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Holocaust denial

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Holocaust denial is the rejection of some or all of the conventional history of the Holocaust, whereby Nazi Germany committed genocide against millions of people belonging to minority ethnic groups in Europe during World War II.

Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Israel, France, Germany and Austria, punishable by fines and jail sentences.

Terminology

"Historical revisionism" is an academic term used by historians which refers to the reexamination and reviewing of the stories told as history; this is done with an eye to updating them with more recently discovered, more unbiased, or more accurate information. Mainstream historians are open to the possibility that history, as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate and it thus is subject to review. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies.

The term historical revisionism has relatively recently been adopted by many people that question the "official" Holocaust story. Their critics state that Holocaust deniers are not applying genuine historical revisionism. For example, Gordon McFee writes in his essay "Why Revisionism isn't" that:

"Revisionists" depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology [...], thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head." [1]

Of course, many historians of all stripes assume an event as fact and then do their utmost to find the evidence to back it up. The Holocaust believers and the Holocaust deniers appear to be no different in this regard.

Beliefs of Holocaust revisionists

Holocaust revisionists make some or all of the following claims:

  1. There was no specific order by Adolf Hitler or other top Nazi officials to exterminate the Jews, although their incarceration in concentration camps and use as slave labor in factories had that effect.
  2. The Nazis did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews.
  3. The figure of six million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration.
  4. The film footage shown after the War was all specially manufactured as propaganda against the Nazis by the Allied forces;
  5. That the claims of what the Nazis supposedly did to the Jews were all intended to facilitate the Allies in their intention to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine;
  6. That though crimes were committed, they were not centrally orchestrated and thus the Nazi leadership bore no responsibility for the implementation of such a policy.
  7. The historical proof for the Holocaust is falsified or deliberately misinterpreted
  8. There is an American, British or Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Germans.
  9. The overwhelming number of biased academics and historians are too afraid to actually admit that the Holocaust was a fiction; they know they will lose their jobs if they speak up.

Holocaust revisionism examined

Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust revisionists 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 Holocaust revisionist claims of "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 revisionism have compiled detailed, numerous accounts instances where revisionist evidence has been altered or manufactured (see below, also see Nizkor Project and David Irving). Evidence presented by revisionists has also failed to stand up to scrutiny in courts (see Fred A. Leuchter) of law, further questioning its veracity.

Ken McVay, an activist who works to counter revisionist claims on the Internet, described the modus operandi of Holocaust revisionists in a 1994 interview:

"They'll cite a historical text: 'K.K. Campbell says on page 82 of his famous book that nobody died at Auschwitz.' Then you go to the Library of Congress and look up K.K. Campbell, page 82, and what you find he really said was, 'It was a nice day at Dachau.' They get away with this because they know goddamn well most people don't have time to rush off to the Library of Congress. But people read that and say to themselves, 'Who would lie about such a thing when it's so easy to prove them wrong? They must be telling the truth.' " -- Eye magazine (online Web-based magazine), November 10, 1994

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.

In other cases, conflation of facts is used to mislead. A frequent photo used by revisionists 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 used on an extermination gas chamber, it is a door used on a de-lousing gas chamber.

Finally, many publications and statements by Holocaust revisionists have been tainted by anti-Semitism. Critics of Holocaust revisionism have cited many examples where the revisionists' arguments and proffered evidence have moved from neutral, scholarly presentations to blatant, biased personal attacks. Revisionists have frequently used anti-Semtitic terms such as "Zionist," "Jew-lover," and similar smears to describe their opponents.

Evidence of the Holocaust

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.

Evidence for Hitler's complicity in the Holocaust

Holocaust revisionists 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 elimination of the Jews in Europe comes from a 1939 speech, where he is quoted as saying:

"Today I want to be a prophet once more: If international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Provided here is a photographic image of a report from Himmler to Hitler regarding the executions of prisoners in Nazi-occupied Russia. 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 separate entry specifically notes the number of executed Jews.

Evidence that gas chambers were used for killing

There have been claims by Holocaust revisionists 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 revisionist 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 scientific 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 used by revisionists, 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 point of great debate by Revisionists is, "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.

Nonetheless, revisionists still the question 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."

External Link: Gassing as a "remedy" for Jews
External Link: A detailed refutation of the Leuchter-Report

Evidence for the death toll

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 revisionist 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).

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. These accounts are discounted by Holocaust revisionists, who claim that these witnesses were tortured. When asked to refute the numerous individual stories and official testimonies, the revisionist 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 single captured Nazi officer, soldier, and worker who testified at the war crimes tribunal.

Various instances have been reported where the death toll of the death camps was overstated. Revisionists are quick to point to a report known as 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 printed in the Breitbard Document).

Public reactions to Holocaust denial

France and Germany have passed legislation making it illegal to make claims equivalent to those of Holocaust revisionism. 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 revisionists 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. 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 revisionism 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 revisionists 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 Holocaust revisionists to express their perception that Jewish leaders promote the official story about the Holocaust for financial and political gain.

The Zündel trial

Canadian resident Ernst Zündel operates a small-press publishing house called Samisdat Publishing, which publishes and distributes Holocaust revisionism 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 revisionist viewpoint.

Ken McVay and alt.revisionism

In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the Internet brought new international exposure to many organizations, including Holocaust revisionists and other groups. A number of authority figures stated publicly that the Internet allowed groups to introduce their messages to a widespread audience, and it was feared that Holocaust revisionism 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 revisionists. 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 revisionists 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 revisionists, 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 revisionists, some of whom were neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

The Irving affair

In 1998, the best-selling British historian David Irving filed suit against American author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books, claiming that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book Denying the Holocaust. The statements made by Lipstadt included the accusation that Irving deliberately twisted and misrepresented evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoint. Under British 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:

References

Scholarly

  • Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994. Debunking Holocaust revisionism.
  • Richard J. Evans, "Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial", Basic Books, 2002 (ISBN 0465021530). As well as the story of the Irving case, this is an excellent case study on historical research.

Works by Holocaust revisionists

  • Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Newport Beach: Institute for Historical Review, 1994. This is a standard work of Holocaust revisionism, but not a good place for beginners to start.

External links: Background

External Links: refutal of revisionism

External Links: Audio Testimony of Holocaust Survivors

  • Audio Testimony of Dr. Walter Ziffer, Recorded April 11, 2004 Dr. Walter Ziffer, the last Holocaust survivor in Asheville, North Carolina as of April 11, 2004, discusses his interment in several camps, as well as the idea of Holocaust revisionism. It is one thing to read about the Holocaust, quite another to hear it from the mouth of one who was there...
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