Holocaust Denial

Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
*Nazi Germany's Final Solution was aimed only at deporting Jews and did not include their extermination.
*Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas chambers for the mass murder of Jews.
*The actual number of Jews murdered is significantly lower than the accepted figure of approximately 6 million, typically around a tenth of that figure.
*The Holocaust is a hoax perpetrated by the Allies, Jews, and/or Soviet Union.

Similar to other forms of genocide denial, the methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Scholars use the term ''denial'' 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 methodologies. Holocaust deniers generally do not accept ''denial'' as an appropriate description of their activities and use the euphemism '' revisionism'' instead. In some former Eastern Bloc countries, Holocaust deniers do not deny the mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals in the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs, and it is illegal in Israel and many European countries.

Terminology and etymology

Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as " deniers". 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. 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 introduced by Henry Rousso, 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". Denial of the mass murder of gas chambers, according to Douglas, repeats 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.p. xiii 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 (near Riga) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943.Ezergailis, Andrew, ''The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944 – The Missing Center'', pages 4–7, 239–270, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996 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, even 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 in order to form a ''centre de documentation''. as quoted in Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation. Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC.

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

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