Falsifying history - the denial of the Holocaust

"...Our view on the Holocaust is if it didn't happen it should have; if it did happen it's a pity they didn't kill them all. The subhuman Jew must die if our race is to survive..." Extract from Redwatch, bulletin of Combat 18, distributed in 1993.

This quotation expresses the dilemma of today's extreme-right groups. To a greater or lesser extent, Hitler's national socialist Third Reich represents the inspiration and model to which the neo-nazis aspire. Today's nazis, while privately (and often publicly) proud of the crimes of Hitler and the Third Reich, are only too aware that one major factor prevents national socialism from ever gaining widespread mainstream acceptance. That factor is the historical truth of the Nazi Holocaust, the planned, systematic extermination of around six million Jews during the Second World War. If, however, it can be "proven" that the Holocaust never happened, or that it was greatly exaggerated, then the history of the Third Reich can be revised and Nazism rehabilitated, thereby legitimising the beliefs of today's nazis.

Holocaust denial propagandists go to great lengths to suggest that they are engaged in honest intellectual enquiry and attempt to encourage debate on the subject. However, the historian Deborah Lipstadt clearly states in a 1992 interview with Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee:

"We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers' contentions. It would be never-ending to respond to arguments posed by those who freely falsify findings, quote out of context and simply dismiss reams of testimony. Unlike true scholars, they have little, if any, respect for data or evidence. Their commitment is to an ideology and their 'findings' are shaped to support it."

The history of Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial material first appeared shortly after the end of the war, as SS officials escaping from the Allies fled to Sweden, South America and some Arab states. From these bases they began the task of readjusting history. Early deniers included Maurice Bardèche, a French fascist activist. However, it was the work of another Frenchman, Paul Rassinier, which has proved to have a lasting effect on Holocaust deniers today. Rassinier, who was himself a concentration camp survivor, claimed the Jewish kapos in the camps rather than the nazis were responsible for committing atrocities. As an ex-inmate of Buchenwald concentration camp, he attempted to portray himself as objective and truthful in his work. However, he had not been interned in the extermination section of Buchenwald and his writings are deeply antisemitic. Rassinier's book is now considered a classic of Holocaust denial literature and is still advertised in Spearhead, published in support of the British National Party (BNP) by the party's former leader.

Revisionist material continued to appear in the 1950s and 1960s. In the USA the notorious antisemite Austin App and the right-wing libertarian Harry Elmer Barnes were publishing revisionist tracts. David Hoggan, another influential denier, wrote The Myth of the Six Million, in which he refuted eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. This work was published by Noontide Press, part of the antisemitic Liberty Lobby organisation run by Willis Carto, a man with a long involvement with Ku Klux Klan and nazi organisations.

The importance of Holocaust denial within fascist and antisemitic circles grew in the 1970s with the publication of two seminal denial works. Did Six Million Really Die? was written by one Richard Harwood, later exposed as really being Richard Verrall, a National Front leader. In America Arthur Butz, a professor of engineering at the Northwestern University in Chicago, wrote The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, in which he argued that although the Jews were persecuted, there had been no programme of mass extermination and the gas chambers had been used solely for delousing concentration camp inmates. Butz stated: "Jews should be elated to discover that large numbers of their people were not deliberately destroyed."

Both these works were published in Britain by Anthony Hancock's Historical Review Press. Hancock's printing works near Brighton is still today one of the most prolific fascist printing presses, churning out neo-nazi literature in several languages which is distributed worldwide. Hancock also assisted in the production of the infamous Holocaust News, published in 1982, which the BNP reprinted and distributed to thousands of people, including schoolchildren.

In France Robert Faurisson, a professor of literature, began publishing revisionist tracts and continues to exert a major influence on Holocaust denial in France and elsewhere. In Sweden Dietlib Felderer announced that Anne Frank's Diary was a fake. In fact Anne Frank's father, Otto, has successfully sued both David Irving and a schoolteacher over this absurd claim. Felderer himself was eventually prosecuted and imprisoned by the Swedish authorities in 1984 for his revisionist activities.

The Institute of Historical Review

In 1978 Willis Carto established the Institute of Historical Review. It has had a degree of success in presenting a respectable pseudo-academic veneer through its high-profile conferences and the regular publication of its Journal of Historical Review. The IHR acts as a coordinating centre for Holocaust denial material worldwide, publishing books, pamphlets, videos etc., which try to portray Holocaust denial as an objective search for truth. The Institute also offered a bogus $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove the Holocaust had taken place. Holocaust survivor Mel Mermelstein rose to this challenge, providing documentary evidence of the murder of his family in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IHR refused to accept the evidence. Following a long legal battle, Mermelstein was awarded damages of $90,000 in 1981, with the superior court judge ruling that the Holocaust "is not reasonably subject to dispute ... The court does take judicial notice that Jews were gassed to death in Poland in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944."

David Irving and Fred Leuchter

The most famous revisionist is David Irving, who became a household name in 1992 after being hired by The Sunday Times to translate the Goebbels Diaries. Until 1989, Irving was considered a fairly respectable, if controversial, historian. Rather than deny the Holocaust outright, Irving aimed to shift its emphasis, claiming that allied actions such as the bombing of Dresden constituted the worst atrocities of the Second World War. In his most famous work, Hitler's War, Irving stated that Hitler was not personally responsible for the Holocaust, claiming that the exterminations were carried out without the Führer's knowledge or authorisation.

In 1989 Irving changed direction when he wholeheartedly embraced Holocaust denial through his personal endorsement and distribution of The Leuchter Report. This work by Fred Leuchter, a self-styled engineer and gas chamber expert, has perhaps proved to be the most influential Holocaust denial work ever published. It claims that if the gas chambers had existed, the sites would have contained chemical residues of the Zyklon-B gas used. According to Leuchter's research, no such residues were found. However, it has been proven that Leuchter has no scientific credentials, and his evidence is based on deeply flawed data.

Irving has spoken to audiences all over the world, addressing neo-nazi rallies in Germany and revisionist seminars for the BNP in England. As a result of his activities and international links, which range from respectable right-wing politicians to neo-nazis and fugitive nazi war criminals, Irving has been banned from South Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Austria and Germany.

In April 2000, after a three-month trial, Irving lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt had, in 1996, published Denying the Holocaust, in which she described Irving as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial". Irving disputed this, and sued Lipstadt. But the judge's verdict vindicated Denying the Holocaust and went further in his findings than Lipstadt ever had. "It appears to me to be incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier", he stated emphatically. The judge added that Irving, "is a right wing pro-nazi polemicist". Such a verdict will ensure that Irving and his followers are denied mainstream credibility and legitimacy. But it will not stop Holocaust denial. Indeed many will feed off the judgement as further evidence of an "international Jewish conspiracy".