Holocaust denialism

The denial of the Holocaust is a school of thought that aims to reinterpret the events in Europe between 1941 and 1945 , following “the doctrine that the genocide practiced by Nazi Germany against Jews and Gypsies did not exist, But is a product of myth, of fable, of fraud. ” ¹ In general, these reinterpretations thesis question or deny the mass killing which the people were subjected Jewish and other minorities under the Third Reich and the countries occupied by him between 1933 and 1945 .

The common axes of this current are the rejection of the following historical facts:

• That the Nazi regime had a deliberate plan to exterminate Jews or other groups.
• That six million Jews died during the war.
• Functional devices that exist for mass extermination, such as gas chambers , and therefore also the death camps .

Also, within denialism , two positions are identified according to their degree of denial of the historical facts of the Holocaust:

• The one that totally denies the mass murder and consequently also the existence of gas chambers.
• The one that does not totally deny the Holocaust or the gas chambers, but states that Hitler had no knowledge or responsibility about mass executions. The British writer David Irving is characterized to defend this idea. ²

Most deniers also say implicitly or explicitly, that the Holocaust would be a propaganda , war invented by the powers allied and subsequently have been taken advantage of by an alleged Jewish conspiracy or Zionist , in order to obtain benefits Other peoples, mainly Palestinians and Germany . For this reason, denialism is considered as a theory of anti-Semitic conspiracy and is prosecuted in several European countries including Germany and Austria , being understood as concealment of genocide with knowledge, or consent and approval or justification thereof.

Terminology

At first they called deniers Holocaust deniers (taken from the concept historical revisionism ). In the first decades after the war, the Jewish communities decided not to dignify those presumed revisionist studies with a response, believing that answering would only lead this group to greater credibility. Later, and with some resistance from the Jewish community, the American historian Deborah Lipstadt called them Holocaust deniers , ³ since they were not “reviewing” history, but rather denying the undeniable . ⁴ Thereafter the term was adopted revisionism , the deniers still refuse, considering dismissive. This expression means that they categorically deny the facts they address without research or evidence to support their position. In compensation for the use of this term, the negationists refer as exterminationists or exterminationists to those who support and credit the historical evidence of the Holocaust.

Academic historians often do not accept the term Holocaust revisionism as applied to negationism, in order to establish differences with respect to legitimate historical revisionism which, unlike negationism, does conform to academic standards, available evidence, and scientific methodology . Holocaust denial is known as “negationism” following the French term négationnisme , proposed by Henry Rousso in The Vichy Syndrome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). ⁵ Denialists attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. According to Jacques Derrida :

In general terms, the “revisionism” of history is the attempt to critique established dogmas, a criticism that can not in any way be included in the kind of denialism that attempts to deny the reality of recognized facts. ⁶

According Koenraad Elst :

Negationism means the historical denial of crimes against humanity. It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but a denial of known facts. The term Negationism has gained popularity as the name of a movement denying a crime against humanity, the Nazi genocide of the Jews in 1941-45, also known as the Holocaust (Greek: Fire Sacrifice) or the Shoah (Hebrew: Catastrophe ). Denialism is mostly identified with the effort to re-write history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted. ⁷

Academic historians further point out that the Holocaust has been the subject of numerous visions and revisions after World War II, both in the field of academic research and in official educational programs , for which historical revisionism must not Be confused with the current known in academic circles as the denial of the Holocaust . This situation shares it with other genocides that experienced their “denial”, such as Armenian and Gypsy during World War II. ¹

History

Background

Studies of the negationist arguments have revealed that anti-Semitism has been the most important engine of denialism since its inception. Historians contend that the early deniers were the Nazis themselves, ⁸ from documentary evidence that Heinrich Himmler ordered his officers to destroy recordings, installations and other evidence that betrayed the mass extermination of human beings when Germany’s defeat was imminent And the Nazi leaders realized that they would be captured and brought to trial. At the end of the war, many of the Nazi leaders left Germany and began to promote properly denialist propaganda material to exculpate them, offering a positive image of Nazism. ⁸ Others see Hermann Göring as the first Holocaust denier, since during the Nuremberg Trials he denied any accusation of genocide.

Hitler’s testament was:

A justification for mass murder and, at the same time, was also the first act of denial of the existence of the Holocaust: his war against the Jews had been, according to his estimation, an act of self-defense “against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world”; He had never sought anything but peace, and it was the “international financiers” who had forced him to go to war; Gassing and firing the Jews had been a response to the Allied bombing of Germany, attacks which, according to the Nazi worldview, were an act of “Jewish” aggression against Aryan humanity. ^{Referring to Fig.}

Paul Rassinier

Is usually mentioned to Paul Rassinier as the initiator of this trend by publishing in 1950 the book Le Mensonge d’Ulysse ( “The Lie of Ulysses”), which deals with the testimonies of former prisoners of German concentration camps and his experience in Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora , where he was imprisoned for participating in the French Resistance to the German occupation during World War II . In writing this book, Rassinier sought to question and deny the testimony of extermination chambers in post-war German territory, but he admitted his lack of moral authority to testify about the other camps in Eastern Europe, (Auschwitz, for example), which was occupied by the Soviets, and considered the remote possibility of the existence of the extermination chambers in that territory. However, after his later investigations changed his position, affirming that there were no executions by gassing in any field.

However, critics of denialism point out that Rassinier’s anti-Semitic vision conditions his views and subtracts their validity, while emphasizing that neither Buchenwald nor Mittelbau-Dora were extermination camps, which is why it is not surprising that Rassinier has not Seen gas chambers. ^{10 11}

The deniers have continued to cite their works to date as an investigation that questions the accepted facts about the Holocaust. Rassinier also claimed that for fifteen years he had sought gassings without success and that in the camps, in addition to medical care and recreational activities, prisoners were compensated for forced labor. Its influence on the negationists remains because it was among the first to propose that a supposed Zionist / Allied / Soviet conspiracy falsified the Holocaust, a subject then treated by other supporters of this belief.

Harry Elmer Barnes

The American historian Harry Elmer Barnes , assumed a denialist position in the later years of his life. Between the First and Second World War, Barnes became a well-known pacifist writer and the greatest exponent of the historical revisionist movement. After World War II, he became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan, including the Holocaust, were war propaganda used to justify US involvement. in the war.

Barnes’s writings in the field of historical revisionism are still quoted by some anarchist writers such as James J. Martin . Barnes’s name has been commonly used by modern deniers in an attempt to lend credibility to his cause, such as Willis Carto of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

Einar Aberg

In 1959, Professor Einar Aberg had published in Norniken , Sweden , a statistical calculation in which the figure of 6 million dead Jews did not match the information from some sources such as the American Jewish Committee and the Statistical of the Synagogues of America . This calculation read as follows:

David Hoggan

A prominent precursor of revisionism was the historian David Hoggan , who wrote in 1969 one of his first books where denying the Holocaust entitled The Myth of the Six Million ( The myth of the six million ), and which was published by the Noontide Press , A small publisher specializing in anti-Semitic literature . ¹² Hoggan became one of the first known personalities of negationism, since he had several university professors.

The Leuchter Report

The Leuchter Report is the name by which a fraudulent expert investigation conducted in 1988 by the American Frederick A. (Fred) Leuchter, Jr., was said to be a specialist in the design and construction of execution teams in the prisons of The United States, but later proved to be without any knowledge of gas chambers, and was prosecuted for engaging in unlicensed engineering. The report was made for the purpose of defending Ernst Zündel , prosecuted on charges of Holocaust denial and racial hatred.

This document has been the main tool of revisionism to support its view that in the fields of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz - Birkenau and Majdanek there were no gas chambers for mass execution.

Zündel contracted Leuchter’s services in 1988 in exchange for $ 35,000, who went to Poland to collect samples and take pictures. Using a hammer and a chisel, he unconsciously extracted bits of wall and floor from the extermination and disinfection chambers. Samples obtained surreptitiously were taken to the United States. And delivered to the laboratory led by the American chemist James Roth , without being informed of where the samples came from, but that it was an expert analysis for a trial.

The chemical report from the Roth laboratory determined that the mortar samples extracted from the disinfection chambers contained a high cyanide content and that extermination samples contained a zero or minimal trace of cyanide. These results were presented as the material ratification of their beliefs about the non-existence of extermination chambers.

However, subsequently, in an interview, Dr. Roth indicated that cyanide would have formed an extremely thin layer on the walls, one-tenth of a human hair thick. Leuchter had taken samples of an indeterminate and variable thickness. Not informed of this, Roth had pulverized the whole samples, drastically diluting the cyanide layer containing each sample with an indeterminate amount of brick, which varied for each sample. To explain the unreliability of his analysis, Roth offered the analogy that the results were like analyzing the wood of a wall when what you want to know is the composition of the painting.

From Roth’s laboratory analysis, Leuchter wrote the expert report commissioned by Zündel, in which, through erroneous scientific reasoning, he concluded that ” there were no gas chambers for executions in any of the three camps, Gas found there could never have functioned to execute executions and that only served for the fumigation of parasites .

Although Leuchter’s oral testimony was accepted at the Zündel trial, the expert’s report was rejected by the Court because of its lack of professional accreditation. In October 1990, a Massachusetts court criminally prosecuted Leuchter for practicing as an engineer without a license. It was learned that not only did not have a license, but had no study related to engineering or any other professional accreditation, only a BA in History, which ended in 1964. He admitted having no training or experience in toxicology, biology or chemistry. It was also discovered that, although he had some experience in electric chairs and lethal injections, he had no knowledge of gas chambers, as he had said before.

Despite being totally discredited, the report was widely disseminated among the negationists, who believed they could find definitive support for their beliefs. His critics, however, asserted that it was impossible to detect cyanide fifty years later with his method (the analyzes done at the end of the war on the ventilation ducts showed significant amounts of cyanide), samples supposedly obtained from cameras that had been demolished By the Nazis and partially rebuilt afterwards. Leuchter did not know which part had been rebuilt, so he could not prove if the samples corresponded to the original gas chambers.

Affirmations and opinions of the deniers

The three basic affirmations of the negationists are: ^{[ citation needed ]}

• There would be no official policy, plan or clear intention for the extermination of the Jews during World War II.
• Six million Jews would not have died during the war: this would be a tremendously exaggerated figure that would not correspond with reality. They doubt that more than 800,000 people would have died in concentration camps, of which about 300,000 would be Jews . ¹³ Although the number of more than 6,000,000 murders is widely documented, among others, the famous korherr report , by Richard Korherr , chief statistician for the SS , cites the number of Jewish losses greater than 2,454. 000 ^{14 15} only towards the end of 1942, not counting the deaths due to the harsh conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps .

• There would have been no gas chambers in concentration camps. (They do not refer here to the cameras used in the disinfection for clothes, mattresses, etc. whose existence is unquestionable, but to cameras made, specifically and functionally for the purpose of murdering people).

Other statements include the following: ^{[ citation needed ]}

• The Jewish population in Europe before World War II was not 9,500,000 Jews but would be less than four million, of which approximately one million emigrated to places like Palestine, United States, Argentina, Canada, etc. And more than two million emigrated to the Soviet Union , and only about 300,000 died in concentration camps.
• The constant Allied bombing caused disruptions to roads, bridges and railways, which provided food and medicine to the various fields of work, for that reason starvation and epidemics of typhus typhus transmitted by lice they would have been the decisive factors for low Of Jews, not Jews and Germans, not including old age and natural death.
• There would not have been, or at least not preserved, any Nazi document to order, decree or manifest mass murder by the latter, or even mention the gas chambers. ¹⁶
• The ” Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” would not have meant the decision to exterminate the Jewish people, but their displacement and relocation on the island of Madagascar , ¹⁷ and later in Eastern Europe for the new settlement of the State of Israel . See: Madagascar Plan .
• The Holocaust would be a myth initially created by the Allies to demonize the Germans. The Jews would have spread this myth as part of a plot with the intention of allowing the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine and to continue to support the State of Israel today.
• The main evidence of genocide would be based on testimony rather than material evidence of mass murder.
• Material evidence, such as photographs or the Anne Frank Diary , would have been forgeries.
• Survivors’ testimonies would be full of errors and inconsistencies so they would not be reliable.
• Nazi confessions on war crimes, such as Rudolf Höss’s in the Nuremberg Trials , would have been extracted under torture.
• The treatment of the Nazis towards the Jews would not have been different to the treatment that the allies gave to their enemies in the war.
• Adolf Hitler and Nazism would be innocent, at least, of the crime of genocide against the Jewish people.

They do not, however, deny the persecution of Jews and other groups under the Hitler regime, the deprivation of the rights of those they enjoyed, their separation and deportation to concentration camps, their consequent suffering and death by epidemics, Execution of some Jews and non-Jews, either this by the penalization against prisoners who carried out acts considered serious inside the fields, or simply by unfair abuse on the part of some officers. ^{[ Citation needed ]}

Techniques used by Holocaust deniers

The distinction between these two approaches is based on the techniques used to write such works. Accuracy and revision are fundamental to academic historians. As in any other scientific discipline , articles by historians are subjected to peer review , a method that leaves the work open to scrutiny by a number of experts equal in rank to the author, as prior to admission for publication in an arbitrated journal . On the contrary, instead of sending their works to publications where such quality controls exist, the deniers rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, using a number of fallacies logic to support his thesis. Because of this, the community of historians consider these writings as defective and unreliable.

The most common rhetorical techniques of the negationists are the following:

• Conspiracy Theories .
• Selective use of facts.
• Denial or mockery of known facts.
• Fallacies ad ignoratiam , That is, to pretend that, because something has not been proved to be true, then it is false. (For this reason, historians insist on the importance of historical memory and historical studies).
• Assumption of unproven facts.
• Invention of facts.
• Obfuscation of facts.
• Claim a “contra-genocide” causing confusion between victims and executioners (for example, the bombing of Dresden in World War II is for the deniers a “counter-genocide”, thus transforming the Germans into victims and excluding Of any kind of moral responsibility.
• Fallacies of equivocation and non sequitur .
• Appeal to the consequences.
• Excessive request for evidence (because of the complex nature of what can be considered as historical evidence, which differs from a logical proof, revisionists often ask historians to demonstrate an event which has been reasonably tested by historical standards and accepted as A fact by the historical community).
• Appeal to fear or resentment.
• Fallacies of association.
• Excessive generalization (error inductive ).
• Use of attractive or neutral euphemisms to disguise unpleasant facts that concern your posture.
• Use of unpleasant euphemisms to describe opposing facts.
• Fallacy of justification of an improper action.
• Fallacies and attacks ad hominem to discuss their views.
• Irrelevant conclusions .
• Absurd statements.
• Inversion of guilt. (Accusing Jews of provoking the Holocaust)

Reactions to Holocaust denialism

Criticism of negationism

There has been a substantial debate about the correct way to respond to denialist propaganda. Three lines of response have evolved in this regard.

Many scholars refuse to discuss denialism or its arguments at all, with the perception that doing so would give Holocaust deniers unwarranted legitimacy. ¹⁹

A second group of scholars, typified by Deborah Lipstadt, have denounced the methods and motivations of the negationists, while attempting to subtract them from legitimacy. Lipstadt explained his findings:

It is not necessary to waste time or effort in responding to the deniers’ claims. It would be a never-ending answer to the arguments put forward by those who freely falsify the results, cite out of context and simply dispatch reams of testimony. Unlike true academics, they have little, if any, respect for data or evidence. Their commitment is to an ideology and their “conclusions” are the way to support it. ” ²⁰

A third group, represented by the Nizkor Project website, responds by addressing the denial of the Holocaust directly. They address the arguments and allegations made by the negationist groups pointing out the errors of their statements. ²¹ Ken McVay, founder of Nizkor Project described his critique of Holocaust denier methods in a 1994 interview:

They quote a historical text: “KK Campbell says on page 82 of his famous book that no one died at Auschwitz.” Then one goes to the Library of Congress and looks for KK Campbell, page 82, and finds that what he really said was: “It was a good day at Dachau.” They get this straight because they know damn well that most people do not have time to approach the Library of Congress. But people read them and say to themselves, “Who would lie about such a thing when it is so easy to prove that they are wrong? They must be telling the truth.” ²²

In 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: “Remembering is a necessary rejection of those who say that the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated. Holocaust denial is the work of fanatics; we must reject their false proclamations every time. That wherever and by whomever they may be performed. ” ²³ In January 2007, the UN General Assembly condemned “without reservation any denial of the Holocaust,” although Iran dissociated itself from the resolution itself. ²⁴

A list of personalities and academics have spoken out against Holocaust denial. William Shulman, director of the Holocaust Research Center, describes the denial “… as if these people [in the Holocaust] were killed twice,” ²⁵ a sentiment echoed by literary theorist Jean Baudrillard , who argued that “to forget Extermination is part of extermination. ” ²⁶ Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel calls the Holocaust “the most documented tragedy in history. Never before has a tragedy sparked so much testimony from the murderers, the victims and even the millions of passers-by who Has the museum, all the other museums, files by thousands, by millions. ” ²⁷

Political use of negationism

Denial of the Holocaust is often used by movements anti - Semitic and neo - Nazis , since they share the view that exculpatory Hitler did not order any genocide, while denying the Holocaust and glorifying simultaneously. Highlights, Horst Mahler , founder of the Baader-Meinhof and now militant extreme right, who was in prison for spreading anti - Semitic propaganda. Also the leader of the National Front in France , Jean-Marie Le Pen , repeatedly condemned for crimes of complicity with the apology of war crimes and denial of a crime against humanity . ²⁸

However, some Holocaust deniers are not Nazi or anti-Semitic. Joseph Burg , a Jew, was an adviser and defender of Ernst Zündel in his 1988 trial, as was David Cole , who was called a traitor by the Jewish Defense League and was asked to retract, which he did. Paul Rassinier was a communist and a member of the French resistance against the German occupation. Although traditionally dominated by the extreme right, in denialism various extreme positions are expressed. As for example, that of Professor Robert Faurisson or Roger Garaudy , expelled from the French Communist Party and later converted to Islam , who are active propagandists of negationism.

Holocaust denial is also expressed in some Islamist regimes (such as Iran ), which give political cover to Holocaust denial at the highest level, as illustrated by the organization of a global negationist conference organized by the Government itself Iran in December 2006. ^{29 30} According to the Iranian Foreign Minister, ” the aim of the conference is not to deny or prove the holocaust, but to offer the opportunity for European researchers to give their views on this historical phenomenon .” The then foreign minister Iran , Manouchehr Mottaki , also added in his opening remarks that ” the Iranian president simple question: What if the Holocaust is a historical fact, why not be studied ?, sparked a wave of accusations against Iran, without a reasoned response . ” Also attending members of Neturei Karta , ³¹ an ultra-orthodox Jewish organization, anti-Zionists from Europe and United States who are against the very existence of the State of Israel, but that do not question the Holocaust. ³²

Holocaust denialism and anti-Semitism

The Anti - Defamation League (ADL) reported that “Holocaust denial is a classic example of the diabolical anti - Semitic doctrine, manipulation and threatening Jewish conspiracy”. ³³ On October 10, 2013, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an association of experts from 31 countries to promote the Holocaust memorial, adopted a new definition of work on Holocaust denialism. This definition refers to the anti-Semitic basis in the denial of the Holocaust:

Holocaust denial is the discourse and propaganda that denies the historical reality and degree of extermination of Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the “Holocaust” or “Shoah”. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to reinvocate that the Holocaust / Shoah never happened. Holocaust denial may include denying or publicly questioning the use of major destruction mechanisms (eg gas chambers, murder, famine, and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people. The denial of the Holocaust, in its various forms, is an expression of anti-Semitism. The attempt to deny the genocide of the Jews is an effort to exonerate National Socialism and anti-Semitism from their guilt and responsibility in the genocide of the Jewish people. Holocaust denial also includes blaming Jews for exaggerating or creating the Shoah for political or financial gain as if it were the result of a conspiracy plotted by the Jews. Thus, with the aim of making Jews guilty and anti-Semitism legitimate. The objectives of Holocaust denial are generally the rehabilitation of explicit anti-Semitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the same type of denying event. ^{3. 4}

Legislation against Holocaust denialism

In many countries, especially Europeans, denialism in relation to the Holocaust and other genocides is considered a criminal offense. The Council of Europe defines it as “denial, trivialization, justification or public approval of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity.” [1]

International Legislation

An additional protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime Council of Europe specifically covers the denial of the Holocaust and other genocides recognized as such by international courts since 1945 (Article 6, Section 1). [2]

National legislations

Laws relating to negationism and hate speech (including negationism) have been enacted in several countries, such as Loi Gayssot (adopted in France in 1990), which prohibits any expression “racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic” and That contemplates at least three years of jail to the negacionistas or people who express doubts on the Jewish extermination. In 1992, Austria enacted a similar law that contemplates up to ten years of imprisonment for these persons (article 3h Verbotsgesetz , 1947 ). The “Belgian Law on Negation” (adopted in 1995) prohibits public support, justification or denial of the Holocaust in Belgium . In Germany the denial or doubts of the holocaust in public according to the article 130 paragraph 3 (§ 130 Abs. 3) German penal code ( Strafgesetzbuch ) is penalized and is considered like “incitement to hatred” ( Volksverhetzung ). Other European countries that criminalize this conduct as a crime in its legal system are: Switzerland (Article 261 bis), Slovakia , Czech Republic , Lithuania , Poland , Canada , Liechtenstein , New Zealand , Netherlands , Romania and South Africa . Furthermore, under Law 5710-1950 it is also illegal in Israel .

This is not the case in the United States , where the so-called Institute for Historical Review , which is considered the main negationist organization in the world, is based. The United States considers that provisions such as those of the Council of Europe are not compatible with its constitutional order, and therefore did not sign the protocol.

Among the charges commonly attributed to denialists being tried before the courts are: ridicule or offense to Holocaust victims, defamation of the memory of the dead, popular incitement, incitement to racial hatred, denial of the murder of six million Jews, denial of Jewish extermination (Holocaust denialism), publication of false news, anti-Semitism , apology of Nazism and indirect support or complicity of genocide . One of the most well-known cases of legal prosecution, in addition to that of Ernst Zündel , was that of David Irving who was sentenced to three years in prison on 20 February 2006 for having openly denied the Holocaust in 1989. ³⁵

Holocaust deniers defend themselves by arguing that their opinions and works are protected by European treaties on freedom of expression , or as for example by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , and that the existence of these laws against them , confirm a censorship deliberate on the issue and believe that if they were wrong in their opinions, no reason for such laws exist. Some personalities who do not deny the Holocaust defend the right of the deniers to spread their ideas, such as the case of Noam Chomsky , who opposes the anti-negationist laws (see Faurisson case ) in defense of freedom of expression, or Deborah Lipstadt , Who despite his sour record with Irving has ruled against the decision of the Austrian court. “I feel uncomfortable with people being imprisoned for their speech, letting them march and fade away from all radar screens.” ^{36 37}

In November 2007 the Constitutional Court of Spain declared in a ruling that punishing the dissemination of ideas or doctrines that question or deny genocide implies a violation of the right to freedom of expression. The resolution endorses the constitutionality of article 607.2 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the dissemination “by any means” of ideas or doctrines that justify genocide, but declares null reference to the dissemination of arguments that question or deny those facts, and unconstitutional Criminal penalty ³⁸

In July of 2015 the Spanish Parliament, with the votes in favor of the PP and UPN, approved a reform of the penal code that, among other crimes, expressly pursues to the negacionistas of the Holocausto. Articles 510, 510-bis, 511, 512, 515 and 607 of the Penal Code punish incitement to hatred, violence and discrimination based on ethnic, religious, disability, sexual orientation, etc., and denial or exaltation of genocide or Their authors.

Holocaust denial in Arab countries

Holocaust denial has been regularly promoted by several Arab leaders and in various media throughout the Middle East . ³⁹ The government-financed press in Saudi Arabia routinely denies the existence of the Holocaust, or minimizes its importance. ⁴⁰ The Syrian government, as well as the Palestinian political group Hamas, have recently issued statements denying the Holocaust. ⁴¹

In August 2002 , the Zayed Center for Coordination and Monitoring, a think tank of the Arab League , whose President, Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates , promoted a symposium on the denial of Holocaust in Abu Dhabi . ⁴²

Hamas leaders have also promoted the denial of the Holocaust: Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi declared that the Holocaust never occurred, that the Zionists were behind the action of the Nazis, and that the Zionists financed Nazism. ⁴³ A press release by Hamas in April 2000 dismissed “the so-called Holocaust, which is a supposedly invented story without foundation.” ⁴⁴

The denial of the Holocaust has been resisted by prominent intellectual figures in the Arab world. In 2001 , a protest led by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish , the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury and others, led to the cancellation of a Holocaust Denial Conference planned by the Institute for Historical Review in Beirut. ^{Four. Five}

Notes and references