Holocaust Denial Archives - The New Antisemitism

July 1, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 8 Comments

Holocaust Denial Is Pure Evil?

As unfathomable as the Holocaust was to those who entered the death camps at the end of WWII, it is all the more unthinkable even to contemplate the idea that the Holocaust never happened. Of all people, General Eisenhower understood that very well when he visited a death camp with General Patton after the war. When he spoke to members of Congress who had just visited Buchenwald in 1945, he said, “You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at home of things like these atrocities is one of them… Nothing is covered up. We have nothing to conceal. The barbarous treatment these people received in the German concentration camps is almost unbelievable. I want you to see for yourself and be spokesmen for the United States.”

Furthermore, in a letter to General Marshall, also in 1945, he also wrote, “While I was touring the camp, I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops the tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

General Eisenhower somehow understood that the human race is such that if the Holocaust could be erased, minimized or denied, people would find ways to do it. He was very concerned about preserving the memory of such carnage for future generations. In spite of his efforts and that of others, Holocaust denial is a real thing in 2023.

Of all the people who spent years hunting Nazis post-WWII, Simon Wiesenthal understood that bringing those criminals to justice was critical but not enough. In his book The Sunflower, he said, “Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.”

Wiesenthal was so right! Especially as we move forward into the 21^st century and both criminals and surviving victims are in their mid-90s. Soon, very soon, first-hand accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust will be a thing of the past, and the historical revisionists will be one step closer to making the Jewish catastrophe completely disappear from the annals of history.

So was Elie Wiesel in Night, the memoir of his time in Auschwitz, “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time,”

One of the most known Holocaust deniers is David Irving, who has written several books on the Third Reich and who has described the Holocaust as “limited,” “experimental,” “not systematic,” and “an invention of the allies.” He was exposed in a book by Jewish historian and antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt. In Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier. This led to Irving suing her and Penguin Books. Irving was found by the judge to be an antisemite, a racist and a falsifier of the historical record. He lost, but unfortunately, that was just one battle against Holocaust denial that was a victory, but certainly not the war.

Why are people not trying to deny American slavery or the Russian Gulag? I am not in any way suggesting that we should deny these two other human tragedies or any others, but I am wondering why such focus is on the Jewish tragedy.

To be honest, I am not wondering why such focus is on trying to erase the Holocaust from history. Satan will invest all his efforts in trying to ridicule, minimize, ostracize and even demonize Jewish existence. He would be thrilled if he could convince some that the Holocaust never happened or was grossly exaggerated by the Allies or Jewish people to justify pushing for the creation of a Jewish state.

One way to fight Holocaust denial is through education: at home, at school, through movies and even in churches and mosques. Some have said that people talk too much about the Holocaust, but a survey taken two years ago shows otherwise.

63% of Millennials and Gen Z didn’t know that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
48% of Millennials and Gen Z couldn’t name one single concentration camp.
56% of Millennials and Gen Z were unable to identify Auschwitz.
11% of Millennials and Gen Z believe that Jews caused the Holocaust.
49% of Millennials and Gen Z have seen Holocaust Denial on Social Networks.

Please do not tell me that we are speaking too much about the Holocaust after you consider the result of that survey. As first-hand accounts are becoming a rarity, the memory of the Holocaust is in our hands. Our generation is now responsible for continuing the fight for the preservation of historical truth and for the respect of the memory of the six million.

Holocaust Denial is pure evil, it is an insult to the victims and the survivors. When we see it, read it or even hear it, if we remain silent, we become the new bystanders of the 21^st century. Bystanders at such a critical crossroads in human history as at any other time are becoming co-perpetrators.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel).

April 21, 2022 By Olivier Melnick 2 Comments

Meet Deborah Lipstadt: The New US Antisemitism Envoy!

Most Americans might not know who Deborah Lipstadt is, and yet, her new appointment as the US antisemitism envoy by President Biden shouldn’t be ignored. First, let us look at Ms. Lipstadt’s background and credentials. She is an American historian of Jewish descent and an expert on Holocaust history and antisemitism. In her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, she exposed the views of historical revisionist David Irving who claims that the Holocaust never happened. David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel, and in 2000, Lipstadt won the case. Incidentally, a great movie telling that story and titled Denial, was made in 2006.

Deborah Lipstadt wrote several other books on the topic of antisemitism and also has been a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1994 she was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton. In 2021, President Biden nominated her for the position of United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism, and on March 30, 2022, after a long delay, the US Senate confirmed her unanimously.

The position was created in 2004 and had several people at its head since. There is no doubt that from the standpoint of understanding antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt is qualified for the task, and it is a very difficult task requiring some hard decisions to be made. In her recent book Antisemitism Here and Now, she defines antisemitism as: “Antisemitism is not the hatred of people who happen to be Jews. It is hatred of them because they are Jews.”

She has a point. I agree that antisemitism is the hatred of Jews because they are Jews, and as a form of xenophobia, it is quite unique. The challenge for Lipstadt and others trying to define, expose and teach against antisemitism, is to define it properly. Make the definition too narrow and real acts of antisemitism will fall through the crack but make it too wide almost to the point of saying that any criticism of Jewish people and/or Israel is antisemitism, and when real antisemitism occurs, people won’t pay attention. Defining antisemitism requires a delicate balance between overreaction and nonchalance. My best attempt at crafting a definition is as follows: “Antisemitism is the irrational and demonic hatred of Jewish people and Israel characterized by thoughts, words and/or deeds against them.” Even my definition probably falls short of properly defining antisemitism, but I believe that it is critical to accept the fact that antisemitism is irrational and demonic. Once we understand that only Satan can make the irrational look and sound rational, it all fits!

As I have said before, any definition of antisemitism that doesn’t include a spiritual component will always fall short. It is truly impossible to understand antisemitism without including Satan’s hatred for the “apple of God’s eye”. He [Satan] is obsessed with destroying all the Jews so that not one will be left when it is time to say Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai (Zechariah 12:10)–the single event that will usher in the Second Coming of Messiah AND pronounce the demise of Satan.

I am not sure that Deborah Lipstadt includes the demonic criteria in her definition, nevertheless, the task that she has been entrusted with is so critical at this time in our history. She has become the spokesperson on the subject, and there is no doubt that the expectations will be very high as to how she will denounce, expose and fight the oldest hatred.

I wish I could be excited and hopeful about this appointment, but I am concerned about some statements she has made. I honestly don’t care if she is a liberal or conservative, as long as she is competent in her field. Unfortunately, I must disagree with her statement about Holocaust denial. In the aftermath of the lawsuit that David Irving brought on her and Penguin Books, she was quoted saying, “Generally, I don’t think Holocaust denial should be a crime. I am a free speech person; I am against censorship.” I couldn’t disagree more. Denying the existence of the organized, methodical genocide that was the Holocaust SHOULD constitute a crime! I too am in favor of free speech and I too am against censorship, but we must have moral boundaries and by making that statement, Ms. Lipstadt might have committed another–albeit different–sin of denial.

Holocaust denial is willful blindness to the facts of history. It is unfounded historical revisionism and should absolutely be punished as a crime. I understand that Ms. Lipstadt might be academically and scholarly competent to teach on the Holocaust and antisemitism, but she might also be blinded by liberal political correctness, and that would really be a shame!

January 20, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Do we really need to talk so much about the Holocaust?

The further we move away from an event, the harder it is to remember it, its details and even its outcome. Any event enters the annals of history the minute they take place, and there is nothing man can do to erase that event from our collective memories. Nothing can take it away unless it is an event that the vast majority of people wish to forget or even tell the rest of the world it never happened. There are four types of people in any event of history: the victims, the helpers, the perpetrators and the bystanders. As it pertains to the Holocaust, they all need to be remembered.

Not only do we run the risk of forgetting an event, but we also run the risk of allowing history to repeat itself. When it comes to the Holocaust, it would be tragic on both levels. In January 2020, we remember the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1/25), and we also commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day (1/27). As Forty heads of states and key representatives gather to pay tribute to the victims and the helpers (Righteous Among the Nations), the rest of the world is invited to post a photo of themselves with the hashtag #WeRemember.

The beauty of a hashtag is that it inserts itself into the worldwide web to never disappear or be changed, and that has power in and of itself. Once composed and posted, a hashtag serves as a beacon bringing people to a particular topic, where all similar hashtags congregate. It can be very helpful. The downside of a hashtag is that too many people use them as gimmicks to satisfy their own conscience. Can someone post #WeRemember or #FightAntisemitism and feel satisfied that they have done their good deed to speak up against the Holocaust and antisemitism? Sure they can, but does it really help?

Hashtags alone only serve to point to the gravity of the Holocaust and the danger of the new antisemitism, as much as a repeated word can. Hashtags will not defeat Holocaust deniers, historical revisionists and antisemites. Hashtags are the bumper stickers of the twenty-first century, they make a statement in passing as they move to their eternal abode in cyberspace.

They don’t speak up, they don’t sign petitions, they don’t march on the street in protest, they can’t teach history, ethics or morality. We need people for all that. Create all the hashtags you want, they might tug on the strings of our hearts, but until we move into action, nothing will change.

We can do so much more:
• Visit one of the numerous US-based (30 states) Holocaust memorial/museums like the one in Washington DC or even Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. If you cannot visit a museum, get online to their sites and learn from their extensive databases and research tools.
• Read on the topic. Start with the autobiographical short book “Night” by Elie Wiesel. Move on to “The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz. Then in an effort to understand how the Holocaust further affected Jewish/Christian relations, read “The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz” by Jakob Jocz.
• Please, share your knowledge with the next generation. Two-thirds of millennials do not know what Auschwitz was. Additionally, 22% of Americans have never heard of the Holocaust.
• Attend marches and/or protests in your city or near you if they take place to show your support to the Jewish community and your disagreement with the enemies of Israel.
• Be ready to even go further by helping Jewish people in dire need. We can be proactive in 2020 instead of reactive in the 1930s and 40s. Things might get worse before they get better.

The African American communities should not stop telling their people about slavery and segregation, just like the Native American communities should not stop educating their young ones about the poor treatment and fate of their forefathers. So, why should we stop speaking of the Holocaust and why should we let those who deny it, get away with it?

Remembering a happy and positive moment requires no action but simply bring pleasure as we reminisce. When we are called to remember a somber moment on mankind’s timeline, remembering the event is just the tip of the iceberg. Sharing our memories, past experiences and teaching others about those events is key. Very soon, all the survivors of the Holocaust will be gone and the task of continuing to honor their memory will fall on those of us who still believe that the Holocaust happened and it could happen again. So, YES, we need to continue talking about the Holocaust, today more than ever!

April 10, 2018 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Holocaust Remembrance Day: More Relevant than Ever!

Yom HaShoah was voted by the Israeli Knesset as an official national memorial day in Israel in 1953. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion established that day as a yearly memorial for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Every year since that day, Jewish people remember the Shoah or “Catastrophe” as they perpetuate the memory of the loved ones they lost in the Holocaust. In Israel, on that day, two minutes of silent reflection is observed at 10:00 AM as a siren is heard all over the country. It isn’t unusual to even see motorists stop in the middle of the road and get out of their cars to observe that solemn moment. This year, it takes place on the 27th of Nisan which happens to start at sundown on April 11.

The importance of perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust cannot be underestimated. It is not about dwelling on the past for the sake of dwelling on the darkest days of Jewish history, but rather for the sake of never allowing future generations to forget these events and possibly preventing another “Catastrophe” in the future.

Historically speaking, the Shoah is a unique genocide for at least one reason. It is the only attempt at annihilating a people group–The Jews–by even going outside of the area where they resided to gather them and bring them back to a certain death in the myriad of Death Camps. It was an orchestrated, organized attempt at the total destruction of European Jewry. With all other genocides, as brutal as they might have been, there was always a way for potential victims to escape and/or immigrate. This was rarely the case for the Jews during the Holocaust years. My maternal father Maurice Weinzveig was one of the six million. He died in Auschwitz on July 24, 1942. Here are four reasons why Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), is more relevant than ever:

• Holocaust denial continues to grow
How could we possibly go from NEVER AGAIN to NEVER HAPPENED in 75 years? Holocaust denial is gaining a lot of momentum globally. Holocaust denial officially got organized by Willis Carto (Liberty Lobby) in 1978 with the founding of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). Even Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas wrote his dissertation in which he doubted the existence of the gas chambers and the high number of Jewish victims. Even though in 2014, he backpedaled to admit that the Holocaust was a heinous crime, his statements made in English and Arabic vary greatly. Some claim that the Holocaust never happened, some claim that it was greatly exaggerated, some claim that it was used as Jewish propaganda and some think that we talk too much about it. The frightening truth is that according to a recent survey by the ADL, 1/3 of the world population believes that the Holocaust was a myth... One third!

• Holocaust survivors are dwindling down to a very small number
As the years go by, Holocaust survivors are getting older and many of them are rapidly passing away. If a baby was born in the camps in 1945 and survived the horrors of the Holocaust, they would be 73 years old today. In reality, the vast majority of Holocaust survivors are in their mid-eighties at best, and even older. Within the next 20 years, the surviving witnesses of the Holocaust will have ALL DISAPPEARED, facilitating the propagating of lies by historical revisionists. Thanks to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Spielberg Shoah Foundation, names, stories, artifacts and testimonies are added every day.

• The Holocaust might have been worse than we even thought
It was about 18 years ago when a team of their researchers started to gather data from about 400 different sources about the Holocaust, Camps and Ghettos of the 30s and 40s. Based on their preliminary studies and available records, they had estimated the number of ghettos, labor camps, concentration camps and extermination camps at about 7,000. In 2013, They published their findings and realized that the numbers were not 7,000 but over 42,500. It is hard to fathom that the horrors of the Holocaust could have been a lot worse if not in intensity, most definitely in numbers. This renders the excuse of those who claimed that “they didn’t know it was happening”, completely unrealistic. Considering these findings about the 42,500 camps and ghettos, not only more people had to be well aware of the events but possibly more bystanders might have been more than just watching. A bystander who does nothing only facilitate the work of a perpetrator. Bystanders became co-perpetrators by default!

• End-Times Antisemitism is on the rise
By downplaying the Holocaust, we run the risk of minimizing recent acts of antisemitism. The last decade has seen an exponential increase in acts of antisemitism all over the world. These acts are getting more frequent, more spread out and much more violent…to the point of death. Until recently, antisemitism–as evil as it is– seldom claimed the lives of Jewish people. Since the Spring of 2012 and the “Toulouse Massacres”, Jews are now fearing for their lives and for good reasons, they are leaving Europe. The recent death of French Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll is a tragic example of the growth of End-Times antisemitism. She was an 85-year old Holocaust survivor who lived alone in her Paris apartment. She was stabbed 11 times and then burned inside her home. The poor woman who barely survived the flames of the Auschwitz factory of death, ended-up losing her life in flames, as if in a personal Holocaust.

As we remember the victims, the survivors and their families, I would like to encourage you to visit the site Shadows of Shoah that presents the truth about the Holocaust. It is neither dramatized nor romanticized. The stories come from first-person interviews with survivors of the Shoah across the world. Considering the fact that fewer and fewer survivors are still alive today, there is a sense of urgency in this kind of work. As first-hand witnesses continue to disappear, the “Catastrophe” runs a greater risk of falling into oblivion.The simplicity of the presentation brings out the profound reality of the Shoah. Each survivor has his/her own ordeal to recall and relive in front of the camera and they do it with difficulty but with dignity. It gives the audience a sense of hope based on mankind’s resilience. Some of these people who came out of the Shoah as survivors are still with us, telling their story and letting us know that after they survived the horrors of the camps, they chose to live and to share. Shadows of Shoah brings truth, light and hope into a world that too often lacks all three.

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories” Elie Wiesel

January 19, 2018 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The best way to remember the Holocaust is not with a hashtag!

On January 27, the whole world will be invited to remember the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust by observing International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is an anniversary that was set-up by the United Nations and is different from the yearly Yom HaShoah (Day of the Catastrophe) that takes place in Israel in the spring. While I find much bias in how the UN views and portrays Israel, I must commend them for recognizing the Holocaust. We live at a time of history nearing the complete extinction of all the remaining survivors of the Holocaust, as most of them are now in their mid-eighties at least. The motto of “NEVER AGAIN” arose soon after the closing of World War Two and has been the on-going creed of all those who want the Holocaust to be remembered. Recently, people have been even more creative in prompting, challenging and encouraging others to remember. This year, the World Jewish Congress wants to reach 500 million people globally, who will post the hashtag #WeRemember or #IRemember on a multitude of platforms on the social networks. Hashtags are a very powerful way to express an idea and make it attach itself and multiply itself on the web like nothing else can. In and of themselves, they are not bad, but they can have a tendency to become counterproductive.

Many people around the globe will post pictures of themselves with a sign showing the hashtag, and they will feel good about themselves. They will get a feeling of righteous indignation against hatred. They will feel like they are part of a broad community of people holding virtual hands to speak up against the Holocaust and antisemitism, and in a small way, they will be, but for most, the remembrance will dissipate soon after. Hashtags are a good starting point or a good addition, but if we truly want to remember–And now more than ever is the time to do so– we should opt for other ways of looking at the Holocaust. As permanent as a hashtag can become on the web, it is very ephemeral in our minds. There are other options that will leave an indelible memory in all of us, and we should explore them if at all possible.

Listen to a Holocaust survivor: Their number is dwindling down very fast, but there are still ways for many of us to get first-person accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust. If you know such a person or have an opportunity to go listen to one, do not hesitate to go and listen. Their stories vary from one to the next, but they all are a testimony to the problem of evil within mankind and the deep hatred for the Jewish people. For many of us, it can be challenging to meet one in person. The closest thing to a physical meeting is a video testimony. The powerful work of the staff at Shadows of Shoah brings many testimonies from survivors on video, and by virtue of that medium, renders their unique stories eternal. Additionally, the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation has over 54,000 video testimonies of survivors that are there to stay. Every single one of them is poignant and memorable in its own way.

Visit a Death Camp: In 2010, I had the opportunity to travel to Krakow, Poland and visit the remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This meant a lot to me since my maternal Grandfather Maurice Weinzveig was taken there by the Gestapo, from Paris in the Summer of 1942. Walking alongside the empty barracks in the cold of winter, left a mark on my psyche. Had Maurice spent time in any of them or did he die on the train or the gas chambers upon arrival? I will never know. The Death Camps are gruesome and eerie monuments left over from one of the darkest periods of mankind’s history. If at all possible, everybody, and most definitely every Christian should walk through one of them once in their lifetime.

Visit a Holocaust Memorial Museum: There are many such edifices that gather artifacts, photos and videos from the Holocaust. They make the events of the Jewish Catastrophe more real and tangible. The biggest and most elaborate of them–Yad Vashem–is located in Jerusalem. It is a difficult visit punctuated by visual and audio markers that will undoubtedly leave an impression on you for many years, well beyond the posting of any hashtag. There are several Holocaust Memorials closer to home in the United States. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. or the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles are just two of the most impactful and fruitful in their respective communities and nationally. The list is much longer and warrants several different visits if possible.

Read an account of the Holocaust: There is a tremendous global collection of Holocaust literature. From survivors’ accounts to biographies, historical accounts and even poems. Every human being should read the short but life-altering account of Elie Wiesel’s time at Auschwitz-Birkenau with his father when he was only 15. As told in his autobiography Night, his story of resilience and survival against all odds is very dark. Another powerful account coupled with a symposium from famous survivors is found in Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. A detailed and accurate account of the Holocaust can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz The War Against the Jews or in The destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg.

Any of these options or all of them if possible will work a lot further than a clever hashtag. The Holocaust cannot afford to be relegated to a single string of two or three words. We are minimizing the gravity of the event by posting hashtags. The virtual remembrance that is brought by the clever use of a hashtag will quickly become empty without the personal experiences, stories and accounts that can be lived through survivors, camps, museums and literature. Since most of us were not there in the camps and probably not even born at the time, what are we really saying when we say #WeRemember? At the very least, we ought to listen to the few survivors introduced on Shadows of Shoah , and then we can honestly say that we remember what they shared.

It is our duty as human beings to remember the Holocaust, share its history with the future generations and speak-up against those who deny that it ever happened.

The best way to do all this IS NOT just with a hashtag!

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