Category: Jewish History

Denying the Holocaust

By FFOZ Staff, May, 2000

Ever since the Nazis launched their campaign of genocide against Europe’s Jews, there have been those who—for their own political ends—have sought to deny that the Shoah ever happened. By couching their murderous policy in the bureaucratic language of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," the Nazis themselves laid the groundwork for what has become known as "Holocaust Denial."

The phenomenon has reared its head regularly over the half-century since World War II, most commonly in Europe and North America. Over the past decade, however, it has made more frequent appearances in the media of Israel’s Arab neighbors. Media monitors, most notably the Middle East Media and Research Institute, have documented a number of statements by Arab officials and commentators that either deny the Holocaust happened at all, or try to minimize the enormity of the atrocity by questioning the historically accepted figure of six million Jewish victims.

In Egypt, the situation has become so bad that Israeli Ambassador Mazel was recently prompted to urge the media to stop carrying reports denying the Holocaust (Al Ahram, March 1, 2000). The Syrian media, however, has been responsible for some of the most disturbing Holocaust denial. The official mouthpiece of the Assad regime, Tishreen, carried an editorial in January this year alleging that Jewish leaders had collaborated with the Nazis to carry out atrocities against Jews, to encourage aliyah (immigration of Jews) to British-mandated Palestine.

"There is sound historical proof that Zionist leaders collaborated with the Nazis in order to escalate the Jewish Problem. Furthermore, some of them did not hesitate to commit murders and direct terror attacks [against Jews] in order to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine. This, of course, in full cooperation with the German Nazi leaders…"

"Zionism hides the dark chapters of its black history," Tishreen continued, "it invents stories regarding the Nazi Holocaust in which the Jews suffered and inflates them to astronomic proportions."

Lies and Exaggeration?

The most common denial of the Holocaust emanates from Israel’s primary "peace partner," the Palestinian Authority. As well as televised denials of the Holocaust by figures such as deans of the Arab Universities in the region, their printed media has been rife with allegations. As early as July 1990, the Palestinian Red Crescent publication, Balsam, asserted that: "The lie concerning the gas chambers enabled the Jews to establish the State of Israel."

After the 1993 signing of interim peace accords with the PA, Israelis may have expected a warmer tone from Palestinian leaders and media. Indeed the PA committed itself in signed agreements to refrain from incitement. But if anything, Holocaust denial became more widespread.

"It is well-known that every year the Jews exaggerate what the Nazis did to them," the presenter of a cultural affairs program on official PA television told viewers in August 1997. "They claim there were six million killed, but precise scientific research demonstrates that there were no more than 400,000." A guest on the show, Palestinian author Hassan al-Agha, said that the Jews "have profited materially, spiritually, politically and economically from the talk about the Nazi killings. This investment is favorable to them and they view it as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of victims all the time. In another ten years, I do not know what number they will reach."

The official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, featured an article in September of that year calling the Holocaust "the forged claims of the Zionists regarding the alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period." In January 1998, Palestinians at a Gaza rally praised Roger Garaudy, a French Muslim author who was on trial in Paris for claiming in a book, The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, that the Holocaust was an exaggeration. A PA minister addressing the event urged Palestinians to support Garaudy’s view, while the PA’s official Voice of Palestine radio station also called for "a widespread solidarity campaign" with the writer.

Six months later, American Jewish organizations called on PA Chairman Arafat to take a stand against Holocaust denial among his officials and in Palestinian media. They cited an article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah (July 2, 1998) which called the Holocaust a "deceitful myth," and claimed that the Jews made up stories of gas chambers, and cynically distributed photos of Nazi soldiers shooting women and children. "The truth is that such persecution was a malicious fabrication by the Jews. It is a myth which they named ëThe Holocaust’ in order to rouse empathy," it claimed.

In a letter to Arafat, the organizations said: "There can be little hope for reconciliation if people, especially the youth, are subject to constant indoctrination portraying their neighbors in such vile ways. We call on you, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, to denounce this historical revisionism and declare as unacceptable all written or oral denigration and diminution of the Holocaust."

But it has not stopped. In 1999, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah offered the following clue for a crossword puzzle: "Jewish Center for eternalizing the Holocaust and the lies." The answer was Yad Va’Shem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Also last year, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Manar published a lengthy article on the trial in Canada of a Holocaust denier 11 years earlier. "Nobody in the West dares to stand up when the subject is the fictitious Nazi Holocaust against the Jews of Europe," the paper said. "Since the end of WWII, the victors have imposed their hegemony over history, and forged the legend of the Holocaust to extort the entire world, using the face of the ugly Nazi."

Western Danger

One thread that runs through many such articles in the Arab press is the work of prominent Holocaust deniers in the West. As a Muslim, Garaudy received particular acclaim. But there are other, possibly even more dangerous Western "intellectuals" who question the veracity of the Shoah. At the forefront is David Irving, a British historian who the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says is "unique for having established a reputation as a popular, if controversial, chronicler of World War II prior to his admission to the ranks of this propaganda movement." As such, Irving may be the most dangerous Holocaust denier of all. At least, that’s what the American Jewish author Deborah Lipstadt suggested in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust. Irving subsequently sued Lipstadt for libel. She and her publisher are currently defending the case in a London High Court.

Lipstadt, a teacher of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, said in her book Irving had manipulated and distorted history in an attempt to prove his beliefs. Irving has told the court he was not a Holocaust denier, but stood by claims that the systematic gassing of millions of Jews was "just a legend." He said Jews who died during the war had either been worked or starved to death, or been shot, beaten or hanged. "I deny that it was possible to liquidate millions of people in the gas chambers," he said, adding that there was no evidence that Adolf Hitler had sanctioned a systematic program to exterminate Jews.

The lawyer representing Lipstadt told the court: "Mr. Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar… Mr. Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and—not least—mistranslation."

The Irving libel case prompted the Israeli government in February to release the unpublished prison memoirs of the executed Nazi Adolf Eichmann, sending Lipstadt’s lawyers a copy to use in her defense. In the diary, Eichmann called the Holocaust the "greatest and most monumental dance of death of all time."

Irving is most dangerous, say critics, because of the purported academic basis to his writing. But in December 1991, the governing council of the American Historical Association, the largest professional organization for historians in the U.S., unanimously approved a statement saying: "No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place." In another statement three years later, the association called Holocaust denial "at best, a form of academic fraud."

"Honorable Men"

Recently Holocaust denial took on another face, with the emergence into the public spotlight of a populist Austrian politician, Joerg Haider, whose Freedom Party became part of the country’s new coalition government in February. Haider is not a Holocaust denier in the usual sense, but has praised Hitler’s labor policies, called veterans of the SS "honorable men," and described Nazi concentration camps as "punishment centers." International pressure on Austria, including Israel’s withdrawal of its ambassador and steps by its partners in the European Union to isolate the country, eventually saw Haider resign as head of his party at the end of February. Observers believe he may attempt a comeback in the years to come, and possibly even become chancellor if the Freedom Party wins the next election.

The real goal of Holocaust deniers, according to the ADL, is the goal of anti-Semites in general—to present Jews "as exploiters of non-Jewish guilt and Jews as controllers of academia or the media." The very beliefs, in fact, that helped to bring another Austrian-born populist to power—in Berlin in 1933.

© 2006 First Fruits of Zion. All rights reserved. This material may not be republished, rewritten or redistributed. From Bikurei Tziyon #64 | May, 2000. For more information about this publication, click here.

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