First International Conference on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial

In November 2010, scholars met in Dublin to attend the first International Conference on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. This was held at Trinity College in the very same building where, in 1988, Diana Mosley and David Irving had been invited to speak and had to be relocated following a large protest. It was also the place where, in 2002, the late Jorg Haider addressed students. On that occasion, the debate continued as planned, albeit to a backdrop of a noisy demonstration.

Conference speakers explored the close links between antisemitism and Holocaust denial from different perspectives and explained how new forms of each were emerging. It is difficult to determine the impact of Holocaust denial, but teachers and educators need to consider the growth of Holocaust denial literature on the World Wide Web. Anyone who uses the internet to search for information on the Holocaust can not only easily find denial literature, but may find it difficult to avoid. Holocaust denial is like a virus in that it continually changes form. Even I wonder whether drawing attention to it in this article may be counterproductive.

Historian Deborah Lipstadt distinguished two types of Holocaust denial: ‘hardcore’ and ‘softcore’. The former is more easily identifiable because it rejects historical facts of the Holocaust that can be proven with solid evidence, such as the genocide of the Jews, the existence of gas chambers and the use of crematoria. Lipstadt refers to this as ‘totally irrational’ and ‘rooted in antisemitism’. The latter, she claims, is a ‘softer variant’ and ‘more ambiguous’ as it acknowledges that the Holocaust happened, but minimises it. It questions figures, for example, and compares the Holocaust to other events and in so doing casts doubt on its authenticity. This partially explains how Holocaust denial, the initial domain of neo-Nazis, skinheads, philo-Germans and right-wing extremists, now extends to a sophisticated audience. Lipstadt demonstrated how the home page of one site (Holocaustdenialvideos.com) has a strapline that boasts ‘9 hours of free web video about how the Holocaust is a hoax’, and one of its main images is that of smartly dressed, former journalist and American TV presenter Phil Donahue. 

One is unlikely to enter the above website unless deliberately looking for such material and this is why Juliane Wetzel from the Centre for Research on Antisemitism in Berlin claims that the softer variant is more dangerous. Softcore Holocaust denial draws people in because its agenda is not immediately obvious. Wetzel cited the animation ‘Housewitz’ which has been widely circulating on the internet through Youtube and other blogs since 2005. This film uses images of Auschwitz death camp to compare it to a dance party. Its author has since been convicted by a Dutch court, although he has insisted that it was all a joke and has apologised profusely. The title of this animation does not obviously convey Holocaust denial. Whether it was deliberately conceived to target young people and to trivialise the Holocaust is irrelevant. It did so, and young people continue to access this and other similar material without being prepared for their content.   

Wetzel also demonstrated ways in which the term ‘Holocaust’ has been adopted by a number of groups who have nothing to do with the Holocaust. These groups include ‘Bombing Holocaust’, which focuses on the bombing of German cities by the Allies at the end of the Second World War; ‘Babycaust’, an anti-abortion website; and ‘Holocaust on your Plate’, which advocates animal welfare issues and equates Holocaust victims with animals. These organisations compare the Holocaust to other mass killings as a means of getting attention. Although these examples have nothing to do with racism or antisemitism, they diminish the Holocaust and thus represent a form of softcore denial.

For teachers, one of the challenges of Holocaust denial is whether it should be discussed in the classroom or not. Justification to do so is based on the wide range of Holocaust denial material on the internet. Educators will also become increasingly reliant on web-based resources as Holocaust survivors are no longer alive to bear witness. A key issue is that any discussion of Holocaust denial risks it becoming regarded by young people as a legitimate discourse. This in turn could lead to legitimising Holocaust denial groups on social networking sites such as Facebook, which in 2009 deleted two such groups from its website. However, young people may also be more vulnerable to such attempts to deny and trivialise the Holocaust if they are not educated about the variants of Holocaust denial. But teachers may simply not have time to fit Holocaust denial in to the short allocation they have for teaching the Holocaust; they may instead consider that the best way to challenge Holocaust denial is to ensure that students are well-informed about the Holocaust and the Second World War.

Holocaust denial is only one form of antisemitism. Often referred to as ‘The Longest Hatred’, antisemitism existed long before Holocaust deniers and the Holocaust. Research by myself and others has shown that Holocaust education can have many benefits for young people. Robert Jan van Pelt, a key witness at the Irving vs Penguin and Lipstadt libel case, is more pessimistic. He stated that this has ‘created a response that we have to live with’. Exactly how we do so is unclear.

Paula Cowan is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of West Scotland.