Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial refers to the belief that the systematic extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II did not occur, despite extensive historical evidence. This denial began in the aftermath of the war through the efforts of former Nazi officials and sympathizers who sought to distort historical facts and absolve Germany of its wartime atrocities. Notably, early figures in this movement, such as Paul Rassinier and later American revisionists, claimed that the accounts of gas chambers and mass exterminations were exaggerated or fabricated. Over time, organizations like the Institute for Historical Review were established to promote these denial narratives. Although the prevalence of Holocaust denial has decreased in recent years, the rise of the Internet and social media has allowed such rhetoric to persist and evolve. Denial is sometimes leveraged in contemporary political contexts, particularly concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Global awareness and educational initiatives remain crucial in combating Holocaust denial and fostering understanding of this historical tragedy.
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Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the assertion, despite documented evidence to the contrary, that the systematic Nazi extermination of an estimated five million to six million Jews between 1933 and 1945 did not occur. It was begun by Nazi commandants, who, near the end of World War II, destroyed concentration camp records and other evidence of mass destruction and carried out the orders of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler that no prisoner should survive. After the war, many leaders of the Schutzstaffel (SS, a special Nazi military unit) fled the country and began the publication of denial materials.
The origins of Holocaust denial are in the works of European and American historical revisionists designed to absolve Germany of its role in World War II. However, one of the earliest apologists for the Nazi regime was Paul Rassinier, a French prisoner confined to Buchenwald in 1943, who claimed that there were no gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. Despite the fact that gas chambers had been implemented in Poland and not in Buchenwald, Rassinier asserted his personal experience as proof. Rassinier’s Crossing the Line (1948) and The Holocaust Story and the Lie of Ulysses (1950) maintain that the atrocities that were committed by the Germans have been greatly exaggerated and that the inmates who ran the camps, not the Germans, were the perpetrators of these atrocities.
The works of Rassinier, republished in 1977 by Noontide Press as Debunking the Genocide Myth, were translated by Henry Barnes of Smith College, the first American historian to pursue Holocaust denial. Barnes had denounced the United States’ foreign policy during World War II, but with his discovery of Rassinier, he began to argue that the atrocity stories had been exaggerated and eventually came to insist that they had been fabricated. Barnes raised doubts about the existence of gas chambers as a means of extermination by contending that gas chambers were a postwar invention. Barnes learned of American revisionist David Leslie Hoggan, whose dissertation at Harvard University maintained that Great Britain was responsible for World War II and depicted Adolf Hitler as a victim of the Allies. Through Barnes’s help, Hoggan’s book The Forced War (1961) became a Nazi apologia.
Holocaust denial assumed a more scholarly character with the advent of Austin J. App, professor at the University of Scranton, who sought through demographic studies to prove that the estimates of Jewish victims had been inflated. App’s position that no Jews were gassed in German camps and the small number who had “disappeared” was exaggerated to victimize Germany became a central tenet of Holocaust denial. In 1976, Arthur Butz, a professor at Northwestern University, published The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, which denies that huge numbers of gassings and cremations could have occurred given the technological limitations of the equipment used.
In 1978, the beliefs supporting Holocaust denial were incorporated into a Los Angeles-based organization, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), funded by Willis Carto. The IHR, which used Carto’s periodical and book publication company, Noontide Press, also established the Journal of Historical Review. The following year, it initiated International Revisionist Conventions to accommodate and direct the activities of deniers around the world.
In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League released findings from a survey that it had conducted regarding global anti-Semitism. Through this survey, which involved more than one hundred countries, researchers discovered that of those respondents who had heard of the Holocaust (54 percent), 32 percent believed that it was a myth or that, at the least, it had been greatly exaggerated.
By the twenty-first century, the IHR had significantly declined in its activity and ceased to publish its journal, although it maintained a website and continued to sell extremist materials. While some still participated in Holocaust denial, it became far less prevalent in the twenty-first century. Still, the Internet and social media became the main forums for Holocaust denial rhetoric, allowing ideas to spread. Many moved from theories of outright denial to ones of fact distortion. National governments and international organizations, like the United Nations, continued to express concern about the issue and work to educate populations. Holocaust denial was sometimes used as a tool against Israel in the contemporary Palestine-Israeli conflict.
Bibliography
"Explaining Holocaust Denial." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion/explaining-holocaust-denial. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.
Green, Emma. "The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers." The Atlantic, 14 May 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/the-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.
Kollerstrom, Nicholas. Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust; Myth & Reality. TBR, 2014.
Lang, Berel. "Six Questions on (or about) Holocaust Denial." History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, vol. 49, no. 2, 2010, pp. 157–68.
Lewy, Guenter. Outlawing Genocide Denial: The Dilemmas of Official Historical Truth. U of Utah P, 2014.
"Outreach Programme on the Holocaust." United Nations, www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.
"A Short History of Holocaust Denial in the United States." Anti-Defamation League, 17 Apr. 2023, www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/short-history-holocaust-denial-united-states. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.
"What is Holocaust Denial?" Museum of Tolerance, www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/what-is-holocaust-denial.html. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.
Wistrich, Robert S., editor. Holocaust Denial: The Politics of Perfidy. De Gruyter, 2012.