Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of approximately six million Jews and many other victims by the Germans and their collaborators during World War II.

The Holocaust is one of the most thoroughly researched periods of history. The amount of existing research is enormous and growing constantly as historians pour through archives full of extant documents and artifacts. While important questions remain to be researched, nearly all trained historians who have studied this period agree on the basic facts: The Nazi's "Final Solution" was an official, systematic program of extermination of the Jewish race involving mass murder on an industrial scale which "succeeded" in killing between 5 and 6 million Jews, or approximately 1/2 of the Jewish population of Europe, before it was ended by the Allies' victory over Germany in 1945.

"Holocaust deniers" deny these well established facts about the Holocaust. They assert that the murder of approximately six million Jews during World War II never occurred and that the Germans are victims of a Zionist plot to extort vast sums of money from them on the basis of a hoax. Under a rallying cry created by Holocaust denier David Irving -- "Sink the Battleship Auschwitz!" -- they deny the existence of the poison gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, as that camp lies at the symbolic core of the Holocaust and stands as the icon for Jewish suffering.

The goal of Holocaust deniers in the West is political -- they want to rehabilitate Nazism and fascism in general and Adolf Hitler in particular -- and to promote anti-Semitism and, at times, anti-Israel sentiment. Holocaust denial in the Arab and Muslim world seems to be driven primarily by the goal of undermining what is perceived to be a powerful justification for Israel's existence.

Although the number of active Holocaust denier authors is small, during certain periods they have been able to attract attention that is grossly out of proportion to their numbers and the level of their scholarship. Under the guise of a reasonable person's search for truth, Holocaust deniers spread falsehoods and misinformation that appears reasonable to the uninformed reader. Often times they claim the mantle of free-speech saying they are for “continued research” into a “complex” and “misrepresented” history; yet, their method is never truly historical. Deniers do not rely on artifactual and documentary evidence to create their hypotheses, instead they develop a history of opinion in which any manipulation or distortion of history is acceptable as one’s personal belief.

This website is designed to empower the open-minded reader to identify and reject the lies, distortions and misleading innuendo used by Holocaust deniers. Our Myth/Fact sheets concisely analyze each of the deniers' arguments and refute them with high quality scholarship. In addition, our online archive of trial documents from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's legal battle with Holocaust denier David Irving provides a wealth of detailed information.

Excerpt from: http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/en/denial