HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Guest
speaker, Holocaust Memorial Service, Beth El Synagogue, St. John's, NF, 4 May
1997
How can anyone seriously deny the Holocaust in the
face of testimonies by countless witnesses, including survivors, observers, and
former Nazi officials? Moreover, the Nazi regime itself, inheriting the
Prussian tradition for bureaucratic thoroughness, has left behind such a mass
of indicting records that no serious student of the Third Reich can overlook
it. Indeed, thanks to international historical scholarship, the systematic
extermination of millions of European Jews in the Third Reich has acquired the
distinction of the most frequently studied and most thoroughly documented event
in modern history.
To be sure, the available evidence has given rise to
certain arguments of interpretation among scholars. One of these has focused on
the origins of the Holocaust. Did Hitler intend it from the beginning of his
political career or did the so-called "final solution" emerge only in
1941 after forced emigration of Jews had failed and Germany had embarked on the
conquest of Russia? Another debate has involved the question of who first
ordered the systematic killing of Jews. Did an unknown secret order from Hitler
trigger the killing or did he encourage his subordinates Himmler and Heydrich
to devise the implementation?
These and related scholarly debates, however, in no
way minimize or deny the occurrence of the Holocaust. On the contrary. They
have deepened our appreciation of this crime's enormity and uniqueness in
modern history. Indeed, historical research has opened our eyes to the
disturbing fact that the Holocaust was neither undertaken in complete secrecy
by a small fanatical minority nor committed under duress. It was carried out,
instead, with the surprisingly widespread involvement of supposedly cultured,
civilized people in a prosperous, highly advanced, industrial nation.
How then can anyone in his or her right mind belittle
the Holocaust or declare it a hoax? And, if anyone is crazy enough to advocate
such an obvious historical falsehood, why should we make it an issue by getting
excited about it? Wouldn't we serve historical truth and the memory of the
Holocaust victims better by simply ignoring such an absurdity? Unfortunately,
we cannot ignore Holocaust denial for two serious reasons: first, because
Holocaust denial pretends to be valid historical research but actually
functions as a front for hate doctrines; and second, because the Holocaust
deniers' message targets an ignorant, gullible audience. The aim is to recruit
the audience to the Holocaust deniers' cause. Let me explain this more clearly.
Generally speaking, Holocaust denial has appeared in
two forms--as a deliberate distortion of history and as a non- deliberate
distortion of history. Deliberate distorters--that is, those who knowingly deny
the truth--are, in reality, advocates of hate doctrines. They are adherents of
such diverse right-wing extremist beliefs as neo-Fascism, neo-Nazism,
antisemitism, or racism. Their real agenda is the promotion of these beliefs.
They have to deny the Holocaust since its acknowledgement would negate their
appeal. These hate-mongers have appeared in every western country since the end
of World War II. In fact, they assist each other politically, ideologically,
and financially through a well-functioning international network.
In Canada the best known advocates of this deliberate
Holocaust denial have been James Keegstra and Ernst Zündel. Keegstra has been
exposed as a product of prewar western Canadian antisemitism. He taught that
the Holocaust was a fraud calculated to perpetuate the so-called world Jewish
conspiracy. The postwar German immigrant Zündel, on the other hand, prides
himself on being a neo-Nazi. He named his first publication "The Hitler We
Loved and Why." Immigrating from Germany as an apolitical teenager in
1958, he was converted to neo-Nazism in Canada by the veteran Quebec fascist
Adrien Arcand and his international network of contacts. Zündel's motive is to
whitewash the Third Reich so that neo-Nazism can be marketed. He has
characterized the Holocaust as a gigantic hoax aimed at blackmailing the German
people. According to Zündel's reasoning, the alleged victims of the Holocaust
are really "holocaust racketeers." Today Zündel is one of the most
prominent popularizers of Holocaust denial. With his own publishing house
(called Samisdat) in Toronto he has placed Canada on the global map as a major
exporter of neo-Nazi material.
Deliberate Holocaust deniers resort to deception to
promote their cause. They deliberately confuse those unfamiliar with their
tactics by mixing proven facts with absolute lies and by quoting each other as
authorities regardless of scholarly refutations. They propagate their views as
the legitimate "other side" of history and use such phony scholarly
covers as the "Journal of Historical Review" and the "Institute
for Historical Review," both launched in the United States. They also
generate pseudo-scientific reports on the Auschwitz gas chambers claiming that
the design and chemical residues of these facilities precluded the killing of 6
million people. When attacked, they counterattack as champions of freedom of
speech. To give his hate propaganda the appearance of legitimacy, Zündel has
improvised such agencies as "The Concerned Parents of German
Descent," "The German-Jewish Historical Commission," and
"Samisdat Publications." (By the way, Samisdat was the term used by
Soviet dissidents for their underground publications.)
We would probably not have to worry much about the
crazy fringe of deliberate Holocaust deniers, were it not for the more numerous
group of what I would call non-deliberate Holocaust deniers. They arrive at
their negative views of the Holocaust for essentially three
reasons--repression, latent prejudice, and ignorance. Repression is evident,
for example, among refugees, expellees, and displaced persons who resent having
their own traumas of forced migration and suffering subordinated to the
Holocaust. A second, more frequent reason for non-deliberate Holocaust denial
is latent anti-Jewish prejudice. For instance, surveys of Canadians have
repeatedly indicated that between 11 and 22 percent of respondents expressed
anti-Jewish sentiments as a basis for negative attitudes towards the Holocaust.
The most important cause of non-deliberate Holocaust
denial, however, is ignorance. According to surveys during the last decade, as
many as 55 percent of North American high school seniors were unable to link
the Holocaust to the Third Reich and 22 percent of Canadians under 25 even
blamed Jews for the Holocaust. Following the 1985 Zündel trial in Toronto, one
out of eight Canadians surveyed believed the figure of 6 million Holocaust
victims to be too high. Even in Newfoundland distortions of Holocaust-related
facts are perpetuated, as I discovered to my dismay. For example, in a 1995
publication entitled Those In Peril, one prominent Jewish refugee who spent
part of World War II in Newfoundland continues to be stigmatized as a Nazi spy,
just as he was during the war. This serious falsehood appeared despite the
explicit documentation in my book Sanctuary Denied, published in 1992, in which
I clearly prove his correct identity as a Jewish refugee.
What conclusions should be be drawn from this review?
The claim of deliberate Holocaust deniers to represent "the other
side" of history should be ignored wherever possible because they thrive
on public and media attention. But, whenever necessary, deliberate deniers
should be reined in legally and politically. For example, Germany has gone as
far as declaring Holocaust denial a crime. Studies have confirmed the positive
educational impact of the Eichmann and Zündel trials. After the 1985 Zündel
trial, Canadian surveys made the interesting discovery that respondents unaware
of the trial were more likely to deny the Holocaust than those paying attention
to the trial.
No doubt, the widespread historical ignorance and
gullibility in society is our real challenge. Non-deliberate Holocaust denial,
just as negative stereotyping, feeds on ignorance. This can easily turn, as the
career of Zündel demonstrated, into deliberate, aggressive Holocaust denial. It
is historical ignorance, therefore, that makes the small number of deliberate
deniers a menace. The only lasting protection against a recurrence of the Third
Reich nightmare is vigilance and awareness. To this end, Memorial University is
going to introduce a History course on the Holocaust next year.
Our fellow Canadians need to
know about the Holocaust and the nature of Holocaust denial so that the six
million innocent victims did not die in vain. The history of antisemitism and
its culmination in Hitler's flourishing Germany should remind us constantly
that even in our affluent society and advanced civilization, barbarism lurks
just around the corner.
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