The Daily must surely be desperate for paid advertising to have published the ad on page 20 of the June 18th issue, which implied that the Holocaust didn’t happen because it was not discussed in Dwight Eisenhower’s book “Crusade In Europe.”

Just a quick Google search led me to a number of links that point to documented historical records such as an April 12, 1945 letter from Eisenhower to General George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, in which he described his visit to the Ohrdruf camp that had been liberated by Patton’s army. Eisenhower wrote, “I have never felt able to describe my emotional reaction when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency … I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.”

This web site (http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/liberato.htm ) also shows photos of Eisenhower at the Buchenwald concentration camp and a statement from one of Eisenhower’s staff officers that he saw both Eisenhower and Patton vomiting by the roadside at Ohrdruf. All of this has been documented by scholars and is accessible to future scholars. The fact of the Holocaust is indisputable and has been testified to by a huge cloud of witnesses over the last 65 years.

I have personally talked to people who helped liberate the camps and who lost family members in them. My high school German teacher, William Kauslauskas (known to us as “Herr K”) had studied in Germany before the war and was fluent in German. He was an intelligence officer with Patton’s Third Army and was present when they liberated at least one camp, possibly Ohrdruf. I don’t recall whether he said which one. Herr K just shook his head and said, “The smell was terrific.” Herr K also taught Latin and he meant that in the sense of terrible or terrifying, all of which derive from the Latin verb “terrere,” which means “to frighten.” There was no motivation whatever for Herr K to lie to us. He could not possibly have been part of some vast conspiracy. If anything, he probably avoided telling us too much about the horrors he had seen.

Herr K was an unforgettable teacher and, in honor of his memory, as well as several others, who personally shared their families’ experiences in the death camps with me, I am compelled to witness here to their testimony. The huge historical and testamentary record notwithstanding, the personal testimony I have received from eye witnesses is enough for me. The Holocaust is a historical fact and those who deny it are wackos.

– James Gaunt is manager of the Engineering Research Labs.