[images and captions added by this website] Wellington, New Zealand, Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Genocide a growth area of study by Colin Patterson THE Holocaust has always held a fascination for Simone Gigliotti. While growing up in Australia, she heard stories from her grandparents who fled Mussolini's fascist dictatorship in Italy in the early 1920s. Studying history at Melbourne University, her interest in humanitarian issues encouraged her to delve into what happened during the Holocaust and why. Now a history lecturer at Victoria University, Dr Gigliotti researches and teaches about Hitler's Final Solution and its consequences. David Irving comments: THANKS for sending me that; it is of course absurd to say I deny the Holocaust, in the normal and commonly understood sense of the words, as anybody who has read my books knows.    I just refuse to buy the whole Package, let alone swallow it the way that many journalists and some judges are willing to do, for need of a cushier existence. INCIDENTALLY now that New Zealand has survived the trauma of a general election, I shall now be making my formal application for special permission to enter the country to deliver my much delayed talk to the National Press Club. A new legal battle may well loom. In a world where those such as British historian David Irving deny the Holocaust ever happened or claim there was never a plan to exterminate Jews Dr Gigliotti said her research had left her in no doubt. "I believe it happened. I believe the Nazis had an intentional strategy to persecute and marginalise Jews by any means possible." [Website comment: Uh, that's not quite the same thing as a Holocaust]. She supports the Government's 2004 decision to deny Irving a visa to speak at the National Press Club. "I think David Irving has no place in Holocaust history. He is part of a marginal group. The frequent quoted figure of six million Holocaust deaths was no exaggeration, said Dr Gigliotti. Nazi gas chambers claimed three million people, while two million died in massacres that followed the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The remaining million died in other forms of detention or as a result of the state's discriminatory practices. Dr Gigliotti's most recent research focuses on the psychological effects on Jews of the methods used to transport them to concentration camps usually in railway wagons normally used for cattle. [Website comment: Untrue -- click to see our image of Stuttgart's deported Jews arriving at Riga, November 1941. So much for the standard of Holocaust teachers in New Zealand -- and perhaps the real reason why they did not want Mr Irving to speak there. . .] She believes the transportation process has been overlooked by con temporary historians, who have tend ed to focus on what happened after internees arrived at their destinations. "I want to find out what it was like to be confined in carriages for long periods. There was definitely a policy of causing pain." The trains were essential. It would have been impossible to move so many people by road, especially in the height of war. Thousands of Jews who filled the cattle trains never made it, as harsh conditions including a lack of water and food took their toll, especially among the elderly and the young. Stories of conditions on trains did get around. Yet one of the big mysteries was that many people got on board willingly. "They had been living in terrible conditions especially a lack of food. They thought that by getting on the train, conditions would get better." But they did not. Many of those who arrived at the camps were immediately selected for death. Most were women, children or the elderly because they were considered less valuable sources of labour. Her sources are published and unpublished testimonies and memoirs of survivors. "Those memoirs are sometimes of exceptional quality, even though survivors often don't have a lot of writing ability." She also teaches and researches the wider field of genocide, extending from the Holocaust to modern variants, such as Rwanda civil war and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. While the horrors of genocide are well known, its causes are less clear. "Genocide is preventable. But more scholarship and research is necessary to help identify its causes." Many perpetrators are provocateurs who are not necessarily those who pull the trigger. But race and racism are essential ingredients, she said. And with race-based conflicts festering throughout the world, Dr Gigliotti is not confident that genocide can be consigned to the dustbin of history. "Unfortunately, genocide is a growth area of study."   on this website Our Auschwitz dossier

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