Nicholas Kollerstrom

Nicholas Kollerstrom (born 1946) is a British historian of science and author. He was an honorary member of staff of University College London (UCL) for 11 years.

Life

Kollerstrom has two history of science degrees, one from Cambridge 1968, plus a PhD from London, 1995.

"He was an honorary member of staff of UCL for 11 years. He co-edited The Case Against War (Spokesman, comprising the CND legal arguments against the Iraq war) and then co-organised the Belgrano Inqury in 1986, publishing The Unnecessary War as its proceedings in 1998. In 2008 he received widespread publicity and ethical damnation owing to his interest in studies of the residual cyanide levels found in walls of the World War Two labor-camps."

After this, Kollerstrom has written in support of Holocaust revisionism, such as Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust, Myth & Reality.

Holocaust denial controversy

UCL announced on 22 April 2008 that it had removed Kollerstrom's honorary fellowship after articles of his were published on Holocaust revisionist websites. The college wrote that he had expressed views "diametrically opposed to the aims, objectives and ethos of UCL, such that we wish to have absolutely no association with them or with their originator." The articles by Kollerstrom "The Auschwitz 'Gas Chamber' Illusion" and "The Walls of Auschwitz" appeared on a website run by the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), and a third, "School trips to Auschwitz," was published in March 2008 in Smith's report, a newsletter and website run by the co-founder of CODOH, Bradley Smith. The articles came to the university's attention after Kollerstrom attended a book launch about the 2005 London bombings. On 14 April, one blog reported him as a Holocaust denier. In May 2008, "The Walls of Auschwitz" appeared on the website of the Iranian government's Press TV, when he gave them an interview at the suggestion of Michèle Renouf, a British woman known for her involvement with writers accused of Holocaust denial.

In "The Auschwitz 'Gas Chamber' Illusion," first published on the CODOH website in June 2007, Kollerstrom wrote that there were no "lethal gas chambers" in the concentration camps by the Germans, that cyanide gas chambers operated in Auschwitz only for the purpose of hygiene and disinfection, and that "the only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps of World War Two was targeted at Germans" in French and American-run concentration camps. In "School trips to Auschwitz," he wrote:

Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water-polo matches; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its theatrical performances, including a children's opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established there. Let's hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly. Thus the past may not always be quite, as we were told."

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Kollerstrom saw himself as the victim of a "calumny" by bloggers. Kollerstrom said he had no interest in the National Socialist movement, had always belonged to groups like the Green Party, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Respect party, and regarded himself as having been accused of a "thought-crime."

External links

Article archives

• Codoh: Nicholas Kollerstrom - Writings by.