In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States fought back against the terrorist group Al Quaeda. Many people in the Bush administration believed that the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was not only involved in the terrorist attacks with Al Quaeda, but was planning another attack on the United States. The Vice President at the time, Dick Cheney, made a statement about Hussein that caused lots of panic and distress: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” Despite there being zero evidence that this claim was true, the Bush administration claimed that Hussein was also building nuclear bombs to potentially use against the United States. In 2003, the Unites States eventually invaded Iraq out of fear that what Cheney said was true. The conflict lasted seven years, cost over two trillion dollars, and ended in thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties. 

This goes to show how devastating a powerful figure sharing a lie or statement that has no evidence to back it up can be. Many people throughout history have also made similar statements like this.

 In an interview with CBS, Bishop Richard Williamson is questioned about comments that he had previously made about the Holocaust and his stance on whether or not gas chambers played any role in the mass genocide of Jewish people. Bishop Williamson makes some claims in this video that are not entirely rooted in fact, and his sources are not reliable. The claims he does make can and have been disproven.

Claim: “I believe there were no gas chambers.” (0:52)

In the video, Bishop Williamson claims to believe there were no gas chambers used during the Holocaust. This assumption is false.

According to the article “Final Solution” posted on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, three gassing installations were established in 1941 in Poland, named Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard. The goal of this operation was to perform mass murder of Jewish people, whether it be by gassing, shooting, or any other means. In another article “Gassing Operations” on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, it states that victims would be loaded into what they thought to be “showers” and would suffocate as carbon monoxide gas from diesel engines would fill the room. The more people that were packed into the room, the quicker they suffocated.

The Nazis were always looking for quicker ways to perform mass extermination. They began experimenting with a chemical called Zyklon B, which before it was used in gas chambers, had been tested on Soviet war prisoners and other ill prisoners. As the Zyklon B pellets made contact with air, they turned into a lethal gas. This form of execution was used in gas chambers in Auschwitz, and other smaller gas chambers in camps like Mauthausen, Stutthof, and Sachsenhausen. 

Bishop Williamson speaks on his past statements. (0:05)

Claim: “Historical evidence is against 6 million Jews having died in gas chambers.” (0:23)

In this claim, Williamson is actually partially correct, just a little mixed up.

It is estimated that throughout the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed in total. Not just in the gas chambers. This includes shootings and other means of extermination that the Nazis used. Even though the number may not have been as big as six million, the amount of Jews killed in gas chambers is still drastic. In the article published on History, “Thousands of Jews Die in Nazi Gas Chamber”, it states that in Sobibor alone, around 250,000 Jews were killed in gas chambers between 1942 and 1943. To add on to that, it is estimated that around six thousand Jews were gassed each day in Auschwitz gas chambers.

These two examples show just how devastating the gas chambers were and how many people they affected. When Williamson states that history is against six million people perishing in the gas chamber, he is technically correct, but that does not mean that thousands upon thousands of Jews never died in gas chambers. 

Holocaust Revisionists

Bishop Williamson claims that “the most serious [Holocaust revisionists] conclude that between two and three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.”

With that in mind, who are Holocaust revisionists? They are a group of people who try to negate and distort facts about the Holocaust. They are better recognized as Holocaust deniers. According to an article published on Time called “Holocaust Revisionism”, they have made assertions that the figure of six million Jews killed is an exaggeration and have also claimed that Anne Frank’s diary was a forgery.

Williamson basing his evidence off of a highly disregarded group of people shows that his claims are not based off of reliable sources. In fact, in Europe, sixteen countries have made laws against Holocaust denial. At the end of the video, Williamson even acknowledges this fact: “Be careful, I beg of you, this is against the law in Germany [. . .] you could have me thrown into prison before I leave Germany, I hope that is not your intention.” This proves that Williamson at least knows that his stance is controversial. 

Bishop Willamson speaking on the legallity of Holocaust denial. (5:35)

Expert: Fred A. Leuchter

Bishop Williamson mentiones a fellow Holocaust denier, Fred A. Leuchter and his Leuchter report. Chemist Richard Green explores the credibility of the Leuchter report in his article “The Chemistry of Auschwitz” as the report is one of the founding resources for Holocaust deniers and their claims.

Leuchter wrote this report after he had spent three days visiting Auschwitz in 1988. During his visit, he illegally collected brick and cement fragments from the gas chambers to use as “forensic samples” for his studies. The fragments that he had collected were from after the gas chambers in Auschwitz had been both destroyed and rebuilt, along with it being around forty years after the first examinations of the chambers in 1945. In his studies, he concluded that none of the facilities examined at Auschwitz were used to perform executions using any form of lethal gas. Leuchter also concluded that the use of the chemical Zyklon B would be too dangerous for the operators of the gas chambers. He claimed that it would take anywhere between six to thirty-two hours for the chemical to evaporate, making it not as efficient to use for the Nazis. This was debunked by Green, as those times have nothing to do with the time to evaporate, but strangely, is the amount of time it takes for the fumes to kill lice.

Should we even trust Fred A. Leuchter?

Bishop Williamson speaks of Leuchter as if he is an expert, claiming that “Fred Leuchter was an expert in gas chambers.” Even though Fred A. Leuchter’s conclusions in his report were proven false, is there actually any proof that Leuchter is even an expert at all?

Well, according to the article “Electric Chair Builder Worried Tennesse Execution Will Fail,” published on AP News, Leuchter built and consulted on electric chairs, lethal injection machines, gas chambers, and gallows for at least twenty-seven states in the US. Later in his career, after his comments about the Holocaust, it came to light that he had actually lied about his qualifications. He did not have an engineering degree, nor did he have a license to work on these types of projects even though he presented himself to be an expert. Apparently, he relied on skills picked up from designing surveillance equipment and studying documents describing previous executions.

In the article “Execution ‘Engineer’ Settles Criminal Case” posted on The New York Times, it is said that Leuchter was charged in Massachusetts with having misrepresented himself as an engineer despite having no qualifications. He ended up receiving two years of probation as punishment. 

Conclusion

The claims that Bishop Williamson have made in his video have been proven to be false, and are based off of unreliable sources. Making these types of claims is a very dangerous path to go down. People, especially people in power, spreading false information like this can, and most likely will, persuade lots of people into believing something that is not true. As they say, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. With something as horrific as the Holocaust, I think it is safe to say humanity would be better off if something like that never happened again. 

Featured image is a screenshot from the video “Bishop Williamson – Holocaust Denier”