Holocaust Denial
Middle East Palestinians and anti-Semites refuse to believe the prosecution and killing of 6 million Jews happened or existed at all. The Holocaust denial is a worldwide issue; some believe it happened, some don’t. Most people question why Middle Easterners are the majority of the deniers.
“‘The political purpose of Middle Eastern Holocaust denial is to delegitimize the state of Israel. Since Israel, in this view, was created by the West out of Holocaust guilt, disproving the Holocaust removes the reason for Israel’s existence'” is a quote by Michael Gerson and is the reason Middle Easterners typically are the deniers. Israel was given to the Jews after World War II, basically as an apology for the extermination of mass amounts of their race, where Islamic Palestinians were already living; they were angry that they were forced to share Israel with people they did not get along with for religious reasons. If it had not been for the Holocaust this change never would have occurred which is why denying the Holocaust is most common in Palestinians in the Middle East. (ProQuest Staff). Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president, believes the Holocaust is “a lie of Israel” that allows the Jewish state to hurt the Palestinians.
Most people involved in the Holocaust denial movement generally live outside the borders of Germany to spread information to the people of Germany. In most regions of the world denying the Holocaust is illegal yet some argue that it is their right to freedom of speech under the Constitution to deny such events and others argue that the Holocaust denial is a hate-speech and the Holocaust caused such a great amount of harm to the Jewish race and impacted the world in such a significant way that it overrides the right to freedom of speech (Lang). A man by the name of Gunter Deckert was charged with “sedition, defaming the memory of the dead and incitement to racial hatred” for being a part of the Holocaust denial movement (Long). Because the Holocaust denial was known as an “‘insult to the survivors of the Holocaust'”, people who committed this crime could be sentenced up to 5 years in prison. The severity of the punishment greatly decreased the broadcasting of the Holocaust denial (Long). A huge issue regarding the Holocaust denial and a good portion of why it’s illegal is because it causes emotional trauma and is offensive toward the Jewish race.
The Jews are generally upset with Holocaust deniers because of their fatal memory of the concentration camps and what the Nazis did to them (Singer). As most people know, the Jewish people were rounded up during WWII and placed in concentration camps under the reign of German dictator Adolf Hitler. In these concentration camps, the Jews suffered from starvation, excruciatingly hard labor and were treated as if they weren’t even human beings. The German soldiers took way all of their rights; they were made to wear prison clothes, give up any valuable belonging they owned, which was pawned off to make money, women’s heads were shaved, and all Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on all of their clothing to symbolize that they were Jewish. The Jews encounter a form of verbal abuse by the Deniers from books, magazines, etc. published; the fact that they had to go through horrific times and have to live their entire life with the memory of the concentration camps and being inferior to the German Nazis makes it significantly worst that people would deny said events.
The Jewish people have come to realization that the denial will never actually stop but making it illegal gives the Jewish people gratification (Rosenblum) that they are at the higher power and have the control to bring justice to themselves when needed (Lang). Knowing that the people who publically deny the Holocaust and the atrocious events the Jewish people encountered can be imprisoned for several years brings a sense of satisfaction to Jewish people; it gives hope for one day completely ending the Holocaust denial. There were many “revisionists” involved in the Holocaust denial, two of the most famous being David Irving and Ernst Zundel. David Irving is said to be “‘one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial'”. Irving weaved through the facts of history in order to pick out those that supported his arguments which is what made his arguments make people think.
Since 1960 David Irving has written pieces of work in favor of the Holocaust denial; he was arrested and put on trial in the country of Germany and founded guilty for denying the Holocaust (Gottfried). Also in 1990 Irving wrote about the Auschwitz gas chambers being fake and was convicted and charged with insulting the memory of the dead. Irving believes that it is relevant to analyze the concrete evidence of the Holocaust found but the Holocaust survivors should not be components of evidence because they are “a matter of psychiatric evaluation” meaning what the Holocaust survivors say may not always be true (Gottfried). Ernst Zundel wrote a book called Did Six Million Really Die where he provided evidence that was in favor of disproving the Holocaust. Zundel also wrote a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why which explored the fact that Hitler did not kill any Jews during WWII.
He was tried and arrested for publishing “a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes, or is likely to cause, injury or mischief to public interest.”; it is a crime to do so because of the illegalization of the Holocaust denial shortly after WWII (Gottfried). Zundel seemed to be a person who was very “pro-Hitler” and agreed with all of his actions. Researchers have found that he possesses some traits similar to Hitler’s and they do not think that is a coincidence; for example, all of Zundel’s representatives happened to have hair colors of blond and eye colors of blue. Zundel was known to be one of the greatest contributors to the Holocaust denial movement because it was like a full-time job to him; he did all of his work at his home for the majority of his life (Long).
Many people and their works claim that the Holocaust did not happen under three basic and broad ‘facts’: concentration camps couldn’t have possibly been able to kill the numbers claimed (Long), the Nazis who are said to have tortured the Jews did not intend to create a genocide of the Jewish race, and lastly, that the statistic of 6,000,000 Jews was very much exaggerated (Lang). In the 1990’s a man by the name of Germar Rudolf claimed the gas chambers did not work like they were portrayed. Rudolf illegally took samples from the camps at Auschwitz and made a false documentation of a conversation between scientists to try to prove his theory (Long). In Ernst Zundel’s book, Did Six Million Really Die?, many false facts were discovered roughly 10 years after publication. He was put on trial and proved wrong concerning several statements he wrote.
Zundel’s book claimed that the Jews were not killed during WWII; he states that about 800,000 people of the Jewish race simply emigrated post-war out of fear of the war. He writes that there is no chance of Hitler letting that many out of the country considering he had the intentions of exterminating them completely. On trial, Zundel admitted that Jewish populations could not be exact only estimated nor was he any sort of statician who could give a semi-accurate estimate. He only knew of Hitler failing to prevent property from getting out. Another statistical number given in his book was 6,500,000, which he stated to have gotten from Chambers Encyclopedia, to be the total number of Jews living in Europe before the war yet Chambers Encyclopedia only gives the total number of Jews in Europe having nothing to do with pre-war populations (Zundel).
In his book, Ernst Zundel leads the reader to believe that there was no evidential documentation that proves that Hitler purposely murdered Jews or had the intention to when in fact there were several documents that proved Hitler’s intention on murdering the entire Jewish race including Anne Frank’s diary, the Wannasee Conference protocol, and the Posen speech of Himmler. Ernst Zundel also stated that Anne Frank’s diary was a lie, that it had not been written by the girl herself but by her father, Otto Frank, to make money after the the Holocaust had been discovered. Zundel said Meyer Levin had written the dialogue of the diary and took Otto Frank to court for a law suit to get money from Frank which is not true. Levin established a play based on the diary of Anne Frank for Otto Frank who did not pay him for it and therefore filed for a law suit (Zundel). Probably the biggest lie of Ernst Zundel’s book was that he said no Jew who encountered events in the Auschwitz camps were found, leaving the Holocaust’s known gas chambers “conveniently unprovable”; he claimed no eye-witness to the horrifying tragedy of the gassing of the Jews was present. He stated that the gas chambers were mistaken as crematories.
There are plenty of Holocaust survivors who have discussed the horrors they encountered in the concentration camps, some who go around the world discussing the events they went through. Not only was he wrong about having no eye-witnesses to the gas chambers but also he is wrong in the sense that he gas chambers were every crematories. The gas chambers walls were covered with residue from the gas Zycklon B which scientists believe was used over 1000 times (Zundel). Most of the Holocaust deniers are found to be Hitler ‘wanna-be’s. The Middle Eastern deniers are under a form of government known as totalitarianism which is extremely similar to a dictatorship much like Adolf Hitler’s.
Historical facts need to be studied carefully and shared in specific terms because many misinterpret evidence of history and cause a political conflict. It is not a coincidence that the deniers are in favor of Hitler’s dictator actions and cover what he’s done with facts that seem to look correct but are, in reality, twisted to make the Holocaust look as a hoax.
