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Aftermath of the Holocaust

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Further information: Responsibility for the Holocaust

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Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944
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The Holocaust had a deep effect on society both in Europe and the rest of the world, and today its consequences are still being felt, both by children and adults whose ancestors were victims of this genocide.

Konrad Adenauer's State Secretary, Hans Globke, played a major role in drafting antisemitic Nuremberg Race Laws.

Evidence in Germany

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See also: Responsibility for the Holocaust § The German people

German society largely responded to the enormity of the evidence for and the horror of the Holocaust with an attitude of self-justification and a practice of keeping quiet. Germans attempted to rewrite their own history to make it more palatable in the post-war era.[1] For decades, West Germany and then unified Germany refused to allow access to its Holocaust-related archives in Bad Arolsen, citing privacy concerns. In May 2006, a 20-year effort by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum led to the announcement that 30–50 million pages would be made available to survivors, historians and others.[2]

Survivors

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Main article: Holocaust survivors

Displaced persons and the State of Israel

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Main article: Sh'erit ha-Pletah

The Holocaust and its aftermath left millions of refugees, including many Jews who had lost most or all of their family members and possessions, and often faced persistent antisemitism in their home countries. The original plan of the Allies was to repatriate these "displaced persons" to their countries of origin, but many refused to return, or were unable to as their homes or communities had been destroyed. As a result, more than 250,000 languished in displaced persons camps for years after the war ended. Many American-run DP camps had horrific conditions, with inmates living under armed guard, as revealed in the Harrison Report.[3][4][5]

The Hall of Names in Yad Vashem containing Pages of Testimony commemorating the millions of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust

With most displaced persons being unable or unwilling to return to their former homes in Europe, and with restrictions to immigration to many western countries remaining in place, the British Mandate of Palestine became the primary destination for many Jewish refugees. However, as local Arabs opposed their immigration, the United Kingdom refused to allow Jewish refugees into the Mandate territory. Countries in the Soviet Bloc made emigration difficult. Former Jewish partisans in Europe, along with the Haganah in British Mandate of Palestine, organized a massive effort to smuggle Jews into Palestine, called Berihah, which eventually transported 250,000 Jews (both displaced persons and those who had been in hiding during the war) to Mandate Palestine. After the State of Israel declared independence in 1948, Jews were able to emigrate to Israel legally and without restriction. By 1952, when the displaced persons camps were closed, there were more than 80,000 Jewish former displaced persons in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 10,000 in other countries, including Mexico, Japan, and countries in Africa and South America.[6]

The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.[7]

Resurgence of antisemitism

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Main articles: Secondary antisemitism and Anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–46

The few Jews in Poland were augmented by returnees from the Soviet Union and survivors from camps in Germany. However, a resurgence of antisemitism in Poland, in such incidents as the Kraków pogrom on August 11, 1945, and the Kielce pogrom on July 4, 1946, led to the exodus of a large part of the Jewish population, which no longer felt safe in Poland.[8] Anti-Jewish riots also broke out in several other Polish cities where many Jews were killed.[9]

The atrocities were motivated in part by the widespread Polish idea of "Żydokomuna" (Judeo-Communism) which cast Jews as supporters of communism. Żydokomuna was one of the causes that led to an intensification of Polish antisemitism in 1945–48, which some have argued was worse than prior to 1939; hundreds of Jews were killed in anti-Jewish violence. Some Jews were killed for merely attempting to recover their property.[10] As a result of the exodus, the number of Jews in Poland decreased from 200,000 in the years immediately after the war to 50,000 in 1950 and 6,000 by the 1980s.[11]

Lesser post-war pogroms also broke out in Hungary.[10]

Welfare in Israel

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It was reported in May 2016 that 45,000 Holocaust survivors are living below the poverty line in Israel, and in need of more assistance. Situations like these result in heated and dramatic protests on the part of some survivors against the Israeli government and related agencies. The average rate of cancer among survivors is nearly two and a half times the national average, while the average rate of colon cancer, attributed to the victims' experience of starvation and extreme stress, is nine times higher. As of 2016, the population of survivors that live in Israel had fallen to 189,000.[12][13][14]

Searching for records of victims

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Further information: Holocaust survivors § Survivor registries and databases

There has been a recent resurgence of interest among descendants of survivors in researching the fates of their relatives. Yad Vashem provides a searchable database of three million names, about half of the known Jewish victims. Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims Names is searchable over the internet yadvashem.org or in person at the Yad Vashem complex in Israel. Other databases and lists of victims' names, some searchable over the internet, are listed in Holocaust (resources).

Impact on culture

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Effect on the Yiddish language and culture

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In the decades preceding World War II, there was a tremendous growth in the recognition of Yiddish as an official Jewish European language, and there was even a Yiddish renaissance, particularly in Poland. On the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 13 million speakers of Yiddish in the world.[15] The Holocaust destroyed the Eastern European bedrock of Yiddish, though the language was rapidly declining anyhow. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet Jewish public rejected the cultural autonomy which was offered to it by the government and opted for Russification:[16] while 70.4% of Soviet Jews declared Yiddish their mother tongue in 1926, only 39.7% did so in 1939. Even in Poland, where harsh discrimination left the Jews as a cohesive ethnic group, Yiddish was rapidly declining in favour of Polonization. 80% of the entire Jewish population declared Yiddish its mother tongue in 1931, but among high school students this number fell to 53% in 1937.[17] In the United States, the preservation of the language was always a unigenerational phenomenon, and the immigrants' children quickly abandoned it for English.[18]

Starting with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, and continuing with the destruction of Yiddish culture in Europe during the remainder of the war, the Yiddish language and culture were almost completely rooted out of Europe. The Holocaust led to a dramatic decline in the use of Yiddish, because the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day lives were largely destroyed. Around five million victims of the Holocaust, or 85% of the total, were speakers of Yiddish.[19]

Holocaust theology

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Main article: Holocaust theology

Holocaust theology is a body of theological and philosophical debate concerning the role of God in the universe in light of the Holocaust of the late 1930s and 1940s. It is primarily found in Judaism; Jews were drastically affected by the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered in a genocide by Nazi Germany and its allies.[a][21] Jews were murdered in higher proportions than other groups; some scholars limit the definition of the Holocaust to the Jewish victims of the Nazis as Jews alone were targeted for the Final Solution. Others include the additional five million non-Jewish victims, bringing the total to about 11 million.[22] One third of the total worldwide Jewish population was murdered during the Holocaust. The Eastern European Jewish population was particularly hard hit, being reduced by ninety percent.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have traditionally taught that God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnibenevolent (all-good) in nature. However, these views are in apparent contrast with the injustice and suffering in the world. Monotheists seek to reconcile this view of God with the existence of evil and suffering. In so doing, they are confronting what is known as the problem of evil.

Within all of the monotheistic faiths many answers (theodicies) have been proposed. In light of the magnitude of depravity seen in the Holocaust, many people have also re-examined classical views on this subject. A common question raised in Holocaust theology is "How can people still have any kind of faith after the Holocaust?"

Orthodox Jews have stated that the fact that the Holocaust happened does not diminish the belief in God. For a creation will never be able to fully grasp the creator, just as a child in an operating theater can not fathom why people are cutting up a live person's body. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe once told Elie Wiesel, after witnessing the Holocaust and realizing how low human beings can stoop, who can we trust, if not God? Nevertheless, Orthodox Judaism does encourage us to pray and cry out to God, and complain to him how he lets bad things happen.[23]

Art and literature

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Main article: The Holocaust in the arts and popular culture

Theodor Adorno commented that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,"[24] and the Holocaust has indeed had a profound impact on art and literature, for both Jews and non-Jews. Some of the more famous works are by Holocaust survivors or victims, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank, but there is a substantial body of literature and art in many languages. Indeed, Paul Celan wrote his poem "Todesfuge"[25] as a direct response to Adorno's dictum.

The Holocaust has also been the subject of many films, including Oscar winners Schindler's List, The Pianist and Life Is Beautiful. With the aging population of Holocaust survivors, there has been increasing attention in recent years to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The result has included extensive efforts to document their stories, including the Survivors of the Shoah project and Four Seasons Documentary,[26] as well as institutions devoted to memorializing and studying the Holocaust, including Yad Vashem in Israel and the US Holocaust Museum. The historic tale of the Danish Jews fleeing to Sweden by fishing boat is recounted in an award-winning American children's novel.[27]

Pre-1945 European art

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The Holocaust also had a devastating impact on already-extant art. From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany stole approximately 600,000 works of art worth $2.5 billion in 1945 U.S. dollars (equivalent to $34 billion in 2023) from museums and private collections across Europe.[28] Works of art belonging to Jews were prime targets for confiscation.[29] As an heir of one Holocaust victim later explained: "You ask, did they kill? Yes, they killed. They killed for art, when it suited them. So killing Jews and confiscating art somehow went together."[28] Thus, any work of art that existed prior to 1945 has a potential provenance problem.[30][31][32]

This is a serious obstacle for anyone who currently collects pre-1945 European art. To avoid wasting thousands or even millions of dollars, they must verify (normally with the assistance of an art historian and a lawyer specializing in art law) that potential acquisitions were not stolen by the Nazis from Holocaust victims. The highest-profile legal cases arising from this issue are the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004) and Germany v. Philipp (2021).

Reparations

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Main articles: Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany and Wiedergutmachung
See also: List of companies involved in the Holocaust and Yossi Katz (geographer) § Holocaust survivor assets

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the Jewish Agency led by Chaim Weizmann submitted to the Allies a memorandum demanding reparations to Jews by Germany but it received no answer. In March 1951, a new request was made by Israel's foreign minister Moshe Sharett which claimed global recompense to Israel of $1.5 billion based on the financial cost absorbed by Israel for the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer accepted these terms and declared he was ready to negotiate other reparations. A Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany was opened in New York City by Nahum Goldmann in order to help with individual claims. After negotiations, the claim was reduced to a sum of $845 million direct and indirect compensations to be installed in a period of 14 years. In 1988, West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations.[33]

In 1999, many German industries such as Deutsche Bank, Siemens or BMW faced lawsuits for their role in the forced labour during World War II. In order to dismiss these lawsuits, Germany agreed to raise $5 billion of which Jewish forced laborers still alive could apply to receive a lump sum payment of between $2,500 and $7,500.[33] In 2012, Germany agreed to pay a new reparation of €772 million as a result of negotiations with Israel.[34]

In 2014, the SNCF, the French state-owned railway company, was compelled to allocate $60 million to American Jewish Holocaust survivors for its role in the transport of deportees to Germany. It corresponds to approximately $100,000 per survivor.[35] Although the SNCF was forced by German authorities to cooperate in providing transport for French Jews to the border and did not make any profit from this transport, according to Serge Klarsfeld, president of the organization Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France.[36]

These reparations were sometimes criticized in Israel where they were seen as "blood money".[33] The American professor Norman Finkelstein wrote The Holocaust Industry to denounce how the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel.[37] These reparations also led to a massive scam where $57 million were fraudulently given to thousands of people who were not eligible for the funds.[38]

While the restitution movements of the mid-1990s reunited some families with their stolen property, Holocaust remembrance also served as an important part of the reparation and restitution movement. The main idea of Holocaust remembrance comes from Dan Diner's article "Restitution and Memory: The Holocaust in European Political Cultures" which is the idea that Europe is now bound together by a collective memory of the Holocaust. This unified memory is one of the main reasons Diner lists for the flourishing of the restitution movement of the mid-1990s, following that of the initial movement immediately after World War II. This unified memory allowed for all European countries to come together after such a tragic event to establish the Holocaust at its center as one of the most damaging occurrences of the 20th century leading to a greater consciousness and awareness of this horrific event, in addition, to beginning countless discourses on the topic. Immediately after the Holocaust, countries such as the United States were preoccupied with the Cold War, whereas countries like Germany were controlled by foreign powers, and the Holocaust was not the main concern. Only as time went on did Europe begin to understand the importance of restitution and reparations. As the restoration of property increased, an increase in the memories for Holocaust survivors was found to be a direct correlation. The connection between property and memory proved to be a key in unlocking more details about the Holocaust, further adding to this collective European memory, and thereby increasing and furthering the restitution movement.[39]

Holocaust Memorial Days

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Main articles: Holocaust Memorial Days and Yom HaShoah
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust in Terre Haute, Indiana, 2011

The United Nations General Assembly voted on November 1, 2005, to designate January 27 as the "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust." January 27, 1945, is the day that the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. The day had already been observed as Holocaust Memorial Day in a number of countries. Israel and the Jewish diaspora observe Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagvora, the "Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the courage of the Jewish people," on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which generally falls in April.[40] Starting in 1979, the United States' equivalent commemoration is similarly timed to include the 27 Nisan date as well in a given year, beginning on the Sunday before the Gregorian calendar date that 27 Nisan falls on, and onward for a week to the following Sunday.

Holocaust denial

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Main articles: Holocaust denial and Historical negationism
See also: Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust

Holocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II–usually referred to as the Holocaust[41]–did not occur in the manner and to the extent described by current scholars.

Key elements of this claim are the rejection of the following: that the Nazi government had a policy of deliberately targeting Jews and people of Jewish ancestry for extermination as a people; that between five and seven million Jews[41] were systematically killed by the Nazis and their allies; and that genocide was carried out at extermination camps using tools of mass murder, such as gas chambers.[42][43]

Many Holocaust deniers do not accept the term "denial" as an appropriate description of their point of view, and use the term Holocaust revisionism instead.[44] Scholars, however, prefer the term "denial" to differentiate Holocaust deniers from historical revisionists, who use established historical methods.[45]

Most Holocaust denial claims imply, or openly state, that the Holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples.[46] For this reason, Holocaust denial is generally considered to be an antisemitic[47] conspiracy theory.[48] The methods of Holocaust deniers are often criticized as based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores extensive historical evidence to the contrary.[49]

Holocaust awareness

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According to German-British journalist Alan Posener, the "...failure of German films and TV series to deal responsibly with the country's past and to appeal to younger audiences feeds a growing historical amnesia among young Germans. ... A September 2017 study conducted by the Körber Foundation found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds surveyed in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was."[50]

A survey released on Holocaust Remembrance Day in April 2018 found that 41% of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66% of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was. 41% of millennials incorrectly claimed that 2 million Jews or less were killed during the Holocaust, while 22% said they had never heard of the Holocaust. Over 95% of all Americans surveyed were unaware that the Holocaust occurred in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. 45% of adults and 49% of millennials were unable to name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto in German-occupied Europe during the Holocaust.[51] In contrast, a study conducted in Israel has shown that young participants in social media use the Holocaust as a discursive means to critique and object Israel's current surveillance agenda.[52]

See also

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Documentaries related to life after the Holocaust:

Notes

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  1. ^ Snyder 2010, p. 45. Further examples of this usage can be found in: Bauer 2002, ,[20] Longerich 2012,

References

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Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ Margolin, Elaine. "The Post-War West Germans’ Post-Holocaust Distortions." Jewish Journal. 6 February 2014. 9 February 2015.
  2. ^ Germany to open Holocaust archives Al-Jazeera 19 April 2006.
  3. ^ Report of Earl G. Harrison. As cited in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Resources," Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945-1951
  4. ^ The New York Times, 30 Sept. 1945, "President Orders Eisenhower to End New Abuse of Jews, He Acts on Harrison Report, Which Likens Our Treatment to That of the Nazis,"
  5. ^ Robert L. Hilliard, "Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation" (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997) p. 214
  6. ^ Displaced Persons from the United States Holocaust Museum.
  7. ^ "World Jewish population nears pre-Holocaust numbers at 15.2 million". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2022-04-25. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  8. ^ Columbia University release [1]
  9. ^ Yad Vashem website [2]
  10. ^ a b Wistrich, R.S. (1995). Terms of Survival: The Jewish World Since 1945. Routledge. p. 271. ISBN 9780415100564. Retrieved February 23, 2017.
  11. ^ Bolaffi, G. (2003). Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity and Culture. SAGE Publications. p. 220. ISBN 9780761969006. Retrieved February 23, 2017.
  12. ^ "40% of Holocaust Survivors in Israel Live Below Poverty Line" [permanent dead link‍], Haaretz, December 29, 2005.
  13. ^ "Social Safety Nets" (PDF), In Re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swiss Bank), September 11, 2000.
  14. ^ "On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel's needy survivors still suffer". USA Today.
  15. ^ Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
  16. ^ David Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture: 1918-1930, Cambridge University Press, 2004. pp 13-14.
  17. ^ David E. Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. pp 84-85.
  18. ^ : Jan Schwarz, Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust, Wayne State University Press, 2015. עמ' 316.
  19. ^ Solomo Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3.
  20. ^ Hilberg 1996.
  21. ^ Dawidowicz 1975, p. 403.
  22. ^ Donald L. Niewyk; Francis R. Nicosia (2003). The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. pp. 45–46.
  23. ^ Mangel, Nissen. "Belief in G‑d After the Holocaust: A child survivor of Auschwitz". chabad.org.
  24. ^ "Poetry After Auschwitz: Is John Barth Relevant Anymore?".
  25. ^ Celan, Paul. "Fugue of Death". Archived from the original on 2 February 2007. Retrieved January 23, 2007.
  26. ^ "Four Seasons". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27.
  27. ^ Lowry, Lois (1989). Number the Stars. Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0440227534.
  28. ^ a b Bazyler, Michael J. (2003). Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts. New York: NYU Press. p. 202. ISBN 9780814729380.
  29. ^ Nicholas, Lynn H. (1995). The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books. p. 43. ISBN 9780307739728.
  30. ^ Petropoulos, Jonathan (2000). The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 279. ISBN 9780198029687. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  31. ^ Bazyler, Michael J. (2003). Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts. New York: NYU Press. p. 204. ISBN 9780814729380.
  32. ^ Goodman, Simon (2016). The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis. Simon and Schuster: New York. p. 211. ISBN 9781451697643. Retrieved August 3, 2024.
  33. ^ a b c Jewish Virtual Library, Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations [3]
  34. ^ Der Spiegel, Holocaust Reparations: Germany to Pay 772 Million Euros to Survivors [4]
  35. ^ Le Monde, Pour le rôle de la SNCF dans la Shoah, Paris va verser 100 000 euros à chaque déporté américain [5]
  36. ^ Serge Klarsfeld (26 June 2012). "Analysis of Statements Made During the June 20, 2012 Hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary" (PDF). Memorial de la Shoah. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 December 2013. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  37. ^ Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry [6].
  38. ^ Haaretz, Ringleader of $57 million Holocaust survivor fraud found guilty [7]
  39. ^ Diner, Dan (2003). "Restitution and Memory: The Holocaust in European Political Cultures". New German Critique (90): 36–44. doi:10.2307/3211106. JSTOR 3211106.
  40. ^ Harran, Marilyn. The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures, Louis Weber, 2000, p. 697.
  41. ^ a b Donald L Niewyk, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Estimates by scholars range from 5.1 million to 7 million. See the appropriate section of the Holocaust article.
  42. ^ Key elements of Holocaust denial:
    • "Before discussing how Holocaust denial constitutes a conspiracy theory, and how the theory is distinctly American, it is important to understand what is meant by the term "Holocaust denial." Holocaust deniers, or "revisionists," as they call themselves, question all three major points of definition of the Nazi Holocaust. First, they contend that, while mass murders of Jews did occur (although they dispute both the intentionality of such murders as well as the supposed deservedness of these killings), there was no official Nazi policy to murder Jews. Second, and perhaps most prominently, they contend that there were no homicidal gas chambers, particularly at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where mainstream historians believe over 1 million Jews were murdered, primarily in gas chambers. And third, Holocaust deniers contend that the death toll of European Jews during World War II was well below 6 million. Deniers float numbers anywhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million, as a general rule." Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition Archived 2011-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
    • "In part III we directly address the three major foundations upon which Holocaust denial rests, including... the claim that gas chambers and crematoria were used not for mass extermination but rather for delousing clothing and disposing of people who died of disease and overwork; ... the claim that the six million figure is an exaggeration by an order of magnitude—that about six hundred thousand, not six million, died at the hands of the Nazis; ... the claim that there was no intention on the part of the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry and that the Holocaust was nothing more than the unfortunate by-product of the vicissitudes of war." Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman. Denying History: : who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-23469-3, p. 3.
    • "Holocaust Denial: Lies that the mass extermination of the Jews by the Nazis never happened; that the number of Jewish losses has been 'greatly exaggerated'; that the Holocaust was not systematic nor a result of an official policy; or simply that the Holocaust never took place." What is Holocaust Denial, Yad Vashem website, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
    • "Among the untruths routinely promoted are the claims that no gas chambers existed at Auschwitz, that only 600,000 Jews were killed rather than twelve million, and that Hitler had no murderous intentions toward Jews or other groups persecuted by his government." Holocaust Denial Archived 2007-04-04 at the Wayback Machine, Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
  43. ^ "The kinds of assertions made in Holocaust-denial material include the following:
    • Several hundred thousand rather than approximately twelve million Jews died during the war.
    • Scientific evidence proves that gas chambers could not have been used to kill large numbers of people.
    • The Nazi command had a policy of deporting Jews, not exterminating them.
    • Some deliberate killings of Jews did occur, but were carried out by the peoples of Eastern Europe rather than the Nazis.
    • Jews died in camps of various kinds, but did so as the result of hunger and disease. The Holocaust is a myth created by the Allies for propaganda purposes, and subsequently nurtured by the Jews for their own ends.
    • Errors and inconsistencies in survivors’ testimonies point to their essential unreliability.
    • Alleged documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs of concentration camp victims to Anne Frank's diary, is fabricated.
    • The confessions of former Nazis to war crimes were extracted through torture." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, JPR report #3, 2000. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
  44. ^ Refer to themselves as revisionists:
  45. ^ Denial vs. "revisionism":
    • "This is the phenomenon of what has come to be known as 'revisionism', 'negationism', or 'Holocaust denial,' whose main characteristic is either an outright rejection of the very veracity of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, or at least a concerted attempt to minimize both its scale and importance... It is just as crucial, however, to distinguish between the wholly objectionable politics of denial and the fully legitimate scholarly revision of previously accepted conventional interpretations of any historical event, including the Holocaust." Bartov, Omer. The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath, Routledge, pp.11-12. Bartov is John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at the Watson Institute, and is regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on genocide ("Omer Bartov" Archived 2008-12-16 at the Wayback Machine, The Watson Institute for International Studies).
    • "The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a "certain body of irrefutable evidence" or a "convergence of evidence" that suggest that an event_like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust—did in fact occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence..." Ronald J. Berger. Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Aldine Transaction, 2002, ISBN 0-202-30670-4, p. 154.
    • "At this time, in the mid-1970s, the specter of Holocaust Denial (masked as "revisionism") had begun to raise its head in Australia..." Bartrop, Paul R. "A Little More Understanding: The Experience of a Holocaust Educator in Australia" in Samuel Totten, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Paul R Bartrop. Teaching about the Holocaust, Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, p. xix. ISBN 0-275-98232-7
    • "Pierre Vidal-Naquet urges that denial of the Holocaust should not be called 'revisionism' because 'to deny history is not to revise it'. Les Assassins de la Memoire. Un Eichmann de papier et autres essays sur le revisionisme (The Assassins of Memory—A Paper-Eichmann and Other Essays on Revisionism) 15 (1987)." Cited in Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2581-8, p. 215.
    • "This essay describes, from a methodological perspective, some of the inherent flaws in the "revisionist" approach to the history of the Holocaust. It is not intended as a polemic, nor does it attempt to ascribe motives. Rather, it seeks to explain the fundamental error in the "revisionist" approach, as well as why that approach of necessity leaves no other choice. It concludes that "revisionism" is a misnomer because the facts do not accord with the position it puts forward and, more importantly, its methodology reverses the appropriate approach to historical investigation... "Revisionism" is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit, because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result; it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred; and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, "revisionism" denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't" Archived 2010-04-28 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
    • "Crucial to understanding and combating Holocaust denial is a clear distinction between denial and revisionism. One of the more insidious and dangerous aspects of contemporary Holocaust denial, a la Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith and Greg Raven, is the fact that they attempt to present their work as reputable scholarship under the guise of 'historical revisionism.' The term 'revisionist' permeates their publications as descriptive of their motives, orientation and methodology. In fact, Holocaust denial is in no sense 'revisionism,' it is denial... Contemporary Holocaust deniers are not revisionists — not even neo-revisionists. They are Deniers. Their motivations stem from their neo-nazi political goals and their rampant antisemitism." Austin, Ben S. "Deniers in Revisionists Clothing" Archived November 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust\Shoah Page, Middle Tennessee State University. Retrieved March 29, 2007.
    • "Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review). Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as ‘revisionists’, in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans’ involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, JPR report #3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
    • "The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past. For historians, in fact, the name revisionism has a resonance that is perfectly legitimate -- it recalls the controversial historical school known as World War I "revisionists," who argued that the Germans were unjustly held responsible for the war and that consequently the Versailles treaty was a politically misguided document based on a false premise. Thus the deniers link themselves to a specific historiographic tradition of reevaluating the past. Claiming the mantle of the World War I revisionists and denying they have any objective other than the dissemination of the truth constitute a tactical attempt to acquire an intellectual credibility that would otherwise elude them." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust -- The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p. 25.
  46. ^ A hoax designed to advance the interests of Jews:
    • "The title of App's major work on the Holocaust, The Six Million Swindle, is informative because it implies on its very own the existence of a conspiracy of Jews to perpetrate a hoax against non-Jews for monetary gain." Mathis, Andrew E. Holocaust Denial, a Definition Archived 2011-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, July 2, 2004. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
    • "Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as ‘truth’ and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, JPR report #3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
    • "Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. Denying History: : who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-23469-3, p. 106.
    • "Since its inception in 1979, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States Archived June 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
    • "The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." Deborah Lipstadt. Denying the Holocaust -- The Growing Assault onTruth and Memory, Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p. 27.
    • "They [Holocaust deniers] picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
    • "Deniers argue that the manufactured guilt and shame over a mythological Holocaust led to Western, specifically United States, support for the establishment and sustenance of the Israeli state — a sustenance that costs the American taxpayer over three billion dollars per year. They assert that American taxpayers have been and continue to be swindled..." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism Archived 2011-09-01 at the Wayback Machine, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
    • "The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8078-5374-7, p. 445.
  47. ^ Antisemitic:
    • "Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)." EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism"AS Working Definition Draft" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-01. Retrieved 2007-12-20.. EUMC. Contemporary examples of antisemitism
    • "It would elevate their antisemitic ideology — which is what Holocaust denial is — to the level of responsible historiography — which it is not." Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, ISBN 0-14-024157-4, p. 11.
    • "The denial of the Holocaust is among the most insidious forms of anti-Semitism..." Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2581-8, p. 215.
    • "Contemporary Holocaust deniers are not revisionists — not even neo-revisionists. They are Deniers. Their motivations stem from their neo-nazi political goals and their rampant antisemitism." Austin, Ben S. "Deniers in Revisionists Clothing" Archived November 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust\Shoah Page, Middle Tennessee State University. Retrieved March 29, 2007.
    • "Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review)." The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial? Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, JPR report #3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
    • "This books treats several of the myths that have made antisemitism so lethal... In addition to these historic myths, we also treat the new, maliciously manufactured myth of Holocaust denial, another groundless belief that is used to stir up Jew-hatred." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, ISBN 0-312-16561-7, p. 3.
    • "One predictable strand of Arab Islamic antisemitism is Holocaust denial..." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, ISBN 0-312-16561-7, p. 10.
    • "Anti-Semitism, in the form of Holocaust denial, had been experienced by just one teacher when working in a Catholic school with large numbers of Polish and Croatian students." Geoffrey Short, Carole Ann Reed. Issues in Holocaust Education, Ashgate Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7546-4211-9, p. 71.
    • "Indeed, the task of organized antisemitism in the last decade of the century has been the establishment of Holocaust Revisionism – the denial that the Holocaust occurred." Stephen Trombley, "antisemitism", The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, ISBN 0-393-04696-6, p. 40.
    • "After the Yom Kippur War an apparent reappearance of antisemitism in France troubled the tranquility of the community; there were several notorious terrorist attacks on synagogues, Holocaust revisionism appeared, and a new antisemitic political right tried to achieve respectability." Howard K. Wettstein, Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity, University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-520-22864-2, p. 169.
    • "Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy." Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", Anti-Defamation League, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
    • "In a number of countries, in Europe as well as in the United States, the negation or gross minimization of the Nazi genocide of Jews has been the subject of books, essay and articles. Should their authors be protected by freedom of speech? The European answer has been in the negative: such writings are not only a perverse form of anti-semitism but also an aggression against the dead, their families, the survivors and society at large." Roger Errera, "Freedom of speech in Europe", in Georg Nolte, European and US Constitutionalism, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-85401-6, pp. 39-40.
    • "Particularly popular in Syria is Holocaust denial, another staple of Arab anti-Semitism that is sometimes coupled with overt sympathy for Nazi Germany." Efraim Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East, Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-7146-5418-3, p. 104.
    • "Holocaust denial is a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs." Dinah Shelton, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan Reference, 2005, p. 45.
    • "The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8078-5374-7, p. 445.
    • "Since its inception in 1979, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States Archived June 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
    • "There is now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism ... insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric ... The history of the Arab world ... is disfigured ... by a whole series of outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that the Holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much, currency." Edward Said, "A Desolation, and They Called it Peace" in Those who forget the past, Ron Rosenbaum (ed), Random House 2004, p. 518.
  48. ^ Conspiracy theory: .
  49. ^
    • "'Revisionism' is obliged to deviate from the standard method of historical pursuit because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result, it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred, and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, "revisionism" denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodical dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't" Archived 2010-04-28 at the Wayback Machine, The Holocaust History Project, May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
    • Alan L. Berger, "Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?", in Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz (eds), Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, p. 154.
  50. ^ "German TV Is Sanitizing History". Foreign Policy. April 9, 2018.
  51. ^ "New Survey by Claims Conference Finds Significant Lack of Holocaust Knowledge in the United States". Claims Conference. 2018. Archived from the original on 12 April 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2019.

    Astor, Maggie (12 April 2018). "Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2019.

  52. ^ Marciano, Avi (2019). "Vernacular politics in new participatory media: Discursive linkage between biometrics and the Holocaust in Israel". International Journal of Communication. 13: 277–296.

Cited sources

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Further reading

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Further information: Holocaust (resources)
  • Bartrop, Paul R. and Michael Dickerman, eds. The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection (4 vol 2017)
  • Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (4 Vol 1990)
  • Kangisser Cohen, Sharon (24 September 2020). What Now? Child Survivors in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (video). Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2020-10-08.
  • Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz. "Introduction: Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine: Historical Research, Public Debates, and Methodological Disputes." East European Politics & Societies (Feb 2020) 34#1, pp 129–142.
  • "A Changed World: The Continuing Impact of the Holocaust". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, D.C. 2012.
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