It is very obvious that anyone who had been killed in or had survived a Nazi concentration camp underwent immeasurable amounts of pain and malice. Perhaps the one thing the survivors feared the most would be that their stories could be ignored after they were free. To this day, there are several people that claim the Holocaust never happened. It has even been called the "Holohoax". The fact is that the Nazis tried to cover up their tracks while committing the mass murder. They did not want the Jewish story to be believed or even heard. Attempt was made for the program to be carried out in secrecy so that they could get away with their crime. An entire vocabulary of euphemisms was created to help make their actions seem not so vicious. For example, the transportation of Jews to their death was referred to as emigration, repatriation, or resettlement in the east. Rather than saying the Jews were murdered, one might refer to it as special treatment or special action. The Final Solution was the term used as the annihilation of the Jews. Every attempt was made to make sure that the disappearance of the Jewish race from the face of the earth would be as mysterious as the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Final Solution obviously did not succeed. Once the Nazis had lost the war, the stories of Holocaust victims were spreading like wildfire. Some of the stories were not believed because of the senseless inhumanity was so incomprehensible. Having their stories denied was the far greater blow to the Jews. To this day, there is an international movement trying to preach the denial of the Holocaust.
Holocaust deniers claim that in order for the six million Jews to be killed, there must have been some sort of unfathomable weapon. This weapon did exist. The gas chamber is what took so many lives. Some claim that the only thing they were ever used for was to disinfect the prisoners. Others claim that they were built after the war for the simple purpose of tourist attractions. The deniers claim that it was only a few thousand Jews that were killed, and they were just unfortunate victims of war. The gas chambers were not the only means to terminate the prisoners. There was a series of other methods such as the mobile SS killing squad known as the einsatzgruppen. They would follow the German army and engage in mass shootings. This accounted for over one million murders. The deniers totally ignore this as well as the crowding of Jews into ghettos and the deaths that resulted from disease, brutality, and starvation. Not only will the deniers focus only on the gas chambers, but they only deal with the Auschwitz camp. This was both a slave labor camp and an extermination camp. There were many other camps as well, but they were small points on the map to which trains transported thousands to their death. Holocaust deniers reject all evidence and claim that all documents and photographs are forgeries. Even survivor eyewitnesses are said to be delusional.
Most historians revise history in some form or fashion. A second look at the past is taken, and it is revised in the light of new evidence and new perspectives. Historians will ask questions, such as what happened, how did it happen, and why did it happen. They will not deny the events ever happened. In contrast with this, Holocaust deniers flatly say that it never existed, and it is a mere invention of the imagination of the Jews. In other words, the criminals are innocent, and the innocent are criminals. This is similar to the novel 1984 by George Orwell. This book dealt with the same principles of the reverse meaning in language: criminals are innocent, black is white, peace is war, truth is false, etc…
Ernst Zundel, author of "The Hitler We Loved, and Why", is one of the founding fathers of the Holocaust denial movement. In 1985, in Toronto, Canada, Zundel was charged under Section 177 of the Criminal Code making it a crime to disseminate false information, which is know to be false, and will likely cause public mischief. The charges brought against him arose out of publication of two pamphlets: "Did Six-Million Really Die?" and "The West, War, and Islam!" They claimed the Holocaust was a hoax, and a conspiracy of Jews, bankers, communists, and Freemasons to control the world could be something of concern. The jury probably thought "The West, War, and Islam!" was not very important and could not do much harm because it was mailed out of the country, but he was sentenced to serve jail time for the publication of the Holocaust denial pamphlet. He appealed on legal technicalities, and a re-trial was ordered. The second trial was held in 1988, and he was again found guilty. The jail term was imposed, and the case is now under appeal once more.
Another notorious Holocaust denier is David Irving. He declared the Allies were as bad as the Nazis. He said Hitler neither ordered nor knew about the destruction of the Jews. He even offered a $1,000.00 reward to anyone who could produce a written record of Hitler’s ordering the murder of Jews. At a conference at the Holocaust Denying Institute for Historical Review he is quoted "Hitler was probably the biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich, certainly at least when the war broke out." In the closing moments of the second Zundel trial he was brought out as a surprise witness and openly declared himself a Holocaust denier. Under cross-examination he was confronted with his own words from his book, "Hitler’s War." In that book he did not deny the Holocaust at all. Instead, he went into great detail of the torture that took place. He claimed that Hitler was unaware of it, though. When confronted by this, he claimed he believed it then, but he changed his mind due to the Leuchter report. This was a ludicrous document from Fred Leuchter, a self-confessed expert in "execution hardware." He was found by Zundell in the United States. He recruited to go to Auschwitz to collect soil and wall samples and analyze them. He claimed there was no evidence of gassing anyone ever. Irving probably saw this so-called evidence a day or two before he took the stand, but he claimed it was a significant factor in the changing of his mind from what he had written several years ago. His credibility as a historian had mostly diminished after this, but he frequently visits Canada on tours sponsored by various radical right groups.
There have been several other leaders in the Holocaust
denial movement, but none have any proof or evidence that it is just a
farce. This should be of concern to the Jewish, but more of concern to
those who take pride in our democratic society. The ultimate goal for the
Holocaust denial is the fall of our open pluralistic society that we have
worked so hard to build.