INTRODUCTION. ORIGINS OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL
The term Holocaust (from the Greek) or Shoah (from the Hebrew) – regardless of its many definitions (see lesson Holocaust – Terminological and Interpretative Problems, chapter ‘Various definitions of the Holocaust’) – refers to the genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. During this period, Jews were murdered on a massive scale in extermination centres, mainly in gas chambers or by the special Einsatzgruppen units operating behind the Eastern Front, as well as in ghettos or as prisoners in concentration camps. After the war, many scholars devoted their careers to analysing the origin, course and consequences of the Holocaust, as well as to documenting the fate of its victims.
However, alongside this scholarly research, there has also emerged a view known as Holocaust denial, which is based on negating the very existence of the Holocaust or greatly belittling its significance. It has taken on various forms: from significantly reducing the estimated number of victims, through casting doubt on the existence of gas chambers and extermination camps, to the claim that genocide in German Nazi camps never took place.
By greatly downplaying or outright repudiating the Holocaust, Holocaust denial de facto seeks to spread anti-Semitism, which indeed lies at its base, and legitimises neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist opinions in public debate.
The first attempts to deny the Holocaust were already made during the court trials of Nazi war criminals and their collaborators.
During the trials before the American Military Tribunal (e.g. the Dachau camp trial in 1945), the British Military Tribunal in Lüneburg (1945) or the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw (1947) and Kraków (1948), many death sentences were passed on the SS staff of German concentration camps, including KL Auschwitz. Only a few of the condemned, such as Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss or Erich Muhsfeldt (who was in charge of the Birkenau crematoria), confessed to their crimes. Most of the defendants denied that they had anything to do with the murder or brutal treatment of prisoners and downplayed the scale of the committed atrocities. Faced with irrefutable evidence, they usually explained their involvement as merely following orders, adding that they had never noticed the Auschwitz gas chambers and that the crematoria only served to burn the bodies of prisoners who had died of natural causes.
Source: Naprzód, 17th December 1947, No. 343.
Press report presenting a fragment of the testimony of the former KL Auschwitz commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel, before the Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków during the trial of the ‘Auschwitz staff’.
Source: Trybuna Robotnicza, 26th November 1947, No. 325.
Press report presenting a fragment of the testimony of the former head of the Politische Abteilung (camp section of the Gestapo) , Maximilian Grabner before the Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków during the trial of the ‘Auschwitz staff’.
Source: Polish Press Agency.
The conference room during the trial of the former SS staff of Auschwitz concentration camp before the Supreme National Tribunal which took place in Kraków in November and December 1947.
