112-457: Robert Faurisson ( French: [foʁisɔ̃] ; born Robert Faurisson Aitken ; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial . Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, and by letters to French newspapers, especially Le Monde , which contradicted
224-515: A La Salle University medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier. App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review , a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task
336-475: A "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust". The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for
448-401: A "relatively apolitical liberal of some sort". Chomsky was accused of supporting Faurisson, rather than defending his right to free speech, which Chomsky denied. Noting that he had described the Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history", Chomsky argued that his views were "diametrically opposed" to those of Faurisson on the subject. Faurisson was fined by
560-554: A French court in 1983, for having declared that "Hitler never ordered nor permitted that anyone be killed by reason of his race or religion." In September 1989, Faurisson was beaten by unknown assailants claiming to be "The Sons of the Memory of the Jews", an organization about which nothing has been discovered either before or since the incident. Faurisson had been walking his dog in a park in Vichy and
672-527: A French professor of literature at the University of Lyon , wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac , who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at Auschwitz in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of
784-599: A Hitlerite-style regime may be impossible, but a replica might be produced in the future; the rehabilitation of Nazism, they concluded, required the discrediting of the Holocaust. Neo-fascism has likewise relied upon Holocaust denial as a means of rehabilitation. As a movement, modern Holocaust denial is associated with historical revisionism based on pseudoscientific evidence and fringe academic networks including intradiegetic pseudoscientific journals, conferences, and professional organizations (e.g. Journal of Historical Review , International Conference to Review
896-488: A contingency plan that if defeat was imminent they would carry out the total destruction of German records. Historians have documented evidence that as Germany 's defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination. Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination. As one of many examples,
1008-689: A merger between the Bayit Yehudi party and the extremist Otzma Yehudit party. In October 2019, Lipstadt had a letter to the editor published in The New York Times , prompted by the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Peter Handke , in which she wrote that the Nobel Committee awarded Handke a platform "he does not deserve" and that "the public does not need him to have", adding that such
1120-514: A paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized, and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake. The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte , starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, Carlo Mattogno , as a serious historian. In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized
1232-568: A platform could convince some that his "false claims must have some legitimacy". In September 2024, she came under criticism by CAIR over a joke made about the 2024 Lebanon pager explosions . After the publication of Denying the Holocaust in June 1993, Lipstadt received the 1994 National Jewish Book Award . Already a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , President Bill Clinton appointed her in 1994 to
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#17328515047221344-468: A protégé of Barnes, David Hoggan , published Der erzwungene Krieg ( The Forced War ) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though Der erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified
1456-574: A resolution adopted by the Duke University History Department, November 8, 1991, and reprinted in Duke Chronicle , November 13, 1991, in response to an advertisement produced by Bradley R Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust : That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly correct; however, what historians do is very different from this advertisement. Historical revision of major events ...
1568-661: A three-month probationary sentence and fined €7,500 for this offence. In December 2006, Faurisson gave a speech at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust , which was sponsored by the government of Iran. Beginning in late 2008, Faurisson became close to the comedian and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala , appearing with him publicly on stage and in video, and celebrating Faurisson's 80th birthday in his theater. Dieudonné awarded Robert Faurisson an "insolent outcast" prize. The award
1680-559: A voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust", "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust". Lawrence Douglas argues that denial was invented by the perpetrators and employed as a means of genocide. For example, trucks of Zyklon B were labeled with Red Cross symbols and victims were told that they would be " resettled ". Douglas also cites
1792-459: A way that could not really be debated." Holocaust deniers have placed "Full page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of Brandeis University , Boston College , Pennsylvania State University , and Queens College . Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students". On September 8, 2009, student newspaper The Harvard Crimson ran
1904-634: A younger brother, Nathaniel, an investor on Wall Street. In her youth, she studied at the Hebrew Institute of Long Island, and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens . She studied with Rabbi Emanuel Rackman at Temple Shaarei Tefillah. Lipstadt spent summers at Camp Massad . She spent her junior year of college — which turned out to include the Six-Day War — in Israel, where she stayed as an exchange student at
2016-678: Is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . Keegstra appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal . That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada , which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be justifiably restricted under s 1 of the Charter . The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction. He
2128-613: Is believed to be one of seven children born in Shepperton , Middlesex , England to a French father and a Scottish mother. He studied French , Latin and Greek literature ( Lettres classiques ), and passed the agrégation (the highest competitive examination to qualify to be a secondary school teacher) in 1956. He became a high school teacher at Vichy . In Vichy, as a young teacher, he gained attention when he published an interpretation of Rimbaud 's Sonnet des voyelles as an erotic text. Around 1960, he developed political sympathies for
2240-479: Is deemed influential in regenerating post-war European far-right ideas at a time of identity crisis in the 1950–1960s. His arguments formed the basis of numerous works of Holocaust denial that followed: "testimonies are not reliable, essentially coming from the mouth of Jews and communists", "atrocities committed in camps were the work of deportees [essentially the kapos ]", "disorganization occurred in Nazi camps following
2352-562: Is not concerned with the actuality of these events; rather, it concerns their historical interpretation – their causes and consequences generally. Lipstadt writes that modern Holocaust denial draws its inspiration from various sources, including a school of thought which used an established method to question government policies. In 1992, Donald L. Niewyk gave some examples of how legitimate historical revisionism—the re-examination of accepted history and its updating with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information—may be applied to
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#17328515047222464-546: Is soft-core denial." Along the same lines, Lipstadt has criticized the German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte for engaging in what she calls "soft-core denial" of the Holocaust, arguing that Nolte practices an even more dangerous form of negationism than the Holocaust deniers. Speaking of Nolte in a 2003 interview, Lipstadt stated: Historians such as the German Ernst Nolte are, in some ways, even more, dangerous than
2576-497: Is the denial of the Holocaust. The publication of Arthur Butz 's 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 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University . In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson ,
2688-548: The CDJC , and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography. The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) or
2800-733: The Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War , a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the Versailles Treaty was morally invalid. Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a völkisch activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on
2912-664: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem . She completed a Bachelor of Arts in American history at the City College of New York in 1969. She then enrolled at Brandeis University where she completed her master's degree in 1972 and then her Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in 1976. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "The Zionist Career of Louis Lipsky , 1900–1921". After receiving her Ph.D., Lipstadt began teaching, first at
3024-513: The Institute for Historical Review during the 1970s, lecturing and publishing prolifically. He gave a lecture at the headquarters of the National Alliance (the American neo-Nazi party) outside of Washington, on September 14, 1979. He twice testified in defense of Canadian-German Holocaust denier and Neo-Nazi Ernst Zündel , and his testimony has been associated with laying the groundwork for
3136-865: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , at the Human Rights Committee . Faurisson filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1993; in 1996, the Committee rejected Faurisson's claim that France's prosecution of him was a violation of the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights . The Committee upheld the Gayssot Act as "serv[ing]
3248-509: The Posen speeches as an example of denial while genocide was ongoing, with Himmler referring to the Holocaust as "an unnamed and never to be named page of glory". According to Douglas, the denial of mass murder using gas chambers recalls the Nazi efforts to persuade the victims that they were actually harmless showers. While the Second World War was still underway, the Nazis had already formed
3360-754: The United States Holocaust Memorial Council . In 1997, Lipstadt received the Emory Williams teaching award for excellence in teaching. She is also a recipient of the Albert D. Chernin Award from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which is given to "an American Jew whose work best exemplifies the social justice imperatives of Judaism, Jewish history and the protection of the Bill of Rights, particularly
3472-458: The University of Lyon in 1973. In 1974, Faurisson contacted Yad Vashem with a lengthy letter detailing a variety of arguments which he claimed demonstrated that there had been no genocide of Jews during World War II. These assertions were based on his own interpretation of archival records and his skepticism about the assertions and testimony of various historical figures, including Nazi officials such as Rudolf Höss . He became involved with
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3584-586: The University of Washington in Seattle from 1974 to 1979, then as an assistant professor at UCLA . When she was denied tenure there, she left in 1985 to be the director of the independent Brandeis-Bardin Institute for two years, during which time she also wrote a monthly column for The Jewish Spectator . Lipstadt then received a research fellowship from the Vidal Sassoon International Center for
3696-576: The " Leuchter Report ", an influential Holocaust-denial publication. Faurisson's activism garnered him several dedicated critics, including the Jewish French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet . In 1978, Faurisson authored a French-language text, " The Diary of Anne Frank – Is It Authentic?". It appeared in Dutch-language translation in 1985, with the modified title, " The Diary of Anne Frank – A Forgery". The text questioned
3808-455: The "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...." British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in
3920-641: The 1930s, the Nazi government used this propaganda against the British, claiming allegations of concentration camps were malicious lies put forward by the British government, and historians Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin note that this story "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler". Victor Cavendish-Bentinck , chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during
4032-805: The 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time. Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg. In 1961, the Israeli government captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner 's intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about
4144-536: The American INS arrested him in Tennessee , US, 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 and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's Volksverhetzung law, which bans
4256-469: The American far-right activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust. The IHR's founding was inspired by Austin App , a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier. The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within
4368-468: The CODOH campus project. He said, "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in
4480-574: The First Amendment." Previous recipients of the Award include Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Alan Dershowitz . Lipstadt was awarded the 2005 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier and the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity for Antisemitism: Here and Now. Lipstadt has received honorary doctorates from
4592-575: The German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe and reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945. While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by
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4704-578: The Global Vision of the Holocaust , Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust ). The first person to openly write after the end of World War II that he doubted the reality of the Holocaust was French journalist Maurice Bardèche in his 1948 book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land"). Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial", Bardèche introduced in his works many aspects of neo-fascist and Holocaust denial propaganda techniques and ideological structures; his work
4816-648: The Holocaust , is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims: The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary . Scholars use the term denial to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in order to distinguish them from legitimate historical revisionists , who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using established historical methodologies . Holocaust deniers generally do not accept denial as an appropriate description of their activities and use
4928-524: The Holocaust . Lipstadt's legal defense team was led by Anthony Julius of Mishcon de Reya while Penguin's was led by Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman of Davenport Lyons . Both defendants instructed Richard Rampton QC , while Penguin also instructed Heather Rogers as junior counsel. The expert witnesses for the defence included Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans , Christopher Browning , Robert Jan van Pelt , and Peter Longerich . English libel law places
5040-465: The Holocaust denial movement bases its approach on the predetermined idea that the Holocaust, as understood by mainstream historiography, did not occur. Sometimes referred to as " negationism ", from the French term négationnisme introduced by Henry Rousso , Holocaust deniers attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. Koenraad Elst writes: Negationism means
5152-742: The Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled The Myth of the Six Million , which was published by the Noontide Press , a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature. In 1964, Paul Rassinier published The Drama of the European Jews . Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in Buchenwald for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions
5264-560: The Israeli government and said that the government had "cheapened" the memory of the Holocaust by using it to justify war. She has also rejected the view that Israeli military actions during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict constituted a genocide. Lipstadt returned to the theme of soft-core Holocaust denial in The Atlantic when responding to the Trump administration 's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day , January 27, 2017, which
5376-683: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict as "stupid". According to Haaretz , "She decried the 'hysteria' and 'neuroses' of many Jews and Israelis who compare the current situation in Europe and in the Middle East to the Holocaust-era": People go nuts here, they go nuts. There's no nuance, there's no middle ground, it's taking any shade of grey and stomping on it. There are no voices of calm, there are no voices of reason, not in this country, not in Israel. In
5488-655: The Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took " judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944," judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that
5600-460: The Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds. Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier Paul Rassinier , whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories". In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in the American Mercury , Barnes wrote: "The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call
5712-426: The Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem , during which she studied Holocaust denial, and taught at Occidental College part time. Lipstadt then became an assistant professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta in January 1993, becoming the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies that fall. She helped to create the Institute for Jewish Studies there. In May 2021, Lipstadt
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#17328515047225824-433: The Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional. Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicized his viewpoints. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act . The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003,
5936-425: The Zionist Federation's annual fundraising dinner in London. Referring to groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain , reportedly she stated: "When groups of people refuse to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day unless equal time is given to anti-Muslim prejudice, this is soft-core denial." According to Jonny Paul, "She received huge applause when she asked how former United States President Jimmy Carter could omit
6048-420: The accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors. Austin App ,
6160-422: The atrocities of the Third Reich is a crime punishable with up to 10 years' imprisonment. Speaking of Irving, Lipstadt said, "I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people for speech. Let him go and let him fade from everyone's radar screens ... Generally, I don't think Holocaust denial should be a crime. I am a free speech person, I am against censorship." In February 2007, Lipstadt warned of "soft-core denial" at
6272-444: The bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his command had shot at Rumbula (near Riga ) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943. Similar operations were undertaken at Belzec , Treblinka and other death camps. In occupied France , the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before
6384-452: The books Denying the Holocaust (1993), History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005), The Eichmann Trial (2011), and Antisemitism: Here and Now (2019). She has served as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism since May 3, 2022. Since 1993 she has been the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta , Georgia , US. Lipstadt
6496-554: 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, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians,
6608-416: The burden of proof on the defendant rather than the plaintiff. Lipstadt and Penguin won the case using the justification defense, namely by demonstrating in court that Lipstadt's accusations against Irving were substantially true and therefore not libelous. The case was argued as a bench trial before Mr Justice Gray , who produced a written judgment 349 pages long detailing Irving's systematic distortion of
6720-439: The candidate that the method of reading the text as it is written; systematically ignoring the context, not taking into account the historical environment reflected by the language, is an unsustainable bias". In a 2021 book, the historian Stephanie Courouble-Share said that Faurisson's "literary method" would be repeated later when he wrote about the gas chambers. Faurisson became a lecturer, and then professor of French literature at
6832-432: The colonialist cause in Algeria (the Algérie française movement), and was arrested in the belief he was a member of the " OAS ", a terrorist organisation. While teaching, he worked on a PhD thesis about the poet Lautréamont . He obtained his doctorate in 1972. The methodology of Faurisson was challenged during the defense of his thesis. The president of the jury, Jacques Robichez, declared: "Finally, I point out […] to
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#17328515047226944-448: The court was that Roth must refrain from publishing any further reading material claiming the diary was a fraud. During the Faurisson affair (1978-1979), the university administration suggested distance learning for Faurisson, although he was still attached to the university. In 1984, the president of the university forbade him to use the university letterhead in his private correspondence. One of Faurisson's works, Mémoire en défense ,
7056-460: The credibility of various elements in The Diary of Anne Frank . The website of the historian Deborah Lipstadt , Holocaust Denial on Trial, argues that Faurisson's treatise ignored details within Anne Frank 's account that explain the aspects he deemed implausible, as well as observable details within the Anne Frank House . Faurisson interviewed Otto Frank in researching the piece, though much of what Faurisson asserted Frank had said
7168-407: The defense, Fred A. Leuchter , David Irving and Robert Faurisson . The pseudo-scientific Leuchter report was presented as a defense document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by Douglas Christie and Barbara Kulaszka . His conviction was overturned in 1992 when
7280-406: The denial of historical crimes against humanity . It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but the denial of known facts. The term negationism has gained currency as the name of a movement to deny a specific crime against humanity, the Nazi genocide on the Jews in 1941–45, also known as the Holocaust (Greek: complete burning) or the Shoah (Hebrew: disaster). Negationism is mostly identified with
7392-412: The deniers. Nolte is an anti-Semite of the first order, who attempts to rehabilitate Hitler by saying that he was no worse than Stalin ; but he is careful not to deny the Holocaust. Holocaust-deniers make Nolte's life more comfortable. They have, with their radical argumentation, pulled the center a little more to their side. Consequently, a less radical extremist, such as Nolte, finds himself closer to
7504-448: The documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it. Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead. The Nuremberg trials took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of
7616-637: The effort at re-writing history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted. In "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah", Clemens Heni [ de ] writes: Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published
7728-404: The entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record. The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage. Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast
7840-582: The euphemism revisionism instead. In some former Eastern Bloc countries, Holocaust deniers do not deny the mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals in the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs, and it is illegal in Canada, Israel, and many European countries . Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as " deniers ". Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt has written that: "The deniers' selection of
7952-445: The first German defeats", "the high mortality is due to the 'weakening' of prisoners and epidemics", "only lice were gassed in Auschwitz ", etc. Harry Elmer Barnes , at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between World War I and World War II , Barnes was an anti-war writer and a leader of the historical revisionism movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with
8064-538: The following day. In the immediate aftermath of the war, prior to the extensive documentation efforts by the Allied forces, a sense of disbelief caused many to deny the initial reports of the Holocaust. Compounding this disbelief was the memory of forged newspaper accounts of the German Corpse Factory , an anti-German atrocity propaganda campaign during WWI, which was widely known to be false by 1945. During
8176-654: The gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox , Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract , anticipatory repudiation , libel , injurious denial of established fact , intentional infliction of emotional distress , and declaratory relief . On October 9, 1981, both parties in
8288-514: The gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $ 90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them. In
8400-414: The gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the [chemical process engendered by Zyklon B]", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas." Deborah Lipstadt Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian and diplomat, best known as author of
8512-453: The historical record of World War II. The Times (April 14, 2000, p. 23) said of Lipstadt's victory, "History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory." Despite her acrimonious history with Irving, Lipstadt has stated that she is personally opposed to the three-year prison sentence Austria imposed on Irving for two speeches he made in 1989, where he claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz. In Austria, minimizing
8624-505: The history of the Holocaust by denying the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps , the systematic killing of European Jews using gas during the Second World War , and the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank . After the passing of the Gayssot Act against Holocaust denial in 1990, Faurisson was prosecuted and fined, and in 1991 he was dismissed from his academic post. Faurisson
8736-566: The huge one billion Reichsmark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the Kristallnacht ). Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied
8848-602: The incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison. In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review, founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers. Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as
8960-673: The last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie"; likewise, The Christian Century commented that "The parallel between this story and the 'corpse factory' atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked." Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives." The Neo-Nazi movement has been revitalized by Holocaust denial. Small but vocal numbers of Neo-Nazis realized that recreation of
9072-498: The majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust. In 1980, the IHR promised a $ 50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times and others including The Jerusalem Post . The IHR wrote back, offering him $ 50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in
9184-634: The middle ground, which makes him more dangerous. In late 2011, Lipstadt attacked American and Israeli politicians for what she called their invocation of the Holocaust for contemporary political purposes, something she thought mangled history. She rebuked Republican Party presidential candidates for speeches that 'pandered' to the Evangelical constituency, as much as it did to the Republican Jewish Coalition . She also judged Howard Gutman 's remarks on causal links between Muslim antisemitism and
9296-565: The millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers. In 1984, James Keegstra , a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian Criminal Code for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews. Keegstra
9408-414: The name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." Scholars consider this misleading since the methods of Holocaust denial differ from those of legitimate historical revision. Legitimate historical revisionism is explained in
9520-565: The new National Office for Veterans and Victims of War ; however, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, even to the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC). In 1943, Isaac Schneersohn , anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in Grenoble which
9632-464: The occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany. The British historian Ian Kershaw has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany
9744-566: The outbreak of the war." Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan , including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen. In his 1962 pamphlet, Revisionism and Brainwashing , Barnes claimed that there
9856-557: The respect of the Jewish community to live free from fear of an atmosphere of anti-semitism" and necessary "to serve the struggle against racism and anti-semitism". He challenged the statute as Faurisson was charged again in a trial on 11 July 2006. He was accused of denying the Holocaust in an interview with the Iranian television station " Sahar 1 " in February 2005. On 3 October 2006, he was given
9968-540: The same interview, she argued that "If anti-Semitism becomes the reason through which your Jewish view of the world is refracted, if it becomes your prism, then it is very unhealthy. Jewish tradition never wanted that." She said "You listen to Newt Gingrich talking about the Palestinians as an 'invented people'—it's out-Aipacking AIPAC , it's out-Israeling Israel". On a visit to London in September 2014, Lipstadt criticized
10080-516: The study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge to change the historical understanding of it: 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. In contrast,
10192-439: The swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner." Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany. In 1961,
10304-685: The underlying evidence in his 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers . Henry Bienen , the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern". In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars". The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence". In 1978
10416-556: The war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at Liberation , the Prefecture of Police destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation. One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war, in France, where Drancy internment camp records were carefully preserved and turned over to
10528-414: The work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars". Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany". In a 1994 interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of
10640-602: The work of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel. In his 1987 book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg ( The European Civil War ), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation". Nolte himself, though he has never denied
10752-509: The years 1939–1947 from a chronology in his book"; referring to his recently published and controversial book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid , she said: "When a former president of the United States writes a book on the Israeli–Palestinian crisis and writes a chronology at the beginning of the book in order to help them understand the emergence of the situation and in that chronology lists nothing of importance between 1939 and 1947, that
10864-460: Was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct". Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans". He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of
10976-586: Was a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . In 1994, President of the United States Bill Clinton appointed her to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council , and she served two terms. On July 30, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated her to be the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism . She was confirmed by voice-vote on March 30, 2022, and sworn in on May 3, 2022. Lipstadt
11088-490: Was charged under s 281.2(2) of the Criminal Code (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offense. He was convicted at trial before the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench . The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie , that promoting hatred
11200-635: Was condemned for the absence of a specific mention of Jews, as the principal victims of the Holocaust or of antisemitism itself. "The Holocaust was de-Judaized. It is possible that it all began with a mistake. Someone simply did not realize what they were doing. It is also possible that someone did this deliberately." In February 2019, Lipstadt resigned her membership in the Young Israel synagogue movement because its national council president defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's facilitation of
11312-506: Was considered for an ambassadorship position at the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Biden administration . On July 30, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Lipstadt for this role. Opposition from Senator Ron Johnson , whom she had tweeted was advocating "white supremacy/nationalism", delayed her nomination for many months. Her initial nomination expired at the end of the year and
11424-438: Was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists. In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something. In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there
11536-401: Was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward. The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers , which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of Richard Verrall – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in R. v. Zundel and convicted under
11648-413: Was kicked and punched by three young men, breaking his jaw. Shortly after the Gayssot Act —a statute that prohibited Holocaust denial—was enacted in 1990, Faurisson was convicted of Holocaust denial in a French court. In 1991, Faurisson was removed from his university chair under the Gayssot Act on the basis of his denialist views. He challenged the statute as a violation of international law, specifically
11760-462: Was later contradicted by Frank himself. Faurisson's writing on the subject first came into the spotlight during a court case between Otto Frank and Heinz Roth , a publishing-house owner responsible for the circulation of various neo-Nazi writings, including several publications impugning the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary; Faurisson's writing on the subject was entered into the court record as an expert opinion in defense of Roth. The 1978 finding of
11872-568: Was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023. Lipstadt was born in New York City to a Jewish family, the daughter of Miriam ( née Peiman; 1915–2013) and Erwin Lipstadt (1903–1972). Her mother was born in Canada, and her father, a salesman, was born in Germany. Her parents met at their neighborhood synagogue. She has an older sister, Helene, a historian, and
11984-474: Was presented by one of Dieudonné's assistants, Jacky, dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow badge. This earned Dieudonné a court conviction. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad granted Faurisson an award for courage in Tehran, Iran on 2 February 2012. Holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews , known as
12096-552: Was published in 1980, prefaced by an essay by Noam Chomsky . While Chomsky had given general approval for his essay to be reproduced by others, it was included without his knowledge. Chomsky's piece was a general defense of freedom of speech, including that of Faurisson. Chomsky stated that "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust...I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work," and considered Faurisson as
12208-402: Was returned to President Biden on January 3, 2022. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on her nomination on February 8, 2022. On March 29, 2022, the committee favorably reported her nomination out of committee. Her nomination was supported by all committee Democrats, as well as senators Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio . It was confirmed by voice vote on March 30, 2022, and she
12320-535: Was something to the Leuchter report : "If the revisionists [Holocaust deniers] and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now." In his 1993 book Streitpunkte ( Points of Contention ), Nolte praised
12432-747: Was sworn in on May 3, 2022. Lipstadt was part of the Biden administration team that launched the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25, 2023. On October 17, 2023, in a joint statement with Michal Cotler-Wunsh (Israel's antisemitism envoy), published by the U.S. State Department , Lipstadt condemned the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel . On September 5, 1996, author David Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books for libel in an English court for characterizing some of his writings and public statements as Holocaust denial in her book Denying
12544-414: Was under Italian occupation at the time in order to form a center de documentation . Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation . Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC. In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower , Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize
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