Marco Polo case

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The event known as the Marco Polo case ( Japanese マ ル コ ポ ー ロ 事件 Maruko Pōro jiken ) is a serious incident of Japanese revisionism or Holocaust denial . It began in 1995 with an article printed in the February issue of the Japanese monthly magazine “Marco Polo” (henceforth MP), in which the doctor Masanori Nishioka ( Japanese 西岡 昌 紀 ) claimed that all the testimonies from the gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were produced by the Allies and there was originally no plan to exterminate the Jews. After foreign media reported on this article, the publishing house Bungei Shunjū , which MP published, was heavily criticized by Jewish associations and other groups. As a result of this criticism, many companies considered discontinuing advertising on all Bungei Shunjū publications. Thereupon the publisher called back all magazines in the trade. In addition, MP was hired itself and the people responsible for the article were dismissed, including the president of the publishing house and the editor-in-chief of MP.

controversy

The author claims that there were no gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and that there was no plan to exterminate the Jews. To prove this, he makes the following arguments:

1. The chamber in the concentration camp, known as the gas chamber, has no device for killing people with gas. You have z. B. no fan and no system to heat the Zyklon B gas.
2. The final solution did not mean the annihilation of the Jews, but the resettlement of the Jews. There is no evidence of the extermination of the Jews, but evidence of a planned resettlement.

He concluded that the concentration camp was not intended for the murder of the Jews. It only served to prepare for the resettlement of the Jews. Later, the Allies, especially those from Communist countries, deliberately turned the camp into an extermination camp in preparation for resettlement.

Germany historians objected to this article. They argued that all of Nishioka's reasoning was wrong and refuted his claims at length. Mentioning new materials such as Jean-Claude Pressac's “The Auschwitz Crematoria”, they explained the structure of the gas chamber. They said the fan had already been found and Zyklon B didn't need a heater to evaporate. And they declared that there was evidence in which the military and politicians like Himmler and Goebbels ordered the extermination, although there was no order from Hitler himself. In addition, the words "resettlement" and "evacuation" could also mean annihilation. The details of the historians' objections can be found in the book "Auschwitz and the 'Auschwitz Lie'" by the publisher Hakusuisha, which also published a translation of Till Bastian's "Auschwitz and the 'Auschwitz Lie'" (Verlag CH Beck).

result

Before the magazines containing the article were sold, European media had reported on the content of this article. On January 25, Uwe Schmitt, a correspondent for the FAZ in Tokyo, wrote a text introducing this article, which made this Holocaust denial known outside of Japan.

At the end of January, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights organization, protested against the article and called on companies to stop placing ads in Bungei Shunjū publications. As a result of this action by the center, the publisher was forced to publicly apologize and dismiss the employees involved in the article. As a result, the publishing director Kengo Tanaka and the editor-in-chief Kazuyoshi Hanada were released from their posts and the editorial staff of MP were obliged to attend a seminar at the Wiesenthal Center and an excursion to Auschwitz. All copies of MP that were already in bookshops were recalled from bookshops on January 27th (the day the magazine could be bought), MP itself was also discontinued and the MP scandal ended.

reception

Even after the event closed, discussion of the case continued. One of the main points of contention was freedom of the press. The Wiesenthal Center's call for a boycott and the subsequent measures taken by the Bungei Shunjū publishing house were criticized by Japanese revisionists.

Moderate critics such as Takahiro Otsuki and Ken Yasuhara demanded that MP should have been published with Nishioka's article and at the same time together with articles that argued against it.

The literary critic Hidemi Suga, referring to the discussion between Hayden White and Carlo Ginzburg , argued that the law of press freedom is not neutral, but creates a place for political discourse. In Japan itself, the ally of the National Socialists in World War II, the Holocaust was not a politically important problem. Holocaust denial should also appear in the name of freedom of the press .

literature

• Herbert Worm: Holocaust Denier in Japan. The “Marco Polo” case. In: Manfred Pohl (Ed.): Japan 1994/1995. Politic and economy. Institute for Asian Studies, Hamburg 1995
• Suga Hidemi: (Cho) Kotobagari Ronso [The dispute over the "ultra" word hunt] . Jokyo-Shuppan, 1995
• Till Bastian, Ishida Yuji, Hoshino Haruhiko, Shibano Yoshikazu: Aushuvittsu to <Aushuvittsu no uso> ( ア ウ シ ュ ヴ ィ ッ ツ と <ア ウ シ ュ ヴ ィ ッ ツ の 嘘> , dt. " Aushuvittsu no uso "). Hakusuisha, Tokyo 2005