SOURCE: "The Men Who Whitewash Hitler," in New Statesman, Vol. 98, No. 2537, November 2, 1979, pp. 670-73.

Sereny is an Austrian-born journalist and fiction writer whose works include Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (1974) and The True Story of the Hitler Diaries. In the following essay, she attacks the logic and scholarship of neo-Nazi apologists.

There is a degree of indecency in entertaining a dialogue with individuals such as Richard Verrall and those of his persuasion. Nonetheless, it is necessary. We may despise them, but only at our peril do we mock or under-rate them, for the best—or worst—of them lack neither intelligence nor resources. According to the farmer and part-time publisher Robin Beauclerc (one of the original backers of the National Front), whose busy printing press produced not only Verrall's obnoxious pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die?, but also A. R. Butz's book The Hoax...