What are your thoughts on Holocaust Revisionism?

Question

Do you think people like David Irving and Ernst Zundel have raised legitimate questions regarding the holocaust? Also do you believe that is was just to punish such people using holocaust denial laws present in much of western Europe? Do you think it is necessary to have an historical event protected by law? Do you think we should also have the same laws in America, and should we have laws making it illegal to question other aspects of history?

Answer 1

Before she became ill and moved back to Italy to live with one of her sons, one of my neighbors talked about the Holocaust. She showed me her concentration camp tattoo. I have also visited the National Holocaust Museum.

My father-in-law was in the 3rd wave at Omaha beach on D-Day and eventually took part in liberating a camp. (Don't know exactly where.) He told me enough as an eyewitness that I have no doubts.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. We can NEVER get enough mileage from this lesson. Miss Ida told me something that wasn't original with her, but it was good lesson. All that is required for evil to win is for good people to do nothing.

The Holocaust deniers are basically BLOCKHEADS who deserve to be ridiculed. It happened. It doesn't matter if you cannot believe that people would do such a thing to other people. It is a lesson about power and madness. And damned if it isn't starting again, this time with the USA and their waterboarding and destroying evidence. It is just another chance for good people to do nothing.

Write or phone your congressman and tell them you want the CIA coverup uncovered. Our country CANNOT allow such things to go on in our name.

Answer 2

I am a believer in free speech and don't think the US should amend its Constitution to criminalize Holocaust denial. (I say this as a Jew whose family lost many of its members in the Holocaust, and with full realization that people like David Irving and Ernst Zundel hate and revile me simply for being a Jew.)

However, as to the substance of that "theory", it is bogus. Neither Irving nor Zundel have raised "legitimate questions". The Nazis themselves left copious evidence of the fact and the magnitude of the Final Solution -- and the only people who want to "revise" that part of history are those with a clear agenda to deny that the atrocities took place.

Holocaust denial is nothing new. The evidence we have today clearly shows, that it was the Nazis' plan all along to deny the Final Solution once it was completed. In the last days of WWII, they made it a crime to mention the Final Solution and took frantic steps to destroy the death camps and to get rid of the bodies -- but unluckily for them, there was just too much stuff they would have to destroy beyond recognition, and the only thing that they accomplished was to leave behind a showing of their attempted cover-up. Allied troops reported also that people in towns located next to concentration camps staunchly denied being aware of any such thing, although the stench of those camps (namely of burnt and/or decomposing flesh) was not merely felt in the towns, but was indeed overwhelming; and the crematoria burned so many people that soot covered buildings and cars every day.

My guess is that had the Nazis won, they would first deny the Final Solution, and then several decades later they would begin to deny that the Jews even existed. Their academics would characterize the Jews either as an entirely mythical people, or a primeval tribe that disappeared in antiquity. At least that's what some Islamist anti-Semites are attempting to do now.

I also don't think that a historical event needs to be protected by law -- it is impossible to protect an historical event by law. A historical event is an event that happened. The Holocaust happened. Nothing that scum like Irving or Zundel say or do will ever change the truth. And free speech does not mean endorsement or recognition.
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Ferret: Even if you think people are getting "too much mileage" out of the Holocaust -- that does not furnish a good-faith basis to deny that the Holocaust took place. The way I see it, those who got the most mileage out of the Holocaust are the Germans -- at least they got to keep most of the stuff they looted.

Answer 3

How can there actually BE 'legitimate questions' about an event that happened and can be verifiably and accurately proven TO have happened?

David Irving has spent years claiming that the Holocaust did not happen. If you study the people who support him, you will find that the vast majority belong to right wing nationalist parties and/or neo Nazi groups.

Can you name for me any other historical event where people make their living by denying it ever happened?

And yes, I do believe we have to stop people like Zundel - a well known neo Nazi - from spreading their poison. They incite hatred towards Jews; why should they be allowed to continue doing this?

You seem to think that all Irving and Zundel do is 'question' the Holocaust. Even if that is all they do, it is irrational and it is dangerous ultimately. There are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors left alive to tell the truth. In order to ensure that nothing as grotesque as the Holocaust ever happens again, we have to ensure that it doesn't get denied and dismissed.

A question for you:

- let's suppose that, G-d forbid, your entire family gets massacred in a truly horrific way. How would you feel if despite all the evidence, people started denying that it had ever happened? Would their 'questions' be legitimate?

Because that is the same scenario, just smaller.

EDIT TO THE ANSWERER ABOVE ME;

- sorry, I have to correct you. human skin WAS used to make among other things, lampshades and also a type of soap. this has never been 'disproven'.

FERRET - no Jew ever 'uses' the Holocaust as a 'political tool'. If you'd bothered to apply even a modicom of logic, you'd realise that the only people to ever post queries about the Holocaust seem to be NON Jews; so it's not Jews who are, as you imply, going on about it too much.

Answer 4

Above all, no, I do not think we should make illegal any kind of questioning of any aspect of history. I believe this is a healthy and important pursuit.

But I do not believe what people like David Irving and Ernst Zundel are doing can accurately be called "revisionism". Their arguments are based in a series of logical fallacies, most notable of which is their demand for a single "proof" that can confirm or deny the Holocaust, the gas chambers, etc. They are forgetting that the Holocaust and all of its details are the accepted fact, and that it is their duty to uncover counter-evidence. They refuse the multitude of evidence all pointing towards its existence. And by their blatant refusal they make clear their motives do not lie in open-mindedness and historical self-examination, but in blatant racism/ hatred towards the Jewish people. This hurtful ideology places them in rank apart from most labeled conspiracy theorists, and this is the reason why such laws are in place.
The laws are not intended to punish those who question the accuracy of historical events, but to punish those who perpetuate crimes of hate in (admittedly) unique ways. I also realize that these laws in Europe are often taken to rather extreme lengths, and I believe that reform of the laws is necessary, with further emphasis placed on examining the presented evidence and motive of each accused denier, without always assuming the worst. I do not think these laws are necessary in the U.S., as there has been markedly less denial here than in Europe.


As an aside, I believe much of the reasoning for the laws is also derived from a statewide reluctance to give equal grounding to these "revisionists" as they would for established historians, since the great majority are not accredited in any way. Nobody wants to seriously examine their evidence anymore, since it is usually just a repeat of already discounted arguments. Sure, they have brought up good points in the past, publicly eradicating myths like human skin lampshades, but these are always facts already accepted by historians who have chosen not the state outright for fear of appearing too radical.
Legitimate questions: none.

Answer 5

There is a HUGE diffference between questioning aspects of history and denying nearly 20 million people were killed by a group of haters for their religion and ethnicity.

Answer 6

I think that enough 'mileage' as been gotten out of the Holocaust. You would think that they where the only ones that got a bad time during WWII. I bet you and most other Americans don't know who the 'Romani' where / are

BTW WIZJP...Raul Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews, estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust

I'm not a Holocaust denier. But just get over it and stop using it as a political tool