The Light in the Darkness: A Book Review of Nicholas Kollerstrom's 'Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality'

A Book Review of Nicholas Kollerstrom, 2014, 'Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality', 1st Edition, Castle Hill: Uckfield

Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom is without doubt; a very brave and courageous man. He knowingly abandoned - perhaps a bit naively - the safety of conventional academic subjects and began instead to work on most dangerous intellectual arena of all: the holocaust. The fascinating thing about Kollerstrom is that he is a remarkably principled man even if his principles rather get in the way of his life as opposed to facilitating it.

In 'Breaking the Spell' Kollerstrom sets out the case for why the 'Holocaust' as conventionally claimed is not only absurd as an argument regarding the fate of the jews in Axis territory in the Second World War, but also absolutely and completely dishonest. Kollerstrom highlights the fact - largely unknown outside of academic and lay scholars - that as new sources of information have been released there has been more evidence against the 'Holocaust' not more for it.

These new sources of information have not only failed to live up to the hype made about them about the 'Holocaust' industry, but have proven the revisionist contention that there is simply no evidence of a homicidal mass gassing program targeting the jews as well as that there is a large amount of evidence contracting such an assertion.

A good example of this that Kollerstrom brings up are the recently declassified Bletchley Park decrypts of German communication intercepts at various times during the war. Not once do we have any inkling of a mass gassing program being referred to. We don't have any orders that suggest as such nor do we even have anything in the way of physical evidence of such a program.

Kollerstrom summarizes the evidence such as it is ably, but naturally focuses on the ludicrous nature of the charges themselves. He correctly points out that only in the case of the 'Holocaust' are the laws of historical research suspended and as a result credulity rather than criticality has become the norm for orthodox proponents. This has lead to numerous embarrassing incidents for orthodox proponents such as a hand-picked 'Holocaust survivor' claiming that different nationalities, when burned in the crematoria, produce different coloured smoke.

To add a personal observation; I have seen 'Holocaust deniers' oft described as being credulous lunatics in a vast array of different books from those making the philosophic case for atheism to histories of modern Iran. This is the completely opposite of the impression that you get when you get into the detail of the arguments used by both sides as the 'Holocaust deniers' address and utilize all of the available evidence and suspend judgement to come to their position on the matter.

Comparatively those who affirm the theory that the 'Holocaust' occurred primarily cite the same few testimonies and bits of evidence selectively and deliberately ignore the bits that do not fit their proposed vision; whether they contradict it or obviously undermine the credibility of the witness or are just physically impossible.

One such situation is pointed out by Kollerstrom when he notes that the 'Holocaust' industry's 'experts' don't have any evidence as to the actual mechanism used to deliver the Zyklon B pellets into the alleged 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz let alone release the hydrogen cyanide gas they contained.

The famous 'mesh baskets' and 'mesh pillars' used are simply made up whole-sale with their first introduction by Jean-Claude Pressac in the early 1990s and the further development of the concept by Robert van Pelt a few years later.

How you can claim a mechanism - upon which your whole theory is heavily dependent - existed without any direct or indirect evidence is quite beyond me.

It is however a classic example of the kind of magical thinking that increasingly desperate intellectuals will use to try and defend an indefensible position.

After all who needs 'evidence', because there 'must' have been such a mechanism because it 'had to have happened' because 'it happened'?

That this is absurd magical thinking in otherwise lucid people is the essence of Kollerstrom's point in 'Breaking the Spell'. He points out - as has been argued without barely an attempt at rebuff from opponents of 'Holocaust' revisionism - that if the 'Holocaust' was as evident as all that then it would be easy for the orthodox scholars to demonstrate this and the field of revisionism would be populated by the kind of odd-balls that assert the existence of the Illuminati.

Instead revisionists are hounded and persecuted by specially drafted laws and the orthodox holocaustians, after some extremely embarrassing intellectual reverses in the 1990s, have simply refused to debate them and claim the 'Holocaust' is 'self-evident'.

Does that sounds like a normal intellectual position or rather state-sponsored orthodoxy maintained increasingly by the use of thought police?

Now I should point out that while I like what Kollerstrom says; 'Breaking the Spell' suffers the almost de rigueur defect of many 'Holocaust' revisionist works in that it is not written particularly well.

To be sure 'Breaking the Spell' is a significant advance on the notoriously dry and turgid texts that revisionists - with the singular exceptions of Jurgen Graf - have an unfortunate tendency to produce, but it isn't particularly coherent as a work - as it jumps around all sorts of issues in no particular order - and it reads like a collection of articles hastily strung together than a single work.

Unfortunately Kollerstrom says he wrote 'Breaking the Spell' as a kind of introduction to 'Holocaust' revisionism, but it really doesn't live up to its promise. More particularly Kollerstrom also endorses other theories throughout the work - for example 9/11 Truth and the Khazarian origin of the Ashkenazim - that will give opponents rhetorical ammunition and also turn some people off.

In essence 'Breaking the Spell' is a good first draft of an introduction to 'Holocaust' revisionism, but it still in no way supersedes the far more readable, entertaining and comprehensive second edition of Germar Rudolf’s 'Dissecting the Holocaust'.

It is unfortunate, but that - to my mind - is the bald, honest truth of the matter.