Adolf Who? What makes someone a Holocaust denier?

[Behind the Aegis]

Ultraconservative Catholic bishop Richard Williamson apologized to the pope this week for his "imprudent remarks" concerning the Holocaust but did not recant. The bishop accepts that some Jews died in concentration camps but claims that fewer than 300,000 were killed, rather than 6 million, and he denies that the Nazis used gas chambers. To be a Holocaust denier, do you have to deny the whole thing?

There's no single definition of Holocaust denial or "revisionism," but scholars generally agree that it means claiming that the Nazis had no official policy to exterminate Jews, that the gas chambers are a myth, or that the figure of 6 million murdered Jews is a gross exaggeration. At the extreme, denial can mean hiding or suppressing evidence of the Holocaust by destroying gas chambers, as the Nazis did at the end of World War II, or by burning documents. But denial can also take the form of relativization—saying that, yes, the Nazis killed Jews, but the killings of Gypsies, Poles, and Jehovah's Witnesses were just as bad.

That said, there are plenty of aspects of the Holocaust that are still hotly debated by historians without charges of denial being tossed around. One is the exact number of Jews killed. Most historians agree it was somewhere between 5 million and 7 million. (Solid documentary evidence exists for about 5.3 million deaths.) But the numbers vary because of the circumstances under which some of the killings occurred. For example, no one knows precisely how many Jews were evacuated when the Soviet army retreated from the western regions of the USSR under German attack, or whether they were killed. Legitimate debate also continues over how widespread Jewish resistance was against the Nazis.


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[MADem]

1. I'm thinking maybe brain lesions? Some major insult to the cerebellum?

That guy is completely off the page--I saw a clip of him on the tee vee and could not fucking believe the words coming out of his mouth. I was appalled.

I guess old Pope Benny ain't having any of that "apology without recanting" stuff...and the bishops in his neighborhood are up in arms as well.

Of course Pope "Yep He's German" Benny doesn't NEEEEED this kind of crap, either!

It bugs me that this still comes up every so often. Who will speak, when the last witnesses are dead? When the memories fade, when no one watches the films anymore?

Who can possibly have the balls to carp about "Well, it may have only been five million..." ONLY five million? Christ on a fucking bicycle!

I just cannot believe it. If we, as a world, forget, it will happen again.

[Chulanowa]

4. It's happened several times since, to the silence of the world

There are even nations that make denial of genocides official state policy - try to get an America, British, or Israeli official to call the Turkish slaughter of Armenians a "genocide" and watch them hem and haw. Or better yet, get them to call something in Africa a genocide... and then maintain relations with the aggressor!.

[MADem]

9. It doesn't matter what people say about the Armenian extermination.

I am well aware of Turkey's denial--I even have a few books that the Turkish government produced that are "denial" tomes (I also have a few books written by Saddam Hussein--doesn't mean I am a fan, they're items of historical curiosity). I don't buy their "it wasn't extermination, it was just plain old war that caused those deaths; hey, accidents happen" excuses, though--and neither does anyone I know who knows a single Armenian and has an awareness of what happened.

Certainly, it has happened way too often--there's the Killing Fields, and Rwanda, just to name two...but when you've got a "denier" spouting off about an event that was heavily covered, that took place in a "First World" nation, where an abundance of physical evidence and filmed records exist, it's just appalling that anyone would try to suggest that it was a myth. And a huge amount of MOXIE, to boot. I think the guy oughta be horsewhipped in Saint Peter's Square, and then made to wash the feet of old Jewish ladies from now till the day he croaks! But then, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride...

[Behind the Aegis]

7. "If we, as a world, forget, it will happen again. "

It will. At least with the next attempt, they will get almost all of us.

[Confusious]

2. Yea, but

There's a large difference between 300,000 and 6 million. I don't think the nazis kept records at the start, just later. So it could be as high as 7 million.

I think what should be remembered is that not only were 6 mil jew killed, but that this could happen again, to a different group, maybe YOU reading this, if everyone is not vigilant. That is another reason, maybe the most important reason, why I hate holocaust deniers.

[Chulanowa]

3. Denial of anything clearly backed by evidence, confessions, and witness testimony makes one a denier

I wouldn't say that trying to figure out the exact number itself is denial, so long as it's not ludicrous - and claims of only 300,000 Jews killed definitely falls within the bounds of ludicrous.

I wonder if his numbers scale? Did only 600,000 people die in total in the Nazi Holocaust according to Williamson? 300,000 Jews, 30,000 Rroma, 100,000 Russians, and only 750 homosexuals of both sexes?

I wonder if he further believes that the nearly two million Armenians who died at Turkey's hands are fiction, as well, or if he thinks that the genocides in Rwanda, Kongo, or Sudan are similarly fiction.

[BobTheSubgenius]

5. IMPRUDENT???? WTF????????

It's hard to imagine how f'ed up this is.

[HillbillyBob]

6. Call him freekin whack job, I have a great uncle who survived Buchenwald,

I had neigbhors, a whole apartment buildings worth from at least 5 different death camps that were survivors..tattoos on the inside of the left arm, and neighbors in other buildings nearby from other camps..yea never fukin happened at all they just imagined it all, the shootings, the gassings the beatings..just all freakin imagination. Dying in the silesia (bush/harriman mines and iron works near Auschwitz) that was imagination too. I ll stop now before I blow a gasket.

[Enthusiast]

8. This bishop should be given the boot.

The pope had better set an example that there will be no Nazi sympathizers in his church hierarchy.

Does it disturb anyone else that there is a massive effort to rewrite history taking place? I don't mean only the Holocaust. They are now saying FDR prolonged and worsened the Great Depression. I've even heard some insane claims that FDR caused the Great Depression. On a number of fronts these history rewriter's are hard at work informing us that Ronald Reagan was our Nation's greatest president, how he stopped Communism single handedly. Reagan's economy was the greatest ever and we are still benefiting from it. I view this as another book burning incident as took place in Nazi Germany. Same thing, different times.