Holocaust denial as an anti-Semitic propaganda movement has been on the rise for the past few decades. The movement or phenomenon has been adopted all over Europe in an effort to either minimize or deny the history of the Jewish genocide by the Nazi regime. The denial is propelled by hate groups and individuals who argue that the Holocaust is a phenomenon made up by the Jewish people to get financial support for their newly created state, Israel. The deniers mainly center their denial arguments citing various reasons. In addition, they hide under the assertion that if the Holocaust at all happened, it was not perpetrated by the regime and the leadership had no clue of this development. The most notable deniers include individuals like Willis Carto, Paul Ressinier, and Harry Elmer Barnes. In light of these assertions, this paper critically analyzes holocaust deniers and posits that such individuals distort and compromise history thereby affecting its authenticity.
Holocaust Denialists
Holocaust denial is still a big part of our society today. To comprehensively gain an insight of the event and the debate around it, it is fundamental that a consistent and concise definition of the terminology is given. Therefore, Holocaust denial can wholesomely be described as the propaganda movement that is active in the European continent especially the United States, Western Europe, and Canada that seeks to refute the realities of the Nazis mass genocide of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War (The Jewish Virtual Library, 2017). It is worth noting that the Holocaust denial is an anti-Semitic movement that traces its roots to the Nazi Policy who instead referred to it as the final solution to the Jewish question. As such, the paper is aimed at discussing this subject matter as it pertains to the denialists.
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Many deniers mainly focus on the genocide of the Jews based on the hatred built over the years as the grounds for the Holocaust event. It must, however, be noted that the genocide not only happened to the Jews but also to political opponents of the Nazi regime, homosexuals, Gypsies, the mentally ill among others. The emphasis is on the Jews because they were the largest group of people to be murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. The deniers express their position under four major points. First, they refute the fact that the Holocaust took place in the gas chambers and if it did, the number of Jews murdered in there was not on such a huge scale (16 million). They also purport that the number of Jews killed during that period was not in terms of millions as history suggests but rather much lower than that. They further go on to claim that the Holocaust is a myth and a propaganda perpetrated by allied propagandists during the Second World War and maintained or further spread by the Jews to claim and obtain further financial support for their young country. Finally, they hinge their denial arguments on the allegation that the Nazis had no such policy of extermination as history and the Jews claim and that the mass deaths of the Jews were as a consequential result of individual extremities that were unauthorized by the senior leadership (Josephs, 2008).
Holocaust Deniers
Holocaust denial can be traced to the period just after the war with the Nazis and other Nazi sympathizers such as Paul Rassinier, a post-War French Trotskyists, and an anarchist. However, as a movement, Holocaust denial began in 1979 and was perpetrated by the founder of Liberty Lobby (Willis Carto), the biggest Anti-Jewish propaganda institution in the United States. This organization under its founder refute and deny all events relating to the Holocaust and in their place distort history with their version of the ordeal. Like other deniers in history and today, Carto is motivated by the immense hatred of the Jews, and it is no surprise that their stereotypic views prove the occurrence of the Holocaust event as true. The denial, misuse of information, and the distortion of history regarding the event is a disheartening phenomenon as it destroys the fundamentals, comprehension, and authenticity of history as we know it (The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2017).
Fortunately, what cannot be distorted regarding history are the deniers of the event, which inadvertently prove that the incident happened. Documented in the denial literature and history is Harry Elmer Barnes who is in more ways than one considered as the father of Holocaust denial. Barnes was a professor and a revisionist post the first and the second world war. He had an insatiable dislike and hatred for the Americans and their involvement in the wars. The Further involvement of America in the war led him to sympathize with the Germans and debunked most of the Holocaust claims as overstated and mostly untrue. Joining Barnes was Paul Ressinier a French and prisoner of the Germans during the Nazis regime. Based on his prison conditions, he refuted the claims regarding the Holocaust as untrue. In this accord, it is worth noting that Ressinier was not a Jew and was never present in the gas chambers or the death camps where the murders happened. Other early deniers including Barnes and Ressinier never outrightly denied the Holocaust but rather minimized it. Essentially, the deniers state that Zyklon B gas was only used for disinfection and that the deaths of the Jews were as a result of deprivations during the war which the Nazi regime leadership had no knowledge about (Angove, 2005).
Other deniers in the United States include Sheikh Fadhel who vehemently asserted that the Holocaust event was massively exaggerated. The Holocaust denial movement further crossed boundaries to students. For instance, in February 2006, the California State University-Sacramento student newspaper published a lengthy letter in which they launched complaints of the continuous persecution of the Holocaust deniers. More deniers globally include David Irving whose sentence was reduced by an Austrian judge on the basis that the hate speeches he made were a long time ago and that he was not expected to repeat the same. As such, the judge is a Holocaust denial sympathizer acquitting a convicted Holocaust denier. In fact, his history of court rulings proves his sympathy for Nazism since they are in favor of the same (Medoff & Grobman, 2006).
Conclusion
The Nazi genocide of the Jews began with simple hateful words which grew to discrimination, dehumanization, and finally the massacre. As a result, many other groups of people including opponents of the regime suffered and died during the Holocaust proving that if a single group is targeted, all other individuals in the society are at risk. It is therefore crucial for people to find out the truth regarding the event and debunk the deniers’ myths and misinformation. With the increasing anti-Semitism in the contemporary world, it is critical to be informed of these facts and the epidemiology of the horrific event. A society that is tolerant of anti-Semitism is inadvertently tolerant of other forms of discrimination such as hatred, racism or oppression. Denial and distortion of history perpetrated by the deniers are wrong because comprehension of history is fundamental to self-awareness and understanding of the society. Thus, denial and distortion undermine individual rights and democracy as well as efforts of safeguarding the community from similar events.
References
Angove, R. (2005). Holocaust Denial and Professional History-Writing. University of Saskatchewan. Web. Retrieved from https://ecommons.usask.ca/bitstream/handle/10388/etd-09142005-174811/rob_angove.pdf
Josephs, J.D. (2008). Holocaust Denial Legislation: A Justifiable Infringement of Freedom of Expression. Working Papers du Centre Perelman de Philosophie du Droit, n° 2008/3. Web. Retrieved from http://www.philodroit.be/IMG/pdf/WP-philodroit2008-3-Josephs.pdf
Medoff, R., & Grobman, A. (2006). Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey-2006. The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington DC, 20005. Web. Retrieved from http://new.wymaninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/HolocaustDenial2006.pdf
The Jewish Virtual Library. (2017). Holocaust Denial: Background & Overview. Jewish Virtual Library. Web. Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-holocaust-denial
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2017). Holocaust Denial and Distortion. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . Web. Retrieved from https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion
