Denial of the Jewish Holocaust

Autograph Letter Signed (“Ike”), as General of the Army, 3 pages, quarto, no place [Rheims, France], April 15, no year [1945]. To his wife, Mamie Doud Eisenhower.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER ON THE CAMPS

Remember

This is what Eisenhower said on pages 408-9 of “Crusade in Europe”

“The same day [April 12, 1945] I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain, however that I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.

“I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that `the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.’ Some members of the visiting party were unable to through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton’s headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.”

And on page 439

“Of all these [Displaced Persons] the Jews were in the most deplorable condition. For years they had been beaten, starved, and tortured.”

And in “Ike the Soldier: As they knew him” (G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York, 1987) Merle Miller quotes Eisenhower speaking on April 25th 1945 to the members of Congress and Journalists who had been shown Buchenwald the day before:

“You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at home of things like these atrocities is one of them… Nothing is covered up. We have nothing to conceal. The barbarous treatment these people received in the German concentration camps is almost unbelievable. I want you to see for yourself and be spokesmen for the United States.” [pages 774-5]

EISENHOWER ASKS CONGRESS AND PRESS TO WITNESS NAZI HORROR
General Eisenhower invited members of Congress and journalists
to see the newly liberated camps
so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities
to the American public.
History Unfolded, US Newspapers and the Holocaust

In late 1944 and early 1945, as Allied troops defeated the German army and moved across Europe into Germany, they encountered tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners.

Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Later, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945. In the following months, the Soviets liberated additional camps in the Baltic states, Poland, and eventually in Germany itself. In April and May 1945, the British liberated Nazi camps in northern Germany, including Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme.

The first Nazi camp liberated by US forces was Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald (the main camp would be liberated one week later). The 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry of the Third US Army entered Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945. When soldiers of the 4th Armored Division entered the camp, they discovered piles of bodies, some covered with lime, and others partially incinerated on pyres. The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12, with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:

The things I saw beggar description. … The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick ... . I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

Seeing the Nazi crimes committed at Ohrdruf made a powerful impact on Eisenhower, and he wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps. On April 19, 1945, he again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they could convey the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public. Within days, congressmen and journalists began arriving to bear witness to Nazi crimes in the camps.

The discovery of the Ohrdruf camp, and the subsequent liberation of Dora-Mittelbau (April 11), Flossenbürg (April 23), Dachau (April 29), and Mauthausen (May 5) opened the eyes of many US soldiers and the American public to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

_____________________________________________

THE TEN STAGES OF GENOCIDE

Genocide never just happens.
There is always circumstances which occur or created
to build the climate for genocide to take place.

Gregory H Stanton, President of Genocide Watch developed
the 10 stages of genocide which explains the different stages
which lead to genocide.
At each of the earlier stages there is an opportunity
for members of the community or the International Community
to halt the stages and stop genocide before it happens.

Click here to download a PDF copy of the ten stages of genocide poster.

The stages are:

1. Classification - The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different.

2. Symbolisation - This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’.

3. Discrimination - The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews.

4. Dehumanisation - Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.

5. Organisation - Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people.

6. Polarisation - Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people.

7. Preparation - Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis' phrase 'The Final Solution' to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons.

8. Persecution - Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin.

9. Extermination - The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide.

10. Denial - The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.

CREATE A 2-COLUMN TABLE.
COPY THIS LIST INTO THE FIRST COLUMN
THEN ENTER THE NAZI ACTION USED TO CARRY OUT EACH STAGE
INTO THE SECOND COLUMN

YOU CAN THEN USE THE SAME METHOD TO SHOW HOW IT APPLIES
TO OTHER GENOCIDES SUCH AS THAT IN RWANDA.

(Click here to go to Genocide History and Today)

WHAT IS HOLOCAUST DENIAL?
From Holocaust Encyclopedia

The Holocaust is one of the best documented events in history. “Holocaust denial” describes attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. Common denial assertions are: that the murder of six million Jews during World War II never occurred; that the Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate the Jews; and that the poison gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp never existed.

A newer trend is the distortion of the facts of the Holocaust. Common distortions include, for example, assertions that: the figure of six million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration; deaths in the concentration camps were the results of disease or starvation but not policy; and that the diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.

Holocaust denial and distortion are generally motivated by hatred of Jews, and build on an accusation that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests. This view perpetuates long-standing antisemitic stereotypes by accusing Jews of conspiracy and world domination, hateful charges that were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust.

The United States Constitution ensures freedom of speech. Therefore, in the United States denying the Holocaust or engaging in antisemitic hate speech is not illegal, except when there is an imminent threat of violence. Many other countries, particularly in Europe where the Holocaust occurred, have laws criminalizing Holocaust denial and hate speec

SEE VIDEO AND FILMS‘.
WHY DO PEOPLE DENY THE HOLOCAUST HAPPENED
AND WHO DENIES IT OCCURRED? ?

HOLOCAUST DENIAL TIMELINE
From Holocaust Encyclopedia

1942-1944: To conceal the evidence of their annihilation of Europe's Jews, Germans and their collaborators destroy evidence of mass graves at the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers, and at thousands of sites of mass shooting operations throughout German-occupied Poland, the German-occupied Soviet Union, and Serbia, including Babi Yar, in an operation code named Aktion 1005.

1943: In a speech to SS Generals at Poznan, Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons), remarks that the mass murder of the European Jews will be kept secret, never to be recorded.

1955: Willis Carto founds an influential, far right group based in Washington, DC, that eventually comes to be known as the Liberty Lobby. Led by Carto until its bankruptcy in 2001, the Liberty Lobby advocates a “racially pure” United States and blames Jews for problems facing the US and the world. The Liberty Lobby begins to publish Holocaust denial literature in 1969.

1959: American clergyman Gerald L. K. Smith's antisemitic publication, Cross and the Flag, claims that six million Jews were not killed during the Holocaust but immigrated to the United States during World War II.

1964: Paul Rassinier, a French Communist who had been interned by the Nazis, publishes The Drama of European Jewry, in which he claims that gas chambers were an invention of a “Zionist establishment.”

1966-67: American historian Harry Elmer Barnes publishes articles in the Libertarian periodical Rampart Journal claiming that the Allies overstated the extent of Nazi atrocities in order to justify a war of aggression against the Axis powers.

1969: Noontide Press, a subsidiary of the Liberty Lobby, publishes a book entitled The Myth of the Six Million.

1973: Austin J. App, professor of English literature at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, publishes a pamphlet: The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses. The pamphlet becomes a foundation for future claims by Holocaust deniers.

1976: Northwestern University engineering professor Arthur R. Butz publishes The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. Butz was the first Holocaust denier to use the pretense of academic rigor to disguise his falsehoods. Northwestern responds by declaring Butz's statements an “embarrassment” to the university.

1977: Ernst Zündel, a German citizen living in Canada, establishes Samisdat Publishers, which issues neo-Nazi literature that includes Holocaust denial. In 1985 the Canadian government prosecuted Zündel with distributing information he knew to be false.

1977: David Irving publishes Hitler's War, arguing that Hitler neither ordered nor condoned the Nazi policy of the genocide of the European Jews. Irving distorts historical evidence and scholarly methods to lend legitimacy to his thesis.

1978: William David McCalden (also known as Lewis Brandon) and Willis Carto found the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) in California, which publishes material and sponsors conferences denying the Holocaust. The IHR masks its hateful, racist messages under the guise of valid academic inquiry.

1980: The IHR promises a $50,000 reward to anyone who can prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Survivor Mel Mermelstein submits an affidavit of his internment at Auschwitz and brings suit against the IHR when the institute refuses to pay. In October 1981, Superior Court judge Thomas T. Johnson uses "judicial notice," which allows courts to recognize as fact matters that are common knowledge, to issue a ruling that the Holocaust was fact and that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.

1981: A French court convicts literature professor Robert Faurisson of inciting hatred and discrimination for calling the Holocaust a “historical lie.”

1984: In a landmark case, a Canadian court convicts public school teacher James Keegstra of “willfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group” for espousing Holocaust denial and other antisemitic views to his social studies students.

1986: On July 8, the Israeli parliament passes a law criminalizing denial of the Holocaust.

1987: California-based Bradley Smith founds the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. During the early 1990s, Smith's organization places full-page advertisements or editorial pieces in more than a dozen American college newspapers under the headline “The Holocaust Story: How Much is False? The Case for Open Debate.” Smith's campaign helps to blur the line between hate mongering and freedom of speech.

1987: Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of France's far right Nation Front party, suggests that gas chambers were merely a “detail” of World War II. Le Pen runs for president in France in 1988 and comes in fourth.

1987: Moroccan-Swedish writer Ahmed Rami begins broadcasting on Radio Islam, based in Sweden. The station describes the Holocaust as a Zionist/Jewish claim. Radio Islam later posts The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other antisemitic texts on its website.

1988: At the request of Ernst Zündel, Fred Leuchter (a self-proclaimed specialist in execution methods) travels to the site of the Auschwitz killing center. He later issues the Leuchter Report : An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, which is cited by Holocaust deniers to cast doubt on the use of gas chambers for mass murder.

1989: David Duke, a white supremacist, wins a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature. Duke sells Holocaust denial literature from his legislative office.

1990: After Illinois becomes the first American state to mandate teaching about the Holocaust in public schools, parents Ingeborg and Safet Sarich publicly protest by pulling their 13-year-old daughter out of school. The Sariches also mail 6,000 letters to public officials, scholars, journalists, and Holocaust survivors attacking the historical record as “rumors and exaggerations.”

1990: The French government enacts the Gayssot Law which declares that questioning the scale or existence of crimes against humanity (as defined in the London Charter of 1945) is a criminal offense. This act marks the first European statute explicitly outlawing denial of the Holocaust.

1990: In the course of criminal proceedings brought against Fred Leuchter by the State of Massachusetts, it is revealed that Leuchter never actually earned an engineering degree or license. Leuchter admits that he has no training in biology, toxicology, or chemistry, all of which are crucial to the claims of the 1988 Leuchter Report, which is often cited to support claims made by Holocaust deniers.

1990: A Swedish court sentences Ahmed Rami to six months in jail for “hate speech” and revokes the broadcasting license of Radio Islam for one year.

1991: The American Historical Association, the oldest professional organization of historians, issues a statement: “No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place.”

2000: A British court declares David Irving an “active Holocaust denier.” Irving had sued Emory University historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel following the publication of her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

2005: In a speech broadcast on live television on December 14, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the Holocaust a “myth.”

2006: Iran's government sponsors a meeting of Holocaust deniers in Tehran cloaked as an academic conference called “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.”

2007: On January 26, the United Nations adopts a resolution condemning denial of the Holocaust. The General Assembly declares that denial is “tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms.”

2007: The European Union approves legislation that makes Holocaust denial a crime punishable by time in jail.

2009: English-born Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson denies the existence of gas chambers and minimizes the extent of killing during the Holocaust. The Vatican eventually calls on Williamson to retract his statements.

2010: Bradley Smith places his first online Holocaust denial advertisement, which appears on the website of the University of Wisconsin's Badger Herald in February. The Internet—because of its ease of access and dissemination, seeming anonymity, and perceived authority—is now the chief conduit of Holocaust denial

2010 The Dutch appeals court fines the Arab European League (AEL) 2,500 € for publishing a cartoon on its website in 2006 that suggested the Holocaust was made up or exaggerated by Jews. According to the AEL, the organization published the cartoon to highlight double standards in free speech after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. The court also imposes a 2-year probation period on the AEL.

2010 Lithuania criminalizes Holocaust denial. Later in the same year, the Lithuanian magazine Veidas publishes an article entitled “[The] Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal - The Greatest Legal Farce in History” by Petras Stankeras, a Lithuanian historian who also served in the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Lithuania. In the article, Stankeras highlights the application of double standards towards the Nazis and criticizes the International Military Tribunal. He also describes the Holocaust as a “legend” lacking substantiation for the killing of six million Jews. After international pressure, Stankeras steps down from his post in the Ministry of the Interior. The Vilnius County Prosecutor's Office initiates a pre-trial investigation of the article, but closes the investigation in February 2011 without pressing any charges against Stankeras.

2011 The vice chairman of Egypt’s Wafd Party tells the Washington Times in an interview that the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Holocaust, and Anne Frank’s diary are all historical fabrications. “The Holocaust is a lie,” says Ahmed Ezz El-Arab. He continues, “the Jews under German occupation were 2.4 million. So if they were all exterminated, where does the remaining 3.6 million come from?”

2012 Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the head of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party, denies the existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. “There were no ovens, no gas chambers, it’s a lie,” he states during an interview aired on television.

2012 Saudi cleric Salman al-Odeh tells Rotana Khalijiya TV that “The Holocaust has a historical basis. Many stories about it are documented and well-founded. The problem lies, first of all, in the exaggeration of the Holocaust. It has been turned into a myth of tremendous proportions.... For thousands of years, the Jews were subject to persecution, deportation, killings, and accusations. Maybe much of this stemmed from their moral values, their treacherous nature, their schemes, and the ploys, which made other nations be wary of them.”

2012 Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a Romanian member of the European Parliament and leader of the nationalist Greater Romania Party, denies the Holocaust on the talk show “Romania a la Raport.” Tudor states, “In Romania there was never a Holocaust.... I will deny it till I die because I love my people.”

2013 On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Fathi Shihab-Eddim, an aide to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, claims that the 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazis actually relocated to the United States. “U.S. intelligence agencies, in cooperation with their counterparts in Allied nations during World War II, created it [the Holocaust] to destroy the image of their opponents in Germany, and to justify war and massive destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers, and especially to hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb,” states Shihab-Eddim.

2013 Gyorgy Nagy becomes the first Hungarian to be convicted of Holocaust denial. Nagy carried a sign during a 2011 demonstration in Budapest which read “the Holocaust never happened” in Hebrew. The Court sentences him to 18 months in prison and probation. Part of his sentence is also to visit either Budapest’s Holocaust memorial museum, Auschwitz, or Yad Vashem.

2014 Udo Voigt, the former leader of Germany’s National Democratic Party (NDP) is appointed to the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs Committee. While leader of the NDP, which espouses Neo-Nazi views, Voigt had praised Adolf Hitler and claimed that far fewer than six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. He was convicted of “incitement of the people.”

2014 In his official 2014 Nowruz address, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remarks: “The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened.”

2014 Russia criminalizes Holocaust denial.

2014 Greece criminalizes Holocaust denial.

2015 Two government-sponsored Iranian cultural organizations, Owj Media & Art Institute and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex, announce a second Holocaust cartoon contest, expecting to receive entries from cartoonists in dozens of countries.

2015 A German court finds Ursula Haverbeck guilty of sedition after she wrote a letter to the Mayor of Detmold, stating that it was "clearly recognizable" that Auschwitz was nothing more than a labor camp. She sent her message when the Detmold court was trying Reinhold Hanning, a former guard at the Auschwitz camp. In 2014, she had been on trial for saying that the Holocaust was "the biggest and longest-lasting lie in history."

2016 On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei releases a video entitled “Holocaust: Are the Dark Ages Over?" on his website, which includes his 2014 comments questioning the Nazi mass slaughter of six million Jews during World War II.

2016 An amendment adopted in Italy criminalizes Holocaust denial.

2016 An exhibition displaying 150 Holocaust cartoons (external link) from the 11th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial opens in Tehran in the art section of the Islamic Propaganda Organization. Two weeks later, an awards ceremony is held for the winners of the Holocaust cartoon contest. Majid Mollanoroozi, the director of Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art and the Head of the Graphic Arts section of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, takes part in the awards ceremony. Prizes reportedly total $50,000.

2016 The Polish cabinet approves a bill imposing prison terms on anyone convicted of referring to death camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland as “Polish.” Claiming that the Poles collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews would also be considered a criminal offense..

THE WORLD IS FULL OF HOLOCAUST DENIERS
A new survey suggests that many
Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, young people, Muslims, and Hindus
believe that facts about the genocide have been distorted.
The Atlantic, Emma Green, May 2014

Only 54 percent of the world's population has heard of the Holocaust.

54 percent.

This is the most staggering statistic in a new survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of more than 53,000 people in over 100 countries, conducted by First International Resources. But that figure speaks to only those who have heard of it: Only a third of the world's population believe the genocide has been accurately described in historical accounts. Some said they thought the number of people who died has been exaggerated; others said they believe it's a myth. Thirty percent of respondents said it's probably true that "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust."

Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, two-thirds of the world's population don't know the Holocaust happened—or they deny it.

These beliefs follow some unexpected patterns, too. The Middle East and North Africa had the largest percentage of doubters, with only 8 percent of respondents reporting that they had heard of the genocide and believed descriptions of it were accurate. But only 12 percent of respondents in sub-Saharan Africa said the same, and only 23 percent in Asia. People in these groups were likely to say they believed the number of deaths has been exaggerated—just over half of Middle Easterners and a third of Asians and Africans think the body count has been distorted over time.

AntI
Defamation League

When the data is sliced by religious groups, the results are even more surprising: Hindus were most likely to believe that the number of Holocaust deaths has been exaggerated. Muslims followed closely, and those two groups were distantly trailed by Christians, Buddhists, and those with no religion. In no coincidence, Hindus and Muslims were also significantly less likely to have heard of the Holocaust.

In almost every religious group, people younger than 65 were much more likely to say they believe that facts about the Holocaust have been distorted, and they were less likely to know what the Holocaust is.

Percent Who Have Heard of the Holocaust

AntI-
Defamation League

Percent of Who Believe Facts About the Holocaust Have Been Distorted,
by Age and Religious Group

Anti-
Defamation League (ADL)

The report by the ADL, a Jewish NGO that campaigns against anti-Semitism and discrimination, also covers the prevalence of other anti-Semitic attitudes, including beliefs about Jews' allegiance to Israel, influence in media and business, and likeability. Although the prevalence of Holocaust ignorance and denial was just one small aspect of the survey, it illuminates a powerful fact: As the memory of the genocide grows fainter, attitudes toward Jews—and Israel—are changing. The fate of the Jewish people in the twentieth century was largely centered around the Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that facilitated it, the loss it wrought, and the reflection it prompted. As that history becomes more distant, it's unclear what will animate the Jewish community—and attitudes toward it—moving forward.

Depressingly, the study does hint at the way most people get their information about Jews and the Holocaust today:

Anti-
Defamation League (ADL)

Go To IS ANTISEMITISM WORLDWIDE ?

HOLOCAUST DENIERS ON TRIAL

Resources about the
David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt trial

IRVING v PENGUIN BOOKS and DEBORAH LIPSTADT TRIAL
Wikipedia (go to site for more detail)

David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt is a case in English law against American author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books, filed in the High Court of Justice by the British author David Irving in 1996, asserting that Lipstadt had libelled him in her book Denying the Holocaust. The court ruled that Irving's claim of libel relating to English defamation law and Holocaust denial was not valid because Lipstadt's claim that he had deliberately distorted evidence had been shown to be substantially true. English libel law puts the burden of proof on the defence, meaning that it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher to prove that her claims of Irving's deliberate misrepresentation of evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoints were substantially true.

Lipstadt hired British lawyer Anthony Julius while Penguin hired libel experts Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman of media law firm Davenport Lyons. Richard J. Evans, an established historian, was hired by the defence to serve as an expert witness. Evans spent two years examining Irving's work, and presented evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including evidence that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as source material. Of utmost importance was the role played by another expert witness for the defence, the renowned Holocaust historian Christopher Browning. Upon mutual agreement, the case was argued as a bench trial before Mr. Justice Gray, who produced a written judgment 349 pages long in favour of the defendants, in which he detailed Irving's systematic distortion of the historical record of the Holocaust and Hitler's role therein.

DENYING THE HOLOCAUST
Deborah Lipstadt, 2011-02-17

Deborah Lipstadt is director of the Rabbi Donald A Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, at Emory University, Atlanta.

Deborah Lipstadt discusses how misinformation and false claims are used to question the reality of the Nazis' attempt
to exterminate Europe's Jews.

BBC

IT NEVER HAPPENED

Holocaust deniers are people who contend that the Holocaust - the attempt by Nazi Germany to annihilate European Jewry during World War Two - never happened. According to the deniers, the Nazis did not murder six million Jews, the notion of homicidal gas chambers is a myth, and any deaths of Jews that did occur under the Nazis were the result of wartime privations, not of systematic persecution and state-organised mass murder.

“Some even claim that Hitler was the best friend the Jews had in Germany, and that he actively worked to protect them.”

Deniers dismiss all assertions that the Holocaust took place as conscious fabrications, or as psychotic delusions. Some even claim that Hitler was the best friend the Jews had in Germany, and that he actively worked to protect them. According to deniers, Jews have perpetrated this hoax about the Holocaust on the world in order to gain political and financial advantage, and it was in fact Germany that was the true victim in World War Two.

DOCUMENTED GENOCIDE

Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism, positing that Jews have concocted a giant myth for their own ends. It persists despite the fact that the Holocaust is one of the best documented genocides in history, with a wide array of evidence documenting virtually every aspect of it.

For example, approximately a million Jews on the Eastern Front were shot during 1941-42, and buried in large pits. This is known partly because the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units that coordinated these massacres, prepared detailed reports on the murders - reports that contained precise death tolls, broken down into men, women and children.

These reports were sent to high ranking officials in Berlin, and to army, police and SS officers, as well as diplomats and even prominent industrialists. This wide distribution suggests that the perpetrators felt no shame at what they did. Had these killings not been part of Berlin's policy, the reports would never have been so widely distributed.

“Deniers argue that evidence such as this was forged, after the end of World War Two, by people working for world Jewry.”

Deniers argue that evidence such as this was forged, after the end of World War Two, by people working for world Jewry. They claim that forgers created these and other documents - complete with complex internal reference markings, on typewriters that perfectly matched those used by the various German units said to have written the documents - and then planted thousands of these perfect forgeries in numerous different archival collections (in exactly the right file and in precisely the right sequence) all over Europe.

Not only is such a scenario fantastically improbable, it fails to explain why these supposedly incredibly talented forgers did not succeed in producing the one piece of paper that deniers demand as 'proof' that genocide took place under the Third Reich - an order from Hitler authorising the destruction of the Jews.

CONFESSIONS

Children on their way to the Auschwitz gas chamber Children on their way to the Auschwitz gas chamber © Many perpetrators confessed to what they had done during the war, after it was over. For example, Otto Ohlendorf, commander of one of the Einsatzgruppen units, testified quite openly that between June 1941 and 1942 his Einsatzgruppe murdered 90,000 people.

Deniers dismiss confessions by German perpetrators that a 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish question' was indeed a part of the Nazi programme - by saying the confessions were produced under torture. They say that those who confessed knew their admissions would result in a death sentence, so would not have confessed except under duress - and that their accounts of their wartime activities should thus be disregarded.

This, however, ignores the fact that some of the more detailed confessions were written after the perpetrators had been sentenced to death. It also ignores the fact that many of the perpetrators described - sometimes in great detail - what happened, but insisted that they either had nothing to do with it or were forced by their superiors to participate.

“One must marvel at the power of those supposed to be responsible for this hoax.”

Thus this argument fails to take into account the statements of Nazis such as the Commandant of Birkenau concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, who described the mass murders that took place in his camp in a document written after he had been sentenced to death. It also fails to account for Adolf Eichmann who, in the memoir he wrote during his trial, spoke of the gassing of the Jews.

Some deniers explain away the confessions by positing that after the war these Germans were subjected to a barrage of propaganda, and themselves become victims of the hoax. One must marvel at the power of those supposed to be responsible for this hoax. Not only did they win the cooperation of the world's greatest military and political powers, forge thousands of documents in record time without being detected, and create physical evidence attesting to an annihilation programme, but they even convinced the very people said to be a part of the hoax that it had actually happened.

DISAPPEARANCES

Buchenwald camp survivors Buchenwald camp survivors © Some deniers posit that the Jews said to have been killed under the Nazi regime actually survived the war, and succeeded in avoiding detection by going to places such as the Soviet Union or the United States. In these countries, the deniers claim, there were already so many Jews that no one noticed a couple of million more.

“This improbable explanation of why these people deserted their families would be hilarious, were the topic not so serious.”

Deniers such as Arthur Butz offer other equally fantastic explanations as to the supposed 'disappearance' of millions of Jews. Many of those who were reported killed in the war, he suggests, actually survived - but did not re-establish contact with their pre-war relatives because they were in bad marriages. After the war they found other partners, established better relationships, started a new life and failed to correct the record. This improbable explanation of why these people deserted their families would be hilarious, were the topic not so serious.

The real facts are much better documented. For example, it is known that Nazis used gas buses at one point to murder Jews (eventually they abandoned this system because it was not efficient enough). This is known partly because SS-Major General Dr Harald Turner, chief of the German Administration in Serbia, wrote to Karl Wolff, chief of Heinrich Himmler's personal staff, on 11 April 1942.

In the note Turner describes a 'delousing van' - the quotation marks around the word already suggest that it is a euphemism - then makes it quite clear what this means:

“Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a 'delousing van', that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp...”

Additional details about these buses are to be found in a letter from Willy Just to SS Lieutenant Colonel Walter Rauff on 5 June 1942. In the letter, Just describes how a load of '97,000 have been processed'. He leaves little doubt about the nature of the load, when he writes about it pushing against the door as a result of 'fear aroused by the darkness'.

Just also offers Rauff a series of suggestions on how the vans might be improved. Since there was a problem of 'off-road manoeuvrability', he suggests that the cargo area be reduced. This would make the operation more efficient, because '... were the cargo area smaller, but fully occupied, the operation would take considerably less time, because there would be no empty space.'

Deniers find it impossible to 'explain away' these kinds of documents so they generally ignore them.

DENYING AUSCHWITZ

Most of all, deniers focus on the extermination camp run by the Nazis at Auschwitz. They claim - despite overwhelming documentary and physical evidence as well as eye-witness accounts by both perpetrators and victims - that it was not an extermination camp. They ignore or try to explain away evidence that leaves no doubt as to Auschwitz's nefarious purposes. A small sample of the many pieces of documentary evidence demonstrates the far-fetched nature of their claims.

“Most of all, deniers focus on the extermination camp run by the Nazis at Auschwitz.”

Though the Germans made concerted attempts to avoid direct references to the gassings that took place in the camp, sometimes even those in the upper echelons slipped up. On 29 January 1943, for example, SS Captain Bischoff, head of the Auschwitz Central Construction Management, wrote to officials in Berlin regarding Crematorium 2, and in this letter he referred to a Vergasungskeller (gassing cellar).

In the Auschwitz archives one can inspect the architectural drawings for Crematoria 4 and 5. These call for 30 x 40cm windows, through which Zyklon B was to be thrown. In February 1943 the Auschwitz Construction Office issued a work order for the 'production of 12 gas-tight doors (window shutters) approximately 30/40cm'. In Auschwitz there remain a number of decrepit 30 x 40cm window shutters. The remnants of a gas-tight seal are still visible around their edges. The handle for closing the windows is on the outside, a decidedly impractical arrangement for any room, unless one wanted to ensure that those inside could not open them.

On 28 February, according to the civilian contractors' daily time-sheets, the gas-tight shutters were installed. A time-sheet dated 2 March 1943, and submitted by the contractor for work on Crematorium 4, mentions a 'concrete floor in gas chamber'. These documents indicate that by March 1943 workers officially designated a room in Crematorium 4 a 'gas chamber'.' The drawings, work order, time-sheets, and remaining windows constitute a simple but stunning example of the confluence of evidence concerning the gassing of prisoners at the camp.

Deniers also claim that the gas chambers were actually delousing chambers or morgues. But the documentary evidence proves this a bogus claim. In a letter dated 31 March, Bischoff refers to a 'gas [tight] door' for Crematorium 2, which was to be fitted with a rubberised sealing strip and a peephole for inspection. The deniers fail to explain why a door for a delousing chamber or morgue would need a peephole.

Another claim is that the gas chambers were air-raid shelters. This argument ignores the fact that these supposed shelters were too small to house the camp inmates, and were over a kilometer away from where the guards were quartered - a decidedly silly arrangement if these shelters were meant to protect them. Furthermore, the doors had a metal grille over the peephole on the inside of the door - to protect the glass from being broken from within - exactly the opposite of where it would be were it the door for an air-raid shelter. And indeed there were proper one- or two-person air-raid shelters for guards around the camp. They are still visible at the perimeter of Birkenau.

Most importantly, to support their position, deniers also have to ignore testimony given by perpetrators such as Hans Stark, a member of the Auschwitz 'Gestapo.' At his trial Stark described the killing process.

“As early as autumn 1941 gassings were carried out in a room...[which] held 200 to 250 people, had a higher than average ceiling, no windows, only a specially insulated door with bolts like those of an airtight door [Luftschutzer]. The room had a flat roof, which allowed daylight in through the openings. It was through these openings that Zyklon B in granular form would be poured.”

Stark told the court that, because the Zyklon B '... was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them.'

EVIDENCE

In February 1943 Auschwitz camp building authorities complained to Topf, the company that built the crematoria equipment, that they needed ventilation blowers 'most urgently'. Why the urgency, if this was an air-raid shelter, morgue, or delousing chamber?

“There is no reputable evidence that affirms the deniers' claims.”

Deniers hypothesise that the urgency was a result of official fears that the camp would be hit with a typhus epidemic, which would cause a tremendous spike in the death toll. Without the proper ventilation system, the crematoria would not be able to operate.

Deniers try to bolster their argument about the typhus by pointing to documents which show that at this point in time the planned monthly incineration rate of Auschwitz had been boosted to 120,000 bodies. Deniers claim this was because of the typhus epidemic. However, the camp's projected population was 150,000. For the deniers' explanation to make sense, in one month an epidemic would have to kill four-fifths of Auschwitz's population and the Germans would have to repopulate the camp with 120,000 people. This claim exceeded the absolute worst case epidemiological scenario.

On 6 March 1943, one of the civilian employees working on the construction of Crematorium 2 referred to the air extraction system of 'Auskleidekeller [undressing cellar] 2'. No normal morgue could require an undressing room, particularly one that was 50 yards long. In that same month, there were at least four additional references to Auskleidekeller. It is telling that civilians who, according to the deniers, were in Birkenau to work on underground morgues, repeatedly referred not to morgues but to the ventilation of the 'undressing cellars'.

In the same letter the employee asked about preheating the areas that would be used as the gas chamber. If these were morgues they should be cooled, not preheated. Heating a gas chamber, on the other hand, would speed the gassing process by more quickly vaporising the gas from the Zyklon B.

A letter dated 31 March 1943, regarding Crematorium 3, spoke of it as having a Gastür, a gas door. Deniers argue that this could mean many things. But the inventory attached to the handover documents for the crematorium states that it had a Gasdichtetür, a 'gas-tight door'. One might argue about the meaning of Gastür, but it is hard to squabble over a gas-tight door.

Deniers have said for years that physical evidence is lacking because they have seen no holes in the roof of the Birkenau gas chamber where the Zyklon was poured in. (In some of the gas chambers the Zyklon B was poured in through the roof, while in others it was thrown in through the windows.) The roof was dynamited at war's end, and today lies broken in pieces, but three of the four original holes were positively identified in a recent paper. Their location in the concrete matches with eyewitness testimony, aerial photos from 1944, and a ground photo from 1943. The physical evidence shows unmistakably that the Zyklon holes were cast into the concrete when the building was constructed.

There is much additional evidence affirming Auschwitz/Birkenau's role as a killing centre. There is no reputable evidence that affirms the deniers' claims.

Diary of Anne Frank

Anne Frank Anne Frank © Deniers have repeatedly attacked the authenticity of the famous Diary of Anne Frank, which tells of the young Jewish author's experiences as she and her family hid from Nazi persecution in Holland. It seems they believe that by creating doubts about this popular book, which is often a young person's first encounter with the literature of the Holocaust, they can generate broader doubts about the Holocaust itself. Their attacks on the diary became so widespread, that eventually the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, the archives to which Anne's father left the work, subjected the glue, paper and ink of the diary to extensive forensic tests. They found them all to be from the 1940s.

The investigators compared Anne's handwriting in the diary to other samples of her writing, including letters she wrote before going into hiding, and traditional student autograph books she signed before the war. The tests found the handwriting to be that of the same person. In fact, every test to which the diary was subjected proved that this was a genuine World War Two era work by a teenager.

Deniers also argue that there are multiple versions of the Diary of Anne Frank.

Deniers also argue that there are multiple versions of the Diary of Anne Frank. This, they claim, proves it is a fraud. Actually, there are multiple versions of the diary, and Anne herself explains why this is so. In 1944, a Dutch government official, broadcasting from London, urged the population to save eyewitness accounts of their wartime experience, including memorabilia and diaries. Hearing this, Anne, decided to rewrite some of the entries. She also used her diary as a basis for a novel, The Annexe. Hence the different versions.

Deniers also make the claim that the diary is in green ballpoint pen, something that was not readily available during the war. And there are, in fact, some minor stylistic marginal notes in green ink. However, as the Dutch investigation demonstrated, the only ballpoint writing is on two scraps of paper included among the loose leaves, and these have no significance whatsoever in terms of content. Moreover, the handwriting on the scraps of paper differs markedly from those in the diary, indicating that they were written by someone else, an editor perhaps.

The final result of the Dutch investigation was a critical 712-page edition of the diary containing the original version, Anne's edited copy, and the published version as well as the experts' findings. While some may argue that the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation used an elephant to swat a fly, once again it becomes clear that the deniers glibly make claims that have no relationship to the most basic rules of truth and evidence.

All this evidence, and much else, demonstrates the nature of the deniers' claims. Much of this information was entered into the High Court of Justice in London as evidence when the author of this article was sued for libel by David Irving, a man who has written many books on World War Two, a number of which deny the Holocaust.

Irving sued for libel because he had been described as a Holocaust denier in one of the present author's books. He contended this was not true, because his claims about the Holocaust were correct. The judge in the case, Judge Gray, however, found Irving, who introduced virtually all of the standard denial arguments into his submission, to be indeed a Holocaust denier.

Dismissing Irving's claims that the gas chambers were an impossibility, the judge noted that that the 'cumulative effect of the documentary evidence for the genocidal operation of the gas chambers' was not only 'considerable' but 'mutually corroborative'.

Judge Gray, who found the eyewitness and documentary evidence to be 'striking[ly]... consistent', concluded that 'no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt' the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, which were used on a substantial scale to kill Jews. He found Irving's arguments - and by extension the claims of deniers in general - to be 'perverse and egregious'.

Furthermore, the judge said that Irving had 'significantly misrepresented what the evidence, objectively examined, reveals'. (For the complete judgement, the daily transcripts, and the expert witness reports see www.hdot.org - the link is given below.)

Holocaust denial is a form of virulent anti-Semitism. But it is not only that. It is also an attack on reasoned inquiry and inconvenient history. If this history can be denied any history can be denied.

Holocaust deniers have, thus far, been decidedly unsuccessful in convincing the broader public of their claims - although many people worry that after the last of the Holocaust survivors has died (most are now in their 80s) deniers will achieve greater success. However, historians, carefully relying on a broad array of documentary and material evidence, a small sample of which is mentioned in this article, can and already have demonstrated that Holocaust denial is a tissue of lies.

AKTION 1005

At the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, a deputy of Adolf Eichmann,
SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny
gave the following testimony regarding Aktion 1005.
(Wikipedia)

In November 1942, in Eichmann's office in Berlin, I met Standartenfuehrer Plobel [sic], who was leader of Kommando 1005, which was specially assigned to remove all traces of the final solution of the Jewish problem by Einsatz Groups and all other executions. Kommando 1005 operated from at least autumn 1942 to September 1944 and was all this period subordinated to Eichmann. The mission was constituted after it first became apparent that Germany would not be able to hold all the territory occupied in the East and it was considered necessary to remove all traces of the criminal executions that had been committed. While in Berlin in November 1942, Plobel [sic] gave a lecture before Eichmann's staff of specialists on the Jewish question from the occupied territories. He spoke of the special incinerators he had personally constructed for use in the work of Kommando 1005. It was their particular assignment to open the graves and remove and cremate the bodies of persons who had been previously executed. Kommando 1005 operated in Russia, Poland and through the Baltic area. I again saw Plobel [sic] in Hungary in 1944 and he stated to Eichmann in my presence that the mission of Kommando 1005 had been completed.

SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny

HOLOCAUST DENIAL FORMS
Rational Wiki (Go to Link for a Rebuttal of Each Claim)

Holocaust denial (a field of Holocaust revisionism) is the assertion that the Holocaust (often called the "Holohoax") perpetrated by Nazi Germany, other Axis powers, and their collaborators in occupied Europe during the Second World War never happened or that it happened vastly differently from the "official" story. Like most conspiracy theories, it takes many forms; however, the claims generally fall into three categories:

Was faked:

That the Jews collectively faked the Holocaust to gain the world's sympathy (see Holocaust profit controversy).
That the Allies faked the Holocaust to gain the world's sympathy, as "history is written by the victors".
That powerful Zionists faked and/or orchestrated the Holocaust, to encourage Jewish migration to Eretz Israel.

Didn't happen:

That the gas chambers used by the Nazis were actually delousing stations, etc.
That the Final Solution was in fact not the genocide of the Jewish people, but rather the expulsion of Jews from Germany.
That the Nuremberg testimonies from Germans were extracted by torture and/or otherwise faked.
That surviving death camp witnesses are/were "psychiatric cases" or liars.
That Hitler actually protected European Jews.

Wasn't that bad:

That 6,000,000 is a gross exaggeration of the Jewish death count.
That death counts for other groups (such as Roma or homosexuals) are exaggerated, that they were not included in the Holocaust, or that they were among those who carried it out.
That Stalin killed more people.
Particularly when it focuses on "how the Jews faked it all," Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism. This denial of Jewish suffering is embraced by bigots who are too cowardly to admit that they wished that Hitler had finished the job.
Holocaust denial, as noted, has many variants. This article tries to briefly rebut the most common claims.

1 Starting off with a note from Ike

2 Definitions and terminology

2.1 Functionalism and intentionalism versus Holocaust denial

2.2 "Holocaust revisionism" versus Holocaust denial

2.3 Confusion around the term Holocaust

2.3.1 Martin Glynn's "Holocaust" article from 1919

3 The Holocaust denial movement

3.1 Aims and techniques of deniers

3.2 Famous deniers

4 Laws against Holocaust denial

5 Evidence for the Holocaust

5.1 Nazi documents, speeches etc.

5.1.1 Hitler (duh)

5.1.2 Holocaust plans in Mein Kampf

5.1.3 Goebbels' diaries

5.1.4 Jäger report

5.1.5 Wannsee Conference

5.1.6 Himmler's 1942 report

5.1.7 Heinrich Himmler's speech

5.1.8 Odilo Globocnik's reports

5.1.9 Korherr report

5.1.10 Höfle Telegram

5.1.11 Other wartime documents

5.1.12 Kurt Gerstein

5.1.13 Gunnar Eklöf

5.1.14 "Sonderbehandlung" and other euphemisms

5.2 Testimonies

5.2.1 Guards, officers etc

5.2.2 Prisoners, Sonderkommandos and Kapos

5.2.3 Diary of Anne Frank

5.2.4 Claims to dissenting testimonies

5.3 "We knew nothing"

5.3.1 Swedish journalists; Valentin and Fredborg

5.3.2 Allies' knowledge during the war

5.4 Death toll and census data

5.4.1 World Almanac gambit

5.4.2 Where did the Jews go?

5.4.3 Not quite six million Jews

5.4.4 Discrepancies in per-camp death toll estimates

5.4.5 The Auschwitz gambit

5.4.6 Alexander Scronn

5.5 Physical evidence

5.5.1 It's the shoes, stupid!

6 Revisionist explanation to the deportations

6.1 New homeland

6.2 Labor

6.3 Security

7 Details about the Holocaust

7.1 Detention camps in Germany, death camps in Poland

7.2 Conditions in camps; swimming pool, orchestras etc

7.3 Gas chambers

7.3.1 Zyklon B

7.3.2 Forensic examinations on gas chambers, crematoria etc.

7.3.3 The Leuchter Report

7.4 Corpse disposal and cremation

7.4.1 Ash disposal

7.5 Methods except gassing

7.6 A few things once believed about the Holocaust are now known not to be true

7.6.1 Soap manufacturing

7.7 "Why didn't the Jews fight back?"

8 Red herrings in Holocaust denial

8.1 Holocaust compared to other atrocities

8.2 Nuremberg trials

8.3 Claimed bias against Holocaust denial

8.4 Semantics

8.5 A claimed agenda

8.6 General conspiracy theory/pseudo-history components

9 Questions to ask a Holocaust denier

10 Appendices

11 See also

12 External links

13 Footnotes

HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN MOROCCO
The Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Programme
by Elmehdi Boudra (see also Morocco)

There are people all around the world in every country that claim the Holocaust never took place. While Morocco is one of the countries where there were particularly good relations between Jews and Muslims, Holocaust denial has made its way to the young generation of Moroccans, largely due to the lack of Holocaust education in schools and politics in the Middle East. Holocaust education is not mandatory in the schools in Morocco and it is hard to find Holocaust publications, such as The Diary of Anne Frank published in French and nearly impossible to find it in Arabic. This is why publications such as this journal, produced in all United Nations official languages by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, and others published by the Aladdin Project, are so important. Some Moroccans have openly denied the Holocaust, but fortunately they were challenged by an active civil society. Discussion about the Holocaust did not take place officially until 2009. While there was no public denial of the Holocaust, there was also no acknowledgment of it.

In denying the Holocaust, we are denying future generations their right to a truthful and full reading of their history. Through such education, we will have a better chance to avoid the same mistakes and atrocities that some of the European leaders committed in the twentieth century.

It is simply absurd to hear such claims of Holocaust denial in light of the historical evidence the world has today. Therefore in Morocco, while Holocaust denial can be observed, the current monarch King Mohammed VI openly recognized the Holocaust in 2009, in a message addressed to the participants at the launch of the Aladdin Project at UNESCO in Paris. He called upon the world to learn lessons from the past through intercultural and interreligious dialogue. In this way, he set an example and opened the way for young Moroccans to learn more about the Holocaust. Such a change in official policy was in my view, a first step towards achieving justice through historical memory.

Taking this context into account, I founded the Mimouna Club while still a university student with a group of like-minded colleagues who were interested in discovering the Moroccan Jewish identity, history, culture and heritage. We wanted to explore how this collective memory could be preserved. What should be done in the Arab and Jewish worlds to recognize the horrific history of the Holocaust and the righteous acts of Arabs who saved the lives of their Jewish fellow countrymen and women at the risk of their own lives?

In Morocco, there are still people who remember the time of the Second World War. Such testimonies, as they would best be described, would not be available for future generations to hear if they were not documented now. In Mimouna Club, while not focused only on documenting such testimonies, we are focused on the broader mission of collecting narratives and primary source stories about Jewish life in Morocco: talking about the role of Mohamed V in protecting his Jewish subjects whilst the Jews of Europe were being massacred during the Second World War was also part of the Club’s mission. This history exemplifies Moroccan openness to its diversity, awareness of the need to protect human life, and the Monarchy’s long standing commitment to respecting the rights of its non-Muslim citizens.

Inspired by King Mohammed VI, the Mimouna Club organized the first conference on Holocaust remembrance in the Arab world titled “Mohammed V Righteous among the Nations”. It was held in September 2011 at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco in partnership with Kivunim, the Casablanca Moroccan Jewish Museum, with the sponsorship of two Moroccan companies, Nora and Marocapres.

Many university students who attended the conference learned about the Holocaust for the first time from Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust historian and former Project Director and Head of the Research Institute at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They also had the chance to hear personal testimony from Mrs. Elisabeth Citrom, a Holocaust survivor. Mrs. Citron was 12 years old when she was deported to the infamous concentration camp of Auschwitz- Birkenau. She speaks frequently of her experiences, but this was the first time she had ever spoken to an Arab audience. She travelled to Morocco with her husband George, also a survivor. Dr. Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke via video conference on the role that Arabs played in saving Jews across North Africa during the Holocaust.

Mr. Serge Berdugo, the Secretary-General of the Council of Moroccan Jews, gave a presentation on the threats to Jewish life under the Vichy regime and the actions of King Mohammed V in response. Mr. Berdugo’s father, then President of the Meknes Jewish Community participated in secret meetings with the Sultan Mohammed V. Mr. Simon Levy, the director of the Casablanca Jewish Museum, shared with us his personal story living in Morocco under the Vichy Government.

Mr. Andre Azoulay, Advisor to the King of Morocco, explained the importance of teaching the Holocaust in Morocco and in other Arab countries and the role of Mohammed the V in saving Moroccan Jews.

During the second day of the conference a facilitated discussion took place between students from Al Akhawayn University, students from Moroccan Universities throughout the country and the group of Kivunim alumni who had come to Morocco from their college campuses in the United States to participate in the event. This conference was welcomed by many Moroccan scholars, intellectuals and students. However it was also widely criticized by Holocaust deniers.

This conference was part of a larger movement of individual initiatives by civil society organizations, media representatives and educators who all wanted to promote Holocaust education in Morocco and to recognize Arabs who saved Jews in North Africa. There were also reports made by the Moroccan historians and media about forced labour camps that had been established at this time across North Africa.

In addition, Ismaël Ferroukhi, a Moroccan filmmaker, made a movie called “Free Men”, which narrates the story of the Imam of Paris who saved many Jews during the Nazi occupation of France. Another important development was the visit of a few Moroccan professors to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel. Aomar Boum, a Moroccan scholar has written several articles and essays on the subject.

All these individual initiatives have promoted the foundation for Holocaust education in Morocco, although not easy to implement. Mimouna Club, now an Association, continues to be active. It has arranged a number of caravans that have travelled to major cities in Morocco to bring knowledge of this history, and Jewish heritage and culture, to the people. Mimouna also organized a number of presentations in Morocco by Kimberly Mann, the Manager of the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. By strengthening our ties with educational institutions and civil society groups, we hope to engage even more people in Morocco in Holocaust remembrance and education activities.

FAMOUS HOLOCAUST DENIERS
Rational Wiki

Some famous Holocaust deniers described in brief. See each entry for a case study.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Former President of Iran. Hosted a 2006 conference, the "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust," at which the panel of speakers included among others David Duke and Robert Faurisson. Ahmadinejad is proud of his achievement: “That was a taboo topic that no one in the West allowed to be heard,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech, according to the Iranian Fars news agency. “We put it forward at the global level. That broke the spine of the Western capitalist regime.”

Sultan bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan - United Arab Emirates politician. Promoted a Holocaust denial symposium in Abu Dhabi in 2002.

Steven Anderson - Pastor of the Faithful World Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Producer of the "documentary" video Marching to Zion in which he rants about the "blasphemous teachings of the Talmud and Kabbalah" and "scriptural evidence that the Jews are no longer God's chosen people." According to the ADL, he "has a history of anti-Semitism through his sermons and a series of YouTube videos.". On one of his videos, in which he denies the Holocaust, he openly says, "Frankly, I don't believe that the official version of the Holocaust is true, whatsoever."

Harry Elmer Barnes - Originally, a mainstream writer and historian. After World War II, a marginal crank who brought his marginalization on himself because he insisted that all accusations against Germany and Japan were fabricated wartime propaganda. Revered and frequently name-dropped by today's Holocaust denial movement but their politics are likely far from Barnes' which were more along the lines of "I didn't leave liberalism, liberalism left me."

David Brandt Berg ("Moses David") - Founder of the Children of God cult. He peppered many of his group's tracks with anti-Semitic rants and occasional denials of the Holocaust, such as, "You hear all about Hitler & how he was supposed to have killed 6 million Jews!--Well, they've never been able to prove yet that he even killed 60,000!".

Arthur Butz - Professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University; author of the 1976 book “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry”. Accused of getting another professor removed from the department for incorporating the Holocaust into his lecture on ethics in engineering.

Willis Carto - Founder of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) in 1979, the main Holocaust denial group in the United States. Founder of the Barnes Review, a "historical revisionist" magazine that mostly runs articles questioning the Holocaust but covers it up with other articles on serious historical topics. Previously founded the wingnut Liberty Lobby in 1955.

Francis E. Dec.- Disbarred lawyer turned pamphleteer known for vehement and often incoherent screeds of a delusional and paranoid nature. In one of his pamphlets, dated Spring 1984, he insisted that during World War 2, the Jews lived in luxury while the concentration camps were run by both the Jews and the Nazis in order to exterminate Polish and Slavic people.

David Duke - Neo-Nazi extremist well-known and despised in the United States. Notably came disturbingly close to being elected Governor of Louisiana in 1990.

Robert Faurisson - French writer, prosecuted for defamation in 1979 after writing letters to Le Monde claiming there were no gas chambers. The author of a 1991 booklet claiming the Diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.

Bobby Fischer - American world chess champion. Despite his openly anti-Semitic remarks and denial of the Holocaust in the 1980's until his death, he reportedly was on good terms with Jewish chess players.

Ursula Havenbeck - German writer, convicted in Germany.

Michael Hoffman - American writer and editor of the journal Revisionist History. Claims that he is being persecuted by anti-German Jewish "racists."

David Irving - A "historian and a neutral observer" who believes that the Jews asked for it. (On January 11, 2000, a trial opened in London's High Court that would prove to be a crucial test of ‘Holocaust deniers.’ when British author David Irving brought a libel action against American Deborah Lipstadt, author of ‘Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth’ and Memory’. Go to IRVING VS LIPSTADT trial)

Milton L. Kapner aka Brother Nathanael Kapner - Born to Jewish parents, he converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity and joined a monastery.[19] While he often wears the trappings of a monk, he no longer is one, and his actions have been denounced by the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.[20] Runs the "Brother Nathanael Foundation" (a tax-deductible 501(c)3 Non-Profit), and a website called "Real Jew News" where he has a page listing "Holocaust Hype Articles". He has also made a number of YouTube videos promoting his views.

Charles Wing Krafft - Pop artist noted for his "disasterware" (Delft plates depicting violent disasters or fascist themes) and funerary memorial porcelain artworks crafted from human remains, who was outed as an anti-Semite and holocaust denier. On a July 28, 2012, podcast on The White Network, a site that officially hosts the program "Whites Talking To Whites About White Interests", he openly stated, "I believe the Holocaust is a myth." In an e-mail to writer Jen Graves of The Stranger, regarding his thoughts on the Holocaust, he stated,

"I don't doubt that Hitler's regime killed a lot of Jews in WWII, but I don't believe they were ever frog marched into homicidal gas chambers and dispatched. I think between 700,000–1.2 million Jews died of disease, starvation, overwork, reprisals for partisan attacks, allied bombing, and natural causes during the war."

Fred Leuchter - Consultant to the lucrative capital punishment industry in the U.S. and manufacturer of electric chairs. In 1988, he was hired by Ernst Zündel to investigate whether the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps could have been used for mass extermination. Leuchter claims he concluded they could not have been and published The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland. Fred Leuchter has no scientific background to have made such a claim. He was the subject of the 1999 Errol Morris documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter.

Texe Marrs - Christian writer and conspiracy theorist. On his website he sells his own recordings entitled The Holocaust Controversy and the Falsification of History, and Holocaust Dogma Unmasked — A Grim Global Conspiracy Mocking Reality and Capitalizing on Death is Outed by Brave Truthtellers. He also peddles Victor Thorn's book The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie, and Brian Alois Clèrauba's book A Greater "Miracle" Than The Lost Ten Tribes Discovered...—The Dead "Six Million" Uncovered...!, as well as the anti-Semitic screeds The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies.

Eustace Mullins - Anti-Semitic writer and (until his recent demise) contributing editor to Barnes Review.

Revilo P. Oliver - His original claim to fame was as a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist. Kicked out of the John Birch Society for public anti-Semitic statements, went on to neo-Nazi activities in his later years.

Ahmed Rami - Moroccan-Swedish writer, and founder of Radio Islam. Sentenced by a Swedish court in 1990 to six months in prison for hate speech rising from the material including, but not limited to, Holocaust denial. Has co-written a Holocaust denial book, Tabubelagda tankar (Tabooed Thoughts), with Swedish Neo-Nazi leader Björn Björkqvist.

George Lincoln Rockwell - US Navy veteran of both WW2 and the Korean war, and one-time commercial illustrator, advertising agent, magazine publisher, and sign painter, later founder of the American Nazi Party (later known as National Socialist White People's Party), which was one of the first US organizations to promote Holocaust revisionism and denial as part of its ideology. (It splintered off into numerous groups after his 1967 murder by a purged party member.) An outspoken white supremacist and anti-Semite, he was quoted in an April 1966 interview in Playboy:

"I don't believe for one minute that any 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated by Hitler. It never happened." ... "I emphatically deny that there is any valid proof that innocent Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis. The photographs you've seen that have been passed off as pictures of dead Jews have been identified as pictures of the corpses of German civilians -- mostly women and children and refugees who were killed in the one-night Allied bombing of Dresden, which slaughtered 350,000 innocent people."

Germar Rudolf - German student who released a poorly researched report while interning at the Max Planck institute claiming that samples taken from gas chamber walls showed no more cyanide evidence than random farmhouses. He ignored the basic chemistry of cyanide by not discriminating against iron-based cyanide compounds. The study was subsequently falsified, and Rudolf was fired and imprisoned. Rudolf has since gone on to other impressive feats such as denying 9/11.

Bradley Smith - A crank who has spent the last 25 years trying to place advertisements in newspapers calling for an "open debate" on whether the Holocaust happened. He seems to crave the controversy that results and chants the mantra of "free speech" a lot. He is especially fond of trying to place these ads in student newspapers on college campuses, which usually results in free publicity for him and his pet cause whether or not the ads are accepted for publication.

David Stein aka David Cole - Leader of Republican Party Animals, a Hollywood-based conservative political group. In 2013, he was exposed as being "David Cole," a Holocaust revisionist who made a splash in the media in the 1990's.

Paul Topete - Lead vocalist of the "Patriot" rock band Poker Face. On the band's on-line forum, Topete, using the handle "Pokerkid", has made a number of anti-Semitic statements, including the following (reproduced verbatim):

"I am always amazed at how many roads lead back to one of the largest if not THEE [sic] largest scam ever played on humanity... Yes that [sic] right... the HOLOHAUX aka holocaust. 1985 and 1988 Ernst Zundel DESTROYED the Myth known as the cult of holohauzianity. In a canadien [sic] court of law, Ernst Zundel took on the biggest frauds in the SHOAH Industry, and showed them to be the frauds that they were. Names like Raoul Hilberg and Vrba. And several other parasites known to infest this worldly sham. Wake up people, You are being played for fools for you LACK KNOWLEDGE."

Hal Turner - White supremacist, shortwave and internet talk show host and FBI informant, now convicted felon. Quoting him directly:

"Jews love to complain about the 'Holocaust.' Let me tell you, there was no Holocaust in World War 2 -- but rest assured, there most certainly IS GOING TO BE a holocaust. I look forward to participating with zeal."

Richard Williamson - British Roman Catholic Bishop and former member of the Catholic Traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, was fined by the German government for denying the Holocaust on Swedish TV while on German soil. During the interview, he stated, "I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."[28] and "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them in gas chambers."

Shaun Patrick Winkler - American White Supremacist and failed Sheriff candidate for Bonner County, Idaho who attempted to build an "Aryan compound" to replace the now defunct Aryan Nations Church. In an interview, he was quoted as saying, "The bad, evil, rotten Jew is behind a lot of things. We look at the media, we look at society in general. We look at even our public school systems. They paint this pretty little portrait for Jews, how they were such victims of the Holocaust or, as I like to refer to it, the ‘Holo-Hoax.’ We … deny that 6 million died."

Francis Parker Yockey - An American Hitler admirer who wrote an unreadable post-WWII tome called Imperium under the pen-name "Ulick Varange," a book which you can't make heads or tails of but vaguely has something to do with advocating European unification around a program of "total politics."

Ernst Zündel - German writer and neo-Nazi who, through his Canadian publishing company (he lived in Canada 1958-2000) and his website, has been a prolific promoter of Holocaust denial through. Was prosecuted in Germany and sentenced to five years in prison in 2007 for violating Germany's law against inciting hatred. Released in 2010, but seems to have been relatively inactive since.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY:
'SHOCKING' LEVELS OF DENIAL REMAIN (2019)

BBC 27 January 2019

Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found.

The poll of more than 2,000 people was carried out by Opinion Matters for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT).

Meanwhile, people have gathered across the country to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

More than 11,000 activities took place, including a national commemorative ceremony in Westminster.

In the survey, 45% of those polled said they did not know how many people were killed in the Holocaust, while one in five (19%) believed fewer than two million Jews were murdered.

The actual figure was six million.

Holocaust Memorial Day also marks the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and 40 years since the end of the genocide in Cambodia.

Prime Minister Theresa May led tributes online with a message she had written in the Holocaust Educational Trust's book of commitment, calling for people to once again remember the catastrophe.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - who joined 200 Holocaust survivors at the service in Westminster - also shared a photo of himself signing the book, adding: "Let us never allow anti-Semitism or any other form of racism to disfigure our society."

At the ceremony, survivors lit six candles to represent the six million Jewish victims.

Grandmother Rachel Levy, 87, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a teenager and came to the UK after the war, said she was frightened by the anti-Semitism in Britain today.

"People are turning nasty again, of all classes," she said. "I don't understand why."

He added: "Education is so important. If we ignore the past, I fear history will repeat itself."

The HMDT's chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman said: "Such widespread ignorance and even denial is shocking.

"Without a basic understanding of this recent history, we are in danger of failing to learn where a lack of respect for difference and hostility to others can ultimately lead."

She added that the rise in reported hate crime in the UK and the risk of genocide in ongoing international conflicts meant "we cannot be complacent".

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "One person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many.

"It is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history."

LINKS

HOLOCAUST MUSEUMS, MONUMENTS, AND MEMORIALS AROUND THE WORLD

THE HOLOCAUST SITES OF EUROPE Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
Martin Winstone is the author of The Holocaust Sites of Europe: An Historical Guide. In this podcast Martin talks about the geography of the Holocaust, the sites where the atrocities took place, and the different kinds of camp which existed.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM Encyclopedia Britannica

Eisenhower and the Writing of Holocaust History

“The other day I visited a German
Internment Camp.
I Never Dreamed
that Much Cruelty,
Bestiality and Savagery Could Really Exist
in this World”

Dwight D Eisenhower on the
Camps

Eisenhower Asks Congress
and Press
to
Witness
Nazi Horror

The
Ten Stages
of Genocide

What is
Holocaust Denial?

Holocaust
Denial
Timeline

Irving v Lipstadt
Trial

Denying
the Holocaust

The World
is Full of Holocaust Deniers

DENIAL OF THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

EISENHOWER AND THE WRITING
OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY
Prof Harry Reicher Holocaust presentation - Dec. 14, 2010
IkeLibrary, 2010 (1.08.08)
This presentation was the finale to several months
programming connected to the
"Eisenhower and the Righteous Cause"
temporary exhibit at the Museum.
General Eisenhower and the Documentation of the Holocaust

Professor Harry Reicher talked about an episode which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. While liberating concentration camps and witnessing sights that “beggar description,” General Eisenhower ensured the horrific scenes were captured for posterity in graphic photographs and film. Professor Reicher asserted that he grasped the impact which visual evidence was to have in the Nuremberg Trials, and foresaw the era of Holocaust denial. Video clips of concentration camps were shown. Professor Reicher also responded to questions from members of the audience.

“Eisenhower and the Writing of Holocaust History” was the final program, on December 14, 2011, in the seven-month series “Eisenhower and the Righteous Cause: The Liberation of Europe.”
It was held in the Visitors Center Auditorium
of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.

Portions of this program may be disturbing to some viewers.

REEL AMERICA PREVIEW:
"NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS" 1945 U.S. ARMY FILM
C-SPAN 2015 (4.20)

NAZI CONCENTRATION
AND PRISON CAMPS
WARSTORIES 2012 (57.53)

Click here for
enlarged copy of this letter

BEHIND THE LIES
OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Dr Deborah Lipstadt
TEDX 2017 (15.30)
"There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies," says historian Deborah Lipstadt, telling the remarkable story of her research
into Holocaust deniers --
and their deliberate distortion of history.
Lipstadt encourages us all to go on the offensive against those who
assault the truth and facts.
"Truth is not relative," she says.

MY COURTROOM BATTLE
WITH A HOLOCAUST DENIER
Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt
TEDxSkoll 2017 (15.54)

DENIAL MOVIE TRAILER (2016)

DENIAL
REVIEWED BY MARK KERMODE
(2017)

THE 5TH WORLD
HOLOCAUST FORUM:
“REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST: FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM"

YAD VASHEM 2020 (3.35.31)

Heads of State from Europe, North America and Australia gather at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, for the Fifth World Holocaust Forum to mark the 75th anniversary of
the liberation of Auschwitz and
International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND DISTORTION
Yad Vashem 2019 (12.16)
Prof. Dina Porat explores what is Holocaust denial, what forms it takes and why they are defined as manifestations of antisemitism.

Holocaust
Denial Forms

Holocaust Education
in Morocco

Famous
Holocaust
Deniers

Holocaust Memorial Day:
'Shocking' Levels
of
Denial Remain

Links