Holocaust denial is the claim that the mainstream historical version of the Holocaust is either highly exaggerated or completely falsified. Experts, witnesses, and historians almost
universally regard the claims of Holocaust denial as untrue.
Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism
Holocaust deniers prefer to be called Holocaust revisionists. Most people contend that the latter term is
misleading. Historical revisionism is the
reexamination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and/or less biased
information. Broadly, it is the approach that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate and should
be revised accordingly. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies. It may be
applied to the Holocaust as well, as new facts emerge and change our understanding of its events.
Holocaust deniers maintain that they apply proper revisionist principles to Holocaust history, and therefore the term
Holocaust revisionism is appropriate for their point of view. However, their critics disagree and prefer the term
Holocaust denial. Gordon McFee writes in his essay "Why Revisionism
isn't" that:
- "Revisionists" depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them
to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology […], thus turning the proper
historical method of investigation and analysis on its head." [1] (http://www.holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/)
In general, the term Holocaust denial fits the description at the beginning of this article, while Holocaust
revisionism ranges from holocaust denial through the belief that only minor corrections are required to Holocaust history.
However, because the latter term has become associated with Holocaust deniers, mainstream historians today generally avoid using
it to describe themselves. Thus Holocaust revisionism has come to be understood as revisionist history, rather than historical revisionism.
Beliefs of Holocaust deniers and revisionists
Holocaust deniers and revisionists make all or most of the following claims:
- There was no specific order by Adolf Hitler or other top Nazi officials to exterminate the Jews.
- Nazis did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews. Small chambers did
exist for delousing and Zyklon-B was used in
this process.
- The figure of six million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration, and that many Jews who actually emigrated to
Russia, Britain, Israel and the United States are included in the number. The original source for this figure was from Hoess' signed "confession" which was written in English, a language he did not
understand.
- Film footage shown after World War II was all specially manufactured as
propaganda against the Nazis by the Allied forces. For example, one film, shown
to Germans after the war, of supposed Holocaust victims were in fact German civilians being treated after allied bombing of
Dresden. Pictures we commonly see show victims of starvation or Typhus, not of gassing.
- Claims of what the Nazis supposedly did to the Jews were all intended to facilitate the Allies in their intention to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and are currently used to garner support for the policies of the state of Israel, especially in its dealings with the Palestinians.
- Although crimes were committed, they were not centrally orchestrated and thus the
Nazi leadership bore no responsibility for the implementation of such a policy.
- Historical proof for the Holocaust is falsified or deliberately
misinterpreted.
- There is a American, British or Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Germans. Also, it was in the Soviets' interest
to propagate wild stories about Germany in order to frighten related nations into accepting soviet rule (Poland, Czechoslovakia,
etc.). The amount of money pumped into Israel and reparations from Germany alone give Israel a strong incentive to maintain this
conspiracy.
- The overwhelming number of biased academics and historians are too afraid to actually admit that the Holocaust was a fiction; they know they will lose their jobs if they speak up.
- In any event, the Holocaust pales in comparison to the number of dissidents and Christians killed in Soviet gulags, which
they usually attribute to Jews.
Most Holocaust deniers also stress that, contrary to popular belief, they do not deny the following:
- Jews were persecuted under the Third Reich.
- Jews were deprived of civil rights.
- Jews were deported.
- There were Jewish ghettos.
- There were concentration camps.
- There were crematoriums in concentration camps.
- Jews died for a great number of reasons (although they claim there were no mass murders).
- Other minorities were also persecuted such as Poles, Roma (a.k.a. gypsies), Jehovah's
Witnesses, homosexuals, and political dissenters.
- All or some of the abovementioned things were unjust.
Holocaust denial examined
- For a detailed treatment of arguments used against Holocaust deniers, see Holocaust denial examined.
Holocaust denial is a per se criminal offence in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland,
Slovakia and Switzerland, and
is punishable by fines and jail sentences.
Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers centres upon the methods used to present arguments that
the Holocaust allegedly never happened. Numerous accounts have been given (including evidence presented in court cases) of
claimed "facts" and "evidence"; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biased
statements, and even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have compiled detailed accounts of numerous
instances where this evidence has been altered or manufactured (see Nizkor
Project and David Irving). Evidence presented by Holocaust deniers has
also failed to stand up to scrutiny in courts of law (see Fred A.
Leuchter), further questioning its veracity.
The arguments over the legitimacy of Holocaust denial and its historical accuracy (or lack thereof) have led to the deniers'
arguments being examined and, in many instances, debunked. This has not stopped the deniers from promoting their beliefs as
historical fact in the face of what they believe is a conspiracy.
History of Holocaust denial
Research into Holocaust revisionism has revealed that anti-Semitism
has been an important part of the revisionist philosophy since the very beginnings of the movement. With few exceptions, charges
of anti-Jewish bias have been leveled against many revisionists over the years – charges that they have rarely denied.
Scholars credit the very first Holocaust deniers as the Nazis themselves. Historians have documented evidence that Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria and other signs of
mass extermination of human beings, as Germany's defeat became imminent and the Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be
captured and brought to trial. Following the end of World War II, many of the former leaders of the SS left Germany and began using their propaganda skills to defend
their actions (or, their critics contended, to rewrite history). Shortly after the war, denial materials began to appear. One of
the first published revisionist screeds (though the word "revisionist" was not used to describe it) was Friedrich Meinecke's The
German Catastrophe (1950), in which he offered a brief defense for the German people by
blaming industrialists, bureaucrats and the Pan-German League for the outbreak of World War I and
Hitler's rise to power. Meinecke was openly anti-Semitic; nonetheless, he was a respected historian.
The beginnings of modern-day Holocaust revisionism are shrouded in obscurity. Public challenges to the accepted factual
accounts of the holocaust first began to appear in the 1960s, with French historian Paul Rassinier publishing The Drama of the European Jews in 1964. Rassinier was himself a Holocaust survivor (he was imprisoned in Buchenwald for his socialist beliefs), and modern-day revisionists continue to cite his works as scholarly
research that questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics and opponents of revisionism, however, note that Rassinier's
own anti-Semitic views influenced his viewpoint; more importantly, he was arrested in Germany in 1943, and had long since been transferred to Poland by the time the
extermination was fully in progress.
The Holocaust revisionist movement grew into full strength in the 1970s with the
publication of Arthur Butz' The
Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 and David Irving's Hitler's War in 1977. These books, seen as the basis of much of the revisionists' arguments, brought other
similarly inclined individuals into the fold.
In 1979 the Institute for Historical
Review was founded as an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the "myth" of the Holocaust.
The Zündel trials
Former Canadian resident Ernst
Zündel operated a small-press publishing house called Samisdat Publishing, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial
material such as Did Six Million Really Die? (http://zundelsite.org/english/harwood/Didsix01.html) by Richard Harwood (a/k/a Richard Verrall - a British neo-Nazi leader). In 1985, he was tried 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." Zündel
gained considerable notoriety after this conviction, and a number of free-speech activists stepped forward to defend his right to
publish his opinion. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada
declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.
Zündel established his own Web site to publicize his viewpoints. In January
2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website,
found contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act.
The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February
2003, the INS
arrested him in Tennessee on an immigration violations matter, and few days
later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he had refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany; under whose laws he could be prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda.
Ken McVay and alt.revisionism
In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the Internet brought new international exposure to many organizations, including Holocaust deniers and other groups. A
number of authority figures stated publicly that the Internet allowed hate groups to introduce their messages to a widespread
audience, and it was feared that Holocaust denial would gain in popularity as a result. But this was not the case, largely due to
the efforts of Ken McVay and the participants in the Usenet newsgroup alt.revisionism.
McVay, a Canadian resident, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers. On
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 and slander. McVay received a number of death threats, and the Nizkor Project soon became the number-one online foe of
many Holocaust deniers, some of whom were neo-Nazis and white
supremacists.
The Irving affair
In 1998, the best-selling British historian David Irving filed suit
against American author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books, claiming that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book Denying the Holocaust. The statements made by Lipstadt included the accusation that
Irving deliberately twisted and misrepresented evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoint. Under British libel law, which
seeks primarily to protect the reputation of an individual, Lipstadt and her publisher bore the full burden of demonstrating not
only that they had not shown "reckless disregard" for the truth (as would be the case in America), but also that the statements
made were true.
Lipstadt and Penguin hired British lawyer Anthony Julius and Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans to present her case. Evans spent two years examining Irving's work, and
presented evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as a source. One of
the few witnesses called on Irving's behalf was American evolutionary psychology professor Kevin B. MacDonald. The presiding judge, Charles Gray, was
persuaded by the evidence presented by Evans and others and wrote a long and decisive verdict in favor of Lipstadt, calling
Irving a "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist," and confirming the accusations of
Lipstadt and Evans.
Some journalists called the verdict a blow to free speech, although others pointed out that it was Irving who had initiated
legal action for damages from the publication of Lipstadt's work, and hence no one's speech was restricted.
Public reactions to Holocaust denial
Seven European Union member countries including France and Germany
have passed Holocaust denial laws making it illegal to make claims equivalent to those of Holocaust denial.[2]
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/18/nxeno18.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/02/18/ixnewstop.html)
Many people who do not deny that the Holocaust occurred nevertheless oppose such restrictions of free speech, including Noam Chomsky. An uproar resulted when Serge Thion used one of Chomsky's essays as a
foreword to a book of holocaust denial essays. Many Holocaust deniers claim their work falls under a "universal right to free
speech", and see these laws as a confirmation of their own beliefs, arguing that the truth does not need to be legally
enforced.
At times, Holocaust deniers seek to rely on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression, when faced
with criminal sanctions against their statements or publications. The European Court of Human Rights however consistently declares their complaints inadmissible.
According to Article 17 of the Convention, nothing in the Convention may be construed so as to justify acts that are aimed at
destroying any of the very rights and freedoms contained therein. Invoking free speech to propagate denial of crimes against
humanity is, according to the Court's case-law, contrary to the spirit in which the Convention was adopted in the first place.
Reliance on free speech in such cases would thus constitute an abuse of a fundamental right.
In the Middle East, the Syrian government, as well as the Palestinian Authority publish Holocaust denial literature. These
works are popular sellers in several Arab nations. Denials of the Holocaust have been regularly promoted by various Arab leaders
and in various media throughout the Middle East.[3] (http://www.adl.org/holocaust/Denial_ME/in_own_words.asp)[4] (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=egypt&ID=SP7700) In August
2002 the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-up, an Arab League
think-tank whose Chairman, Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, promoted a Holocaust denial symposium in
Abu Dhabi. [5] (http://www.likud.nl/extr225.html)
Hamas leaders have also been promoters of Holocaust denial; Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi held that the Holocaust never occurred,
that Zionists were behind the action of Nazis, and that Zionists funded Nazism. A
press release by Hamas in April 2000 decried "the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis"
[6] (http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/watch/Peacewatch/peacewatch2000/255.htm)
Many Neo-Nazi groups and people associated with them believe that the
Holocaust never occurred.
Many Jews protest that Holocaust denial trivializes the suffering caused to victims of the Holocaust when it juxtaposes it
with accounts of the millions of Germans (most popular estimate is 2.4 million, but some Holocaust deniers put the figure as high
as 10 million) who died of starvation and from Russian pogroms immediately after WWII. They feel this is an attempt to make the
Germans feel they don't deserve full blame for the war crimes of the Nazis, on the basis that the Soviets, British, and Americans
committed similar war crimes without repercussions. This position is based on the work of James Bacque, Ernst
Mayo, and others.
Recently the terms Holocaust industry and Shoah
business, have come into vogue among those who believe Jewish leaders use the Holocaust for financial and political gain. The
term Holocaust industry was coined by Norman
Finkelstein, a Jew and the son of Auschwitz survivors. He fully accepts the fact that the Holocaust occurred, but believes
that its memory is being dishonestly exploited. However, his term has also been picked up by Holocaust deniers who believe the
Holocaust was faked for the purpose of financial and political gain, although that usage is much less frequent.
Spokespersons for Holocaust deniers and revisionists have claimed that the revisionists are often "persecuted" for their
beliefs. This stems from the widespread negative reaction to holocaust revisionism in the general public. Holocaust revisionists
have stated that they have received personal threats and even been assaulted, as happened in an incident known as the Faurisson affair.
Other genocide denials
According to Dr. Gregory Stanton, President of the Genocide Watch (http://www.genocidewatch.org/eightstages.htm), denial is the eighth and final stage of
a genocide development.
Other acts of genocide and atrocity have met similar attempts to deny and minimize. Some examples are the Nanjing Massacre (1937) by the Japanese army, which many Japanese politicians, such as Ishihara Shintaro, have denied happened. The Armenian Genocide by Turkey is denied by the Turkish
government. Sometimes the motivation for holocaust denial is to avoid disturbing opinions, and sometimes it is strictly
nationalist, or ideological. Ward Churchill, a scholar and activist in
the area of Native American studies, asserts that the concept of holocaust denial applies to minimization of the significance of
attempted extermination of other victims of the Nazi holocaust such as Gypsies and to marginalization of other "holocausts" such as the near elimination of Native Americans.
The Holocaust Research Center director Dr. William Shulman described the denial "…as if these people were killed twice."
[7]
(http://www.timesledger.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13569863&BRD=2676&PAG=461&dept_id=542415&rfi=6)
References
About Holocaust deniers
- Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994.
Debunking Holocaust revisionism.
- Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, Basic Books, 2002 (ISBN 0465021530). As well as the story of the
Irving case, this is an excellent case study on historical research.
- Sergio Troncoso, The Nature of Truth, Northwestern
University Press, 2003. A philosophical novel about righteousness and evil, Yale and the Holocaust.
By Holocaust deniers
- Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Newport Beach: Institute for Historical Review, 1994. This is a
standard work of Holocaust revisionism, but not a good place for beginners to start.
External links
Background
Denials of the Holocaust
Refutations of revisionism
Audio testimony of Holocaust survivors
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