Holocaust denial
Book cover, Did Six Million Really Die?
Holocaust denial is the claim that the mainstream historical version of the Holocaust is either highly exaggerated or completely falsified.
Holocaust deniers prefer to be called Holocaust revisionists. However, many people contend that the latter term is misleading. Historical revisionism is the reexamination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and/or less biased information. Broadly, it is the approach that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate and should be revised accordingly. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies. It may be applied to the Holocaust as well, as new facts emerge and change our understanding of its events.
Holocaust deniers maintain that they apply proper revisionist principles to Holocaust history, and therefore the term Holocaust revisionism is appropriate for their point of view. However, their critics disagree and prefer the term Holocaust denial. Gordon McFee writes in his essay "Why Revisionism isn't" that:
Holocaust deniers make some of the following claims:
Holocaust denial is a per se criminal offense in Austria, France, Germany, Israel, and Switzerland, and is punishable by fines and jail sentences.
Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers centers upon the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly never happened. Numerous accounts have been given (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed "facts" and "evidence"; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biased statements, and even deliberately falisified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have compiled detailed accounts of numerous instances where this evidence has been altered or manufactured (see below, also see Nizkor Project and David Irving). Evidence presented by Holocaust deniers has also failed to stand up to scrutiny in courts of law (see Fred A. Leuchter), further questioning its veracity.
Ken McVay, an activist who works to counter such claims on the Internet, described the modus operandi of Holocaust deniers in a 1994 interview:
In other cases, conflation of facts is used to mislead. A frequently-used photo shows a fairly flimsy gas chamber door. The intent is to confuse the reader into believing that gas chambers could not be practically used for extermination, because the victims would break down the door rather than be executed. While the photo is a real gas chamber door, it is not a door that was known to be used on an extermination gas chamber; it is a door likely used on a de-lousing gas chamber.
Finally, many publications and statements by Holocaust deniers have been tainted by anti-Semitism. Critics of Holocaust denial have cited many examples where the arguments and proffered evidence have moved from neutral, scholarly presentations to blatant, biased personal attacks. Holocaust deniers have frequently used anti-Semitic terms such as "Zionist," "Jew-lover," and similar smears to describe their opponents.
The continuing, persistent efforts by Holocaust deniers to portray such a human disaster as a mere fiction in the face of overwhelming evidence has led scholars and authorities to question their motives. "Why," it has been asked, "do people deny the Holocaust?" On July 24, 1996, a missive by Harold Covington (the leader of the National Socialist White Peoples Party, formerly the American Nazi Party) was sent via email to a number of neo-Nazi supporters (many of whom were Holocaust deniers). In this message, Covington explained holocaust revisionism in a manner that has been used by its opponents and critics as a definitive answer to the question of why:
Evidence of the existence of the Holocaust was well documented by the German government itself. It was further well documented by the Allied forces who entered Germany and its associated Axis states towards the end of World War II. Among the evidence produced was film and stills of the existence of prisoner camps, as well as the testimony of those freed when the camps were entered.
The Holocaust was a massive undertaking that lasted for years across several countries, with its own command and control infrastructure. Although the Nazis made attempts to destroy the evidence of the Holocaust when they could see that their defeat was imminent, they left many tons of documents relating to the Holocaust. Due to the extremely rapid collapse of the Nazi forces at the end of the war, attempts to destroy evidence in Germany were for the most part unsuccessful.
After their defeat, many tons of documents were recovered, and many thousands of bodies were found not yet completely decomposed, in mass graves near many concentration camps. The physical evidence and the documentary proof included records of train shipments of Jews to the camps, orders for tons of cyanide and other poisons, and the remaining concentration camp structures. Interviews with survivors completed the picture.
As a result of the records produced, all mainstream historians agree that Holocaust denial is contrary to the facts of history.
Report to Hitler detailing the executions of prisoners
Holocaust deniers cite the fact that there was never a blatant, unquestionable order written or signed by Adolf Hitler that specifically ordered the death of the Jewish populations of Germany or Poland. Critics counter this argument by noting that very few Nazi documents used such obvious terms as "murder" or "death" when addressing their actions. Almost always, they spoke and wrote with suggestive phrases such as "the final solution to the Jewish question" rather than "the destruction of the Jewish people." The most often-cited quote from Hitler regarding the intention to eliminate the European Jewry comes from his January 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag, where he is quoted as saying:
There have been claims by Holocaust deniers that the gas chambers built to massacre civilians never existed, and the structures identified as gas chambers actually served other purposes. However, the more common argument has been to claim that gas was not used to murder Jews and other victims, and that many gas chambers were also built after the war just for show. An often-quoted document advancing this theory is the "Leuchter Report" by Fred A. Leuchter, a paper stating that no traces of cyanide were found when he examined samples taken from one of the Auschwitz gas chambers in 1999. This paper is used to further a common debating tactic, namely the suggestion that because no traces of cyanide were found in 1999, then no cyanide was used at all in Auschwitz, over fifty years earlier.
The cyanide used in Auschwitz and other extermination camps was created through activation of the pesticide Zyklon-B, which was used to exterminate prisoners by the thousands. Further investigation into the horrors of the death camps revealed that the most difficult part of the operation was the disposal of thousands of corpses after the executions had taken place; this required the construction of huge ovens to cremate the corpses.
Another piece of evidence Holocaust deniers frequently cite is the question of what happened to the ash after the bodies were cremated. Some speculate that some ash could have been used in fertilization experiments in crop fields, by the Germans.
The Institute for Historical Review publicly offered a reward of $50,000 for verifiable "proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz." Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz, submitted proof, which was then ignored. He then sued IHR and won the $50,000 reward, plus $40,000 in damages for personal suffering. Revisionists have subsequently claimed that the proof offered by Mermelstein was "never released to the public," implying that it had been sealed by the court or otherwise kept secret.
Nonetheless, holocaust deniers still question the use of gas chambers in spite of overwhelming evidence. Arno Mayer stated in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable."
The figure "six million" (which is actually closer to eleven million, when counting the other ethnic, religious, and minority groups targeted for extinction) is often downgraded by claims to a figure of "only" one million deaths, or only three hundred thousand "casualties." Numerous documents archived and discovered after the war gave meticulous accounts of the exterminations that took place at the "death camps" (such as Auschwitz and Treblinka).
Complicating the matter is that various instances have been reported where the death tolls of particular death camps were claimed to be overstated. Any possible ambiguity in death toll figures has been seized upon by revisionists as evidence for their position. Nevertheless, the evidence for the large death figures quoted by mainstream sources is overwhelming.
A much-quoted instance of disputing the toll is the "Breitbard Document," which describes a commemorative plaque at Auschwitz to the victims that died there, which read, Four million people suffered and died here at the hands of the Nazi murderers between the years 1940 and 1945. In 1990, a new plaque replaced the old one. It now says, May this place where the Nazis assassinated 1,500,000 men, women and children, a majority of them Jews from diverse European countries, be forever for mankind a cry of despair and of warning. The lower numbers are due to the fact that the Soviets "purposely overstated the number of non-Jewish casualties at Auschwitz-Birkenau," according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (as said to be printed in the Breitbard Document). The existence of the document is in doubt; it does not appear on the SWC website, and the only parts found in web searches are the ones given above.
The most telling evidence is the testimony of thousands of survivors of the Holocaust, including the testimony of captured Nazi officers at the Nuremberg Trials. Holocaust deniers discount these accounts claiming that these witnesses were tortured. When asked to refute the numerous individual stories and official testimonies, the argument has been to construct an elaborate conspiracy theory involving a massive "Jewish plan" to plant forged documents across the continent of Europe, aided by the torture and forced confession of every captured Nazi officer, soldier, and worker who testified at the war crimes tribunal.
France and Germany have passed legislation making it illegal to make claims equivalent to those of Holocaust denial. Many people who do not deny that the Holocaust occurred nevertheless oppose such restrictions of free speech, including Noam Chomsky. An uproar resulted when Serge Thion used one of Chomsky's essays as a foreword to a book of holocaust denial essays. Many Holocaust deniers see these laws as a confirmation of their own beliefs, arguing that the truth does not need to be legally enforced.
In the Middle East, the Syrian government, as well as the Palestinian Authority publish holocaust denial literature. These works are popular sellers in several Arab nations.
Many Neo-Nazi groups and people associated with them believe that the Holocaust never occurred.
Many Jews protest that Holocaust denial trivializes the suffering caused to victims of the Holocaust when it juxtaposes it with accounts of the millions (most popular estimate is 2.4 million, but some Holocaust deniers put the figure as high as 10 million) of Germans who died of starvation and from Russian pogroms immediately after WWII. They feel this is an attempt to make the Germans feel they don't deserve full blame for the war crimes of the Nazis, on the basis that the Soviets, British, and Americans committed similar war crimes without repercussions. This position is based on the work of James Bacque, Ernst Mayo, and others.
Recently the terms Holocaust industry and Shoah business, have come into vogue among those who believe Jewish leaders use the Holocaust for financial and political gain. The term Holocaust industry was coined by Norman Finkelstein, a Jew and the son of Auschwitz survivors who very much believes the Holocaust occurred, but also believes that its memory is being dishonestly exploited. However, the term has also been picked up by Holocaust deniers who believe the Holocaust was actually manufactured for the purpose of financial and political gain, although that usage is much less frequent.
Canadian resident Ernst Zündel operates a small-press publishing house called Samisdat Publishing, which publishes and distributes Holocaust-denial material such as Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood aka Richard Verrall (a British neo-Nazi leader). In 1985, he was tried and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust." Zündel gained considerable notoriety after this conviction, and a number of free-speech activists stepped forward to defend his right to publish his opinion. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.
Zündel established his own Web site to publicize his viewpoints.
In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the Internet brought new international exposure to many organizations, including Holocaust deniers and other groups. A number of authority figures stated publicly that the Internet allowed hate groups to introduce their messages to a widespread audience, and it was feared that Holocaust denial would gain in popularity as a result. But this was not the case, largely due to the efforts of Ken McVay and the participants in the Usenet newsgroup alt.revisionism.
McVay, a Canadian resident, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers. On alt.revisionism he began a campaign of "truth, fact, and evidence," working with other participants on the newsgroup to uncover factual information about the Holocaust and counter the arguments of the deniers by proving them to be based upon misleading evidence, false statements, and outright lies. He founded the Nizkor Project to expose the activities of the Holocaust deniers, who responded to McVay with personal attacks and slander. McVay received a number of death threats, and the Nizkor Project soon became the number-one online foe of many Holocaust deniers, some of whom were neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Book cover: Denying The Holocaust
In 1998, the best-selling British historian David Irving filed suit against American author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books, claiming that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book Denying the Holocaust. The statements made by Lipstadt included the accusation that Irving deliberately twisted and misrepresented evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoint. Under British law, which seeks primarily to protect the reputation of an individual, Lipstadt and her publisher bore the full burden of demonstrating not only that they had not shown "reckless disregard" for the truth (as would be the case in America), but also that the statements made were true.
Lipstadt and Penguin hired British lawyer Anthony Julius and Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans to present her case. Evans spent two years examining Irving's work, and presented evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as a source. The presiding judge, Charles Gray, was persuaded by the evidence presented by Evans and others and wrote a long and decisive verdict in favor of Lipstadt, calling Irving a "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist," and confirming the accusations of Lipstadt and Evans.
Some journalists called the verdict a blow to free speech, although others said that it was Irving who had initiated legal action for damages from the publication of Lipstadt's work, and hence no one's speech was restricted.
See also:
Other acts of genocide and atrocity have met similar attempts to deny and minimize. Some examples are the Nanjing Massacre (1937) by the Japanese army, which many Japanese politicians, such as Ishihara Shintaro, have denied happened. The Armenian Genocide by Turkey is denied by the Turkish government. Intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, have been accused of denying massmurder by communist governments, such as the millions killed in Cambodia, which Chomsky called a "New york Times creation". Sometimes the motivation for holocaust denial is to avoid distrubing truths, and sometimes it is strictly nationalist, or ideological.
Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism
In general, the term Holocaust denial fits the description at the beginning of this article, while Holocaust revisionism ranges from holocaust denial through the belief that only minor corrections are required to Holocaust history. However, because the latter term has become associated with Holocaust deniers, mainstream historians today generally avoid using it to describe themselves.Beliefs of Holocaust deniers
Most Holocaust deniers also stress that, contrary to popular belief:Holocaust denial examined
In some cases, while some facts presented are sound, the application of those facts to specific arguments is meaningless, and are simply used to bolster other arguments (in spite of their irrelevance). For example, in the Leuchter report (see below), a lack of significant cyanide traces in some gas chambers is measured some 50 years later, after 50 years of open-air weathering. While it is indeed factual, it is meaningless as an indicator of whether or not cyanide gas was ever used there.Evidence of the Holocaust
Evidence for Hitler's complicity in the Holocaust
Provided here is a photographic image of a report from Himmler to Hitler regarding the executions of prisoners in Nazi-occupied Bialystok, Ukraine. This was presented as evidence during the Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, of Hitler's knowledge and approval of the executions of Jews and other targeted groups. A translation of the report can be found by clicking on the image.Evidence that gas chambers were used for killing
Evidence for the death toll
Public reactions to Holocaust denial
The Zündel trial
Ken McVay and alt.revisionism
The Irving affair
Other Holocaust Denials
References
About Holocaust deniers
By Holocaust deniers
External links
Background
Denials of the Holocaust
Refutations of revisionism
Audio testimony of Holocaust survivors