Tina Pinkney Pinkney 1

Marta T. Henriksen
Sociology 213
14 July 2005

The Holocaust: Denying It Happened

Just about everyone knows about the Holocaust, the systematic killing of millions of

Jews around the time of World War II, but yet there are several amateur and academic historians that claim

the Holocaust “is either highly exaggerated or otherwise completely falsified.”(Wikipedia) In this paper, I

search for an answer as to why these people choose to deny the Holocaust.

According to the article, “Holocaust Denial”, from Wikipedia, public denial of the Holocaust

began in the 1960s. French historian, Paul Rassinier published “The Drama of the European Jews.”

Rassinier was a Holocaust survivor himself. His work questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust.

Opponents note that Rassimer has anti-Semitic views and that he was arrested and transferred to Poland

when the extermination was in progress, therefore he cannot possibly know if there were mass gassings.

Holocaust deniers claim their work is free speech and does not need to be legally enforced.

Claiming free speech to publicize denial of crimes against humanity is, according to the European Courts of

Human Rights case-law, “contrary to the spirit in which the convention was adopted in the first place.

Holocaust Industry and Shoah Business are terms used by those who believe that Jewish leaders

use the Holocaust for financial and political gain. This term was brought about by Norman Finkelstein who

is a jew and the son of Holocaust survivors. Finkelstein does believe the Holocaust happened, but feels it's

memory is being “dishonestly exploited.” Deniers have followed suit, claimimg the Holocaust was faked

for the purpose of financial and political gain.

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Harry Elmer Barnes, U.S. historian and the first American to take to the idea of Holocaust denial,

first produced works that were fairly respectable historical analysis ”despite the fact that his agenda was a

clear denunciation of U.S. foreign policy during World War I.”(Ben S. Austin) Not until the late 1950s did
he move to the issue of outrage against jews. It seems that discovering Rassimer is what changed his

thinking. He began by saying the Holocaust claims were exaggerated and then eventually concluded they

were made up. He attempted to raise doubts about the existence of gas chambers for the purpose of

extermination. The gas chambers are a matter of special concern for deniers as they represent the core of

the Holocaust. Barnes' states that the gas chambers were ”post-war inventions”

Austin J. App contributed his coding of denial, which consist of eight fundamental

beliefs(Deborah Lipstadt, 1994; 99-100):

1. Emigration, not extermination was the Nazi plan for dealing with Germany's ”Jewish problem”

His main evidence for this statement is that if Germany had planned total extermination, no jews would

have survived.

2. No jews were gassed in any German camps and probably not at Auschwitz either. He argued

that the crematoria were designed to cremate those who died from other causes - natural illness, ect.

3. Jews who disappeared during the years of World War II and have not been accounted for did so

in territories under Soviet, rather than German, control.

4. The majority of jews who were killed by the Nazi were people whom the Nazis had every right

to ”execute” as subversives, spies, and criminals.

5. If the Holocaust claims have any truth, Israel would have opened it's archives to historians.

Instead, he claims they have preferred to continue perpetuating the Holocaust ”hoax” by utilizing the

charge of ”antisemitism” against anyone who questions it.

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historians. Instead, he claims they have preferred to continue perpetuating the Holocaust ”hoax” by

utilizing the charge of ”antisemitism” against anyone who questions it.

6. All evidence to support the Holocaust ”hoax” of six million dead rests upon misquotes of Nazi

and Nazi documents.

7. Burden of proof argument. It is incumbent upon the accusers to prove the six million figure.
Instead, App argues, Germany has been forced to prove that six million is incorrect. This argument rests

upon App's (and others') assertion that reparations paid to Israel by Germany are based on the six million

figure,. He consistently refers to the reparations as a Zionist ”swindle”.

8. Jewish historians and other scholars have great discrepancies in their calculations of the number

of victims. App takes this as evidence that the claims are unverified.

In an article titled, ” The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?” by Antonio Pitamitz, Pitamitz asks Dr.

Robert Faurisson questions about his claim that the gas chamber never existed . Faurisson alleges that these

”homicidal gas chambers” are nothing but a tall story of wartime.” He admits that German concentration

camps existed, as well as crematorium ovens, but says cremation is no more offensive or criminal than

burial. He claims the corpses shown in photos are “clearly the corpses of typhus victims.” He also claims

that they only used gas for the fumigation of vermin and to disinfect garments. According to Faurisson,

”There is no single person capable of telling me , I have been interned in such a camp and I have seen

there, with my own two eyes, a building which was undoubtly a gas chamber”, ”And even more curious:

there does not exist to this day any book, nor even any article from the Exterminationist school on the

subject of ”gas chambers.”

Hoss is the only one who left a confession, in which the description of the actual gassing is short

and vague. Rudolf Hoss write. ”Half an hour after having released the gas,

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the door would be opened and the fan turned on. The bodies immediately began to be removed.” Hoss then

adds, ”the crew in charge of handling and removing 2,000 bodies from the ”gas chamber” and transporting

them to the crematory ovens did so while eating and smoking, therefore these duties were performed

without gas masks.” There is no way someone can do this without perishing , therefore this could not have

happened. But in the case of the ”gas chambers” there has been no forensic examination in 35 years.

Some deniers take on the characteristics of extremeism. Behaviors that are part of extermise

include: “ a belief in an influential “conspiracy” and therefore a lack in faith of democracy, open hatred of

opponents because they are “enemies” deserving this contempt, willingness to deny these “enemies” civil

liberties, constantly making irrational accusations and lashing out at certain individuals, belief that they

have the ultimate truth, and belief that America is controlled by some sort of powerful sabotage or
conspiratorial group.”(Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Wolfgang Neugebauer)

Many of the claims of deniers have been challenged by opponents of Holocaust denial and

deniers. Deniers have claimed that because there was more gas in the delousing chambers than in the

extermination chambers and that there would need to be more in the extermination chambers to accomplish

a mass gassing, this shows that no gassing occurred. HCN, the gas used, works better in warm blooded

humans and a much smaller concentration is needed to kill people compared to lice. They also claim it was

impossible to kill six million people at Auschwitz. “Judging by the amount and area of the gas chambers,

and the number of Kremas, it was impossible to kill six million people in the time interval in which the

concentration camps existed.” No claims have been made that six million people died at Auschwitz. Many

died in other camps, ghettos, and in Soviet territory. Anywhere between 900,000 and 1,600,000 were

gassed to death in Auschwitz. There were five Kremas and

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fifteen furnaces. Each furnace had the capacity to consume three to four bodies at once, in forty five

minutes. One gas chamber is about 2220 square feet, which can hold a few hundred people when crammed

into it, as they were. Fifteen furnaces, a least three bodies in forty five minutes, could burn at least 720

bodies in 12 hours, that turns out to be over a quarter of a million bodies in one year from one Krema,

imagine the total from all five Kremas. Bodies were also burned in massive pits as well.

In a letter sent to SS General Kammler in Berlin dated June 20, 1943, from Jahrling, statements

are made about the number of bodies that can be burned in twenty four hours is 4,756. Jahrling gives

specific number for each Krema. Krema I, 340 corpses, Krema IV and V 1,768 and Krema II and III 1,440.

Deniers claim that if these people were gassed and burned, where is all the ash? There is only a small

amount of ash left after a corpses is burned, which makes it easy to dispose of.(Deborah Lipstadt 1994;99-

100)

They say the death list from Auschwitz shows that less people were gassed, but this is because the

list only has those who had been given a serial number. Most were classified as “unfit to work” and

immediately gassed. They also do not understand how eyewitnesses to these “gassings” survived, why were

they not killed as well? These survivors escaped during rebellion. Also, Auschwitz was in total chaos at the

end of the war. Soviets were approaching which left no time to kill the remaining prisoners.
 Statements about there not being enough jews in Europe for there to have been six million killed

are also made by deniers. There are population statistics that prove there were enough jews in Europe at the

time. About 11 million jews were involved in the “Jewish problem.” There were 131,800 in Altreich,

43,700 in Austria, 420,000 in Eastern territories, 2,284 in Nazi occupied Poland, 160,000 in the

Netherlands, 342,000 in Rumania, 742,800 in Hungary, 5,000,000 in USSR, and 446,484 in White Russia,

for a total number over

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11,000,000 pre-war. After the war there were 195,00 in Germany, 53,000 in Austria, 255,000 in

Czechoslovakia, 1,500 in Denmark, 140,00 in France, 57,000 in Belgium, 3,000 in Luxembourg, 1,000 in

Norway, 120,000 in Holland, 20,000 in Italy, 64,000 in Yugoslavia, 64,000 in Greece, 5,000 in Bulgaria,

530,000 in Rumania, 200,000 in Hungary, 3,271,000 in Poland, and 1,050,000in USSR, less dispersed

refugees(308,000), a total of 5,721,500 jews were exterminated according to these calculations.(Deborah

Lipstadt 1994)

The Holocaust is not a single event that a single fact can prove or disprove. The Holocaust is a

bunch of events in which a lot of data is collected. Errors in this data collection cannot prove or disprove

the Holocaust, because these errors in data never proved it in the first place. Data relied on by historians are

written documents, eyewitness accounts, photographs, the camps themselves, and conclusive evidence from

other sources.

Holocaust deniers are far from the skeptical, fair-minded academic members they pretend to be,

they are political activists, pushing a plan of hate. They use tactics of hoaxers and frauds to attempt to

rewrite history to suit themselves. They have used every imaginable method to develop the “believable

story.” We need to identify the small group of impostors who call themselves historians and uncover their

most cruel lies, in order to dispose of them.

The one outstanding characteristic of deniers, one that binds them together, is antisemitism, the

language of hate and fear. The works of deniers, such as Rassinier, Barnes, and App, always fall back on

viewing jews as stereotypical. These stereotypical views have been around for centuries and show no sign

of going away with the current group of deniers. If someone can say the Holocaust never existed, what

makes other historical events safe?(Ken McVay and Daniel Keren, 1993)
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Works Cited

“Holocaust Denial and Deniers” Ben S. Austin

“Holocaust Denial” Wikipedia

“Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory” Plume, 1994 Deborah Lipstadt

“ The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?” Antonio Pitamitz to Dr. Robert Faurisson Storia Illustrata, August

1979)

Ken McVay and Daniel Keren 1993

“ Can it Happen Again: Chronicals of the Holocaust” edited by Roselle Chartock and Jack Spencer, various

authors.