Holocaust denial is the negationist, antisemitic claim that Nazi Germany and its collaborators did not the Holocaust during World War II, ignoring overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Theories
Holocaust denial has roots in postwar Europe, beginning with writers such as Maurice Bardèche and Paul Rassinier. In the United States, the Institute for Historical Review gave Holocaust denial a pseudo-scholarly platform and helped spread it globally.
The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores historical evidence. Scholars use the term Denialism to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in order to distinguish them from legitimate historical revisionists, who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using established historical methodology. Holocaust deniers generally do not accept denial as an appropriate description of their activities and use the euphemism revisionism instead. Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs. It is illegal in Canada, Israel, and many European countries, including Germany itself. In 2007 and 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolutions condemning Holocaust denial.
Terminology and etymology
Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as "
Denialism".
Emory University professor
Deborah Lipstadt has written that: "The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." Scholars consider this misleading since the methods of Holocaust denial differ from those of legitimate historical revision.
["The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about a historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event—like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust—did, in fact, occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence...."] Legitimate historical revisionism is explained in a resolution adopted by the
Duke University History Department, November 8, 1991, and reprinted in
Duke Chronicle, November 13, 1991, in response to an advertisement produced by Bradley R Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust:
Lipstadt writes that modern Holocaust denial draws its inspiration from various sources, including a school of thought which used an established method to question government policies.
In 1992, Donald L. Niewyk gave some examples of how legitimate historical revisionism—the re-examination of accepted history and its updating with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information—may be applied to the study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge to change the historical understanding of it:
In contrast, the Holocaust denial movement bases its approach on the predetermined idea that the Holocaust, as understood by mainstream historiography, did not occur. Sometimes referred to as "negationism", from the French term négationnisme introduced by Henry Rousso,[See Alain Finkielkraut, Mary Byrd Kelly, Richard J. Golsan. The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide. University of Nebraska Press, 1998.] Holocaust deniers attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. Koenraad Elst writes:
In "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah", writes:
Background
Denial as a means of genocide
Lawrence Douglas argues that denial was invented by the perpetrators and employed as a means of genocide. For example, trucks of
Zyklon B were labeled with
Red Cross symbols and victims were told that they would be "resettled". Douglas also cites the
Posen speeches as an example of denial while genocide was ongoing, with Himmler referring to the Holocaust as "an unnamed and never to be named page of glory". According to Douglas, the denial of mass murder using gas chambers recalls the Nazi efforts to persuade the victims that they were actually harmless showers.
Efforts to conceal the historical record
German efforts
While the Second World War was still underway, the Nazis had already formed a contingency plan that if defeat was imminent they would carry out the total destruction of German records.
Historians have documented evidence that as
Germany's defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination.
Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination.
As one of many examples, the bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his command had shot at
Rumbula massacre (near
Riga) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943.
Similar operations were undertaken at Belzec, Treblinka and other death camps.
French collaboration in archive destruction
In occupied France, the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before the war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at Liberation, the Prefecture of Police destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation.
Efforts to preserve the historical record
During the war
One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war in France, where Drancy internment camp records were carefully preserved and turned over to the new National Office for Veterans and Victims of War. However, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, including to the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC).
In 1943, Isaac Schneersohn, anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in Grenoble which was under Italian occupation at the time[ as quoted in ] Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation.
Immediate post-war period
In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize the documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it.
Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead.
Nuremberg trials
The
Nuremberg trials took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of the German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe and reiterated at the
Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945.
While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by the
CDJC, and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography.
The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) or the 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time.
Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg.
Trial of Adolf Eichmann
In 1961, the Israeli government captured
Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to
Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor
Gideon Hausner's intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about the entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record.
The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage.
Significant individuals and organizations
In the immediate aftermath of the war, before the Allied forces had fully documented the extent of the Holocaust, many people reacted with disbelief and even denied the first reports of what had happened.
Compounding this disbelief was the memory of
Fake news of the German Corpse Factory, an anti-German atrocity propaganda campaign during WWI, which was widely known to be false by 1945.
During the 1930s, the Nazi government used this propaganda against the British, claiming allegations of concentration camps were malicious lies put forward by the British government, and historians Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin note that this story "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler". Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie"; likewise, The Christian Century commented that "The parallel between this story and the 'corpse factory' atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked."
The Neo-Nazi movement has been revitalized by Holocaust denial. Small but vocal numbers of neo-Nazis realized that recreation of a Hitlerite-style regime may be impossible, but a replica might be produced in the future; the rehabilitation of Nazism, they concluded, required the discrediting of the Holocaust.
As a movement, modern Holocaust denial is associated with historical revisionism based on pseudoscience evidence
Maurice Bardèche
The first person to openly write after the end of World War II that he doubted the reality of the Holocaust was French art critic Maurice Bardèche in his 1948 book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land").
[: "Pour la première fois, depuis la fin de la guerre, un homme écrit qu'il doute ouvertement de l'existence des camps de la mort" For] In the 1950 book
Nuremberg II, ou les Faux-Monnayeurs, designed around the tale of
Paul Rassinier, a former deportee from Nazi concentration camps (not to be confused with extermination camps) turned into a Holocaust denier, Bardèche concluded that kapos were in reality worse than
Schutzstaffel, and expressed his "doubts" about the existence of gas chambers.
Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial",[: "Bardèche being considered as the father-figure of Holocaust denial and its methodology"]
Harry Elmer Barnes
Harry Elmer Barnes, at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between World War I and World War II, Barnes was an
anti-war writer and a leader of the historical revisionism movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War, a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the Versailles Treaty was morally invalid. Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a völkisch activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on the outbreak of the war."
Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan, including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen.
In his 1962 pamphlet, Revisionism and Brainwashing, Barnes claimed that there was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct". Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans". He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of the Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds.
Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier Paul Rassinier, whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories". In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in The American Mercury, Barnes wrote: "The courageous author Rassinier lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call the swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner." Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany.
Beginnings of modern denialism
In 1961, a protégé of Barnes, David L. Hoggan, published Der erzwungene Krieg (
The Forced War) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though
Der erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi
antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion
Reichsmark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938
Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the
Kristallnacht (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the Kristallnacht). Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied the Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled
The Myth of the Six Million, which was published by the
Noontide Press, a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature.
In 1964, Paul Rassinier published The Drama of the European Jews. Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in Buchenwald for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors.
Austin App, a La Salle University medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier.
The publication of Arthur Butz's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University. In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon, wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac, who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at Auschwitz in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of the underlying evidence in his 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers.
Henry Bienen, the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern".
Institute for Historical Review
In 1978 the American
far-right activist
Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.
The IHR's founding was inspired by
Austin App, a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier. The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a
neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III, and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians, the majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.
In 1980, the IHR promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times and others including The Jerusalem Post. The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox, Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Los Angeles County Superior Court for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief. On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Los Angeles County Superior Court took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944,"
In the "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...."[Richard J. Evans. Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial, Verso Books, 2002, , p. 151. Quote: Like many individual Holocaust deniers, the Institute as a body denied that it was involved in Holocaust denial. It called this a 'smear' which was 'completely at variance with the facts' because 'revisionist scholars' such as Faurisson, Butz 'and bestselling British historian David Irving acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and otherwise perished during the Second World War as a direct and indirect result of the harsh anti-Jewish policies of Germany and its allies'. But the concession that a relatively small number of Jews were killed was routinely used by Holocaust deniers to distract attention from the far more important fact of their refusal to admit that the figure ran into the millions, and that a large proportion of these victims were systematically murdered by gassing as well as by shooting.]
James Keegstra
In 1984,
James Keegstra, a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian
Criminal Code for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews.
Keegstra was charged under s 281.2(2) of the Criminal Code (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offense.[ Criminal Code, RSC 1970, c C-34, s 281.2(2); now Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, s 319(2).] He was convicted at trial before the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench. The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie, that promoting hatred is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Keegstra appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal. That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be justifiably restricted under s 1 of the Charter. The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction.[*"The trouble erupted when the teacher's anti-Jewish (and, incidentally, anti-Catholic) views attracted complaints from certain Eckville parents, thereby inviting intervention from the district school superintendent, Robert David, in 1981. A train of events was launched that finally led to Keegstra's dismissal and subsequent indictment." Alan Davies, "The Keegstra Affair", in Alan T. Davies, Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992, , p. 228.
]
-
"Far from arguing that Keegstra had a civil right to continue spreading his dreck at Eckville High, civil libertarians wonder (along with the rest of Canada, we hope) why it took twelve years for the local school board to exercise its appropriate authority and fire him. But at least Keegstra was finally fired, and was finally removed from his position as Mayor of Eckville." John Dixon, The Keegstra case: Freedom of speech and the prosecution of harmful ideas , British Columbia Civil Liberties Association Position Paper, 1986. Retrieved June 27, 2007.
Zündel trials
The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as
Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of
Richard Verrall – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in
R. v. Zundel and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an
Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust".
The Holocaust historian
Raul Hilberg was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for the defense, Fred A. Leuchter,
David Irving and
Robert Faurisson. The pseudo-scientific
Leuchter report was presented as a defense document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by Douglas Christie and
Barbara Kulaszka. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.
Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicized his viewpoints.
Bradley Smith and the CODOH
In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review,
founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH).
[ "Poisoning the Web – Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust." ADL. 2001. April 24, 2008.] In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers.
[ "Bradley Smith and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust: The New College Try". ADL. 2001. April 24, 2008.]
Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as the CODOH campus project. He said, "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in a way that could not really be debated."
Ernst Nolte
The German philosopher and historian
Ernst Nolte, starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier,
Carlo Mattogno, as a serious historian.
In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized the work of the French Holocaust denier
Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel.
[Maier, Charles The Unmasterable Past, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 page 190.] In his 1987 book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg (
The European Civil War), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation".
[Lipstadt, Deborah Denying the Holocaust, New York: Free Press, 1993 page 214] Nolte himself, though he has never denied the occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany.
The British historian Ian Kershaw has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists.[Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretations, London: Arnold, 1989 page 176] In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something.
In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there was something to the Leuchter report: "If the revisionists Holocaust and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now."[Wistrich, Robert S. "Holocaust Denial" pages 293–301 from The Holocaust Encyclopedia edited by Walter Laqueur, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 page 299] Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany".[Lukacs, John The Hitler of History New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 233.] In a 1994 interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of the gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the chemical", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas."
The British historian Richard J. Evans in his 1989 book In Hitler's Shadow expressed the view that Nolte's reputation as a scholar was in ruins as a result of these and other controversial statements on his part.[Evans, Richard In Hitler's Shadow, New York, NY: Pantheon, 1989 page 123] The American historian Deborah Lipstadt in a 2003 interview stated:
Mayer controversy
In 1988, the American historian Arno J. Mayer published a book entitled
Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, which did not explicitly deny the Holocaust, but according to
Lucy Dawidowicz lent support to Holocaust denial by stating that most people who died at Auschwitz were the victims of "natural causes" such as disease, not gassing.
[Dawidowicz, Lucy What Is The Use of Jewish History?, New York: Schocken Books, 1992 pages 129–130] Dawidowicz argued that Mayer's statements about Auschwitz were "a breathtaking assertion".
[Dawidowicz, Lucy What Is The Use of Jewish History?, New York: Schocken Books, 1992 page 130] Holocaust historian Robert Jan van Pelt has written that Mayer's book is as close as a mainstream historian has ever come to supporting Holocaust denial.
[Pelt, Robert Jan van The Case for Auschwitz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 pages 47–48] Holocaust deniers such as
David Irving have often cited Mayer's book as one reason for embracing Holocaust denial. Though Mayer has been often condemned for his statement about the reasons for the Auschwitz death toll, his book does not deny the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, as Holocaust deniers often claim.
Some mainstream Holocaust historians have labeled Mayer a denier. The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that Mayer "popularizes the nonsense that the Nazis saw in Marxism and Bolshevism their main enemy, and the Jews unfortunately got caught up in this; when he links the destruction of the Jews to the ups and downs of German warfare in the Soviet Union, in a book that is so cocksure of itself that it does not need a proper scientific apparatus, he is really engaging in a much more subtle form of Holocaust denial".[Bauer, Yehuda "A Past That Will Not Away" pages 12–22 from The Holocaust and History edited by Michael Berenbaum and Abrahm Peck, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998 page 15.]
Defenders of Mayer argue that his statement that "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable" has been taken out of context, particularly by Holocaust deniers.[Shermer, Michael & Grobman, Alex Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 page 126.] Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman observe that the paragraph from which the statement is taken asserts that the SS destroyed the majority of the documentation relating to the operation of the gas chambers in the death camps, which is why Mayer feels that sources for the operation of the gas chambers are "rare" and "unreliable".[Shermer, Michael & Grobman, Alex Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 pages 126–127.]
False equivalence and effect
Denialist focus on Allied war crimes
In countries where outright denial of the Holocaust is illegal, Holocaust denial authors, focus "on so-called Allied atrocities against the Germans during and after the war."
[Stephen E. Atkins, Holocaust denial as an international movement, ABC-CLIO, 2009, pg. 105] According to historian
Deborah Lipstadt, the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II and the bombing of Dresden,
is at the center of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary Holocaust denial; she calls the phenomenon "immoral equivalencies".
[Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Bt Bound, 1999, pg. 41] In 1977, historian
Martin Broszat, in a review of
David Irving's book
Hitler's War, maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to imply moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states with both sides equally guilty of terrible crimes, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "no longer an exceptional phenomenon".
[Broszat, Martin. "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390–429 from Aspects of the Third Reich edited by H.W. Koch page 395.]
Propaganda
According to James Najarian, Holocaust deniers working for the Institute for Historical Review are not trained in history and "put out sham scholarly articles in the mock-academic publication, the
Journal of Historical Review". They appeal to "our objectivity, our sense of fair play, and our distrust of figurative language". Thus, they rely on facts to grab the readers' attention. These facts, however, are strung by what Najarian calls "fabricated decorum" and are re-interpreted for their use. For example, they pay particular attention to inconsistencies in numbers.
Holocaust denial propaganda in all forms has been shown to influence the audiences that it reaches. In fact, even the well-educated—that is, college graduates and current university students alike—are susceptible to such propaganda when it is presented before them. This stems from the growing disbelief that audiences feel after being exposed to such information, especially since Holocaust witnesses themselves are decreasing in number.
Eastern Europe
General
In some Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania, Holocaust deniers do not deny the very fact of mass murder of Jews but deny some national or regional elements of the Holocaust.
Soviet Union and Russia
According to
Zvi Gitelman, Soviet writers tended either to ignore or downplay the Holocaust, treating it as one small part of a larger phenomenon of 20 million dead Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War. According to Gitelman, Soviet authorities were concerned about raising the consciousness of Soviet Jews and retarding their assimilation to the greater Soviet population. The Holocaust also raised the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, an uncomfortable topic for Soviet historiography.
According to historian
Yuri Pivovarov in modern Russia this trend has returned with the Russian invasion on Ukraine, culminating with July 19, 2023, article of
Maria Zakharova who argued that it were the Soviet citizens who were the victims of Holocaust in the first place. In a number of popular history project sponsored by Russian state Jews were mentioned as one of many victim groups, or not mentioned at all.
Holocaust denial literature is freely published in Russia, and one of the most prominent authors, Jürgen Graf, lives there since his escape from prosecution in Switzerland in the 2000s.
Ukraine
The post-Soviet radical right activists in Ukraine do not question the existence of Nazi death camps or Jewish ghettos. However, they deny the participation of local population in anti-Jewish
or the contribution of national paramilitary organizations in capture and execution of Jews.
Thus, denial of the antisemitic nature and participation in the Holocaust of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has become a central component of the intellectual history of the Ukrainian diaspora and nationalists.
Croatia
In 2018, the United States Department of State warned about "the glorification of the
Ustasha regime and denial of the Holocaust" in Croatia, citing the placement of a plaque with the Ustasha-era salute 'Za dom spremni' on the grounds of a concentration camp memorial site, far-right rallies and the concert of the controversial band Thompson among other events.
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center describes Croatia as a "cradle of Holocaust distortion".
Holocaust denial in Croatia typically involves the downplaying or denial of the Holocaust carried out by the Ustasha regime, particularly against Serbs and Jews at the Jasenovac concentration camp and it is done by public figures, though the regime's victims also included Roma and anti-fascist Croats.
The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp in Croatia, an NGO with authors and academics among its members, claims that Jasenovac was a labor camp during World War II and that it was later used by Yugoslav Communists to imprison Ustasha members and regular Croatian Home Guard army troops until 1948, then alleged Stalinists until 1951.
Following a series of book publications denying the Ustashe regime's crimes, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Croatian authorities in 2019 to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so".
Hungary
In Hungary, Holocaust distortion and denial take place in the form of downplaying the country's role in the killing and deportation of Jews. The Arrow Cross Party committed numerous crimes and killed or deported Jews. A total of 437,000 Jews were deported by Miklós Horthy's government in the Kingdom of Hungary, an Axis collaborator.
Serbia
In Serbia, Holocaust distortion and denial is manifested in the downplaying of Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić's roles in the extermination of Serbia's Jews in concentration camps in Nedić's Serbia, by a number of Serbian historians.
Serb collaborationist armed forces, including the
Chetniks, were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the mass killings of mainly Jews and Roma as well as Croats, Muslims and those Serbs who sided with any anti-German resistance.
Since the end of the war, Serbian collaboration in the Holocaust has been the subject of historical revisionism by Serbian leaders.
Slovakia
In Slovakia, some anti-communist writers claim that
Jozef Tiso was a savior of Jews or that the Slovak State was not responsible for the Holocaust in Slovakia.
Western Europe
Belgium
In Belgium in 2001,
Roeland Raes, the ideologue and vice-president of one of the country's largest political parties, the
Vlaams Blok, gave an interview on Dutch TV where he cast doubt over the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In the same interview, he questioned the scale of the Nazis' use of gas chambers and the authenticity of
Anne Frank's diary. In response to the media assault following the interview, Raes was forced to resign his position but vowed to remain active within the party.
[ Belgium's far right party in Holocaust controversy , The Guardian, Friday, March 9, 2001.] Three years later, the Vlaams Blok was convicted of racism and chose to disband. Immediately afterwards, it legally reformed under the new name Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) with the same leaders and the same membership.
[ Court rules Vlaams Blok is racist , BBC News, November 9, 2004.]
In September 2024, the Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang party sparked controversy by putting a convicted Holocaust denier as one of its candidates in the upcoming municipal elections.
France
In France, Holocaust denial became more prominent in the 1990s as négationnisme, though the movement has existed in ultra-left French politics since at least the 1960s, led by figures such as
Pierre Guillaume (who was involved in the bookshop La Vieille Taupe during the 1960s). Elements of the extreme far-right in France have begun to build on each other's negationist arguments, which often span beyond the Holocaust to cover a range of antisemitic views, incorporating attempts to tie the Holocaust to the Biblical massacre of the
Canaanites, critiques of Zionism, and other material fanning what has been called a "conspiratorial Judeo-phobia" designed to legitimize and "banalize" antisemitism.
[Richard Joseph Golsan, Vichy's Afterlife, University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 130.]
Germany
The trial of a Canadian woman, Monika Schaefer, and her German-Canadian brother, Alfred Schaefer started in Germany in early July 2018. They were charged with Volksverhetzung (literally 'incitement of the people', often phrased as 'incitement to hatred' in English-language media). The pair had published video clips on
YouTube of their denial of the genocide of Jews. In the clips, Alfred Schaefer said that Jews wanted to destroy Germans, blamed them for starting both World Wars, and referred to the Holocaust as a "Jewish fantasy".
[Cohen, Reut (May 8, 2018) "Canadian Alfred Schaefer Convicted of Holocaust Denial in Germany" B'Nal Brith Canada] Monika Schaefer was arrested in January 2018 in Germany while attending a court hearing of
Sylvia Stolz.
[ Roberta (July 6, 2018) "Canadian Holocaust denier on trial in Germany for 'incitement to hatred'" CBC News][Staff (January 4, 2018) "Canadian Holocaust denier arrested in Germany: Report" Edmonton Sun][JTA (January 9, 2018) "Canadian Holocaust denier arrested in Germany" The Times of Israel] Schaefer had been the Green Party candidate in the
Alberta riding of Yellowhead during the federal elections in 2006, 2008, and 2011, but was expelled from the party after news reports surfaced of a July 2016 video
[Alfred S. "Sorry Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust" (video) YouTube] where she describes the Holocaust as "the most persistent lie in all of history" and insisted that those in concentration camps had been kept as healthy and as well-fed as possible.
[Staff (January 5, 2018) "Alberta Holocaust denier reportedly arrested in Germany" CBC News][Fishman, Aidan (January 4, 2018) "Canadian Holocaust Denier Arrested in Germany Following B'nai B'rith Complaint" B'Nal Brith Canada] In late October 2018, Monika Schaefer was convicted of the charge of 'incitement of hatred'. She was sentenced to ten months while Alfred Schaefer, also convicted, received a sentence of three years and two months.
United Kingdom
In January 2019, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters, on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust found that 5% of UK adults did not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 (8%) believed its scale has been exaggerated. One in five respondents incorrectly answered that less than 2 million Jews were murdered, and 45% couldn't say how many people were murdered in the Holocaust. Speaking in light of the survey's findings,
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "One person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many, and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history."
The BBC Radio 4 programme
More or Less, specializing on statistics, investigated the survey finding it was unlikely to be accurate. Participants were incentivized to complete the online survey by shopping vouchers encouraging speedy answering, and the principal question was a "reverse question" with most participants having to give the reverse answer to surrounding questions requiring careful answering. Another question asked how many Jewish people had been murdered in the holocaust with only 0.2% of participants giving the answer zero, which was considered to be a closer estimate of the number of UK adults that did not believe the Holocaust took place.
Middle East
General
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, told a German newspaper in 1964 that "no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered in."
Denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern figures and media. Holocaust denial is sponsored by some Middle Eastern governments, including Iran
Prominent figures from the Middle East have rarely made publicized visits to Auschwitz—Israel's Arab community being the exception. In 2010, Hadash MK Mohammed Barakeh visited, following a previous visit of two other Arab-Israeli lawmakers, and a group of about 100 Arab-Israeli writers and clerics in 2003.
Iran
Until recently, the Islamic Republic was the only state whose leadership and institutions openly engaged in Holocaust denial (and at times, justification) as part of official ideology.
Iranian discourse often portrays the Holocaust as a fabricated myth, allegedly invented by a Zionist–American alliance to justify the creation of Israel and expand Western influence.
This framing serves to delegitimize Jewish statehood and legitimize the destruction of Israel.
The Iranian government has also shifted blame for global injustice during World War II from Nazi Germany to the United States, which is seen as greatest cultural threat to Islam.
Mark Weitzman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization described Iran as the "center of Muslim Holocaust denial."
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently denied the Holocaust,[Variously:
]
formally 'questioning' the reliability of the historical evidence,[ "Spiegel Interview with Iran's President Ahmadinejad: 'We Are Determined'" , Der Spiegel (May 30, 2006). Retrieved 07sep2013.] although he on occasion confirmed belief in it.[ Transcript of his speech on September 24, 2007. "However, I believe the Holocaust, from what we read, happened during World War II after 1930 in the 1940s."]
The remarks immediately provoked international controversy as well as swift condemnation from government officials in Israel, Europe, and the United States. All six political parties in the German parliament signed a joint resolution condemning Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial.[ German parliament slams Ahmadinejad remarks, Expatica, December 16, 2005.] In contrast, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal described Ahmadinejad's comments as "courageous" and stated, "Muslim people will defend Iran because it voices what they have in their hearts, in particular the Palestinian people."[Al Jazeera,] In the United States, the Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks.[ Egyptian Islamists deny Holocaust , December 23, 2005.]
On December 11, 2006, the Iranian state-sponsored "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust" began to widespread condemnation.[* "Holocaust denial outrages Europe" , The Washington Times, December 13, 2006.
]
-
"Holocaust deniers gather in Iran" , Edmonton Journal, December 13, 2006.
-
"Holocaust deniers rebuked". Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2006.
-
"Canadian prof attends Tehran's gathering of Holocaust deniers" , The Globe and Mail, December 13, 2006.
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"The conference for Holocaust deniers hosted by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a transparent polemical stunt." "Iran's great pretender" , The Boston Globe, December 13, 2006.
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"What's the perfect way to top off a Holocaust denial conference featuring input from the likes of such scholars as former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke?" "Holocaust denial can be dangerous" , Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2006.
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"Across Europe, outrage over meeting of holocaust deniers" , Zee News, December 13, 2006.
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, Calgary Sun, December 13, 2006.
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"Holocaust deniers' meeting spurs outrage" , Houston Chronicle, December 12, 2006.
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"Across Europe, outrage over meeting of Holocaust deniers in Iran" , International Herald Tribune, December 12, 2006.
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"Holocaust deniers gather in Iran for 'scientific' conference" , The Guardian, December 12, 2006.
-
"Revisionist fringe gathers for Iran's Holocaust denial jamboree" , The Independent, December 12, 2006.
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"Holocaust Denied at Iran Forum to 'Research' Nazis" , Bloomberg Television, December 11, 2006.
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"Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran" , The New York Times, December 11, 2006.
-
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at a Tehran conference denying the existence of the Holocaust, said Israel will disappear like the Soviet Union." "Iran students rebel over Holocaust denial" , United Press International, December 12, 2006.
though Iran denied it was a Holocaust denial conference.
Iran was the only country to vote against UN Resolution 61/255 condemning Holocaust denial in 2007. The editor of Kayhan, a newspaper linked to the Supreme Leader, dismissed the resolution as "“preparing the United Nations' corpse for burial in the graveyard of history."
In 2013, in an interview with CNN, newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the Holocaust, stating: "I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis created towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn."
In his official 2013 Nowruz address, Supreme Leader of Iran Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, remarking that "The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened."
In 2015, the House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex in Iran organized the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Competition,[ "Iran to host Holocaust denial cartoon competition." Ynetnews. February 1, 2015. February 1, 2015.]
Israel
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at a speech to the World Zionist Congress in 2015, claimed Adolf Hitler did not want to exterminate Jews but only wanted to expel them from Europe, and the extermination of the Jews was the idea of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Scholars denied this claim, including
Moshe Zimmermann who said that it reinforced the opinions of the far-right and Holocaust deniers. Zimmerman stated that "Any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial". Netanyahu later told reporters that he was not letting Hitler off the hook for the Holocaust and that the Mufti's role should not be ignored.
Palestine
Individuals from the Palestinian Authority,
Hamas, and a number of Palestinian groups have engaged in various aspects of Holocaust denial.
Hamas has promoted Holocaust denial;[ Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust Denial , Kenneth Lasson, University of Baltimore School of Law, 2007] Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi held that the Holocaust never occurred, that Zionism were behind the action of Nazis, and that Zionists funded Nazism.[ Washington Institute for Near East Policy , 2000] In August 2009, Hamas' told UNRWA that it would "refuse" to allow Palestinian children to study the Holocaust, which it called "a lie invented by the Zionists" and referred to Holocaust education as a "war crime".[Hadid, Diaa (September 1, 2009) "Hamas leader denies Holocaust" Associated Press via Boston Globe] Hamas continued to hold this position in 2011, when the organization's Ministry for Refugee Affairs said that Holocaust education was "intended to poison the minds of our children."[Oster, Marcy (March 1, 2011) "Hamas to U.N.: Don't teach Holocaust" Jewish Telegraphic Agency]
The thesis of the 1982 doctoral dissertation of Mahmoud Abbas, a co-founder of Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority, was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement".[ Was Abu Mazen a Holocaust Denier? By Brynn Malone (History News Network)][ Abu Mazen: A Political Profile. Zionism and Holocaust Denial by Yael Yehoshua (MEMRI) April 29, 2003][ A Holocaust-Denier as Prime Minister of "Palestine"? by Dr. Rafael Medoff (The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)][ Abu Mazen and the Holocaust by Tom Gross]
In his March 2006 interview with Haaretz, Abbas stated, "I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12 million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it."
Surveys conducted by Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa found that the fraction of Palestinian citizens of Israel denying that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis increased from 28% in 2006 to 40% in 2008.
In Arab eyes disbelief in the very happening of the Shoah is not hate of Jews (embedded in the denial of the Shoah in the West) but rather a form of protest. Arabs not believing in the event of Shoah intend to express strong objection to the portrayal of the Jews as the ultimate victim and to the underrating of the Palestinians as a victim. They deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state that the Shoah gives legitimacy to. Arab disbelief in the Shoah is a component of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike the ideological and anti-Semitic denial of the Holocaust and the desire to escape guilt in the West.
Mohammed Dajani, a Palestinian professor at Al-Quds University and founding director of its American Studies Institute, took a group of students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland. Following the trip, he faced strong opposition and pressure from within the university, ultimately leading to his resignation. Dajani later explained that critics believed the knowledge students might gain from the visit would contradict the prevailing collective narrative, with some viewing the Holocaust as a Zionist narrative intended to garner international support for Israel. Still, he defended Holocaust education as essential for peace, stating:
Syria
In a speech delivered at the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's central committee meeting in December 2023, the Ba'ath party secretary-general
Bashar al-Assad claimed that there was "no evidence" of the killings of six million Jews during
the Holocaust. Assad alleged that the Holocaust was "politicized" by Allied powers to facilitate the mass-deportation of
European Jews to Palestine. Assad also accused the U.S. government of financially and militarily sponsoring the rise of Nazism during the
Interwar period.
Highlighting the deaths of 26 million Soviet citizens during the Second World War, Assad said: "there was no specific method of torture or killing specific to the Jews. The
Nazism used the same methods everywhere."
Turkey
In Turkey, in 1996, the Islamic preacher
Adnan Oktar under the pen name of Harun Yahya, distributed thousands of copies of a book which was originally published the previous year, entitled
Soykırım Yalanı ("The Genocide Lie", referring to the Holocaust) and mailed unsolicited texts to American and European schools and colleges.
[Michael Hopkins, "Harun Yahya and Holocaust Revisionism" , The TalkOrigins Archive Posted:.] The publication of
Soykırım Yalanı sparked much public debate.
This book claims, "what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans."
In March 1996, a Turkish painter and intellectual,
Bedri Baykam, published a strongly worded critique of the book in the Ankara daily newspaper
Siyah-Beyaz ("Black and White"). A legal suit for slander was brought against him. During the trial in September, Baykam exposed the real author of the book as Adnan Oktar. The suit was withdrawn in March 1997.
[ Alt URL]
Other
Finland
Holocaust denial started in Finland almost immediately after the war, with many Finns who had been involved in the far-right and Nazi movements publishing articles questioning the Holocaust. Prominent early Finnish Holocaust deniers include professor C. A. J. Gadolin, CEO Carl-Gustaf Herlitz, architech Carl O. Nordling and ambassador
Teo Snellman.
[" Kääntäkää aseenne ihmiskunnan suurinta vihollista, kommunismia vastaan!" (Äärioikeiston pikkupommit ja isänmaallinen paatos) Yle Areena. Yleisradio.][Tommi Kotonen: Politiikan juoksuhaudat – Äärioikeistoliikkeet Suomessa kylmän sodan aikana, s. 64–67. Atena, Jyväskylä 2018.] In early 1970s, a Finnish translation of a pamphlet denying Holocaust written by
Vera Oredsson was distributed in Finland.
's Patriotic Popular Front started distributing a Finnish translation of Richard Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? in 1976.
[Häkkinen, Perttu; Iitti, Vesa (2022). Lightbringers of the North: Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-64411-464-3. p. 146]
In the late 1980 and early 1990s, National Radical Party's newspaper Uusi Suunta wrote how the supposed Jewish owned media maligned fascism with Holocaust "sob stories" that "have never been proven" to undermine the nationalist movement. One issue of Uusi Suunta stated that "The horrors of the concentration camps, that are not true by half, have been tied to the nationalist movement regardless of nationality."
Antisemitism has also experienced a resurgence after the Cold War, both in the internet and real life.
In 2013, the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked President Niinistö to condemn a neo-Nazi newspaper circulated to some 660,000 households. The newspaper published articles denying the Holocaust and articles such as "Zionist terrorism" and "CNN, Goldman Sachs and Zionist Control" translated from David Duke.[Oosi, Riikka: Kärkkäisen tuomio ei yllätä asiantuntijaa Yle. October 21, 2013. Retrieved January 22, 2017.]
Far-right Finns Party General Secretary Olli Immonen has also multiple times shared a blog criticizing the "Holocaust-religion".
Japan
Japanese Holocaust denial first appeared in 1989 and reached its peak in 1995 with the publication in February 1995 by the Japanese magazine
, a 250,000-circulation monthly published by Bungeishunju, of a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka
which stated: "The '
Holocaust' is a fabrication. There were no execution
gas chambers in Auschwitz or in any other concentration camp. Today, what is displayed as 'gas chambers' at the remains of the Auschwitz camp in Poland are a post-war fabrication by the Polish communist regime or by the
Soviet Union, which controlled the country. Not once, neither at Auschwitz nor in any territory controlled by the Germans during the Second World War, was there 'mass murder of Jews' in 'gas chambers."
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center instigated a
boycott of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including
Volkswagen,
Mitsubishi, and Cartier. Within days, Bungei Shunju shut down
Marco Polo and its editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada, quit, as did the president of Bungei Shunju, Kengo Tanaka.
United States
According to a 2020 survey of US youth by the Claims Conference, 23% of US adults aged 18-39 said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated, or were not sure.
Reactions to Holocaust denial
In 2022, the
United Nations adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial and antisemitism. The resolution was proposed by Germany and Israel.
Scholars
Scholarly response to Holocaust denial can be roughly divided into three categories. Some academics refuse to engage Holocaust deniers or their arguments at all, on grounds that doing so lends them unwarranted legitimacy.
The second group of scholars, typified by the American historian
Deborah Lipstadt, have tried to raise awareness of the methods and motivations of Holocaust denial without legitimizing the deniers themselves. "We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers' contentions," Lipstadt wrote. "It would be never-ending.... Their commitment is to an ideology and their 'findings' are shaped to support it."
[Deborah Lipstadt, 1992 interview with Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee] A third group, typified by the
Nizkor Project, responds to arguments and claims made by Holocaust denial groups by pointing out inaccuracies and errors in their evidence.
In December 1991 the American Historical Association, the oldest and largest society of historians and teachers of history in the United States, issued the following statement: "The American Historical Association Council strongly deplores the publicly reported attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust. No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place."
Literary theorist Jean Baudrillard described Holocaust denial as "part of the extermination itself".[Golsan, 130] Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, during a 1999 discussion at the White House in Washington, D.C., called the Holocaust "the most documented tragedy in recorded history. Never before has a tragedy elicited so much witness from the killers, from the victims and even from the bystanders—millions of pieces here in the museum what you have, all other museums, archives in the thousands, in the millions."
Deborah Lipstadt's 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, sharply criticized various Holocaust deniers, including British author David Irving, for deliberately misrepresenting evidence to justify their preconceived conclusions. In the book, Lipstadt named Irving as "one of the more dangerous" Holocaust deniers, because he was a published author, and was viewed by some as a legitimate military historian. He was "familiar with historical evidence", she wrote, and "bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda". In 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books. Irving, who appeared as a defense witness in Ernst Zündel's trial in Canada, and once declared at a rally of Holocaust deniers that "more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz",
Ken McVay, an American resident in Canada, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers, feeling that it was better to confront them openly than to try to censor them. On the Usenet newsgroup alt.revisionism he began a campaign of "truth, fact, and evidence", working with other participants on the newsgroup to uncover factual information about the Holocaust and counter the arguments of the deniers by proving them to be based upon misleading evidence, false statements, and outright lies. He founded the Nizkor Project to expose the activities of the Holocaust deniers, who responded to McVay with personal attacks, slander, and death threats.
Public figures
A number of public figures have spoken out against Holocaust denial. In 2006, UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan said: "Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated. Holocaust denial is the work of bigots; we must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made."
In January 2007, the United Nations General Assembly condemned "without reservation any denial of the Holocaust", though Iran disassociated itself from the resolution.
In July 2013, Iran's then president-elect Hassan Rohani described Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and Israel as "hate speech rhetoric"
Former Auschwitz SS personnel
Critics of Holocaust denial also include members of the Auschwitz SS. Camp physician and SS-
Untersturmführer Hans Münch considered the facts of Auschwitz "so firmly determined that one cannot have any doubt at all", and described those who negate what happened at the camp as "malevolent" people who have "personal interest to want to bury in silence things that cannot be buried in silence".
[Frankfurter, Bernhard. Die Begegnung. Auschwitz-Ein Opfer und ein Täter im Gespräch. Vienna, Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1995, p. 102. cited in Jan van Pelt, Robert. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 291.] Zyklon B handler and SS-
Oberscharführer Josef Klehr said that anyone who maintains that nobody was gassed at Auschwitz must be "crazy or in the wrong".
SS-
Unterscharführer Oswald Kaduk stated that he did not consider those who maintain such a thing as normal people.
[ Drei Deutsche Mörder. Aufzeichnungen über die Banalität des Bösen, Germany 1998 (filmed in 1978). Directed by Ebbo Demant, produced by Südwestrundfunk.] Hearing about Holocaust denial compelled former SS-
Rottenführer Oskar Gröning to publicly speak about what he witnessed at Auschwitz, and denounce Holocaust deniers, stating:
Holocaust denial and antisemitism
Holocaust denial is given as an example of antisemitism in the IHRA definition of antisemitism,
adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as well as the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Scotland, Romania, Germany and Bulgaria. The European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling for member states to adopt the definition on June 1, 2017.
The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity defines Holocaust denial as "a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs".
According to Walter Reich, psychiatrist and then a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, one-time director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and now professor of international affairs at George Washington University:
The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet described the motivation of deniers more succinctly, explaining, "One revives the dead in order the better to strike the living."
Examination of claims
The key claims which cause Holocaust denial to differ from established fact are:
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The Nazis had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews.
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The Nazis did not use to mass murder Jews.
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The figure of 5 to 6 million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration, and the actual number is an order of magnitude lower.
Other claims include the following:
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Stories of the Holocaust were a myth initially created by the Allies of World War II to demonize Germans, Jews having spread this myth as part of a grander plot intended to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and now to garner continuing support for the state of Israel.
[A plot designed to garner support of Israel:
]
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"The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust – The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin Books, 1993, p. 27. .
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"Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as 'truth' and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? , JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
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"Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2000, , p. 106.
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"They Holocaust picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism , "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, , p. 445.
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Documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs to The Diary of Anne Frank, is fabricated.
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Survivor testimonies are filled with errors and inconsistencies and are thus unreliable.
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Interrogators obtained Nazi prisoners' confessions of war crimes through the use of torture.
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The Nazi treatment of Jews was no different from what the Allies did to their enemies in World War II.
[Shermer & Grobman, 2002, pp. 103–14.]
Holocaust denial is widely viewed as failing to adhere to principles for the treatment of evidence that mainstream historians (as well as scholars in other fields) regard as basic to reason.["(H)istory is the attempt to describe events of the past and move from description to analysis, in accordance with certain agreed rules of evidence, of analysis of language, and of logic." "Yehuda Bauer, Historian of the Holocaust – Portrait of an Historian" – Online Dimensions, a Journal of Holocaust Studies, Fall, 2004]
The Holocaust was well documented by the bureaucracy of the Nazi government itself.["... the German bureaucrats' collective actions are relatively well-documented for the historian...." Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: essays on launching the final solution, Cambridge University Press, 1992, , p. 125.]["According to the historian Raul Hilberg, the United States alone captured forty thousand linear feet of documents on the murder of European Jews ... we can say that the Holocaust is a uniquely well-documented historical event." Deák, István. Essays on Hitler's Europe, University of Nebraska Press, 2001, , p. 67] It was further witnessed by the Allied forces who entered Germany and its associated Axis Powers states towards the end of World War II.[ Holocaust: The events and their impact on real people, DK Publishing in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, p. 146. "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."][Kelly Oliver. Witnessing: beyond recognition, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, , p. 90.][Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz. Image and remembrance: representation and the Holocaust, 2003, Indiana University Press, , pp. 205–206.] It was also witnessed from the inside by non-Jewish captives such as Catholic French Resistance member André Rogerie who wrote extensively and testified about his experiences in seven camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau[ INA, Major Interviews, General André Rogerie ; audio recording] and also produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium.[Annette Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l'oubli, Plon, 1992, p. 249.]
According to researchers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:[Shermer & Grobman, 2002, p. 33.]
Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers' centers on the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly never happened as commonly accepted. Numerous accounts have been given by Holocaust deniers (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed facts and evidence; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biassed statements, or even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have documented numerous instances in which such evidence was altered or manufactured (see Nizkor Project and David Irving). According to Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "in our society of image and spectacle, extermination on paper leads to extermination in reality."[Pierre Vidal-Naquet, French "une tentative d'extermination sur le papier qui relaie l'extermination réelle" in Les assassins de la mémoire, Un Eichmann de papier, Postface de Gisèle Sapiro, Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, La Découverte, Paris, 2005, .]
Laws against Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 18 countries:
Austria,
Belgium,
Canada, the
Czech Republic,
France, Germany,
Hungary, Israel,
Liechtenstein,
Lithuania,
Luxembourg, the
Netherlands,
Poland,
Portugal,
Romania,
Russia,
Slovakia, and
Switzerland.
[Lechtholz-Zey, Jacqueline: Laws Banning Holocaust Denial. Genocide Prevention Now.. Retrieved October 4, 2020.] Romania officially denied the Holocaust occurred on its territory up until the Wiesel Commission in 2004.
The European Union's Framework decision on Racism and
Xenophobia states that denying or grossly trivializing "crimes of genocide" should be made "punishable in all EU Member States".
Such legislation remains controversial. In October 2007, a tribunal declared Spain's genocide denial law unconstitutional.[By way of judgment of November 7, 2007 of the Constitutional Court of Spain, which ruled the criminalization to be unconstitutional and void.] In 2007 Italy rejected a denial law proposing a prison sentence of up to four years. In 2006 the Netherlands rejected a draft law proposing a maximum sentence of one year on denial of genocidal acts in general, although specifically denying the Holocaust remains a criminal offense there. The United Kingdom has twice rejected Holocaust denial laws. Denmark and Sweden have also rejected such legislation.
A number of deniers have been prosecuted under various countries' denial laws. French literature professor Robert Faurisson, for example, was convicted and punished under the Gayssot Act in 1990. Some historians oppose such laws, among them Pierre Vidal-Naquet, an outspoken critic of Faurisson, on the grounds that denial legislation imposes "historical truth as legal truth".[François de Smet, Philosopher of the ULB: Le négationnisme est l'une des pires formes de racisme. Elle en est aussi sa version la plus « respectable », se parant des oripeaux de la science. C'est pour cela qu'il faut continuer à le sanctionner, in La Libre Belgique, on April 28, 2006] Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt expressed her opposition to laws against expressing Holocaust denial, saying, "I don't think they work. I think they turn whatever is being outlawed into forbidden fruit." She also said that politicians should not be able to decide what can and cannot be said.
David Irving conviction
In February 2006, Irving was convicted in Austria, where Holocaust denial is illegal, for a speech he had made in 1989 in which he denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Irving was aware of the outstanding arrest warrant but chose to go to Austria anyway "to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity".
Although he pleaded guilty to the charge, Irving said he had been "mistaken", and had changed his opinions on the Holocaust. "I said that then, based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."
Irving served 13 months of a 3-year sentence in an Austrian prison, including the period between his arrest and conviction, and was deported in early 2007. The episode sparked intense international debate over the limits of freedom of speech. Upon hearing of Irving's sentence, Lipstadt said:
I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship.... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth.
According to
CNN, upon Irving's return to the UK, he "vowed to repeat views denying the Holocaust that led to his conviction" stating he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.
Genocide denials
Other acts of genocide have met similar attempts to deny and minimize them.
Gregory Stanton, formerly of the US State Department and the founder of
Genocide Watch, lists denial as the final stage of a genocide development: "Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims."
Holocaust denial is often compared to Armenian genocide denial because of similar tactics of misrepresenting evidence, false equivalence, claiming that atrocities were invented by war propaganda and that powerful lobbies manufacture genocide allegations for their own profit, subsuming one-sided systematic extermination into war deaths, and shifting blame from the perpetrators to the victims of genocide. Both forms of negationism share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about.
See also
Holocaust:
Other:
Citations
[ See also appropriate section of the Holocaust article for the death toll.]
[Key elements of Holocaust denial:
]
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"Before discussing how Holocaust denial constitutes a conspiracy theory, and how the theory is distinctly American, it is important to understand what is meant by the term 'Holocaust denial'. Holocaust deniers, or 'revisionists', as they call themselves, question all three major points of definition of the Nazi Holocaust. First, they contend that, while mass murders of Jews did occur (although they dispute both the intentionality of such murders as well as the supposed deservedness of these killings), there was no official Nazi policy to murder Jews. Second, and perhaps most prominently, they contend that there were no homicidal gas chambers, particularly at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where mainstream historians believe over 1 million Jews were murdered, primarily in gas chambers. And third, Holocaust deniers contend that the death toll of European Jews during World War II was well below 6 million. Deniers float numbers anywhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million, as a general rule." Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition , The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
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"In part III we directly address the three major foundations upon which Holocaust denial rests, including ... the claim that gas chambers and crematoria were used not for mass extermination but rather for delousing clothing and disposing of people who died of disease and overwork; ... the claim that the six million figure is an exaggeration by an order of magnitude—that about six hundred thousand, not six million, died at the hands of the Nazis; ... the claim that there was no intention on the part of the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry and that the Holocaust was nothing more than the unfortunate by-product of the vicissitudes of war." Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman. Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2000, , p. 3.
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"Holocaust Denial: Claims that the mass extermination of the Jews by the Nazis never happened; that the number of Jewish losses has been greatly exaggerated; that the Holocaust was not systematic nor a result of an official policy; or simply that the Holocaust never took place." What is Holocaust Denial , Yad Vashem website, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
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"Among the untruths routinely promoted are the claims that no gas chambers existed at Auschwitz, that only 600,000 Jews were killed rather than six million, and that Hitler had no murderous intentions toward Jews or other groups persecuted by his government." Holocaust Denial , Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
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"In general, Holocaust denial consists of four central points: minimization of numbers killed, denial of use of gassing, denial of the systematic nature of the genocide, and claims that the evidence was fabricated, above all after the war." Mark M. Hull, Vera Moynes. Masquerade: Treason, the Holocaust, and an Irish Impostor, University of Oklahoma Press, 2017, p. 181.
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"According to the deniers, the Nazis did not murder six million Jews, the notion of homicidal gas chambers is a myth, and any deaths of Jews that did occur under the Nazis were the result of wartime privations, not of systematic persecution and state-organised mass murder." Deborah Lipstadt. "Denying the Holocaust", History, BBC Online. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
["The kinds of assertions made in Holocaust-denial material include the following:
]
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Several hundred thousand rather than approximately six million Jews died during the war.
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Scientific evidence proves that gas chambers could not have been used to kill large numbers of people.
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The Nazi command had a policy of deporting Jews, not exterminating them.
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Some deliberate killings of Jews did occur, but were carried out by the peoples of Eastern Europe rather than the Nazis.
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Jews died in camps of various kinds, but did so as the result of hunger and disease (most died to the unavailability of food due to allied bombings). The Holocaust is a myth created by the Allies for propaganda purposes, and subsequently nurtured by the Jews for their own ends.
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Errors and inconsistencies in survivors' testimonies point to their essential unreliability.
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Alleged documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs of concentration camp victims to Anne Frank's diary, is fabricated.
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The confessions of former Nazis to war crimes were extracted through torture." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? , JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
[Denial vs. "revisionism":
]
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"This is the phenomenon of what has come to be known as 'revisionism', 'negationism', or 'Holocaust denial,' whose main characteristic is either an outright rejection of the very veracity of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, or at least a concerted attempt to minimize both its scale and importance.... It is just as crucial, however, to distinguish between the wholly objectionable politics of denial and the fully legitimate scholarly revision of previously accepted conventional interpretations of any historical event, including the Holocaust." Omer Bartov. The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath, Routledge, pp.11–12. Bartov is John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at the Watson Institute, and is regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on genocide ( "Omer Bartov" , The Watson Institute for International Studies).
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"The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event—like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust—did in fact occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence...." Ronald J. Berger. Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Aldine Transaction, 2002, , p. 154.
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"At this time, in the mid-1970s, the specter of Holocaust Denial (masked as 'revisionism') had begun to raise its head in Australia...." Bartrop, Paul R. "A Little More Understanding: The Experience of a Holocaust Educator in Australia" in Samuel Totten, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Paul R Bartrop. Teaching about the Holocaust, Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, p. xix.
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"Pierre Vidal-Naquet urges that denial of the Holocaust should not be called 'revisionism' because 'to deny history is not to revise it'. Les Assassins de la Memoire. Un Eichmann de papier et autres essays sur le revisionisme (The Assassins of Memory—A Paper-Eichmann and Other Essays on Revisionism) 15 (1987)." Cited in Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, , p. 215.
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"This essay describes, from a methodological perspective, some of the inherent flaws in the 'revisionist' approach to the history of the Holocaust. It is not intended as a polemic, nor does it attempt to ascribe motives. Rather, it seeks to explain the fundamental error in the 'revisionist' approach, as well as why that approach of necessity leaves no other choice. It concludes that 'revisionism' is a misnomer because the facts do not accord with the position it puts forward and, more importantly, its methodology reverses the appropriate approach to historical investigation.... 'Revisionism' is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit, because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result; it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred; and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, 'revisionism' denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't" , The Holocaust History Project, May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
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"Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review). Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans' involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? , JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
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"The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past. For historians, in fact, the name revisionism has a resonance that is perfectly legitimate – it recalls the controversial historical school known as World War I 'revisionists', who argued that the Germans were unjustly held responsible for the war and that consequently the Versailles treaty was a politically misguided document based on a false premise. Thus the deniers link themselves to a specific historiographic tradition of reevaluating the past. Claiming the mantle of the World War I revisionists and denying they have any objective other than the dissemination of the truth constitute a tactical attempt to acquire an intellectual credibility that would otherwise elude them." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust – The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, , p. 25.
[Refer to themselves as revisionists:
]
-
"The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust—The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, , p. 25.
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"Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term 'revisionism' in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism , "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans' involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." " The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? ", JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
[Predetermined conclusion:
]
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"'Revisionism' is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result, it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred, and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, 'revisionism' denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't" , The Holocaust History Project, May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
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Alan L. Berger, "Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?", in Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz (eds), Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, p. 154.
[A hoax designed to advance the interests of Jews:
]
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"The title of App's major work on the Holocaust, The Six Million Swindle, is informative because it implies on its very own the existence of a conspiracy of Jews to perpetrate a hoax against non-Jews for monetary gain." Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition , The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
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Another belief of deniers is the death of the millions of Jews was caused by sickness and disease.
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"Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as 'truth' and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? , JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
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"Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2000, , p. 106.
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"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States , Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
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"The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust – The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, , p. 27.
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"They Holocaust picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism , "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"Deniers argue that the manufactured guilt and shame over a mythological Holocaust led to Western, specifically United States, support for the establishment and sustenance of the Israeli state – a sustenance that costs the American taxpayer over three billion dollars per year. They assert that American taxpayers have been and continue to be swindled...." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, , p. 445
[Antisemitic:
]
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"Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include ... denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)." , European Fundamental Rights Agency
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"It would elevate their antisemitic ideology – which is what Holocaust denial is – to the level of responsible historiography – which it is not." Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, , p. 11.
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"The denial of the Holocaust is among the most insidious forms of anti-Semitism...." Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, , p. 215.
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"Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review)." " The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? ", JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
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"This books treats several of the myths that have made antisemitism so lethal.... In addition to these historic myths, we also treat the new, maliciously manufactured myth of Holocaust denial, another groundless belief that is used to stir up Jew-hatred." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, , p. 3.
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"One predictable strand of Arab Islamic antisemitism is Holocaust denial...." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, , p. 10.
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"Anti-Semitism, in the form of Holocaust denial, had been experienced by just one teacher when working in a Catholic school with large numbers of Polish and Croatian students." Geoffrey Short, Carole Ann Reed. Issues in Holocaust Education, Ashgate Publishing, 2004, , p. 71.
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"Indeed, the task of organized antisemitism in the last decade of the century has been the establishment of Holocaust Revisionism – the denial that the Holocaust occurred." Stephen Trombley, "antisemitism", The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, , p. 40.
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"After the Yom Kippur War an apparent reappearance of antisemitism in France troubled the tranquility of the community; there were several notorious terrorist attacks on synagogues, Holocaust revisionism appeared, and a new antisemitic political right tried to achieve respectability." Howard K. Wettstein, Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity, University of California Press, 2002, , p. 169.
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"Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism." Igounet, Valérie. "Holocaust denial is part of a strategy" , Le Monde diplomatique, May 1998.
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"Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism , "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"In a number of countries, in Europe as well as in the United States, the negation or gross minimization of the Nazi genocide of Jews has been the subject of books, essay and articles. Should their authors be protected by freedom of speech? The European answer has been in the negative: such writings are not only a perverse form of anti-semitism but also an aggression against the dead, their families, the survivors and society at large." Roger Errera, "Freedom of speech in Europe", in Georg Nolte, European and US Constitutionalism, Cambridge University Press, 2005, , pp. 39–40.
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"Particularly popular in Syria is Holocaust denial, another staple of Arab anti-Semitism that is sometimes coupled with overt sympathy for Nazi Germany." Efraim Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, Routledge, 2003, , p. 104.
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"Holocaust denial is a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs." Dinah Shelton, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan Reference, 2005, p. 45.
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"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, , p. 445.
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"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States , Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
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"The primary motivation for most deniers is anti-Semitism, and for them the Holocaust is an infuriatingly inconvenient fact of history. After all, the Holocaust has generally been recognized as one of the most terrible crimes that ever took place, and surely the very emblem of evil in the modern age. If that crime was a direct result of anti-Semitism taken to its logical end, then anti-Semitism itself, even when expressed in private conversation, is inevitably discredited among most people. What better way to rehabilitate anti-Semitism, make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even make it acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies than by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened – indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by the Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media? What better way, in short, to make the world safe again for anti-Semitism than by denying the Holocaust?" Reich, Walter. "Erasing the Holocaust" , The New York Times, July 11, 1993.
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"There is now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism ... insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric.... The history of the Arab world ... is disfigured ... by a whole series of outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that the Holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much, currency." Edward Said, "A Desolation, and They Called it Peace" in Those who forget the past, Ron Rosenbaum (ed), Random House 2004, p. 518.
[Conspiracy theory:
]
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"While appearing on the surface as a rather arcane pseudo-scholarly challenge to the well-established record of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, Holocaust denial serves as a powerful conspiracy theory uniting otherwise disparate fringe groups...." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism , "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
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"Before discussing how Holocaust denial constitutes a conspiracy theory, and how the theory is distinctly American, it is important to understand what is meant by the term 'Holocaust denial.'" Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition , The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
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"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States , Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
Sources
Bibliography
- About Holocaust denial
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) As well as the story of the Irving case, this is an excellent case study on historical research.
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Actual text of the judgment in the Irving case.
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Debunking Holocaust revisionism.
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- By Holocaust deniers
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"Gauss" is a pseudonym for Germar Rudolf, the founder of "Theses & Dissertations Press."
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External links
