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Holocaust denial

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

Holocaust denial is a conspiracy theory that the Holocaust did not happen or was not as bad as people think it was.[1][2] Historians agree that during World War II, the Nazis killed at least 6,000,000 Jews (67% of pre-war European Jews) in the Holocaust,[3][4] mostly in Nazi concentration camps within occupied territories across Europe back then.[3][4] They agree that there is more proof in writing, pictures, and places about the Holocaust than any other genocide.[clarification needed]

Overview

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Holocaust deniers

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Holocaust deniers usually call themselves Holocaust revisionists to make themselves look good.[5] Their usual claim is that the Holocaust is "a hoax made up by Jewish people working together."[6][7]

It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Israel and in many European countries, especially in Germany.[8] Some Holocaust deniers, like Ernst Zündel, have been charged with crimes.

Prominent Holocaust deniers

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Denialist claims

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Tactics

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Just Asking Questions

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See the main article: Just Asking Questions

Just Asking Questions (JAQ) is a pseudoskeptical[20] tactic often employed by Holocaust deniers to promote lies about the Holocaust by phrasing them as questions.[21] Holocaust deniers tend to claim that they are "only asking questions" about the Holocaust while rejecting the abundant amount of evidence that proves that the Holocaust happened.[21]

Writing for the Slate magazine, Johannes Breit, a German historian, stated that JAQ used to be seen frequently in posts made by Holocaust deniers in Reddit's r/AskHistorian subreddit (2.2M subscribers), which prompted its moderators to ban them from participation in 2018,[21] while Reddit has been long been criticized for uncontrolled antisemitism.[22] American historian Deborah Lipstadt (1947 – ) commented on JAQ's potential impact:[21]

[... p]roperly camouflaged, Holocaust denial has a good chance of finding a foothold among coming generations.

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a self-declared academic group that has been promoting Holocaust denial since 1978,[23] uses JAQ in many of their publications.[23] The Counter Extremism Project summarized IHR's activities as follows:[21]

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

While lying about being neutral, the IHR advances the antisemitic trope that the Holocaust was "invented" by Jews to "further Jewish-Zionist interests."[21][23] The IHR also pushed the myth that "Nazi Germany actively supported Zionism" by presenting relevant history without context.[23] IHR's Holocaust distortion has had a considerable impact across the political spectrum. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone (1945 – ), who was a British Labour Party member until 2018, promoted the myth,[24] so did PA's leader[25] and American Trotskyist activist writer Lenni Brenner (1937 – ) who published a book endorsing the myth.[26][27] Since then, Brenner has adamantly denied inspiring Holocaust distortion or encouraging antisemitism's global resurgence,[27] despite the book's content being exploited extensively by antisemites on the far right and far left to trivialize the Holocaust and demonize the vast majority of diaspora Jews[28][29] who support Israel's right to exist.[27]

Sealioning

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As a similar concept to JAQ, sealioning refers to the act of repeating the same questions that have already been answered while faking ignorance and politeness.[30] It is also a common tactic among Holocaust deniers on online forums and social media.[22][31]

Rebuttal to Holocaust denial

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Evidence includes the word of Sonderkommandos like these.

Historians agree that the Holocaust happened and that Holocaust deniers use bad research, get things wrong, and sometimes make facts up to support their claims.[6][7]

Many things together prove that the Holocaust did happen:

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

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References

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  1. ↑ "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved October 17, 2024. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
    • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
    • Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
    • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
    • Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
    • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1
  5. ↑ Lipstadt, Deborah, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p. 25
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a definition Archived 2011-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004, Retrieved 6 March 2013
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. Denying History: : who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it?, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-23469-3, p. 106
  8. ↑ Bazyler, Michael J. (December 25, 2006). "Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of Nazism" (PDF). Yad Vashem. Retrieved 30 March 2012.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "What is Opus Dei, and why is it so controversial — both in and out of the Catholic Church?". Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). January 30, 2023. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 McDermott, Jim (January 13, 2023). "Mel Gibson and the dangers of Catholic antisemitism". American Magazine. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Reid, Donald (March 29, 2022). "Holocaust denial, Le Vicaire, and the absent presence of Nadine Fresco and Paul Rassinier in Jorge Semprún's La Montagne blanche". French Cultural Studies. 33 (3). doi:10.1177/09571558221078450. Retrieved December 26, 2024. Open access
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1
  19. ↑ Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004, Retrieved 6 March 2013
  20. ↑ Faking as being neutral about a topic to hide one's bias.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 "Institute for Historical Review (IHR)". Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Retrieved February 6, 2025.
  24. ↑ "Ken Livingstone repeats claim about Nazi-Zionist collaboration". The Guardian. March 30, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2025.
  25. ↑
  26. ↑
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2
  28. ↑ "Eight out of ten British Jews identify as Zionist, says new poll". The Jewish Chronicle. December 28, 2023. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  29. ↑ "AJC Survey Shows American Jews are Deeply and Increasingly Connected to Israel". American Jewish Committee (AJC). New York. June 10, 2024. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
  30. ↑
  31. ↑
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