Why are there so many Holocaust deniers?

Question

One would think that the countless photographs of the death camps and the fact that almost all of the Jews of Poland were wiped out between 1939 and 1945 would tell them something!

Answer 1

There actually _Aren't_ a lot of them.  They just make a lot of noise and to a educated civilized person denying the Holocaust is nearly obscene.  So we react.  (With horror and disbelief that anyone could think that way.)

There is NO way to reason with these people.  They are generally not well educated.

Answer 2

Because they are idiots.

Answer 3

It is hard to believe that any group of people would let themselves be killed in such large numbers.  I am not a denier - I believe it happened - I just find it very hard to believe.

Answer 4

Which holocaust are you refering to? Biafra?

Rwanda? The Armenians? The Bosnian and former Yugoslavian Muslims? Darfur?

I'm sick of seeing the Jewish people putting a monopoly on the sympathy generated from being victims of a holocaust.

Most people have already forgotten the millions of people who died in the last twenty years in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sudan. Remember East Timor? How about Irian Jaya?

It's insulting to be reminded again and again about something that happened more than 60 years ago while conviniently forgetting (dare I say denying?) the victims of genocide we ourselves did nothing about.

I'm not denying the slaughter of Jews ( and FIVE MILLION other victims-communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists, White Rose members, Polish resistance fighters etc etc-who are rarely mentioned). I just think it needs to be put in perspective.

Why do we rate the loss of different ethnic lives differently? Is there a memorial for the Tutsis? Do you even care?

Answer 5

I'd say we have 3 categories here. The first would be, shall be say, vicious deniers. Those who are hard-core anti-Semites and whose hatred of Jews outweighs any reasonable attention to historical fact and evidence. The second would be, though it sounds like an oxymoron, honest deniers. By that I mean those who feel important problems exist with respect to the historical record on this topic and who are attaching an undue weight to those problems. The third would be, and I do not use this adjective in a pejorative sense, ignorant deniers. These are people, usually young people, who do not feel any emotive weight regarding events which occurred so far before their births and whose suspicions are aroused by law and legal prosecutions against those questioning the Holocaust.

Answer 6

Probably because in this day and age of photo and document manipulation one can not believe anything one sees, hears, or reads about without either some further research or a certain amount of faith. The powers that be make it a regular practice to lie to the masses to get their way. Also, as the numbers normally quoted are so tremendously huge, doubt in those numbers based on sheer physical impossibilities tends to spill over as doubt in the entire event. It is obvious that racism, hatred and murder ran rampant across Europe during that time and that there is no excuse for the extraordinary inhumane and barbaric treatment of many peoples. Unfortunately, when people start attaching numbers and quantities to such things it dehumanizes the reality of these terrible offenses and does indeed open loopholes for people who don't want to believe such things are possible.

Answer 7

They can't believe that someone they hero worship could do such a thing, even to people they hate as well.  I think you wil find that most holocaust deniers are also rasists, and white supremisits.  unfortunataly the world still has such people.  Maybe one day we will be able to accept each other for what we are rather than the skin colour, eye shape or religion.  but that day is still a long way off.

Answer 8

It's shocking how soon we americans forget about the govt. sponsered genocide against the native americans.....there is no telling how many we killed. Ignorance rules the day of those that deny the genocide of millions...be they jews, indians, slavs, asians, or africans. Sad times are these where lessons of history are repeated. Shame on those that ignore because it doesn't affect them personally of financially. After all this time...the past keeps repeating itself...and people stand by as if they have never seen it before. we are so spoiled.

Answer 9

It's all because they had no idea such an occurance existed then and they make themselves not believe it for that purpose. And they don't want to believe that someone would try to kill Jews for such a stupid reason.

Answer 10

There are still people around who have a factual and objective assessment of history without the usual manipulation of the facts by all kind of interest groups.

These people are no deniers and no apologizers for that what happened.

However, there is a whole industry of perpetual "victims" and "survivors" who have benefited (how horrible it sounds) from the misery of so many and who always  justify any misdeed and genocidal act committed by fanatic racist people and their own Israel state.

Further, it is a very inconvenient truth for many that there have been a great many of genocidal acts in much greater numbers of victims committed by other nations like the Soviet Union, China, Japan, Turkey, Yugoslavia and  in Africa. Because these facts distract the public from their one-sided indoctrinated hatred towards the totally evil n**i regime.

Holocausts continue in this horrible world of wars and fanaticism, only the victims are not of Jewish origins, therefore they are not getting special interest by media and the public.

Answer 11

It because they fear of being persecuted themselves by the law.

Answer 12

Thank God the Jews have kept Their Holocaust in the forefront - otherwise we would have forgotten IT just like some people have forgotten the others listed.

I suggest that those who are offended by the omission of the OTHER Holocausts get on their bikes and devote their lives to teaching, reminding, memorializing the victims of those crimes. Then they won't be forgotten either.

What do you say?

Or are you just going to sit there and bash Jews?

Answer 13

To Paul B-

You're incorrect in your terminology. The term genocide is a generic term that can be used for any mass slaughter, however, the term holocaust has only been used twice in the last 100 years, and that is for the Hitler genocides and what is currently going on in Darfur. The others, while they were horrific and senseless genocides, cannot be considered holocausts. Also, I think you'll find that the Jews are the most sensitive when it comes to genocide. As a matter of fact, I converted to judaism many years ago and the first I ever heard about the Darfur holocaust was through my rabbi at temple. It was about 5 years before I ever heard any mention of it anywhere else, and by that time my temple had raised thousands and thousands of dollars trying to help end the tragedy. So get your facts straight before you criticize.

Answer 14

The terms "Holocaust denier" and "Holocaust denial" are often objected to by the people to whom they are applied. These people typically prefer "revisionist" and "revisionism". Scholars believe that term to be misleading, however.While historical revisionism is the re-examination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information, deniers seek evidence to support a preconceived theory, omitting substantial facts.

Historical revisionism is an academic approach that holds that a given slice of history, as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate, and should hence be revised accordingly. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies, and it is applied to the study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge and change our understanding of it. A very different process unfolds when someone proceeds from the premise that a major element of human history is simply inaccurate, and ignores or routinely minimizes evidence that conflicts with that premise. History done in this way is not revisionism, but denial.

Because the term "revisionist" has become associated with Holocaust deniers, Holocaust historians today generally avoid using it to describe themselves, though they continue to study and revise opinions on aspects of the Holocaust. In the words of historian Donald Niewyk of Southern Methodist University:

    "With the main features of the Holocaust clearly visible to all but the willfully blind, historians have turned their attention to aspects of the story for which the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous. These are not minor matters by any means, but turn on such issues as Hitler's role in the event, Jewish responses to persecution, and reactions by onlookers both inside and outside n**i-controlled Europe."

Holocaust denial is sometimes referred to as "negationism", from the French term Le négationnisme, introduced by Henry Rousso.Negationists attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying or simply ignoring essential facts. According to Jacques Derrida:

    "Generally speaking, 'revisionism' in history is the attempt to critique established dogmas, a critique that can in no way be included in with the type of negationism that attempts to deny the reality of acknowledged facts."

According to Koenraad Elst:

    "Negationism means the denial of historical crimes against humanity. It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but the denial of known facts. The term negationism has gained currency as the name of a movement to deny a specific crime against humanity, the n**i genocide on the Jews in 1941-45, also known as the holocaust (Greek: fire sacrifice) or the Shoah (Hebrew: disaster). Negationism is mostly identified with the effort at re-writing history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted."

The three key claims of Holocaust deniers are:

    * The n***s had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews.

    * n***s did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews.

    * The figure of 5 to 7 million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration, and the actual number is an order of magnitude lower.

Answer 15

SHAME