Holocaust Deniers

Bren1609

I read this article today http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/pope-tries-to-heal-rift-with-jews-after-holocaust-row-1618539.html and it reminded me last year of a holocaust denier that was supposed to give a lecture in UL last year but in the end it had to be cancelled because of death threats or protests. I cant remember the exact details and if somebody could tell me the mans name I'd appreciate it.

Be that as it may, why is it that when anyone questions the accuracy of the holocaust and the numbers involved the argument is effectively silenced and the debate never even takes place.

I for one am interested to know how exaclty the we came to the conclusion that 11 million people died during the holocaust. Only the flip side, I would also like to know the other argument as to how the holocaust never happened.

Any taker?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

ChocolateSauce

Bren1609 wrote: »

I for one am interested to know how exaclty the we came to the conclusion that 11 million people died during the holocaust. Only the flip side, I would also like to know the other argument as to how the holocaust never happened.

Any taker?

To the best of my knowledge, the primary source are the Nazi records. They documented it all meticulously.

Nodin

Its an emotive issue and a bandwagon everyone feels comfortable jumping on.

Nasty as many of these people are, hounding them only gives them a certain cache they just don't deserve. When you look at them, their methodology is dire, and often surrounded by quackery and conspiracy theories. Public humiliation and mockery is a far better way to deal with them.

seanybiker

I remember me man supposed to be coming over alright. I to would be interested in hearing his excuse for it not happening.

deadhead13

It may of been the british "historian" David Irving

Het-Field

The big question hangs over Hitler's actual knowledge of what was going on.

Very few documents and no death warrents were signed by lil ol Adolf. Hence, it has given revisionists a chance to question the role of Hitler in the holocaust. Many revisionists feel that it was other of Hitler's cronies who were the primary cause of the wanton destruction of human life during the holocause.

Irving's poorly written book also uses picture evidence to try and convince people that it was spacially impossible for that many people to be murdered in the death camps in the period of time that Hitler was concentrating on his final solution.

On the other hand Holocaust Deniers are attention seeking douchbags. I can handle revisionists, but not deniers. Most of the latter groups are uneducated fascists, who see Hitler as a form of God.

The Irving thing in UCC last February was a joke. The Left were out in force to try and stop him from speaking to 400 students, yet he still managed to speak to a potential audience of 3.5 million. Much as I disagree with those on the extreme right, I equally diagree with the "thought police" of the extreme left. I recall an Immigration Debate in UCD in 2004 which saw the extreme left physically assault No To Nice/Youth Defence/German Extremist Youth campaigner Justin Barrett. It was a disgrace, and it made a martyr out of him. Interestingly we have not heard of him since

ejmaztec

As I understand it, in the numbers game, the Russians estimated that 6 million Jews were wiped out, whereas the other allies thought it was 2 or 3 million.

I don't know what kind of Nazi records were left behind, so don't know how accurate either of the figures are, nor the accuracy of the numbers of non-Jews that were exterminated.

I've read on some "websites" that there were more Jews living in Europe at the end of the war, than there were at the beginning.

I don't deny that it took place - but I would like to see how the numbers were arrived at. The estimated 5 or 6 million non-Jews that died in the camps seem to be lost in translation and pretty much ignored by the Holocaust bandwagon.

If the 2 or 3 million figures are correct, it would mean that more non-jews were killed than Jews and the latter's monopoly on the whole affair would be somewhat diluted.

deadhead13

What exactly, is a "holocaust bandwagon"?

OhNoYouDidn't

Het-Field wrote: »

. Interestingly we have not heard of him since

Sounds like a job well done so.....

Just for the record some 'revisionists' like Irving are doing so to sanitise the memory of the third reich, so while at an academic level there is no harm in studying the holocaust and improving our understanding of it, just remember that some peoples motives are better than others.

Twin-go

If the 2 or 3 million figures are correct, it would mean that more non-jews were killed than Jews and the latter's monopoly on the whole affair would be somewhat diluted.[/quote]

I disagree 100%. The Jewish people were the largest ethnic group affected by the Holocaust. The non-Jews were made up of many smaller ethnic groups, Polish, Hungarian, Gypsies, Disabled, Sick, Elderly and many many more.

As with most of history, facts get lost with time. The Nazi's when they realised the game was up begain to distroy all the records so the full truth of the horrors may never be known. All we have are the remaining survivors many who where very young at the time and the records that were not distroyed.

I would recomend any body with an interest in the subject to visit Auswitzch. It is a powerfull experience of an event we must not forget, must not deny it but go by the evidence there is and never let it happen again.

brianthebard

OP where did you get the 11 million figure?

deadhead13 wrote: »

It may of been the british historian David Irving

Please don't refer to him as a historian.

ejmaztec wrote: »

As I understand it, in the numbers game, the Russians estimated that 6 million Jews were wiped out, whereas the other allies thought it was 2 or 3 million.

I don't know what kind of Nazi records were left behind, so don't know how accurate either of the figures are, nor the accuracy of the numbers of non-Jews that were exterminated.

I've read on some "websites" that there were more Jews living in Europe at the end of the war, than there were at the beginning.

That would be impossible, not just because of the holocaust but because of the policy of forced migration prior to the war.

Why does debate not take place?
Because there is nothing to debate. DF made a good post about the difference between negationism and revisionism. Revisionism is a very useful thing, negationism is incredibly damaging. We can't allow revisionism to be equated with negationism, that is part of why so many people have a poor opinion of revisionist history in this country. We can't allow people to deny that the holocaust happened, or that millions and millions of people existed and then didn't, because of Nazism. People cannot pick and choose which historical events they believe happened at will. Further, holocaust denial laws are very important pieces of legislation, which should in time be a way of putting pressure on Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian genocide for example.

Twin-go wrote: »

I disagree 100%. The Jewish people were the largest ethnic group affected by the Holocaust. The non-Jews were made up of many smaller ethnic groups, Polish, Hungarian, Gypsies, Disabled, Sick, Elderly and many many more.

While there were more jews killed in the holocaust, as a proportion of their population, gypsies suffered a bigger loss. They have not received reparations afaik either. I don't believe that one group suffered more than the other, the holocaust affected a terrible number of people.

maxwell smart

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia. ~David McCullough
The very thought that what David Irving espoues could be taken seriously by people shows that we must never forget.
I've never read anywhere that there were more Jewish people in Europe when WWII ended than when it began, do you know where you read it?
Can I also say the following. I, like a great many people have read a vast amount in relation to WWII, the Nazi party, the holocaust etc. I am facinated by the failure of the German state to win the war, but also eternally grateful for that fact

The_Minister

brianthebard wrote: »

OP where did you get the 11 million figure?

Everyone forgets that 4,000,000 people who weren't Jewish were killed as well.

It's one of my pet hates, when people talk about the 6,000,000 killed.

Kama

I am facinated by the failure of the German state to win the war, but also eternally grateful for that fact

Same same, but on a revisionist note, I'd be thanking the Russians...our history tends to focus (unsurprisingly) on the Allied contribution, imo the weak sister in toppling the Nazis. Not that that played well post-war.

Similarly, no-one makes any films about the Roma...history is a biased beast, which is essentially the argument for revisionism.

jim o doom

brianthebard wrote: »

While there were more jews killed in the holocaust, as a proportion of their population, gypsies suffered a bigger loss. They have not received reparations afaik either. I don't believe that one group suffered more than the other, the holocaust affected a terrible number of people.

Yeah I pretty much agree with you, except for one thing;

Most of the others killed were killed as part of war (regardless of the reason for that war).

With the Jews, Romas, Homosexuals or in fact anyone who was interred in a prison camp; the point and intention was utter extermination. That is what makes it worse IMO. Sure tons of people died during fighting, but it was the intent that made the holocaust so (dare I say it) evil..

With people in many different continents and areas dying, there was no "intent" they were just casualties...

With the camps, it was done with forethought and intention & there was an overall plan to kill innocents (well innocents & political dissidents).

TerrorFirmer

jim o doom wrote: »

Yeah I pretty much agree with you, except for one thing;

Most of the others killed were killed as part of war (regardless of the reason for that war).

With the Jews, Romas, Homosexuals or in fact anyone who was interred in a prison camp; the point and intention was utter extermination. That is what makes it worse IMO. Sure tons of people died during fighting, but it was the intent that made the holocaust so (dare I say it) evil..

With people in many different continents and areas dying, there was no "intent" they were just casualties...

With the camps, it was done with forethought and intention & there was an overall plan to kill innocents (well innocents & political dissidents).

I think what he meant was the figure of 6,000,000 refers exclusively to Jews, when entire other groups, for want of a better word, of people were wiped out in similar fashions, that is to say, extermination but in terms of general knowledge are not so recognised. The disabled, the Polish elite (and later, such as the Warsaw Rising in 44, the Polish as a mere nationality), and the same for other Eastern Territories, and so on, for example - the list is actually extensively long but in proportion to the actual group they represent not as large as that of the Jewish populace. Basically, anybody that was a hindrance to the power, unrivaled development, physical conditioning of the state, was a legitimate target. The extra 4,000,000 doesn't refer to any group killed as a by result of fighting....the Germany army lost almost that many KIA during the war alone.

brianthebard

The_Minister wrote: »

Everyone forgets that 4,000,000 people who weren't Jewish were killed as well.

It's one of my pet hates, when people talk about the 6,000,000 killed.

I don't forget, quite the contrary, I'm always reminding people about the non Jewish population that died in the holocaust. Its just the last figure I heard for the total holocaust deaths was closer to 8 million than 11.

ejmaztec

brianthebard wrote: »

That would be impossible, not just because of the holocaust but because of the policy of forced migration prior to the war.

Any statistics?

turgon

The_Minister wrote: »

Everyone forgets that 4,000,000 people who weren't Jewish were killed as well.

It's one of my pet hates, when people talk about the 6,000,000 killed.

There is still a debate as to whether the Holocaust refers to Jews or all people. In general people refer to the Holocaust as the programme towards eradicating Jews. So when people talk about the 6 million they are referring to the Holocaust, although I concede that the "others" seem to have been forgotten about.

Another similar point is that the Jews were exterminated solely for being Jews and that was it, whereas a lot of the "others" would have been rebel leaders and dissenters etc etc. In that light it is obvious why people sympathize primarily with Jews because they were a specifically targeted group that lives on today.

ejmaztec wrote: »

Any statistics?

In many cases WWII death tolls are calculated from the reduced number of people living in a particular state. The 6 million was probably calculated from the amount of Jews that went missing and that couldnt be found. In particular the 3 million Polish Jews was calculated in this respect Im sure, due to census details from Poland in the inter-war period.

brianthebard

ejmaztec wrote: »

Any statistics?

Think it might have been half a million, not sure and would have to check.

Serenity Now!

Kama wrote: »

Same same, but on a revisionist note, I'd be thanking the Russians...our history tends to focus (unsurprisingly) on the Allied contribution, imo the weak sister in toppling the Nazis. Not that that played well post-war

Germany didn't invade Poland alone. There is also a reason that Berlin was split four ways. "Russia" (you mean the USSR of course) ran the largest concentration camp system, killed more of its own and remained a totalitarian state even after 1945. Look at it this way. They only changed sides one time less than Italy.

Kama wrote: »

Similarly, no-one makes any films about the Roma...history is a biased beast, which is essentially the argument for revisionism.

The very same Roma who are treated as low-castes in this very country for example? Their treatment at the hand of affluent Europe is not confined to the 1930s and 1940s.

Kama

The very same Roma who are treated as low-castes in this very country for example?

Precisely. I regard them as being the best way to understand how Holocausts aren't something 'other', but that the dynamics are shared in many societies, ours included.

turgon

I agree, no one seems to give a shìt that 54 million people were killed under Lenin and Stalin, not including wartime casualties. Including stuff like the Ukraine Famine, which killed nearly as many as the Holocaust.

Serenity Now!

turgon wrote: »

I agree, no one seems to give a shìt that 54 million people were killed under Lenin and Stalin, not including wartime casualties. Including stuff like the Ukraine Famine, which killed nearly as many as the Holocaust.

To be honest, actual details of such atrocities under Stalin are out in the open barely under 20 years and after a few changes at the helm not only in Russia itself but the other states that comprised the USSR.
The years you mention were in fact discussed in Brussels only last year unless I'm much mistaken.
What shakes about the Holocaust is not only the sheer planning and mechanical efficiency which went into its implementation but the speed in which the killings took place. I'm not just talking death camps but organised mass murder by the einsatzgruppen and Soviet equivalent in the Baltics and western USSR for example.

Kama

Yeh, just to be clear, emphasising the military role of the USSR does not equal support for the regime. It's more a response to comments like John Boltons 'Are you speaking German? No? Say thank you' narrative of the post-war Allies.

Also to clarify, my stance on 'the' Holocaust is essentially Zygmunt Baumanns, that in a sick way it was 'nothing special'; the application of Modern industrial processes to the kind of pogroms and 'ethnic cleansing' that humans seem all to prone to. Which to me is precisely the opposite of Holocause denial, its acknowledgement of that tragedy as a singular instance among many of dehumanization and attempted at organised, mass-produced genocide.

ejmaztec

deadhead13 wrote: »

What exactly, is a "holocaust bandwagon"?

The whole Shoah experience.

I saw a Channel 4 programme recently, where various disgruntled Holocaust survivors were having great difficulty in getting any help from the various Holocaust charities that were actually set up to help them.

They and others concluded that, in an attempt to keep on telling the world about the inhumanities carried out by the Nazis, the plight of those lucky enough to survive was being ignored.

Some of them were probably the half-dead kids that were shown in the black and white stills on display in various Shoah memorial exhibitions around the world. Now, they're half-dead old people that can't pay their medical bills. The irony!

Bobo78

There wasnt only Holocaust where Jewish and Roma and other people were killed there was places such as Jasenovac as well and good few others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp

Kama

On Holocaust bandwagonism, Norman Finkelstein would be the recommended reading. Article and extracts. He did painstaking forensic scholarship on key academic Holocaust tets and found them...wanting. Chomsky said to him that: " if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you." Unsurprisingly, he got accused of anti-Semitism (and conspiracy theory) for doing revisionism.

Basic argument (as I understand it) is that the instrumentalization of the Holocaust for political purposes, for instance as by the Zionist programme, is a greater threat than denial of the Holocaust, as by neo-Nazis, and does more to inflame anti-Semitism than anything else. He also wrote on the diversion of funds by charities from survivors to settlements in Israel, and has a ban from entering the country.

jmayo

Het-Field wrote: »

The big question hangs over Hitler's actual knowledge of what was going on.

Very few documents and no death warrents were signed by lil ol Adolf. Hence, it has given revisionists a chance to question the role of Hitler in the holocaust. Many revisionists feel that it was other of Hitler's cronies who were the primary cause of the wanton destruction of human life during the holocause...

Hitler espoused the hatred of Jews and is even quoted as mentioning mass indiscriminate hangings of Jews in the street of Munich as far back as a 1922 interview.
He waqnted to get rid of Jews and anyone basically that did not fit his Aryian sterotype, particularly those in the East.
But the actual extermination process was developed and taken to an industrial level by some of the major evil nutjobs within the Nazi regime i.e. Himmler and his sidekick Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Müller and the various commanders of the SS formations "Einsatzgruppen" operating in the East.
Thus Hitlers signature is not on any documents although the Nazis running the camps did record the evil events in a truly callous and unbelieveable manner.

BTW half the evil dreamt up during Third Reich and half the salvation of the Germany economy were not Hitler's own ideas but those of his appointees and lower ranks who were trying to curry his favour.

BTW according to some definitions the term "The Holocaust" is used to describe the genocide of European Jewry or what the Nazis termed the "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem.
Thus the 6 million odd number only applies to this and not all those others exterminated.

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

...
Just for the record some 'revisionists' like Irving are doing so to sanitise the memory of the third reich, so while at an academic level there is no harm in studying the holocaust and improving our understanding of it, just remember that some peoples motives are better than others.

The scary thing is it is not alone Irving and would be Nazis that try to gloss over events. There was a large number of natives of some of the Central and Eastern European occupied countries who collaborated in wiping out the Jews and the Roma. There were progroms in these areas long before Hitler and the Nazis arrived.
I once noticed museum in Talinn tended to cover the pre independence times, the years of independence, the soviet invasion and occupation after 1939 and the reconquest by Red Army in 1944 and soviet rule upto 1989, but there was SFA about the years 1941 to 1944.
It was like history did not exist those years and the weird thing is Estonia was not one of the worst where a large Jewish population was wiped out.

Serenity Now! wrote: »

Germany didn't invade Poland alone. There is also a reason that Berlin was split four ways. "Russia" (you mean the USSR of course) ran the largest concentration camp system, killed more of its own and remained a totalitarian state even after 1945. Look at it this way. They only changed sides one time less than Italy.

The very same Roma who are treated as low-castes in this very country for example? Their treatment at the hand of affluent Europe is not confined to the 1930s and 1940s.

AFAIK Italy only really changed sides one time. The Germans probably saw it as adavantageous
Roma are still treated as second class citizens among a fair few European countries to this day. They lost a very sizable chunk of their population during the war years but they probably do not get the attention because their group did not have the access to media and the American influence that the Jewish population has had in later years.

I believe people like Irving should not be allowed to try and spout his drivel, because today we say yeah it might not have been so bad, tomorrow we say it definetly wasn't that bad and before long we say it is all ancient history and sure what's all the fuss about.

Remember how the UN and world said "Never Again".
Obviously that didn't apply to Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur :mad:

Kama

I'm of the opposite stance on that pretence of a historian; was well annoyed when he wasn't allowed speak, was looking forward to getting my teeth in. The concept of an open society would be that we can hear 'dangerous' ideas, and openly combat them. Censoring them (to me) presumes that our arguments are too weak to stand up in debate, and buttresses the neo-Nazi argument that they are censored because they are right.