fraudulent documents.

There is an article, written by Mark Weber for the Institute of Historical Review, which you can read in full at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html

The article is quite lengthy, and excessively erudite, but this quote from the article outlines the most important aspects of the crimes committed by the Allies at the Nuremberg IMT:

The Charter of the International Military Tribunal permitted the use of normally inadmissible “evidence.” Article 19 specified that “The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence… and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value.” Article 21 stipulated: /42

The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United [Allied] Nations, including acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military and other Tribunals of any of the United [Allied] Nations.

On the basis of these articles, the Tribunal accepted as valid the most dubious “evidence,” including hearsay and unsubstantiated reports of Soviet and American “investigative” commissions. For example, the Tribunal accepted an American congressional report that “proved” gas chamber killings at Dachau, and a Polish government report (submitted by the US) that “proved” killings by steam at Treblinka. /43 (No reputable historian now accepts either of these stories.)

In addition, the Tribunal validated Soviet reports about Auschwitz and Majdanek (documents USSR-8 and USSR-29), which explained in detail how the Germans killed four million at Auschwitz and another one-and-a-half million at Majdanek. (These days, no reputable historian accepts either of these fantastic figures.)

German guilt for the killing of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk was similarly confirmed by Nuremberg document USSR-54. This detailed report by yet another Soviet “investigative” commission was submitted as proof for the charge made in the joint indictment of the four Allied governments. As a Soviet prosecutor explained: “We find, in the Indictment, one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war shot in the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders.” /44 (Interestingly, two of the eight members of the Soviet Katyn Commission were also members of the Soviet Auschwitz commission: Academician N. Burdenko and Metropolitan Nikolai.) It wasn’t until 1990 that the Soviet government finally acknowledged that the Katyn massacre was carried out, not by a German unit, as “proven” at Nuremberg, but by the Soviet secret police. /45

It is sometimes claimed that the evidence presented by the prosecution to the Nuremberg Tribunal was so incontrovertible that none of the defense attorneys ever disputed the authenticity or accuracy of even a single prosecution document. /46 This is not true. Not only did defense lawyers protest against the prosecution use of spurious documents, but some of the most important Nuremberg documents are now generally acknowledged to be fraudulent. /47

For example, defense attorney Dr. Boehm protested to the Tribunal that Nuremberg document 1721-PS, which purportedly confirms attacks by stormtroopers against Jewish synagogues in November 1938, is a clumsy forgery. He went on to explain his reasons at some length. /48

Several Nuremberg documents based on the purported “death bed confession” of Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, are demonstrably fraudulent. (Nuremberg documents 1515-PS, 3870-PS, and NO-1973.) These documents supposedly prove systematic killings of hundreds of thousands of people by gassing and other means at Mauthausen and Hartheim. /49

Almost forty years after the Tribunal handed down its verdicts, Nuremberg document USSR-378 was definitively exposed as a fraud. It is a purported record of numerous private conversations with Hitler by Hermann Rauschning, a former National Socialist official in Danzig. In brutal language, the Führer supposedly revealed his most intimate thoughts and secret plans for world conquest. Rauschning’s “memoir” was published in 1939 in Britain under the title Hitler Speaks, and in the United States in 1940 as The Voice of Destruction. It was this US edition that was accepted in evidence at Nuremberg as proof of the “guiding principles of the Nazi regime.”

Chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross and his Soviet colleagues cited numerous quotations from it. Defendant Baldur von Schirach contested its authenticity, but defense attorney Pelckmann (who did not know any better) accepted this “evidence” as authentic. /50 In 1983 Swiss historian Wolfgang Hänel established that the “memoir” is entirely fraudulent. Rauschning never had even a single private meeting with Hitler. /51

Another fraudulent Nuremberg document is the so-called “Hossbach protocol” (document 386-PS), a purported record of a high-level 1937 conference at which Hitler supposedly revealed his secret plans for aggressive conquest. US Nuremberg prosecutor Sidney Alderman called it “one of the most striking and revealing of all the captured documents,” and told the Tribunal that it removed any remaining doubts about the guilt of the Germans leaders for their crimes against peace. It was largely on the basis of this document that Göring was condemned to death. /52

Similarly spurious is Nuremberg document L-3 (US-28), supposedly a record of a bellicose speech by Hitler to armed forces commanders on August 22, 1939. It contains a widely cited quotation attributed to Hitler, “Who talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” /53

In Germany, a person who is put on trial for Holocaust denial, is not allowed to put on a defense. I assume that this will also be the case in Russia. If not, there is sure to be a lot of Russian crimes exposed by deniers trying to defend themselves.