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Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history. In attempting to revise the past, illegitimate historical revisionism may use techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mistranslating texts.
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust denial involves making one or more of the following false claims:
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States–based nonprofit organization which promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a "historical revisionist" organization, the IHR promotes antisemitic viewpoints and has links to several neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations.
David John Cawdell Irving is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it. Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German war crimes in World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents.
Fred Arthur Leuchter Jr. is an American manufacturer of execution equipment and Holocaust denier, best known as the author of the Leuchter report, a pseudoscientific document alleging there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Prior to the document's publication, he was contracted by authorities of several U.S. states to improve the designs of instruments for capital punishment. He was charged in Massachusetts with misrepresenting himself to penitentiaries as an engineer, despite having no relevant qualifications. He plea bargained with state prosecutors and received two years' probation. He has also been accused of running a "death row shakedown", where he threatened to testify for the defense in capital cases if he was not given contracts for his services by that state.
Melvin Mermelstein was a Czechoslovak-born American Holocaust survivor and autobiographer. A Jew, he was the sole survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz concentration camp.
Willis Allison Carto was an American far-right political activist. He described himself as a Jeffersonian and a populist, but was primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.
The Holocaust—the murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the best-documented genocide in history. Although there is no single document which lists all Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, there is conclusive evidence that about six million were murdered. There is also conclusive evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Operation Reinhard extermination camps, and in gas vans, and that there was a systematic plan by the Nazi leadership to murder them.
The Journal of Historical Review was a non-peer-reviewed, pseudoacademic periodical focused on advancing Holocaust denial. It was published by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), based in Torrance, California. It ran quarterly from 1980 until 1992, and then bimonthly from 1993 until publication ceased in 2002. A supplement, IHR Newsletter, was published alongside the journal.
Germar Rudolf, also known as Germar Scheerer, is a German chemist and a convicted Holocaust denier.
William David McCalden was active in the British political far-right. After moving to the United States, he was co-founder of the Institute for Historical Review in 1978 and advocated Holocaust denial.
Michael Anthony Hoffman II is an American author. He has been described as a conspiracy theorist and, by the Anti-Defamation League and other sources, as a Holocaust denier and antisemite.
Ahmed Rami is a Moroccan-Swedish writer, political activist, coup d'etat participant, military officer and Holocaust denier. He gained attention as the founder of the radio station Radio Islam, which now functions as a website.
Noontide Press is an American publishing entity which describes itself as a publisher of "hard-to-find books and recordings from a dissident, 'politically incorrect' perspective." It publishes numerous antisemitic pseudohistorical titles, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew. The Anti-Defamation League describes its founding and early years:
The Institute for Historical Review and its publishing arm, Noontide Press, were founded in 1978 by the leading organizer of modern American anti-Semitism, Willis Carto, and his wife Elisabeth. Based near Los Angeles in Torrance, California, the group pioneered organizing efforts among Holocaust deniers, who had heretofore labored mostly in isolation and obscurity. The group's first "Revisionist Convention" in September 1979 featured speakers from the U.S., France, Germany, England and Sweden, many of whom subsequently contributed articles to the inaugural issue of IHR's Journal of Historical Review the following spring. With the Noontide Press offering a means for the sale and distribution of their writings, professional deniers had found something of a rainmaker in Carto.
Karl H. Striedieck II is a world record setting glider pilot, a member of the U.S. Soaring Hall of Fame, and an active Holocaust denier. He was an early pioneer of ridge soaring in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians in the 1960s, ultimately setting nine world records flying gliders there. He was selected for the U.S. national soaring team 12 times, and won a silver medal in the world championships in 1978 and 1983.
The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust was a two-day conference in Tehran, Iran that opened on December 11, 2006. Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference sought "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue". Participants included David Duke, Moshe Aryeh Friedman, Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Töben, Richard Krege, Michèle Renouf, Ahmed Rami and Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta.
Wilhelm Stäglich was a World War II army officer, later a financial judge in Hamburg, and a prominent Holocaust denier.
Carlo Mattogno is an Italian writer and Holocaust denier. He served on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Historical Review and as an editor of its publication Journal of Historical Review. As of 2016, Mattogno is an editorial advisor and columnist for a journal published by the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, also a Holocaust denial organisation.
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.
Dariusz Ratajczak was a Polish historian, publicist and right-wing activist. In 1999 he was convicted of Holocaust denial in Poland.
References
- ↑ WILL, GEORGE F. (August 30, 1993). "Holocaust Denial: When in Doubt, Doubt". baltimoresun.com.
- ↑ "Mark Weber". Southern Poverty Law Center.
- ↑ "Holocaust denier Mark Weber banned from entering U.K. for "unacceptable" behavior". Newsweek. January 17, 2018.
- ↑ "The Institute for Historical Review / Holocaust denial / History / Auschwitz-Birkenau". auschwitz.org.
- 1 2 "Selected IHR Author Biographies". www.ihr.org.
- ↑ Huerta, Carlos C.; Shiffman-Huerta, Dafna (1996). "Holocaust Denial Literature: Its Place in Teaching the Holocaust". In Millen, Rochelle L. (ed.). New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars. NYU Press. p. 189. ISBN 0-8147-5540-2.
- ↑ Cesarani, David; Kavanaugh, Sarah (2004). "The politics of uniqueness: reflections on the recent polemical turn in Holocaust and genocide scholarship". Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. Routledge. p. 376. ISBN 0-415-27509-1.
- ↑ "ABOUT THE IHR". www.ihr.org.
- ↑ Who Are The Holocaust Revisionists? Archived 2018-09-18 at the Wayback Machine . Skeptic Magazine
- ↑ Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld and Diana R. Grant, Crimes of Hate: Selected Readings (Thousand Oaks, Cal: Sage Publications, 2004).
- ↑ "Holocaust denier Mark Weber left stranded in Madrid after realising that Theresa May banned him from the UK". Campaign Against Antisemitism. January 22, 2018.
