In the Trenches: Dear Bishop Williamson

Dear Bishop Richard Williamson,

You've been in the news quite a bit lately, haven't you?

As one of the four bishops whose excommunication from the Church was recently lifted by the Vatican, you and your, shall we say, problematic beliefs have gained international attention.

Chief among them is your denial of the Holocaust. The Church inexplicably missed this anything-but-secret side of your life, but after much public outcry, it now insists that you recant your views before moving forward.

Your denial of the Holocaust isn't new, of course. Twenty years ago, you declared that, "There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel... Jews made up the Holocaust..."

The basis for your denial?

In an interview this month in Der Spiegel, you stated, "I addressed the subject in the 1980s. I had read various writings at the time. I cited the Leuchter report in the interview, and it seemed plausible to me. Now I am told that it has been scientifically refuted. I plan now to look into it."

The interviewer then suggested a trip to Auschwitz, to which you replied, "No, I will not travel to Auschwitz."

It's hard to know where to begin in the face of such appalling - and, no doubt, willful - ignorance on the part of a Cambridge-educated prelate.

Why willful? Because anyone opting to believe the scientific quackery of Fred Leuchter, who sought to prove that mass gassings were impossible but was dismissed by historians and legal experts as the kook that he was, can't be totally honest. Nor can someone who refuses to visit Auschwitz, while trumpeting his denial of what took place there.

Yes, Bishop Williamson, we Jews, with our infinitely fertile imagination and endless desire to deceive the rest of the world, made up the Holocaust.

No, there never was an Adolf Hitler, a Mein Kampf, a Wannsee Conference, or a Final Solution. Nor were there the death camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, or Treblinka. Nor were there the Einsatzgruppen, the ravines of Babi Yar, or the ghettos. Nor were there the gas chambers, the crematoria, or the killing agents.

No, it was just one big fabrication to enlist the world's sympathy.

And no, six million Jews weren't really killed. Of course not. They're all living on a South Pacific island having a smashing time with their children and grandchildren.

Or maybe they're hiding just outside Thessaloniki, waiting for the moment when no one is looking so they can regain their homes and livelihoods in a city where - allegedly, of course, Bishop Williamson - 96 percent of the Jewish residents disappeared one fine day in 1943.

And why have I been grieving for my cousin, Mila Racine, all these years? How could I think she had been killed in the death camps, when I should have been looking for her on Facebook? How silly of me!

I'll be sure to tell all those with whom I grew up that their parents, like mine, were liars. How dare they, the survivors, the remnants of European Jewry, have led us astray into believing that so many of their relatives, neighbors, friends, and colleagues had been carted off by the Nazis and their collaborators, never to be seen again? After all, you seem to know otherwise.

Oh, and, let's not forget, Bishop Williamson, that we Jews are so cunning and powerful - you know that, since you've publicly praised the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as truthful - that we managed to persuade everyone from Winston Churchill to General Dwight Eisenhower, from Jan Karski to Raoul Wallenberg, that there was a Holocaust. Boy, did we ever manage to pull the wool over the world's eyes!

Bishop Williamson, what really explains your refusal to accept perhaps the most documented - and monstrous - crime in recorded history, a crime so unique that Churchill referred to it as "a crime without a name"?

Clearly, it's not the absence of information. Scholarly works, personal testimonies, eyewitness accounts, films, archives, and museums abound.

No, it must be something else.

Could it be a desire to "protect" the historical image of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich from the stain of the Holocaust?

Could it be an effort to stir the waters of anti-Semitism, which got a "bad name" during the Second World War?

Maybe it's a way of seeking Israel's elimination, since you insist that its creation derived from our grand deceit?

Or perhaps it's a theological issue, rooted in your ultra-conservative, pre-Second Vatican Council belief system that does not hold Jews, any Jews, in particularly high regard?

Whatever the reasons, you certainly find yourself in good company. Let's see. Apart from Fred Leuchter, there's David Irving, who was found in a British court to be a Holocaust denier and a racist. Then there's David Duke, whose racism and anti-Semitism have found him dear friends in Iran. And, not least, there's the Iranian president himself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has taken on the role of global Holocaust denier-in-chief.

Perhaps it's too late, Bishop Williamson, or perhaps it's not. If your religious beliefs include the possibility of redemption, go to Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Belzec. Visit the Holocaust museums in Washington, London, and Jerusalem. And go back and read what the Church has said on the subject of the Holocaust, including the powerful statements of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, as well as the 1998 Vatican document, "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah."

Oh, and while you're at it, perhaps you'd add another book to your reading list, the late Father Edward Flannery's The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism. It might help you understand the historical antecedents of the Holocaust. Jews had long been demonized, dehumanized, and destroyed on European soil - and the religious teachings, edicts, and incitement of the Church were all too frequently a common denominator.

What ultimately happens to your standing in the Church is a matter for others to decide. But don't count on the silence of Jews and Gentiles of good will, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as long as you seek to kill the victims of the Holocaust a second time by choosing to ignore the reality of their deaths.

What's next on your political agenda? How about challenging the truth of the 9/11 attacks by suggesting that the US government planned it all as a pretext to invade Afghanistan? Oh, sorry, you've already done that.

Well, Bishop Williamson, don't give up hope. Maybe you can take up the case that Galileo, unlike you, actually did deserve eternal excommunication for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun.