What can YOU do to help defeat communism?

[Beskar]

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The general aim of the Holocaust denial is to challenge and ridicule the history of Jewish suffering during the war. The deniers want to rehabilitate fascism by denying its past. Holocaust denial is the most extreme form of antisemitism and it shows how the system of antisemitic thought functions. Holocaust denial is therefore a result of classical antisemitism. As Ken Stern writes in his book Antisemitism Today, "Holocaust denial is about Jews, not about Holocaust" (2006).

1. WHAT ARE THE MAIN CLAIMS OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL?

The international movement of Holocaust denial uses several strategies and lines of argumentation. They use a range of tactics, from outright denial of facts of the Nazi genocide to various forms of minimalization and trivialization of the Nazi crimes.

The first, most extreme, strategy is explicitly denying the facts of the genocide of the Jewish people, which according to the deniers simply never took place and is a wholly fabricated story, which in their opinion was invented in the interests of the state of Israel and the international Jewish conspiracy. In particular, all evidence of killing people in gas chambers is disputed by the deniers. Of course, such extreme claims of the Holocaust deniers are easily defeated, simply by quoting the numerous testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. For this reason, the revisionists pay some attention to challenging the survivors' accounts, accusing them all of being motivated by self-interest or falsified. Similarly, a number of Holocaust deniers invested some energy into claiming the famous diary of Anne Frank is false and it was allegedly written after the war.

They tell stories which are simply self-contradictory. And applying to emotion here over some imaginary suffering is sick and disgusting

When they cannot refuse to admit that Jews and other victims of Nazism did die during World War II, the revisionists argue that the number of people killed was in fact much smaller than generally thought. Reports of atrocities and mass killing are considered exaggerated. They attempt to minimize the amount of suffering and destruction which resulted from Nazi policies in Europe, claiming the causalities were simply results of armed conflict and diseases, and not of an intentional policy of genocide conducted by Hitler and his allies.

Finally, in order to trivialise and relativize the Nazi crimes, the revisionists try to give them a kind of justification by claiming that Nazi brutality was not worse than alleged atrocities committed by the other side during World War II, the Allied bombing of Germany, especially of Dresden, being mainly exploited for this purpose (members of regional parliament of the rightwing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany even applied the term "bombing holocaust" when referring to the Allied bombing of Dresden).

many died due to starvation and typhus due to allied bomb raids.

The revisionists like to cite examples of other events in world history to show that brutality is "normal" throughout ages and the Nazis should not be blamed for using harsh methods. They often mention the crimes of communism and argue that the crimes of fascism were not unique and in some ways Hitler's war could be seen as defence of European values against communism.

Jews led the Bolshevik massmurder of 60 million white people

Finally, we have the question on the Operation Barbarossa - was that a pre-emptive strike against a 100% sure threat, or an imperialistic declaration of war by Hitler? Was his motives really Lebensraum, or the fact that the USSR was trying to take over all of Europe to spread Gulags and turn people into human cattle?

... [My] views, if they are true, depict him (Hitler) as an incredibly good philantropic fighter for peace and culture. On the other hand the mainstream media and hollywood and 40ies USSR version of it, accuse him of deeds that would make him a demon in anybody's view.

Holocaust denial comes in a variety of forms, however it is often more implicit than explicit. Subtle forms of Holocaust denial can also appear through discursive methods such as quotation marks, usage of the words 'claim', 'allege' etc. Today when outright denial is hardly credible, subtle means become more common practice.

2. WHO ARE THE MAIN EXPONENTS OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL?

The first Holocaust deniers were Nazis themselves. Today Holocaust denial is promoted by a small but internationally connected group of amateur historians and political activists. The international Holocaust denial movement has some leading figures such as David Irving in Great Britain, David Duke and Arthur Butz in the United States, Robert Faurisson in France, Ernst Zündel in Canada. They differ in the focus of their revisionist agenda, but what they share is a clear antisemitic political outlook, based on the desire to rehabilitate fascism and to promote the fight against a 'global Jewish conspiracy'.

This quiz is broken, where is David Duke? [...]

Holocaust denial is strongly linked with antisemitism. As there is no universally agreed definition of antisemitism, it is appropriate to present here the definition, which will fit to our understanding of the term in the context of the Holocaust denial phenomenon:
"Antisemitism is hatred toward Jews and is directed toward the Jewish religion, Jews as a people, or, more recently, the Jewish state. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm non-Jews and is often used to give an explanation for why things go wrong. It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms, and action, and regularly employs stereotypes."

The majority of known Holocaust deniers have strong connections with political movements whose agendas are antidemocratic. A leading example is David Irving who has been described by a British court as a "Holocaust denier who associates with rightwing extremists promoting neo-Nazism". Other examples of known Holocaust deniers linked with political organizations include Nick Griffin, the leader of the extreme-right British National Party as well as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku-Klux-Klan. It is clear that Holocaust denial here is just an element of a much broader political programme directed against minorities and against democracy as such.

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4. LEGAL AND ACADEMIC RESPONSES TO HOLOCAUST DENIAL

In many countries in Europe the Holocaust denial is forbidden by law and, in fact, it can easily be condemned. Many states also have broader legislation against racial and ethnic hatred. European intergovernmental organizations passed resolutions and signed agreements to commemorate the Holocaust and to condemn its denial. It includes the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust; the European Parliament Resolution on remembrance of the Holocaust, antisemitism and racism; the various declarations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (e.g. the Permanent Council Resolution in 2004, the Berlin Declaration in 2004, the Cordoba Declaration in 2005, the Brussels Declaration of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in 2006, the Bucharest Declaration in 2007).

Many states, especially in Western Europe adopted different approaches against Holocaust denial, including monitoring of Holocaust denial discourse by academic and non-governmental organizations, punitive measures such as fines, imprisonment and even deportations. Here are some examples of successful measures against Holocaust deniers.

Zündel Trial
German national Ernst Zündel living in Canada is known as an owner of the publishing house "Samizdat Publications" which is infamous for producing and disseminating Holocaust denial material. He is also a co-author of the book The Hitler we loved and why. Zündel propagates the notion that the world is controlled by an international "Zionist conspiracy" that is destroying the white race. Zündel also has a web-site which publicizes his antisemitic views. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that his web-site propagating hate speech is against the Canadian Human Rights Act. Zündel was ordered by the court to stop hate messages. In February 2003 he was arrested in the United States and then deported to Canada. In Canada, before he was deported to Germany, he stayed in prison until March 2005. In February 2007 in Germany, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's Volksverhetzung law, which bans the incitement of hatred against a minority of the population and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Irving Trial
In 1998 the most known Holocaust denier David Irving sued American scholar Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin publishing house claiming that they libelled him in her book Denying the Holocaust. He used Great Britain's loose libel laws to file a suit for defamation. In her book Lipstadt accused Irving of misrepresentation of evidence and called him, among other things, "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial". She also pointed to his links with neo-Nazi figures and organizations. David Irving's purpose was to silence criticism and to publicize widely his ideas through the court case. Holocaust deniers appeal to the freedom of speech in case of refusal to present and discuss their ideas on an equal footing with others. As a result of work of Lipstadt and other historians, Irving's suit was dismissed. In November 2005 David Irving was arrested when he went to Austria to give a lecture to a far-right student group. He was accused of denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz in his speech and interview in Austria in 1989. He spent a year in jail there before gaining early release.

Robert Faurisson Case
French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson was suspended from his university teaching position and brought before a court for denying that the Nazi gas chambers had existed. In July 1981, the Paris Court of Appeal stated that his words "would arouse in his very large audience feelings of contempt, of hatred and of violence towards Jews in France."

There are not so many similar examples from Eastern and Central Europe, but still not all those denying the Holocaust are unpunished. Thus, for example, in 1999 Dariusz Ratajczak, a popular lecturer at the University of Opole was suspended from his university post following protests over his book Dangerous Topics. In his book Ratajczak claimed that for technical reasons it was impossible for the Nazis to kill people with Zyklon B and that Nazis did not have plans for the extermination of the Jews. Ratajczak was subsequently convicted by the court.

In Hungary the criminal proceedings were initiated against outright deniers Albert Szabo and Istvan Gyorkos, who claimed that the Holocaust is a hoax. Both of them were linked with US Nazi and Austrian neo-Nazi movements.

For example, in 2000, the Polish translation of David Irving's biography of Hitler's right-hand man Hermann Göring by a state-owned company was stopped by the joint efforts of anti-fascists from the "Never Again" Association and the media.

In May 2007, Holocaust denier David Irving visited the Warsaw International Book Fair. His aim was to promote his books, which question the important facts about the Holocaust, such as the existence of the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp. As a result of the media campaign initiated by the "Never Again" Association, Irving was immediately ejected from the Book Fair by the organizers.

Many countries in Eastern Europe have made some important gestures to recognize the facts of the Holocaust in the recent years. A number of public figures and scholars such as Holocaust survivor and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising leader Marek Edelman in Poland or Romanian-born Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel speak out against Holocaust denial.

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It is not only the "Jews", "Russians", "Allies" and "Everyone Else" who speak out against the acts, even the SS members at the camps come clean about the acts.

Hans Münch - SS Physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp

so firmly determined that one cannot have any doubt at all

Oswald Kaduk - German SS-Unterscharführer and Rapportführer at Auschwitz concentration camp

(Interviewer) Today there are many people that say Auschwitz was a lie, that nobody at all was gassed.
(Kaduk) I have to say, I do not consider these people normal. We have to stick to the truth. There are people denying it, but what happened, happened, and it is not up for dispute.

Josef Klehr - head of the SS disinfection commando at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Jews never gassed? No? Yes, I have already been asked about that. ...Three elderly ladies come to visit us here. That is such an official society. They always want to support us a little bit, to give us a present on our birthdays, and so on, and one of them asked me once if people were gassed in Auschwitz? I said - I will tell you openly and honestly, but if it were someone else, I would have answered that I did not know. But because it is you, I will tell you precisely, that people were gassed. And anyone who maintains that there are no gassing....Yes, I don't understand him, he must be crazy or on the wrong.... When you are three, four years in Auschwitz and experienced everything, then I cannot get myself to lie about it and say that no gassings were ever conducted.

Oskar Groning - former German SS-Rottenführer at Auschwitz concentration camp

I saw everything, the gas chambers, the cremations, the selection process. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. I was there

I would like you to believe me. I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections took place. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened because I was there

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In short, this is a Total War website, not a forum for hate speech.