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- This article is about the history, development, and methods of Holocaust denial. For an examination of the arguments of Holocaust denial, see Examination of Holocaust denial.
Holocaust denial (commonly called Holocaust revisionism by its supporters) is the belief that the genocide of Jews during World War II — the Holocaust — did not occur. Key elements of this belief are the explicit or implicit rejection that, in the Holocaust:
- The Nazi government had a policy of deliberately targeting Jews, people of Jewish ancestry, Gypsies, and homosexuals for extermination as a people;
- More than five million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis and their allies.
- Tools of efficient mass extermination, such as gas chambers, were used in extermination camps to kill Jews.
In addition, most Holocaust denial implies, or openly states, that the Holocaust is a hoax which is the result of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy created to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples. For this reason, Holocaust denial is generally considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Because of this, Holocaust denial has been illegal in many European countries since shortly after World War II, as their governments hold that it is motivated by an anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi agenda.
Holocaust deniers do not accept "denier" as an appropriate term to describe their point of view, using the term "Holocaust revisionists" instead. They are nevertheless commonly labeled "Holocaust deniers" to differentiate them from historical revisionists who consider their goal to be historical inquiry using evidence and established methodology; Holocaust deniers, on the other hand, try to prove that the Holocaust did not occur, regardless of historical evidence.
Terminology: Holocaust denial or Holocaust revisionism?
The term "denial" (also but less often in English "negationist") is objected to by the people to whom it is applied, who prefer "revisionist," though most scholars contend that the latter term is deliberately misleading. While historical revisionism is the re-examination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and less-biased information, "deniers" have been criticized for seeking evidence to support a preconceived theory, omitting substantial facts. Broadly, historical revisionism is the approach that history as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate and should hence be revised accordingly. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies, and it is applied to the study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge and change our understanding of it.
Holocaust deniers maintain that they apply proper revisionist principles to Holocaust history, and therefore the term Holocaust revisionism is appropriate for their point of view. Their critics, however, disagree and prefer the term Holocaust denial.
"Revisionists" depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology , thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head.
— Gord McFee, in the essay "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't"
In general, the term Holocaust denial fits the description at the beginning of this article, while the term Holocaust revisionism is ambiguous, in theory ranging from Holocaust denial to standard historical techniques applied to examine aspects of the Holocaust that have been understudied. However, because the latter term has become associated with Holocaust deniers, mainstream historians today generally avoid using it to describe themselves. Though they do not use the term revisionism, historians do continue to study and revise opinions on aspects of the Holocaust, though no reputable historian has challenged the basic scale and outlines of the event. In the words of historian Donald Niewyk from Southern Methodist University: "With the main features of the Holocaust clearly visible to all but the willfully blind, historians have turned their attention to aspects of the story for which the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous. These are not minor matters by any means, but turn on such issues as Hitler's role in the event, Jewish responses to persecution, and reactions by onlookers both inside and outside Nazi-controlled Europe."
Despite the best attempts of some to make a distinction between the terms Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism, the jailing of the discredited self-taught historical author David Irving in Austria in February 2006 shows that the British news media frequently use the term revisionist when referring to a Holocaust denier.
Claims of the Holocaust deniers
Holocaust deniers often find themselves in agreement with the following points, although not all claims are limited to denial of the Holocaust.
- Nazis did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews. Small chambers did exist for delousing and Zyklon-B was used in this process, but larger chambers were not built or would not have worked as described if built.
- Nazis did not use cremation ovens to dispose of millions of extermination victims. The amount of energy required to fire the ovens far exceeded what the energy-strapped nation could spare in wartime. The cremation ovens that existed would have been too small for this purpose and were installed for hygienic removal of corpses. Death from natural causes and disease epidemics could reasonably be expected in a high-density work camp.
- The figure of 5-6 million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration, because this would mean that virtually all of the Jews in Nazi occupied territories were exterminated; instead, they claim that many Jews actually emigrated or escaped to the Soviet Union, Britain, Palestine and the United States.
- Many photos and much of the film footage shown after World War II were either incorrectly attributed or specially manufactured as propaganda against the Nazis by the Allied forces, in particular by the Soviet Union. For example, one film of supposed Holocaust victims, shown to Germans after the war, in fact depicted German civilians being treated after Allied bombing of Dresden. Pictures we commonly see show victims of starvation or typhus, not of gassing.
- Claims of what the Nazis supposedly did to the Jews were all intended to facilitate the Allies in their intention to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and are currently used to garner support for the policies of the state of Israel, especially in its dealings with the Palestinians.
- Historical proof for the Holocaust, such as maps and documents or buildings claimed to be gas chambers, have been deliberately falsified, misinterpreted, misrepresented, or reconstructed. For example, documents contain grammatical errors which only non-native German speakers would make; photographs of generic death and destruction are labeled Nazi atrocities.
- There is an American, British or Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Germans. Also, it was in the Soviet interest to propagate wild stories about Germany in order to frighten related nations into accepting Soviet rule (Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.). The amount of money pumped into Israel and reparations from Germany alone would give Israel a strong incentive to maintain this conspiracy.
- The overwhelming number of academics and historians are actually too afraid to admit that the Holocaust was a fiction; they fear they will lose their jobs if they speak up.
- The "official" research into the Holocaust is inherently biased because it is considered immoral, and it is often illegal, to attempt to question its extent. For example, an article revising the number of victims of the Holocaust up from 5-6 million to 8 million could in principle be considered valid research, whereas any article revising this number downwards would be automatically labeled "anti-Semitic" and denied print, and its author could be persecuted. This violates the basic principles of scientific method and calls the results into question.
- The Holocaust pales in comparison to the number of dissidents and Christians killed in Soviet gulags, which Holocaust deniers usually attribute to Jews; and to the number of non-Jews killed by Nazis during World War II.
Additionally, two other common claims of Holocaust deniers constitute part of the debate on functionalism versus intentionalism:
- Although crimes were committed, they were not centrally orchestrated and thus the Nazi leadership bore no responsibility for the implementation of such a policy.
- There was no specific order by Adolf Hitler or other top Nazi officials to exterminate the Jews.
Holocaust denial examined
Holocaust denial is widely viewed as failing to adhere to rules for the treatment of evidence, rules that are recognized as basic to rational inquiry. The prevailing consensus is that the evidence given by survivors, eye witnesses, and historians is overwhelming, that it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Holocaust occurred, and that it occurred as they say it occurred. It is unreasonable to ask these claimants to prove that their evidence is "really real" any more than they already have, unless there is some particular demonstrably credible reason for thinking that it is suspect.
The existence and nature of the Holocaust was well-documented by the heavily bureaucratic German government itself. It was further witnessed by the Allied forces who entered Germany and its associated Axis states towards the end of World War II. Among the evidence produced was film and stills that showed the existence of prisoner camps, as well as the testimony of those freed when the camps were entered. The Holocaust was a massive undertaking that lasted for years across several countries, with its own command and control infrastructure, which left a large trail of documentation. Although the Nazis made attempts to destroy the evidence of the Holocaust when they could see that their defeat was imminent, substantial documentation remained. After their defeat, many documents were recovered, and many thousands of bodies were found not yet completely decomposed, in mass graves near many concentration camps. The physical evidence and the documentary proof included numerous reports written by the Nazis about the number of Jews killed, records of train shipments of Jews to the camps, orders for tons of cyanide and other poisons, photographs, films, and the remaining concentration camp structures themselves. Thousands of interviews with survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders added to the level of documentation around the Holocaust. And diaries written by German anti-Nazis, such as Friedrich Kellner, show the extent to which the average German was aware of the crimes.
Thus, there is little debate among scholars whether the Holocaust occurred, and much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers centers upon the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly never happened as commonly accepted. Numerous accounts have been given by Holocaust deniers (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed "facts" and "evidence"; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biased statements, or even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have compiled detailed accounts of numerous instances where this evidence has been altered or manufactured (see Nizkor Project and David Irving). Evidence presented by Holocaust deniers has also failed to stand up to scrutiny in courts of law (see Fred A. Leuchter), further questioning its veracity.
As Holocaust denial is not considered to be historical research by mainstream scholars, there has been a substantial debate on the right way to respond to deniers. Since the aim of some Holocaust deniers is to prove that the Holocaust did not happen, a conclusion contradicted by deep historical record, many scholars worry that to debate Holocaust denial is to make the former appear a legitimate field of inquiry.
A second group of scholars, typified by historian Deborah Lipstadt, have tried to raise awareness of the methods and motivations of Holocaust denial, while trying not to legitimize the deniers themselves. Lipstadt explained her goals:
We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers' contentions. It would be never-ending to respond to arguments posed by those who freely falsify findings, quote out of context and simply dismiss reams of testimony. Unlike true scholars, they have little, if any, respect for data or evidence. Their commitment is to an ideology and their 'findings' are shaped to support it.
A third group, typified by the Nizkor Project, responds by confronting Holocaust denial head-on, debunking invalid arguments and false claims of Holocaust denial groups.
History of Holocaust denial
Research into Holocaust Denial has revealed that anti-Semitism has been an important part of the revisionist philosophy since the very beginnings of the movement. With few exceptions, charges of anti-Jewish bias have been leveled against many deniers over the years – charges that they have rarely rejected.
Early examples
Scholars credit the very first Holocaust deniers as the Nazis themselves. Historians have documented evidence that Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria and other signs of mass extermination of human beings, as Germany's defeat became imminent and the Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial. Following the end of World War II, many of the former leaders of the SS left Germany and began using their propaganda skills to defend their actions (or, their critics contended, to rewrite history). Denial materials began to appear shortly after the war.
The case of Harry Elmer Barnes
Also eventually taking a Holocaust denial stance in the later years of his life was Harry Elmer Barnes. Barnes is an unusual case because he was at one time a mainstream historian with liberal credentials. Between World War I and World War II, Barnes became well known as an anti-war writer and a leader in the historical revisionism movement. Following World War II, however, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan to justify U.S. involvement in WWII were merely wartime propaganda that needed to be debunked. He later began including the Holocaust in this category in his writings. Barnes' anti-war and mainstream historical revisionist writings are still held in high regard by some libertarians. Following the example of Barnes, a few other early libertarian writers also concerned with anti-war historical revisionism began to take a Holocaust denial stance, including James J. Martin. Most libertarians, even those who otherwise hold Barnes' writings in high regard, reject his Holocaust denial. Barnes' name has since been appropriated by some modern Holocaust deniers in an attempt to lend credibility to their cause, most notably Willis Carto.
The beginnings of the Modern Movement
The beginnings of modern-day Holocaust denial are somewhat obscure. Public challenges to the historical accounts of the holocaust first began to appear in the 1960s, with French historian Paul Rassinier publishing The Drama of the European Jews in 1964. Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was imprisoned in Buchenwald for his socialist beliefs), and modern-day revisionists continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics and opponents of revisionism, however, note that Rassinier's own anti-Semitic views influenced his viewpoint and that Buchenwald was not a death camp, so his argument that he saw no gassings there was unsurprising. While Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims, and ignored information that contradicted his assertions, he remains influential in Holocaust denial for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme picked up by other authors.
A prominent early Holocaust denier was the American historian David Hoggan, who wrote a book in 1961 called the Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War), which was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, but also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi anti-Semitic measures in the pre-1939 period. Subsequently, Hoggan wrote one of the first books denying the Holocaust in 1969 entitled The Myth of the Six Million, which was published by the Noontide Press, a small Los Angeles based publisher noted for specializing in anti-Semitic literature. Hoggan became one of the early stars of the Holocaust denial movement, because he had a number of professorships at prestigious universities.
The Holocaust denial movement grew into full strength in the 1970s with the publication of Arthur Butz' The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 and David Irving's Hitler's War in 1977. These books, seen as the basis of much of the deniers' arguments, brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon, published two letters in Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist.
Institute for Historical Review
In 1979 the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was founded by Willis Carto as an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the "myth of the Holocaust." The IHR sought from the beginning to attempt to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III, and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes to attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a broader base of support besides just neo-Nazis. The IHR brought most of Barnes' writings, which had been out of print since his death, back into print. However, most of IHR's supporters were neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, and while IHR included token articles on other topics and sold some token books by mainstream historians in its book catalog, the vast majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.
The IHR became one of the most important organizations devoted to Holocaust denial. In recent years the IHR underwent an internal power struggle which ousted Willis Carto. Under the subsequent leadership of Mark Weber, the IHR has taken on an even more explicit neo-Nazi orientation than it had under Carto. Carto went on to found the Barnes Review magazine after his ousting from IHR, a magazine which is also devoted to Holocaust denial.
In recent published articles, volunteer organizations monitoring hate groups have stated that Holocaust denial groups, such as the IHR, have been having difficulty finding supporters (and especially financial sponsors) in the United States. As a result, spokespersons for the IHR and other denial groups have been traveling to the Middle East in an attempt to forge closer ties with extremist groups there. IHR spokespersons have been reported to have met with persons suspected of involvement with terrorist groups.
In an "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR makes the claim that "The Institute does not 'deny the Holocaust'," though they explicitly deny many of the elements of the mainstream view of the Holocaust, calling them a "hoax," as stated in the IHR journal:
There is no dispute over the fact that large numbers of Jews were deported to concentration camps and ghettos, or that many Jews died or were killed during World War II. Revisionist scholars have presented evidence, which "exterminationists" have not been able to refute, showing that there was no German program to exterminate Europe's Jews, and that the estimate of six million Jewish wartime dead is an irresponsible exaggeration. The Holocaust — the alleged extermination of some six million Jews (most of them by gassing) — is a hoax and should be recognized as such by Christians and all informed, honest and truthful men everywhere.
Commentators have noted the misleading nature of statements by the IHR that they are not Holocaust deniers. For example, in The San Francisco Express, Paul Raber described a revisionist "word game":
The question appears to turn on IHR's Humpty-Dumpty word game with the word Holocaust. … According to Mark Weber , … "If by the `Holocaust' you mean the political persecution of Jews, some scattered killings, if you mean a cruel thing that happened, no one denies that." … That is, IHR doesn't deny that the Holocaust happened; they just deny that the word "Holocaust" means what people customarily use it for.
Bradley Smith and CODOH
Bradley R. Smith is the founder of a group called the "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust". CODOH was founded in 1987. In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly tried to place newspaper ads questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers. These ads typically cause a stir on each campus, whether or not they are actually run in the campus newspaper. Some newspapers have accepted the ads, some have rejected them. No matter which decision the editors make, most papers run an editorial defending their decision either on free speech grounds or on the grounds that Smith's views are repugnant and rightfully kept out of the newspaper. During the early 1990s, CODOH's ad campaign attracted national controversy after many campus newspapers accepted the ads. This action became the subject of editorials in major newspapers such as The New York Times. Since 2000, CODOH's newspaper ad campaign has fallen into inactivity because most campus papers (with a few exceptions) reject the ads as a matter of course. Attempts to place the ads no longer generate the controversy they once did. Bradley Smith has more recently sought other avenues to promote Holocaust denial with little success.
James Keegstra
In 1984, James Keegstra, a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged with denying the Holocaust and making anti-Semitic claims in his classroom as part of the course material. Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie, argued that the section of the Criminal Code (now section319{2}), is an infringement of the Charter of Rights (section 9{b}). The case was appealed to the Supreme court of Canada, where it was decided that the law he was convicted under did infringe on his freedom of expression, but it was a justified infringement. Keegstra was convicted, and fired from his job.
The Zündel trials
Former Canadian resident Ernst Zündel operated a small-press publishing house called Samisdat Publishing, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood (a/k/a Richard Verrall - a British neo-Nazi leader). In 1985, he was tried and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust." Zündel gained considerable notoriety after this conviction, and a number of free-speech activists stepped forward to defend his right to publish his opinion. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.
Zündel established his own Web site to publicize his viewpoints. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, found contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act. The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003, the American INS arrested him in Tennessee, USA, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany; under whose laws he could be prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda.
Ken McVay and alt.revisionism
In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the Internet brought new international exposure to many organizations, including Holocaust deniers and other groups. A number of authority figures stated publicly that the Internet allowed hate groups to introduce their messages to a widespread audience, and it was feared that Holocaust denial would gain in popularity as a result. However, this was not the case, largely due to the efforts of Ken McVay and the participants in the Usenet newsgroup alt.revisionism.
McVay, a Canadian resident, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers. On alt.revisionism he began a campaign of "truth, fact, and evidence," working with other participants on the newsgroup to uncover factual information about the Holocaust and counter the arguments of the deniers by proving them to be based upon misleading evidence, false statements, and outright
- Donald L Niewyk, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Estimates by scholars range from 5.1 million to 7 million. See the appropriate section of the Holocaust article.
- Alan L. Berger, “Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?” In Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas. Ed. Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, pg 154.
- Negationism is the denial of historic crimes. The word is derived from the French term Le négationnisme, which refers to Holocaust denial.
- Omer Bartov, The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath, Routledge, p.12
- Gord McFee, Holocaust History Project, Why Revisionism Isn't
- Niewyk, 1992
- Richard Ingram Irving was the author of his own downfall in The Independent 25 February 2006: In 1969, after David Irving's support for Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, The Daily Telegraph issued a memo to all its correspondents. "It is incorrect," it said, "to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author."
- The British news media use of the term revisionist as well as denial:
- Kate Connolly Irving held in Austria for denying Holocaust in The Daily Telegraph November 18 2005
- Tony Paterson Austria considers Holocaust denial charge for Irving in The Independent, November 18 2005
- Staff and agencies David Irving jailed for Holocaust denial in The Guardian February 20, 2006
- By Times Online and agencies Bankrupt, disgraced and now jailed: Irving sinks to new low in Times Online, February 20, 2006
- Kate Murphy Irving tests Europe's free speech on the BBC website February 20 2006.
- Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do they Say it? University of California Press
- What are scholars persecuted for in the West?
- Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, International Handbook of Violence Research, Springer: 2003
- Deborah Lipstadt, 1992 interview with Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee
- Martin Perry, Anti-Semitism, Palgrave: 2002
- Phyllis B Gerstenfeld, Diana R Grant, Crimes of Hate. Sage Press, 2003, p 191
- Deborah E. Lipstadt, History on Trial, Harcourt:2005
- Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory 1994
- Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, Basic Books, 2002 (ISBN 0-465-02153-0).
- [http://www.oraclesyndicate.org/pub_e/k.coo_e/publ_05-02_1.htm HITLIST April/May 2002], Kevin Coogan, Berkeley CA, USA
- Journal for Historical Review, 1993, 13, 5, p. 32
- Paul Raber, San Francisco Express, January 17, 1992, page 4.