Start by contextualizing for you Holocaust Denial. Ill talk to you about what happened during my trial but first i want to talk who are holocaust deniers, why do they say what they say and how can we understand, whats doing, or what their arguments are, their socalled arguments are . But i think we have to begin first by defining the holocaust. Im getting sort of a basic definition. There are many variations. How would you define the holocaust . Dont all freeze up on me. How would you define the holocaust . We went over this briefly in class that we went back to the root of the word holocaust, total and caust to be consumed by fire. A more popularized term to describe the hebrew term for the utter destruction of the jewish people. Prof. Lipstadt the utter destruction of the jewish people by whom . The third reich. The germans. It is not all the horrific things the germans did during the war. The germans did many horrific things, killed millions of people. Had they won, theyd probably, this is counterfactual, we dont know because they did not win, but had they won they probably wouldve killed millions more. They probably would have wiped out many people whom they considered useless eaters, just consumers, not producing anything. They might have wiped out all homosexuals. They mainly persecuted german homosexuals but they may have eliminated all of, and murdered them. They might have murdered people, many of the workers and the ukraine, leaving enough Agricultural Workers to produce food for the third reich, but that is all speculation. The mongols, because of the, you know, the connection mongols to the connections of what used to be called mongoloid, today what we would call the children with developmental disabilities. But all those things could wait till after the war. The one thing that could not wait that happened during the war was the attempt to wipe out the jewish people from one end of europe, the netherlands. Denmark. All the way through into the soviet, well into the soviet union. And then north africa, libya and aimed at other north african countries where there was a Large Population of jews. Corfu, rhodes, etc. And what makes it, we know of other genocides. One of the most famous genocides, too little talked about is the turkish genocide of the armenians in the time of world war i. And that, which is denied also by the turks. The turkish government denies there was a genocide. There is a parallel there. But in any case, most genocides are against a specific people within a specific area. For answers, the turks were not out to kill armenians who mightve been living in berlin. Or in paris or in any other place in europe. They wanted the armenians in a specific area and turkey murdered, destroyed, removed, etc. In this case, the case of the holocaust, as we know from the various memoirs and discussions we have had over the course of the semester, it was men, women, children, irrespective of whether you posed a particular threat to the german regime. And inside germany and outside of germany. The mass killings begin outside of germany. The begin with the group and the mobile killing units and early 1941 in former, in soviet territory. That the germans captured. So, its different from, again, it does not encompass all the horrific things that were done in the name of germany during the war, but what, what captions our attention is this unique, unique cannot be modified. You cannot say somewhat unique, a little unique, very unique. Something is either unique or not unique. Right . Ok . This unique attempt to murder an entire people, irrespective of age. People were wheeled to the deportation trains. We have pictures of it. Because they could not walk, they could not sit. Baby carriages. Babies carried into the gas chambers. Irrespective of age, irrespective of gender, irrespective of whether the person posed a threat to germany and a sensible an ostensible threat to germany. What deniers are denying, holocaust deniers are denying, is that this happened. Not that there were not bad things that happened, bad things as one denier that i interviewed said to me bad things happen in war. One side bombs another, one side unfairly imprisons another group. So, this is no different. But one of the things, see they engage in immoral equivalencies. We have moral equivalencies, these are immoral equivalencies. They will say things like, ok, so, the germans had concentration camps. That was well know. When doc how was opened they had a press conference to announce the opening of dacau. But the american who did the americans have camps for . Japanese. Prof. Lipstadt not is not entirely correct. Who did we have camps for . Japaneseamericans. Prof. Lipstadt american citizens of japanese descent. Foreigners. Did they have camps for pows prof. Lipstadt camps for pows. But that is the norm. Many words in the region we are sitting in right now in the south. There were camps for officers, german officers. And in many camps, they were treated better, they had more freedoms of movement than american soldiers who were black. So, in other words the officers could go into town, and africanamerican soldiers were often told by their Commanding Officers you were not allowed to go into town. But a pow camp is a norm, a prisoner of war camp is a norm in the course of a war. Were talking about camps for civilians. Camps for noncombatants. Theyll say, oh, well, the germans bombed london in the blitz but the allies bombed dresden. They will find all sorts of, you did bad. We did bad. Lets all sing kumbayah. But there is no immoral equivalency of an attempt to wipe out an entire people. That stands alone. So there is this effort to deny it. Now, Holocaust Denial begins quite early. And, in fact, lets say, brazil and panama, not argentina. But in argentina, which was home to quite a number of escaped nazi war criminals, and a very loyal to the third reich german expat community, they refused to believe when one of the chief executive officers, chief operating officers of the holocaust told them about what happened, they refused to believe it. Many of the early denial materials were produced there. Some were produced in france. There was early denial in the 1950s and the 1960s. But Holocaust Denial, the denial that i have studied, the denial you read about in history on trial, or the movie, deals with later denial. And it deals with denial that begins to emerge about the mid1970s. And its, it has a certain parallel. Alex, you and i were discussing white extremism. It adopts many of the same tactics. What deniers figured out, and deniers are very often closely linked to white supremacists, white power groups, etc. Or, if you go on the website of white supremacist groups, you will see Holocaust Denial material there. They figured out early on that if you praised the third reich, praised the nazis, if you did that, if you walked around in pseudo third reich uniforms, or you were photographed giving the german salute, people would look at you and say, that is an extremist. We dont want to be associated. An extremist rebels. That is why the racists do not go marching around with white bed sheets with ku klux klan hoods on. We all recognize that and we stay away from that. But they figured out if they got rid of the outer telltale signs of extremism, of pronazism and of neonazism and garb themselves in more traditional, acceptable, nonextremist wear people would not be repelled by this. So, instead of calling themselves deniers or antisemites. We hate jews. We think with the germans did was terrific. They adopted the name revisionist. Sometimes you will hear deniers refer to as revisionists. And what they want to say is we are not denying anything. The only thing we want to do is revise mistakes in history. That is one an institute they created thats why an institute they created in the mid1970s was the journal of Historical Review. Review. In other words, reviewing mistakes in history. History makes mistakes. We understand things different, etc. But the only thing they looked at that was the killing of the jews. And it was hardly revising of mistakes, but it was denial. Denial that, and they denied, each one is a little different. Theres not one overwhelming or uniform template to apply to all deniers, but there are certain things that are common to them. A, to deny that there was a plan by the third reich led by adolf hitler, directed from berlin to annihilate the jews. Ok . So, that if any jews may have been killed they use the word died. Pay close attention to language. It was rogue action. Or individual action. Some officer got out of hand, shot a bunch of jews. Some soldiers buried to synagogue. But it was nothing organized and not directed from berlin. A. B. The number six million victims is totally made up, an exaggeration. It cannot be proven. It cannot be documented, etc. C. Anything wrong that was done was not done under the aegis of adolf hitler. Again, it goes back to the rogue actions. These were out of control officers or things like that. What am i up to, d . I forget. And then a big focus on gas chambers. Now, the gas chambers are a scientific impossibility. Gas chambers wouldve exploded. Gas chambers never happened. They were really fumigation units, there were air raid shelters. Any number of different examples of what they were other than purpose built killing machines. Now, just for a moment, i want to contrast, i want to make a point here that i think it is important to recognize. The germans killed, murdered with the help of lithuanians, latvians, ukrainians, militia in different places, well over one million jews. We will look at some of those documents in a little while. But they shot them. Took them out to pits that had been dug. Shot them and buried them in the pits. We have eyewitnesses to this. We have the physical evidence, etc. , etc. And the deniers do focus on that and do try to say that was, that was a killing a partisans, people who were spies, of people who were rising up against the germans. Doesnt explain how their own documented lists show how many jewish children and jewish women are killed. If youre killing spies you are not killing children in the great number they killed. The reason the deniers focus of much on the gas chambers is that you have shootings in many wars. You have shootings of civilians in many wars. Not usually in the number of well over an one million in the short time span this happen, but the gas chambers were and you died in one, you died in the other. The death was horrific. This is not compared pain. If i walked in here this morning and said, my god, i have an impacted root canal and someone said, oh, i have two. I would not have felt the least bit better. People get, my pain is worse than your pain. My peoples pain is worse than your pain, and i think it is a nonproductive, useless road to go down. But the reason we focus on the gas chambers is the gas chambers were purposebuilt killing machines. A gun could be used to get food, a gun could be used for protection. No matter how you might feel about guns, they do have purpose. Other than killing. Gas chambers have one purpose and one purpose only. And that is to kill people. And to kill them efficiently, and to kill them using as little fuel as possible. And to kill them in a way that, in a manner that will make them compliant, so they will not all go crazy and start fighting, so you hang your clothes over here, remember where you hung your clothes, so you can find them when you come out. Putting showerheads in the gas chambers or things like that to deceive people so they will be more compliant. But the deniers, realizing that there is no immoral equivalency for gas chambers, go to great efforts to deny them, to say they were scientific impossibility. Ignoring reams of evidence, some of which im going to show you in a little while, on a website called h. Doc. We will look at it in a minute. So, thats the basic arguments of deniers. No plan, no 6 million, no leadership from hitler, no gas chambers and the last point is this was all made up by jews to get sympathy from the world. And to get reparations. And in that sympathy on the first point and the sympathy from the world to get themselves a state. A jewish state. Now, i want to stop here from the details of denial and pause it for you and explained he why i consider and it seems eminently clear to me, Holocaust Denial is really a form of antisemitism. Because what it is arguing is that the jews made up this myth, made up this story of 6 million killed. And then not only to make it up, to make it up a myth. We can make up a lot of great stories. We walk out of this room and no people would believe us. People would look at us like we are weird. But they managed to make up this unbelievable, incredible story, and get the world to believe it, get the allies to help them plant evidence, get the germans who were innocent, according to deniers, to pay billions in reparations and even more than the money being paid, they were paying reparations, you know, money paid to the victims, and to the families of the victims, etc. To bear a burden of having done this. To bear an ethical burden. Because even today germany, when chancellor Angela Merkel decided three, four years ago to open germany to quite a few refugees, i think it was one million, many of them were already there but part of a reasoning is that we as germans cannot turn people away. If you go to germany, you spend time in germany, that burden of what happened now, some people fight it, some people ignored it, some people fight against it but somehow if this never happened, to get germany to accept it, its quite a thing. For, after all, think about this. For deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong . For deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong . The victims. Prof. Lipstadt the victims. All the people who said this is my story. My family disappeared, my wife, my children, my parents, my uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors, etc. , i saw them being shot or taken to the gas chambers never to reappear again. Who else would have to . Governments. Prof. Lipstadt which governments . The germans themselves, the perpetrators themselves when they say it happened, that they are making that up. Who else would have to be wrong . The troops. Prof. Lipstadt that is a very good point. There is there are no witnesses saying it did not happen. We did not see it. These people were taken and are all still, were taken to this nice place to live in this nice place. There are no documents, so what deniers do is they have to debunk the documents that do exist alex . Are they essentially conspiracy theorists . Prof. Lipstadt yes, yes. They are conspiracy theorists. And that is what antisemitism is. They are conspiracy theorists making the point that this small group of jews was able to get the allies to plant this evidence, hold the nuremberg trials, hold the war crimes trials, get the german to pay reparations, all these things because of the power of the jews. That is why we consider it a form of antisemitism because it plays into all of the the financial shenanigans of the jews, the power of the jews, the Many Political the manipulation of the jews. In the event and holocaust and other ones indisputably happen, would you consider revision is to be the same as deniers . Prof. Lipstadt let me go back to that. Thank you for reminding me. They call themselves revisionist but you will see in the book, in denial, that i dont call them revisionist because revisionism for those who are history majors, you are going to learn that revisionism is a respected approach to history. If you were to go up to the library and find a history of the south, american south, from 1952, maybe even 1962 or earlier, it would have very little discussion of the life of the africanamerican, either as a slave or later as a free person. It would very Little Information on southern women, black or white. So, what a historian today would do is take that period and revise and think, well, if we add the voice of the slave or the freed africanamerican or the voice of the woman, how does our understanding of history change . I will give you another example. After world war i. It was not called world war i. It was called the great war. The paris peace accords were seen as a great accomplishment. By you took a history class in 1965, as opposed to 1925 or even 1975, 1985, 1995, you learn about all of the flaws of the versailles treaty. The great financial burden it put on weimar germany, on democratic germany. The creation of all sorts of things well go into now. That is revision of history. Thats looking, you ask different questions. We look at it as historical events and we ask different questions. So revision, in terms of general history is a very respected. It is one of the operating motives of any science. They will often look back to early legitimate historians who would call themselves revisionists. Were in that lineage. They try to legitimize their approach, denial through revision. Do these actual legitimate historians who subscribe to the school of thought of revisionism, do they distance themselves . Prof. Lipstadt there are no serious historians in the ranks of deniers. Right. Prof. Lipstadt yes, sometimes youll get a professor that he learned as a professor of, i dont know astrophysics but, you know. They are in a completely different feel. No serious historian subscribes to this. Where it has gotten traction is among certainly far right wing extremist, antisemites and then it begins to get traction today. For a long time, we thought it had diminished markedly. But it begins to get traction today in other ways, in sort of soft core denial. What had been talking about is hard core denial. Soft core denial is bad things happen all the time. Why complain about it . Or you will get people that were once formerly respectable people. The former mayor of london. Yeah, it happen but the zionists cooperated with the nazis and made it happen because they wanted the jews to come to palestine. It has no legitimate grounding, no legitimate historical data, but you will get that kind of thing as well. Or the poles. In poland today, as of a year ago, they passed a law that says you cant talk about the polish people as collaborators. Now, the poles, because they wanted to they were many victims there are many poles who collaborated with the germans and many who rescued jews. And many poles who turned jews in. Poland was to be thought of strictly as a victim, we did not collaborate in anyway. That is not the hard core denial i am talking about but it is more what i call soft core denial. When you say that there were not taken seriously, it is very different to the book where the denier is shown as someone who is taken seriously by the media and historians. Prof. Lipstadt very few historians subscribe to his, talking about the tape of what happened with david irving. I will get into it in a more constructive way. Ok, the same thing. So, lets turn to that for a minute. My story, as many of you know from the memoir, which you are reading, etc. I wrote a book in 1993, published in 19