Shraga Elam response to defamations following e-mail to David Irving

Here is my mail to the renown Shoa expert Professor Randolph L. Braham and his statement.

Mail to Professor Braham:

 From: Shraga Elam

To: R._Braham

Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 4:55 PM

Dear Prof. Braham,

I want to ask you a big favor which I hope will not cause you too much trouble. It would help me a lot. I need a statement, a kind of short Gutachten from you that I can use in a court suit.

You might know that I have been defamed again and again because I “dared” to write ONCE to the Holocaust denier David Irving. My aim was to try to convince him to stop denying the gassing of the Jews. I assumed that the main reason for his denial was because no written order by Hitler (Führerbefehl)  for the gassing has ever been found, and as far as I know there is no proof that Hitler was even informed about the gassing (see e.g. the incident of the Korherr report that Himmler prevented Hitler's being informed about the industrial murder of Jews - http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/korherr/himmler-sipo.php +

 http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/korherr/korherr-begleitschreiben.php).

The view that extermination on an industrial scale was impossible without Hitler's approval is common, albeit wrong, and has led some lunatics to conclude that there could not possibly have been any systematic murdering. I suspected that this line of reasoning was behind Irving’s transformation from a brilliant researcher (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E3D6153AF935A15755C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print)

into a Holocuast denier, and that I could convince him to abandon his hallucinatory theory if I provided him with a plausible alternative explanation for the lack of a “Führerbefehl.”

From my book “Hitlers Fälscher,” you might remember that I believe that behind the Jewish annihilation was a satanic blackmail plan of Himmler's. Many historians accept that Himmler tried to topple Hitler in 1944, and that he tried to use Hungary's Jews as bargaining chips to force the allies to negotiate a “Sonderfrieden” with him. I believe that the Europaplan from 1942 was for real and was part of the same scheme. Himmler would have had no problem convincing his subordinates that there was a “Führerbefehl.” They would not have needed to see it in writing. Hitler‘s position on the Jews was well known, so it was very possible that he ordered their extermination.  My theory may be mistaken, but there is nothing morally wrong with it, as I’m not trying to whitewash Hitler. He was a criminal whether or not he authorized the gas chambers at Auschwitz. My grandparents were murdered by the Nazis before Auschwitz was founded.

On this background I wrote a short private e-mail to Irving on 15. April 2000. The letter was very condensed as it was not addressed to the broad public but to an expert acquainted with the issues. Not many people are aware of the fact that Irving is considered by several serious historians to be a brilliant researcher; only his denial stuff is rejected. Not many people are aware of the New York Times article from, June 26, 1999, Taking a Holocaust Skeptic Seriously By D.D. GUTTENPLAN,(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E3D6153AF935A15755C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print)

Irving replied to me in a friendly way, but he also published my e-mail without my permission, and I broke off contact with him. To be honest, in a way I regret not trying to continue the dialogue, but then I got the impression that he was crazier than I had thought and his publishing my e-mail was very irritating. Of course my private e-mail to him contained many statements to upset the uninformed. As I said, it was not meant for the broad public. Unhappily, since then my letter has been held against me again and again by people not acquainted with the issues. Finally, I decided to sue a well-known Jewish-German journalist, Henryk M. Broder, who wrote a defamatory article about me, accusing me of being Irving's friend and  supporter.

Broder wrote: http://web.archive.org/web/20070104221554/http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/e/