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Holocaust denial is an
antisemitic conspiracy theory This is a list of conspiracy theories that are notable. Many conspiracy theories relate to clandestine government plans and elaborate murder plots. Conspiracy theories usually deny consensus or cannot be proven using the historical or scienti ...
that falsely asserts that the Nazi
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
of
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, known as
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: *
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
's
Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
was aimed only at deporting Jews and did not include their extermination. *Nazi authorities did not use
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s and
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History ...
s for the
mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...
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 A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
perpetrated by the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
,
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, and/or
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. 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 In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
, 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 The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
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 Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
professor
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
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 Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...
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 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: * ...
: 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 Historical negationism, also called denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with '' historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinter ...
", 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 Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...
were labeled with
Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
symbols and victims were told that they would be " resettled". Douglas also cites the
Posen speeches The Posen speeches were two speeches made by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS of Nazi Germany, on 4 and 6 October 1943 in the town hall of Posen (Poznań), in German-occupied Poland. The recordings are the first known documents in which a m ...
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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
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 Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
'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 Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
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 Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...
) 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 Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
and other death camps.


French collaboration in archive destruction

In
occupied France The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied z ...
, 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 Liberation or liberate may refer to: Film and television * ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War * "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode * "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode Gaming * '' Liberati ...
, the
Prefecture of Police In France, a Prefecture of Police (french: Préfecture de police), headed by the Prefect of Police (''Préfet de police''), is an agency of the Government of France under the administration of the Ministry of the Interior. Part of the National P ...
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 The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation is an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future gener ...
(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 lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...
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 Liberation or liberate may refer to: Film and television * ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War * "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode * "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode Gaming * '' Liberati ...
. 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 Nazi crime or Hitlerite crime ( pl, Zbrodnia nazistowska or ''zbrodnia hitlerowska'') is a legal concept used in the Polish legal system, referring to an action which was carried out, inspired, or tolerated by public functionaries of Nazi Germany ...
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 The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
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 The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
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 The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation is an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future gener ...
, 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 ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherl ...
'' (1959) or the 1961 ''
Judgment at Nuremberg ''Judgment at Nuremberg'' is a 1961 American epic courtroom drama film directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann and starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene D ...
'' 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 The Cabinet of Israel (officially: he, ממשלת ישראל ''Memshelet Yisrael'') exercises executive authority in the State of Israel. It consists of ministers who are chosen and led by the prime minister. The composition of the governmen ...
captured
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
'' Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor
Gideon Hausner Gideon Hausner ( he, גדעון האוזנר, 26 September 1915 – 15 November 1990) was an Israeli jurist and politician. Between 1960 and 1963, he served as Attorney General and was later elected to the Knesset and served in the cabinet. Haus ...
'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. Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast the following day.


Significant individuals and organizations

In the immediate aftermath of the war, prior to the extensive documentation efforts by the Allied forces, a sense of disbelief caused many to deny the initial reports of the Holocaust. Compounding this disbelief was the memory of forged newspaper accounts 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."Neander, Joachim, ''The German Corpse Factory. The Master Hoax of British Propaganda in the First World War'', Saarland University Press, 2013, pp.8–9. Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives." The
Neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack ...
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.


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 journalist
Maurice Bardèche Maurice Bardèche (1 October 1907 – 30 July 1998) was a French art critic and journalist, better known as one of the leading exponents of neo-fascism in post– World War II Europe. Bardèche was also the brother-in-law of the collaborationis ...
in his 1948 book ''Nuremberg ou la Terre promise'' ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land"). Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial", Bardèche introduced in his works many aspects of
neo-fascist Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, racial supremacy, populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration ...
and Holocaust denial propaganda techniques and ideological structures; his work is deemed influential in regenerating post-war European far-right ideas at a time of identity crisis in the 1950–1960s. His arguments formed the basis of numerous works of Holocaust denial that followed: "testimonies are not reliable, essentially coming from the mouth of Jews and communists", "atrocities committed in camps were the fact of deportees kapos.html"_;"title="Kapo_(concentration_camp).html"_;"title="ssentially_the_Kapo_(concentration_camp)">kapos">Kapo_(concentration_camp).html"_;"title="ssentially_the_Kapo_(concentration_camp)">kapos,_"disorganization_occurred_in_Nazi_camps_following_the_first_German_defeats",_"the_high_mortality_is_due_to_the_'weakening'_of_prisoners_and_epidemics",_"only_lice_were_gassed_in_Auschwitz_concentration_camp.html" "title="Kapo_(concentration_camp)">kapos.html" ;"title="Kapo_(concentration_camp).html" ;"title="ssentially the Kapo (concentration camp)">kapos">Kapo_(concentration_camp).html" ;"title="ssentially the Kapo (concentration camp)">kapos, "disorganization occurred in Nazi camps following the first German defeats", "the high mortality is due to the 'weakening' of prisoners and epidemics", "only lice were gassed in Auschwitz concentration camp">Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
", etc.


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 movement, anti-war writer and a leader of the
historical revisionism In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with the
Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War The Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War (in German: Zentralstelle zur Erforschung der Kriegsursachen) was a think tank based in Berlin, funded by the German government, whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government positio ...
, 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 The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 19 ...
was morally invalid.Herwig, Holger "Clio Deceived" pp. 5–44 from ''International Security'', Volume 12, Issue 2, Fall 1987, pp. 22–23 & 26 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 Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
, 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.Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'' (New York: Free Press, 1993) p. 75. 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".Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'' (New York: Free Press, 1993) p. 74. 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 ''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wri ...
'', Barnes wrote: "The courageous author assinierlays 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 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 Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
measures in the pre-1939 period.Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', New York : Free Press; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York; Oxford : Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993 page 71 For example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion
Reichsmark The (; sign: ℛℳ; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in West Germany, where it was replaced with the , and until 23 June 1948 in East Germany, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reich ...
fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 ''
Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
'' 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 Austin Joseph App (24 May 1902 – 4 May 1984) was an American professor of medieval English literature who taught at the University of Scranton and La Salle University. App defended Nazi Germany during World War II. He is known for his work den ...
, a
La Salle University La Salle University () is a private, Catholic university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The university was founded in 1863 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and named for St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle. History L ...
medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier.Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Austin J. App and Holocaust Denial. Holocaust denial as an international movement. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. pp. 153–55. . App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review, a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task is the denial of the Holocaust. The publication of
Arthur Butz Arthur R. Butz is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University and a Holocaust denier, best known as the author of the pseudohistorical book ''The Hoax of the Twentieth Century''. He achieved tenure in 1974 and curr ...
's ''
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century ''The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry'' is a book by Northwestern University electrical engineering professor and Holocaust denier Arthur Butz. The book was originally published in 1975 ...
: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry'' in 1976; and David Irving's ''
Hitler's War ''Hitler's War'' is a biographical book by British author David Irving. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler. It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton and Viking Pre ...
'' in 1977 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
. In December 1978 and January 1979,
Robert Faurisson Robert Faurisson (; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in th ...
, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon, wrote two letters to ''
Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'' 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 Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
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". In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars". The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence".


Institute for Historical Review

In 1978 the American
far-right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.Chip Berlet & Matthew J. Lyons, ''Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort'', New York: Guilford Press, 2000, p. 189. The IHR's founding was inspired by
Austin App Austin Joseph App (24 May 1902 – 4 May 1984) was an American professor of medieval English literature who taught at the University of Scranton and La Salle University. App defended Nazi Germany during World War II. He is known for his work den ...
, 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 Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack ...
background such as
James J. Martin James J. Martin (1916–2004) was an American historian and author known for espousing Holocaust denial in his works. He is known for his book, ''American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941'' (1964). Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer B ...
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 editor A letter to the editor (LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional ma ...
s of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'' and others including ''
The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the pap ...
''. 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 Superior Court of Los Angeles County for
breach of contract Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other part ...
, anticipatory repudiation,
libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defi ...
,
injurious denial of established fact Melvin Mermelstein (born Moric Mermelstein; September 25, 1926 – January 28, 2022) was a Czechoslovak-born American Holocaust survivor and autobiographer. A Jew, he was the sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz concentration ...
, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and
declaratory relief A declaratory judgment, also called a declaration, is the legal determination of a court that resolves legal uncertainty for the litigants. It is a form of legally binding preventive by which a party involved in an actual or possible legal ma ...
. On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for
summary judgment In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Summary judgments may be issued on the merits of ...
in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took " judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944," judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that the gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them. 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...." British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in the millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers.


James Keegstra

In 1984,
James Keegstra James "Jim" Keegstra (March 30, 1934 – June 2, 2014) was a public school teacher and mayor in Eckville, Alberta, Canada, who was charged and convicted of hate speech in 1984. The conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal of Alberta but ...
, 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 offence. He was convicted at trial before the
Alberta Court of Queen's Bench The Court of King's Bench of Alberta (abbreviated in citations as ABKB or Alta. K.B.) is the superior court of the Canadian province of Alberta. Until 2022, it was named Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta. The Court of Queen's Bench in Calgary wa ...
. 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 The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; french: Cour suprême du Canada, CSC) is the Supreme court, highest court in the Court system of Canada, judicial system of Canada. It comprises List of Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, nine justices, wh ...
, 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. He was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward.


Zündel trials

The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called
Samisdat Publishers Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...
, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as ''
Did Six Million Really Die? ''Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last'' is a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial pamphlet allegedly written by British National Front (NF) member Richard Verrall under the pseudonym Richard E. Harwood and published in 1974 by neo-Nazi propa ...
'' by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of
Richard Verrall Richard Verrall (born 1948) is a British Holocaust denier and former deputy chairman of the British National Front (NF) who edited the magazine '' Spearhead'' from 1976 to 1980. Under the ''nom de plume'' (pen name) of Richard E. Harwood, Verr ...
 – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in ''
R. v. Zundel ''R v Zundel'' 9922 S.C.R. 731 is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision where the Court struck down the provision in the Criminal Code that prohibited publication of false information or news on the basis that it violated the freedom of e ...
'' and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
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 defence,
Fred A. Leuchter Fred Arthur Leuchter Jr. (born February 7, 1943) is an American manufacturer of execution equipment, and a Holocaust denier best known as the author of the Leuchter report, a pseudoscientific document*"Leuchter and Rudolf have published pseudosc ...
, David Irving and
Robert Faurisson Robert Faurisson (; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in th ...
. The pseudo-scientific Leuchter report was presented as a defence 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 Barbara Kulaszka (1952/1953 – June 15, 2017) was a Canadian lawyer who practised law in Brighton, Ontario, known for her work with far-right causes, defending alleged Nazi war criminals and Holocaust deniers, and free speech cases. Practice Kula ...
. 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 publicises his viewpoints. In January 2002, the
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (french: Tribunal canadien des droits de la personne, link=no) is an administrative tribunal established in 1977 through the ''Canadian Human Rights Act''. It is directly funded by the Parliament of Canada and i ...
delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act. The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003, the American
INS INS or Ins or ''variant'', may refer to: Places * Ins, Switzerland, a municipality * Creech Air Force Base (IATA airport code INS) * Indonesia, ITF and UNDP code INS Biology *'' Ins'', a New World genus of bee flies * INS, the gene for the insulin ...
arrested him in
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
, US, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's '' Volksverhetzung'' law, which bans the incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison.


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). In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers. 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." Holocaust deniers have placed "Full page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of
Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...
,
Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classified ...
,
Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State becam ...
, and
Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...
(part of
CUNY The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven prof ...
). Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students". On September 8, 2009, student newspaper ''
The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...
'' ran a paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake.


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.Evans, Richard J. ''In Hitler's Shadow'' New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 page 83. In a letter to the Israeli historian
Otto Dov Kulka Otto Dov Kulka (''Ôttô Dov Qûlqā''; 16 January 1933 in Nový Hrozenkov, Czechoslovakia – 29 January 2021 in Jerusalem) was an Israeli historian, professor emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His primary areas of specialization ...
of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized the work of the French Holocaust denier
Robert Faurisson Robert Faurisson (; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in th ...
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. 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
olocaust deniers The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...
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." In his 1993 book ''Streitpunkte'' (''Points of Contention''), Nolte praised the work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars".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". 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 hemical process engendered by Zyklon B, 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. The American historian
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
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 Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
were the victims of "natural causes" such as disease, not gassing. Dawidowicz argued that Mayer's statements about Auschwitz were "a breathtaking assertion". 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". 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. 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".


False equivalence and effect


Denialist focus on Allied war crimes

The focus on so-called Allied atrocities during the war has been a theme in Holocaust denial literature, particularly in countries where outright denial of the Holocaust is illegal. According to historian
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
, the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the
expulsion of Germans after World War II Expulsion or expelled may refer to: General * Deportation * Ejection (sports) * Eviction * Exile * Expeller pressing * Expulsion (education) * Expulsion from the United States Congress * Extradition * Forced migration * Ostracism * Persona ...
and the bombing of Dresden, is at the center of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary
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: ...
; a phenomenon she calls "immoral equivalencies". Pierre Vidal-Naquet pointed out the same phenomenon in the earlier version of ''Les Assassins de la mémoire'' under the title ''Auschwitz et le tiers monde'' (''Les Assassins de la mémoire'', Paris, 2005, pp. 170–180), and accurately about the declarations of Klaus Barbie's lawyer Jacques Vergès. In 1977, Martin Broszat, in a review of David Irving's book ''
Hitler's War ''Hitler's War'' is a biographical book by British author David Irving. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler. It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton and Viking Pre ...
'', 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".


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. Studies centered on the psychological effects of Holocaust denial propaganda confirm this assertion. Linda M. Yelland and William F. Stone, in particular, show that Denial essays decrease readers' belief in the Holocaust, regardless of their prior Holocaust awareness.


Middle East


General

Gamal Abdel Nasser Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein, . (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian politician who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-r ...
, 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
n the Holocaust N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
" 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 and Syria. In 2006
Robert Satloff Robert B. Satloff is an American writer and, since January 1993, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Satloff's expertise includes "U.S. policy, public diplomacy, Arab and Islamic politics, Arab-Israeli r ...
writing in ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'', reported that "A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers." Prominent figures from the Middle East have rarely made publicized visits to
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
Israel's Arab community being the exception. In 2010,
Hadash Hadash ( he, חד״ש, lit=New), an acronym for ''HaHazit HaDemokratit LeShalom uLeShivion'' ( he, הַחֲזִית הַדֶּמוֹקְרָטִית לְשָׁלוֹם וּלְשִׁוְיוֹן, lit=The Democratic Front for Peace and Equalit ...
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.


Palestinian territories

Individuals from the
Palestinian Authority The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
,
Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni- Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qas ...
, and a number of Palestinian groups have engaged in various aspects of Holocaust denial. Karsh, Efraim. ''Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest''. New York: Grove Press, 2003. p. 98–99.
Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni- Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qas ...
have promoted Holocaust denial; Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi held that the Holocaust never occurred, that
Zionists Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Jew ...
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". 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". 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." The thesis of the 1982 doctoral dissertation of
Mahmoud Abbas Mahmoud Abbas ( ar, مَحْمُود عَبَّاس, Maḥmūd ʿAbbās; born 15 November 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen ( ar, أَبُو مَازِن, links=no, ), is the president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian Nati ...
, a co-founder of
Fatah Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and s ...
and president of the
Palestinian National Authority The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
, was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement". In his 1983 book '' The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism'' based on the dissertation, Abbas denied that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust; dismissing it as a "myth" and a "fantastic lie". At most, he wrote, 890,000 Jews were murdered by the Germans. Abbas claimed that the number of deaths has been exaggerated for political purposes. "It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure
f Holocaust deaths F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. His ...
so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure ix millionin order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand."A Holocaust-Denier as Prime Minister of "Palestine"?
by Dr. Rafael Medoff (The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)

by Tom Gross

by Itamar Marcus (Palestinian Media Watch) In his thesis Abbas expressed the belief that gas chambers were never used to murder Jews.
In his March 2006 interview with ''
Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner ...
'', 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." While acknowledging the existence of the Holocaust in 2006 and 2014, Abbas has defended the position that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to perpetrate it. In 2012, Abbas told Al Mayadeen, a Beirut TV station affiliated with Iran and Hezbollah, that he "challenges anyone who can deny that the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis before World War II". Surveys conducted by
Sammy Smooha Sammy Smooha ( he, סמי סמוחה; born 1941) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa. Biography He is recipient of the Israel Prize. He specializes in comparative ethnic relations, and has researched the internal divisions in Is ...
of the
University of Haifa The University of Haifa ( he, אוניברסיטת חיפה Arabic: جامعة حيفا) is a university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation in 1972, becoming ...
found that the fraction of Israeli Arabs denying that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis increased from 28% in 2006 to 40% in 2008. Smooha commented:
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.


Iran

Former Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ( fa, محمود احمدی‌نژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadīnežād ), born Mahmoud Sabbaghian ( fa, محمود صباغیان, Mahmoud Sabbāghyān, 28 October 1956),
frequently denied the Holocaust,Variously:
"Holocaust comments spark outrage"
BBC News, Accessed December 14, 2005. *Esfandiari, Golnaz

Radio Free Europe. Accessed January 28, 2008.

. National Council of Churches. Accessed December 16, 2007.
"Annan: 'Dismay' over Iranian comments on Israel"
. CNN. Accessed September 27, 2007.
"Iranian leader: Holocaust a 'myth'"
. CNN. December 14, 2006.
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. In a December 2005 speech, Ahmadinejad said that a legend was fabricated and had been promoted to protect Israel. He said: 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. In contrast,
Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni- Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qas ...
political leader Khaled Mashaal 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." In the United States, the Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks. In 2005, the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( '), is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic studies, Islamic scholar and scho ...
leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, denounced what he called "the myth of the Holocaust" in defending Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust. On December 11, 2006, the Iranian state-sponsored " International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust" began to widespread condemnation. The conference, called for and held at the behest of Ahmadinejad, was widely described as a "Holocaust denial conference" or a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", though Iran denied it was a Holocaust denial conference. A few months before it opened, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi stated: "The Holocaust is not a sacred issue that one can't touch. I have visited the Nazi camps in Eastern Europe. I think it is exaggerated." In 2013, in an interview with CNN, newly elected Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani ( fa, حسن روحانی, Standard Persian pronunciation: ; born Hassan Fereydoun ( fa, حسن فریدون, links=no); 12 November 1948) is an Iranian politician who served as the seventh president of Iran from 2013 to 2021. ...
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." Iranian media later accused CNN of fabricating Rouhani's comments. In his official 2013
Nowruz Nowruz ( fa, نوروز, ; ), zh, 诺鲁孜节, ug, نەۋروز, ka, ნოვრუზ, ku, Newroz, he, נורוז, kk, Наурыз, ky, Нооруз, mn, Наурыз, ur, نوروز, tg, Наврӯз, tr, Nevruz, tk, Nowruz, ...
address,
Supreme Leader of Iran The Supreme Leader of Iran ( fa, رهبر ایران, rahbar-e irān) is the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader directs the executive system and judicial system of the Islamic theocratic government and is the co ...
Grand Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei ( fa, سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia '' marja and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third presiden ...
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." This was consistent with Khamenei's previous comments regarding the Holocaust. In 2015, the House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex in Iran organized the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, a competition in which artists were encouraged to submit
cartoons A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...
on the theme of Holocaust denial. The winner of the contest will receive $12,000. '' Hamshahri'', a popular Iranian newspaper, held a similar contest in 2006.


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. 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 Bedri Baykam is a Turkish artist. Early life Baykam was born in Ankara, Turkey. Baykam's father, Dr. Suphi Baykam, is a deputy in the Turkish parliament, and his mother, Mutahhar Baykam, is an architectural engineer. Baykam studied at Sorbonne ...
, 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.


Eastern Europe

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. According to
Zvi Gitelman Zvi Gitelman is a Professor of Political Science, and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Career Gitelman received a Ph.D., an M.A., and a B.A. degree from Columbia University. He has usually written about the connection of ...
, 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 The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), an ...
. 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. In 2018, the
United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...
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 Thompson may refer to: People * Thompson (surname) * Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician Places Australia *Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality Bulgaria * Thompson, Bulgaria, a village in Sofia Province Canada ...
among other events. Efraim Zuroff 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 The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
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 labour 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". 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 The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coronation of the Hungarian monarch, c ...
, an Axis collaborator. 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 The Chetniks ( sh-Cyrl-Latn, Четници, Četnici, ; sl, Četniki), formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav royali ...
, 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. In Slovakia, some anti-communist writers claim that Jozef Tiso was a savior of Jews or that the
Slovak State Slovak may refer to: * Something from, related to, or belonging to Slovakia (''Slovenská republika'') * Slovaks The Slovaks ( sk, Slováci, singular: ''Slovák'', feminine: ''Slovenka'', plural: ''Slovenky'') are a West Slavic ethnic group ...
was not responsible for
the Holocaust in Slovakia The Holocaust in Slovakia was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany, during World War II. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, an estimated 69,000 were murdered ...
. The post-Soviet radical right activists do not question the existence of Nazi death camps or Jewish ghettos. However, they deny the participation of local population in anti-Jewish
pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
s 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 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has become a central component of the intellectual history of the Ukrainian diaspora and nationalists.


Western Europe

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 {{Cat main, Canaan See also: * :Ancient Israel and Judah Ancient Levant Hebrew Bible nations Ancient Lebanon 0050 Ancient Syria Wikipedia categories named after regions 0050 Phoenicia Amarna Age civilizations ...
, critiques of Zionism, and other material fanning what has been called a "conspiratorial Judeo-phobia" designed to legitimize and "banalize" antisemitism. In Belgium in 2001,
Roeland Raes Roland Henri Theofiel (Roeland) Raes (born 4 September 1934) is a Belgian politician, a former senator for and vice president of the political party Vlaams Blok. Raes took a dr. iur. ( J.D.) at Ghent University. He became politically active in ...
, the ideologue and vice-president of one of the country's largest political parties, the
Vlaams Blok ''Vlaams Blok'' ( en, Flemish Block, or VB) was the name of a Belgian far-right and secessionist political party with an anti-immigration platform.Erk, 2005, pp. 493-502. Its ideologies embraced Flemish nationalism, calling for the independen ...
, 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 Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
'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. 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. 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'', "incitement to hatred". The pair had published video clips on
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
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". Monika Schaefer was arrested in January 2018 in Germany while attending a court hearing of
Sylvia Stolz Sylvia Stolz (born 16 August 1963) is a German neo nazi, convicted Holocaust denier and former lawyer. Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany. Ernst Zündel and Stolz trials Stolz was a member of the defense team of Holocaust ...
. Schaefer had been the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...
candidate in the
Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest T ...
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 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. In late October 2018, Monika Schaefer was convicted of the charge of "incitement of the people" (often reworded as ''incitement of hatred'' by the news media). She was sentenced to ten months while Alfred Schaefer, also convicted, received a sentence of three years and two months. In January 2019, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters, on behalf of the
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD, 27 January) is a national commemoration day in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the Jews and others who suffered in the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution. It was first held in January 2001 and has ...
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 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...
More or Less programme, specialising on statistics, investigated the survey finding it was unlikely to be accurate. Participants were incentivised 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.


Other

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
Bungei Shunju Bungei may refer to: * Bungei (magazine), ''Bungei'' (magazine), a Japanese literary magazine * The Bungei Prize, a literary prize of Japan, awarded by ''Bungei'' * Bungeishunjū, a Japanese publishing company known for its literary magazine of the ...
, of a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka which stated: "The '
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
' is a fabrication. There were no execution gas chambers in
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
or in any other
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
. 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 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, 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 A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict so ...
of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including
Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...
,
Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...
, 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. According to a 2020 survey of American adult Millennials and Generation Z members, 24% said the Holocaust might be a myth or had been exaggerated.


Reactions to Holocaust denial

In 2022, the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
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 Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
, 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." 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 American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...
, 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." This followed a strong reaction by many of its members and commentary in the press against a near-unanimous decision that the AHA had made in May 1991 that studying the ''significance of the Holocaust'' should be encouraged. The association's May 1991 statement was in response to an incident where certain of its members had questioned the reality of the Holocaust. The December 1991 declaration is a reversal of the AHA's earlier stance that the association should not set a precedent by certifying historical facts."AHA Statement on Holocaust Denial"
,
American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...
website. Retrieved October 11, 2013.
The AHA has also stated that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud". Literary theorist
Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...
described Holocaust denial as "part of the extermination itself". Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner
Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in F ...
, during a 1999 discussion at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
in Washington, D.C., called the Holocaust "the most documented tragedy in
recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...
. 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 Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Ernst Zündel's
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribun ...
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 Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
," claimed that Lipstadt's allegation damaged his reputation. American historian
Christopher Browning Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American historian who is the professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting ...
, an expert witness for the defense, wrote a comprehensive essay for the court summarizing the voluminous evidence for the reality of the Holocaust, and under cross-examination, effectively countered all of Irving's principal arguments to the contrary. 6
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
historian Richard J. Evans, another defense expert witness, spent two years examining Irving's writings and confirmed his misrepresentations, including evidence that he had knowingly used forged documents as source material. After a two-month trial in London the trial judge, Justice Charles Gray, issued a 333-page ruling against Irving, which referred to him as a "Holocaust denier" and "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist."
Ken McVay Kenneth "Ken" McVay (born  1940), a Canadian-American dual citizen, is an Internet activist against Holocaust denial. He is the founder of the Nizkor Project, one of the first websites against Holocaust denial. An active participant on the ...
, 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 Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
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 Kofi Atta Annan (; 8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founde ...
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 The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Curr ...
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 Hatred is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust. Hatred is s ...
rhetoric" and in September 2013 Rohani stated that "The Nazis carried out a massacre that cannot be denied, especially against the Jewish people" and "The massacre by the Nazis was condemnable. We never want to sit by side with the Nazis...They committed a crime against Jews — which is a crime against ... all of humanity." While declining to give a specific number of Jewish victims, Iranian analysts suggested that "Rouhani pushed the envelope as far as it could go ... without infuriating the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other conservatives back home."


Former Auschwitz SS personnel

Critics of Holocaust denial also include members of the Auschwitz SS. Camp physician and SS-''
Untersturmführer (, ; short: ''Ustuf'') was a paramilitary rank of the German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of ''Sturmführer'' which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921. ...
'' 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".
Zyklon B Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...
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 Oswald Kaduk (26 August 1906 – 31 May 1997) was a German SS member during the Nazi era. He served as ''Rapportführer'' at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Biography The son of a blacksmith, Kaduk was born in Königshütte, Upper Silesia. Aft ...
stated that he did not consider those who maintain such a thing as normal people. Hearing about Holocaust denial compelled former SS-''
Rottenführer ''Rottenführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in the year 1932. The rank of ''Rottenführer'' was used by several Nazi paramilitary groups, among them the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) an ...
''
Oskar Gröning Oskar Gröning (10 June 1921 – 9 March 2018) was a German SS '' Unterscharführer'' who was stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charg ...
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 Working 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"."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. The
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
has stated that "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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
website. Retrieved August 27, 2009.
and French historian
Valérie Igounet Valérie Igounet is a French historian and political scientist. She studies the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, and extreme right-wing politics in France. Her research on the history of Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism in France trace ...
has written that "Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism."Igounet, Valérie
"Holocaust denial is part of a strategy"
''
Le Monde diplomatique ''Le Monde diplomatique'' (meaning "The Diplomatic World" in French) is a French monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. The publication is owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary com ...
'', May 1998.
According to Walter Reich, psychiatrist and then a senior scholar at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (or Wilson Center) is a quasi-government entity and think tank which conducts research to inform public policy. Located in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Wash ...
, one-time director of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust h ...
, and now professor of international affairs at
George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , presi ...
: 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." Vidal-Naquet, Pierre
"A Paper Eichmann (1980) – Anatomy of a Lie: On the Revisionist Method"
in ''Assassins of Memory'',
Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fie ...
, 1992.
German political scientist Matthias Küntzel has argued, "Every denial of the Holocaust... contains an appeal to repeat it."


Examination of claims

The key claims, which cause Holocaust denial to differ from established fact, are: *The Nazis had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews. *The Nazis did not use
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History ...
s to mass murder Jews. *The figure of 5 to 6 million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration, and the actual number is an
order of magnitude An order of magnitude is an approximation of the logarithm of a value relative to some contextually understood reference value, usually 10, interpreted as the base of the logarithm and the representative of values of magnitude one. Logarithmic di ...
lower. Other claims include the following: *Stories of the Holocaust were a myth initially created by the
Allies of World War II The Allies, formally referred to as the Declaration by United Nations, United Nations from 1942, were an international Coalition#Military, military coalition formed during the World War II, Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis ...
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. *Documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs to ''
The Diary of Anne Frank ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherl ...
'', is fabricated. *Survivor testimonies are filled with errors and inconsistencies, and are thus unreliable. *Interrogators obtained Nazi prisoners' confessions of war crimes through the use of torture. *The Nazi treatment of Jews was no different from what the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
did to their enemies in World War II. 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 rational inquiry. The Holocaust was well documented by the
bureaucracy The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
of the Nazi government itself. It was further witnessed by the Allied forces who entered Germany and its associated Axis states towards the end of World War II. It was also witnessed from the inside by non-Jewish captives such as Catholic
French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
member André Rogerie who wrote extensively and testified about his experiences in seven camps including Auschwitz-BirkenauINA, 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: 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."


Laws against Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 17 countries:
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
,
Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
, the
Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, Germany,
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...
, Israel,
Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German language, German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constit ...
,
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
,
Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
, the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
,
Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...
,
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
,
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
,
Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...
, and
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. 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 The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
". Such legislation remains controversial. In October 2007, a tribunal declared Spain's genocide denial law unconstitutional. 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 Robert Faurisson (; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in th ...
, 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". Other academics favor
criminalization Criminalization or criminalisation, in criminology, is "the process by which behaviors and individuals are transformed into crime and criminals". Previously legal acts may be transformed into crimes by legislation or judicial decision. However, ...
. Holocaust denial, they contend, is "the worst form of racism and its most respectable version because it pretends to be a research". Holocaust historian Deborah E. 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"."Holocaust denier to be released" (December 20, 2006)
BBC News
Retrieved January 13, 2011.
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."BBC Repor
Holocaust Denier is Jailed
February 20, 2006.
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 "vow dto 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 H. Stanton, formerly of the US State Department and the founder of
Genocide Watch Gregory H. Stanton is the former Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder a ...
, 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 massacre The term ''genocidal massacre'' was introduced by Leo Kuper (1908–1994) to describe incidents which have a genocidal component but are committed on a smaller scale when they are compared to genocides such as the Rwandan genocide. Others such as ...
s. 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 Historical negationism, also called denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with '' historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinter ...
share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about.


See also

Holocaust: * Double genocide theory * Holocaust trivialization *
Romani genocide The Romani Holocaust or the Romani genocide—also known as the ''Porajmos'' (Romani pronunciation: , meaning "the Devouring"), the ''Pharrajimos'' meaning the hard times ("Cutting up", "Fragmentation", "Destruction"), and the ''Samudaripen'' (" ...
*
Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Genocid nad Srbima u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj, separator=" / ", Геноцид над Србима у Независној Држави Хрватској) was the sys ...
* Secondary antisemitism Other sources: * Denialism * Pseudohistory *
Temple denial Temple denial is a claim advanced by Palestinian political leaders, religious figures, intellectuals, and authors that the successive Temples in Jerusalem did not exist or were placed other than on the Temple Mount. Yitzhak Reiter describes the ...


References


Citations

"Holocaust Denial and Distortion"
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust h ...
website. Accessed September 28, 2017. "Holocaust denial is an attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. Holocaust denial and distortion are forms of antisemitism. They are generally motivated by hatred of Jews and build on the claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests."
See also appropriate section of the Holocaust article for the death toll. Key elements of Holocaust denial: *"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. *"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. *"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 Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
website, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006. *"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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, 2001. Retrieved June 28, 2007. *"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 The University of Oklahoma Press (OU Press) is the publishing arm of the University of Oklahoma. Founded in 1929 by the fifth president of the University of Oklahoma, William Bennett Bizzell, it was the first university press to be established ...
, 2017, p. 181. *"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 BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, the childr ...
. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
"The kinds of assertions made in Holocaust-denial material include the following: *Several hundred thousand rather than approximately six million Jews died during the war. *Scientific evidence proves that gas chambers could not have been used to kill large numbers of people. *The Nazi command had a policy of deporting Jews, not exterminating them. *Some deliberate killings of Jews did occur, but were carried out by the peoples of Eastern Europe rather than the Nazis. *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. *Errors and inconsistencies in survivors' testimonies point to their essential unreliability. *Alleged documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs of concentration camp victims to Anne Frank's diary, is fabricated. *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": *"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." Bartov, Omer. ''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 Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...

"Omer Bartov"
, The Watson Institute for International Studies). *"The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
(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. *"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. *" 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. *"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. *"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. *"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 Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
. ''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 Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
. ''Denying the Holocaust—The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Penguin, 1993, , p. 25. *"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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007. *"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: *"'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. *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: *"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. *Another belief of deniers is the death of the millions of Jews was caused by sickness and disease. *"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. *"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. *"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.

,
Stephen Roth Institute The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism is a research institute at Tel Aviv University in Israel. It is a resource for information, provides a forum for academic discussion, and fosters research on issues ...
, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007. *"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 Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
. ''Denying the Holocaust – The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Penguin, 1993, , p. 27. *"They
olocaust deniers The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...
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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007. *"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. *"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: *"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 The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, usually known in English as the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), is a Vienna-based agency of the European Union inaugurated on 1 March 2007. It was established by Council Regulation (EC) No 168/2 ...
*"It would elevate their antisemitic ideology – which is what Holocaust denial is – to the level of responsible historiography – which it is not."
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
, ''Denying the Holocaust'', , p. 11. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism." Igounet, Valérie
"Holocaust denial is part of a strategy"
''
Le Monde diplomatique ''Le Monde diplomatique'' (meaning "The Diplomatic World" in French) is a French monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. The publication is owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary com ...
'', May 1998. *"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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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. *"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 The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism is a research institute at Tel Aviv University in Israel. It is a resource for information, provides a forum for academic discussion, and fosters research on issues ...
, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007. *"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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', July 11, 1993. *"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 Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...
, "A Desolation, and They Called it Peace" in ''Those who forget the past'', Ron Rosenbaum (ed), Random House 2004, p. 518.
Conspiracy theory: *"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 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007. *"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. *"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 The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism is a research institute at Tel Aviv University in Israel. It is a resource for information, provides a forum for academic discussion, and fosters research on issues ...
, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.


Bibliography

::About Holocaust denial *Richard J. Evans, ''In Defense of History'', New York: Norton, 1999. *Richard J. Evans, ''Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial'', Basic Books, 2002 (). As well as the story of the Irving case, this is an excellent case study on historical research. *Charles Gray, ''The Irving Judgment'', Penguin, 2000 (). Actual text of the judgment in the Irving case. *D. D. Guttenplan, ''The Holocaust on Trial'', Norton 2002 *Deborah Lipstadt, ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994. Debunking Holocaust revisionism. *Donald L. Niewyk, ed. ''The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation'',
D.C. Heath and Company D.C. Heath and Company was an American publishing company located at 125 Spring Street in Lexington, Massachusetts, specializing in textbooks. History The company was founded in Boston by Edwin Ginn and Daniel Collamore Heath in 1885.D.C Heath ...
, 1992. * Robert Jan van Pelt, ''The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial'' (). *Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, '' Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?'' University of California Press (). *Michael Shermer, '' Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time'', Freeman, New York 1997 (). * * Mr. Death, a documentary by Errol Morris. * *John C. Zimmerman, ''Holocaust denial: demographics, testimonies, and ideologies'' Lanham, Md., University Press of America, 2000. *John C. Zimmerman, "Holocaust Denial". ''Los Angeles Times'', January 16, 2000, M4 *
Jean Claude Pressac Jean-Claude Pressac (3 March 1944 – 23 July 2003) was a French pharmacist by profession, who became a published authority on the Auschwitz concentration camp homicidal gas chambers deployed during the Holocaust in World War II. He was the au ...
: "Les carences et incohérences du Rapport Leuchter" ''Jour J., la lettre télégraphique juive'', December 12, 1988.
Jean Claude Pressac, "Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers", The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989
*Jean Claude Pressac, ''Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie Du Meurtre De Masse'', CNRS editions, Paris, 1993. *Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Les assassins de la mémoire", ''Un Eichman de papier'', Postface de Gisèle Sapiro, Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, La Découverte, Paris, 2005, . *Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Qui sont les assassins de la mémoire?" in ''Réflexions sur le génocide. Les juifs, la mémoire et le présent'', vol. III. La Découverte 1995. * Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, Wilhelm Lasek, ''Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit. NS-Verbrechen und revisionistische Geschichtsschreibung''. Wien, 1992. * *Till Bastian, "Auschwitz und die «Auschwitz-Lüge». Massenmord und Geschichtsfälschung", Beck'sche Reihe München, 1994. *Francesco Germinario, ''Estranei alla democrazia. Negazionismo e antisemitismo nella destra radicale italiana'' BFS Editore, Pisa, 2001. *Francesco Rotondi, ''Luna di miele ad Auschwitz. Riflessioni sul negazionismo della Shoah'', Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli, 2005. *Flores M., ''Storia, Verità e Giustizia'', Mondadori, Milano, 2001. *Valentina Pisanty, ''L'irritante questione delle camere a gas. Logica del negazionismo'', Bompiani, Milano, 1998. *Ted Gottfried, ''Deniers of the Holocaust: Who They Are, What They Do, Why They Do It'', Brookfield Conn Twenty-First Century Books, 2001. *Henry Rousso, ''Le dossier Lyon III: le rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme à l'université Jean-Moulin'', Paris, 2004. *Nadine Fresco "Les redresseurs de morts. Chambres à gaz: la bonne nouvelle. Comment on révise l'histoire", ''Les Temps Modernes'', 407, June 1980. *Nadine Fresco, ''The Denial of the Dead On the Faurisson Affair'' 1981. *Georges Bensoussan "Négationnisme et antisionnisme: récurrences et convergences des discours du rejet", ''Revue d'histoire de la Shoah'', 166, May–August 1999. Centre de documentation juive contemporaine 1999. *Valérie Igounet, "Dossier «Les terroirs de l'extrême-droite»: Un négationnisme stratégique", ''Le Monde diplomatique'' (May 1998). *Valérie Igounet, ''Histoire du négationnisme en France'', Paris, Le Seuil, 2000 *Pierre Bridonneau, ''Oui, il faut parler des négationnistes'', Éditions du Cerf 1997. *Yehuda Bauer "A Past that Will Not Go Away". in ''The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined''. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington: Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Indiana University Press, 1998, pp. 12–22. *Alan L. Berger, "Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?" in ''Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas''. Ed. Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, pp. 31–45. *Joseph Dan, "Four Ways of Holocaust Denial". in ''Bruch und Kontinuität: Jüdisches Denken in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte''. Ed. Eveline Goodman-Thau and Michael Daxner. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995, pp. 39–46. *Patrick Finney "Ethics, Historical Relativism and Holocaust Denial." Rethinking History 2 (1998), pp. 359–369. * *Wayne Klein, "Truth's Turning: History and the Holocaust". In ''Postmodernism and the Holocaust''. Ed. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1998, pp. 53–83. *Jonathan Petropoulos, "Holocaust Denial: A Generational Typology." In ''Lessons and Legacies'' III: ''Memory, Memorialization, and Denial''. Ed. Peter Hayes. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. *Werner Wegner: "Keine Massenvergasungen in Auschwitz? Zur Kritik des Leuchter-Gutachtens", in: ''Die Schatten der Vergangenheit. Impulse zur Historisierung der Vergangenheit'', hg. v. Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse und Rainer Zitelmann, Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 1990, S. pp. 450–476 (). * *Jürgen Zarusky: "Leugnung des Holocaust. Die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz. Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften Aktuell – Amtliches Mitteilungsblatt". ''Jahrestagung'' 9./10. Nov. 1999, Marburg. Auch als Internet-Veröffentlichung (pdf-Dokument) erhältlich. *Martin Finkenberger/Horst Junginger (Hrsg.): ''Im Dienste der Lügen. Herbert Grabert (1901–1978) und seine Verlage''. Aschaffenburg: Alibri-Verl., 2004 (). *Thomas Wandres: ''Die Strafbarkeit des Auschwitz-Leugnens''. Berlin 2000 (). * * * * * ::By Holocaust deniers * Arthur R. Butz, '' The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry'', Newport Beach: Institute for Historical Review, 1994 (). * Faurisson, Robert, ''My Life As a Revisionist'', The Journal of Historical Review, volume 9 no. 1 (Spring 1989), p. 5. *
Ernst Gauss Germar Rudolf (born 29 October 1964), also known as Germar Scheerer, is a German chemist and a convicted Holocaust denier. Background Rudolf was born in Limburg an der Lahn, Hesse. In 1983 he took his Abitur in Remscheid, then studied chemis ...
(Ed.), ''Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of 'Truth' and 'Memory, Alabama: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2000 \(). "Gauss" is a pseudonym for Germar Rudolf, the founder of "Theses & Dissertations Press." * Jürgen Graf, ''Der Holocaust auf dem Prüfstand'', 1992. *
Richard E. Harwood Richard Verrall (born 1948) is a British Holocaust denier and former deputy chairman of the British National Front (NF) who edited the magazine '' Spearhead'' from 1976 to 1980. Under the ''nom de plume'' (pen name) of Richard E. Harwood, Verr ...
, ''
Did Six Million Really Die? ''Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last'' is a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial pamphlet allegedly written by British National Front (NF) member Richard Verrall under the pseudonym Richard E. Harwood and published in 1974 by neo-Nazi propa ...
'', Noontide Press. *
Michael Hoffman II Michael Anthony Hoffman II (born January 2, 1957) is an American author. He has been described by critics as a conspiracy theorist and by the Anti-Defamation League (among other sources), as a Holocaust denier and antisemite. Biography Hoffman w ...
, ''The Great Holocaust Trial'', (June 1985, 2nd Edition) (). *
Fred A. Leuchter Fred Arthur Leuchter Jr. (born February 7, 1943) is an American manufacturer of execution equipment, and a Holocaust denier best known as the author of the Leuchter report, a pseudoscientific document*"Leuchter and Rudolf have published pseudosc ...
,
Robert Faurisson Robert Faurisson (; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in th ...
, Germar Rudolf, '' The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition'', Chicago, Theses & Dissertations Press, 2005 ().
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
is a 1999 documentary film by Errol Morris about execution technician Fred A. Leuchter. * Germar Rudolf, ''The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the 'Gas Chambers' of Auschwitz'', Chicago: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001.
"Syrian Holocaust Denial"
by Mohammad Daoud, ''Syria Times'' September 6, 2000. Retrieved November 8, 2005.
"Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial in the Iranian Media"
MEMRI Special Dispatch Series no 855, January 28, 2005. Retrieved November 8, 2005.
"Palestinian Holocaust Denial"
Reuven Paz, ''Peacewatch'' April 21, 2000. Retrieved November 8, 2005. At Archive.org


External links


an online lecture by Ephraim Kaye, of Yad Vashem


By Robert Rozett of
Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

The Wiener Holocaust Library
nbsp;– The World's Oldest Holocaust Memorial Institution
The Nizkor Project
nbsp;– responses to Holocaust denial

��the Nizkor Project
The Holocaust History Project
nbsp;– documents and essays on the Holocaust and its denial
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (HEART)Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda
Published by the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...

Holocaust Denial on Trial
Documents and resources relating to the David Irving vs. Penguin Books and
Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books '' Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ...
trial
United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumAbsence of Humanity Exhibit – The Breman MuseumDenial of the Holocaust and the genocide in Auschwitz from the online web site
by Prof. Michael J. Bazyler {{DEFAULTSORT:Holocaust Denial Neo-Nazi concepts Holocaust studies Historical negationism Censorship in Germany The Holocaust Antisemitic canards Fringe theories