Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is a work of genocide denial drawing on antisemitic conspiracy theories that asserts that a Nazi genocide of Jews, required as the Holocaust, is the myth or fabrication. Holocaust deniers draw one or more of the following false statements:

The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Scholars usage the term denial to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in lines to distinguish them from legitimate historical revisionists, who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using setting historical methodologies. Holocaust deniers loosely do non accept denial as an appropriate description of their activities and use the euphemism revisionism instead. In some former Eastern Bloc countries, Holocaust deniers do non 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 numerous places where it occurs & is illegal in several European countries and Israel.

Background

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 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". Denial of the mass murder of gas chambers, according to Douglas, repeats 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 a contingency schedule that whether defeat was imminent they would carry out the total loss of German records. Historians have documented evidence that as Germany's defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would near likely be captured and brought to trial, great attempt was offered 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 numerous examples, the bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his leadership had shot at Rumbula most Riga in gradual 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 or situation. of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before 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 any 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 ]

In 1943, Isaac Schneersohn, anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also guide claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in Grenoble which was under Italian occupation at the time in formation to form a centre 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 gradual 1944 and was renamed the CDJC.

In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be introduced to recharacterize 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 purpose was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of the German government. This Allied intention to afford justice post-war was number one 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 requested to prosecute the cases were provided to them by 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 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 toEichmann's guilt personally but to present material about 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 identified reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. Israelis had the possibility to watch equal television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast the following day.