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Holocaust denial

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Countries with laws against Holocaust denial.
The Auschwitz concentration camps stand as a testament that antisemitism caused one of the worst genocides in human history.
A Holocaust memorial outside Auschwitz concentration camp I.

Holocaust denial,[1][2] or Holocaust distortion,[1][2] refers to the false claim that the Holocaust did not happen or was not as bad as commonly believed.[1] Historians agree that the Nazis killed at least 6,000,000 Jews (67% of pre-war European Jews) in the Holocaust,[3][4] mostly in Nazi concentration camps within occupied territories across Europe back then.[3][4]

Background

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Definition of the Holocaust

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As per the Holocaust Encyclopedia, run by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM),[5]

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.

According to Yad Vashem:[6]

The Holocaust was unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people.

As per the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust:[7]

The Holocaust was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe.

According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA):[8]

[The Holocaust was] the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, [also] known as [...] the Shoah.

Recent trend

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Further information: Vichy syndrome and Leon Rupnik § Trial

A trend of Holocaust denial, some state-sponsored, is seen in other European countries, including Austria,[9] Croatia,[10] Czechia,[9][11] Hungary,[12] Germany,[9] Italy[9] and Poland.[13][14] In the book Decoding Antisemitism, co-author Hagen Troschke said that the common strategies of such denial consisted of:

  1. Making some Holocaust perpetrators[a] look better than they were[15][b]
  2. Reducing the Holocaust responsibility to a small group of perpetrators[15][c]
  3. Doubting the scientifically proven death toll[15][18]
  4. Blaming Jews for the Holocaust[15][d]
  5. Equating the Holocaust with other crimes against humanity[15][e], which is common in academia.[20]

Some scholars said that Holocaust denial had gone mainstream[21] amid the rise of nationalism across Europe,[22][15] where Jews were sometimes equated with the disliked Soviet communists against whom the Holocaust was considered "a reaction".[15][16]

Some described the phenomenon with the concept mnemonic politics,[11] where nationalist governments distorted the Holocaust by framing their ethnic majority as the victims rather than the Jews or Roma.[11][23] Such denial is sometimes rooted in the conspiracy theory that the mainstream Holocaust historiography's focus on Jews is an EU plot to suppress national identity[11][24] and promote "cosmopolitanism" and "multiculturalism".[11][25]

Definition

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Contrary to public misconceptions, Holocaust denial does not simply mean denying that the Holocaust happened.[1] Instead, it also includes the following acts:[1]

  1. Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany;
  2. Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources;
  3. Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide;
  4. Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism.[26] They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”;
  5. Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.

For instance, someone acknowledging that the Holocaust happened while denying the Nazi use of poison gas in the death camps is also a Holocaust denier. Whether like-minded people see the person as denying the Holocaust is irrelevant.

Denialist claims

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Below is a summary of usual claims made by Holocaust deniers.

Tactics

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Just Asking Questions

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Main article: Just Asking Questions

Just Asking Questions (JAQ) is a pseudoskeptical[30] tactic often employed by Holocaust deniers to promote lies about the Holocaust by phrasing them as questions.[31] Holocaust deniers tend to claim that they are "only asking questions" about the Holocaust while rejecting the abundant amount of evidence that proves that the Holocaust happened.[31]

Writing for the Slate magazine, Johannes Breit, a German historian, stated that JAQ used to be seen frequently in posts made by Holocaust deniers in Reddit's r/AskHistorian subreddit (2.2M subscribers), which prompted its moderators to ban them from participation in 2018,[31] while Reddit has been long been criticized for uncontrolled antisemitism.[32] American historian Deborah Lipstadt (1947 – ) commented on JAQ's potential impact:[31]

Properly camouflaged, Holocaust denial has a good chance of finding a foothold among coming generations.

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a self-declared academic group that has been promoting Holocaust denial since 1978,[33] uses JAQ in many of their publications.[33] The Counter Extremism Project summarized IHR's activities as follows:[31]

They do not deny history but seek to provide more in-depth investigations to ascertain the truth [. ... They claim] to have no position [... but] "encourage more objective investigation."

While lying about being neutral, the IHR advances the antisemitic trope that the Holocaust was "invented" by Jews to "further Jewish-Zionist interests."[31][33] The IHR also pushed the myth that "Nazi Germany actively supported Zionism" by presenting relevant history without context.[33]

IHR's Holocaust distortion has had a considerable impact across the political spectrum. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone (1945 – ), who was a British Labour Party member until 2018, promoted the myth.[34] So did the Palestinian Authority's leader[35] and American Trotskyist activist writer Lenni Brenner (1937 – ), who published a book endorsing the myth.[36][37]

Since then, Brenner has denied encouraging Holocaust distortion,[37] despite the book's content being cited extensively by antisemites on both the far right and far left to trivialize the Holocaust and demonize the vast majority of diaspora Jews[38][39] who support Israel's right to exist.[37]

Sealioning

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As a similar concept to JAQ, sealioning refers to the act of repeating the same questions that have already been answered while faking ignorance and politeness.[40] It is also a common tactic among Holocaust deniers on online forums and social media.[32][41]

Doubting Holocaust uniqueness

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Main article: Holocaust uniqueness debate

Some well-educated antisemites are more skillful at promoting Holocaust denial.[42] They do not deny that the Holocaust happened,[42] but they cast doubt on the Holocaust's nature,[42] ignore the historical context leading up to the Holocaust,[42] and abusively compare the Holocaust to other historical events.[15][42] They do this to whitewash the Holocaust and dehumanize Holocaust victims so as to whitewash Nazi antisemitism and justify the mass murder of Jews.[42] Such behavior is rejected by mainstream historians, including Emil Fackenheim, Yehuda Bauer, Deborah Lipstadt and Daniel Goldhagen.[42][43]

Some of them also accuse Jews of "owning the Holocaust" or "extorting compensation from European governments",[42] and rewrite the Holocaust's history to inflate Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germans so as to blame Jews for their own suffering.[44] These false claims are common on social media, especially Reddit[31] and English Wikipedia.[44]

Rebuttal

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Evidence of Jewish prisoners being forced to help the Sonderkommandos destroy other victims' bodies.

Historians agree that the Holocaust happened and that Holocaust deniers use bad research, get things wrong, and sometimes make facts up to support their claims.[28][27] Many things together prove that the Holocaust did happen:

  • Written documents, like laws, newspaper articles, speeches made by Nazi leaders, and confessions from Nazi prisoners of war. The Nazis kept careful records, and many of them still exist. Even during World War II, many Germans knew about the Holocaust, and some tried to help save Holocaust victims.
  • Eyewitness testimony from people who saw what the Nazis did. That includes Holocaust survivors, like people who survived the Nazi concentration camps. There is specific testimony about the gas chambers from Jewish Sonderkommandos (concentration camp inmates who helped load bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria because this gave them a chance to survive). It also includes the word of Nazi leaders, Nazi concentration camp guards, and Allied soldiers who discovered the camps.
  • The camps. Pieces of Nazi concentration camps, death camps, and work camps still exist.
  • Other evidence, like population statistics.

Holocaust deniers

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Holocaust deniers usually call themselves Holocaust revisionists to make themselves look good.[45] Their usual claim is that the Holocaust is "a hoax made up by Jewish people working together."[28][27] It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Israel and in many European countries, especially in Germany.[46] Some Holocaust deniers, like Ernst Zündel, have been charged with crimes.

Prominent Holocaust deniers

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Footnotes

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  1. ↑ A person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act. Oxford Languages.
  2. ↑ This happened on English Wikipedia, which became a subject of media controversy.[16]
  3. ↑ Examples in Germany: Excusing the Wehrmacht, the police and the population, while blaming the SS, the Nazi leadership or Hitler alone.[15][17]
  4. ↑ This happened on English Wikipedia, which became a subject of media controversy.[16]
  5. ↑ An example is the Arab–Israeli conflict, which is often compared to the Holocaust by those accusing Israel of genocide.[19]

References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved October 17, 2024. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
    • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
    • Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
    • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
    • Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
    • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1
  5. ↑ "Introduction to the Holocaust". Holocaust Encyclopedia. September 20, 2024. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  6. ↑ "Thematic and Chronological Narrative". Yad Vashem. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  7. ↑ "The Holocaust". Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  8. ↑ "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 "Defeating distortion: new report highlights Holocaust distortion amid rising antisemitism". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  10. ↑
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Kubátová, Hana; Láníček, Jan (October 14, 2024). "Memory Wars and Emotional Politics: "Feel Good" Holocaust Appropriation in Central Europe". Nationalities Papers. 53 (2). Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  12. ↑
  13. ↑
    • Robert Rozett, “Competitive Victimhood and Holocaust Distortion,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, XVI (2022); “Distorting the Holocaust and Whitewashing History: Toward a Typology,” XIII: 1 (2019); Yehuda Bauer, “Creating a “Usable” Past: On Holocaust Denial and Distortion,” XIV: 2 (2022); and Jan Grabowski, “The Holocaust and Poland's 'History Policy'” X: 3 (2016).
    • Joanna Beata Michlic, “The Politics of the Memorialisation of the Holocaust in Poland: Reflections on the Current Misuses of the History of Rescue,” Jewish Historical Studies—Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, LIII: 1 (2022); Piotr Forecki, Po Jedwabnem: Anatomia pamięci funkcjonalnej (Kraków, 2018); Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne (Princeton, 2001).
    • Piotr Forecki, “Domestic ‘Assassins of Memory’: Various Faces of Holocaust Revisionism in Contemporary Poland,” presentation at a symposium in honor of Professor Antony Polonsky called “The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: sources, memory, politics,” March 16, 2021, UCL, London.
    • "Polish appeals court dismisses claims against Holocaust book historians". Euractiv. August 17, 2021. Retrieved January 4, 2025. An appeals court ruled that two historians accused of tarnishing the memory of a Polish villager in a book about the Holocaust need not apologise, overturning a lower court ruling that raised fears about freedom of academic research.
  14. ↑
    • Antony Polonsky and Joanna Beata Michlic (eds.), The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton, 2009) and Laurence Weinbaum, “Amnesia and Antisemitism in the ‘Second Jagiellonian Age,’” Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Delegitimizing Israel, Robert Wistrich (ed.) (Lincoln, 2016).
    • “Professors Engelking and Grabowski case: Victory in the Warsaw Court of Appeal,” International Jewish Lawyers, https://www.ijl.org/engelking-and-grabowski-case13. For the full judgement, see https://www.ijl.org/grabowski_engelking-full.
    • Grabowski, Jan (2024). "Whitewash: Poland and the Jews". Jewish Quarterly. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved May 25, 2025. In this ground-breaking essay, Jan Grabowski, a world-renowned Holocaust historian, examines how the government, museums, schools and state institutions became complicit in delivering a message of Polish national innocence during the Holocaust. He recounts his own experience as the victim of smears and a notorious lawsuit for questioning the complicity of Poles in the destruction of the country's Jews, and examines the far-reaching consequences of Poland's historical distortions, which have been repeated and replicated worldwide to challenge the truth of the Holocaust.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7 15.8 Becker, Matthias J.; Troschke, Hagen; Bolton, Matthew; Chapelan, Alexis (October 16, 2024). "Holocaust Denial and Distortion". Decoding Antisemitism. pp. 237–260. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2
  17. ↑ Greven, Michael Th., and Oliver von Wrochem, eds. 2000. Der Krieg in der Nachkriegszeit. Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Politik und Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik. Wiesbaden: Leske u. Budrich.
  18. ↑ Litvak, Meir, and Esther Webman. 2009. From Empathy to Denial. Arab Responses to the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.
  19. ↑
  20. ↑
  21. ↑
  22. ↑ Petrović, Zorica (2018). "The Roman Catholic Church and Clergy in the Nazi-Fascist Era on Slovenian Soil" (PDF). Athens Journal of History. 4 (3): 227‒252. doi:10.30958/ajhis.4-3-4. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  23. ↑ Kónczal, Kornelia, and Moses, A. Dirk. 2022. “Patriotic Histories in Global Perspective.” Journal of Genocide Research 24 (2): 153–157. CrossRef Google Scholar
  24. ↑ Soroka, George, and Krawatzek, Félix. 2019. “Nationalism, Democracy, and Memory Laws.” Journal of Democracy 30 (2): 157–171. CrossRef Google Scholar
  25. ↑ Ray, Larry, and Kapralski, Sławomir. 2019. “Introduction to the Special Issue – Disputed Holocaust Memory in Poland.” Holocaust Studies 25 (3): 209–219. CrossRef Google Scholar
  26. ↑ "Working Definition Of Antisemitism". World Jewish Congress (WJC). Retrieved October 22, 2024.
    IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism :
  27. ↑ 27.00 27.01 27.02 27.03 27.04 27.05 27.06 27.07 27.08 27.09 27.10 Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. Denying History: : who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it?, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-23469-3, p. 106
  28. ↑ 28.00 28.01 28.02 28.03 28.04 28.05 28.06 28.07 28.08 28.09 Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a definition Archived 2011-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004, Retrieved 6 March 2013
  29. ↑ Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004, Retrieved 6 March 2013
  30. ↑ Faking as being neutral about a topic to hide one's bias.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 31.3 31.4 31.5 31.6
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 33.3 "Institute for Historical Review (IHR)". Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Retrieved February 6, 2025.
  34. ↑ "Ken Livingstone repeats claim about Nazi-Zionist collaboration". The Guardian. March 30, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2025.
  35. ↑
  36. ↑
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2
  38. ↑ "Eight out of ten British Jews identify as Zionist, says new poll". The Jewish Chronicle. December 28, 2023. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  39. ↑ "AJC Survey Shows American Jews are Deeply and Increasingly Connected to Israel". American Jewish Committee (AJC). New York. June 10, 2024. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  40. ↑
  41. ↑
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 42.2 42.3 42.4 42.5 42.6 42.7
  43. ↑ Gerstenfeld, Manfred (April 9, 2008). "Holocaust Trivialization". Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA). Retrieved February 28, 2025.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1
  45. ↑ Lipstadt, Deborah, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p. 25
  46. ↑ Bazyler, Michael J. (December 25, 2006). "Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of Nazism" (PDF). Yad Vashem. Retrieved 30 March 2012.
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 "Holocaust denier in Germany sentenced to five years in prison – Europe – International Herald Tribune", The New York Times, February 15, 2007. Retrieved November 14, 2009
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 "What is Opus Dei, and why is it so controversial — both in and out of the Catholic Church?". Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). January 30, 2023. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 McDermott, Jim (January 13, 2023). "Mel Gibson and the dangers of Catholic antisemitism". American Magazine. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 "Le Pen Convicted for Racial Hatred", Associated Press, June 2, 1999. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
  53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 "Le Pen fined over Holocaust remarks". BBC. BBC. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
  54. ↑ 54.0 54.1
  55. ↑ 55.0 55.1
  56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 Reid, Donald (March 29, 2022). "Holocaust denial, Le Vicaire, and the absent presence of Nadine Fresco and Paul Rassinier in Jorge Semprún's La Montagne blanche". French Cultural Studies. 33 (3). doi:10.1177/09571558221078450. Retrieved December 26, 2024. Open access
  57. ↑ 57.0 57.1
  58. ↑ 58.0 58.1
  59. ↑ 59.0 59.1
  60. ↑ 60.0 60.1 "Writer fined for Holocaust writings", BBC News, February 27, 1998. Retrieved November 15, 2009.
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