National Journal, first published: 28/05/10

Gerd Honsik, Pastor Knirsch and Pope Benedikt

Gerd Honsik, the Austrian poet, writer and holocaust researcher published in 1988 a book titled "Acquittal for Hitler? 36 unheard witnesses versus the gas chambers". His friend, the Catholic pastor Viktor Knirsch, wrote the following preface to the book:

Kahlenbergerdorf, (Austria), June 2, 1988,
»As a Roman Catholic priest I say to you ... question the existence of gas-chambers in the Third Reich. It is the right of those who seek the truth to be allowed to doubt, investigate and evaluate. Where ever this doubting and evaluating is forbidden, where ever someone demands that he must be believed, an arrogance arises that is a blasphemy to God. This is why, if those whom you doubt have the truth on their side, they will accept any questions gracefully and answer them patiently. They will no longer hide their evidence and their records. But if those persons are lying, they will cry for the judge. That is how you will recognize them. The truth is always graceful, while lies cry out for earthly judges.
Respectfully,
with best regards,
/s/ Pastor Viktor Robert Knirsch«
Ref: Honsik, Freispruch für Hitler? (Acquittal for Hitler?)

Both men, Gerd Honsik and Pastor Viktor Knirsch (pastor Knirsch baptised Honsik’s children), were planning for another book on the holocaust. Honsik learned that pastor Knirsch had access to a number of reports, filed by Catholic ministers who performed then pastoral care at the Auschwitz camp. These innumerable reports are archived by the Vatican but kept under lock.

"Accidentally", soon after the publication of Honsik's book "Acquittal for Hitler?", pastor Knirsch became very ill and was taken to a cloister where he then died from brain cancer. When his friend Honsik visited him he made him understood that he was not in a position anymore to get in touch with those holding on to the pastoral reports from Auschwitz. Pastor Knirsch died soon after behind thick walls, unable to speak out of what he knew.

Gerd Honsik before the Vienna court for appealing to the Pope to open the Auschwitz archives.

Honsik was tried for the book "Acquittal for Hitler?" in Vienna in 1992 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Before the arrest he went to Spain where he was granted unofficial political asylum.

He was doing fine in Spain, no harassment from the system, until he wrote to the Pope in 2006 regarding the Vatican’s "opening" of the "Auschwitz"-Archives. When it became public (DER SPIEGEL) that the Pope had “opened” the so-called Auschwitz-Archives, Honsik was puzzled to read that the period 1939 to 1945 was still under lock and key. What seemed to him even more contradicting was that the Jewish power centres and Israel, who yelled for about 20 years that these archives “must be opened”, cheered the continued locking of these documents. Obviously they are quite happy that the Vatican's documents on the so-called holocaust remain under lock.

From the day Honsik appealed to Benedikt with an open letter to disclose all material about the period 1939 to 1945, pressure mounted on him. The Spanish system started to work on Honsik’s extradition to Austria. Following Honsik’s appeal to the Pope, Israel’s then prime minister Ehud Olmert flew on 12 December 2006 to Rome for a special visit with the Pope. Both, the Pope and Olmert, agreed to remember the holocaust for all eternity. No further archive openings were announced during that meeting - and never after.

Honsik asserted in his letter to the Pope "I shall accept whatever facts these documents may reveal" and, if he was refuted, he would apologize to Jewry and humbly serve his prison term. The answer he received was not a reply to his letter but an extradition enactment. He since suffers incarceration in Austria for publishing an unrefuted book and for an appeal to the Pope to open the “Auschwitz”-Archives. All in all he serves nearly six years in prison, but new indictments are in the make.