Fighting the Nazi Threat Today

Holocaust denial: writing the death camps out of history

What is Holocaust denial?

HOLOCAUST denial is the lie that claims six million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis in death camps like Auschwitz. Holocaust ‘revisionists’, as they call themselves, claim that the evidence of gassing and mass genocide has been faked, and that the small number of Jews who died did so from diseases like typhus.

The Holocaust--not a detail of history

This lie is important to Nazis because they know that the knowledge of the Holocaust and of what happened in Nazi Germany is a huge political block on their growth. People who might be attracted by seemingly respectable talk about jobs or housing will be horrified by being identified with Hitler’s mass genocide. This is why Nazis try to appear respectable, and why Le Pen referred to the Holocaust as ‘a mere detail in the history of the Second World War’, and tries to play down its importance or deny it altogether. It is why groups like the British National Party sell books and pamphlets with titles like The Six Million Swindle. Revisionists include Robert Faurisson in France and David Irving in this country who claims that ‘the infamous gas chambers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek did not exist--ever--except as a brainchild of Britain’s wartime Psychological Warfare Executive’. Irving has also admitted, ‘You can call me a mild fascist’.

The Sunday Times

Many of these lies had little circulation in this country, but the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe has given them some publicity. Irving himself has regularly spoken at Nazi rallies in Germany, where neo-Nazis have relentlessly sought to perpetrate the myth of Holocaust denial. Despite this, respectable newspapers gave space to him and his ideas. Most notoriously, the Sunday Times engaged him to ‘decipher’ Goebbels’ diaries, claiming no one else could read his handwriting (Goebbels was the Nazi propaganda chief). There was a storm of protest over the Sunday Times’s actions, especially, but not only, from the Jewish community. Many cancelled their subscriptions and wrote furious letters protesting about the publicity being given to these lies. The Sunday Times backed down completely and was forced to write to many of these people, and to publish an article exposing Holocaust denial.

Campaigning against Holocaust denial

The Anti Nazi League supported a mass protest outside Irving’s house that was organised by the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Union of Jewish Students and the Association of Jewish ex-Service Men and Women. It also organised a demonstration the following day which marched to where Irving was holding a ‘seminar’ on Holocaust revisionism attended by the Nazi BNP and C18.

The Anti Nazi League also produced a poster with the slogan ‘Never Again’, and pictures from concentration camps showing the reality of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.

New pamphlet produced by the ANL

After this the Anti Nazi League launched a wider campaign to increase awareness of Holocaust denial and why it is important to neo-Nazis today. Jewish members produced a pamphlet, Holocaust Denial: the new Nazi lie, which has sold extensively, and been used in many schools and colleges. This has been accompanied by a series of meetings all around the country, which have been addressed by Holocaust survivors Esther Brunstein and Leon Greenman.

Talks by Holocaust survivors

Leon Greenman and Esther Brunstein have since spoken to audiences all round the country, both to students in schools and colleges, and to wider audiences. At the first meeting, at York University, Esther told a packed hall of over 650 students how she fears the resurgence of Nazism, and that to deny the Holocaust is to deny the existence of her mother, father, brother and relatives who were murdered by the Nazis. Later she spoke at a rally in Edinburgh, at the climax of a successful campaign to prevent Le Pen from visiting Edinburgh. Leon has continued to speak at meetings, despite death threats and attacks on his house by Nazi thugs from Combat 18.

Visits to Auschwitz

The Anti Nazi League has organised three trips to Auschwitz led by Leon Greenman. Each has involved a huge variety of people, black and white, including school and college students, teachers, firefighters, local government workers, journalists, pensioners and others. All felt that it was important to see for themselves, to remember, and to use what they saw to fight back.

‘I spent three years in the camps. The Anti Nazi League wanted me to come, to show the truth which the Nazis deny. Nazism is growing and the government is doing nothing. Some of the population is doing something. The other part don’t know, and the Nazis want to get them on their side. I do it without guns, without weapons. This is my way of protesting. The government should put through laws with punishments. They are killing black people, bombing homes and trying to kill survivors who tell the truth. When you get home, tell others to go and see the truth while it’s still there.’
Leon Greenman, interviewed at Auschwitz in 1995

An exhibition on the life of Leon Greenman can be seen at the Jewish Museum in London. Contact the ANL for details.

‘We didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was. We had always thought there would be a few camps and it would be small. But when we got to Auschwitz we were shocked by the size of the camp. It was enormous. Over the gate it says in German ‘Work Makes You Free’, but there was no freedom in the camp. The big fences were shocking.’
School students

‘I noticed the shoes--one pair was destroyed, worth absolutely nothing. To a Nazi that shoe was worth more than a human being. Their hair, their teeth, their shoes were worth more than a human being. You saw Mercedes Benz involved in slave labour. You look at the gas chambers--it was systematic on a scale you couldn’t imagine.’
Youth worker

‘I’d read about it, and heard about it from my family, but it came to life--the hair, the shoes, the suitcases--it’s a different world. It’s got to be known. My grandfather, her brother and her sister were 14, 15 and 13 years old when they got sent to England on their own. Their parents told them they would come in two months ... they didn’t find out until 1946 that they were dead.’
FE student

ANL visit to Auschwitz, October 1997

The launch of the ANL’s Holocaust Denial pamphlet in the House of Commons. From left to right: Esther Brunstein, Peter Hain MP, Hyam Maccoby, Mike Rosen