View source for Holocaust denial

{{Short description|Antisemitic conspiracy theory}}
{{Pp-extended|small = yes}}
{{Use American English|date=November 2023}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2023}}
{{Antisemitism|Manifestations}}
'''Holocaust denial''' is the [[historical negationism|negationist]] and [[Antisemitic trope|antisemitic]] claim that [[Nazi Germany]] and [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|its collaborators]] did not [[The Holocaust|commit genocide against European Jews]] during [[World War II]], ignoring [[Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust|overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary]]. Theories<ref name="antisemitic" /><ref name="conspiracy" /> assert that the [[genocide]] of [[Jews]] is a fabrication or exaggeration.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Coady|first1=David|title=Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate|date=2019|publisher=[[Routledge]]|isbn=978-1-315-25957-4|chapter=Conspiracy Theories and Official Stories *|quote=Holocaust denial is one, unfortunately widespread, example of a conspiracy theory.}}</ref><ref name="ushmmdenialmisinformation">{{cite web |title=Holocaust Deniers and Public Misinformation |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/holocaust-deniers-and-public-misinformation |access-date=May 29, 2021 |website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210519225227/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/holocaust-deniers-and-public-misinformation |archive-date=May 19, 2021}}</ref>{{R|definition}} Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims:{{R|often claims|Key elements|Assertions}} that Nazi Germany's "[[Final Solution]]" was aimed only at [[Expulsions and exoduses of Jews|deporting Jews]] from the territory of the Third Reich and did not include their extermination; that Nazi authorities did not use [[extermination camp]]s and [[gas chamber]]s for the [[mass murder]] of Jews; that the actual number of Jews murdered is significantly lower than the accepted figure of approximately six million; and that the Holocaust is a [[hoax]] perpetrated by the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]], [[International Jewish conspiracy|Jews]], or the [[Soviet Union]].<ref name="ushmmdenialmisinformation" />{{R|hoax}}

Holocaust denial has roots in postwar Europe, beginning with writers such as [[Maurice Bardèche]] and [[Paul Rassinier]]. In the United States, the [[Institute for Historical Review]] gave Holocaust denial a [[Pseudo-scholarship|pseudo-scholarly]] platform and helped spread it globally.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last1=Weitzman |first1=Mark |title=The Routledge history of antisemitism |last2=Williams |first2=Robert J. |last3=Wald |first3=James |date=2024 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-429-76751-7 |series=The Routledge histories |location=Abingdon, Oxon |pages=373–376}}</ref> In the [[Islamic world]], Holocaust denial has been used to delegitimize [[Israel]]; deniers portray the Holocaust as a fabrication to justify the creation of a Jewish state.<ref name=":1" /> [[Iran]] is the leading state sponsor, embedding Holocaust denial into its official ideology through state-backed conferences and cartoon contests.<ref name=":1" /> In former [[Eastern Bloc]] countries, deniers do not deny the mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals.{{R|post-Soviet}}

The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores historical evidence.{{R|predetermined}} Scholars use the term ''[[Denialism|denial]]'' to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in order to distinguish them from legitimate [[historical revisionists]], who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using established historical [[methodology|methodologies]].{{R|terminology}} Holocaust deniers generally do not accept ''denial'' as an appropriate description of their activities and use the euphemism ''[[Historical negationism|revisionism]]'' instead.{{R|Revisionist}} Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs. It is [[Legality of Holocaust denial|illegal in Canada, Israel, and many European countries]], including Germany itself. In 2007 and 2022, the [[United Nations General Assembly]] adopted resolutions condemning Holocaust denial.

==Terminology and etymology==
Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as "[[Denialism|deniers]]".{{R|Revisionist}} [[Emory University]] professor [[Deborah Lipstadt]] has written that: "The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past."{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=25}} Scholars consider this misleading since the methods of Holocaust denial differ from those of legitimate historical revision.<ref>"The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about a historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event—like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust—did, in fact, occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence...."</ref> Legitimate historical revisionism is explained in a resolution adopted by the [[Duke University]] History Department, November 8, 1991, and reprinted in ''Duke Chronicle'', November 13, 1991, in response to an advertisement produced by Bradley R Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust:

{{blockquote|That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly correct; however, what historians do is very different from this advertisement. Historical revision of major events ... is not concerned with the actuality of these events; rather, it concerns their historical interpretation – their causes and consequences generally.<ref>{{cite book |title=Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory |edition=reprint |last=Lipstadt |first=Deborah E. |author-link=Deborah Lipstadt |year=1994 |publisher=Plume |isbn=978-0-452-27274-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/denyingholocaust00lips}}</ref>}}

Lipstadt writes that modern Holocaust denial draws its inspiration from various sources, including a school of thought which used an established method to question government policies.<ref>{{cite book |first=Deborah E. |last=Lipstadt |author-link=Deborah Lipstadt |title=Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_yLm_cHp_REC |date=December 18, 2012 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-1-4767-2748-6 |quote=Modern Holocaust denial draws inspiration from a variety of sources. Among them is a legitimate historical tradition that was highly critical of government policies and believed that history was being used to justify these policies. The deniers consider themselves heirs of a group of influential American historians who were deeply disturbed by American involvement in World War I. These respected scholars, who called themselves revisionists, would have been appalled to learn of the purposes to which their arguments were put.}}{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

In 1992, Donald L. Niewyk gave some examples of how legitimate historical revisionism—the re-examination of accepted history and its updating with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information—may be applied to the study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge to change the historical understanding of it:

{{blockquote|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 Nazi-controlled Europe.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Niewyk |editor-first=Donald L. |title=The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation |publisher=D. C. Heath and Company |date=1992 |page=7 |chapter=1: Introduction |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GbcWAQAAIAAJ |isbn=9780618214624}}</ref>}}

In contrast, the Holocaust denial movement bases its approach on the predetermined idea that the Holocaust, as understood by mainstream historiography, did not occur.{{R|predetermined}} Sometimes referred to as "[[Historical negationism|negationism]]", from the French term {{Lang|fr|négationnisme}} introduced by [[Henry Rousso]],<ref>See Alain Finkielkraut, Mary Byrd Kelly, Richard J. Golsan. [https://archive.org/details/futureofnegation0000fink/page/125 ''The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide'']. [[University of Nebraska Press]], 1998.</ref> Holocaust deniers attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. [[Koenraad Elst]] writes:

{{blockquote|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 Nazi genocide on the Jews in 1941–45, also known as the Holocaust (Greek: complete burning) 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.<ref>[[Koenraad Elst]]. [http://voiceofdharma.org/books/negaind/ch1.htm Chapter One&nbsp;– Negationism in General] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071025063927/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/negaind/ch1.htm |date=October 25, 2007 }}, ''Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam'', ''The Voice of India'', 2002.</ref>}}

In "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah", political scientist {{ill|Clemens Heni|de}} writes:
{{blockquote|Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. [[Manfred Gerstenfeld]] discusses [[Holocaust trivialization]] in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published a voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust", "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Heni |first=Clemens |date=Fall 2008 |title=Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah |journal=Jewish Political Studies Review |location=Jerusalem |volume=20 |issue=3/4 |pages=73–92 |jstor=25834800}}</ref>}}

==Causes==
There are a wide variety of motivations for denying the Holocaust, which can include antisemitism, German nationalism, and sympathy for National Socialism.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Motivations and Impact of Contemporary Holocaust Denial in Germany |date=7 March 2013 |doi=10.4324/9780203727249-25 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203727249-25/motivations-impact-contemporary-holocaust-denial-germany-wolfgang-benz}}</ref>
[[Enzo Traverso]] argues that [[instrumentalization of the Holocaust]] could lead to Holocaust denial: "many will come to believe that the Holocaust is a myth invented to defend the interests of Israel and its allies".<ref name=Traverso>{{cite book |last1=Traverso |first1=Enzo |title=Gaza Faces History |date=3 October 2024 |publisher=Footnote Press |isbn=978-1-80444-179-4 |page=search "Holocaust" |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R-sZEQAAQBAJ&q=holocaust}}</ref>

Although some have argued that Holocaust denial is rising over time, other evidence indicates that it remains a fringe belief.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lucas |first1=Yasmine Eve |title=Holocaust denial discourse: A conspiracy/theory |journal=Memory Studies |date=29 September 2025 |article-number=17506980251379667 |doi=10.1177/17506980251379667}}</ref>

==Background==
===Denial as a means of genocide===
[[Lawrence Douglas]] argues that denial was invented by the perpetrators and employed as a means of genocide. For example, trucks of [[Zyklon B]] were labeled with [[Red Cross]] symbols and victims were told that they would be "[[resettlement to the East|resettled]]". Douglas also cites the [[Posen speeches]] as an example of denial while genocide was ongoing, with Himmler referring to the Holocaust as "an unnamed and never to be named page of glory". According to Douglas, the denial of mass murder using gas chambers recalls the Nazi efforts to persuade the victims that they were actually harmless showers.<ref name=Douglas>{{cite book |first=Lawrence |last=Douglas |editor1-last=Hennebel |editor1-first=Ludovic |editor2-last=Hochmann |editor2-first=Thomas |title=Genocide Denials and the Law |date=2011 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-987639-6 |chapter=From Trying the Perpetrator to Trying the Denier and Back Again |pages=55–56}}</ref>

===Efforts to conceal the historical record===

====German efforts====
{{See also|Sonderaktion 1005}}
[[File:Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp.png|thumb|Members of a [[Sonderaktion 1005|''Sonderkommando'' 1005]] unit pose next to a bone-crushing machine in the [[Janowska concentration camp]] (photo taken in August 1944, after camp's liberation).]]
While the [[Second World War]] was still underway, the Nazis had already formed a contingency plan that if defeat was imminent they would carry out the total destruction of German records.<ref name="klars-coth">{{cite book |url={{google books|id=NTjJDNi7fq4C|title=French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial|page=|plainurl=yes}} |last1=Klarsfeld |first1=Serge |title=French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial |author-link1=Serge Klarsfeld |date=1996 |location=New York |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |lccn=96031206 |isbn=9780814726624 |oclc=35029709 |page=xiii}}</ref> Historians have documented evidence that as [[Germany]]'s defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination. [[Heinrich Himmler]] instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination.<ref name="Arad_1984">{{cite web |first=Yitzhak |last=Arad |author-link=Yitzhak Arad |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203576.pdf |title=Yad Vashem Studies XVI Operation Reinhard: Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |year=1984 |pages=205–239 |access-date=February 2, 2009 |archive-date=March 18, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090318073143/http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203576.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> As one of many examples, the bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom [[Friedrich Jeckeln]] and the soldiers under his command had shot at [[Rumbula massacre|Rumbula]] (near [[Riga]]) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943.<ref name="Ezer">{{cite book |last=Ezergailis |first=Andrew |title=The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944&nbsp;– The Missing Center |pages=4–7, 239–270 |publisher=[[Historical Institute of Latvia]] (in association with the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]) |location=Riga |date=1996 |isbn=9984-9054-3-8}}</ref> Similar operations were undertaken at [[Belzec extermination camp|Belzec]], [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] and other death camps.<ref name="Arad_1984"/>

====French collaboration in archive destruction====
In [[German military administration in occupied France during World War II|occupied France]], the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before the war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at [[Liberation of Paris|Liberation]], the [[Prefecture of Police]] destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation.{{R|klars-coth}}

===Efforts to preserve the historical record===

====During the war====
One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war in France, where [[Drancy internment camp]] records were carefully preserved and turned over to the new [[National Office for Veterans and Victims of War]]. However, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, including to the [[Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation]] (CDJC).{{Citation needed|date=June 2020}}<!-- {{R|klars-coth}} -->

In 1943, [[Isaac Schneersohn]], anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in [[Grenoble]] which was under Italian occupation at the time<ref name="mdlShoah">{{cite web |url=http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/index.php/en/archives-and-documentation/the-cdjc-catalogue/the-history-of-the-center-of-contemporary-jewish-documentation-cdjc |title=The History of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150316150400/http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/index.php/en/archives-and-documentation/the-cdjc-catalogue/the-history-of-the-center-of-contemporary-jewish-documentation-cdjc |archive-date=March 16, 2015}}</ref> in order to form a ''center de documentation''.<ref name="Jockusch">{{cite web |url={{google books|id=E2IhaiQwJQ8C|page=18|title=Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe|plainurl=yes}} |title=Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe |last1=Jockusch |first1=Laura |date=October 11, 2012 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780199764556 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.001.0001}} as quoted in {{cite journal |url=https://www.academia.edu/1777831 |title=Khurbn Forshung (''destruction research'')– Jewish Historical Commissions in Europe, 1943–1949 |last1=Jockusch |first1=Laura |website=academia.edu |access-date=March 15, 2015 |archive-date=June 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626051235/https://www.academia.edu/1777831/_Khurbn_Forshung_Jewish_Historical_Commissions_in_Europe_1943-1949_ |url-status=live}}</ref> Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before [[Liberation of France|liberation]].<ref name="ej-cdjc">{{Citation |last1=Mazor |first1=Michel |last2=Weinberg |first2=David |contribution=Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) |editor1-last=Berenbaum |editor1-first=Michael |editor2-last=Skolnik |editor2-first=Fred |title=Encyclopedia Judaica |volume=4 |edition=2 |pages=547 |series=Gale Virtual Reference Library |publisher=[[Macmillan Reference USA]] |place=Detroit |date=2007 |contribution-url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2587504110&v=2.1&u=imcpl1111&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=00b7d473b9c8670353939c8535501ac3 |access-date=April 3, 2015 |archive-date=June 29, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629074246/http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2587504110&v=2.1&u=imcpl1111&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=00b7d473b9c8670353939c8535501ac3 |url-status=live}}</ref> Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC.{{R|Jockusch|ej-cdjc}}

====Immediate post-war period====
[[File:Ohrdruf Corpses Eisenhower.jpg|thumb|April 12, 1945: Generals [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], [[Omar Bradley]] and [[George S. Patton]] inspect an improvised crematory pyre at [[Ohrdruf concentration camp]].]]
In 1945, General [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize the documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobbs|first1=Joseph Patrick|last2=Eisenhower|first2=Dwight D.|last3=Marshall|first3=George Catlett|title=Dear General: Eisenhower's Wartime Letters to Marshall|date=May 12, 1999|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=0801862191}}</ref> Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hobbs |first1=Joseph Patrick |last2=Eisenhower |first2=Dwight D. |last3=Marshall |first3=George Catlett |title=Dear General: Eisenhower's Wartime Letters to Marshall |date=May 12, 1999 |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |location=Baltimore |isbn=0801862191|page=223}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=World War II Liberation Photography |url=https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography |access-date=August 30, 2020 |website=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |archive-date=September 22, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922024859/https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography |url-status=live}}</ref>

====Nuremberg trials====
[[File:Evidence in Nuremberg trials.jpg|thumb|United States Army clerks with evidence collected for the Nuremberg trials]]
The [[Nuremberg trials]] took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of the German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the [[Moscow Declaration|Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe]] and reiterated at the [[Yalta Conference]] and at Berlin in 1945.<ref name="Wright-1946">{{cite journal |last=Wright |first=Quincy |author-link= Quincy Wright |year=1946 |title=The Nuremberg Trial |journal=[[Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science]] |volume=246 |issue=1 |pages=72–80 |jstor=1025134 |doi=10.1177/000271624624600113 |s2cid=143138559 |issn=0002-7162}}</ref> While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by the [[CDJC]], and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography.<ref name="Bensoussan">{{cite book |url={{google books|id=aNzjTUT6jdYC|title=Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements|plainurl=yes|page=245}} |title=Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Bankier |editor2-first=Dan |editor2-last=Mikhman <!--|chapter=Jewish Contemporary Documentation Centre (CDJC) and Holocaust Research in France, 1945-1970--> |last1=Bensoussan |first1=Georges |date=2008 |publisher=[[Berghahn Books]] |pages=245–254 |isbn=9789653083264 |access-date=March 15, 2015}}</ref>

The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as [[The Diary of Anne Frank (1959 film)|''The Diary of Anne Frank'' (1959)]] or the 1961 ''[[Judgment at Nuremberg]]'' which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time.

Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg.<ref name="yadvashem-impact">{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/awareness_of_the_holocaust.asp |title=Shaping an Awareness of the Holocaust in Israeli and World Public Opinion |date=2015 |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141023150544/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/awareness_of_the_holocaust.asp |archive-date=October 23, 2014 |access-date=June 26, 2015 |quote=In the annals of public awareness of the Holocaust period, nothing rivals the Eichmann trial as a milestone and turning point, whose impact is evident to this day. The trial introduced the Holocaust into the historical, educational, legal and cultural discourse, not merely in Israel and the Jewish world, but on the consciousness of all peoples of the world. Sixteen years after the end of the Holocaust, it focused attention upon the account of the suffering and torment of the Jewish people, as recounted to the judges. Its powerful, and one could claim, revolutionary, consequences continue right up to the present day.}}</ref><ref name="Shandler-1999a">{{cite book |last=Shandler |first=Jeffrey |title=While America Watches : Televising the Holocaust |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NobvLCXFIOcC&pg=PA127 |access-date=June 26, 2015 |date=February 4, 1999 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]], USA |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-518258-3 |page=127 |chapter=4. The Man in the Glass Box |quote=The Eichmann case is widely cited as a[sic] marking a threshold in American awareness of the Holocaust, generating a 'renewed engagement' and 'heightened historical consciousness' as well as serving as a catalyst for a spate of American Holocaust literature, television programs, and feature films.}}</ref>

====Trial of Adolf Eichmann====
{{main|Eichmann trial}}
In 1961, the [[Cabinet of Israel|Israeli government]] captured [[Adolf Eichmann]] in Argentina and brought him to [[Israel]] to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor [[Gideon Hausner]]'s intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about the entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record.<ref name="Cesarani-2005">{{cite book |last=Cesarani |first=David |author-link=David Cesarani |title=Eichmann: His Life and Crimes |publisher=[[Vintage Books|Vintage]] |location=London |year=2005 |orig-year=2004 |isbn=978-0-09-944844-0 |pages=252, 254–5, 325–7}}</ref>

The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage.<ref name=Birn-2011>{{cite journal |last=Birn |first=Ruth Bettina |title=Fifty Years After: A Critical Look at the Eichmann Trial |journal=Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law |year=2011 |volume=44 |pages=443–473 |url=http://law.case.edu/journals/JIL/Documents/(21)%20Birn_Darby.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203021540/http://law.case.edu/journals/JIL/Documents/%2821%29%20Birn_Darby.pdf |archive-date=December 3, 2013 |access-date=April 2, 2015 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story.{{R|Cesarani-2005}} Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast the following day.{{R|Cesarani-2005}}<ref name=Shandler-1999b>{{cite book |last=Shandler |first=Jeffrey |title=While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust |year=1999 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford; New York |isbn=0-19-511935-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whileamericawatc00shan_0/page/93 93] |quote=The trial and the surrounding media coverage sparked renewed interest in wartime events, and the resulting increase in publication of memoirs and scholarly works helped raise public awareness of the Holocaust. |url=https://archive.org/details/whileamericawatc00shan_0/page/93}}</ref>

==Significant individuals and organizations==
{{Category see also |Holocaust deniers}}

In the immediate aftermath of the war, before the Allied forces had fully documented the extent of the Holocaust, many people reacted with disbelief and even denied the first reports of what had happened.<ref name="FoguKansteiner2016">{{cite book |first1=Claudio |last1=Fogu |first2=Wulf |last2=Kansteiner |first3=Todd |last3=Presner |title=Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2MRADQAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |date=October 17, 2016 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-97051-9 |page=68}}</ref> Compounding this disbelief was the memory of [[Fake news|forged newspaper accounts]] of the [[German Corpse Factory]], an anti-German [[atrocity propaganda]] campaign during WWI, which was widely known to be false by 1945.<ref name="BBC fake news">{{cite news |title=The corpse factory and the birth of fake news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38995205 |access-date=March 5, 2017 |work=[[BBC News]] |date=February 17, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170228230334/http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38995205 |archive-date=February 28, 2017}}</ref>

During the 1930s, the Nazi government used this propaganda against the British, claiming allegations of concentration camps were malicious lies put forward by the British government, and historians Joachim Neander and [[Randal Marlin]] note that this story "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler".{{R|BBC fake news}} [[Victor Cavendish-Bentinck]], chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie"; likewise, ''[[The Christian Century]]'' commented that "The parallel between this story and the 'corpse factory' atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked."<ref name="bgd">{{cite book |last=Neander |first=Joachim |title=The German Corpse Factory. The Master Hoax of British Propaganda in the First World War |publisher=[[Saarland University Press]] |date=2013 |pages=8–9}}</ref> Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives."<ref name="bgd"/>

The [[Neo-Nazi]] movement has been revitalized by Holocaust denial. Small but vocal numbers of neo-Nazis realized that recreation of a Hitlerite-style regime may be impossible, but a replica might be produced in the future; the rehabilitation of Nazism, they concluded, required the discrediting of the Holocaust.<ref name=Atkins>{{cite book |first=Stephen E. |last=Atkins |author-link=Stephen E. Atkins |title=Holocaust Denial as an International Movement |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M9Uj6u6b-ZIC |year=2009 |publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]] |isbn=978-0-313-34538-8 |quote=Holocaust denial has played an important role in the revitalization of the Neo-Nazi movement. There was a smaller but nonetheless vocal number of supporters in other Western European countries and the United States. These neo-Nazis realized that a Hitlerite regime was impossible, but a reasonable facsimile was possible in the future. These neo-Nazis and their allies realized that any rehabilitation of Nazism could be accomplished only by discrediting the Holocaust.}}</ref> [[Neo-fascism]] has likewise relied upon Holocaust denial as a means of rehabilitation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bland |first=Benjamin |date=2019 |title=Holocaust inversion, anti-Zionism and British neo-fascism: the Israel–Palestine conflict and the extreme right in post-war Britain |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2018.1536347 |journal=[[Patterns of Prejudice]] |volume=53 |issue=1 |pages=86–97 |doi=10.1080/0031322X.2018.1536347 |issn=0031-322X |access-date=May 11, 2024 |archive-date=May 11, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240511134816/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2018.1536347 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

As a movement, modern Holocaust denial is associated with historical revisionism based on [[pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]] evidence<ref name="Rosenfeld2015">{{cite book |last1=Rosenfeld |first1=Alvin H. |title=Deciphering the new antisemitism |date=2015 |location=Bloomington and Indianapolis |publisher=[[Indiana University Press]] |isbn=9780253018694 |pages=250, 350 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ibfkCgAAQBAJ |quote="In the 1970s, Holocaust denial took up more sophisticated pseudoscientijfic methods and began to portray itself as a movement of historal revisionists..." |access-date=March 21, 2023 |archive-date=July 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705094703/https://books.google.com/books?id=ibfkCgAAQBAJ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Pigliucci_Philosophy_of_Pseudoscience_2013">{{cite book |last1=Pigliucci |first1=Massimo |last2=Boudry |first2=Maarten |title=Philosophy of pseudoscience : reconsidering the demarcation problem |date=2013 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |location=Chicago |isbn=9780226051826 |pages=206 |url=https://archive.org/details/philosophyofpseu00unse/page/206/ |access-date=February 13, 2023}}</ref><ref name="Brittingham2020">{{cite journal |last1=Brittingham |first1=Matthew H. |title="The Jews love numbers": Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial |journal=[[Genocide Studies and Prevention]] |date=September 2020 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=44–64 |issn=1911-0359 |eissn=1911-9933 |doi=10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 |pmid= |s2cid=225256338 |url=https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1721 |quote="The preacher produced a nearly 40-minute video, "Did the Holocaust Really Happen?," in which he espoused what Deborah Lipstadt has called "hardcore" Holocaust denial, "den[ying] the facts of the Holocaust" in an "outright and forceful fashion." Though his “scientific” evidence for the "Holocaust hoax" or "Holocaust myth," as he often refers to the Holocaust, is mostly a regurgitation of the pseudoscientific arguments made by a more established group of Holocaust deniers, Anderson adds a spiritual dimension to Holocaust denial to make it attractive to Christian viewers." |doi-access=free}}{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref name="HirvonenKaristo2022">{{cite journal |last1=Hirvonen |first1=Ilmari |last2=Karisto |first2=Janne |title=Demarcation without Dogmas |journal=[[Theoria (philosophy journal)|Theoria]] |date=February 13, 2022 |volume=88 |issue=3 |pages=701–720 |issn=0040-5825 |eissn=1755-2567 |doi=10.1111/theo.12395 |pmid= |hdl=10138/345499 |s2cid=246834442 |url=https://philarchive.org/rec/HIRDWD |quote="On the one hand, there is science denialism, such as climate change scepticism, the anti-vaccination movement, and holocaust denial, which attacks well-established scientific theories and practices. On the other hand, there is the promotion of pseudotheory, the attempt to get doctrines like homoeopathy and intelligent design accepted as sciences even though they have no warrant for such merit (Hansson, 2017). Both types of pseudoscience have harmful effects on health, environment, education, and society...Paradigmatic pseudosciences can also be very different from one another. Think of, say, intelligent design, Holocaust denial, ancient astronaut hypothesis, homoeopathy, the anti-vaccine movement, astrology, or climate change scepticism. Because there are different forms of pseudoscience, one cannot rule out the possibility that different criteria are needed to distinguish them from science." |hdl-access=free}}</ref> and [[fringe science|fringe academic networks]]<ref name="Rosenfeld2015"/><ref name="Pigliucci_Philosophy_of_Pseudoscience_2013"/> including [[Diegesis|intradiegetic]] pseudoscientific journals,<ref name="CODOH_ADL">{{cite news |title=Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) {{!}} Center on Extremism |url=https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/committee-open-debate-holocaust-codoh |access-date=February 13, 2023 |work=extremismterms.adl.org |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |date=2022 |archive-date=February 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230213142838/https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/committee-open-debate-holocaust-codoh |url-status=live}}</ref> conferences, and professional organizations (e.g. ''[[Journal of Historical Review]]'', [[International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust]], Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust).<ref name="HolocaustEncyclopedia_2001">{{cite book |last1=Laqueur |first1=Walter |last2=Baumel-Schwartz |first2=Judith Tydor |title=The Holocaust encyclopedia |date=2001 |location=New Haven |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=9780300084320 |pages=300 |quote="Holocaust revisionism enlists a wide variety of strategies and assumes many different forms adapted to the history and political cultures in which it operates. It has nonetheless developed into an international movement with its own networks, gatherings, public forums, propaganda, and pseudo-scientific journal"}}</ref><ref name="NESS_HD">{{cite news |last1=Novella |first1=Steven |title=Holocaust Denial |url=https://theness.com/index.php/holocaust-denial |access-date=February 13, 2023 |work=[[New England Skeptical Society]] |date=July 17, 2009 |quote="Those who deny that there ever was a Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II have used a similar style of arguing. Deniers have subjugated science, in this case historical science, to a political agenda, creating a pseudoscience called Holocaust Denial.... Inventing and promoting pseudoscience [the art of using "expert witnesses"]: Leuchter claims that the gas chamber was not really used against human beings.... Error #1: Leuchter estimates that a certain crematorium at Auschwitz could process only 156 bodies. He was apparently unaware of an SS report which confirms that the same building (which he describes) destroyed 4756 bodies in the course of a single 24 hour period. Error #2: He notes that the cyanide residue from one gas chamber wall is less than the residue from a wall inside a known delousing chamber. Leuchter claims that this is the most conclusive evidence that a "gas chamber" could not have been used for killing humans. His argument is based on the assumption that humans require much more cyanide than lice to die – an assumption that, as it happens, is wrong. In fact, lice require about a 50 times higher dose of cyanide gas than humans in order to die." |archive-date=February 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230212144941/https://theness.com/index.php/holocaust-denial/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Whine2008">{{cite journal |last1=Whine |first1=Michael |title=Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation Against It |journal=Jewish Political Studies Review |date=2008 |volume=20 |issue=1/2 |pages=57–77 |jstor=25834777 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25834777 |access-date=February 13, 2023 |issn=0792-335X |quote="Holocaust deniers, and the media they use, are changing as a consequence of international political developments... New forms of this propaganda encompassed pseudoscientific books and papers; crude denial material, usually published in leaflet form by small neo-Nazi groups; and what can be called political denial, which includes the most recent and increasingly potent source, namely, Islamists as well as Internet and television transmissions within some Muslim states. Many of the pseudoscientific publications available internationally were published under cover of fictitious academic publishing houses. These works included, for example, ''The Hoax of the Twentieth Century'' by Arthur Butz, ''Did Six Million Really Die?'' by Richard Harwood, and ''The Leuchter Report''. Historians challenged these and rebutted their false theses."}}</ref>

===Maurice Bardèche===
The first person to openly write after the end of World War II that he doubted the reality of the Holocaust was French art critic [[Maurice Bardèche]] in his 1948 book {{lang|fr|Nuremberg ou la Terre promise}} ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land").<ref name=":2">{{harvnb|Igounet|2000|p=31}}: "{{lang|fr|Pour la première fois, depuis la fin de la guerre, un homme écrit qu'il doute ouvertement de l'existence des camps de la mort}}" [For the first time, since the end of the war, a man writes that he openly doubts the existence of death camps]</ref> In the 1950 book ''Nuremberg II, ou les Faux-Monnayeurs'', designed around the tale of [[Paul Rassinier]], a former deportee from [[Nazi concentration camps]] (not to be confused with [[extermination camps]]) turned into a Holocaust denier, Bardèche concluded that [[Kapo (concentration camp)|kapos]] were in reality worse than [[Schutzstaffel|SS]], and expressed his "doubts" about the existence of gas chambers.{{sfn|Igounet|2000|p=}}{{page needed|date=August 2024}}

Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial",<ref>{{Harvnb|Barnes|2002|p=195}}: "Bardèche being considered as the father-figure of Holocaust denial and its methodology"</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Der Matossian |first=Bedross |author-link=Bedross Der Matossian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TOq1EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1952 |title=Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century |date=2023 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-1-4962-3554-1 |quote=In the postwar period, the two main Holocaust deniers were the French journalist Maurice Bardèche, considered “the father-figure of Holocaust denial,” and the American historian Harry Elmer Barnes.}}</ref> Bardèche introduced in his works many aspects of [[neo-fascist]] and Holocaust denial [[propaganda techniques]] and ideological structures; his work is deemed influential in regenerating post-war European far-right ideas at a time of identity crisis in the 1950–1960s.{{sfn|Algazy|1984|pp=208–209}}{{sfn|Barnes|2002|p=}}{{sfn|Bar-On|2016|p=}} His arguments formed the basis of numerous works of Holocaust denial that followed: "testimonies are not reliable, essentially coming from the mouth of Jews and communists", "atrocities committed in camps were the work of deportees [essentially the [[Kapo (concentration camp)|kapos]]]", "disorganization occurred in Nazi camps following the first German defeats", "the high mortality is due to the 'weakening' of prisoners and epidemics", "only lice were gassed in [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]]", etc.{{sfn|Igounet|2000|p=}}{{page needed|date=August 2024}}

===Harry Elmer Barnes===
[[Harry Elmer Barnes]], at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between [[World War I]] and [[World War II]], Barnes was an [[anti-war]] writer and a leader of the [[historical revisionism]] movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with the [[Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War]], a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the [[Versailles Treaty]] was morally invalid.{{sfn|Herwig|1987|pp=22–23 & 26}} Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a {{lang|de|[[Völkisch movement|völkisch]]}} activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on the outbreak of the war."{{sfn|Herwig|1987|pp=21–23 & 26}}

Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and [[Empire of Japan|Japan]], including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=75}}

In his 1962 pamphlet, ''Revisionism and Brainwashing'', Barnes claimed that there was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|pp=73-74}} Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of the Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=75}}

Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier [[Paul Rassinier]], whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in ''[[The American Mercury]]'', Barnes wrote: "The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call the swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner."{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}}

===Beginnings of modern denialism===
In 1961, a protégé of Barnes, [[David L. Hoggan]], published {{lang|de|Der erzwungene Krieg}} (''The Forced War'') in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though ''Der erzwungene Krieg'' was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi [[antisemitic]] measures in the pre-1939 period.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=71}} For example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion [[Reichsmark]] fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 {{lang|de|[[Kristallnacht]]}} as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the ''Kristallnacht'' (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the {{lang|de|Kristallnacht}}).{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=71}} Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied the Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled ''The Myth of the Six Million'', which was published by the [[Noontide Press]], a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gottfired |first=Ted |title=Deniers Of The Holocaust: Who They Are, What They Do, Why They Do It |publisher=Twenty-First Century Books |date=2001 |page=29}}</ref>

In 1964, [[Paul Rassinier]] published ''The Drama of the European Jews''. Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in [[Buchenwald]] for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors.<ref>{{cite book |first=Deborah E. |last=Lipstadt |author-link=Deborah Lipstadt |title=History on Trial |publisher=Harcourt |date=2005 |isbn=0-06-059376-8}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2020}}

[[Austin App]], a [[La Salle University]] medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier.<ref>{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Peter |title=Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia |volume=1 |year=2003 |publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]] |isbn=978-1576078129 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qMIDrggs8TsC&q=%22Austin%20App%22%20holocaust&pg=PA322 |page=322 |access-date=March 20, 2021 |archive-date=July 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705094705/https://books.google.com/books?id=qMIDrggs8TsC&q=%22Austin%20App%22%20holocaust&pg=PA322 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Atkins, Stephen E. 2009 pp. 153">{{cite book |last=Atkins |first=Stephen E. |author-link=Stephen E. Atkins |year=2009 |title=Austin J. App and Holocaust Denial. Holocaust denial as an international movement |location=Westport, CT |publisher=Praeger |pages=153–155 |isbn=978-0-313-34539-5}}</ref> App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the [[Institute for Historical Review]], a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task is the denial of the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Carlos C. |last1=Huerta |first2=Dafna |last2=Shiffman-Huerta |chapter=Holocaust Denial Literature: Its Place in Teaching the Holocaust |editor1-first=Rochelle L. |editor1-last=Millen |title=New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars |publisher=[[NYU Press]] |date=1996 |isbn=0-8147-5540-2 |page=189}}</ref>

The publication of [[Arthur Butz]]'s ''[[The Hoax of the Twentieth Century]]: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry'' in 1976 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=125}} Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at [[Northwestern University]]. In December 1978 and January 1979, [[Robert Faurisson]], a French professor of literature at the [[University of Lyon]], wrote two letters to ''[[Le Monde]]'' claiming that the [[gas chambers]] used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, [[Jean-Claude Pressac]], who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of the underlying evidence in his 1989 book, ''Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pressac |first=Jean-Claude |title=Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers |url=http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/ |via=Pratique de l'Histoire et Dévoiements Négationnistes |access-date=January 31, 2006 |year=1989 |publisher=The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |location=New York |archive-date=January 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170128063557/http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Henry Bienen]], the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern".<ref name="bienen">{{cite web |url=http://www.northwestern.edu/president/arthurbutz.html |title=Message from President Bienen, Northwestern University |last=Bienen |first=Henry S. |date=February 6, 2006 |publisher=[[Northwestern University]] |access-date=September 20, 2009 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070501100921/http://www.northwestern.edu/president/arthurbutz.html |archive-date= May 1, 2007}}</ref> In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars".<ref name="tdn">{{cite news |url=http://dailynorthwestern.com/2006/02/16/archive-manual/students-faculty-oppose-butz-with-petitions/ |title=Students, faculty oppose Butz with petitions |last=Elizabeth |first=Campbell |date=February 16, 2006 |newspaper=The Daily Northwestern |access-date=May 17, 2012 |archive-date=January 16, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140116074722/http://dailynorthwestern.com/2006/02/16/archive-manual/students-faculty-oppose-butz-with-petitions/ |url-status=live}}</ref> The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence".{{R|tdn}}

===Institute for Historical Review===
In 1978, the American [[far-right]] activist [[Willis Carto]] founded the [[Institute for Historical Review]] (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.<ref name="TooCloseForComfort">{{cite book |first1=Chip |last1=Berlet |first2=Matthew J. |last2=Lyons |title=Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort |location=New York |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |date=2000 |page=189}}</ref> The IHR's founding was inspired by [[Austin App]], a [[La Salle University|La Salle]] professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier.{{R|Atkins, Stephen E. 2009 pp. 153}} The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a [[neo-Nazi]] background such as [[James J. Martin (historian)|James J. Martin]] and [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]], and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians, the majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard J. |last=Evans |title=Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |date=2002 |isbn=0-465-02153-0}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2020}}

In 1980, the IHR promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. [[Mel Mermelstein]] wrote a [[letter to the editor]]s of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' and others including ''[[The Jerusalem Post]]''. The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney [[William John Cox]], Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the [[Los Angeles County Superior Court]] for [[breach of contract]], [[anticipatory repudiation]], [[libel]], [[injurious denial of established fact]], [[intentional infliction of emotional distress]], and [[declaratory relief]]. On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for [[summary judgment]] in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Los Angeles County Superior Court took "[[judicial notice]] of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944,"<ref name="NYT">{{cite news |title=California Judge Rules Holocaust Did Happen |date=October 10, 1981 |page=A26 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |agency=[[Associated Press]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/10/us/california-judge-rules-holocaust-did-happen.html |access-date=November 20, 2010 |archive-date=October 19, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181019142015/https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/10/us/california-judge-rules-holocaust-did-happen.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="order">{{cite web |url=http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/m/mermelstein.mel/ftp.py?people/m/mermelstein.mel//mermelstein.order.072285 |title=Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review Judgment and Statement of Record |access-date=November 20, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717102709/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/m/mermelstein.mel/ftp.py?people%2Fm%2Fmermelstein.mel%2F%2Fmermelstein.order.072285 |archive-date=July 17, 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that the gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the [[Stipulation]] for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a [[Holocaust survivors|survivor]] of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.{{R|order}}

In the "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ihr.org/main/about.shtml|title=About the IHR: Our Mission and Record |date=May 2018 |work=Institute for Historical Review |access-date=July 9, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013154000/http://ihr.org/main/about.shtml |archive-date=October 13, 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref> British historian [[Richard J. Evans]] wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in the millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers.<ref>[[Richard J. Evans]]. ''Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial'', [[Verso Books]], 2002, {{ISBN|1-85984-417-0}}, p. 151. Quote: Like many individual Holocaust deniers, the Institute as a body denied that it was involved in Holocaust denial. It called this a 'smear' which was 'completely at variance with the facts' because 'revisionist scholars' such as Faurisson, Butz 'and bestselling British historian David Irving acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and otherwise perished during the Second World War as a direct and indirect result of the harsh anti-Jewish policies of Germany and its allies'. But the concession that a relatively small number of Jews were killed was routinely used by Holocaust deniers to distract attention from the far more important fact of their refusal to admit that the figure ran into the millions, and that a large proportion of these victims were systematically murdered by gassing as well as by shooting.</ref>

===James Keegstra===
{{Further|R v Keegstra}}

In 1984, [[James Keegstra]], a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian [[Criminal Code (Canada)|''Criminal Code'']] for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Elman |first1=Bruce P. |editor1-last=DeCoste |editor1-first=F. C. |editor2-last=Schwartz |editor2-first=Bernard |title=The Holocaust's Ghost: Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education |date=2000 |publisher=[[University of Alberta Press]] |isbn=978-0-88864-337-7 |page=316 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lLnBSq7YP0gC&pg=PA316 |chapter=The Belzberg Lecture: Honouring Memory, Doing Justice: Holocaust Denial, Hate Propaganda and Canadian Law |access-date=March 4, 2022 |archive-date=July 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705094705/https://books.google.com/books?id=lLnBSq7YP0gC&pg=PA316#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref>

Keegstra was charged under s 281.2(2) of the ''Criminal Code''{{citation needed|date=June 2020}} (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offense.<ref>''Criminal Code'', RSC 1970, c C-34, s 281.2(2); now ''Criminal Code'', RSC 1985, c C-46, s 319(2).</ref> He was convicted at trial before the [[Alberta Court of Queen's Bench]]. The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, [[Doug Christie (lawyer)|Doug Christie]], that promoting hatred is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per [[Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms|s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms]]. Keegstra appealed to the [[Alberta Court of Appeal]]. That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the [[Supreme Court of Canada]], which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be [[R. v. Keegstra#Reasons of the court|justifiably]] restricted under [[Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms|s 1 of the Charter]]. The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/695/index.do|title=R. v. Keegstra – SCC Cases (Lexum) |website=scc-csc.lexum.com |date=January 2001 |access-date=February 24, 2019 |archive-date=July 10, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190710021813/https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/695/index.do |url-status=live}}</ref> He was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward.<ref>*"The trouble erupted when the teacher's anti-Jewish (and, incidentally, anti-Catholic) views attracted complaints from certain Eckville parents, thereby inviting intervention from the district school superintendent, Robert David, in 1981. A train of events was launched that finally led to Keegstra's dismissal and subsequent indictment." Alan Davies, "The Keegstra Affair", in Alan T. Davies, ''Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation'', Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992, {{ISBN|0-88920-216-8}}, p. 228.
*"Far from arguing that Keegstra had a civil right to continue spreading his dreck at Eckville High, civil libertarians wonder (along with the rest of Canada, we hope) why it took twelve years for the local school board to exercise its appropriate authority and fire him. But at least Keegstra was finally fired, and was finally removed from his position as Mayor of Eckville." John Dixon, [http://www.bccla.org/positions/freespeech/85keegstra.html The Keegstra case: Freedom of speech and the prosecution of harmful ideas] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070926232724/http://www.bccla.org/positions/freespeech/85keegstra.html |date=September 26, 2007 }}, [[British Columbia Civil Liberties Association]] Position Paper, 1986. Retrieved June 27, 2007.</ref>

===Zündel trials===
{{See also|Leuchter report}}
The Toronto-based photo retoucher [[Ernst Zündel]] operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as ''[[Did Six Million Really Die?]]'' by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of [[Richard Verrall]]&nbsp;– a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in ''[[R. v. Zundel]]'' and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an [[Ontario]] court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust".<ref name="Zundelcourt">{{cite court |litigants=R. v. Zundel |vol= |reporter= |opinion= |pinpoint= |court= |date=August 27, 1992 |url=http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1992/1992rcs2-731/1992rcs2-731.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012161758/http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1992/1992rcs2-731/1992rcs2-731.html |url-status=dead}}</ref> The Holocaust historian [[Raul Hilberg]] was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for the defense, [[Fred A. Leuchter]], [[David Irving]] and [[Robert Faurisson]]. The pseudo-scientific [[Leuchter report]] was presented as a defense document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by [[Doug Christie (lawyer)|Douglas Christie]] and [[Barbara Kulaszka]]. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.{{R|Zundelcourt}}

Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicized his viewpoints.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zundelsite.org/ |title=Zundelsite |website=www.zundelsite.org |access-date=June 27, 2007 |archive-date=December 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211221092253/http://www.zundelsite.org/ |url-status=live}}{{title missing|date=May 2022}}</ref> In January 2002, the [[Canadian Human Rights Commission|Canadian Human Rights Tribunal]] delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the [[Canadian Human Rights Act]]. The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003, the American [[United States Immigration and Naturalization Service|INS]] arrested him in [[Tennessee]], US, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's ''[[Volksverhetzung]]'' law, which bans the incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=c61ce061-50b2-42a5-bb2f-a7bbaecccceb&k=32537 |title=German court sentences Ernst Zundel to 5 years in prison for Holocaust denial |agency=The Canadian Press |publisher=canada.com|date=February 15, 2007 |access-date=February 15, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929104434/http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=c61ce061-50b2-42a5-bb2f-a7bbaecccceb&k=32537 |archive-date=September 29, 2007}}</ref>

===Bradley Smith and the CODOH===
In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/usa/usa.htm|title=United States of America|date=1998|work=axt.org.uk|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080620114155/http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/usa/usa.htm|archive-date=June 20, 2008}}</ref> founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH).<ref>[http://www.adl.org/poisoning_web/codoh.asp "Poisoning the Web&nbsp;– Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115233738/http://www.adl.org/poisoning_web/codoh.asp |date=January 15, 2013 }} ''[[Anti-Defamation League|ADL]]''. 2001. April 24, 2008.</ref> In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers.<ref>[http://www.adl.org/holocaust/bradley_smith.asp "Bradley Smith and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust: The New College Try".] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115233745/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/bradley_smith.asp |date=January 15, 2013 }} ''[[Anti-Defamation League|ADL]]''. 2001. April 24, 2008.</ref>

Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as the CODOH campus project. He said, "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in a way that could not really be debated."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/smith_codoh/words.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=10 |title=Bradley Smith, Holocaust Denial, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust – Extremism in America |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |access-date=March 26, 2013 |archive-date=January 15, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115233646/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/smith_codoh/words.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=10 |url-status=live}}</ref> Holocaust deniers have placed "Full-page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of [[Brandeis University]], [[Boston College]], [[Pennsylvania State University]], and [[Queens College]]. Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students".<ref>{{cite book |last=Shermar |first=Michael |author2=Alex Grobman |title=Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-520-21612-9 |title-link=Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?}}</ref> On September 8, 2009, student newspaper ''[[The Harvard Crimson]]'' ran a paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized, and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/09/09/massachusetts.harvard.holocaust/index.html |title=Harvard Crimson says Holocaust denial ad published by accident |last=Buxbaum |first=Evan |date=September 10, 2009 |work=[[CNN]] |access-date=September 10, 2009 |archive-date=May 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190512200839/http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/09/09/massachusetts.harvard.holocaust/index.html |url-status=live}}</ref><!-- For the whole paragraph as it falls under [[Wikipedia: Biographies of living persons]]-->

===Ernst Nolte===
The German philosopher and historian [[Ernst Nolte]], starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, [[Carlo Mattogno]], as a serious historian.<ref name="Evans, Richard J. page 83">{{cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |author-link=Richard J. Evans |title=In Hitler's Shadow |location=New York |publisher=[[Pantheon Books]] |date=1989 |page=83}}</ref> In a letter to the Israeli historian [[Otto Dov Kulka]] of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized the work of the French Holocaust denier [[Robert Faurisson]] on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel.<ref>Maier, Charles ''The Unmasterable Past'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 page 190.</ref> In his 1987 book {{lang|de|Der europäische Bürgerkrieg}} (''The European Civil War''), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation".{{R|Evans, Richard J. page 83}}<ref name=LipstadtDenying214>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 214</ref> Nolte himself, though he has never denied the occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the [[Wannsee Conference]] of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany.{{R|LipstadtDenying214}}

The British historian [[Ian Kershaw]] has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists.<ref name="Kershaw, Ian page 176">Kershaw, Ian ''The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretations'', London: Arnold, 1989 page 176</ref> In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something.{{R|Kershaw, Ian page 176}}

In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there was something to the [[Leuchter report]]: "If the revisionists [Holocaust deniers] and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now."<ref>{{cite book |last=Brinks |first=Jan Hermann |title=Children of a New Fatherland |location=London |publisher=[[I. B. Tauris]] |date=2000 |page=108}}</ref> In his 1993 book {{lang|de|Streitpunkte}} (''Points of Contention''), Nolte praised the work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars".<ref name="Wistrich, Robert S pages 293-301">Wistrich, Robert S. "Holocaust Denial" pages 293–301 from ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' edited by Walter Laqueur, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 page 299</ref> Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany".{{R|Wistrich, Robert S pages 293-301}}<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'' New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 233.</ref> In a 1994 interview with {{lang|de|[[Der Spiegel]]}} magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of the gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the [chemical process engendered by Zyklon B]", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas."<ref>{{cite web |last=Charny |first=Israel |author-link=Israel Charny |title=The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars |publisher=Idea Journal |date=July 17, 2001 |url=http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=27 |access-date=August 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071224203627/http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=27 |archive-date=December 24, 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The British historian [[Richard J. Evans]] in his 1989 book ''In Hitler's Shadow'' expressed the view that Nolte's reputation as a scholar was in ruins as a result of these and other controversial statements on his part.<ref>Evans, Richard ''In Hitler's Shadow'', New York, NY: Pantheon, 1989 page 123</ref> The American historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]] in a 2003 interview stated: {{blockquote|Historians such as the German Ernst Nolte are, in some ways, even more dangerous than the deniers. Nolte is an anti-Semite of the first order, who attempts to rehabilitate Hitler by saying that he was no worse than Stalin; but he is careful not to deny the Holocaust. Holocaust-deniers make Nolte's life more comfortable. They have, with their radical argumentation, pulled the center a little more to their side. Consequently, a less radical extremist, such as Nolte, finds himself closer to the middle ground, which makes him more dangerous.<ref>{{cite web |last=Gerstenfeld |first=Manfred |title=Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence An Interview with Deborah Lipstadt |publisher=Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs |date=August 1, 2003 |url=http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-11.htm |access-date=June 21, 2007 |archive-date=August 16, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070816010915/http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-11.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

===Mayer controversy===
In 1988, the American historian [[Arno J. Mayer]] published a book entitled ''Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?'', which did not explicitly deny the Holocaust, but according to [[Lucy Dawidowicz]] lent support to Holocaust denial by stating that most people who died at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] were the victims of "natural causes" such as disease, not gassing.<ref>Dawidowicz, Lucy ''What Is The Use of Jewish History?'', New York: Schocken Books, 1992 pages 129–130</ref> Dawidowicz argued that Mayer's statements about Auschwitz were "a breathtaking assertion".<ref>Dawidowicz, Lucy ''What Is The Use of Jewish History?'', New York: Schocken Books, 1992 page 130</ref> Holocaust historian [[Robert Jan van Pelt]] has written that Mayer's book is as close as a mainstream historian has ever come to supporting Holocaust denial.<ref name="Pelt pages 47-48">Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 pages 47–48</ref> Holocaust deniers such as [[David Irving]] have often cited Mayer's book as one reason for embracing Holocaust denial.{{R|Pelt pages 47-48}} Though Mayer has been often condemned for his statement about the reasons for the Auschwitz death toll, his book does not deny the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, as Holocaust deniers often claim.<ref>{{cite news |last=Stein |first=Michael |title=The Mayer Gambit |newspaper=Nizkor Project |date=October 2, 2008 |url=http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/mayer-01.html |access-date=June 4, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090502170033/http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/mayer-01.html |archive-date=May 2, 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Some mainstream Holocaust historians have labeled Mayer a denier. The Israeli historian [[Yehuda Bauer]] wrote that Mayer "popularizes the nonsense that the Nazis saw in Marxism and Bolshevism their main enemy, and the Jews unfortunately got caught up in this; when he links the destruction of the Jews to the ups and downs of German warfare in the Soviet Union, in a book that is so cocksure of itself that it does not need a proper scientific apparatus, he is really engaging in a much more subtle form of Holocaust denial".<ref>Bauer, Yehuda "A Past That Will Not Away" pages 12–22 from ''The Holocaust and History'' edited by Michael Berenbaum and Abrahm Peck, Bloomington: [[Indiana University Press]], 1998 page 15.</ref>

Defenders of Mayer argue that his statement that "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable" has been taken out of context, particularly by Holocaust deniers.<ref>Shermer, Michael & Grobman, Alex ''Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 page 126.</ref> [[Michael Shermer]] and [[Alex Grobman]] observe that the paragraph from which the statement is taken asserts that the SS destroyed the majority of the documentation relating to the operation of the gas chambers in the death camps, which is why Mayer feels that sources for the operation of the gas chambers are "rare" and "unreliable".<ref>Shermer, Michael & Grobman, Alex ''Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 pages 126–127.</ref>

==False equivalence and effect==
===Denialist focus on Allied war crimes===
In countries where outright denial of the Holocaust is illegal, Holocaust denial authors focus "on so-called [[Allied war crimes during World War II#Western Allies|Allied atrocities]] against the Germans during and after the war."<ref>Stephen E. Atkins, ''Holocaust denial as an international movement'', ABC-CLIO, 2009, pg. 105</ref> According to historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]], the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the [[expulsion of Germans after World War II]] and the [[bombing of Dresden]],<ref>{{cite web|last=Evans|first=Richard|author-link=Richard J. Evans|title=Dresden and Holocaust Denial|work=David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition|year=1996|url=http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/520e.html|access-date=December 23, 2013|archive-date=December 20, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131220011057/http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/520e.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> is at the center of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary Holocaust denial; she calls the phenomenon "immoral equivalencies".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah. ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Bt Bound, 1999, pg. 41</ref> In 1977, historian [[Martin Broszat]], in a review of [[David Irving]]'s book ''[[Hitler's War]]'', maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to imply moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states with both sides equally guilty of terrible crimes, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "no longer an exceptional phenomenon".<ref>Broszat, Martin. "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390–429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch page 395.</ref>

===Propaganda===
According to James Najarian,{{who|date=December 2021}} Holocaust deniers working for the [[Institute for Historical Review]] are not trained in history and "put out sham scholarly articles in the mock-academic publication, the ''[[Journal of Historical Review]]''".{{sfn|Najarian|1997|p=74}} They appeal to "our objectivity, our sense of fair play, and our distrust of figurative language".{{sfn|Najarian|1997|p=76}} Thus, they rely on facts to grab the readers' attention. These facts, however, are strung by what Najarian calls "fabricated decorum" and are re-interpreted for their use. For example, they pay particular attention to inconsistencies in numbers.{{sfn|Najarian|1997|p=80}}{{clarify|date=December 2015|reason=Which "inconsistencies in numbers" are being referred to here?}}

Holocaust denial propaganda in all forms has been shown to influence the audiences that it reaches. In fact, even the well-educated—that is, college graduates and current university students alike—are susceptible to such propaganda when it is presented before them. This stems from the growing disbelief that audiences feel after being exposed to such information, especially since Holocaust witnesses themselves are decreasing in number.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lasson|first=Kenneth|year=2007|title=Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust Denial|journal=Current Psychology|volume=26|issue=3–4|page=256|url=http://www.schaler.net/Lasson.pdf|access-date=February 7, 2011|doi=10.1007/s12144-007-9013-7|s2cid=143382566|archive-date=November 5, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171105193336/http://www.schaler.net/Lasson.pdf|url-status=live| issn=0737-8262 }}</ref> Studies centered on the psychological effects of Holocaust denial propaganda confirm this assertion. Linda M. Yelland{{who2|date=October 2025}} and William F. Stone{{who2|date=October 2025}}, in particular, show that Denial essays decrease readers' belief in the Holocaust, regardless of their prior Holocaust awareness.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Yelland|first1=Linda M.|last2=Stone|first2=William F.|year=1996|title=Belief in the Holocaust: Effects of Personality and Propaganda|journal=Political Psychology|volume=17|issue=3|page=559|jstor=3791968|doi=10.2307/3791968}}</ref>

==Eastern Europe==

=== General ===
In some Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania, Holocaust deniers do not deny the very fact of mass murder of Jews but deny some national or regional elements of the Holocaust.<ref name="post-Soviet" />

=== Soviet Union and Russia ===
According to [[Zvi Gitelman]], Soviet writers tended either to ignore or downplay the Holocaust, treating it as one small part of a larger phenomenon of 20 million dead Soviet citizens during the [[Great Patriotic War]]. According to Gitelman, Soviet authorities were concerned about raising the consciousness of Soviet Jews and retarding their assimilation to the greater Soviet population. The Holocaust also raised the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, an uncomfortable topic for Soviet historiography.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Dobroszycki|first1=Lucjan|last2=Gurock|first2=Jeffrey S.|title=The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the Ussr, 1941–1945|date=1993|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|isbn=1563241730|pages=3–29}}</ref> According to historian [[Yuri Pivovarov]], in modern Russia, this trend has returned with the [[Russian invasion of Ukraine|Russian invasion on Ukraine]], culminating with July 19, 2023, article of [[Maria Zakharova]] who argued that it were the Soviet citizens who were the victims of Holocaust in the first place. In a number of popular history projects sponsored by the Russian state Jews were mentioned as one of many victim groups, or not mentioned at all.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Болтянская |first=Нателла |date=July 31, 2023 |title=Как и почему Россия стала отрицателем Холокоста. Часть 1: "Без срока давности" |url=https://detaly.co.il/kak-i-pochemu-rossiya-stala-otritsatelem-holokosta/ |access-date=August 2, 2023 |website=Детали |language=ru-RU |archive-date=July 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705095216/https://detaly.co.il/kak-i-pochemu-rossiya-stala-otritsatelem-holokosta/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Holocaust denial literature is freely published in Russia, and one of the most prominent authors, [[Jürgen Graf]], lives there since his escape from prosecution in Switzerland in the 2000s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Atkins |first=Stephen E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M9Uj6u6b-ZIC |title=Holocaust Denial as an International Movement |date=April 30, 2009 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-34538-8 |access-date=April 8, 2018 |archive-date=July 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705095221/https://books.google.com/books?id=M9Uj6u6b-ZIC |url-status=live }}</ref>

=== Ukraine ===
The post-Soviet radical right activists in Ukraine do not question the existence of Nazi death camps or Jewish ghettos. However, they deny the participation of local population in anti-Jewish [[pogrom]]s or the contribution of national paramilitary organizations in capture and execution of Jews.<ref name="post-Soviet" /> Thus, denial of the antisemitic nature and participation in the Holocaust of the [[Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists]] and the [[Ukrainian Insurgent Army]] has become a central component of the intellectual history of the Ukrainian diaspora and nationalists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rudling |first=Per Anders |date=2011 |title=The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths |url=https://www.academia.edu/1122859 |url-status=live |journal=The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies |issue=2107 |doi=10.5195/CBP.2011.164 |issn=2163-839X |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319171628/https://www.academia.edu/1122859 |archive-date=March 19, 2022 |access-date=August 24, 2022 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Croatia ===
In 2018, the [[United States Department of State]] warned about "the glorification of the [[Ustasha]] regime and denial of the Holocaust" in Croatia, citing the placement of a plaque with the Ustasha-era salute '[[Za dom spremni]]' on the grounds of a concentration camp memorial site, far-right rallies and the concert of the controversial band [[Thompson (band)|Thompson]] among other events.<ref>{{cite news|title=US Warns about Ustasha Glorification and Holocaust Denial|url=https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/28735-us-warns-about-ustasha-glorification-and-holocaust-denial|publisher=Croatian News Agency (HINA)|date=May 30, 2018|access-date=April 21, 2020|archive-date=November 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109015519/https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/28735-us-warns-about-ustasha-glorification-and-holocaust-denial|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Efraim Zuroff]] of the Simon Wiesenthal Center describes Croatia as a "cradle of Holocaust distortion".<ref name="BIRN2">{{cite web|last1=Opačić|first1=Tamara|title=Selective Amnesia: Croatia's Holocaust Deniers|url=https://balkaninsight.com/2017/11/24/selective-amnesia-croatia-s-holocaust-deniers-11-16-2017/|website=BalkanInsight|publisher=BIRN|date=November 24, 2017|access-date=April 3, 2020|archive-date=January 22, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210122022345/https://balkaninsight.com/2017/11/24/selective-amnesia-croatia-s-holocaust-deniers-11-16-2017/|url-status=live}}</ref> Holocaust denial in Croatia typically involves the downplaying or denial of the [[The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia|Holocaust]] carried out by the Ustasha regime, particularly against Serbs and Jews at the [[Jasenovac concentration camp]] and it is done by public figures, though the regime's victims also included Roma and anti-fascist Croats.<ref name="BIRN2" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Croatia Must Not Whitewash the Horrors of Jasenovac|url=https://balkaninsight.com/2018/08/27/croatia-must-not-whitewash-the-horrors-of-jasenovac-08-27-2018/|website=Balkan Insight|date=August 27, 2018|access-date=April 17, 2020|archive-date=February 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209044459/https://balkaninsight.com/2018/08/27/croatia-must-not-whitewash-the-horrors-of-jasenovac-08-27-2018/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Rosensaft|first1=Menachem Z.|title=Croatia Is Brazenly Attempting to Rewrite its Holocaust Crimes Out of History|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/246116/croatia-rewrite-holocaust-crimes-out-of-history|publisher=Tablet Magazine|date=October 9, 2017|access-date=April 3, 2020|archive-date=March 19, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200319061627/https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/246116/croatia-rewrite-holocaust-crimes-out-of-history|url-status=live}}</ref> The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp in Croatia, an NGO with authors and academics among its members, claims that Jasenovac was a labor camp during World War II and that it was later used by Yugoslav Communists to imprison Ustasha members and regular Croatian Home Guard army troops until 1948, then alleged Stalinists until 1951.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Vladisavljevic|first1=Anja|title=Book Event Questioning WWII Crimes Planned for Zagreb Church|url=https://balkaninsight.com/2019/01/07/new-revisionist-book-on-jasenovac-wwii-camp-01-07-2019-1/|website=Balkan Insight|publisher=BIRN|date=January 7, 2019|access-date=April 17, 2020|archive-date=October 4, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201004203436/https://balkaninsight.com/2019/01/07/new-revisionist-book-on-jasenovac-wwii-camp-01-07-2019-1/|url-status=live}}</ref> Following a series of book publications denying the Ustashe regime's crimes, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Croatian authorities in 2019 to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so".<ref>{{cite web|title=Simon Wiesenthal Centre urges Croatia to ban Jasenovac revisionist works|url=http://hr.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a361178/Simon-Wiesenthal-Centre-urges-Croatia-to-ban-Jasenovac-revisionist-works.html|website=hr.n1info.com|publisher=N1 Zagreb|date=January 9, 2019|access-date=April 17, 2020|archive-date=October 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201009060853/http://hr.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a361178/Simon-Wiesenthal-Centre-urges-Croatia-to-ban-Jasenovac-revisionist-works.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Jewish rights group urges Croatia to ban pro-Nazi book|url=https://apnews.com/11edaa150f63423989db3540cbbdbd69|publisher=Associated Press|date=January 9, 2019|access-date=April 17, 2020|archive-date=November 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107223954/https://apnews.com/11edaa150f63423989db3540cbbdbd69|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Hungary ===
In Hungary, Holocaust distortion and denial take place in the form of downplaying the country's role in the killing and deportation of Jews. The [[Arrow Cross Party]] committed numerous crimes and killed or deported Jews. A total of 437,000 Jews were deported by [[Miklós Horthy]]'s government in the [[Hungary in World War II|Kingdom of Hungary]], an Axis collaborator.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Mansky|first1=Jackie|title=Why It Matters That Hungary's Prime Minister Denounced His Country's Role in the Holocaust|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/holocaust-and-hungary-prime-minister-180964139/|website=Smithsonian Magazine|access-date=November 14, 2020|archive-date=November 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109040634/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/holocaust-and-hungary-prime-minister-180964139/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Hungary: Holocaust Denial, Incitement and Intimidation|url=http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14378|website=Israel National News|date=January 14, 2014|access-date=November 14, 2020|archive-date=October 6, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201006110018/http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14378|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Serbia ===
In Serbia, Holocaust distortion and denial is manifested in the downplaying of [[Milan Nedić]] and [[Dimitrije Ljotić]]'s roles in the [[Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia#Racial persecution|extermination of Serbia's Jews]] in concentration camps in [[Government of National Salvation|Nedić's Serbia]], by a number of Serbian historians.<ref name="Perica151">{{harvnb|Perica|2002|p=151.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ramet|first1=Sabrina|title=The denial syndrome and its consequences: Serbian political culture since 2000|journal=Communist and Post-Communist Studies|year=2007|volume=40|pages=41–58|doi=10.1016/j.postcomstud.2006.12.004|url=https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article/40/1/41/63/The-denial-syndrome-and-its-consequences-Serbian|access-date=April 17, 2020|archive-date=June 21, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200621180604/https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article/40/1/41/63/The-denial-syndrome-and-its-consequences-Serbian|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Serb collaborationist armed forces, including the [[Chetniks]], were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the mass killings of mainly Jews and Roma as well as Croats, Muslims and those Serbs who sided with any anti-German resistance.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Ridgeway|first1=James|last2=Udovickii|first2=Jasminka|title=Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia|date=2000|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=978-0-82232-590-1|page=133|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GuGe9fy4raoC|access-date=May 27, 2020|archive-date=July 5, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240705095217/https://books.google.com/books?id=GuGe9fy4raoC|url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Cohen|1996|pp=76–81}} Since the end of the war, Serbian collaboration in the Holocaust has been the subject of historical revisionism by Serbian leaders.{{sfn|Cohen|1996|p=113}}

=== Slovakia ===
In Slovakia, some anti-communist writers claim that [[Jozef Tiso]] was a savior of Jews or that the [[Slovak Republic (1939–1945)|Slovak State]] was not responsible for [[the Holocaust in Slovakia]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sniegon|first1=Tomas|title=Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture|date=2014|publisher=[[Berghahn Books]]|isbn=978-1-78238-294-2|location=New York|title-link=Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture|quote=As far back as during the Cold War, the SWC had adapted its ideological history usage to fit its main goal – to fight for a ‘Slovak Slovakia’.8 The Holocaust was used in the narrative, but to a small degree and without much attention from the surrounding world. The use of history was focused, above all, on defending the memory of Jozef Tiso. What was most important, it seemed, was not to question the Holocaust as such, but rather to present it as a German crime which in Slovakia was supported solely by a few German-friendly radicals whom Tiso, against his will, was forced to keep in the government so as not to enrage the Germans too much. |pages=77–78)}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Nina |last=Paulovičová |editor1-first=John-Paul |editor1-last=Himka |editor2-first=Joanna Beata |editor2-last=Michlic |title=Bringing the Dark Past to Light. The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. |title-link=Bringing the Dark Past to Light |chapter=The "Unmasterable Past"? The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Slovakia |location=Lincoln |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-8032-2544-2 |pages=549–590 |quote=Because of [anti-Communist] émigrés’ attempts to whitewash history and degrade historical scholarship in order to sustain the reservoir of national mythologization, liberal historians denounce the émigrés as “misinformers” and “misinterpreters.” The claims that fascism never occurred in Slovakia (František Vnuk), that the deportation of Jews was an “evacuation” (Milan S. Durica), that Tiso (whose anti-Semitic invectives fueled the radicalism against the Jewish minority) was a “martyr” and a “savior” of the Jews, and that the Holocaust should be omitted from the context of the Slovak national identity discourse are the key markers of the émigré historians’ views. (p. 564)}}</ref>

==Western Europe==

=== Belgium ===
In Belgium in 2001, [[Roeland Raes]], the ideologue and vice-president of one of the country's largest political parties, the [[Vlaams Blok]], gave an interview on Dutch TV where he cast doubt over the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In the same interview, he questioned the scale of the Nazis' use of gas chambers and the authenticity of [[Anne Frank]]'s diary. In response to the media assault following the interview, Raes was forced to resign his position but vowed to remain active within the party.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,449278,00.html Belgium's far right party in Holocaust controversy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200411130223/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/09/worlddispatch.thefarright|date=April 11, 2020}}, ''The Guardian'', Friday, March 9, 2001.</ref> Three years later, the Vlaams Blok was convicted of racism and chose to disband. Immediately afterwards, it legally reformed under the new name Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) with the same leaders and the same membership.<ref>[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3994867.stm Court rules Vlaams Blok is racist], BBC News, November 9, 2004.</ref>

In September 2024, the Belgian far-right [[Vlaams Belang]] party sparked controversy by putting a convicted Holocaust denier as one of its candidates in the upcoming municipal elections.<ref>{{cite news |last=Starcevic |first=Seb |date=18 September 2024 |title=Belgian far-right party puts convicted Holocaust denier up for local elections |url=https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-far-right-party-vlaams-belang-holocaust-denier-roeland-raes-local-elections/ |access-date=19 September 2024 |work=Politico}}</ref>

=== France ===
In France, Holocaust denial became more prominent in the 1990s as {{lang|fr|[[Historical revisionism (negationism)|négationnisme]]}}, though the movement has existed in ultra-left French politics since at least the 1960s, led by figures such as [[Pierre Guillaume]] (who was involved in the bookshop [[La Vieille Taupe]] during the 1960s). Elements of the extreme far-right in France have begun to build on each other's negationist arguments, which often span beyond the Holocaust to cover a range of antisemitic views, incorporating attempts to tie the Holocaust to the Biblical massacre of the [[Canaanites]], critiques of Zionism, and other material fanning what has been called a "conspiratorial Judeo-phobia" designed to legitimize and "banalize" antisemitism.<ref>Richard Joseph Golsan, ''Vichy's Afterlife'', University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 130.</ref>

=== Germany ===
The trial of a Canadian woman, Monika Schaefer, and her German-Canadian brother, Alfred Schaefer started in Germany in early July 2018. They were charged with {{lang|de|Volksverhetzung}} (literally 'incitement of the people', often phrased as 'incitement to hatred' in English-language media). The pair had published video clips on [[YouTube]] of their denial of the genocide of Jews. In the clips, Alfred Schaefer said that Jews wanted to destroy Germans, blamed them for starting both World Wars, and referred to the Holocaust as a "Jewish fantasy".<ref>Cohen, Reut (May 8, 2018) [https://www.bnaibrith.ca/canadian_alfred_schaefer_convicted_of_holocaust_denial_in_germany "Canadian Alfred Schaefer Convicted of Holocaust Denial in Germany"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180707230455/https://www.bnaibrith.ca/canadian_alfred_schaefer_convicted_of_holocaust_denial_in_germany |date=July 7, 2018 }} [[B'Nai Brith|B'Nal Brith Canada]]</ref> Monika Schaefer was arrested in January 2018 in Germany while attending a court hearing of [[Sylvia Stolz]].<ref>[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/holocaust-denier-monika-schaefer-trial-jasper-alberta-germany-1.4735103Bell, Roberta (July 6, 2018) "Canadian Holocaust denier on trial in Germany for 'incitement to hatred'"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200223193320/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/holocaust-denier-monika-schaefer-trial-jasper-alberta-germany-1.4735103Bell, |date=February 23, 2020 }} ''[[CBC News]]''</ref><ref>Staff (January 4, 2018) [https://edmontonsun.com/news/national/canadian-holocaust-denier-arrested-in-germany-report/wcm/84bc1065-59bc-4da1-963f-638940a457f3 "Canadian Holocaust denier arrested in Germany: Report"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190206195309/https://edmontonsun.com/news/national/canadian-holocaust-denier-arrested-in-germany-report/wcm/84bc1065-59bc-4da1-963f-638940a457f3 |date=February 6, 2019 }} ''[[Edmonton Sun]]''</ref><ref>JTA (January 9, 2018) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/canadian-holocaust-denier-arrested-in-germany/ "Canadian Holocaust denier arrested in Germany"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180707230508/https://www.timesofisrael.com/canadian-holocaust-denier-arrested-in-germany/ |date=July 7, 2018 }}''[[The Times of Israel]]''</ref> Schaefer had been the [[Green Party of Canada|Green Party]] candidate in the [[Alberta]] riding of [[Yellowhead (electoral district)|Yellowhead]] during the federal elections in 2006, 2008, and 2011, but was expelled from the party after news reports surfaced of a July 2016 video<ref>Alfred S. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_BZphQ7Qo "Sorry Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust" (video)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808115751/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_BZphQ7Qo |date=August 8, 2019 }} [[YouTube]]</ref> where she describes the Holocaust as "the most persistent lie in all of history" and insisted that those in concentration camps had been kept as healthy and as well-fed as possible.<ref>Staff (January 5, 2018) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/monika-schaefer-alberta-holocaust-denier-arrested-germany-1.4474400 "Alberta Holocaust denier reportedly arrested in Germany"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807170547/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/monika-schaefer-alberta-holocaust-denier-arrested-germany-1.4474400 |date=August 7, 2019 }} ''[[CBC News]]''</ref><ref>Fishman, Aidan (January 4, 2018) [https://www.bnaibrith.ca/canadian_holocaust_denier_arrested_in_germany_following_b_nai_brith_complaint "Canadian Holocaust Denier Arrested in Germany Following B'nai B'rith Complaint"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180707202207/https://www.bnaibrith.ca/canadian_holocaust_denier_arrested_in_germany_following_b_nai_brith_complaint |date=July 7, 2018 }} [[B'Nai Brith|B'Nal Brith Canada]]</ref> In late October 2018, Monika Schaefer was convicted of the charge of 'incitement of hatred'. She was sentenced to ten months while Alfred Schaefer, also convicted, received a sentence of three years and two months.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/alberta-holocaust-denier-guilty-of-inciting-hatred-in-german-court|title=Alberta Holocaust denier guilty of inciting hatred in German court|date=October 26, 2018|work=National Post|access-date=October 28, 2018|archive-date=June 23, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230623215748/https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/alberta-holocaust-denier-guilty-of-inciting-hatred-in-german-court|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== United Kingdom ===
In January 2019, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters, on behalf of the [[Holocaust Memorial Day (UK)|Holocaust Memorial Day Trust]] found that 5% of UK adults did not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 (8%) believed its scale has been exaggerated. One in five respondents incorrectly answered that less than 2 million Jews were murdered, and 45% couldn't say how many people were murdered in the Holocaust. Speaking in light of the survey's findings, [[Karen Pollock]], chief executive of the [[Holocaust Educational Trust]], said: "One person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many, and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history."<ref name="guardian-20190127">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/one-in-20-britons-does-not-believe-holocaust-happened|title=One in 20 Britons does not believe Holocaust took place, poll finds|last=Sherwood|first=Harriet|newspaper=The Guardian|date=January 27, 2019|access-date=February 2, 2019|archive-date=July 30, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190730023456/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/one-in-20-britons-does-not-believe-holocaust-happened|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[BBC Radio 4]] programme ''[[More or Less (radio programme)|More or Less]]'', specializing on statistics, investigated the survey finding it was unlikely to be accurate. Participants were incentivized to complete the online survey by shopping vouchers encouraging speedy answering, and the principal question was a "reverse question" with most participants having to give the reverse answer to surrounding questions requiring careful answering. Another question asked how many Jewish people had been murdered in the holocaust with only 0.2% of participants giving the answer zero, which was considered to be a closer estimate of the number of UK adults that did not believe the Holocaust took place.<ref name="bbcr4-20190201">{{cite AV media|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00028cf|series=More or Less|title=Holocaust deniers, Venezuelan hyperinflation, Tinder likes|people=[[Tim Harford]], Peter Lynn (Professor of Survey Methodology)|publisher=BBC Radio 4|date=February 1, 2019|time=0m27s|access-date=February 2, 2019|archive-date=August 16, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816103617/https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00028cf|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Middle East==
===General===
[[Gamal Abdel Nasser]], the President of Egypt, told a German newspaper in 1964 that "no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust]."<ref>{{cite book |last=Satloff |first=Robert |title=Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab lands |publisher=PublicAffairs |year=2007 |isbn=9781586485108 |page=163}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Laqueur |first=Walter |url=https://archive.org/details/changingfaceofan00laqu/page/141 |title=The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=9780195304299 |page=[https://archive.org/details/changingfaceofan00laqu/page/141 141]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Robert S. |last=Wistrich |author-link=Robert S. Wistrich |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=acBtAAAAMAAJ |title=Hitler's apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi legacy |date=17 October 1985 |publisher=[[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]] |isbn=978-0-297-78719-8 |page=188 |quote="President Nasser of Egypt in a notorious interview with the editor of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Soldaten und National Zeitung, published on 1 May 1964, insisted that No one, not even the simplest man in our country, takes seriously the lie about six million Jews who were murdered"}}</ref>

Denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern figures and media. Holocaust denial is sponsored by some Middle Eastern governments, including Iran<ref>{{cite news |date=December 17, 2006 |title=Iran Further Isolates Itself with 'Holocaust Denial' |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6637685 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180901134402/https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6637685 |archive-date=September 1, 2018 |access-date=April 4, 2018 |work=[[NPR]]}}</ref> and Syria.<ref name="JVLSyria">{{cite web |title=Syrian Holocaust Denial |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/syrian-holocaust-denial |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161217011440/http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/syrdenial.html |archive-date=December 17, 2016 |access-date=August 17, 2020 |website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org |publisher=Jewish Virtual Library}}</ref> In 2006 [[Robert Satloff]] writing in ''[[The Washington Post]]'', reported that "A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers."<ref>{{Cite news |first=Robert |last=Satloff |author-link=Robert Satloff |date=October 8, 2006 |title=The Holocaust's Arab Heroes |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121035318/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.html |archive-date=November 21, 2018 |access-date=October 29, 2010 |newspaper=The Washington Post |page=B01}}</ref>

Prominent figures from the Middle East have rarely made publicized visits to [[Auschwitz]]—[[Arab citizens of Israel|Israel's Arab community]] being the exception. In 2010, [[Hadash]] MK [[Mohammed Barakeh]] visited, following a previous visit of two other Arab-Israeli lawmakers, and a group of about 100 Arab-Israeli writers and clerics in 2003.<ref name="MK">{{cite news |date=January 26, 2010 |title=Arab MK's Auschwitz visit draws fire from Jewish, Arab critics |url=https://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/2.209/arab-mk-s-auschwitz-visit-draws-fire-from-jewish-arab-critics-1.262131 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019074444/http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/2.209/arab-mk-s-auschwitz-visit-draws-fire-from-jewish-arab-critics-1.262131 |archive-date=October 19, 2015 |access-date=March 23, 2014 |newspaper=Haaretz |agency=[[Associated Press]]}}</ref>

===Iran===
Until recently, the Islamic Republic was the only state whose leadership and institutions openly engaged in Holocaust denial (and at times, justification) as part of official ideology.<ref name=":03">{{cite book |last=Litvak |first=Meir |title=Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust: Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives |date=2017 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |isbn=978-3-319-48866-0 |editor-last=McElligott |editor-first=Anthony |place=Cham |pages=205, 213–214 |chapter=Iranian Antisemitism and the Holocaust |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-48866-0_9 |editor2-last=Herf |editor2-first=Jeffrey}}</ref> Iranian discourse often portrays the Holocaust as a fabricated myth, allegedly invented by a Zionist–American alliance to justify the creation of Israel and expand Western influence.<ref name=":03" /> This framing serves to delegitimize Jewish statehood and legitimize the destruction of Israel.<ref name=":03" /> The Iranian government has also shifted blame for global injustice during World War II from Nazi Germany to the United States, which is seen as greatest cultural threat to Islam.<ref name=":03" /> Mark Weitzman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization described Iran as the "center of Muslim Holocaust denial."<ref name=":1" />

[[File:Rio does not welcome Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Protest in Brazil against former [[Iranian President]] [[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]], criticizing [[International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust|his Holocaust denial]]]]

Former Iranian President [[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]] frequently denied the Holocaust,<ref name="InternationalList1">Variously:

* [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4529198.stm "Holocaust comments spark outrage"], BBC News, Accessed December 14, 2005.
* Esfandiari, Golnaz. [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/12/6f3acbdf-d5f9-4ba1-8c9d-278c700ae2ea.html "Iran: President's Latest Comments About Israel Spark Further Condemnation"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080820094906/http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/12/6f3acbdf-d5f9-4ba1-8c9d-278c700ae2ea.html|date=August 20, 2008}}. Radio Free Europe. Accessed January 28, 2008.
* [http://www.ncccusa.org/news/051216Ahmadinejad.html "NCC Condemns Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Statement"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090417214619/http://www.ncccusa.org/news/051216Ahmadinejad.html|date=April 17, 2009}}. [[National Council of Churches]]. Accessed December 16, 2007.
* [http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/27/ahmadinejad.reaction/index.html "Annan: 'Dismay' over Iranian comments on Israel"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081207130247/http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/27/ahmadinejad.reaction/index.html|date=December 7, 2008}}. CNN. Accessed September 27, 2007.
* [http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/iran.israel/ "Iranian leader: Holocaust a 'myth'"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051216125829/http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/iran.israel/|date=December 16, 2005}}. [[CNN]]. December 14, 2006.</ref> formally 'questioning' the reliability of the historical evidence,<ref name="Spiegel">[http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-iran-s-president-ahmadinejad-we-are-determined-a-418660.html "Spiegel Interview with Iran's President Ahmadinejad: 'We Are Determined'"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190512214220/https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-iran-s-president-ahmadinejad-we-are-determined-a-418660.html|date=May 12, 2019}}, ''Der Spiegel'' (May 30, 2006). Retrieved 07sep2013.</ref> although he on occasion confirmed belief in it.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100923/http://www.theisraelproject.org/atf/cf/%7B84DC5887-741E-4056-8D91-A389164BC94E%7D/20070924AHMADINEJADCOLUMBIATRANSCRIPT.DOC Transcript of his speech on September 24, 2007.] "However, I believe the Holocaust, from what we read, happened during World War II after 1930 in the 1940s."</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Video of his speech on September 24, 2007. Timecode 22:28 to 22:37. |url=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=773638342167920349 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629105844/http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=773638342167920349 |archivedate=June 29, 2011}}</ref> In a December 2005 speech, Ahmadinejad said that a legend was fabricated and had been promoted to protect Israel. He said:[[File:Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei Denying Holocaust.webm|thumb|upright=1.3|The [[Supreme leader of Iran]] Khamenei has denied [[Holocaust]] on multiple occasions.]]{{blockquote|They have fabricated a legend, under the name of the Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves.... If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2005/12/200849154418141136.html|title=Ahmadinejad: Holocaust a myth|work=[[Al Jazeera Arabic|Al Jazeera]]|access-date=July 9, 2008|archive-date=September 23, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923231908/http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2005/12/200849154418141136.html|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

The remarks immediately provoked international controversy as well as swift condemnation from government officials in Israel, Europe, and the United States. All six political parties in the German parliament signed a joint resolution condemning Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120730021205/http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=26268&name=German+parliament+slams+Ahmadinejad+remarks German parliament slams Ahmadinejad remarks], ''Expatica'', December 16, 2005.</ref> In contrast, [[Hamas]] political leader [[Khaled Mashal]] described Ahmadinejad's comments as "courageous" and stated, "Muslim people will defend Iran because it voices what they have in their hearts, in particular the Palestinian people."<ref>Al Jazeera,{{cite web |title=Hamas springs to Iran's defense |url=http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=17093 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071206115859/http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=17093 |archive-date=December 6, 2007 |access-date=August 14, 2007}}</ref> In the United States, the [[Muslim Public Affairs Council]] condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks.<ref name="mpac">{{cite news |date=December 8, 2005 |title=MPAC Rebukes Iranian President's Comments |url=http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=231 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080617083103/http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=231 |archive-date=June 17, 2008 |access-date=January 31, 2012}}</ref> In 2005, the Egyptian [[Muslim Brotherhood]] leader, [[Mohammed Mahdi Akef]], denounced what he called "the myth of the Holocaust" in defending Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust.<ref>[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4554986.stm Egyptian Islamists deny Holocaust], December 23, 2005.</ref>

On December 11, 2006, the Iranian state-sponsored "[[International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust]]" began to widespread condemnation.<ref>{{Cite news |date=December 11, 2006 |title=Iran hosts Holocaust conference |url=http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/11/iran.holocaust/index.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190201002703/http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/11/iran.holocaust/index.html |archive-date=February 1, 2019 |access-date=December 27, 2006 |publisher=CNN}}</ref> The conference, called for and held at the behest of Ahmadinejad,<ref>{{Cite web |date=January 5, 2006 |title=Iran: Holocaust Conference Soon in Tehran |url=http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.246551760&par=0 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060310075441/http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.246551760&par=0 |archive-date=March 10, 2006 |access-date=August 17, 2020 |publisher=Adnkronos International (AKI)}}</ref> was widely described as a "Holocaust denial conference" or a "meeting of Holocaust deniers",<ref>* [http://washingtontimes.com/world/20061213-120143-8384r.htm "Holocaust denial outrages Europe"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061225063527/http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20061213-120143-8384r.htm|date=December 25, 2006}}, ''[[The Washington Times]]'', December 13, 2006.
* [http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=c4b5cf88-207a-487d-b785-b97e119099d8 "Holocaust deniers gather in Iran"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011091846/http://canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=c4b5cf88-207a-487d-b785-b97e119099d8|date=October 11, 2007}}, ''[[Edmonton Journal]]'', December 13, 2006.
* [https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-holocaust13dec13,1,5920414.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true "Holocaust deniers rebuked"]. ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', December 13, 2006.
* [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061213.wxholocaustprof13/BNStory/International/home "Canadian prof attends Tehran's gathering of Holocaust deniers"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070121004453/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061213.wxholocaustprof13/BNStory/International/home|date=January 21, 2007}}, ''[[The Globe and Mail]]'', December 13, 2006.
* "The conference for Holocaust deniers hosted by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a transparent polemical stunt." [https://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/12/13/irans_great_pretender/ "Iran's great pretender"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303211047/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/12/13/irans_great_pretender/|date=March 3, 2016}}, ''[[The Boston Globe]]'', December 13, 2006.
* "What's the perfect way to top off a Holocaust denial conference featuring input from the likes of such scholars as former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke?" [https://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-iran13dec13,0,2528243.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail "Holocaust denial can be dangerous"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070111102008/http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-iran13dec13,0,2528243.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail|date=January 11, 2007}}, ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', December 13, 2006.
* [http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=341711&sid=WOR "Across Europe, outrage over meeting of holocaust deniers"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071223174719/http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=341711&sid=WOR|date=December 23, 2007}}, ''[[Zee News]]'', December 13, 2006.
* {{usurped|[https://archive.today/20061217133330/http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/12/12/2769773-cp.html "World reacts with outrage over meeting of Holocaust deniers in Iran"]}}, ''[[Calgary Sun]]'', December 13, 2006.
* [http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4396632.html "Holocaust deniers' meeting spurs outrage"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061219093121/http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4396632.html|date=December 19, 2006}}, ''[[Houston Chronicle]]'', December 12, 2006.
* [http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/12/europe/EU_GEN_Europe_Holocaust_Denial.php "Across Europe, outrage over meeting of Holocaust deniers in Iran"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061214071812/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/12/europe/EU_GEN_Europe_Holocaust_Denial.php|date=December 14, 2006}}, ''[[International Herald Tribune]]'', December 12, 2006.
* [https://www.theguardian.com/israel/Story/0,,1970042,00.html "Holocaust deniers gather in Iran for 'scientific' conference"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210220161206/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/12/iran.israel|date=February 20, 2021}}, ''[[The Guardian]]'', December 12, 2006.
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2067598.ece "Revisionist fringe gathers for Iran's Holocaust denial jamboree"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070108183925/http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2067598.ece|date=January 8, 2007}}, ''[[The Independent]]'', December 12, 2006.
* [https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=auGTWx2QrILM&refer=home "Holocaust Denied at Iran Forum to 'Research' Nazis"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100613163056/http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087|date=June 13, 2010}}, ''[[Bloomberg Television]]'', December 11, 2006.
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-iran.html "Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201210055610/https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-iran.html|date=December 10, 2020}}, ''[[The New York Times]]'', December 11, 2006.
* "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at a Tehran conference denying the existence of the Holocaust, said Israel will disappear like the Soviet Union." [http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061212-072558-3819r "Iran students rebel over Holocaust denial"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071016065421/http://upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061212-072558-3819r|date=October 16, 2007}}, ''[[United Press International]]'', December 12, 2006.</ref> though Iran denied it was a Holocaust denial conference.<ref>{{cite news |date=December 11, 2006 |title=Berlin Counters Holocaust Conference |url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453691,00.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406141032/https://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453691,00.html |archive-date=April 6, 2023 |access-date=December 27, 2006 |work=[[Der Spiegel]]}}</ref> A few months before it opened, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi stated: "The Holocaust is not a sacred issue that one can't touch. I have visited the Nazi camps in Eastern Europe. I think it is exaggerated."<ref>{{Cite news |date=September 3, 2006 |title=Iran to Host Autumn Conference on Holocaust |url=https://www.foxnews.com/story/iran-to-host-autumn-conference-on-holocaust |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060930174449/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,212003,00.html |archive-date=September 30, 2006 |access-date=September 11, 2006 |publisher=Fox News |agency=Associated Press}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=June 2024}}

Iran was the only country to vote against UN Resolution 61/255 condemning Holocaust denial in 2007. The editor of ''[[Kayhan]]'', a newspaper linked to the Supreme Leader, dismissed the resolution as "“preparing the United Nations' corpse for burial in the graveyard of history."<ref name=":03" /> Some Iranian officials claim the Holocaust was exploited to suppress anti-Zionist sentiment in Europe and enable Zionist "murderous goals."<ref name=":03" />

In 2013, in an interview with CNN, newly elected Iranian President [[Hassan Rouhani]] condemned the Holocaust, stating: "I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis created towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn."<ref name="Saeed Kamali Dehghan">{{cite news |last=Dehghan |first=Saeed Kamali |date=September 25, 2013 |title=Iranian president Hassan Rouhani recognises 'reprehensible' Holocaust |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/iran-rouhani-recognises-holocaust |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190528221855/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/iran-rouhani-recognises-holocaust |archive-date=May 28, 2019 |access-date=December 11, 2016 |work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Iranian media later accused CNN of fabricating Rouhani's comments.<ref>{{cite news |date=September 26, 2013 |title=Iranian press accuses CNN of 'fabricating' Rouhani Holocaust remarks |url=https://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Report-CNN-fabricated-Rouhani-Holocaust-interview-remarks-327171 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302203415/https://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Report-CNN-fabricated-Rouhani-Holocaust-interview-remarks-327171 |archive-date=March 2, 2021 |access-date=June 30, 2014 |work=[[The Jerusalem Post]]}}</ref>

In his official 2013 [[Nowruz]] address, [[Supreme Leader of Iran]] Grand Ayatollah [[Ali Khamenei]] questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, remarking that "The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened."<ref>{{cite web |author=Khamenei.ir |title=#Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened. |url=https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/446928689943420928 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611091736/https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/446928689943420928 |archive-date=June 11, 2019 |access-date=March 23, 2014 |via=Twitter}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=In Iran new year's address, Khamenei questions Holocaust |url=http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/03/8006/in-iran-new-years-address-khamenei-questions-holocaust/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140324233740/http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/03/8006/in-iran-new-years-address-khamenei-questions-holocaust/ |archive-date=March 24, 2014 |access-date=March 23, 2014 |work=[[Al-Monitor]]}}</ref> This was consistent with Khamenei's previous comments regarding the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web |title=What does Iran's Supreme Leader really think about the Holocaust? |url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100239211/what-does-irans-supreme-leader-really-think-about-the-holocaust/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002100418/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100239211/what-does-irans-supreme-leader-really-think-about-the-holocaust/ |archive-date=October 2, 2013 |work=News – Telegraph Blogs |publisher=[[The Daily Telegraph]]}}</ref>

In 2015, the House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex in Iran organized the [[International Holocaust Cartoon Competition|Second International Holocaust Cartoon Competition]],<ref>{{cite web |date=September 12, 2016 |title=Timeline: Holocaust Denial and Distortion from Iranian Government and Official Media Resources (1998–2016) |url=https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Iran-Holocaust-denial-timeline.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170315012458/https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Iran-Holocaust-denial-timeline.pdf |archive-date=March 15, 2017 |access-date=June 9, 2019 |website=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]}}</ref> a competition in which artists were encouraged to submit [[cartoons]] on the theme of Holocaust denial. The winner of the contest will receive $12,000. ''[[Hamshahri]]'', a popular Iranian newspaper, held a [[International Holocaust Cartoon Competition|similar contest]] in 2006.<ref>[http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4621731,00.html "Iran to host Holocaust denial cartoon competition."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629102634/https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4621731,00.html|date=June 29, 2018}} ''[[Ynetnews]]''. February 1, 2015. February 1, 2015.</ref>

=== Israel ===
Israel's Prime Minister, [[Benjamin Netanyahu]], at a speech to the [[World Zionist Congress]] in 2015, [[Benjamin Netanyahu#Fourth term|claimed Adolf Hitler did not want to exterminate Jews]] but only wanted to expel them from Europe, and the extermination of the Jews was the idea of [[Haj Amin al-Husseini]], the [[Grand Mufti of Jerusalem]].<ref>{{cite news |date=21 October 2015 |title=Netanyahu Holocaust remarks: Israeli PM criticised |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34594563 |work=BBC |quote=But in a speech at the World Zionist Congress, external in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Mr Netanyahu gave a different account. "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time - he wanted to expel the Jews," the Israeli prime minister said. "And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: 'If you expel them, they'll all come here.' "'So what should I do with them?' he [Hitler] asked. He [Husseini] said: 'Burn them.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=HELLER |first1=ARON |date=October 21, 2015 |title=Netanyahu causes uproar by linking Palestinians to Holocaust |url=https://apnews.com/general-news-61ead35a427a408e9d93d43f41cfa064 |work=AP}}</ref> Scholars denied this claim, including [[Moshe Zimmermann]] who said that it reinforced the opinions of the far-right and Holocaust deniers. Zimmerman stated that "Any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial". Netanyahu later told reporters that he was not letting Hitler off the hook for the Holocaust and that the Mufti's role should not be ignored.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Beaumont |first1=Peter |last2=Reed |first2=Betsy |date=22 Oct 2015 |title=Outrage over Holocaust comments intensifies as Netanyahu meets Kerry |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/holocaust-comments-binyamin-netanyahu-john-kerry-berlin |work=The Guardian}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Heller |first1=Aron |date=October 21, 2015 |title=Scholars slam Netanyahu for suggesting WW II-era Palestinian leader inspired Holocaust |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/scholars-slam-netanyahu-for-suggesting-ww-ii-era-palestinian-leader-inspired-holocaust-1.3282286 |work=[[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation|CBC]] |agency=[[Associated Press]]}}</ref>

===Palestine===
{{See also|Racism in Palestine}}

Individuals from the [[Palestinian Authority]], [[Hamas]], and a number of Palestinian groups have engaged in various aspects of Holocaust denial.<ref name="Karsh98">{{cite book |author-link=Efraim Karsh |last=Karsh |first=Efraim |title=Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest |location=New York |publisher=[[Grove Press]] |date=2003 |pages=98–99}}</ref>

[[Hamas]] has promoted Holocaust denial;<ref>[https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1386&context=all_fac Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust Denial] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190428190244/https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1386&context=all_fac|date=April 28, 2019}}, Kenneth Lasson, [[University of Baltimore School of Law]], 2007</ref> [[Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi]] held the view that the Holocaust never occurred, that [[Zionism|Zionists]] were behind the action of Nazis, and that Zionists funded Nazism.<ref name="wiesenthal">{{cite web |first1=Harold |last1=Brackman |first2=Aaron |last2=Breitbart |year=2007 |title=Holocaust Denial's Assault on Memory: Precursor to twenty first century genocide? |url=http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7Bdfd2aac1-2ade-428a-9263-35234229d8d8%7D/denial_report.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206142427/http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7D/DENIAL_REPORT.PDF |archive-date=February 6, 2012 |access-date=May 2, 2012 |publisher=Simon Wiesenthal Center}}</ref> A press release by Hamas in April 2000 decried "the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis".<ref>[http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=1946 Washington Institute for Near East Policy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090110175744/http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=1946|date=January 10, 2009}}, 2000</ref> In August 2009, Hamas' [[Hamas–UNRWA Holocaust dispute|told UNRWA]] that it would "refuse" to allow Palestinian children to study the Holocaust, which it called "a lie invented by the Zionists" and referred to Holocaust education as a "war crime".<ref>Hadid, Diaa (September 1, 2009) [http://archive.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/09/01/hamas_leader_denies_holocaust/ "Hamas leader denies Holocaust"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190523093127/http://archive.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/09/01/hamas_leader_denies_holocaust/|date=May 23, 2019}} [[Associated Press]] via ''[[Boston Globe]]''</ref> Hamas continued to hold this position in 2011, when the organization's Ministry for Refugee Affairs said that Holocaust education was "intended to poison the minds of our children."<ref>Oster, Marcy (March 1, 2011) [https://www.jta.org/2011/03/01/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/hamas-to-u-n-dont-teach-holocaust "Hamas to U.N.: Don't teach Holocaust"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180618125959/https://www.jta.org/2011/03/01/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/hamas-to-u-n-dont-teach-holocaust|date=June 18, 2018}} ''[[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]]''</ref>

The thesis of the 1982 doctoral dissertation of [[Mahmoud Abbas]], a co-founder of [[Fatah]] and president of the [[Palestinian Authority]], was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement".<ref>[http://hnn.us/articles/1414.html Was Abu Mazen a Holocaust Denier?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190331052749/http://hnn.us/articles/1414.html|date=March 31, 2019}} By Brynn Malone (History News Network)</ref><ref>[http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01503 Abu Mazen: A Political Profile. Zionism and Holocaust Denial] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070310213751/http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01503|date=March 10, 2007}} by Yael Yehoshua ([[MEMRI]]) April 29, 2003</ref><ref name="wiesenthal" /> In his 1983 book ''[[The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism|The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism]]'' based on the dissertation, Abbas denied that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust; dismissing it as a "myth" and a "fantastic lie".<ref name="Abbas">{{cite web |author=Jeremy Havardi |date=August 14, 2012 |title=Holocaust denial undermines the Palestinian cause |url=http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1524/holocaust_denial_undermines_the_palestinian_cause |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190130174348/http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1524/holocaust_denial_undermines_the_palestinian_cause |archive-date=January 30, 2019 |access-date=May 18, 2015 |publisher=The Commentator}}</ref> At most, he wrote, 890,000 Jews were murdered by the Germans. Abbas claimed that the number of deaths has been exaggerated for political purposes. "It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand."{{R|wiesenthal}}<ref name="wymaninstitute.org">[http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2003-03-denier.php A Holocaust-Denier as Prime Minister of "Palestine"?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110908080728/http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2003-03-denier.php|date=September 8, 2011}} by Dr. Rafael Medoff (The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)</ref><ref name="autogenerated1">[http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000032.html Abu Mazen and the Holocaust] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190205035253/http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000032.html|date=February 5, 2019}} by Tom Gross</ref>

In his March 2006 interview with ''[[Haaretz]]'', Abbas stated, "I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12&nbsp;million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it."<ref>{{cite news |author=Akiva Eldar |date=May 28, 2003 |title=U.S. told us to ignore Israeli map reservations |url=https://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-told-us-to-ignore-israeli-map-reservations-1.8840 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120164725/http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-told-us-to-ignore-israeli-map-reservations-1.8840 |archive-date=January 20, 2013 |access-date=March 23, 2014 |newspaper=[[Haaretz]]}}</ref> While acknowledging the existence of the Holocaust in 2006 and 2014,<ref name="Heinous">{{cite news |date=April 27, 2014 |title=Palestinian leader Abbas admits the Holocaust was 'heinous' |url=https://nypost.com/2014/04/27/palestinian-leader-abbas-admits-the-holocaust-was-heinous/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180622164937/https://nypost.com/2014/04/27/palestinian-leader-abbas-admits-the-holocaust-was-heinous/ |archive-date=June 22, 2018 |access-date=May 18, 2015 |newspaper=New York Post}}</ref> Abbas has defended the position that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to perpetrate it. In 2012, Abbas told [[Al Mayadeen]], a Beirut TV station affiliated with Iran and Hezbollah, that he "challenges anyone who can deny that the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis before World War II".<ref name="Link">{{cite news |last=Myers |first=David N. |date=January 23, 2013 |title=Abbas Alleges Link Between Zionists And Nazis |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/23/abbas-alleges-link-between-zionists-and-nazis.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150517195933/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/23/abbas-alleges-link-between-zionists-and-nazis.html |archive-date=May 17, 2015 |access-date=May 18, 2015 |website=[[The Daily Beast]]}}</ref>

Surveys conducted by [[Sammy Smooha]] of the [[University of Haifa]] found that the fraction of Palestinian citizens of Israel denying the Holocaust increased from 28% in 2006 to 40% in 2008.<ref name="Smooha">{{cite web |first=Sammy |last=Smooha |year=2009 |title=The 2008 Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel: Main Findings and Trends of Change |url=http://soc.haifa.ac.il/~s.smooha/uploads/editor_uploads/files/Index2008MainFindings_TrendsChangeEng.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140806134653/http://soc.haifa.ac.il/~s.smooha/uploads/editor_uploads/files/Index2008MainFindings_TrendsChangeEng.pdf |archive-date=August 6, 2014 |access-date=June 18, 2014}}</ref> Smooha commented:

<blockquote>In Arab eyes disbelief in the very happening of the Shoah is not hate of Jews (embedded in the denial of the Shoah in the West) but rather a form of protest. Arabs not believing in the event of Shoah intend to express strong objection to the portrayal of the Jews as the ultimate victim and to the underrating of the Palestinians as a victim. They deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state that the Shoah gives legitimacy to. Arab disbelief in the Shoah is a component of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike the ideological and anti-Semitic denial of the Holocaust and the desire to escape guilt in the West.{{R|Smooha}}</blockquote>

Mohammed Dajani, a Palestinian professor at [[Al-Quds University]] and founding director of its American Studies Institute, took a group of students to visit the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]] in 2014. Following the trip, he faced strong opposition and pressure from within the university, ultimately leading to his resignation. Dajani later explained that critics believed the knowledge students might gain from the visit would contradict the prevailing collective narrative, in which some viewed the Holocaust as a Zionist narrative intended to garner international support for Israel. Still, he defended Holocaust education as essential for peace, stating:

{{Blockquote|text=Holocaust denial and distortion are historically incorrect, and factually wrong, and constitute a significant threat to morality and human dignity, and to the prospects of reconciliation and peace between Palestinians and Israelis.<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Times of Israel]]|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-professor-who-took-students-to-auschwitz-holocaust-denial-imperils-peace|title=Palestinian professor who took students to Auschwitz: Holocaust denial imperils peace|date=17 September 2023}}</ref>}}

=== Syria ===
In a speech delivered at the [[Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region|Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party]]'s central committee meeting in December 2023, the Ba'ath party secretary-general [[Bashar al-Assad]] claimed that there was "no evidence" of the killings of six million Jews during [[the Holocaust]]. Assad alleged that the Holocaust was "politicized" by [[Allies of World War II|Allied powers]] to facilitate the mass-deportation of [[European Jews]] to [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]]. Assad also accused the U.S. government of financially and militarily sponsoring the [[rise of Nazism]] during the [[Interwar period|inter-war period]].<ref name="Silkoff">{{Cite news |last=Silkoff |first=Shira |date=20 December 2023 |title=Syria's Assad claims Holocaust was a lie fabricated to justify creation of Israel |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/syrias-assad-claims-holocaust-was-a-lie-fabricated-to-justify-creation-of-israel/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231220150406/https://www.timesofisrael.com/syrias-assad-claims-holocaust-was-a-lie-fabricated-to-justify-creation-of-israel/ |archive-date=20 December 2023 |work=The Times of Israel}}</ref><ref name="i24news">{{Cite news |date=20 December 2023 |title=Syrian President Assad denies Holocaust and accuses U.S. of funding Nazis in controversial speech |url=https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy/1703081866-syrian-president-assad-denies-holocaust-and-accuses-u-s-of-funding-nazis-in-controversial-speech |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231220142407/https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy/1703081866-syrian-president-assad-denies-holocaust-and-accuses-u-s-of-funding-nazis-in-controversial-speech |archive-date=20 December 2023 |work=i24news}}</ref> Highlighting the [[World War II casualties of the Soviet Union|deaths of 26 million Soviet citizens]] during the [[World War II|Second World War]], Assad said: "there was no specific method of torture or killing specific to the Jews. The [[Nazism|Nazis]] used the same methods everywhere."<ref name="Silkoff" /><ref name="i24news" />

===Turkey===
In Turkey, in 1996, the Islamic preacher [[Adnan Oktar]] under the pen name of Harun Yahya, distributed thousands of copies of a book which was originally published the previous year, entitled ''Soykırım Yalanı'' ("The Genocide Lie", referring to the Holocaust) and mailed unsolicited texts to American and European schools and colleges.<ref>Michael Hopkins, [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/organizations/harunyahya.html "Harun Yahya and Holocaust Revisionism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190124202225/http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/organizations/harunyahya.html|date=January 24, 2019}}, The TalkOrigins Archive [Posted: draft: December 7, 2003].</ref> The publication of ''Soykırım Yalanı'' sparked much public debate.<ref name="axt">{{cite web |date=1996 |title=Turkey |url=http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive1/turkey/turkey.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120519190843/http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive1/turkey/turkey.htm |archive-date=May 19, 2012 |work=axt.org.uk}}</ref> This book claims, "what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans."<ref>{{cite web |date=December 8, 2008 |title=The Holocaust Deception |url=http://members.fortunecity.com/vural/bks/HOLOCAUST.HTML |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208201358/http://members.fortunecity.com/vural/bks/HOLOCAUST.HTML |archive-date=December 8, 2008}}</ref> In March 1996, a Turkish painter and intellectual, [[Bedri Baykam]], published a strongly worded critique of the book in the Ankara daily newspaper ''Siyah-Beyaz'' ("Black and White"). A legal suit for slander was brought against him. During the trial in September, Baykam exposed the real author of the book as Adnan Oktar.{{R|axt}} The suit was withdrawn in March 1997.<ref>{{cite web |title=Turkey |url=http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/turkey/turkey.htm#Parties |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120519184740/http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/turkey/turkey.htm#Parties |archive-date=May 19, 2012 |work=axt.org.uk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Udesky |first=Laurie |date=March 27, 1997 |title=American Jewish organization sees emergence of 'Holocaust denial' in Turkey |url=http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=2371 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071103085344/http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=2371 |archive-date=November 3, 2007 |work=[[Turkish Daily News]]}} [http://tdnarchives.blogspot.com/1997/03/american-jewish-organization-sees.html Alt URL]{{dead link|date=April 2017|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}</ref>

==Other==

=== Finland ===
Holocaust denial started in Finland almost immediately after the war, with many Finns who had been involved in the [[Far-right politics in Finland|far-right]] and [[Nazism in Finland|Nazi]] movements publishing articles questioning the Holocaust. Prominent early Finnish Holocaust deniers include professor [[C. A. J. Gadolin]], CEO [[Carl-Gustaf Herlitz]], architech [[Carl O. Nordling]] and ambassador [[Teo Snellman]].<ref>"[https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-4342168 Kääntäkää aseenne ihmiskunnan suurinta vihollista, kommunismia vastaan]!" (Äärioikeiston pikkupommit ja isänmaallinen paatos) Yle Areena. [[Yleisradio]].</ref><ref name="Kotonen2">Tommi Kotonen: Politiikan juoksuhaudat – Äärioikeistoliikkeet Suomessa kylmän sodan aikana, s. 64–67. Atena, Jyväskylä 2018.</ref> In early 1970s, a Finnish translation of a pamphlet denying Holocaust written by [[Vera Oredsson]] was distributed in Finland.<ref name="Kotonen" /> [[Pekka Siitoin]]'s [[Patriotic Popular Front]] started distributing a Finnish translation of Richard Harwood's [[Did Six Million Really Die?]] in 1976.<ref>Häkkinen, Perttu; Iitti, Vesa (2022). Lightbringers of the North: Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-64411-464-3. p. 146</ref>

In the late 1980 and early 1990s, National Radical Party's newspaper ''Uusi Suunta'' wrote how the supposed Jewish owned media maligned fascism with Holocaust "sob stories" that "have never been proven" to undermine the nationalist movement. One issue of ''Uusi Suunta'' stated that "The horrors of the concentration camps, that are not true by half, have been tied to the nationalist movement regardless of nationality."<ref name="Kotonen" /> In the 1990s the party secretary of the [[National Democratic Party (Finland)|National Democratic Party]] Olavi Koskela said that "the unbelievable Holocaust lies" enable the Jewish rulership over multicultural, multiracial and multilingual society. [[Finland - Fatherland]]'s newspaper ''Kansallinen Rintama'' made similar arguments.<ref name="Kotonen" />

Antisemitism has also experienced a resurgence after the Cold War, both in the internet and real life.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://eurojewcong.org/news/communities-news/finland/finnish-government-presents-report-about-the-rise-of-antisemitism-in-the-country/|title=Finnish government presents report about the rise of antisemitism in the country|work=[[European Jewish Congress]]|date=17 February 2025}}</ref> Medical [[Licentiate (degree)|Licentiate]] Vesa-Ilkka Laurio wrote a blog frequently denying the Holocaust and criticizing democracy from a [[Christian fundamentalist]] perspective. [[Swedenborgian]] ''Nova Hierosolyma''-society's ''Uusi Jerusalem'' website also publishes Holocaust denial material, an article written by Erkki Kivilohkare claiming only 100,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. Another Swedenborgian fundamentalist Markku Juutinen has also denied holocaust in the ''Kumouksen ääni''-magazine.<ref name="Kotonen" />

In 2013, the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] asked President Niinistö to condemn a neo-Nazi newspaper circulated to some 660,000 households. The newspaper published articles denying the Holocaust and articles such as "Zionist terrorism" and "CNN, Goldman Sachs and Zionist Control" translated from [[David Duke]].<ref name="yle2">Oosi, Riikka: [http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-6893270 Kärkkäisen tuomio ei yllätä asiantuntijaa] Yle. October 21, 2013. Retrieved January 22, 2017.</ref><ref name="yle3">{{cite news |last=Hirvonen |first=Tuomas |url=http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-6916563 |title=Juutalaiskirjoittelusta tuomittu Magneettimedia lopetetaan - uusi lehti tilalle |language=fi |trans-title=Magneettimedia, convicted of anti-Semitism, will be closed down - replaced by a new magazine |work=[[Yle]] |date=November 4, 2013 |access-date=January 22, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-centre-to-11.html |title=Wiesenthal Centre to President of Finland: "Condemn Kärkkäinen Department Stores Tycoon Publisher of Antisemitic Free Newspapers as a National Danger." |website=www.wiesenthal.com}}</ref> Popular Finnish alternative media sites [[MV-media]], Verkkomedia and [[Magneettimedia]] are known for publishing articles denying the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://yle.fi/a/3-8407726|work=[[Yleisradio]]|title=Holokausti on myytti ja muita väitteitä – näin toimii suomalainen vastamedia|date=11 July 2024}}</ref> Prominent modern Finnish Holocaust deniers include the owner of KauppaSuomi newspaper and department store tycoon [[Juha Kärkkäinen]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Hyttinen |first=Kati |url=https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/tavarataloyrittaja-karkkaiselta-hurja-syytos-presidentti-sauli-niinistosta-nwo-katyri-kiisti-paivityksessaan-myos-holokaustin/8272656 |title=Tavarataloyrittäjä Kärkkäiseltä hurja syytös presidentti Sauli Niinistöstä: "Nwo-kätyri" – kiisti päivityksessään myös holokaustin |trans-title=Department store entrepreneur Kärkkäinen makes wild accusation against President Sauli Niinistö: "NWO henchman" - also denied the Holocaust in his update |work=[[MTV Uutiset]] |date=24 October 2021 |language=fi}}</ref> Members of the [[Nordic Resistance Movement]] have also distributed material denying the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/a/2016012721026224 |title=Suomen Vastarintaliike jakoi holokaustin kieltäviä lappuja ympäri kouluja: "Opettajat sanoivat, että ulos täältä" |language=fi |trans-title=The Finnish Resistance Movement distributed Holocaust denial leaflets around schools: "The teachers said get out of here" |work=[[Iltalehti]] |date=23 November 2024}}</ref>

Far-right [[Finns Party]] General Secretary [[Olli Immonen]] has also multiple times shared a blog criticizing the "Holocaust-religion".<ref name="Kotonen">{{cite web |url=https://www.tieteessatapahtuu.fi/kategoriat/arkistosta/32016/kuka-kiistaa-holokaustin-suhtautuminen-holokaustiin-kytkeytyy-nykyaan |title=Kuka kiistää holokaustin? Suhtautuminen holokaustiin kytkeytyy äärioikeiston sisäisiin jakolinjoihin |language=fi |trans-title=Who denies the Holocaust? Attitudes towards the Holocaust are linked to internal divisions within the far right |date=17 February 2025 |work={{ill|Tieteessä tapahtuu|fi}} |first=Tommi |last=Kotonen}}</ref> The Finns Party leader [[Jussi Halla-aho]] also referred to Holocaust as "holohoax".<ref name=Czimbalmos>Czimbalmos, M. Antisemitism in the Finnish Blue and Black Movement: Ideological Roots and Contemporary Expressions. Int J Polit Cult Soc (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-025-09540-6</ref> Pseudonymous Thomas Dalton who is a prolific author of Holocaust denial books and has republished [[On the Jews and Their Lies]] and [[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]] is suspected of being a researcher in [[University of Helsinki]] according to [[Demokraatti]].<ref>{{cite web|work=[[Demokraatti]]|url=https://demokraatti.fi/helsingin-yliopiston-tutkija-mukana-antisemitismiskandaalissa-epaillaan-netin-vihankylvajahahmoksi|date=23 March 2025|title=Helsingin yliopiston vieraileva tutkija mukana antisemitismiskandaalissa: epäillään netin vihankylväjähahmoksi}}</ref>

=== Japan ===
Japanese Holocaust denial first appeared in 1989 and reached its peak in 1995 with the publication in February 1995 by the Japanese magazine ''{{ill|Marco Polo (magazine)|lt=Marco Polo|ja|マルコポーロ (雑誌)}}'', a 250,000-circulation monthly published by [[Bungeishunjū|Bungeishunju]], of a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka<ref>{{cite book |last=Falk |first=Avner |title=Anti-Semitism: a History and Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Hatred |publisher=Praeger |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-313-35384-0 |location=Westport, CT |page=106}}</ref> which stated: "The '[[Holocaust]]' is a fabrication. There were no execution [[gas chambers]] in [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] or in any other [[concentration camp]]. Today, what is displayed as 'gas chambers' at the remains of the Auschwitz camp in Poland are a post-war fabrication by the Polish communist regime or by the [[Soviet Union]], which controlled the country. Not once, neither at Auschwitz nor in any territory controlled by the Germans during the Second World War, was there 'mass murder of Jews' in 'gas chambers."<ref>[ Masanori Nishioka, "The Greatest Taboo of Postwar World History: There Were No Nazi 'Gas Chambers'" ''Marco Polo'', February 1995.]</ref> The Los Angeles-based [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] instigated a [[boycott]] of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including [[Volkswagen]], [[Mitsubishi]], and [[Cartier (jeweler)|Cartier]]. Within days, Bungei Shunju shut down ''Marco Polo'' and its editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada, quit, as did the president of Bungei Shunju, Kengo Tanaka.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The IHR Denounces Campaign Against Japanese Publishing Company |url=http://www.ihr.org//jhr/v15/v15n2p-9_Weber.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181023162624/http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n2p-9_Weber.html |archive-date=October 23, 2018 |access-date=April 17, 2014 |website=[[Institute for Historical Review]]}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=September 2023}}

=== United States ===
According to a 2020 survey of US youth by the [[Claims Conference]], 23% of US adults aged 18–39 said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated, or were not sure.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Conference|first=Claims|title=FIRST-EVER 50-STATE SURVEY ON HOLOCAUST KNOWLEDGE OF AMERICAN MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z REVEALS SHOCKING RESULTS|url=http://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/|access-date=February 10, 2021|website=Claims Conference|date=August 13, 2020|archive-date=February 4, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204100207/http://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=September 16, 2020|title=Nearly two-thirds of US young adults unaware 6m Jews killed in the Holocaust|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study|access-date=February 10, 2021|website=The Guardian|archive-date=February 13, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213030410/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Reactions to Holocaust denial==
In 2022, the [[United Nations]] adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial and antisemitism. The resolution was proposed by Germany and Israel.<ref>{{Cite news |date=January 20, 2022 |title=UN defines Holocaust denial in new resolution |work=[[BBC News]] |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60072506 |access-date=March 24, 2022 |archive-date=March 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220324224821/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60072506 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Scholars===
{{See also|Irving v Penguin Books Ltd}}

Scholarly response to Holocaust denial can be roughly divided into three categories. Some academics refuse to engage Holocaust deniers or their arguments at all, on grounds that doing so lends them unwarranted legitimacy.<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Wilhelm Heitmeyer |first1=Wilhelm |last1=Heitmeyer |first2=John |last2=Hagan |title=International Handbook of Violence Research |publisher=Springer |year=2003}}</ref> The second group of scholars, typified by the American historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]], have tried to raise awareness of the methods and motivations of Holocaust denial without legitimizing the deniers themselves. "We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers' contentions," Lipstadt wrote. "It would be never-ending.... Their commitment is to an ideology and their 'findings' are shaped to support it."<ref>Deborah Lipstadt, 1992 interview with Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee</ref> A third group, typified by the [[Nizkor Project]], responds to arguments and claims made by Holocaust denial groups by pointing out inaccuracies and errors in their evidence.<ref name=66-q&a>{{cite web|title=Holocaust denial – The IHR's Questions & Answers, and Nizkor's Responses|url=http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar00.html|work=[[Nizkor Project]]|access-date=September 28, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131202230742/http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar00.html|archive-date=December 2, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Robert L. |last1=Hilliard |first2=Michael C. |last2=Keith |title=Waves of Rancor: tuning in the radical right |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |year=1999 |isbn=0-7656-0131-1 |page=250}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Daniel |last1=Wolfish |first2=Gordon S. |last2=Smith |title=Who Is Afraid of the State?: Canada in a World of Multiple Centres of Power |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=2001 |isbn=0-8020-8388-9 |page=108}}</ref>

In December 1991 the [[American Historical Association]], the oldest and largest society of historians and teachers of history in the United States, issued the following statement: "The American Historical Association Council strongly deplores the publicly reported attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust. No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place."<ref name=":0" /> This followed a strong reaction by many of its members and commentary in the press against a near-unanimous decision that the AHA had made in May 1991 that studying the ''significance of the Holocaust'' should be encouraged. The association's May 1991 statement was in response to an incident where certain of its members had questioned the reality of the Holocaust. The December 1991 declaration is a reversal of the AHA's earlier stance that the association should not set a precedent by certifying historical facts.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |url=http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1991/9112/9112RES.CFM |title=AHA Statement on Holocaust Denial |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100201141606/http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1991/9112/9112RES.CFM |archive-date=February 1, 2010 |publisher=[[American Historical Association]] |access-date=October 11, 2013}}</ref> The AHA has also stated that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud".<ref name="adaaha">{{Cite book |last1=Gerstenfeld |first1=Phyllis B. |last2=Grant |first2=Diana Ruth |title=Crimes of hate: selected readings |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |page=190 |year=2004 |isbn=0-7619-2943-6}}</ref>

Literary theorist [[Jean Baudrillard]] described Holocaust denial as "part of the extermination itself".<ref>Golsan, 130</ref> Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner [[Elie Wiesel]], during a 1999 discussion at the [[White House]] in Washington, D.C., called the Holocaust "the most documented tragedy in [[recorded history]]. Never before has a tragedy elicited so much witness from the killers, from the victims and even from the bystanders—millions of pieces here in the museum what you have, all other museums, archives in the thousands, in the millions."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/resources/millennium.html |title=Millennium Evening with Elie Wiesel |work=[[PBS]] |date= April 12, 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405050622/https://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/resources/millennium.html |archive-date=April 5, 2023}}</ref>

Deborah Lipstadt's 1993 book, ''[[Denying the Holocaust]]'', sharply criticized various Holocaust deniers, including British author [[David Irving]], for deliberately misrepresenting evidence to justify their preconceived conclusions. In the book, Lipstadt named Irving as "one of the more dangerous" Holocaust deniers, because he was a published author, and was viewed by some as a legitimate military historian. He was "familiar with historical evidence", she wrote, and "bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda". In 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her publisher, [[Penguin Books]]. Irving, who appeared as a defense witness in [[Ernst Zündel]]'s [[R. v. Zundel|trial]] in Canada, and once declared at a rally of Holocaust deniers that "more women died in the [[Chappaquiddick incident|back seat of Edward Kennedy's car]] than ever died in a gas chamber at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]]",<ref>{{cite web |title=Irving v. Lipstadt |url=http://www.hdot.org/trial |website=Holocaust Denial on Trial |access-date=September 29, 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100927204545/http://www.hdot.org/trial |archive-date=September 27, 2010}}</ref> claimed that Lipstadt's allegation damaged his reputation. American historian [[Christopher R. Browning]], an expert witness for the defense, wrote a comprehensive essay for the court summarizing the voluminous evidence for the reality of the Holocaust, and under cross-examination, effectively countered all of Irving's principal arguments to the contrary.[96] [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] historian [[Richard J. Evans]], another defense expert witness, spent two years examining Irving's writings and confirmed his misrepresentations, including evidence that he had knowingly used forged documents as source material. After a two-month trial in London the trial judge, [[Charles Gray (judge)|Justice Charles Gray]], issued a 333-page ruling against Irving, which referred to him as a "Holocaust denier" and "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist".<ref>{{cite web |last=Bazyler |first=Michael J. |title=Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of Nazism |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/insights/pdf/bazyler.pdf |website=International Institute for Holocaust Studies |publisher=[[Yad Vashem]] |access-date=September 29, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111105153114/http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/insights/pdf/bazyler.pdf |archive-date=November 5, 2011}}</ref>

[[Ken McVay]], an American resident in Canada, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers, feeling that it was better to confront them openly than to try to censor them. On the [[Usenet]] newsgroup ''alt.revisionism'' he began a campaign of "truth, fact, and evidence", working with other participants on the newsgroup to uncover factual information about the Holocaust and counter the arguments of the deniers by proving them to be based upon misleading evidence, false statements, and outright lies. He founded the [[Nizkor Project]] to expose the activities of the Holocaust deniers, who responded to McVay with personal attacks, slander, and death threats.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.protocol.gov.bc.ca/protocol/prgs/obc/1995/1995_KMcVay.htm|website=Order of British Columbia |title=Biography: Kenneth McVay |access-date=June 30, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516081625/http://www.protocol.gov.bc.ca/protocol/prgs/obc/1995/1995_KMcVay.htm |archive-date=May 16, 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Public figures===
A number of public figures have spoken out against Holocaust denial. In 2006, UN Secretary-General [[Kofi Annan]] said: "Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated. Holocaust denial is the work of bigots; we must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made."<ref>{{cite news |work=[[BBC News]] |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4653666.stm |title=Annan condemns Holocaust denial |date=January 2006 |access-date=February 14, 2006 |archive-date=September 6, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170906210833/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4653666.stm |url-status=live}}</ref> In January 2007, the [[United Nations General Assembly]] condemned "without reservation any denial of the Holocaust", though Iran disassociated itself from the resolution.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21355&Cr=holocaust&Cr1 |title=UN Assembly condemns Holocaust denial by consensus; Iran disassociates itself |work=U.N. News Centre |publisher=[[United Nations]] |date=January 26, 2007 |access-date=June 28, 2017 |archive-date=November 26, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171126010350/http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21355&Cr=holocaust&Cr1 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In July 2013, Iran's then president-elect Hassan Rohani described Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and Israel as "[[hate speech|hate]] rhetoric"<ref>{{cite news |agency=DPA |date=July 7, 2013 |url=https://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.534337 |title=Ahmadinejad touts Holocaust denial as great success of his tenure |newspaper=[[Haaretz]] |access-date=March 23, 2014 |archive-date=July 17, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150717185816/http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.534337 |url-status=live}}</ref> and in September 2013 [[Hassan Rouhani|Rohani]] stated that "The Nazis carried out a massacre that cannot be denied, especially against the Jewish people" and "The massacre by the Nazis was condemnable. We never want to sit by side with the Nazis...They committed a crime against Jews — which is a crime against ... all of humanity."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/25/20693723-irans-rouhani-on-holocaust-a-massacre-that-cannot-be-denied |title=Iran's Rouhani on Holocaust: 'A massacre that cannot be denied' |first1=Andrea |last1=Mitchell |first2=Tracy |last2=Connor |work=[[NBC News]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927154909/http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/25/20693723-irans-rouhani-on-holocaust-a-massacre-that-cannot-be-denied |archive-date=September 27, 2013}}</ref> While declining to give a specific number of Jewish victims, Iranian analysts suggested that "Rouhani pushed the envelope as far as it could go ... without infuriating the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other conservatives back home."{{R|Saeed Kamali Dehghan}}

===Former Auschwitz SS personnel===
Critics of Holocaust denial also include members of the [[SS-Totenkopfverbände|Auschwitz SS]]. Camp physician and SS-''[[Untersturmführer]]'' [[Hans Münch]] considered the facts of Auschwitz "so firmly determined that one cannot have any doubt at all", and described those who negate what happened at the camp as "malevolent" people who have "personal interest to want to bury in silence things that cannot be buried in silence".<ref>Frankfurter, Bernhard. ''Die Begegnung. Auschwitz-Ein Opfer und ein Täter im Gespräch''. Vienna, Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1995, p. 102. cited in [[Robert Jan van Pelt|Jan van Pelt, Robert]]. ''The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial''. [[Indiana University Press]], 2002, p. 291.</ref> [[Zyklon B]] handler and SS-''[[Oberscharführer]]'' [[Josef Klehr]] said that anyone who maintains that nobody was gassed at Auschwitz must be "crazy or in the wrong".<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Demant |editor-first=Ebbo |title=Auschwitz&nbsp;– "Direkt von der Rampe weg...." Kaduk, Erber, Klehr: Drei Täter geben zu Protokoll |language=de |trans-title=Auschwitz&nbsp;- "Straight from the ramp..." Kaduk, Erber, Klehr: Three perpetrators testify |page=114 |location=Hamburg |publisher=Rowohlt |date=1979 |isbn=3-499-14438-7}}</ref> SS-''Unterscharführer'' [[Oswald Kaduk]] stated that he did not consider those who maintain such a thing as normal people.<ref>''Drei Deutsche Mörder. Aufzeichnungen über die Banalität des Bösen'', Germany 1998 (filmed in 1978). Directed by Ebbo Demant, produced by [[Südwestrundfunk]].</ref> Hearing about Holocaust denial compelled former SS-''[[Rottenführer]]'' [[Oskar Gröning]] to publicly speak about what he witnessed at Auschwitz, and denounce Holocaust deniers,{{sfn|Rees|2005|p=300}} stating:

{{blockquote|I would like you to believe me. I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections took place. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened because I was there.{{sfn|Rees|2005|p=301}}<ref name="Online 2005">{{cite news |title=An SS Officer Remembers: The Bookkeeper from Auschwitz |newspaper=[[Der Spiegel]] |date=May 9, 2005 |url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/an-ss-officer-remembers-the-bookkeeper-from-auschwitz-a-355188.html |access-date=April 22, 2016 |archive-date=March 2, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070302085046/http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,355188,00.html |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

===Holocaust denial and antisemitism===
Holocaust denial is given as an example of antisemitism in the [[IHRA definition of antisemitism]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Holocaust Remembrance Press Release |url=https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_document_antisemitism.pdf |publisher=Romanian Chairmanship |date=May 26, 2016 |access-date=April 15, 2018 |archive-date=October 24, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171024070944/https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_document_antisemitism.pdf |url-status=dead}}</ref> adopted by the [[International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance]] as well as the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Scotland, Romania, Germany and Bulgaria. The European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling for member states to adopt the definition on June 1, 2017.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/EU-Parliament-votes-in-favor-of-adopting-antisemitism-definition-494479 |title=EU Parliament votes in favor of adopting antisemitism definition |work=[[The Jerusalem Post]] |date=June 2017 |access-date=February 24, 2019 |archive-date=July 18, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180718001345/https://www.jpost.com//Diaspora/EU-Parliament-votes-in-favor-of-adopting-antisemitism-definition-494479 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Fact Sheet: Working Definition of Antisemitism |url=https://holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/fcat_sheet_working_definition_of_antisemitism.pdf |publisher=[[International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance]] |date=October 24, 2017 |access-date=August 17, 2020 |archive-date=July 13, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180713161250/http://holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/fcat_sheet_working_definition_of_antisemitism.pdf |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.momentmag.com/defining-anti-semitism-conversation-eu-coordinator-combating-anti-semitism/ |title=Defining Anti-Semitism: A Conversation With the EU Coordinator on Combating Anti-Semitism |date=June 28, 2017 |access-date=April 15, 2018 |archive-date=June 18, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180618025721/https://www.momentmag.com/defining-anti-semitism-conversation-eu-coordinator-combating-anti-semitism/ |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The ''Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity'' defines Holocaust denial as "a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs".<ref name=EGCAH45>{{cite book |quote=Holocaust denial is a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs. |first=Dinah |last=Shelton |title=Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity |publisher=Macmillan Reference |date=2005 |page=45}}</ref> The [[Anti-Defamation League]] has stated that "Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy"<ref name=ADLguide>{{cite web |url=http://www.adl.org/Holocaust/theory.asp |title=Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |archive-date=June 4, 2011 |website=Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |access-date=August 27, 2009}}</ref> and French historian [[Valérie Igounet]] has written that "Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism."<ref name=Igounet>{{cite news |last=Igounet |first=Valérie |url=http://mondediplo.com/1998/05/08igou |title=Holocaust denial is part of a strategy |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190613014018/https://mondediplo.com/1998/05/08igou |archive-date=June 13, 2019 |work=[[Le Monde diplomatique]] |date=8 May 1998}}</ref>

According to Walter Reich, psychiatrist and then a senior scholar at the [[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]], one-time director of the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]], and now professor of international affairs at [[George Washington University]]:

{{blockquote|The primary motivation for most deniers is anti-Semitism, and for them the Holocaust is an infuriatingly inconvenient fact of history. After all, the Holocaust has generally been recognized as one of the most terrible crimes that ever took place, and surely the very emblem of evil in the modern age. If that crime was a direct result of anti-Semitism taken to its logical end, then anti-Semitism itself, even when expressed in private conversation, is inevitably discredited among most people. What better way to rehabilitate anti-Semitism, make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even make it acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies than by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened—indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by the Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media? What better way, in short, to make the world safe again for anti-Semitism than by denying the Holocaust?<ref name=ReichNYT>{{cite news |last=Reich |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Reich |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/11/books/erasing-the-holocaust.html |title=Erasing the Holocaust |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 11, 1993 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230628213512/https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/11/books/erasing-the-holocaust.html |archive-date=June 28, 2023}}</ref>}}

The French historian [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]] described the motivation of deniers more succinctly, explaining, "One revives the dead in order the better to strike the living."<ref name=Vidal-NaquetMotivations>{{cite book |author-link=Pierre Vidal-Naquet |last=Vidal-Naquet |first=Pierre |url=http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92a/part-4.html |chapter=A Paper Eichmann (1980)&nbsp;– Anatomy of a Lie: On the Revisionist Method |title=Assassins of Memory |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |date=1992 |access-date=August 27, 2009 |archive-date=September 5, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180905180131/http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92a/part-4.html |url-status=live}}</ref> German political scientist [[Matthias Küntzel]] has argued, "Every denial of the Holocaust... contains an appeal to repeat it."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Küntzel |first1=Matthias |title=Holocaust Denial: The Politics of Perfidy |date=2012 |publisher=[[De Gruyter]] |isbn=978-3-11-028821-6 |chapter=Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran}}</ref>

==Examination of claims==
{{Main|Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust}}

The key claims which cause Holocaust denial to differ from established fact are:{{R|Key elements|Assertions}}

*The Nazis had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews.
*The Nazis did not use [[gas chamber]]s to mass murder Jews.<ref name=NP-gas-chambers>{{cite web |title=Response to Holocaust denial on the existence of Gas Chambers and Crematoria |url=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html |work=[[Nizkor Project]] |access-date=November 16, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131120124932/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html |archive-date=November 20, 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
*The figure of 5 to 6&nbsp;million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration, and the actual number is an [[order of magnitude]] lower, with many online claims saying only 271,000 Jews were murdered.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-06-28 |title=Fact check: This document does not relativize the Holocaust! |url=https://arolsen-archives.org/en/news/fact-check-this-document-does-not-relativize-the-holocaust/ |access-date=2025-10-11 |website=Arolsen Archives}}</ref>

Other claims include the following:
*Stories of the Holocaust were a myth initially created by the [[Allies of World War II]] to demonize Germans,{{R|Assertions}} Jews having spread this myth as part of a grander plot intended to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]], and now to garner continuing support for the state of Israel.<ref>A plot designed to garner support of Israel:
*"The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." [[Deborah Lipstadt]]. ''Denying the Holocaust&nbsp;– The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', [[Penguin Books]], 1993, p. 27. {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}.
*"Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as 'truth' and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
*"Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. ''Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?'', [[University of California Press]], 2000, {{ISBN|0-520-23469-3}}, p. 106.
*"They [Holocaust deniers] picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, ''Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana'', University of North Carolina Press, 2000, {{ISBN|0-8078-5374-7}}, p. 445.</ref>
*Documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs to ''[[The Diary of a Young Girl|The Diary of Anne Frank]]'', is fabricated.{{R|Assertions}}
*Survivor testimonies are filled with errors and inconsistencies and are thus unreliable.{{R|Assertions}}
*Interrogators obtained Nazi prisoners' confessions of war crimes through the use of torture.{{R|Assertions}}
*The Nazi treatment of Jews was no different from what the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] did to their enemies in World War II.<ref>Shermer & Grobman, 2002, pp. 103–14.</ref>

Holocaust denial is widely viewed as failing to adhere to [[Historical method|principles for the treatment of evidence]] that mainstream historians (as well as scholars in other fields) regard as basic to [[reason|rational inquiry]].<ref>"(H)istory is the attempt to describe events of the past and move from description to analysis, in accordance with certain agreed rules of evidence, of analysis of language, and of logic." "Yehuda Bauer, Historian of the Holocaust&nbsp;– Portrait of an Historian"&nbsp;– ''Online Dimensions, a Journal of Holocaust Studies'', Fall, 2004</ref>

The Holocaust was well documented by the [[bureaucracy]] of the Nazi government itself.<ref>"... the German bureaucrats' collective actions are relatively well-documented for the historian...." [[Christopher R. Browning]], ''The Path to Genocide: essays on launching the final solution'', Cambridge University Press, 1992, {{ISBN|0-521-55878-6}}, p. 125.</ref><ref>"According to the historian [[Raul Hilberg]], the United States alone captured forty thousand linear feet of documents on the murder of European Jews ... we can say that the Holocaust is a uniquely well-documented historical event." Deák, István. ''Essays on Hitler's Europe'', [[University of Nebraska Press]], 2001, {{ISBN|0-8032-1716-1}}, p. 67</ref> It was further witnessed by the [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] forces who entered Germany and its associated [[Axis Powers|Axis]] states towards the end of World War II.<ref>''Holocaust: The events and their impact on real people'', DK Publishing in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, p. 146. "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."</ref><ref>Kelly Oliver. ''Witnessing: beyond recognition'', [[University of Minnesota Press]], 2001, {{ISBN|0-8166-3627-3}}, p. 90.</ref><ref>Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz. ''Image and remembrance: representation and the Holocaust'', 2003, Indiana University Press, {{ISBN|0-253-34188-4}}, pp. 205–206.</ref> It was also witnessed from the inside by non-Jewish captives such as Catholic [[French Resistance]] member [[André Rogerie]] who wrote extensively and testified about his experiences in seven camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau<ref name="ina-shoah">[http://grands-entretiens.ina.fr/video/Shoah INA, Major Interviews, General André Rogerie] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170629162948/http://grands-entretiens.ina.fr/video/Shoah |date=June 29, 2017 }}; audio recording</ref> and also produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium.<ref name=Wieviorka>Annette Wieviorka, ''Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l'oubli'', Plon, 1992, p. 249.</ref>

According to researchers [[Michael Shermer]] and [[Alex Grobman]], there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:<ref>Shermer & Grobman, 2002, p. 33.</ref>

[[File:Jew demogr.png|thumb|Jewish World Population without Holocaust (mln people) by [[Sergio Della Pergola]]]]

{{blockquote|
#''Written documents''—hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches, articles, memoirs, and confessions.
#''Eyewitness testimony''—accounts from survivors, Jewish ''[[Sonderkommando]]s'' (who helped load bodies from the gas chambers into the crematoria in exchange for a chance of survival), [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] guards, commandants, local townspeople, and even high-ranking Nazis who spoke openly about the mass murder of the Jews.
#''Photographs''—including official military and press photographs, civilian photographs, secret photographs taken by survivors, aerial photographs, German and Allied film footage, and unofficial photographs taken by the German military.
#''The camps themselves''—concentration camps, work camps, and [[extermination camp]]s that still exist in varying degrees of originality and reconstruction.
#''Inferential evidence'' or ''[[argument from silence]]''—population demographics, reconstructed from the pre–World War II era; if six million Jews were not murdered, what happened to them?}}

Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers' centers on the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly ''never happened as commonly accepted''. Numerous accounts have been given by Holocaust deniers (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed facts and evidence; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biassed statements, or even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have documented numerous instances in which such evidence was altered or manufactured (see [[Nizkor Project]] and [[David Irving]]). According to [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], "in our society of image and spectacle, extermination on paper leads to extermination in reality."<ref>[[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], French "une tentative d'extermination sur le papier qui relaie l'extermination réelle" in ''Les assassins de la mémoire'', ''Un Eichmann de papier'', Postface de [[Gisèle Sapiro]], Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, La Découverte, Paris, 2005, {{ISBN|2-7071-4545-9}}.</ref>

==Laws against Holocaust denial==
{{Main|Legality of Holocaust denial}}

[[File:Holocaust Denial Laws.svg|thumb|upright 1.2|Countries where Holocaust denial is illegal]]

Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 18 countries: [[Austria]], [[Belgium]], [[Canada]], the [[Czech Republic]], [[France]], Germany, [[Hungary]], Israel, [[Liechtenstein]], [[Lithuania]], [[Luxembourg]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Poland]], [[Portugal]], [[Romania]], [[Russia]], [[Slovakia]], and [[Switzerland]].<ref>Lechtholz-Zey, Jacqueline: Laws Banning Holocaust Denial. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100821174310/http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/2010/06/laws-banning-holocaust-denial.html Genocide Prevention Now.]. Retrieved October 4, 2020.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.jta.org/2014/05/05/global/russia-makes-holocaust-denial-illegal |title=Russia makes Holocaust denial illegal |date=May 5, 2014 |access-date=February 24, 2019 |archive-date=February 25, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190225044746/https://www.jta.org/2014/05/05/global/russia-makes-holocaust-denial-illegal |url-status=live}}</ref> Romania officially denied the Holocaust occurred on its territory up until the [[Wiesel Commission]] in 2004.<ref name=bbc-news>{{cite news |title=Romania holds first Holocaust Day |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3736864.stm |access-date=September 24, 2013 |work=[[BBC News]] |date=October 12, 2004 |archive-date=October 29, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181029200156/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3736864.stm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2997616.stm |title=Romania sparks Holocaust row |work=[[BBC News]] |date=June 17, 2003 |access-date=May 22, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130928085609/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2997616.stm |archive-date=September 28, 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref> The European Union's Framework decision on Racism and [[Xenophobia]] states that denying or grossly trivializing "crimes of genocide" should be made "punishable in all [[EU Member States]]".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/93739.pdf |title=See Luxembourg, April 19, 2007, 8665/07 (Presse 84) |access-date=January 8, 2010 |archive-date=November 11, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111185351/https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/93739.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>

Such legislation remains controversial. In October 2007, a tribunal declared Spain's genocide denial law [[unconstitutional]].<ref>By way of [http://www.tribunalconstitucional.es/jurisprudencia/Stc2007/STC2007-5152-2000.html judgment of November 7, 2007] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080215233053/http://www.tribunalconstitucional.es/jurisprudencia/Stc2007/STC2007-5152-2000.html |date=February 15, 2008 }} of the [[Constitutional Court of Spain]], which ruled the criminalization to be unconstitutional and void.</ref> In 2007 Italy rejected a denial law proposing a prison sentence of up to four years. In 2006 the Netherlands rejected a draft law proposing a maximum sentence of one year on denial of genocidal acts in general, although specifically denying the Holocaust remains a criminal offense there. The United Kingdom has twice rejected [[Laws against Holocaust denial|Holocaust denial laws]]. Denmark and Sweden have also rejected such legislation.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/world/europe/19iht-eu.4.5359640.html |title=EU adopts measure outlawing Holocaust denial |first=Dan |last=Bilefsky |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=April 19, 2007 |access-date=February 8, 2017 |archive-date=April 4, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190404010722/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/world/europe/19iht-eu.4.5359640.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

A number of deniers have been prosecuted under various countries' denial laws. French literature professor [[Robert Faurisson]], for example, was convicted and punished under the [[Gayssot Act]] in 1990. Some historians oppose such laws, among them [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], an outspoken critic of Faurisson, on the grounds that denial legislation imposes "historical truth as legal truth".<ref>{{cite web |quote=To live with Faurisson? Any other attitude would imply that we were imposing historical truth as legal truth, which is a dangerous attitude available to other fields of application. |url=http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92a/ |title=Pierre Vidal-Naquet: A Paper Eichmann (1980)&nbsp;– Anatomy of a Lie (10) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190119100310/http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92a/ |archive-date=January 19, 2019}}</ref> Other academics favor [[criminalization]]. Holocaust denial, they contend, is "the worst form of racism and its most respectable version because it pretends to be a research".<ref>François de Smet, Philosopher of the [[Université Libre de Bruxelles|ULB]]: ''Le négationnisme est l'une des pires formes de racisme. Elle en est aussi sa version la plus « respectable », se parant des oripeaux de la science. C'est pour cela qu'il faut continuer à le sanctionner'', in ''[[La Libre Belgique]]'', on April 28, 2006</ref> Holocaust historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]] expressed her opposition to laws against expressing Holocaust denial, saying, "I don't think they work. I think they turn whatever is being outlawed into forbidden fruit." She also said that politicians should not be able to decide what can and cannot be said.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Chotiner |first=Isaac |date=January 24, 2019 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/looking-at-anti-semitism-on-the-left-and-the-right-an-interview-with-deborah-e-lipstadt |title=Looking at Anti-Semitism on the Left and the Right: An Interview with Deborah E. Lipstadt |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |access-date=January 28, 2019 |archive-date=July 15, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190715004921/https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/looking-at-anti-semitism-on-the-left-and-the-right-an-interview-with-deborah-e-lipstadt |url-status=live}}</ref>

===David Irving conviction===
In February 2006, Irving was convicted in Austria, where Holocaust denial is illegal, for a speech he had made in 1989 in which he denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.{{R|release}} Irving was aware of the outstanding arrest warrant but chose to go to Austria anyway "to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity".<ref name="release">{{cite news |title=Holocaust denier to be released |date=December 20, 2006 |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6196073.stm |work=[[BBC News]] |access-date=January 13, 2011 |archive-date=July 25, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725005507/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6196073.stm |url-status=live}}</ref> Although he pleaded guilty to the charge, Irving said he had been "mistaken", and had changed his opinions on the Holocaust. "I said that then, based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."<ref name="BBCCenshorship">{{cite news |work=[[BBC News]] |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm |title=Holocaust Denier is Jailed |date=February 20, 2006 |access-date=February 21, 2006 |archive-date=August 5, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805031758/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm |url-status=live}}</ref> Irving served 13 months of a 3-year sentence in an Austrian prison, including the period between his arrest and conviction, and was deported in early 2007.{{R|release}} The episode sparked intense international debate over the limits of freedom of speech. Upon hearing of Irving's sentence, Lipstadt said:<blockquote>I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship.... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth.{{R|BBCCenshorship}}</blockquote>According to ''[[CNN]]'', upon Irving's return to the UK, he "vow[ed] to repeat views denying the Holocaust that led to his conviction" stating he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/21/uk.irving.ap/index.html|title=Holocaust denier: 'No need to show remorse' |work=[[CNN]] |access-date=November 27, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070116221731/http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/21/uk.irving.ap/index.html |archive-date=January 16, 2007}}</ref>

==Genocide denials==
{{Main|Genocide denial}}

{{denial of mass killings}}
Other acts of genocide have met similar attempts to deny and minimize them. [[Gregory Stanton]], formerly of the [[United States Department of State|US State Department]] and the founder of [[Genocide Watch]], lists denial as the final stage of a genocide development: "Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further [[genocidal massacre]]s. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims."<ref>{{cite web |first=Gregory |last=Stanton |url=http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html |title=Eight Stages of Genocide Denial |website=[[Genocide Watch]] |access-date=June 19, 2013 |archive-date=March 2, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080302002304/http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

Holocaust denial is often compared to [[Armenian genocide denial]] because of similar tactics of misrepresenting evidence, false equivalence, claiming that atrocities were invented by [[war propaganda]] and that powerful lobbies manufacture genocide allegations for their own profit, subsuming one-sided systematic extermination into war deaths, and shifting blame from the perpetrators to the victims of genocide. Both forms of [[Historical negationism|negationism]] share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloxham |first1=Donald |author-link=Donald Bloxham |title=The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians |title-link=The Great Game of Genocide |date=2005 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-922688-7 |page=208}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=MacDonald |first1=David B. |author-link=David Bruce MacDonald |title=Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation |date=2008 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-08572-9 |page=133}}</ref>

==See also==
Holocaust:
* [[Double genocide theory]]
* [[Romani Holocaust]]
* [[Secondary antisemitism]]
Other:
* [[Anti-BDS laws]]
* [[Denialism]]
* [[Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry]]
* [[Myth of the clean Wehrmacht]]
* [[Denial of the October 7 attacks]]
* [[Gaza genocide denial]]
* [[Pseudohistory]]
* [[Temple denial]]
{{clear}}

==References==
===Citations===
<ref name="definition">{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion |title=Holocaust Denial and Distortion |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929174928/https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion |archive-date=September 29, 2023 |website=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=September 28, 2017 |quote=Holocaust denial is an attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. Holocaust denial and distortion are forms of antisemitism. They are generally motivated by hatred of Jews and build on the claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests.}}</ref>
<ref name="often claims">{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/faq.asp |title=How many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust? How do we know? Do we have their names? The Holocaust Resource Center Faqs |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200731203421/https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/faq.asp|archive-date=July 31, 2020 |url-status=dead}} See also [[Holocaust death toll|appropriate section of the Holocaust article]] for the death toll.</ref>
<ref name="Key elements">Key elements of Holocaust denial:
*"Before discussing how Holocaust denial constitutes a conspiracy theory, and how the theory is distinctly American, it is important to understand what is meant by the term 'Holocaust denial'. Holocaust deniers, or 'revisionists', as they call themselves, question all three major points of definition of the Nazi Holocaust. First, they contend that, while mass murders of Jews did occur (although they dispute both the intentionality of such murders as well as the supposed deservedness of these killings), there was no official Nazi policy to murder Jews. Second, and perhaps most prominently, they contend that there were no homicidal gas chambers, particularly at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where mainstream historians believe over 1&nbsp;million Jews were murdered, primarily in gas chambers. And third, Holocaust deniers contend that the death toll of European Jews during World War II was well below 6&nbsp;million. Deniers float numbers anywhere between 300,000 and 1.5&nbsp;million, as a general rule." Mathis, Andrew E. [http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ Holocaust Denial, a Definition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213171733/https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ |date=February 13, 2021 }}, [[The Holocaust History Project]], July 2, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
*"In part III we directly address the three major foundations upon which Holocaust denial rests, including ... the claim that gas chambers and crematoria were used not for mass extermination but rather for delousing clothing and disposing of people who died of disease and overwork; ... the claim that the six million figure is an exaggeration by an order of magnitude—that about six hundred thousand, not six million, died at the hands of the Nazis; ... the claim that there was no intention on the part of the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry and that the Holocaust was nothing more than the unfortunate by-product of the vicissitudes of war." Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman. ''Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?'', University of California Press, 2000, {{ISBN|0-520-23469-3}}, p. 3.
*"Holocaust Denial: Claims that the mass extermination of the Jews by the Nazis never happened; that the number of Jewish losses has been greatly exaggerated; that the Holocaust was not systematic nor a result of an official policy; or simply that the Holocaust never took place." [http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/faqs/answers/faq_35.html What is Holocaust Denial] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20050216030123/http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/faqs/answers/faq_35.html |date=February 16, 2005 }}, [[Yad Vashem]] website, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006. 
*"Among the untruths routinely promoted are the claims that no gas chambers existed at Auschwitz, that only 600,000 Jews were killed rather than six million, and that Hitler had no murderous intentions toward Jews or other groups persecuted by his government." [http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/holocaust.asp Holocaust Denial] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070404130634/http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/holocaust.asp |date=April 4, 2007 }}, [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
*"In general, Holocaust denial consists of four central points: minimization of numbers killed, denial of use of gassing, denial of the systematic nature of the genocide, and claims that the evidence was fabricated, above all after the war." Mark M. Hull, Vera Moynes. ''Masquerade: Treason, the Holocaust, and an Irish Impostor'', [[University of Oklahoma Press]], 2017, p. 181. {{ISBN|978-0-80615836-5}}
*"According to the deniers, the Nazis did not murder six million Jews, the notion of homicidal gas chambers is a myth, and any deaths of Jews that did occur under the Nazis were the result of wartime privations, not of systematic persecution and state-organised mass murder." Deborah Lipstadt. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml "Denying the Holocaust"], History, [[BBC Online]]. Retrieved June 7, 2018.</ref>
<ref name=Assertions>"The kinds of assertions made in Holocaust-denial material include the following:
*Several hundred thousand rather than approximately six million Jews died during the war.
*Scientific evidence proves that gas chambers could not have been used to kill large numbers of people.
*The Nazi command had a policy of deporting Jews, not exterminating them.
*Some deliberate killings of Jews did occur, but were carried out by the peoples of Eastern Europe rather than the Nazis.
*Jews died in camps of various kinds, but did so as the result of hunger and disease (most died to the unavailability of food due to allied bombings). The Holocaust is a myth created by the Allies for propaganda purposes, and subsequently nurtured by the Jews for their own ends.
*Errors and inconsistencies in survivors' testimonies point to their essential unreliability.
*Alleged documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs of concentration camp victims to Anne Frank's diary, is fabricated.
*The confessions of former Nazis to war crimes were extracted through torture." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved December 18, 2006.</ref>
<ref name="terminology">Denial vs. "revisionism":
*"This is the phenomenon of what has come to be known as 'revisionism', 'negationism', or 'Holocaust denial,' whose main characteristic is either an outright rejection of the very veracity of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, or at least a concerted attempt to minimize both its scale and importance.... It is just as crucial, however, to distinguish between the wholly objectionable politics of denial and the fully legitimate scholarly revision of previously accepted conventional interpretations of any historical event, including the Holocaust." [[Omer Bartov|Bartov, Omer]]. ''The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath'', Routledge, pp.11–12. Bartov is John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at the Watson Institute, and is regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on [[genocide]] ([http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=97 "Omer Bartov"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216115629/http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=97 |date=December 16, 2008 }}, The Watson Institute for International Studies).
*"The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians [[Deborah Lipstadt]] (1993) and [[Michael Shermer]] and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a reexamination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event—like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust—did in fact occur (Lipstadt 1993:21; Shermer & Grobman 200:34). Denial, on the other hand, rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence...." Ronald J. Berger. ''Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach'', Aldine Transaction, 2002, {{ISBN|0-202-30670-4}}, p. 154.
*"At this time, in the mid-1970s, the specter of Holocaust Denial (masked as 'revisionism') had begun to raise its head in Australia...." [[Paul R. Bartrop|Bartrop, Paul R.]] "A Little More Understanding: The Experience of a Holocaust Educator in Australia" in Samuel Totten, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Paul R Bartrop. ''Teaching about the Holocaust'', Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, p. xix. {{ISBN|0-275-98232-7}}
*"[[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]] urges that denial of the Holocaust should not be called 'revisionism' because 'to deny history is not to revise it'. ''Les Assassins de la Memoire. Un Eichmann de papier et autres essays sur le revisionisme'' (The Assassins of Memory—A Paper-Eichmann and Other Essays on Revisionism) 15 (1987)." Cited in Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the ''Israel Yearbook on Human Rights'', Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, {{ISBN|0-7923-2581-8}}, p. 215.
*"This essay describes, from a methodological perspective, some of the inherent flaws in the 'revisionist' approach to the history of the Holocaust. It is not intended as a polemic, nor does it attempt to ascribe motives. Rather, it seeks to explain the fundamental error in the 'revisionist' approach, as well as why that approach of necessity leaves no other choice. It concludes that 'revisionism' is a misnomer because the facts do not accord with the position it puts forward and, more importantly, its methodology reverses the appropriate approach to historical investigation.... 'Revisionism' is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit, because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result; it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred; and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, 'revisionism' denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. [http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629074312/https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ |date=June 29, 2018 }}, [[The Holocaust History Project]], May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
*"Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review). Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans' involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
*"The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past. For historians, in fact, the name revisionism has a resonance that is perfectly legitimate&nbsp;– it recalls the controversial historical school known as World War I 'revisionists', who argued that the Germans were unjustly held responsible for the war and that consequently the Versailles treaty was a politically misguided document based on a [[false premise]]. Thus the deniers link themselves to a specific historiographic tradition of reevaluating the past. Claiming the mantle of the World War I revisionists and denying they have any objective other than the dissemination of the truth constitute a tactical attempt to acquire an intellectual credibility that would otherwise elude them." [[Deborah Lipstadt]]. ''Denying the Holocaust&nbsp;– The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Penguin, 1993, {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}, p. 25.</ref>
<ref name=Revisionist>Refer to themselves as revisionists:
*"The deniers' selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." [[Deborah Lipstadt]]. ''Denying the Holocaust—The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Penguin, 1993, {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}, p. 25.
*"Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term 'revisionism' in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as 'revisionists', in an attempt to claim legitimacy for their activities. There are, of course, a great many scholars engaged in historical debates about the Holocaust whose work should not be confused with the output of the Holocaust deniers. Debate continues about such subjects as, for example, the extent and nature of ordinary Germans' involvement in and knowledge of the policy of genocide, and the timing of orders given for the extermination of the Jews. However, the valid endeavour of historical revisionism, which involves the re-interpretation of historical knowledge in the light of newly emerging evidence, is a very different task from that of claiming that the essential facts of the Holocaust, and the evidence for those facts, are fabrications." "[http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}", JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.</ref>
<ref name="predetermined">Predetermined conclusion:
*"'Revisionism' is obliged to deviate from the standard methodology of historical pursuit because it seeks to mold facts to fit a preconceived result, it denies events that have been objectively and empirically proved to have occurred, and because it works backward from the conclusion to the facts, thus necessitating the distortion and manipulation of those facts where they differ from the preordained conclusion (which they almost always do). In short, 'revisionism' denies something that demonstrably happened, through methodological dishonesty." McFee, Gordon. [http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ "Why 'Revisionism' Isn't"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629074312/https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/ |date=June 29, 2018 }}, [[The Holocaust History Project]], May 15, 1999. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
*Alan L. Berger, "Holocaust Denial: Tempest in a Teapot, or Storm on the Horizon?", in Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz (eds), ''Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas'', Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, p. 154.</ref>
<ref name="hoax">A hoax designed to advance the interests of Jews:
*"The title of App's major work on the Holocaust, ''The Six Million Swindle'', is informative because it implies on its very own the existence of a conspiracy of Jews to perpetrate a hoax against non-Jews for monetary gain." Mathis, Andrew E. [http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ Holocaust Denial, a Definition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213171733/https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ |date=February 13, 2021 }}, [[The Holocaust History Project]], July 2, 2004. Retrieved May 16, 2007. 
*Another belief of deniers is the death of the millions of Jews was caused by sickness and disease.{{cite web|title=Holocaust Denial and Distortion|url=http://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]|access-date=November 6, 2013|archive-date=December 10, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191210022522/https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion|url-status=live}}
*"Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as 'truth' and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
*"Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. ''Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?'', University of California Press, 2000, {{ISBN|0-520-23469-3}}, p. 106.
*"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." [http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628184616/http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm |date=June 28, 2011 }}, [[Stephen Roth Institute]], 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
*"The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." [[Deborah Lipstadt]]. ''Denying the Holocaust&nbsp;– The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', Penguin, 1993, {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}, p. 27.
*"They [Holocaust deniers] picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"Deniers argue that the manufactured guilt and shame over a mythological Holocaust led to Western, specifically United States, support for the establishment and sustenance of the Israeli state&nbsp;– a sustenance that costs the American taxpayer over three billion dollars per year. They assert that American taxpayers have been and continue to be swindled...." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism], "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, ''Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana'', [[University of North Carolina Press]], 2000, {{ISBN|0-8078-5374-7}}, p. 445</ref>
<ref name="antisemitic">Antisemitic:
*"Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include ... denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)." {{cite web |url=http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/AS/AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf |title=''Working Definition of Antisemitism'' |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110125001633/http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/AS/AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf |archive-date=January 25, 2011 }} &nbsp;{{small|(33.8&nbsp;KB)}}, [[European Fundamental Rights Agency]]
*"It would elevate their antisemitic ideology&nbsp;– which is what Holocaust denial is&nbsp;– to the level of responsible historiography&nbsp;– which it is not." [[Deborah Lipstadt]], ''Denying the Holocaust'', {{ISBN|0-14-024157-4}}, p. 11.
*"The denial of the Holocaust is among the most insidious forms of anti-Semitism...." Roth, Stephen J. "Denial of the Holocaust as an Issue of Law" in the ''Israel Yearbook on Human Rights'', Volume 23, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993, {{ISBN|0-7923-2581-8}}, p. 215.
*"Holocaust denial can be a particularly insidious form of antisemitism precisely because it often tries to disguise itself as something quite different: as genuine scholarly debate (in the pages, for example, of the innocuous-sounding Journal for Historical Review)." "[http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}", JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
*"This books treats several of the myths that have made antisemitism so lethal.... In addition to these historic myths, we also treat the new, maliciously manufactured myth of Holocaust denial, another groundless belief that is used to stir up Jew-hatred." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. ''Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, {{ISBN|0-312-16561-7}}, p. 3.
*"One predictable strand of Arab Islamic antisemitism is Holocaust denial...." Schweitzer, Frederick M. & Perry, Marvin. ''Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, {{ISBN|0-312-16561-7}}, p. 10.
*"Anti-Semitism, in the form of Holocaust denial, had been experienced by just one teacher when working in a Catholic school with large numbers of Polish and Croatian students." Geoffrey Short, Carole Ann Reed. ''Issues in Holocaust Education'', [[Ashgate Publishing]], 2004, {{ISBN|0-7546-4211-9}}, p. 71.
*"Indeed, the task of organized antisemitism in the last decade of the century has been the establishment of Holocaust Revisionism&nbsp;– the denial that the Holocaust occurred." Stephen Trombley, "antisemitism", ''The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought'', [[W. W. Norton & Company]], 1999, {{ISBN|0-393-04696-6}}, p. 40.
*"After the Yom Kippur War an apparent reappearance of antisemitism in France troubled the tranquility of the community; there were several notorious terrorist attacks on synagogues, Holocaust revisionism appeared, and a new antisemitic political right tried to achieve respectability." Howard K. Wettstein, ''Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity'', [[University of California Press]], 2002, {{ISBN|0-520-22864-2}}, p. 169.
*"Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism." Igounet, Valérie. [http://mondediplo.com/1998/05/08igou "Holocaust denial is part of a strategy"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190613014018/https://mondediplo.com/1998/05/08igou |date=June 13, 2019 }}, ''[[Le Monde diplomatique]]'', May 1998.
*"Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"In a number of countries, in Europe as well as in the United States, the negation or gross minimization of the Nazi genocide of Jews has been the subject of books, essay and articles. Should their authors be protected by freedom of speech? The European answer has been in the negative: such writings are not only a perverse form of anti-semitism but also an aggression against the dead, their families, the survivors and society at large." Roger Errera, "Freedom of speech in Europe", in Georg Nolte, ''European and US Constitutionalism'', [[Cambridge University Press]], 2005, {{ISBN|0-521-85401-6}}, pp. 39–40.
*"Particularly popular in Syria is Holocaust denial, another staple of Arab anti-Semitism that is sometimes coupled with overt sympathy for Nazi Germany." [[Efraim Karsh]], ''Rethinking the Middle East'', [[Routledge]], 2003, {{ISBN|0-7146-5418-3}}, p. 104.
*"Holocaust denial is a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs." Dinah Shelton, ''Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity'', Macmillan Reference, 2005, p. 45.
*"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, ''Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana'', [[University of North Carolina Press]], 2000, {{ISBN|0-8078-5374-7}}, p. 445.
*"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." [http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628184616/http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm |date=June 28, 2011 }}, [[Stephen Roth Institute]], 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
*"The primary motivation for most deniers is anti-Semitism, and for them the Holocaust is an infuriatingly inconvenient fact of history. After all, the Holocaust has generally been recognized as one of the most terrible crimes that ever took place, and surely the very emblem of evil in the modern age. If that crime was a direct result of anti-Semitism taken to its logical end, then anti-Semitism itself, even when expressed in private conversation, is inevitably discredited among most people. What better way to rehabilitate anti-Semitism, make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even make it acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies than by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened&nbsp;– indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by the Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media? What better way, in short, to make the world safe again for anti-Semitism than by denying the Holocaust?" Reich, Walter. [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/11/books/erasing-the-holocaust.html "Erasing the Holocaust"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230628213512/https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/11/books/erasing-the-holocaust.html |date=June 28, 2023 }}, ''[[The New York Times]]'', July 11, 1993.
*"There is now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism ... insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric.... The history of the Arab world ... is disfigured ... by a whole series of outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that the Holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much, currency." [[Edward Said]], "A Desolation, and They Called it Peace" in ''Those who forget the past'', Ron Rosenbaum (ed), [[Random House]] 2004, p. 518.</ref>
<ref name="conspiracy">Conspiracy theory:
*"While appearing on the surface as a rather arcane pseudo-scholarly challenge to the well-established record of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, Holocaust denial serves as a powerful conspiracy theory uniting otherwise disparate fringe groups...." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"Before discussing how Holocaust denial constitutes a conspiracy theory, and how the theory is distinctly American, it is important to understand what is meant by the term 'Holocaust denial.'" Mathis, Andrew E. [http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ Holocaust Denial, a Definition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213171733/https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/denial/abc-clio/ |date=February 13, 2021 }}, [[The Holocaust History Project]], July 2, 2004. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
*"Since its inception ... the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." [http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628184616/http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000-1/usa.htm |date=June 28, 2011 }}, [[Stephen Roth Institute]], 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.</ref>
<ref name="post-Soviet">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1080/13501674.2012.730732 |quote=In general, post-Soviet Holocaust denial has differed from Holocaust denial in the style of David Irving or Ernst Zündel. In post-Soviet space, the Holocaust has not usually been denied as such and post-Soviet radical right activists did not question the existence of gas chambers in Auschwitz, or the anti-Jewish politics of Nazi Germany. Instead, nationalist post-Soviet discourses denied some of the national or regional elements of the Holocaust, like, for example, the contribution of different nationalist organizations or armies to it, or very frequently the participation of local populations in pogroms and other forms of anti-Jewish violence. |title=Debating, obfuscating and disciplining the Holocaust: Post-Soviet historical discourses on the OUN–UPA and other nationalist movements |journal=East European Jewish Affairs |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=199–241 |year=2012 |last1=Rossoliński-Liebe |first1=Grzegorz |s2cid=154067506}}</ref>

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* {{Cite book |last=Rotondi |first=Francesco |title=Luna di miele ad Auschwitz. Riflessioni sul negazionismo della Shoah |publisher=Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane |year=2005 |location=Napoli}}
* {{Cite report |url=https://www.vie-publique.fr/files/rapport/pdf/044000492.pdf |title=Commission sur le racisme et le négationnisme à l'université Jean-Moulin Lyon III : Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de l'Education nationale |last=Rousso |first=Henry |date=2004-09-01 |location=Paris |access-date=March 16, 2024 |archive-date=March 16, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240316124830/https://www.vie-publique.fr/files/rapport/pdf/044000492.pdf |url-status=live}}
* {{Cite book |last=Shermer |first=Michael |title=[[Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time]] |publisher=Freeman |year=1997 |isbn=0-8050-7089-3 |location=New York}}
*{{Cite journal |last=Shermer |first=Michael |year=1998 |title=Holocaust Revisionism Update: David Cole Recants/David Irving Says Churchill Knew About Pearl Harbor |journal=Skeptic |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=23–25}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Shermer |first1=Michael |title=[[Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?]] |last2=Grobman |first2=Alex |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=2002 |isbn=0-520-23469-3}}
* {{Cite book |last=Van Pelt |first=Robert Jan |author-link=Robert Jan van Pelt |title=The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial |date=February 4, 2002 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=0-253-34016-0}}
* {{Cite book |last=Vidal-Naquet |first=Pierre |title=Réflexions sur le génocide. Les juifs, la mémoire et le présent |publisher=La Découverte |year=1995 |volume=III |chapter=Qui sont les assassins de la mémoire?}}
* {{Cite book |last=Vidal-Naquet |first=Pierre |title=Un Eichman de papier |publisher=La Découverte |others=Afterword by Gisèle Sapiro |year=2005 |isbn=2-7071-4545-9 |edition=Nouvelle revue et augmentée |location=Paris |chapter=Les assassins de la mémoire}}
* {{cite book |first=Thomas |last=Wandres |title=Die Strafbarkeit des Auschwitz-Leugnens |location=Berlin |year=2000 |isbn=3-428-10055-7}}
* {{cite book |first=Werner |last=Wegner |chapter=Keine Massenvergasungen in Auschwitz? Zur Kritik des Leuchter-Gutachtens |title=Die Schatten der Vergangenheit. Impulse zur Historisierung der Vergangenheit |editor-first1=Uwe |editor-last1=Backes |editor-first2=Eckhard |editor-last2=Jesse |editor-first3=Rainer |editor-last3=Zitelmann |publisher=Propyläen |location=Berlin |year=1990 |pages=450–476 |isbn=3-549-07407-7}}
*{{Cite journal |last=Wellers |first=George |year=1989 |title=A propos du "Rapport Leuchter" et les chambres à gaz d'Auschwitz |journal=Le Monde Juif |volume=134}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Wicken |first=Stephen |year=2006 |title=Views of the Holocaust in Arab Media and Public Discourse |url=http://yalejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/061209wicken.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=[[Yale Journal of International Affairs]] |pages=103–15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921073926/http://yalejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/061209wicken.pdf |archive-date=September 21, 2013 |access-date=February 2, 2014 }}
* {{cite report |first=Jürgen |last=Zarusky |title=Leugnung des Holocaust. Die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz. Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften Aktuell – Amtliches Mitteilungsblatt |date=9-10 November 1999 |location=Marburg}}
* {{Cite news |last=Zimmerman |first=John C. |date=January 16, 2000 |title=Holocaust Denial |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |page=M4}}
* {{Cite book |last=Zimmerman |first=John C. |title=Holocaust denial: demographics, testimonies, and ideologies |date=2000 |publisher=[[University Press of America]] |location=Lanham, MD}}
{{refend}}

;By Holocaust deniers
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite news |url=http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP85505 |title=Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial in the Iranian Media |series=Special Dispatch Series |volume=855 |date=January 28, 2005 |access-date=November 8, 2005 |publisher=[[Middle East Media Research Institute]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060802010555/http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP85505 |archive-date=August 2, 2006}}
* {{cite book |last=Butz |first=Arthur R. |author-link=Arthur R. Butz |title=[[The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry]] |location=Newport Beach |publisher=Institute for Historical Review |year=1994 |isbn=0-9679856-9-2}}
* {{cite news |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/syrdenial.html |title=Syrian Holocaust Denial |first=Mohammad |last=Daoud |newspaper=Syria Times |date=September 6, 2000 |access-date=November 8, 2005 |via=[[Jewish Virtual Library]] |archive-date=December 17, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161217011440/http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/syrdenial.html |url-status=live}}
* {{cite journal |author-link=Robert Faurisson |last=Faurisson |first=Robert |title=My Life As a Revisionist |journal=The Journal of Historical Review |volume=9 |issue=1 |date=Spring 1989 |page=5}}
* {{cite book |editor-first=Ernst |editor-last=Gauss |title=Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of 'Truth' and 'Memory |location=Alabama |publisher=Theses & Dissertations Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-9679856-0-9}} {{emdash}} "Gauss" is a pseudonym for [[Germar Rudolf]], the founder of "Theses & Dissertations Press."
* {{cite book |last=Graf |first=Jürgen |author-link=Jürgen Graf |title=Der Holocaust auf dem Prüfstand |year=1992}}
* {{cite book |last=Harwood |first=Richard E. |author-link=Richard E. Harwood |title=[[Did Six Million Really Die?]] |publisher=Noontide Press}}
* {{cite book |last=Hoffman, II |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Hoffman II |title=The Great Holocaust Trial |date=June 1985 |publisher=Institute for Historical Review |edition=2nd |isbn=0-939484-22-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Leuchter |first1=Fred A. |author1-link=Fred A. Leuchter |last2=Faurisson |first2=Robert |last3=Rudolf |first3=Germar |title=The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition |location=Chicago |publisher=Theses & Dissertations Press |year=2005 |isbn=1-59148-015-9}}
* {{cite news |last=Paz |first=Reuven |url=http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=108 |title=Palestinian Holocaust Denial |work=Peacewatch |date=April 21, 2000 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061023044146/http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=108 |access-date=November 8, 2005 |archive-date=October 23, 2006}}
* {{cite book |first=Germar |last=Rudolf |title=The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the 'Gas Chambers' of Auschwitz |location=Chicago |publisher=Theses & Dissertations Press |year=2001}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{commons category}}
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U0y2lUxNL4 An online lecture by Ephraim Kaye, of Yad Vashem] 
*[https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/holocaust-antisemitism/rozett-denying-history.html When Denying History is Incitement to Violence], By Robert Rozett of [[Yad Vashem]]
*[https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/ The Wiener Holocaust Library]&nbsp;– The World's Oldest Holocaust Memorial Institution
*[https://www.nizkor.org/ The Nizkor Project]&nbsp;– responses to Holocaust denial
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20131202230742/http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar00.html 66 questions and answers on Holocaust denial]—the [[Nizkor Project]]
*[https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/ The Holocaust History Project]&nbsp;– documents and essays on the Holocaust and its denial
*[http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (HEART)]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060210223210/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/introduction.asp Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda] Published by the [[Anti-Defamation League]]
*[https://www.hdot.org/ Holocaust Denial on Trial], Documents and resources relating to the David Irving vs. Penguin Books and [[Deborah Lipstadt]] trial
*[https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20170223130057/http://www.thebreman.org/Exhibitions/Now-on-View/Absence-of-Humanity-The-Holocaust-Years-1933-1945 Absence of Humanity Exhibit – The Breman Museum]
*[http://auschwitz.org/en/history/holocaust-denial/ Denial of the Holocaust and the genocide in Auschwitz from the online web site]
*[https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/holocaust-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-laws.html Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of Nazism] by Prof. Michael J. Bazyler

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