'DP' denies ad refuting aspects of Holocaust

The Executive Board of The Daily Pennsylvanian voted last Thursday to reject an advertisement which says that Germany did not use the bodies of Jewish prisoners to manufacture soap during World War II. Following a 45-minute discussion attended by many staff members, the board voted by secret ballot four to one to reject the ad. Two board members abstained. "It was not a First Amendment issue, but rather a question of whether or not the newspaper should print ads which are known to be factually inaccurate and foster hate," DP Executive Editor Matthew Klein said yesterday. "And the Executive Board believed it was in the newspaper's best interest not to run the ad." The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, directed by Bradley Smith, sent the ad to the paper last week. The Committee's ad used a condensation of an article by historian Mark Weber. The ad discusses what it terms a "revisionist" theory of an aspect of the Holocaust, refuting the widely-accepted historical belief that the Nazis boiled the bodies of Jewish victims to produce fat which was then used to make soap. Bars of this soap are on display in Holocaust museums around the world. "In spite of all the apparently impressive evidence, the charge that the Germans manufactured soap from human beings is a falsehood, as Holocaust historians are now belatedly acknowledging," says the ad. The full-page text ad also implies that Germans did not have a policy to exterminate Jews during World War II. " 'Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus' or 'false in one thing false in everything,' was a Roman legal principle," the ad states. "I urge you to consider whether any of the individuals or instituitions that have contributed to the perpetuation of the debasing 'human soap' hoax deserve to be believed about anything they say about the 'Holocaust.' " The dissenting opinion on the DP's Executive Board held that "once raised, even offensive ideas deserve to be discussed," said College junior Klein, the spokesperson of the Board. The DP Executive Board, which consists of the executive editor, three business managers and three editors, makes all decisions that affect the newspaper as a whole. Board members discussed the ad at their regular meeting after Business Manager Joshua Gordon brought it to their attention early last week. The "Human Soap" ad was the second one sent to the DP by the California-based revisionist history group in the past six months. The first ad was turned down in November by last year's DP Executive Board by a five to two vote. Since the fall, other universities' publications have received the ads as well. The first ad, called "The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate," ran in newspapers at Duke University and the University of Michigan, sparking protests on both campuses. And Julian Barnes, president of The Harvard Crimson, said yesterday the newspaper's business manager, Sameer Chishty, refused to accept the second ad. As a result, it was never subject to a vote by the Crimson Board, Barnes said, adding that the newspaper also rejected the Committee's first ad. "It was perhaps a more difficult decision" to reject the second ad because the facts stated in the ad were more difficult to question," Barnes said.